“We’re just about to file our second-quarter earnings. They look as solid as ever because they were all in the bag before news of this implant hit. Yes, I see…” Pauline nodded. “If we announce a takeover bid at the same time as we put up solid results, it could bring the stock back up.”
“It will demonstrate confidence in our future far better than my botched press conference did.”
Pauline hesitated and then said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Maura grimaced. “There’s no sugar coating that one. I blew it. They needed something more than the bland pap I offered them. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now.”
“If that researcher hadn’t created the implant, you wouldn’t have had the press conference in the first place,” Pauline countered. “You must hate technology, sometimes. It can flip things upside down at a moment’s notice. Your whole life’s work is on the line here.”
“Hate it? No, not at all. Look around you. You can’t tell me living and working like this,” she pointed at her office and the city outside the windows, “isn’t infinitely better than trying to eke out a living by farming out on the prairies like the first settlers did. If the mosquitoes and the blackflies didn’t drive them insane, the long winters stuck in a one room soddy did. No, technology is not the issue. It’s still the answer to many problems.”
“No, the real difficulty is some humans in particular and humanity in general.” Maura sighed. “The people who invent things or discover things usually have good intentions, and they think what they’ve produced will make things better than they were. And it’s true, to a point. But they hardly ever take human nature into account and try to predict how something might be abused or simply misused and then put in measures ahead of time to mitigate that. Most of the recent history of science and technology has been about launching something and then rapidly backpedalling and applying bandage solutions.”
Maura got up to look out the window, gazing across the city to the university’s main campus. “I do not know what our doctor friend over there had in mind when she designed those implants, but she obviously didn’t take the time to secure her prototypes, and she was naïve about the level of privacy she had when on her computer.”
“Not to mention the device’s ability to play back just about any state, it seems,” Pauline said.
“Is that what our lab is saying?” Maura asked, turning to face Pauline.
“Yes, as far as we can tell there’s no limit to the experiences it can record and replay,” Pauline said. She rose, stretched a little and joined Maura at the window. “So, inventors and scientists should be made to study more what, history? Philosophy?”
Maura laughed again. “What, you mean if I were to become prime minister or something and could decree this? Those wouldn’t hurt, and neither would psychology. But actually, the problem goes further than that.”
“How so?”
“Well, very few of us are good at reasoning things through to their logical conclusion. Or even just playing with the idea ‘what if’? When I said humanity that’s what I meant. We’re terrible at long-term thinking. We really need to teach the skill.”
Pauline appeared to be very amused. “Well! That explains why we maintain a few product lines that aren’t super profitable. That’s what those are, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Those speculative pieces. They’re thought experiments. Each book, each VR experience, each holographic is a mini-laboratory. Helps you think through possible futures. My favourite genre.” Maura shrugged. “So those lines are my pet projects. You know, I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“What, not even your best friend?”
Maura’s face clouded, and she turned back to the city view. “I’ve never made any time for friends,” she said. “My parents seemed to have all kinds of them when I was growing up. I think I told you they liked the good life? Lots of parties, always having people over. Nobody stuck around after my folks were killed. Just poof, gone. My cousin took me in but only because I was the heir to the company he got to play with until I reached the age of majority. Didn’t seem much point to friends if they vanished on you. And besides, I had to deal with the other parts of my parents’ estate and get my education, and then I plunged straight into running the company and resettling it here, where I knew no one.”
Pauline placed a gentle hand on Maura’s arm. It was warm through the cloth of Maura’s suit jacket. “I’m sorry,” Pauline said. “I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”
Maura’s face brightened. “My goodness, that’s given me a great idea!”
“Oh?”
“Yes! And it’ll guarantee we stay afloat. We need to get in touch with Dr Rafferty again.”
PART IV
KEL
Kel rolled over and groaned. Her head was on fire, and every muscle in her body felt like it had been stretched like a rubber band and snapped violently back into place. And coming to in strange places was getting very old.
Then she smelled smoke.
Panicking, she tried to sit up, but the movement made the world spin, and then all she could do was throw up. She stayed like that for several minutes, alternately puking and gasping, until she felt that she’d heaved up everything she had ever eaten in her life.
Moving much more slowly, she sat lay back down and opened her eyes.
She was outdoors… somewhere, under a shelter of sorts. It was pouring rain, the water coming down so hard and in such volume, that she could only see a few metres ahead. Kel was sure there’d be flooding in parts of the city again. The smoke was rising from a small fire. Beyond the flames, a woman regarded her warily.
“You’ll want water,” the woman said. She reached behind her and produced a small bottle. “Just now, all I’d do is rinse.”
Kel accepted the water gratefully. She took her time sitting up, and to wash the foul taste out of her mouth. She looked around. “Where am I?”
“Old Dowling Avenue Bridge,” the woman replied, staring into the fire. “I come out to the lake for a swim now and then, and if I’m too tired to walk all the way back, I stop here for the night.”
