by Jim Stark
None of Michael's discussions about this political opportunity had been done over the Net; everything was done on the warm, in utmost secrecy, and at the highest levels. If the WDA knew, then his two “native lands"—Canada and Québec—had to be deeply, and illegally, infiltrated by the world body. If we only had LieDecks, he began to think—it dawned on him how ironic it was that the head of Whiteside Tech could begin a thought with those words. If we only had LieDecks, he rebooted the thought, we'd know all there was to know about the extent of the WDA's undue influence. Small wonder that the WDA doesn't want to unban the device.
Lilly wondered where Michael's mind had been for the last ten seconds. “None of the above,” she said. “I'll even verify that if...” In a lightening move, she took her LieDeck-equipped Sniffer from her purse, checked to make sure the waiter wasn't on his way into the room, turned the unit on and repeated her assurance. She used the same words, “None of the above,” so that Control would have no idea what she was confirming if he listened in. “In fact I hope you do it,” she added—after she shut off her Sniffer and put the device back in her purse.
"You didn't have to do that,” said Michael. “With the LieDeck..."
"Sure I did,” she said, returning to the roast beef. “Trust ... takes time, Michael. We want to trust each other, and we both want to be trusted by the other, but ... well, like I said before, I'm not altogether unsympathetic with the idea of unbanning the LieDeck. It seems to me that sometimes using the LieDeck helps get the show on the road, or clears the air."
Michael lifted his glass, held it out, and they clinked. “To my new ... friend,” he said.
"To...” She reflected briefly. “To Prime Minister Whiteside,” she said, quietly.
Michael raised an eyebrow, but then he smiled. He knew that if he LieDeck-verified her motivation for such a toast, it would be shown to be without malice, without avarice, without anything but good feelings towards him.
So to these, they drank.
The rest of dinner was plain fun. They agreed to put business and angst aside. They talked about pleasant memories of childhood and adolescence. They laughed more as the alcohol started playing with the THC, and they edged closer and closer to an uninhibited tingle, often using double entendres to speak their feelings without letting words actually say it. And then they had crèmes caramel for dessert, with coffee.
After the waiter cleared the table and added a tiny crystal bowl of chocolate-covered mints, Michael slid his hands across the table, palms up, his blue eyes fixed upon Lilly's brown ones. She placed her thin hands onto his, palms down, without dropping her gaze.
"Welcome to my life, Lilly,” he said.
"Welcome to mine, Michael,” she answered.
Chapter 34
LYING LEXICON
Saturday, February 19, 2033—9:40 p.m.
When Victor got back home after his excursion to the Pot-house, he sat at his MIU with a queer sense of mission stirring in his gut. Nothing wrong with feeling excited if you know what you're doing, he said to himself. He ran a damp hand down his beard, and reminded himself that he did know what he was doing, that he'd thought this through for more than twenty years, and that if he didn't do it, it wouldn't get done, period. No telling when this window of opportunity will close, he worried.
With the screen dark, he could see his reflection in the glass front of his MIU. He had dressed way up, in a white shirt and tie, just like businessmen used to do all the time back in the days when they went to work in offices. I don't feel old, he thought, except for my body. He remembered how things were when he was a boy—old farts were not supposed to feel young, vigorous or sexy, and they were not supposed to have goals. They weren't supposed to think about much at all, except for Christmas presents for the grandkids and the odd bit of offered wisdom, usually ignored.
"Jeeze, I really am old!” he said towards the screen. “I got no kids, no grandkids. I'm supposed to have lived a long and fruitful life by now, but I spent my whole adult life ... or most of it ... hiding. I'm ... what ... sixty? Almost sixty-one? And here I am, starting a new...” He wondered how to best characterize the “final arrangement” he'd made with himself, the offering he would make to the world. My new career, I suppose, he said to himself. Whatever, he shrugged.
"Net, up, now,” he said. “Search ... magazines ... start in 1990 ... find word ‘Inuit,’ upper case I, n, u, i, t ... plus any two of the following words in close proximity: ‘snow, vocabulary, words, kinds.’ Begin search now."
