by Eliot Peper
“Personal attacks will get us nowhere,” said Rachel, her purple eye blazing. “The only question that matters is what comes next.”
That’s the thing about being queen. The bigger your realm, the bigger the bull’s-eye on your back. Lowell was right about one thing at least: The fate of Javier’s proposal had never depended on earning unanimous support from the people around this table. At the end of the day, they were advisers, not deciders. There was only one vote that really mattered, and Rachel Leibovitz was the hardest of nuts to crack.
“This conspiracy is a symptom of inequality,” said Javier. “Lowell and his cohorts are able to kidnap, murder, and manipulate at will because their wealth makes them nearly untouchable. Allowing that much capital to accrue to so few people puts the entire system at risk. Poverty is one problem the progressive-membership initiative will help address, but that’s not all. By charging more to those with more and funding the feed with the proceeds, we’ll be creating the level playing field that Sofia is so keen on.” He pressed his hands together, summoning all the poise and charisma he’d polished in countless commencements, keynotes, and public appeals. “Let’s get real. Our current fee structure is regressive. By charging all individuals the same fee, we force the poor to pony up a much higher percentage of their income than the rich. That’s not just unfair, that’s wrong. We’re making the world worse, not better, and we’re endangering the future of the feed at the same time. It must change. We should prosecute Lowell, expose his collaborators, and demonstrate that their meddling has done nothing but strengthen our resolve.”
It took everything Emily had not to squeeze Javier’s knee under the glass table. Pride swelled within her. He wasn’t the person she’d thought he might become. He was someone better in every way, someone more unique, more himself. The digital ghosts she’d spent years chasing from hibernation on Camiguin were still alive, still real, and, against all odds, did not hate her. It was her own selfishness that had imprisoned her, her overwhelming sense of shame. I just couldn’t bear to lose you again, Javier had said to her a few minutes ago. I’ve just missed you so much. Emily’s heart was still melting, crying out, Me too. Again, Emily felt the weight of Rosa’s head on her shoulder, saw the stars wheeling above them. These people were too good for her, too kind, too courageous, too brilliant. But somehow they cared about her, wanted her in their lives, overlooked the flaws she judged so harshly.
Down in that cavern, Emily had realized she wanted to live. Now she saw how she wanted to live. She would earn back the friendships she’d abandoned, prove herself worthy of the open arms Javier and Rosa were extending. She had brought in Lowell, helping to stave off the worst. It was time to seal the deal. If she could convince Rachel to do the right thing, to make a stand against the scourge of inequality just as she’d made a stand against climate change, Emily could take her rightful place among the people she loved.
“So,” said Sofia. “Just to summarize, you’re saying that we should fight this fire with gasoline.”
Javier clenched his fists. “I’m saying that if we don’t do something, who will?”
“And why do you get to decide on all the ‘somethings’ we should be doing?” asked Sofia. “Look, I hate Lowell as much as the next person. He’s an asshole, and the crew he’s assembled is a catalog of terrible human beings. Barend, Nisanur, Barasa, all of them have some serious human-rights violations on their résumés. But they’re reacting to us. This wasn’t a preemptive attack—this was a badly conceived, badly executed response to Javier’s proposal. We’ve declared ourselves sovereign and crippled national governments. We’ve taxed carbon, unified currency, and opened borders. These are good things, and I applaud the passion with which Javier champions them. But we’re moving too fast. The world can’t handle it. This is what happens. We’re in a moment of transition. If we want to make changes that last, if we want the feed to survive, we have to hit the brakes. We should let this storm blow over. Then, once everything has settled down, we can come back to this and see if there’s a way we can work our way toward a solution.”
Unconditional compassion washed over Emily, lubricated by the saccharine buzz of the painkillers. Sofia didn’t really oppose this plan. She was just scared. As Rachel’s appointed successor, more than anything, Sofia just wanted the transition to go smoothly. She was smart and knew that they were approaching a turning point, that this was just the calm before the storm. Like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter, she wanted to store every ounce of strength, every iota of political capital and public goodwill, for the battle on the horizon.
Emily knew the feeling, and knew how deceptive it could be. It was precisely this logic that gnawed away the potential of the visionary, that turned dreams to rust. What better argument for inaction than the promise of future action? What better defenders of the status quo than well-meaning leaders who hedged? A quote floated up from a half-forgotten high-school history class. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Javier made to speak, but Emily put a restraining hand on his arm.
She stood, calling on the fierce grit that had carried her through years in the ring, digging deep for the easy confidence she’d once possessed.
“Have you ever watched that classic science-fiction film The Matrix?” she asked. “I remember loving that movie when I was a kid, even though the special effects were absolute trash. The campy slow-mo won me over, dodging bullets and kicking ass. But what stuck with me afterward was the idea that the world we perceive isn’t real—just a membrane concealing a deeper reality. I began to see things everywhere that I thought were real but were really made up. Teachers told us that our grades mattered, but really they were just an inaccurate and ineffective bureaucratic sorting mechanism. We weren’t allowed to vote until we were eighteen, but the distinction between child and adult was totally arbitrary, just a number that someone decided on one day. We called politicians leaders when they were often the most corrupt, vain, and impotent people around. Suddenly, everywhere I looked, I saw facts revealed to be fiction.”