Kel twisted her body to see. This was indeed an old bridge, overgrown with summer weeds. She looked more closely at the woman. Her hair was dark brown, shot through with grey and pulled back into a messy bun. Her face was tanned and shockingly wrinkled. Her clothes were, to Kel’s astonishment, handmade.
“You’re an Analogue!” Kel blurted out.
“The name’s Byela,” the woman said, frowning at her. “Never have been too fond of that term.”
“I’m Kel. How did I get here?”
“I found you by the side of the flow. I normally don’t get involved in other people’s lives, ‘specially when they look all beat to hell, but, well…” Byela flicked a glance at Kel, looking embarrassed, “you were wearing one of them new augs,” she said, indicating the back of her head. “And I got nosey. So I played it. Whatever you’ve been into lately was some kind of terrifying. And then I brought you under here.”
Kel wondered what part of the last several days had been recorded. She hadn’t turned on the record function, but maybe one of the two men had. Then she looked again at the woman in her rough clothes. “Wait? You played it? But how?”
Byela gave her an odd look. “Through my jack, of course.” She lifted her hair, exposing the implant underneath.
“But… how can you afford that?”
“Just what do you think an Analogue is, exactly?”
Kel paused, unsure of herself. “People who can’t afford…?”
Byela looked disgusted. “Oh my, just where have you been all this time? So all Analogues are just poor bastards without access? All of them desperate keen to get on the marvellous thingweb if only they could?”
“But…”
Byela sighed. “Look, here’s the way it is with me: I love the outdoors. Always have. And I want as little as possible separating me from it. S
o about ten years ago, I gave up my career and disconnected as completely as I could.”
“You chose to live like this?”
“Yes, goddammit, and another reason is ’cause I got tired of people like you spoutin’ off about how exponentially better things are and inventin’ stuff to make things even easier for anyone on your side to live but not paying attention to the real problems we still got to solve.” Byela grabbed a stick and poked a log in the fire, pushing it higher and making the flames jump. “You know what finally put me over the edge? When someone put out software to help track all of my various fabber prints so I could post my statistics on my connection networks. Not to help me reduce resource use, but so I could brag about my numbers. And this was before it looked like we were getting better news about the climate. So I said, that’s it, I’m out. I’m not participating anymore.”
Kel wondered at the woman’s logic, as she was still using resources one way or the other to stay alive, but thought better of saying so. “Why do other people disconnect?”
Byela threw the stick on the fire. “Other folks have political reasons, some have religious reasons. Most probably don’t even have a clear reason for staying away from augs, or fabbers, or whatever. They do because they want to. And yeah, there’s lots of them who want to connect but can’t.” She pulled up her sleeve to reveal her digital tattoo. “But here’s another thing. I can get back in any time I want. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get one of these things if you’re not already connected?”
Kel frowned. “It can’t be that hard. There are government agencies and—”
“And how do you know about those if you haven’t grown up with them? How do you navigate a world no one’s ever taught you about? Those are skills you need to be taught.”
The question had never occurred to Kel. An ID was just something that had always been there. Head down, hard at work, eyes on her goals and her career. She’d always had a place — a node — in society, and connections on the thingweb, and had never questioned why or how that was. She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling headachy and tired. So far, this whole year had been a crash course in human nature, one she was failing badly.
Byela was on a roll now. “And these latest implant things. What good are they supposed to be? People usin’ them to get their rocks off? Pffft. Like humanity needed more ways to do that.”
It was more than Kel could take. “That’s not what they were for!”
“Oh yeah?” Byela’s chin jutted out stubbornly, not happy to be interrupted in a good rant. “How would you know?”
Kel thought of all the things she’d seen on the news, and all the other uses she’d worried about in the wee hours of the morning once she’d seen how creative people were being in abusing it. She didn’t want to feel responsible for all of that. This was not what she’d envisioned when she’d daydreamed about becoming a famous neuroscientist. A muscle in her jaw clenched. “Because I invented it.”
Byela was momentarily speechless. “So what’s it for then?” she finally asked.
“I made it,” Kel said, “to help people get better work done—”
“Oh geez, another ‘productivity aid.’”
“No!” Kel shouted. Byela tensed and glanced at the stick she had tossed into the fire. Kel took a calming breath. “Not like what you’re thinking, anyway. I made it so we could reproduce that state of ‘flow’ on demand. That feeling of being totally synced up so we could put that kind of intense creative energy to use on tough problems. Only it all went horribly wrong. Someone got a copy before I finished it and it got out, and people have been using it for all kinds of crazy things I never would have dreamed of. People have been hurt because of it. It’s an awful thing.”
“Oh,” Byela said, mollified.
They both stared into the fire, listening to it crackle and pop. Then Byela said, “It’s not awful, you know.”
Kel just looked at her.