Used to be you'd have a few minutes to go for a pee or just relax, he thought, but the SuperNet is so God damned fast that—
"Saturday Night magazine,” said the female voice of his MIU. “February of nineteen ninety-four; an article entitled: It's snowing ... what to say? by Margaret Visser."
A photo was on the screen, as well as some text. All the words he'd asked his MIU to search for were there, highlighted, as he suspected they would be. His eyes ran down the text. At the bottom of the second column were a series of italicized words: qannik for a single snowflake, quannitaq for recently fallen snow, kavisilaq for snow roughened by rain or frost, mannguq for melting snow, minguliq for a fine coat of powdered snow, katakartanaq for snow with a hard crust that gives under one's steps, pukak, apinngaut, and more. “Great,” he said. “Copy it all into a file, the whole thing ... and put the photo on full screen, now."
The photo scrolled its way down the whole screen, and Victor sat back to absorb it. On the left was the head and shoulders of a capped man, with his collar rolled up—a silhouette view, seen from the back. The sun was barely a few degrees over a distant horizon. Three children were about twenty yards from the man, standing apart on the flat, rippled ocean of snow that stretched to a thin black line just below the sun. The middle kid—a girl, if long hair meant anything—was jumping on the snow ... maybe to see if she can break through the crust, Victor thought. Her hair was flying out, and it was thrown starkly against the brilliant patch of ice-topped snow that reflected the perpetual sunset. The shadow of the kids ran all the way to where the man was standing, the sun was that low in the sky, but the middle kid's shadow didn't even touch her feet—she was caught in mid-jump. “Double the contrast,” said Victor ... and there it was: an almost invisible line between the two outside kids. “She's skipping rope!” he said in a startled voice. So if they were ten years old in 1994, he calculated, they'd be fifty now ... or dead. I wonder if the Inuit still die young?
Time's a'wasting. Victor hoped he'd have his presentation ready for tomorrow, so he ordered the photo to disappear, and read the text, word for word. He found out there was a separate list of words for ice, for kinds of snow in the air, and yet other lists for types of snowshapes, for snow that's suitable for various purposes (such as making snowballs and igloos), for snow in various places—on walls, in water, stuck to books, and on and on. He read the article again, and highlighted, emboldened, two key passages. He copied them, and pasted them at the top of a new file entitled “lying lexicon,” putting a short dividing line between them:
Vocabularies differ in richness, in their insistence on making distinctions, or their refusal to note them
There used to be a theory that if a language had no term for something, a speaker of that language lacked the concept. That idea has been largely discredited. Languages use circumlocution, translations, and, if necessary, explanations. But it remains true that richness of vocabulary is a pointer to the importance that a culture places on certain “regions of the real” rather than upon others
Then he added one more quotation, one he'd meant to give to the Victor-Eens out at the Pot-house, but forgot. It was from Einstein. He hoped they'd get this one firmly into their heads—it was the best summary of the “why” of the new simLV program that he'd just proposed for the Victor-E clan ... well, for the whole movement, really, eventually.
Whoever is careless of the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important affairs.
Yes, he said in his mind. It's true. If you would steal a dollar from me, you are a thief, and you'll steal a thousand or a million, given the chance. Behavior defines identity, so little white lies count just as much as any other.
Now he was ready. “Record the following in the file entitled ‘lying lexicon,'” he instructed his MIU.
"Well ... hi,” he began, with a timid wave and a helpless look on his face. “Read this article, with special attention to the two excerpts and the Einstein quote at the top, then I will come back on and explain what the hell I'm getting at."
He touched the command button and said, “Paste the full-screen photo here for ten seconds, so they...” He almost told his MIU why ... so they'd have to drink it in fully ... forgetting that the Net wasn't a person; just a bunch of nuts and bolts ... and chips ... like a toaster, or a LieDeck. “Then paste in the article, with voice reading at a slow listening pace, and get the correct Inuit pronunciations for all of those snow words. Then insert the following presentation."
