Diane Duane

by Omnitopia Dawn (v5)

  Dev opened one eye, turned his head. On the far side of the bed, snoring gently as usual, was Mirabel. She lay on her side, the pillow all bunched up under her, one hand under her chin in that little-girl way she had, the way that always made Dev wonder why she didn’t sleep in some more comfortable position.

  Dev quietly rolled over in her direction and experimentally opened the other eye. He’d left the bedroom blinds across the room open when he’d come to bed, intending to have the morning light wake him, ideally before the alarm went off. But it was still too early for that. The only light visible was the very faint blue glow from the mood-light submerged in the water feature out in the garden. The sky was still dark. And I got exactly how much sleep? Dev wondered, rubbing his eyes and moaning softly to himself. Today when I need it most. Oh, never mind . . .

  On the other side of the bed, Mirabel stirred and muttered a little in her sleep. Dev leaned back against his pillow for just a moment more, looking at her with an affection so deeply ingrained that after ten years it seemed like it had been there forever. The blonde hair, straggling across the pillow, heading for the endless tangle of knots which she would later curse as she teased them out one by one; that pretty little round face with the buttony nose—eyes seeming almost purposely squeezed shut, as if with an effort. Dev could remember the party where Phil—ages ago it seemed, when their company had first hit its stride—had said to him, and not entirely in jest, “Miri’s not the usual kind of wife for somebody on the Forbes Five Hundred list. You’re supposed to have some kind of trophy babe.” Dev had found himself staring at Phil as if he’d just fallen into that party from some other planet. The casually dropped line had told Dev more, maybe, than he was willing to know about Phil at that point. Not that I wasn’t already having my suspicions . . .

  Dev grimaced to himself. This peaceful and unfortunately brief interlude was not one to be cluttered up with such thoughts, which wormed their way into too many of his daylight seconds as it was. Dev spent a few moments more just looking at Mirabel, watching her breathe. Then he pushed the covers back, yawning, and got up as quietly as he could, intent on not disturbing her. Carefully Dev pulled the covers back into place, waved the broadband radio off, paused to hunt for the briefs he’d dumped on the floor last night, pulled them on, and then softly headed over to the window.

  Down in the courtyard, two stories below, nothing moved except the ripple of water from the cascade that ran down into the central rock pool, glittering in the glow of the blue accent light at the pool’s bottom. Dev yawned again, stretched again, and turned away from the window. The master bedroom was relatively small because Mirabel liked it that way. Outside it, though, the size and openness of the master suite’s private lounge area more than made up for the relative coziness of the bedroom. The picture window that ran the full length of the room was smart glass, frosted over and grayed down at this time of day. “Clear up,” Dev said to the room’s control system. The glass cleared, revealing its view down into the central compound. Flagstone paths worked their way among patches of lawn and ornamental shrubbery; in the dimness, a single household cat, one of the gray tabbies, strolled about its business.

  “Lights on low,” Dev said. They cycled up. He picked up his plaid flannel bathrobe from over the back of a nearby easy chair, swung it around his shoulders, and slipped into it, briefly brushing at one sleeve: it was getting frayed. He could just hear Mirabel now: Look at the state of you. Eighth richest man in the world, but you can’t be trusted to buy clothes that don’t look like they came from Sears. In fact half the time they do come from Sears! You’re going to make me look bad in front of all the other billionaires’ wives.

  Dev smiled slightly as he made his way across the private lounge, closing its far door behind him as he headed into the larger adjacent part of their suite, the breakfast bar and common room. The word “bar” probably wasn’t a properly descriptive name for something that took up a whole side of the room: a mini-kitchen with fridge and stove and dishwasher, and most importantly for a caffeine freak, the coffee island. Atop the black marble of its surface, the coffeemaker—which knew Dev’s rising habits and had as usual been primed by the household staff yesterday evening—now had a steaming glass pot of Ugandan Gold waiting for him. Dev reached up into the cupboard, rummaged around for a mug, and came down with a big white stoneware one. As he poured his coffee into it, Dev’s eye fell on the message emblazoned on one side: ARE YOU READY TO THROW THE SWITCH?

  He laughed just once, under his breath, and went to the fridge to get some milk. Not even slightly, he thought. Another month’s debugging time would be a gift from heaven. But all we’ve got now are three days. And we’d bloody well just better be ready . . .

  He came back with the milk carton and topped up the coffee cup. But you’re never ready, he could just hear Mirabel saying. If my dad hadn’t pushed you into the church, you’d still be standing outside making notes and saying “There’s just one more thing I want to fix,” and I’d still be standing at the altar . . .

  Dev sat down in one of chairs behind the coffee island, cradling the cup and staring out across the interior compound. Here and there a light had already come on in the staff quarters on the other side: house security had doubtless sensed him turning on the lights, which they knew meant that pretty soon now Dev would be wanting the morning report—and that today he’d probably be wanting it more urgently than usual. He glanced at his watch. Sixty-six hours until we throw the switch. People who would normally have been on day shift were working strange hours at the moment, because they knew that Dev would be too. Bet it’s Milla bringing the report this morning, rather than one of her minions. But that would be in her style. As head of his corporate affairs management staff, Milla liked Dev to know that when something important was about to happen, she was right on top of it. And there was nothing more important in Omnitopia today and for the next three days than throwing that nonexistent but profoundly important switch, and keeping an eye on anything that could affect its throwing.

