Bedlam

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘The fight-back starts here,’ Ross said, dropping his voice an octave. ‘Let me get those restraints off you gentlemen.’

  It sounded pretty good, and the looks on their faces suggested his tone had hit that sweet spot somewhere between Jesus and arrogant wanker that Americans seemed to respond to so well. He detracted a little from the effect by spending about five minutes trying to suss how the glowing orange handcuffs worked, but redeemed his image by giving up and using the rotating blade thingy on the end of his spike that had done such a sterling job of pureeing Kamnor’s face.

  ‘I’m Sergeant Raven,’ said the older of the marines. ‘This is Corporal Stone. USMC, out of Starbase Kuiper IV.’

  Ross could hear those Roman numerals.

  ‘Who are you?’ Raven asked, looking gratifyingly awestruck.

  ‘I was a colonist,’ Ross replied. Even less wise playing the truth card here than with Bob, he figured. ‘They took me, and they tried to make me one of them, but inside I was still me. And now I’m going to make them pay. In blood. And steel.’

  Jesus, this was embarrassing. Why not add: ‘And, you know, that greeny-yellow stuff that also comes out of them’?

  It seemed to be doing the trick, though.

  ‘Our landing forces are in disarray,’ said Raven. ‘But a forward operations base was covertly established in advance. It is imperative that we get you there. Your intel on the enemy will be invaluable.’

  Ross knew exactly where they meant, having fought his way there a dozen times before, not to mention clocking up about a hundred hours on the capture-the-flag multiplayer version of the map. He didn’t fancy the marines’ chances of getting there though, and if they couldn’t vouch for him when he reached it then he’d be back to square one.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘About two clicks north-east,’ Raven replied.

  ‘Through the canyon,’ said Ross gravely. ‘The Gralaks would pick us off before we made it a hundred yards. But if I was alone, they wouldn’t suspect anything.’

  Raven grinned, getting it.

  ‘I’ll radio ahead, let them know you’re coming. What’s your name?’

  ‘My name is …’

  Ross stopped himself. Stay in character, he thought, and not just so that the NPCs believed in him. He needed to also. He thought back to those CTF games, his clan days, owning the map despite his laggy 36k dial-up connection. In this place, he was never Ross Baker, socially awkward weedy med-student. He was known on servers far and wide by a different handle.

  He hefted his rifle to his chest and struck a suitably cover-art pose.

  ‘They call me Bedlam,’ he said.

  Digital Rights Management

  Zac watched her car arrive from the atrium lobby, congratulating himself for correctly guessing that she’d be driving a retro-styled E-Prius. It was the new-model VW Beetle of the era, the luxury vehicle of choice for people who thought they were making a statement about their integrity by referencing a ride synonymous with the trendy values of an earlier age. Like all holders of trendy values, the fact that this statement would principally be legible to like-minded people was more of a bonus than a concern. It was legible to sharper minds too, though: minds such as his, which could tell how self-righteously full of shit they all were.

  He had stood there waiting less than a minute. He knew almost to the second when she would arrive, updated in real time even as to which parking space she had been allocated. The security systems had been tracking her since her vehicle crossed their unseen perimeter, which actually began half a mile beyond the signpost where visitors thought they were officially entering the expanses of Neurosphere’s sprawling California campus.

  There were two intimidatingly huge Essedari-class armoured vehicles patrolling the compounds, and a phalanx of Retiarii at the barrier where she had to show her credentials. They were there to be noticed, but only partly as a deterrent; their greater role was in disguising from visitors that it was the technology they couldn’t see that was truly ensuring the campus’s security.

  She stared right past him as she sought out the reception desk, looking for where she should report to. He liked that. It would play nicely when she realised, even better than the fact that he had come to greet her personally.

  ‘Juliet Li?’ he called out, causing her to turn on her heel.

  He enjoyed the moment of double-take as she recognised who had addressed her.

  ‘Isaac Michaels. Oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t expect … I thought there’d be assistants and secretaries and security and waiting and …’

  ‘Oh, we can lay on all of that if you’d prefer, but for now it’s just me. You should call me Zac. It only says Isaac on official stuff, you know, like share quarterly statements and subpoenas. Can I get you a coffee, or you wanna head straight to my evil corporate lair?’

  She laughed, already disarmed, already warming. He could read the first paragraph of her interview in her smile.

  He was good at this part, he knew. It was a chore, but it was one that rewarded the effort. Companies spent millions per year on public relations, the majority of it on fire-fighting, but a little human contact with the right people in the media could be worth ten times as much in making sure those fires never got going.

  ‘I try to make myself as accessible as my commitments allow,’ he explained, walking her to the elevators. ‘I’m not gonna pretend I make myself available for every journalist who wants an interview, but when I do make myself available, I like to be actually available, you know? Not chaperoned by a PR guy who’s vetting your questions and my answers.’

  ‘I appreciate that. I’m actually pretty surprised to be doing this in person, face to face, in this day and age. I can’t tell you the last time I did anything other than a virtual interview.’