Victor pressed “pause” and cleared his throat. He hadn't made any notes to guide himself through this, but ... hey, it's not like this is complicated! He disengaged “pause” with another tap. “Good stuff, eh?” he started, meaning the article they'd just read and/or listened to. “If you want, or if you think you're pretty clever, you can pause here and try to figure out why I wanted you to read that article and why I clipped those two quotations for your special consideration. Nice photograph, eh? Did you notice the skipping rope? I have to squint to see it, or turn up the contrast. Anyway, say ‘pause’ here if you like my riddle, or just continue on if you can't be bothered. I bet none of you can figure it out."
He pressed “pause” again himself, and stood up. All this lead-in stuff was necessary, or at least it was fun, but now that he was up against it, the concepts seemed jumbled in his mind. He knew what he wanted to say, but after nineteen years of not speaking, well ... it was understandable.
Victor changed into his caftan, and spent the next hour making hand-written notes and transferring them vocally to his MIU hard drive, trying to give at least a few good examples of what he was getting at. He had no intentions of doing their homework for them, but he wanted to give them enough so they'd get the idea, and carry on from there to develop the thing further ... lots further.
Then he started in on the dictation recording again—this time he was determined to get through it. “Okay,” he said, “now when it comes to lying, you have to know that in the ocean of lies which preceded the LieDeck Revolution, it was difficult to get at any reality, so people, in most respects, lived in a storm of illusion. In Evolution, you have fuss groups, where your people struggle for as many hours as it takes to see who is lying whenever there's a serious conflict that won't get resolved without this effort. You do that because the dumb-assed WDA won't let you have access to a goddam LieDeck. Still, it works, and you also have some people that are particularly good at telling who's lying and who's telling the truth, and I gave you some new ideas at the Pot-house about using digicorders and voice-activated mikes to document all your days, for simulated LieDeck-verification, or ‘simLV,’ as it'll probably end up getting called. But you haven't really analyzed the phenomenon of lying to the extent that you understand the process ... or the reasons people lie. And to do that, you have to look at the kinds of lies that exist.
"That's why I gave you all that stuff about the Inuit and all the words they have for snow. We—or you, really—fledgling Human Threes, I might say—need to build up a vocabulary to represent the different kinds of lies, just like the Inuit did for snow and ice. I think there's probably a need for fifty or a hundred words for lying—maybe even more than that.
"The problem with Human Twos is they all pretend the problem doesn't exist or they grossly underestimate its gravity and pretend that they always tell the truth. They aren't aware of any but their most dangerous lies, and even these aren't a big moral problem for them, but a practical one, mostly, in that getting caught is embarrassing. Lies cause you to be unable to see the person that you really are; a liar, a shameless “bender of reality,” a manipulative self-lover, not because you chose to be like that or because you were raised like that, but because that's the way your instinct works, automatically.
"The message in all this? A young or immature Human Three, meaning a person who has only been Human Three for a few weeks or months, is infinitely more and better than the finest Human Two, as there are no circumstances under which lying, stealing, murder, etcetera, are acceptable to any Human Three.
"In nature, animals—including Human One—have to go out into their environment and just take what they need or want, and if that means injuring or killing another animal, well, them's the breaks. It's entirely natural to do these things because it's necessary for the animal's survival. In the march towards civilization, Human Twos proscribed those kinds of things, forbid them, made laws, turned them into crimes—theft, assault, murder, cruelty to animals and so on. But these were the visible crimes. Lying is invisible. Lying is as natural as theft and assault and murder, more so, maybe, but it is also as uncivilized as those things. Human Threes have to outlaw the act of injuring or murdering ‘the truth.’ And as far as I'm concerned, this natural but uncivilized behavior should not be forgiven without some compensation. I ... mentioned that at the Pot-house, didn't I?
"Ah shit,” he said as he passed a hand over his head and felt acute embarrassment. “I ... I've got this brain problem, like a medical problem—maybe you heard—anyway, I get mixed up and carried away, so please do forgive me if I ... if I ramble sometimes, okay? Anyway, here's the deal: name a lie! Get a fixed, agreed-upon lexicon going in the clan, and among clans, so people can make distinctions about what kind of lie they're talking about and not have to explain its complexities every time, you know?