Reaching out, Emily plucked a lily from the vase, turning the flower in her hands with exaggerated care. “That’s the real power of the feed,” she said. “It’s the red pill. The feed has ripped the veil from so many of the fantasies we once thought were natural laws. Nations are just a collective fiction, an awkward mashup of anecdotes, anthems, and historical circumstance that we use to draft a social contract. I was born in what was once Los Angeles, but I am only American to the extent that I believe I am. The nation state is a relatively recent invention, and when you declared Commonwealth sovereign, you demonstrated that institutional innovation has no more of an endpoint than its technological equivalent. When you mandated open borders, you showed how little those lines in the sand really meant, how the colors we add to maps are a conceit. When you created a unified global currency, you proved money to be a figment of our imaginations. The only value money has is the value we believe it has. That’s why I can buy fresh produce with a few ephemeral electrons, credits adjusted and cleared through the feed. But the problem with nations, money, religion, and other human constructs is that they’re convincing. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t work. Sometimes they work too well. Sometimes we drink our own Kool-Aid. We lose track of first principles.”
She returned the lily to the vase. “That’s what is happening here. Lowell and his pals want to protect their private property. But private property isn’t an actual thing, like granite or gravity. It’s just something we all agree to, like not cutting in line. We agree to private property because inequality is useful. Wealth gives us a way to reward valuable work and trade with each other, benefiting everyone. But taken too far, inequality is deadly. We’re motivated by relative—not absolute—wealth, so when a tiny minority seizes almost all the money, discontent snowballs. The result is social unrest, not economic dynamism. And social unre
st is something that Commonwealth’s new world order cannot afford, particularly at a ‘moment of transition.’”
They were almost there, Emily could feel it. Rachel’s stare bored into her, as intense as the laser at the Ranch. The room was listening with surprise and rapt attention, even Sofia. “The feed is the single most important piece of global infrastructure, interdependent and reciprocal with everything else. It’s the engine that drives civilization, and you are its stewards. It has blessed you with freedom and cursed you with responsibility.” This was the brink. They just needed one last push. “And it shouldn’t take Diana and Dag trading knowledge of Javier and my backdoor to get you to do the right thing, like it did with the carbon tax. People like Lowell might only make good decisions under duress, but you can do the right thing for the right reason right here, right now. Implement Javier’s proposal. Build a future we want to live in.”
Emily collapsed into her chair, spent. With a little luck, it would be enough.
There was a moment of silence.
“Hold the fuck on.” Sofia kicked back her chair and stood up. “What are you talking about? A backdoor into the feed? Trading it for the carbon tax?”
Emily’s breath caught in her throat.
Baihan frowned. “Rachel, what is she—”
“So this is why I had to rewrite the terms of service on a goddamn moment’s notice?” demanded Liane. “We were blackmailed into making climate change policy?”
“Oooohhhh,” said Baihan, shaking his head. “Any breach of feed security should have been disclosed to every signatory to Commonwealth’s agreements. This invalidates every treaty, and as a special adviser to the UN Security Council I can tell you right now that we will take steps to—”
“Oh, hell no, asshole,” snapped Liane. “You’re not reneging on years of fucking work. Whatever this is, it’s not yours to leverage into some kind of hostile takeover.”
Baihan smiled coldly. “It sounds like Commonwealth is already the victim of a hostile takeover. Of course—”
“Don’t make me bring up Bangladesh,” said Diana. “Seriously, Baihan, don’t make me do it. I don’t want to, but I will.”
Color drained from his face. “Bitch—”
“The fuck happened in Bangladesh?” asked Liane, looking back and forth between them.
Sofia reached out, lifted the vase, and smashed it down onto the table. The vessel shattered on impact, sending water and flowers everywhere.
“Explain,” she said in a low voice that promised murder.
“I think what Emily is trying to—” said Diana.
“Oh no you fucking don’t,” raged Sofia. “Javier and this—” She stared at Emily in disbelief. “This—whoever she really is, had some kind of backdoor to the feed? And you and Dag knew?”
“That doesn’t carry a lot of moral authority coming from someone who was the highest-placed agent embedded in Commonwealth,” snapped Diana with the hopeless air of someone making a last-ditch attempt to defuse a bomb.
Sofia’s mouth fell open. “I reported to you, bitch.”
“You did what?” asked Liane.
“I’m calling security,” said Baihan.
“Shut up, all of you!”
It was the nurse. The avalanche shuddered to a sudden halt.
Rachel was twitching in her chair. The right side of her face was slack, and spittle fell from her lip. Her one good eye was dull, staring into the middle distance.
“She’s having a seizure,” said the nurse, checking her pulse and referencing diagnostics in his feed. “You”—he pointed to Liane at random—“call the emergency response. Tell them we need the helicopter. We have to get her to the ICU ASAP. You”—he pointed at Diana—“come here and help me keep her steady. You”—Sofia—“get us an elevator and make sure nothing’s blocking our path.”