  There was just a teasing hint of her ethnic background in her accent, but otherwise she sounded as Californian as the OJ he’d just had with breakfast.

  ‘Well, I’m grateful for you making the trip out here to Silicon Valley. Some would think it ironic to be doing it analogue, given the business we’re in, but in fact I think it just makes genuine human contact all the more imperative, especially when you’re in my job. A faceless entity is perceived as an unaccountable entity, and that makes people wary. You can’t ascribe values to some nebulous corporation, so by extension you’re not going to ascribe it a conscience either. People need to be able to associate human names and personalities with companies in order to engender trust, and given what they’re entrusting to us …’

  She nodded her understanding, a sincere look on her attractive young face as he spoke.

  It wasn’t all bullshit either, but in truth that face was the main reason she wasn’t doing this from her office. Smooth skin, that petite little Asian frame, and all of it genuinely her, all of it original flesh: yeah, he could make himself available to gaze at that with the naked eye for an hour or so. He looked her up and down as the elevator sped to the executive floor. It was harder and harder to judge as the decades passed, but he wouldn’t put her at a day over twenty-five. No replacements, no augmentations. One hundred per cent natural. He remembered hearing people say that the older you got, the more you wanted to be around youth. How much more true was that these days? They were like another goddamn species in an era when you measured your years not in greys and wrinkles, but in how much of your original body was still attached.

  He’d chosen carefully, and not just in terms of the pretty young journalist who was being granted an interview, but, more importantly, in terms of which outlet she worked for. The article would get cascaded all over the globe within minutes of going live, regardless of who published it, but that just made the imprimatur all the more important. No point going with something too ‘establishment’ and business-friendly, like the Wall Street Journal, nor with any outfit that might be perceived as offering a tame fanboy geek-out or a human-interest easy ride. Lightning Rod was therefore ideal: it was sufficiently progressive and is
sue-conscious that anything short of a hatchet job would play as an endorsement of his – and by extension Neurosphere’s – integrity, yet small enough that Li would be wary of blowing the big scoop and souring future relations by trying to hardball him.

  The elevator doors slid open and they emerged into a glass-walled antechamber beyond which lay the office suites of the executive level. A green laser beam took a three-dimensional image of each of them as they approached an iris scanner sited on a hydraulic pedestal that automatically adjusted to the eye level of each subject. Both of these measures were largely for show, and the true value of the iris scanner was that it forced the subjects to stand still for a moment while an unseen cloud of nanites microscopically sampled and cross-checked their DNA.

  ‘After you,’ he said, taking the opportunity to perform his own little scan of Li’s butt as she approached the pedestal.

  He caught her casting a wary eye over the two heavily armoured Andabatae guards standing ready to intervene should anyone’s credentials not come up to snuff.

  ‘Your security is, er, I guess robust would be the word,’ she said as he took his turn at the iris scanner. ‘Terrifying might be another.’

  ‘I’d prefer “intimidating”, or maybe “conspicuous”,’ he replied. ‘Conspicuous more so, because it works two ways. One, the obvious: to deter intrusion; but the other, just as important, is to spur our own vigilance. Whenever any of us sees our security measures, it should be a constant reminder that what we’re protecting here is more valuable than any material wealth on the planet.’

  ‘Is it true that your security’s class and identification system is based on Roman gladiators?’

  Zac laughed, careful to make it sound bashful rather than proud, then gave her his best little-boy-caught look.

  ‘Yeah. It’s cool though, isn’t it? You have to admit it’s more interesting than just numeric codes or phonetic alphabet designations.’

  ‘Whose idea was that?’

  He held up a hand with calculated sheepishness.

  ‘Gotta fess up to that one. It all started when we equipped the security guards with these high-velocity net-launchers. I’ve always been a big advocate of non-lethal enforcement methods. They got extra armour to compensate for the fact we took away their guns, so between that and the nets I said to the head of security we should call them Retiarii. I guess it gets you more chicks to say you’re a Retiarius than a security guard, so it caught on and kinda grew from there.’

  ‘Boys and their toys,’ she said, with an amused roll of her eyes.

  Score, he thought, confident her encounter with military-level hardware had just been successfully spun. She’d write a patronising but crucially harmless-sounding take on the overgrown kids beneath the Neurosphere executives’ suits.

  He let her take in the view from his corner suite for a while, then led her to one of the antique chaise-longues beneath the windows, taking his own rest at its partner. His secretary brought coffee and Danishes, her withdrawal the cue that they could begin the interview proper. Li got out a small data recorder and placed it on the table next to the plates. The use of the ancient-looking and conspicuous device was a formal gesture that they were on the record now, like her getting out a Dictaphone or a notepad.

  She was undoubtedly aware that every word and move was already being recorded by unseen means so that there was an indisputable record of their encounter. What she was less likely to know was that the true extent of the remote monitoring included her heart rate, fluctuations in her body temperature and, of course, brainwave patterns, and all of this was being relayed to him in real time, superimposed upon his field of vision like a heads-up display.