"Here's a few ideas I came up with in one hour of trying, but you'll have to be more serious about it than that, and come to a consensus, okay? Instead of saying them all, I'll just throw the written version on your screen, okay? I'm ... kind of ... tired anyway. Of course if you had a LieDeck, you would know that was a ‘ducker,’ a lie told so that I can ‘duck’ out of something. I'm actually just too lazy to go through all of this stuff with you verbally. See how this lexicon can help you get to the reality of a situation?"
Victor figured he'd made his point—not fully, and none too well, but he didn't feel he had to do that anyway. “Guides” were supposed to know the main features of a territory, not every stick and stone. He saw his job as getting things going, pricking consciences, twigging frontal lobes. He was a guide, not a daddy or a babysitter. He slipped his mouse up to the waiting notes and clicked.
1) a biggie—an important lie
2) a whopper—a lighthearted synonym for biggie; perhaps a harmless biggie
3) a funny—a lie meant to produce laughter or amusement
4) a wrinkle—the minor re-slanting of reality, perhaps for self-defense or self-enhancement
5) a shield—a lie meant for self-defense or to hide the truth about yourself
6) a puffer—a lie told for self-enhancement
7) a teacher—a didactic lie, intended to instruct more than deceive (such as the myths of religion)
8) a needle—a lie told to deliberately annoy someone
9) a detour—a lie meant to divert events, thoughts or feelings away from the directions or places where they would probably otherwise go
10) a ducker—a lie told so you can avoid something
11) a saint—a lie told for another person's own good
12) an oinker—a lie told to acquire something for personal gain
13) a dropsy—an indirect lie; dropping a detail to encourage a wrong conclusion or wrong perception by another person (a sin of omission)
14) a tickler—a lie told just to tease someone
15) a crooked arrow—a lie meant to misdirect the other person
16) a writ—a lie told from a perceived necessity
to not get into the truth or reality (the perceived need can be wrong)
17) a mirror—a lie in response to a perceived or suspected lie, with the other person's lie used as justification (as in “he started it")
18) a trickie—a lie that is intended to confuse the other person
19) a killer—a lie which, if believed, could lead to a death
20) an auto-lie—a lie told to oneself, usually in the silence of your thoughts (Question: if you tell yourself a lie and then believe it, who told the lie, and who believed it? And are there two of you? And if so, do they know each other?)
21) a Stalin—a lie intended to rewrite history, redefine the past (revisionism)
Victor wanted to go on. He hadn't really communicated with his fellow human beings for a very long time, but ... he'd had his reasons, and he knew that if he tried to improve on what he'd already done, he'd end up editing himself to bloody death, and rewriting the thing forever. “Good luck,” was all he added. That, and: “Hope this helps."
Chapter 35
EWWWW!
Sunday, February 20, 2033—12:30 a.m.
Lilly arrived back at Victor-E at half past midnight, with the shadow of a kiss still on her lips. The E-tery was open, but quite empty ... thank God. Big Wus was snoozing on the landing halfway up to her apartment, and Lilly, hiking her shimmery black dress up a bit to climb the stairs, stooped to give him a pat on her way by. He didn't lift his head up, but his wary brown eyes watched her every move, and his tail twitched.
When she got to the top of the stairs, she imagined herself going in and closing the door, leaning her back against it, with her fake-ermine coat still on, her eyes shut, and a smile on her face to match the circus in her heart. Can't do that, she thought. Not in front of my MIU.
She unlocked the door, closed it, and exhaled in the way one does when a big job is finally done. She hung up her coat and purse and walked into the bedroom. As she closed the bedroom door, she leaned against it, sighed and enjoyed the moment of reflection she had imagined herself indulging just a few seconds earlier. She had no real idea how her relationship with Michael would impact on her career, and for the time being, she didn't care. The WDA doesn't own me, she thought. They rent me, on a month-to-month basis.