by Tony Salter
‘… You wouldn’t believe how gorgeous she is.’
‘I would. And I do,’ said Karl in his slow, precise Swedish English. ‘I’ve seen photos.’
Unlike me, Karl had a thing for rich, older women; his salary didn’t leave him as much spending money as he needed for smart clothes and expensive restaurants. His parents were some sort of Swedish aristocracy and sent him extra cash, but any opportunity for more treats wasn’t to be missed.
‘She’s more than gorgeous,’ he said. ‘What could she possibly see in you?’ He raised his hands palm upwards and shrugged. ‘Me? I could understand … But you?’
The fact that he wasn’t joking when he said stuff like this didn’t make it any less entertaining. I think it was a Scandinavian thing. The total absence of a politeness/thoughtfulness filter between brain and mouth.
‘Beats me,’ I said, grinning. ‘I really think I’ve got a chance to win this contract, though. God knows why.’
‘I doubt it very much,’ said Karl. ‘Although I do agree that it’s most unusual for someone like Julie Martin to waste any time with someone like you. Are you sure it was really her?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sure,’ I said. ‘I was sitting in her office at the top of Shard Two.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Karl. ‘It is strange …’ His eyes focused into the distance and he appeared to be thinking deeply. After a year of living together, I knew him well enough to realise he was just bored.
‘Did I tell you about my new pitching wedge?’ he said after a few seconds. Karl was a very good golfer. ‘It’s only forty-two degrees, carbon shaft …’
There was a great place for breakfast around the corner from our flat, and my favourite Saturday treat was a couple of hours settled in with the papers, sometimes with Karl, sometimes with friends and sometimes – the best times – on my own. The name, Salvador Deli, was stretching bad puns to the absolute limit, but otherwise it was perfect.
Whenever I took my dad there, he would burble on about not being able to find proper cafes any more, not like the “greasy spoons” he knew growing up. I could never figure out why I was supposed to lust after slimy gelatinous eggs, paper bacon and cardboard sausages. Soft poached eggs and sourdough toast worked for me. And what was so wrong with avocado, anyway?
Luckily for me, Karl was taking his new carbon-shafted pitching wedge out on the golf course with his Swedish friends, leaving me to enjoy a peaceful morning at Sal’s. Peaceful, but not lazy; I’d taken my laptop and, after a macchiato and a plate of smashed avocado on sourdough, I was planning on finishing the first draft of my Pulsar opening chapter.
The research process had been eye-opening and eye-watering in equal measure. There was a huge amount of publicly available information about Pulsar which included details and context which surprised and shocked me more than I’d expected.
It’s easy to take familiar things for granted; like everyone I knew, I’d trotted off to be fitted with Pulsar Trust inserts on my sixteenth birthday. It was no different from going to the dentist or optician – a fifteen minute painless procedure – and I’d never wasted time considering what life would be like without them.
As I read through the newspaper reports and articles from the mid-twenties, I began to understand how the world could have been a very different place if it hadn’t been for Pulsar. The things we take for granted aren’t carved as deeply in stone as we imagine.
I opened the pad in front of me. I began by trying to list all the instances when my Pulsar Trust implants had been used to identify me in the previous twenty-four hours: getting on the tube, getting off the tube, going in and out of the office three times, buying two coffees, buying a sandwich, activating and reactivating my computer at least ten times, using my phone maybe twice as often … On each occasion, an electronic authorisation request had been sent to the tiny devices in both my arms, they had independently verified the unique pattern of my heartbeat, compared notes and confirmed that I was indeed Sam Blackwell.
When my tally reached forty, I threw down the pencil and leant back in my chair, subconsciously rubbing the small scar on my left bicep where the first implant had been inserted. No wonder Pulsar was so successful.
As the truth about those days started to come into focus, it was easy to imagine a very different present day to the one I knew; authors and film directors had been imagining dystopian futures for a century or more, but the reasons they chose for society’s collapse were never as mundane as the inability to protect identity.
I’d found a mass of information about Pulsar, but almost nothing about Julie Martin. After drawing a total blank, I’d asked one of the senior research analysts at work to help me. He was easily flattered and looked at me with smug superiority as he started digging; it wasn’t going to take him long to show me how a real researcher could get results. Fifteen minutes later, the wide-eyed look on his face had spoken volumes. He was renowned for knowing every backdoor and search trick around, but the data simply wasn’t there.
My second-year degree thesis had been on George Orwell and part of my research had been to examine the way Stalin’s Russia had dealt with truth and history; the routine way facts and real people had been airbrushed away. A century later that sort of revisionism was almost impossible; the tentacles of the information age had worked their way into every tiny crevice of the datasphere and everyone had a digital history of some kind. These histories usually included a mass of tagged photos of youthful indiscretions which were much too dispersed to be tracked down and deleted.
Julie was an exception. Her digital life started at the same time as Pulsar and, even that life was a bland PR-drafted imitation of a real life. There were very few photographs for someone so influential and almost none of those were taken outside the professional environment.