  He would know when she was apprehensive and when she was feeling relaxed. He’d know when she was likely to be lying, or merely being disingenuous, trying to disguise her agenda. He’d know when he was going down well, when she was finding him too forthright, when she considered him aloof, and he could amend his answers accordingly. She would leave this building thinking only good thoughts about him and about Neurosphere.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘Zac Michaels, CEO of Neurosphere. You’ve been with the company since the early twenty-first century, you’ve risen through the ranks and ultimately taken the helm, and your hand has been on the tiller during some truly remarkable times. I’m gonna warm you up with some soft pitches and start by asking: what do you consider your greatest achievement? What would you say you’re most proud of?’

  ‘Memento Mori,’ he replied, in less than a heartbeat. He hadn’t needed any real-time bio-feedback to know the right answer to that one, though he did get instant data confirming a hit.

  ‘Is there anyone in your family …?’ he prompted.

  ‘My grandpa, yes,’ she replied, nodding sincerely. ‘My great uncle too. It’s meant a lot, especially to Grandma, and to my mom. And to me and my brothers. Okay, to everybody, but obviously the closer you are, the greater the need.’

  ‘Absolutely, and that’s what I’m so proud of. Every company wants to create something that will fill a need, whether that’s a cure for cancer or just breath mints. I’m not saying we’re right there alongside the first of those, but I like to think we’re closer to it than to the second, in terms of the scale of human need. To be able to provide what we have done, for so many people … it’s my greatest source of pride but it’s also the most humbling thing in my life too.’

  ‘Some people would go as far as to say Memento Mori has changed how we think about death, or at least about bereavement. Would you go along with that?’

  He took a moment to think about it. Her readings indicated she was neutral on this: content for the discussion to go this way if he took it there, but he was wary of being perceived to be talking too proprietorially about something that was, after all, down to other people’s innovations. The only thing he wanted to do less than turn a spotlight on Ross Baker was to remind the general public about the company’s long-term connections to that basket-case Jay Solomon. Solderburn, they used to call him, but Solderburn-out seemed closer to the truth.

  Best to steer her towards territory where he was less ambiguously identifiable as the one who had made the play.

  ‘I wouldn’t say it’s changed the way we think about death. But I would say it’s changed how we think about consciousness.’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly,’ she agreed, growing animated. This was always going to be the money-shot, as far as she and Lightning Rod were concerned; his role in the great debate of the age. ‘It’s changed how we legislate for consciousness, and that’s largely down to your championing of digital rights.’

  He allowed himself a wistful laugh as he looked to the heavens, gathering his thoughts.

  ‘I’m old enough to remember when digital rights legislation meant stopping teenagers cloning each other’s music collections,’ he quipped, but the real joke was him getting credit for being forced on to the side of a crusade he’d actually been bitterly opposed to, and the eventual success of which he privately cursed every day of his life.

  Every. Fucking. Day.

  ‘What made you take up this cause? I mean, clearly this was a debate that must have been going on inside Neurosphere before the rest of the world had even heard about DCs.’

  ‘Well, I just thought that as we were on the verge of tapping untold revenue streams and in a position to start forging alliances at the highest echelons of every major government on the planet, the obvious way to proceed was to voluntarily cut off our own balls, put them in our mouths and choke on them,’ he didn’t say.

  No. Instead he gave a carefully constructed but seemingly extemporaneous ramble about ethics and scientific progress. He talked about how we shouldn’t always end up having the Frankenstein debates after the technology is loose; he enthused about the way the cutting edge of technology brings you up against the cutting edge of morality; he explained how it was incumbent upon Neurosphere to make sure people understood the level of respect the company accor
ded to its subjects, otherwise they’d never get their first customer. And in case that all sounded a little too warm and fuzzy, he admitted that the legislation did help protect their own position against unlawful proliferation of their technology, not to mention indemnifying them against lawsuits.

  And all of this was true, all of these were reasons he agreed with. The problem was that added together they came nowhere near to justifying what they had forced Neurosphere to forgo.

  When he was trying to be philosophical about it, he’d muse that ‘he giveth and he taketh away’. He being Ross Baker, leading architect of the technology and leading advocate of the digital rights cause.

  Behind the scenes Zac had tried his absolute best to hamstring Baker’s efforts. However, it became obvious as soon as the debate went public that there was only one way it was going to go. That was when he decided that the best damage-limitation strategy was for Neurosphere to be posturing as pioneers of the new legislation, rather than appearing as the entity most conspicuously needing to be constrained by it. This at least meant they had a strong hand in framing the new laws, but to Zac that didn’t amount to much more than getting to add a soft velvet lining to their handcuffs.

  It was Baker who made the argument that the legislation would protect their own intellectual property and guarantee their exclusive position in the new market. This must have sounded very convincing to anybody naïve enough to believe that other people would actually stick to these rules.

  ‘Of course, this kind of legislation is meaningless unless it’s internationally applied and enforced,’ Li said. ‘And you’ve been aggressive in shutting down illegal operations worldwide.’

  Oh yeah. We’re very effective at raiding back-street chop-shops in Beijing and Mumbai while ten blocks away their governments have entire server-farms that don’t officially exist and about which we can do nothing.