Emily turned to Javier. He was staring at her, lips slightly parted, shaking his head in abject disbelief. He looked like he would shatter if she so much as touched him. She had only seen him like that once before.
Her eyes wandered, searching the room for a hint that all was not lost. But all she found was shock, betrayal, and an emergency medical intervention.
Even the window was blank.
The fog had rolled in, occluding the view.
CHAPTER 35
Emily fled.
Faces flew by, phantoms peering at her in surprise over their cappuccinos. Abstract shapes reared up around her. The paths converged and diverged, their lazy curves designed for meanders, not sprints. She vaulted over the breaching whale, shearing moss off the cool rock, kicking up gravel as she stuck the landing and continued her mad dash through lounge areas and conversation nooks to the central elevator bank. She wanted one of those chameleon jumpsuits that rendered you all but invisible. She wanted these people, these engineers and scientists and marketers and whoever else, to look somewhere else, anywhere else. She wanted to get out of this building, this spear thrust into the sky like a thorn in God’s side.
An elevator door was opening just as Emily reached the bank. She shouldered through the people waiting to board. They went from indignant to disturbed as soon as they saw her, not a single one venturing to join her as she directed the elevator to the ground floor. Ignoring their stares, she queued up Grandmaster Flash and let the music take her.
The doors slid shut too slowly, eyelids closing in an impossibly long blink. Her entire body throbbed. If only she could tear away these bandages and slough off her shredded skin. She imagined herself emerging into the lobby naked and flayed, bare muscles and tendons exposed to the air, an anatomical model brought to hideous life.
They knew.
The elevator began its descent and she was weightless, wishing that it would fall faster and faster until it hit terminal velocity, that she would plunge to her death floating light as a feather.
They all must know. It was thirteen years ago. Javier had been a key architect of feed security. Together, he and Emily had used the backdoor he’d installed for himself. With Diana’s help, Dag had unearthed that backdoor and offered it to Rachel in exchange for the carbon tax. Javier had returned to join Commonwealth’s board. Diana had signed up as their chief intelligence officer. Even Dag had consulted on a number of key projects. They had worked directly with Rachel for years, participating in every major Commonwealth decision. Of course Rachel and the rest of the board knew about the long-extinct exploit and who was involved. That Javier and Diana participated in Commonwealth management at such a high level was a testament to Rachel’s long view. She and the board saw how valuable it was to access insights from people who had outwitted their supposedly inviolable system. Black hats turned white hat all the time.
They knew. How could they not?
The walls of the elevator closed in around Emily. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Why was the building so damn tall? This was taking too long. Maybe Diana’s spooks had hijacked the elevator and were sending it to a deep sub-basement not listed on any architectural plans, a shadowy skunkworks stocked with experimental truth serums, padded cells, and mad scientists for whom Emily would be just another guinea pig.
They hadn’t known.
Rachel Leibovitz, supreme overlord of information flows, hadn’t known the secret history of three of her closest advisers. She hadn’t known that Javier authored the single largest breach in feed history. She hadn’t known that Diana played a key role in uncovering said breach. She hadn’t even known that Sofia had been Diana’s mole for most of her career, starting on Sofia’s first day as a Commonwealth trainee.
After what had been either an eternity or a few scant minutes, the elevator came to a stop. Emily’s joints compressed, gravity reminding her of its inexorable pull, that she could never be truly free of anything.
At any hour of any day, Rachel could have granted herself root access to the feed. She’d built it, after all. She could have snuck peeks into the digital lives of anyone she’d wanted, played voyeur on billions. She could
have tapped this infinite library for inspiration, incriminating evidence, or even to shape the psychology of world leaders, just as Emily and Javier had. At the very least, Rachel could have used this latent superpower to vet those she charged with running Commonwealth and steering its path into the future.
The doors opened, and Emily stepped into a lobby that was also an indoor forest, live redwood trees reaching up into mist that obscured the unreasonably high ceiling, the cathedral space paying homage to the combined power of nature and human engineering.
Rachel had never used the key to her own kingdom. It had sat there in its plush box gathering dust all these years, its seductive promise unrequited but for Emily and Javier’s original heist. Rachel must have been an angel or a demon to have disregarded its pull. Emily remembered the force behind her violet gaze, how the seizure had robbed it of its strength. No. Rachel was all too human. It was just in this world of backroom deals and endless intrigue, she had decided to employ that most subtle and counterintuitive of strategies: integrity.
Emily burst out of the doors and onto the street. The fog was thick and soupy, reducing visibility to no more than a few meters. The effect was uncanny, as if the entire universe had shrunk down into a woolly bubble. Emily accelerated into a run, trying to reach the edge of the bubble, the boundary of the universe itself, the asymptote of blindness.
Trust was the one thing the feed needed to survive. It was the active ingredient, the catalyst that had precipitated Commonwealth’s unprecedented ubiquity. Only by inspiring and sustaining faith in its inviolability could the feed sate its insatiable appetite for information and connection. Rachel never broke her own rules because she knew that nothing was worth more than her word, that her dreams rested on her honor. Emily saw herself in Rachel, and hated both Rachel and herself for it.