Society of the Mind

by Eric L. Harry

  But as the hill that obscured her view of the terrain below receded into the distance, Laura saw that nature again gave way to the hand of man. Where there should have continued uninterrupted the thick tangle of growth, instead appeared the tidy edge of a perfectly flat, green lawn.

  Laura's breath caught in her chest. Slowly, from behind the hill that had hid it until now, rose a massive white structure. Like a giant moon climbing above the horizon, the enormous building dwarfed all else within view. It sprawled across the empty field, easily fifteen or twenty stories high and unbroken by windows or doors. It was breathtaking in its scale and was surely the central focus of the island operations. The car was nearing the top of the mountain, which was curved around a steep bluff thick with vegetation. The entire island was now within view. A wide brown road fanned out behind the huge building below, and led through the dense jungle to three concrete launch pads that sat poised at water's edge. The pads were at the tips of small points of land that spread like three fingers from the end of the island: On the rightmost pad sat a squat, blunt rocket like the one she'd seen rise into the air minutes before. From the empty center pad, white smoke or steam still drifted slowly into the air.

  The launch pad on the far left lay, by contrast to the others, a comparatively short distance from the giant building. That pad was also vacant, its gantry standing a lonely watch — awaiting the return of its charge.

  Beyond the three pads swirled the calm greens of still beaches, the crashing whites of the surf on the island's reefs, and the trackless blues of the deep sea that surrounded Gray's kingdom. They were isolated there, remote, detached. Despite the elevation of the mountain that her car had scaled, there were no other islands to be seen. They were a small green dot in an immense blue pool. The ocean, Laura found herself thinking as she stared into the distance, was a moat. It kept Gray's secrets in, and his enemies out.

  The car plunged into inky blackness, and Laura gasped in fright.

  It hurtled through a tunnel, the dim lights along a railed walkway providing the only illumination until the car rounded a bend and burst back into the sunlight.

  It took a moment for Laura's eyes to adjust and for her to realize that the car was braking. To her right, a magnificent mansion came into view behind an ivy-covered stone fence. The car slowed to a crawl and turned through the open iron gates.

  Before Laura lay a large, cobblestone courtyard bounded on three sides by the stucco walls of the great house. Two huge gas lanterns burned invitingly on either side of the house's stately entrance, and water cascaded off the statuary of an immense, beautiful fountain at the center of the courtyard. Well-tended beds of brightly colored flowers surrounded the fountain.

  The curbed roadbed cut a neat crease through it all, forming a teardrop-shaped loop of white concrete circling around the fountain.

  The car pulled up to the front of the mansion, and a woman in jeans and a short-sleeve shirt came down the front steps. The winged door lifted automatically with a quiet hiss from its pistons.

  "Dr. Aldridge, I presume?" the woman said cheerfully from beside the curb.

  "Hello," Laura said, stepping out into the surprisingly crisp mountain air.

  "My name is Janet Baldwin," the woman said with a thick Australian accent. "I'm the majordomo of the Gray household."

  Laura shook hands, trying but failing to stifle a smile on meeting the first of what Laura presumed was a large coterie of people who attended to the every need of the reclusive billionaire.

  "I guess that sounds a bit odd to your ear," Janet said pleasantly. A smile seemed to come naturally to her. She had sandy hair, freckled and tanned skin, and appeared to be in her mid-forties. "No need to worry, though. We're not at all formal in this house."

  Laura caught Janet glancing at the frayed knee of her jeans before turning to lead her up the steps to the house. Laura surreptitiously raised her knee to quickly check the extent of her informality, then joined Janet under a portico finished in stone carvings of intricate detail. A man in a white jacket rapidly descended the steps to retrieve Laura's bag from the car, and Laura turned back to the courtyard. When the man had extracted her bag, the car's doors closed and it took off, swiftly rounding the fountain and proceeding off along its curbed roadway — driverless.

  "That's…" Laura said, nodding and holding her palm out, "that's really impressive."

