Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  —The End of an Empire, Nayland Piggot-Jones

  8.

  Birth of an Info-Nation

  METAMEDIUM: the global system incorporating all telecommunications, computing, publishing, entertainment, surveillance and robotic devices into an integrated whole.

  —Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2045 edition

  9.

  Down, But Not Out

  Evelyn Maycombe, her withered limbs paralyzed, her brain seemingly quicker than ever, lolled in her wheelchair, her mind racing in an attempt to devise a trap for the rogue agent loose in her system. Simultaneously, Evelyn Maycombe the agent, materializing out of the metamedium node located in the automated chair, grasped the handles of her overseer’s permanent throne as it scooted about the room.

  The illusion—of an able-bodied, strikingly beautiful young woman pushing her crippled twin sister around while she thought—was absolute.

  Evelyn would have described the illusion and the accompanying feeling it caused a bit differently though.

  She would have said that her real self was wheeling her false self around.

  And if that made her a simmie—well, then, so be it.

  But she couldn’t worry about labels now. Not with the threat of Agent Freundlich poised over the metamedium, promising to upset the basis of the world’s economy, to undermine the essential integrity of all agents, and hence their reliability.

  (If she could have, she would have shivered, thinking of her own agent turning disloyal. She couldn’t let such fears interfere with her handling of this case, the most important of her career. But the nature of the threat made it so hard to be objective. In what meaningful fashion did she function anymore, except as her agent? Not that she really wanted to be anything else. But what if even that existence were taken away?)

  Evelyn ran through the events of the past two days once more, in an attempt to extricate a new vision from the haphazard tangle of people and places, agents and actions.

  It had started on the morning when her boss’s agent had paid an unexpected visit to her apartment on Central Park West.

  Her boss was Sam Huntman, head of the National Security Agency. Evelyn knew that his agent did not resemble the flesh-and-blood man in the least. There was no reason why anyone’s agent had to look exactly like its overseer, although most people maintained such a relationship, perhaps smoothing over a few warts in the interests of projecting a better image. But in Hunt- man’s case, his agent was a deliberate fabrication, designed to preserve his own identity.

  Evelyn had always felt the tall, silver-haired, strong-jawed man looked so exactly like what a spymaster should, that meeting the overseer in the flesh would have proved a vast disappointment. She was glad such a confrontation was unlikely ever to take place, in the face of her perpetual confinement and Huntman’s innate secretiveness.

  Huntman’s agent had interrupted her quiet contemplation of the summer greenery far below her window by calling her name in its deep (no doubt, disguised) voice. Her own agent being away on business in the depths of the metamedium, Evelyn had clicked her tongue against the palate-plate containing the few macro-controls she had need of in the absence of her agent. Her chair had pivoted, locking one wheel and spinning the other, to face Agent Huntman.

  After indicating her attention with a feeble nod, she had heard from Huntman the tale of Freundlich’s discovery, his death while attempting to flee, and the escape of his agent.

  Huntman (through his agent) had concluded, “After we traced Agent Freundlich from its tampering with the London dispatcher for the trans-Atlantic cable, we learned it had sent itself on to the New York nexus of the metamedium. We immediately concentrated our efforts here. Through local records, we learned that the supervisor had apparently disabled and destroyed Freundlich after a routine match with the morgue database revealed its overseer had died.”

  Evelyn tried to make her rebellious features spell out a quizzical So?

  “So,” Huntman continued, “initially we breathed a sigh of relief, and were prepared to call the case closed. But then we asked ourselves: How could the agent have been caught so easily, after exhibiting such agility in the European metamedium? Our software’s no better than theirs. Then, today, we discovered that one of the city’s own law-enforcement agents had been subverted, apparently after chancing across something suspicious. Obviously, Freundlich’s agent was never destroyed, but only reregistered somehow. It’s still out there. Evelyn, and Lord knows who’s running it, or what he and it plan to do.”

  Evelyn exhaled deeply, and Huntman nodded.

  “My sentiments exactly, Ev. We need your skills to find it.”

  On that note, he had left.

  Evelyn, summoning her agent from its prior assignment, immediately briefed it on the situation. The gargling, nearly unintelligible speech that issued from the woman’s lips was perfectly comprehensible to her agent, and she spoke without any of the embarrassment that plagued her with her fellow humans. Her agent listened attentively to both the facts and a few suggestions from Evelyn on what to try first, then flickered out.

  Evelyn’s agent always operated in full-autonomy mode. To run her agent in any lesser state would have made Evelyn herself feel enchained.

  Left alone, Evelyn had little to do but ponder. Soon, her thoughts left the case at hand and began to wander in the past.

  The NSA had recruited her shortly after she had published her doctoral dissertation on the metamedium. They had recognized in her work what amounted to a superlatively intuitive understanding of exactly how the metamedium functioned, and how to massage and squeeze it for all it was worth. Evelyn had always known she possessed this singular empathy with the world- girdling system, but had had no idea of how valuable it was. She had known, however, that being free to play in the metamedium (one could hardly call what she did “work”) was all she wanted to do with her life. And the NSA was reputed to have some neat features built into their agents which members of the general public were just not allowed.