Byela shrugged and looked back into the flames. “Truth is, I’m also out here ’cause I don’t like people very much. Misanthrope, I think the word is. I avoid people as much as I can. And like I said, I found you by the flow. Saw you had one of these, and well, I don’t know what came over me. I’d heard about these things and I took out your chit and played it. I’m sorry. But then I couldn’t unfeel it. You’d been through hell, all that fear, and pain, and I really felt like I’d been there with you. I could tell there was big rain coming, and I brought you here to… I’m not sure what. Keep you dry and safe until you could use a beacon for emergency services, I guess.”
“Empathy,” Kel said, wonderingly. “You felt what it was like to be me, and it moved you.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Byela nodded, her cheeks colouring. “And if you can get a cranky hermit like me to make nice, well, that’s somethin’, isn’t it?”
Kel had to admit it was.
MEIKE
In her dressing room, Meike unlocked a large custom case she’d had fabbed a few weeks ago. Inside, there were dozens of implants, each with a neat label in a tiny font. She ran her finger across the second row, stopping to pull out the one she was looking for. Meike reached around, pulled out the existing implant, and popped in the new one. She was just filing the original when there as a knock at her door.
Lorenzo came in, an angry expression on his face. “You did it again, didn’t you?”
“What?” Meike said, not looking at him. She sat in front of her mirror to do her makeup.
“Don’t give me what,” he said. “They told me you did your own stunts again yesterday.”
Meike pouted into the mirror. “It’s more fun that way. And it’s what got me into every entertainment roundup as a headliner. No one does stunts anymore, much less their own stunts. It’s all computer generated.”
“I know,” Lorenzo fumed. “And it was fine as a one-time thing to make your name. But I don’t want you injured.”
“I didn’t know you cared that much,” Meike said, applying foundation to her face.
“You’re worth a lot of money to me. More alive than maimed or dead.”
“Such a sentimental man.”
“Pah! Just knock it off already. Your amazing acting skills are all you need now.”
“It may not last forever. That reminds me,” Meike said, sticking out her hand and making a gimme motion. “What else you got for me today?”
Lorenzo glared at her, but Meike just made the gesture again. He sighed, stuck his hand in a pocket, and grabbed a handful of implants. He separated one out and held it up, grinning. “This one is jealous anger.”
“Where’d you get that one?”
“Off Julie, right after I told her I was screwing you, too.” He pointed to a tiny cut near one eye. “She threw it at me.”
Meike rolled her eyes at him. “And you think doing my own stunts is dangerous? You’re lucky she didn’t push you down the stairs.” She took the implants and looked them over. “What else is here?”
“One is a bad LSD trip. The other is off a guy from his first time base-jumping. Not sure how useful it’s gonna be. But you said you wanted to cover as many situations as I could think of.”
Meike held the base-jumping session implant up and contemplated it. “What’s the date today?”
“I think it’s the twenty-eighth?”
“We’re doing a chase scene. This’ll be perfect,” she said, tucking it in a pocket. She filed the rest in her special case and locked it. “Now out. I’ve got lines to memorise.”
He grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “Hey now, you know what I just told Julie. Don’t make a liar out of me.”
She pushed him away. “You’re already a liar. I’m not the only other one. And if I don’t get to work, you don’t get paid. Which do you value more? Paid or laid?”
“Oooh, cruel choice,” he laughed. “So I won’t make it. I’ll go hook up with someone new while you work.”
He was still laughing as he ducked the hairbrush she tos
sed at him while he was leaving.
SETH
“Mama, you can stop fussing, I’ll be fine,” Seth said, feigning exasperation. “I’m being well looked after here.”
He was in a private room in Toronto General, with the late summer sun streaming in the window. He was propped up just enough to see his mother, sitting in a chair by his bed. As far as he could tell, she had been there every day since he’d first been brought in.
“Nobody can look after you as well as your own mother,” she said firmly. “And frankly, Seth, I can’t wait to get you out. They say you’ll heal much faster in familiar surroundings, surrounded by your people. We’ll put you in the spare bedroom for a few weeks.” She poked him gently in the ribs. “You need feeding up, too.”
He suppressed a wince as his ribs were still sore. “You’d have me move back home? I don’t want to be any bother—”
“Seth Carrado Bacchi, we all thought we’d lost you,” his mother said sharply, her voice cracking. Seth looked at her, astonished. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears. He’d never seen his mother show anything other than zen-like calm and control, even when they’d been rowdy, crazy children. “Did you hear that, Seth? Did you know the reporter who was first on the scene got it wrong? They told us you had been the one to die?”
He took her hand. “Yes, a nurse told me. I’m sorry, Mama.”
“That part wasn’t your fault. Although what possessed you to go for a walk on the parkway I will never know,” she said, some of her control returning. “So the least you can do for scaring us all to pieces is let us love you to better health. Your nephews have been beside themselves, and Dario will be here when his flight gets in this afternoon.”
“Dario is flying all the way back from Africa?” Seth blinked back his own tears. “Just to see me?”
“Of course he is, Seth,” she said, looking at him as though he had a head injury on top of everything else. “Why wouldn’t he be? He’s your brother, after all, and he loves you.”
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