  "What? The car?" Janet asked, her lilting accent playing out the last word. "Then it's clear you've only just arrived." She turned and led Laura through the towering double doors of beveled glass. Laura's jaw sagged on entering the mansion. Practically every square inch of the walls was covered with paintings of various shapes and sizes in the old, cluttered style of decor. Laura's heart quickened when she recognized the Impressionist strokes of the masters on several. In Gray's house, she thought, surely they weren't copies. A circular staircase swept up both walls to meet at a second-floor landing high above. Beneath the stairs, a broad hallway opened onto the rest of the ground floor.

  Laura stood there, gawking like a tourist. The highly polished parquet floor was inlaid with dark marble in patterns of varying size and complexity. The ceiling above was at least forty feet high. From the center hung a spectacular crystal chandelier. The feeling evoked in Laura by the size of the entry was the same as she felt on entering a huge rotunda. That feeling was so complete that as she followed Janet across the floor, she scrutinized the inlaid marble to see whether it formed a map of the United States or perhaps of the group of islands of which Gray's was a part. There was, however, a method to the pattern of tiles.

  "You'll stay in Mr. Gray's house during your visit," Janet said as she led Laura toward the stairs. "I think you'll find the accommodations satisfactory." Laura's amusement rose to a nervous chuckle as her eyes flitted from the works of Renoir to Matisse to artists whose signatures she didn't recognize.

  "I do believe that you jog," Janet either said or asked; Laura couldn't tell which.

  "Uhm, yes, I do." Janet must have guessed, Laura decided, from the nylon running shoes Laura wore, which squeaked loudly on the polished floors. Laura was relieved when she finally stepped off the hard wood and marble and onto the Oriental rugs fastened securely to the stairs by gleaming brass rods.

  "You will find that walkways parallel most of the roads. The air is a bit thinner up here — we're at almost five thousand feet — but it is a bit cooler. Down in the Village, it can get humid and much warmer."

  "The Village?" Laura asked, again smiling in amusement. The master, living atop the mountain in his castle. And the village down below.

  "That's what we call the residential quarter where the employees and their families live. There are about five thousand inhabitants, and they held a competition earlier this year to give it a name. 'Workers' Paradise' was the winner, but it didn't stick."

  They reached the top of the stairs and headed down a short hallway whose ceilings were domed and lit with soft, indirect lighting.

  Everywhere the detail of the home's finish was complete — no expense had been spared. Why should it? Laura thought, imagining the mega-rich Gray commissioning ice sculptures for his amusement on sunny summer days and lighting Cuban cigars with hundred-dollar bills.

  A succession of French doors stood open. The passage dead-ended at a hallway that curved gently out of sight to the left and right. This had to be the building she'd seen on the way up the mountain. On the outside it had looked like a resort hotel. On the inside, it looked like… Well, Laura had never seen anything like it.

  Janet turned left, and Laura followed. The few doors they passed were all on the right side of the hall — on the interior of the concave hallway. The decor was less cluttered in this part of the house, just the occasional niche filled with statuary spotlighted by pale illumination. Maybe Gray was on a budget, Laura thought.

  Throw everything you've got on the entrance and scrimp on the guest quarters.

  Janet stopped at a twelve-foot door, which she ope
ned into a room with fourteen-foot coffered ceilings. Wainscoting adorned the lower walls, its intricate woodwork painted glossy white. The wallpaper above was powder-blue, which transitioned to the deeper blues of the heavy draperies that were held gathered in bunches by ties. The sun streamed through the windows behind the curtains — the entire wall of glass thinly veiled behind white gauze.

  Laura wandered in, marveling at the expanse of the room. A thick Oriental rug covered the hardwood floors, the sheer size of it making Laura feel small and out of place. There were bookcases with leather-bound books and tables covered with porcelain figurines.