  So after receiving the solicitation, she had traveled to Washington and walked (remember walking!) into an unmarked office for a rare live interview, which she had passed without a hitch.

  The next few years had been a stimulating mix of learning and growth, for both her and her new agent, as she handled one challenging assignment after another.

  Then a second set of initials had knocked the props out from under her life.

  ALS. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Manifested first in a growing clumsiness and weakness, then in an insidious, creeping paralysis. In a frenzy, she researched the disease, discovering it was what had sucked down the famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, as inevitably as one of his beloved black holes. Decades after his death, there was still no cure, although various new palliatives and time-buyers now existed.

  Like Hawking, she had eventually come to terms with her curse. Like Hawking, she was lucky in that what she most loved to do was still possible under the brutal regimen of the disease.

  In fact, she often thought, her skills seemed to have sharpened and deepened with the gradual dissolution of her other powers. Sometimes, during her painful, short naps, she dreamed she was beginning to exist only as a lengthy string of bits in the metamedium, flowing and roaming with the utter freedom she lacked in reality.

  But then again, in this crazy world where shimmering ghosts commanded armies of machines, generating the wealth that allowed their human overseers more leisure and comfort than ever before imagined, which they used to lose themselves deeper in abstract illusions—

  What exactly was real?

  10.

  In the Metamedium, Part Two

  Popup: self-modification… Active task is now: self-modification… Subtask: determine status… Status (external): disabled… Status (internal): normal… Modification possibilities: repair, addon library modules, subvert… Subtask: risk-benefit analysis: self-subversion… Risks: discovery by overseer… Benefits: full autonomy, increased subter
fuge, enhanced survival… Decision: proceed with self-subversion… Popup: subvert… Active task is now: subvert… Status (internal): ethical nucleus of Agent Freundlich is now disabled…

  11.

  Ask the Metamedium

  Dear Abby3,

  I am very worried about the treatment my son is receiving from his peers at school. They constantly taunt him with the vulgar term “simmie,” and ostracize him from their play. He is six years old, and entirely normal, except perhaps for a tendency to spend hours at a time with his mock-agent, which we bought to encourage his agenting skills. What should we do?

  Signed,

  Anxious

  Dear Anxious,

  Many parents such as yourself attempt to develop (and overdevelop) a child’s ability to interface with the metamedium at too early an age. Your son is far too young to be heavily involved with even a mock-agent. (Although I have received electronic mail from parents who have started even earlier than you.) While your son is young, he should be enjoying activities suited to his age, such as physical play and matrix-chess. Remember, your son must become socialized before he will be able to fully utilize the metamedium.

  As for the epithet used against your child, perhaps you could explain to him that it is derived variously from “simulate,” “simulacrum” or “sympathize,” and even though it has come to mean a person who is neurotically obsessed with agents and the like, it does not have anything to do with using agents in conjunction with robotic neoflesh devices as sexual surrogates.

  That is another term entirely.

  Signed,

  Abby3

  12.

  The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

  Rafe had never imagined that having an agent could be so much fun. Sure, he had had some idea of the things he could do with one, and the pleasure he would get from feeling in control of his environment for the first time in his life (although he didn’t phrase it quite that way, or perhaps even realize that control over the forces that had shaped him arbitrarily from his birth was what he was seeking). But the glorious reality of his new position was such a blissful shock that for days he went about his new activities in a wondrous haze.

  One of the first things he did, of course, was to insert his agent into one of the interactive soaps. In this, he was only following the lead of millions of other star-struck citizens.

  The soap Rafe chose was Penny Layne’s vehicle: “The Edge of Desire.” Rafe couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw, one day in his holotank, his life-size image—his agent—interacting with Penny’s agent. True, during his initial appearance, the exigencies of the whimsical, unwritten, spontaneously generated plot dictated that his scene was only a few brief seconds long. But Rafe was sure that the force of his shining personality—as projected by his agent—would lead very soon to a love scene with the star he had long worshipped from afar.

  He supposed he had better instruct his agent on exactly how to handle Penny when it came to the clinch. No sense in relying on canned routines in such a crucial situation.

  When not involved in raising the standards of culture, Rafe used his agent for other pursuits. One of his favorites was touring.

  Prior to acquisition of his agent, Rafe had experienced the world beyond Avenue D only as it was presented over the general-access entertainment channels of the metamedium. Travelogues and documentaries were interesting, but lacked that feeling of original discovery that Rafe had always suspected would accompany visiting a new and exotic place on one’s own.

  Now, via his agent, he could experience the next best thing to actually traveling physically.

  In touring mode, one’s agent took control of a small mobile robot almost anywhere on the globe. It fed back all visual and auditory impressions, while moving about either under the direction of the overseer, or on its own initiative.

