by Jim Stark
There were three recent archived faces. The first one was from Julia, thanking her for the company over supper. Lilly made an insincere mental note to teach her new “friend” the advantages of holding a grudge. Only dogs offer unqualified love, she said to herself, forgetting that Big Wus had made an exception to that rule just for her.
The second archived face was from Gordon Weatherby, the agent from Callaway #6, down the highway near Luskville. How's the weather up here indeed! she smiled. I'll be sure to face him tomorrow.
The third face was from one Davie Brown, a weaselly-looking chap who did cleaning and maintenance for Victor-E. “On salary,” he'd emphasized. He said he had helped the previous WDA monitor to “understand things better about life in the Victor-E clan, for a reasonable consideration.” Fucking snitch, thought Lilly. But, he may be useful. I guess I should touch base with him.
She checked her “recent local scan archive” to search for exchanges between Julia and Alex, and was pleased to find that Julia had indeed connected with that unfriendly cab driver ... well, unfriendly to me, she rearranged her thought. She readied her pen and her yellow note pad. “Let's have it,” she said as she used the mouse to instruct her MIU to run the piece.
"Hi Alex,” Julia exclaimed on the screen. “I got my brother on hold so I can't face too long, eh? How's life at Walden? I forgot to ask—are you a daddy? I got—"
Lilly stopped there, and ordered her MIU to access InfoBank, the sprawling archiving facility maintained in Connecticut by the WDA for the sole use of agents. She then asked for the digitized record of Julia's entire day, as secretly recorded by way of the MIU in her bedroom. Not many people were placed on “total archive,” but because Julia was a Whiteside, she was one of those whose MIU was set up to capture and transmit images and sounds twenty-four hours a day, even when she slept, and even when she wasn't in her bedroom. A full log of her life in the bedroom was retained for a month, just in case, and all of her Net transactions were permanently archived at the InfoBank.
This aspect of Lilly's work sometimes did bother her, even thought she tried to deny it. It wasn't that she questioned its value, just that it was ... so invasive, she thought. She wondered how most civilians would react if they were to learn the full dimensions of the surveillance the WDA routinely carried out in the course of its policing activities. She remembered many examples from her training at the Academy, examples of seemingly innocent interceptions that had turned out to be of critical importance at a later point in a criminal investigation, but ... well, when it came to surveillance, George Orwell's “Big Brother” was a pussycat compared to the WDA. It's ... necessary, she reminded herself as the MIU signaled the completion of downloading. “If your conscience objects,” she recalled being told repeatedly at the Academy, “think of the millions of lives that are now saved every year and the billions of crimes that are now prevented every year.” It's hard to argue with that.
She found the beginning of the Julia-Alex interface, then backed up to a spot about four minutes previous, before the beginning of Julia's interface with her brother. The screen showed Julia getting up from her settee. The time on Lilly's screen read 5:50 p.m.... right about the time I was sent packing from the mess hall by Annette, in the bubble, she thought. Julia must have arrived at the restaurant not too long before I did.
Lilly froze the image and spilt the screen into three, so she could catch Julia and both of her Netlinks—her brother Michael, and the taxi-driver, Alex. She gave Julia half the screen, the left half, and assigned a quarter each for the two men. Of course Alex wasn't on total archive, so she copied his image off Julia's incoming feed, pasted it onto her screen, and leaned back. “Roll, now,” she said.
She watched as Julia admired herself in the mirror and played with her buttery hair and the fan. God, you can see right through that dress. She could only guess what Julia's mind was doing, or what she might have meant when she said, “It's too bad it's so dark outside now.” She's ... narcissistic, Lilly thought as she watched her former dinner-mate pose and primp. And Lilly shook her head in disbelief when Julia bent over, wiggled her breasts, and said, “They love it when I do that. Maybe a nice boy will want to sleep with me tonight, and make me laugh and hoot."
"Aw jeeze,” Lilly said at her screen. “Grow up!"