We did find some High Court records which helped to explain the black hole which was Julie’s publicly visible life. In 2032, she’d won ten million euros in compensation from the Sun newspaper. Although the details of the case were sealed, there were plenty of other references indicating that she’d sued the Sun for privacy violations. She’d taken on the best lawyers and thrown millions at the case, as well as diverting Pulsar’s advertising budget away from all News Corp companies. By the time the dust had settled, two journalists, and the editor were out of work and a lesson had been learned.
Julie had made it very clear to me that she didn’t want her personal life to be the star of the book and I could see that she’d gone to extraordinary lengths to protect her privacy. Although the secrecy and mystery had found their way under my skin, I wasn’t intending to push any harder. That would result in a short sharp end to any chances I had of winning the dream contract.
A quiet Saturday evening and an early night had seemed like a good plan at the time. My first draft was finished; it wasn’t perfect, but not shabby at all. I was off to my Granny’s for lunch on the Sunday and was excited to hear what my dad and Uncle Daz would have to say.
Karl was going out to a new Scandi bar in Little Venice with his golf buddies. Although I could have tagged along, they’d all have been doing the doobie-do, doobie-da Swedish bit, congratulating themselves on being amazing chaps, and singing silly drinking songs. Fun for an hour or two, but I couldn’t face a whole evening of it and the consequences of lunch in Oxford after necking gallons of rough akevit didn’t bear thinking about.
Karl was also on a promise with a new girl in town – Ella or Elsa or something like that – and I would probably have ended up staggering home alone. All in all, a night in with a takeaway and a film was a much better plan.
I was going through a phase of watching classic Sci-Fi movies from the turn of the century and settled in with a Pad Thai to watch The Matrix with Keanu Reeves. In spite of the laughable special effects and the obscure plot, the vision wasn’t as out there as it must have seemed back then; the newest VR gaming platforms were already able to deliver immersive full world simulations which were almost indistinguishab
le from the real thing.
The film had been a welcome distraction from my circular thoughts about Julie and Pulsar. Unfortunately, the diversion didn’t last and I lay in bed for hours before finally getting to sleep. I couldn’t have been asleep for more than half an hour when the door of the neighbouring flat slammed with enough force to knock my phone off the bedside table.
My neighbours were a nice couple from Andalucia, always smiling on the stairs if I was up early enough to catch them on their way to work. Not that night. Both their voices were loud and slurring and, after a while, I could only hear her screaming and shouting, punctuated occasionally by the flamenco-trained stomping of feet and more slamming of doors. Although, I knew a little Spanish from school, I couldn’t make out a word.
Her tirade lasted for almost half an hour – I imagined him curled up in the corner of the sofa, trying to apologise for whatever it was he’d done and looking up at her with pleading eyes. And then, a final door slamming, the clattering of shoes on the stairs and … silence.
I picked up my book – a real paperback – and switched on the light. Going back to sleep was not an option; there were no more sheep in the field.
Sheep
I felt a childish urge to start skipping as I weaved a path though the Knightsbridge crowds. How could people cope with walking so slowly? It was as though their brains had been switched off and they were shuffling along on some sort of autopilot. No wonder most of them never achieved anything.
It was what the Irish called a “soft day”; a fine rain filled the air, almost a mist, but with droplets just large enough to dampen everything. No point in using an umbrella although the shuffling masses hadn’t quite grasped that. Idiots. Besides, my hair was naturally straight, and I loved the feeling of fresh water on my face.
I looked at my watch – ten past. I was due to meet Dave at eleven and it wouldn’t do to be early. I wasn’t in a skipping mood because of him though. Dave was just business.
Pulsar had been involved with Imperial College for more than ten years. I hated the stuffy arrogance of most of the academics, but having research links with such a prestigious institution was worth the pain. Although we also had programmes running with Stamford, MIT and Tsinghua in Beijing, our link with Imperial was the most important by far and gobbled up 95% of the funding – over fifty million euros were earmarked for 2037 alone.
Professor Dave Bukowski made a pleasant change from the crusty old farts. He was only in his early thirties, but already the recognised world leader in nano-genetic research. Most importantly, he hadn’t picked up the arrogance of his colleagues (yet) and still had something approaching a sense of humour.
We’d arranged to have a coffee in his favourite local haunt, Zak’s Cafe. I’d met him there a few times before and it was patently obvious why he liked the place. Apart from the best cakes for miles around and half-decent coffee, the women who frequented Zak’s were South Kensington’s finest. Yummy-mummies or yummy-mummies-to-be who had all of the time, all of the money and all of the motivation to look like a million dollars, day and night. For a farm-boy nerd from the Midwest like Dave, it must have been the equivalent of taking a trip to Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.
I was still pleased to notice that Dave’s eyes stopped wandering as soon as I walked in. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do when I stopped getting that kind of reaction from men like Dave. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Dave’s research, which was exclusively sponsored by Pulsar, was critical to our future. Our current flagship product, Pulsar Trust, was already four years old and it wouldn’t stay secure for ever. The two titanium implants – one in each arm – worked as a pair to authenticate identity based on an individual’s biorhythms. They were virtually tamper-proof, but “virtually” wasn’t good enough and we’d recently manage to hack them ourselves under controlled lab conditions.