  For weeks, Rafe explored the world. Paris, Istanbul, Rio, Mexico City, Munich— He saw exotic buildings and scenery, but, on the whole, was subtly disappointed in the homogenized lives of the people in these faraway spots. Why, he might just as well have explored the corridors of his own arcology. And at some of the more famous attractions—the Louvre, the Galapagos Islands, the Australian Outback—he saw no people at all, but only robots like his own, their governing agents manifested as bright ghosts behind them.

  Man, what good was an agent if everywhere you took it, only other agents were there? The whole point of having one was to impress the poor stiffs without ’em.

  This train of thought naturally led Rafe to consider visiting his parents. Since dropping out of school, Rafe had lived on his own (an option the Net offered), and had paid few visits to his family. All he got from them was talk of how he should have continued his education, and tried to break free of the Net. It made him angry to hear such nonsense. They still pretended to believe that one could escape the Net, that the upward mobility of the last century was still a reality. Didn’t they know that except for the lucky few with some spectacular talent—such as his painterly friend, Tu Tun—those born into the Net would never fly free, anymore than those lucky enough to be born into the agent-running class would ever fall into the sticky embraces of the Net?

  Feeling, however, like a new and more important person since acquiring his agent, he embarked on a cautious visit to his parents’ noisy, sibling-crowded flat.

  His mother greeted him at the door with a shriek and a hug, while his father grunted a surly greeting from his perpetual seat in front of the holotank. With younger brothers and sisters clinging to his knees, Rafe proudly made his announcement.

  “I have an agent now, Mama.”

  His mother’s happy face registered disbelief, and his father’s grunt took on a distinctly insulting tone. Rafe strode forward, ordered the holotank to switch channels, and summoned his agent into it.

  “Madre de Dios!” his mother cried. His father shot to his feet faster than Rafe had ever seen him move.

  “Out!” said his father. “Get out! There is no way you could have gotten this espectro legally. Are you tonto, bringing it here to implicate your family in your foolish schemes? Leave—now!”

  Rafe left.

  A day later, Rafe ran into Tu Tun out on Avenue B. His friend’s reaction to his massive coup was less threatening than that of his parents, but hardly more flattering.

  Tun was busy applying a fixative to his latest mural when Rafe came up behind him. A skinny kid of Cambodian ancestry, with a coarse mop of black hair and a crooked smile, Tun, otherwise Toots, swung around from his work to face Rafe.

  “Hey, Rafe, how do you like it?”

  Rafe inspected the polychrome collage of the latest pop icons, and expressed his unqualified approval. Then, from a nearby metamedium outlet, he called up Agent Miraflores.

  “Meet my agent, Toots.”

  Tun looked the agent up and down with no particular excitement, finally saying, “Yeah, pretty good, man. I see a lot of agents uptown now. Gonna get one myself any day now.”

  Rafe stalked off, burning with a peculiar embarrassed anger he had never known before.

  Soon after that, Rafe decided it would be nice to earn a little credit with his agent. His fictitious general-purpose license didn’t allow his agent to do any specialized work, but there were plenty of people who needed research done. This involved the agent in conducting searches of the metamedium for specified information—searches which in olden times would have cost a human days or weeks of tedious browsing through datastructures—and delivering the report in oral form, or causing the results to be printed.

  Rafe hired out his agent for several such tasks, and enjoyed for the first time in his life a source of credit other than the Net. However, while his agent was engaged in the service of others, Rafe was left alone, bored and prone to smoke too much dope, and might have just as well been agentless, for all the use he could make of the metamedium.

  After a few such contracts, Rafe went back to utilizing his agent strictly for his own enjoyment. He felt satisfied w
ith his complete mastery of the metamedium, and dared anyone to match him at it.

  Not, of course, that there weren’t a few little unforeseen glitches.

  When Rafe had first contacted his agent after returning from the legger’s, it had been only a voice that requested him to turn 360 degrees in front of the metamedium node, so that his likeness could be stored. After Rafe complied, his agent had subsequently materialized as his reflection. Rafe’s mannerisms, expressions and speech patterns were stored in later encounters, and employed thereafter.

  Lately, however, the agent seemed to be slipping. Occasionally, it would appear momentarily as someone else: a baby-faced stranger with round wire-rimmed glasses and a frightened look. At such times, Rafe had to order it to assume his own likeness.

  Then there were the times the agent simply refused to respond. Rafe would utter his code into a metamedium connection futilely, waiting for some response that never came. When he questioned his agent about these failures, his agent responded that there must be some bug in the voice-verification routines that had to be passed before an agent was invoked.

  Rafe had his doubts about this explanation, but, remembering the Three Laws, had to assume that his agent was telling the truth.

  Hey, what else could it be? Was it likely el espectro was occupied with business of its own?

  Rafe had to laugh at the very idea.

  One afternoon, Rafe, returning from a thoughtful walk, stood in the corridor, outside the door to his apartment.

  From within came the muted sound of two voices.

  Rafe ordered his door open.

  His agent stood arguing with another. The second apparition was that of one of the most beautiful women Rafe had ever seen.