Then Michael's image came on the lower right quadrant of her screen, saying: “Sweet Julia. It's your big brother here. Can we talk?” He really ... loves her, Lilly could see. It wasn't until Michael said “Can we go visual?” that Lilly realized he wasn't being allowed to see his sister, just hear her ... like as if he was using an antique 20th-century telephone. She picked up her yellow pad and started making notes as to her sense of the relationship between the siblings, and particularly about the character of the man she'd been asked by Control to cozy up to. At the moment, she just felt sorry for him.
There was a long silence, during which Julia did her finger stretching and posturing. Lilly tried to imagine what nonsense was going through the girl's mind when she finally said, “Oh, that feels so nice.” She could see Michael rubbing his eyes and his temples, waiting for Julia to get back to reality ... or anywhere close to reality.
When the conversation turned to whether Venice would be allowed to visit her at Victor-E, Julia said her piece and then just stopped talking. Michael appeared to go into a kind of trance while he waited for his sister to speak again. Lilly could tell that the man had been through all this before, and she wondered what he was thinking. The silent gap seemed to never end, and when it finally did, Julia started in on the taking off of clothing, talking about it like it was the weather, or a recipe for pecan pie ... and how Venice was going to get into all that “tingly” stuff with the boys. “And the girls!” noted Lilly on her pad. Again, she felt very sorry for Michael as he slumped and rolled his eyes while Julia rambled on. When she stopped talking, Lilly was surprised that the pause just continued ... and continued, and continued. “Somebody talk, for Christ's sake!” she was tempted to shout at her screen. All this silence was driving her crazy.
Lilly knew the name of Julia's trustee from the Netfiles, but she did not know about the pregnancy. She was shocked—not only by the fact of it, but by Julia's giddy attitude. I'm surprised Julia didn't tell me she was preggers during dinner, Lilly thought. And why wasn't the fact of her pregnancy in her Netfile?
There followed another annoying pause, more posing in the mirror by Julia, and then the brief Netcall from Alex came in. Nothing much in that, Lilly said to herself when Mr. rude-cab-driver signed off.
As before, Julia went back to haranguing Michael for a visit from Venice. Lilly noted with some satisfaction that Julia had finally let her brother see her on screen, but she was disappointed when Julia went right back into her sexual fixations and practically shoved Michael's face in it about how Venice had enjoyed seeing all those naked people during her last visit. “Give your brother a fucking break,” Lilly snapped at the image of Julia.
That was followed by the soliloquy about Julia's friend Eric, the Hydro boy that she was apparently encouraging to leave his wife and move into Victor-E. She may be a true innocent, thought Lilly, but she's capable of all sorts of trouble-making and mischief.
Lilly noted the time of the end of the Netlink between Julia and Michael, clicked off both images, and commanded her MIU to access the InfoBank to see if there was a record of Michael's reaction. I hope he stayed where he was and talked to somebody else on the Net, she thought as the search proceeded.
The WDA had Michael under total archive ... naturally ... but there were never any guarantees that subjects would be in front of their own MIUs when they said or did the things that the WDA wanted to know about. When Lilly's MIU indicated readiness, she called up the exact time of the end of Michael's conversation with Julia and let it roll for two seconds. She saw Michael stand up and head out of the den. Lilly asked her MIU for “next transaction,” and after a brief business call that was of no interest to her, there w
as Michael, half an hour later, talking towards his screen. “You see what I mean, Mom?” he said. “She won't even—"
"Great,” Lilly said quietly as she froze Michael's image with a mouse-command. He had used his own MIU to face his mother, who was apparently at an MIU somewhere else in the Whiteside mansion ... probably just down the hall, Lilly thought ... curious. She split the screen laterally for the two players and returned to InfoBank, but she was not able to access an image from Mrs. Whiteside's MIU. “Check why not,” she noted for later—she guessed that Doreen Whiteside wasn't on total archive, or that whatever MIU she had used wasn't being archived. So she just copied Doreen's image from Michael's incoming feed, pasted in up on her screen, and let the thing roll. By the looks of it, Mrs. Whiteside was in the kitchen, talking via the Net to her son, in his den. “Why Netlink in same house?” she wrote on her pad.