Dave was the key to our next generation of products, which would combine on-the-fly DNA sampling and biorhythm matching using nano-genetic carriers. It was a few years away from being a functional solution, and we had a number of parallel projects, but this was by far the most promising. Dave was our golden boy – and didn’t he know it!
Our meetings involved a lot of dull technical conversation, combined with the occasional lewd proposal from Dave. The way his mind could seamlessly bounce between genius/savant and lecher/moron was breathtaking. Fortunately, I was almost certain that I would never need to do any more than tolerate his inappropriate banter. That being said, if he’d ever realised quite how important the project was to me, I would have been in trouble. One of many reasons to develop a good poker face.
I’d arranged to meet Nicki at Zak’s once Dave and I were done. It would be useful for her to meet him, even in passing, and to understand what we were working on.
My urge to skip was because I was seeing Nicki. I suspected that everyone who knew me thought I was cold and calculating, always one step ahead, never switching off. That was true to an extent, but mostly because people have a tendency to become who they pretend to be. We put on a conscious act, a carnival disguise, to achieve our goals and gradually – in thousands of changing breaths of wind – the disguise bonds with our skin, transforming us forever.
I’d played a role for so many years that I could no longer tell where the act ended and I began. Even so, there was always a place deep inside of me where nerves and excitement and uncertainty lived on and this was a hugely important day. If I had miscalculated, I might find that I had lost Nicki for ever. If my calculations were right, however …
I hadn’t seen Nicki since she’d left Pulsar almost a month earlier. The look on her face when I’d told her Odell was actually my company had been exquisite. Only bettered when I explained that I’d set up the firm for almost exactly the same reasons she’d laid out to me. A small part of her might have been disappointed that I was one (or several) steps ahead of her, but what did she expect?
Almost exactly the same reasons, but not quite. Nicki had been wrong when she’d suggested that the world was still controlled by the same old elites. Most people believed that, but it wasn’t entirely true.
The true locus of influence and control really had shifted forever during the data revolution. The early pioneers like Facebook and Google hadn’t understood what they had, or how to exploit it. They’d started from the wrong place; a fluffy dream of empowering ordinary people, or inanities like Google’s corporate mission, “Don’t be Evil”. Neither was a great starting point for effective global domination.
Even though the data pioneers had failed, managing elections, public reputations or any other form of power broking was no longer about murmured conversations taking place in dark wood-panelled rooms. Influence wasn’t the exclusive domain of privileged men sharing golf and sailing anecdotes whilst slowly marinating themselves in a fug of whisky fumes and cigar smoke. Amazingly enough, those men, and a token few alpha females, still believed they had a firm grip on the reins of power, even though they were barely holding on by their fingertips.
Their world had started to fade into sepia-tinged nostalgia even as the millennium clock was ticking away the final seconds of the twentieth century. Nothing happens overnight, but by the time Nicki learned about Odell, those rich and powerful establishment figures were well on their way to becoming mere puppets.
The future of true power really did lie in the ability to access and manipulate huge amounts of personal data. With enough access and the right skills, entire populations were no more than herds of sheep moving from pen to pen as one or two sheepdogs flashed yapping at their heels. And, whatever they imagined, the old guard had always been beholden to the masses.
It wasn’t easy. People, like sheep, had the ability to be stubborn and contrary, but with the right sheepdogs and a good whistle, it wasn’t that difficult either.
Nicki had taken longer than expected to become convinced, but I had a lot of hard data to back me up. I could tell she was disappointed that I was turnin
g her primary thesis upside down. Once she was on board with the logic, however, she’d started to get excited by the implications.
Managing that much data effectively would require massively complex algorithms which could operate independently and evolve. I understood the basics, but Nicki had been living in that world since she was sixteen.
Any remaining disappointment she might have had evaporated the instant I told her that I wanted her to become CEO of Odell. She didn’t have the political, espionage or relationship skills, but those were ten-a-penny. What Odell needed now – and what Nicki brought to the party – was her expertise in AI and quantum computing.
And, of course, she was the Chosen One.
We’d agreed that Nicki would have a month at Odell before we met again. She needed to get to grips with the details and develop her ideas before we could have a meaningful strategic discussion. As she walked into Zak’s, she was almost bouncing with excitement. I knew that feeling so well – the sensation of a mind on fire, fizzing with so many ideas and visions that it feels as though they’re leaking out of your mouth and nose and eyes and ears in streams of glistening, golden genius-dust.
She would need to control her impatience for a little longer. I wanted her to meet Dave. And I wanted him to meet her.
‘Nicki. This is Professor Dave Bukowski.’
I watched carefully as the two of them shook hands and sized each other up. Dave might have had a brain the size of the planet, but he didn’t have the good manners to stand up for a lady. Not such a big thing where he came from, apparently.
Seeing them together reminded me that Dave was fast becoming my third “project”. Not like Nicki or Sam for obvious reasons, but they were all lead actors.
‘Nicki used to work for us at Pulsar,’ I said. ‘Until a month ago. But she’s an ambitious lady, and she’s moved on.’