  Massive gold frames bounded oil paintings under lamps with brass shades. A grand piano stood unnoticed in a far corner, the sunlight reflecting off its black lacquered top polished clean of any trace of dust.

  "This is your sitting room," Janet said, leading her toward an open doorway on the far side of the rug. Laura followed Janet past a full-sized antique desk, past sofas forming a cove around a crackling fireplace, past a bar with what Janet said was a full kitchen behind dark wood panels.

  Through the door they came to the bedroom. It was spacious, but not as absurdly large as the sitting room. It had a cozier feel.

  Stacks of pillows bulged atop a broad four-poster bed. Janet pulled open the curtains, and the late-afternoon sun streamed in.

  Laura walked up to the window, which ran floor to ceiling the full length of the wall.

  She drew a deep breath, letting it out with the word "Wow!"

  The "Village" lay half buried beneath the foliage nearly a mile below. The jungle, the open green lawns, the launch pads the black sand beaches, and the eddies of blues and greens of the sea were all right there beneath her bedroom.

  "I love seeing this again through the eyes of someone new to the house," Janet said. "I remember when I first arrived. The dreams I had about life in this home."

  Laura looked over to see Janet's expression change completely. "Well," she said, returning to the tone of a bellman on a presentation tour of Laura's suite, "all the views are on this side of the house."

  She wasn't looking at Laura or the view. "The house itself is carved out of the mountain's side, you see."

  The moment — whatever it was — had passed, and Laura turned back to peer out across Gray's island. In the center of the vista stood the enormous, windowless building rising from the treeless green field.

  "What is that huge thing?" Laura asked, but she felt no need to point.

  There was only one structure that dominated the landscape below.

  "That's the assembly building. That's where most of the manufacturing takes place. But you'll get a tour later, I'm sure."

  Janet next led their expedition through the marble bathroom, which had a whirlpool so large you could do laps, and private rooms for the toilet and bidet. On seeing the separate sauna and steam room, Laura muttered, "No bathroom's complete without them, I always say," to the amusement of her guide.

  They then ventured into a closet that was itself a large room. It had full-length mirrors in front of raised platforms for fittings, upholstered benches and low seats in case she needed to rest, and row after row of rails for her wardrobe. Laura immediately grew self-conscious. The clothes she'd brought would fit on three or four hangers in one tiny corner of the closet, which was every inch the size of her entire apartment back in Cambridge.

  When the orientation was finally over, Janet looked at Laura — waiting.

  "Oh," Laura stumbled, "this ought to do fine."

  Janet burst out laughing, and she must have felt it inappropriate because she covered her mouth and turned away. She held her hand up, then finally gathered herself enough to say, "I'm so sorry."

  She ended the fit of laughter with a smile of genuine enjoyment of the moment that made Laura wonder just how much Janet got out.

  "Well," Janet continued, composed, "Mr. Gray's valet will see to your garments. If you need or want anything — personal items which you might have overlooked, articles of clothing, food or drink that isn't in the kitchen, anything — just dial zero on the telephone."

  "What if I want to make long-distance calls?" Laura asked. She meant to Jonathan, who'd made her promise she'd call, and to whom she couldn't wait to describe what she'd seen so far. But the image of the card with the FBI number in her wallet flashed through her head.

  "Just dial it like you would in the States," Janet replied.

  Laura's eyes were drawn in disbelief to the full tea service that was laid out and ready for her use amid an array of sofas and plush armchairs. My closet has a tearoom, she thought in stunned disbelief.

  When she looked around, Janet was gone. Laura was all alone.

  She found her way back to her bedroom and saw that her bag had appeared sometime during the tour. The room was still. There didn't seem to be any noise in the great house.

  Any life. Laura wondered if he was there, somewhere.