So, she observed after the first exchange, Julia manages to piss them both off ... about equally. She also realized that Michael had allowed his mother to listen in on and watch his chat with Julia, but not to participate. Lilly wondered if that was his choice or hers.
It was painful to watch Michael's mother struggle with reality, and then break down in tears, almost as difficult as it was to watch Michael wait it out, enduring his own pain over the Julia situation and the long-ago death of his father ... his beloved father. During the subsequent hiatus, Lilly stared at her screen, at Michael's body language, trying to imagine what might be going through his head, or going on in his feelings. There's too much guesswork in this process, she had long felt, giving no heed to the fact that ordinary mortals got through life without eavesdropping ... without wanting to, or needing to.
Michael then told his mother that Julia had been artificially inseminated—something he had apparently learned from Mr. Wu—and then enlightened her about how Julia was “technically still a virgin.” Lilly was repelled by the tortured look on Doreen Whiteside's face ... Dawe-Whiteside is her legal last name, she remembered from her study of those Netfiles down in lovely, warm Florida. When Michael went on to explain to his mother that the Evolutionaries weren't “a bunch of dirty hippy Communists,” it seemed clear to Lilly—for the thousandth time—that the WDA was right, that the lessons of the WDA's famed Academy were valid. “Oh dear ... big ol’ problem here,” she said as she prepared to re-run the previous several sentences.
No doubt about it! This was indisputably “reportable!” Michael was clearly “soft” on Evolutionism, one of those naïve souls who didn't seem to fully appreciate the danger that the Evolutionary movement represented to the peace, order and good government of the world. This didn't bode well for the option of continuing the exclusive contract under which Whiteside Technologies made all the LieDecks in the world, LieDecks that were paid for by the WDA.
In the extended wait that ensued between Michael and his mother, Lilly pondered the situation, and decided not to make an issue of it—not to report it to Control—at least not until she'd had the opportunity to meet with Michael. There was no legal duty to report it right away, since no law had been broken. What the WDA needed was a thorough report, a compelling report, not a quick one.
The silence on screen ended when Mrs. Whiteside asked her son if he was going to let his young daughter Venice visit Julia at Victor-E. And right in the middle of his response, Mrs. Whiteside suddenly just turned off her MIU! No “talk to you later,” no “take care,” no warning, no nothing, observed Lilly.
She noted in her yellow pad that Venice apparently had a strong wish to talk to Victor Helliwell, as strong as her determination to visit her Aunt Julia at Victor-E, his namesake Evolutionary clan. Maybe I can arrange for Venice and Victor to chat, she thought as she shut down her MIU. If I can get the old fart to talk at all, that is.
Lilly had only been at the clan-site for half a day, and she had already reached the point where things got confusing. People say they don't know what the hell WDA agents do all day, she mused. If they only knew!
It wasn't late, but Lilly was exhausted. On her way to the bedroom, she stopped short. She thought she heard a sound coming from just outside her door, so she took a few quiet steps and listened carefully. Someone was definitely out there, and not knocking—spying on her, or worse.
She tiptoed quickly and quietly to her metal case, opened it, took out her service revolver, undid the safety catch and crept stealthily back to the door. Holding her gun, pointing up, behind the jamb, she opened the door with a jerk, ready for anything.
Big Wus jumped back, startled.
"Bugger off,” she said, with a half-hearted kick in his general direction.
The confused spaniel tore down the stairs. I just wanted to get to know you, he felt. And maybe play!
Chapter 15
DEAR DIARY
Tuesday, February 8, 2033—8:45 p.m.
Annette made her daily diary entry with her hands clasped behind her short gray hair. She was leaning back in the chair at her very public Netstation in the far corner of the E-tery.
"Spent an hour and a half in Sleepery number one, my private little home in the hub, recalibrating time-to-retirement records,” she drawled towards the MIU screen. “I hate being caught without the current figures when people ask about their status, even though few of the current qualifiers seem particularly inclined to stop working. Of course I have to admit that with my savings, my inheritance and my generous disability pension from Patriot Security, I could lollygag my life away in style, so ... who am I to talk? Victor-E has fifty-three members who can retire but haven't, and forty-one members who are fully retired—many of whom work as hard as the rest of us, but sometimes at jobs that don't pay any money ... or don't pay as much as a regular job, or jobs that are part-time.
"We're about on par with the Upper American Evolutionary ratio of adults to kids, but we have fewer pregnancies than most clans—which is fine, considering that the world is grossly overpopulated. Of course we're way behind the Normal stats on pregnancies, which is also fine, since there's always lots of kids to bond with and have fun with in any clan without having to produce your own batch. It seems that internationally, more and more Evolutionaries are choosing to wait until after their retirement party to have a kid anyway—not a problem.
"Stats for growth are always interesting, if you like to focus on stuff like that. Our growth rate globally has slowed since the boom days of a decade ago, of course, but it's still more than seven percent a year, not accounting for babies, since our morbidity and fecundity rates—deaths and births—basically offset each other. Evolutionaries represent a bit more than two percent of the world's population, and—oh—that seven percent annual increase is net, eh? I mean—let me check this—yeah, that's right—we're getting about a ten percent increase in membership every year worldwide, but three percent of our members leave every year, for a variety of reasons. And—oops—I almost forgot—there's a going-away party for Len and Betty tonight in the E-tery, at ten p.m.—they're moving down the road to Callaway #6, as I'm sure you've heard.
"Now, as for work and income, Victor-E has ... well, work is never a problem, since we work for different reasons than Normals, but it seems that no matter what we do, our average income is stuck at slightly less than seventy-five percent of the average fully-employed Normal. There's a lot of reasons for that, but we don't consider it a problem, and of course not all Normal adults work, but..."
A lot of people threw Annette's daily diary on their MIUs or the tiny black-and-white screens of their Sniffers in the evenings, just to see how the clan was doing in general; it was sort of an intra-clan newscast. She always had something of interest to report, and she made a point of including some humor, so people wouldn't get the impression that their 320 lives couldn't generate a few reportable light moments in the course of an entire day. Often, as a day would draw to a close, a few people would come to Annette and tell her of the highlights or lowlights of their days, and sometimes she would include those in her daily diary entries.
Her E-tery MIU—the one she usually used during the day—was framed with mirrors on both sides and across the top, so that people could see her face even though she sat facing the wall, with her back to the E-tery action. She had felt that the mirrors were too intrusive when this set-up was first proposed, but the clan had made a good case that the management should be visible to all—the same case they'd made when her MIU was originally plunked down in back of the restaurant. After her first day with the mirrors back in 2030, she not only got used to it, she liked the way it allowed her to see the bustle of activity when the E-tery was busy, and not miss the nutty antics when they flared up, which was often ... especially when Julia was serving tables.
"Julia was her usual provocative self today,” she chuckled at her MIU. “She's the main reason why the Junior B players all come here for supper. Their coaches won't let them stay in our motel rooms because they'd have swarms of parents mad at them for letting their horny little sons get tingled for the sheer fun of it. Too bad, really, but Julia was pretty nervy today. Half those boys couldn't stand up straight after their meals, at least not without embarrassing themselves.
"It was a real hoot watching all this in my wall of mirrors. Julia found out who the back-up goalie was for the Pembroke Flyers and now she's in the broom closet with him while his team's over at the Shawville arena...” Annette checked the Net for the score ... “while his team's at the arena getting badly beaten,” she snickered. “She's probably just kissing his face off ... I hope so, anyway ... I always get stuck with the job of explaining things to parents when she makes them splurt, even if she never lets them actually boink her, because they always tell on themselves by bragging, the silly twerps.