  After unpacking, she did her own exploring. There was a computer terminal on the desk in the large sitting room, and on the wall hung one of Gray's sleek flat-screen televisions. She paid particular attention to the screen. They had begun appearing everywhere just two years before. After great fanfare, the giant American electronics companies had won the approval of the Federal Communications Commission to begin high-def TV broadcasting. No sooner had the first of those sets appeared on the market than the maverick Gray had begun offering his own system. The giants had cried foul. Winners of the multibillion-dollar competition to replace the old NTSC standard with the new high-def one, they petitioned the government for protection and, at first, received it. Washington barred Gray from doing business in the United States. Gray went right about his business, however, launching satellites, commissioning programming, and selling equipment in Canada, Europe, and the Far East.

  "Gray market" sets began appearing in the United States, but Gray's satellite signal could be pirated from his broadcasts to Canada only in the northern tier of states. Still, people quit buying the FCC-approved televisions as article after article extolled the superiority of Gray's product and predicted the monumental failure of Gray competitors. Lawsuits were filed, government investigations were launched, and finally the consortium of companies that had won FCC approval offered Gray a joint venture. Gray had declined the offer.

  Under intense public pressure from consumers, the FCC relented and approved the sales of Gray's system in the United States. The pent-up demand was unleashed like a dam breaking, and Gray's production and sales soared as his competitors and would-be partners filed for bankruptcy.

  The icing on the consumers' cake came when Gray's system opened up access to the Web. The result was a merger of telephone, television, and computer technologies for users who spent a few extra dollars for the installation of digital lines into their home. Gray's system was the ultimate in interactivity. A small [garbled] the bottom of every, television became a broadcast studio unto itself.

  "Channel surfing" and "cruising the Web" became indistinguishable pastimes. With the punch of a button on the remote control, users could switch from C-SPAN to the Internet or back. On the Web one could find everything from slick infomercials to a kid in his parents' media room doing his best imitation of "Wayne's World" — all with full-motion video and stereo sound.

  At first there were doomsday predictions about purveyors of pornography running rampant, but a funny thing happened on the road to riches from sleaze. The pornographers were put out of business by amateurs who offered their smut for free. Laura had purchased the full system but never explored its capabilities until one Saturday she read an article in Newsweek. It had said the Net came alive late at night, so she tuned in before going to bed. She had stayed up until four — utterly amazed and totally disgusted.

  It seemed that all efforts by the censors had been defeated by technologically more adept teenagers. By using something called "anonymous servers," underground broadcasts popped up randomly and were untraceable. In the freedom t
hat such anonymity provided, the darker alleyways of the information superhighway flourished.

  The Newsweek article had been Laura's guide. When she found the newsgroups what she saw to her amazement was live and uncensored pornography broadcast straight from homes around the world. A boy and girl with Halloween masks having sex on a sofa in front of the television. An off-camera voice giving a running commentary, as pages were turned through a men's magazine. Laura even watched a tape of a high school girl's showers shot through a small hole in the wall.

  She had heard stories of men becoming so obsessed with such things that they stopped leaving their homes altogether. There were sensational accounts from divorce trials. Professional articles about new subcategories of obsessive-compulsive disorders. Laura shook her head.

  All from just a television set.

  Laura ran her hand down the fine grain of the screen's black matte finish. It was liquid plasma LCD, and there were no bulky projectors or related equipment. Just a one-meter-square antenna that hung, in Laura's apartment, on the wall of her hall closet and was tuned "electronically," whatever that meant. And there weren't even any wires connecting the two. Laura hadn't yet figured that one out.

  The screen beneath Laura's fingertips was only an inch thick and mounted flush on the wall like a painting. It was in almost the same proportions as a movie screen — wider than it was high. It allowed, she'd read on the first page of the thick manual before she lost interest, for a more panoramic view that movie directors loved.

  And the picture quality… She'd never seen one of the sets made by the competitors whom Gray had forced out of business, but Gray's sets were reported to be incomparably better. Their resolution was like that of a thirty-five-millimeter photograph. Once consumers saw it and heard the digital surround sound and the huge subwoofers that were buried inside and boomed directly through the grill of the screen, the old NTSC sets were obsolete.