  Dev sighed, got up from the breakfast bar and went to the dressing room door at the far side of the common room, where there was a set of gray sweats hanging on the hook behind the door. He pulled them on and went back to the breakfast bar, drank the rest of his coffee in a gulp, and rummaged in the bread drawer under the counter for a couple of croissants. By the time he’d found a plate and a mug for some tea, the bell near the door at the far side of the common room was sounding its soft chime.

  He went to the door and opened it. Milla Andreas was standing there dressed in jeans and a white shirt, looking weary but cheerful: a slender young woman with short shaggy blonde hair, dramatically streaked. She held a sheaf of folders and her laptop in her arms. “Are you ready for me?” she said.

  “Absolutely. Come on in.”

  They headed back to the breakfast bar: Dev handed Milla her tea. “How was your evening?”

  She nodded, putting down her laptop and opening it up. “Fine, Mr. Logan.”

  He didn’t even bother sighing any more. Dev wasn’t formal with his staff, but some of them took their work seriously enough that they refused to unbend, and Milla was one of the more surprising ones in this regard. “Anything interesting going on in the real world?” Dev said.

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “You haven’t even been online yet?”

  Dev shook his head. “Such a late night last night,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Well, briefly, no,” Milla said. “Those forest fires in northern China, they’re getting them under control. The usual pre-pre-election craziness here, those two Minnesota caucus groups taking potshots at each other over the 2016 primaries . . .”

  “They figure out which of them is the legal one yet?”

  Milla shrugged. “They’re suing each other. May take a few weeks. A train strike in Italy, the EU is sanctioning those African rebels, the Australian labor unions are rattling their sabers again.” Milla shrugged. “Nothing that affects u
s directly except the capitol building thing. That’s getting a lot of play.” She smiled, a wry look. “A lot of press opinion saying the place is so ugly that if you really wanted to do something nice for the state, you should’ve just knocked the thing down and built them a new one.”

  “Everybody’s a critic,” Dev said, holding out a hand for the files. He put them down on the breakfast bar and started flipping through them one by one. “First thing—”

  “The bug list,” said Milla, and handed it to him.

  Dev took it with some trepidation, picking up a pen as he did so. Rolling out a new part of an old game was never a simple business. There were always bugs galore, places where the two game structures refused to interleave together correctly no matter how carefully you planned the shuffle. Add to this that it wasn’t just the Macrocosms, the Omnitopian worlds and scenarios designed by the in- house staff, that had to interleave with the new server and game structures, but also the Microcosms built by Omnitopia-approved gamers on the basic platform, but with player-designed tweaks and twiddles. And then there was the master server structure itself, nearly sixty- four yottabytes of the newest bleeding-edge hyperblast memory. Yes, the huge heap of memory had been custom-built and configured by IBM/Intel and Siemens for Omnitopia’s new megaserver configuration. Yes, the memory arrays and server implementations had been tested as thoroughly as anyone could figure out how. But the wise hardware jockey didn’t trust such testing any more than the wise software engineer did. It was only when the hardware and software met at last in full-speed use, where the virtual rubber finally met the virtual road, that the real problems would reveal themselves.

  But the list didn’t look any worse than it had yesterday, to Dev’s surprise. Some items had fallen off, some had been added: the software troubleshooting teams on campus here in Tempe, nearly a thousand people all told, were working at full stretch to reduce this list to nothing. Nonetheless, he glared at number three on the list, tapping it idly with his pen.

  “A thought about that one, Mr. Logan?” Milla said.

  Dev snorted. “That I wish it’d just go away by itself! Or that somebody would find out what’s causing it . . .”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  I wish I was that sure, Dev thought. Oh, well. He made notes next to a couple of other items on the list, then handed it back to Milla. “I’ll make the usual rounds this morning, but I want some extra time with the intervention groups in Object Village. Tell them to have the trouble-team leaders meet me up there around eleven.”

  Milla nodded, made a note. “The ten o’clock meeting,” Dev said, “with the Magnificent Seven . . .”

  “Five out of seven are here already,” Milla said. “Natasha got stuck at O’Hare last night—they canceled her flight. I sent the New York jet for her and she’ll be landing at Sky Harbor in about forty- five minutes. Jim is driving in from Taos. His car’s GPS says he’s on I-10 just west of Tonopah. Should be here around nine.”

  Dev got up to pour himself some more coffee. “Why can I not get that man to fly?” he muttered.

  “He just loves those wide open spaces,” Milla said. “And hates airport security.”

  “He wouldn’t get such a bad case of it if he’d just use one of the company planes!” Dev said, stirring the coffee. “And yes, I know he hates those too. Stubborn cuss. He’s not planning to go anywhere for the next three days, is he?”

  “No, Mr. Logan. He called the concierge at Castle Scrooge last night and told them to prep his suite for at least a week’s stay.”

  “He bringing Daniela?”

  “No, she and the kids are staying home, he said. The littlest one’s graduating from kindergarten today.”

  “They grow up so fast,” Dev said, smiling a little at the image of tiny redheaded Jackie in a mortarboard. “Make sure that Uncle Dev sends her something nice. She’s big on rocking horses, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. It’s all right, though. Frank took care of that for you yesterday.” Frank was his PA.

  “Okay,” Dev said. “What else? Any significant overnight press for the rollout?”

  “Here are the press clippings from the last twelve hours,” Milla said, opening the bottommost file and pushing it across to him. It was full of laser-printed sheets from Web pages and Xeroxes from newspapers. Dev scanned through them quickly while Milla drank a little of her tea. “Nice articles in Asahi Shimbun and the South China Morning Post,” she said. “Mainichi Daily News, too.”

  Dev turned over some pages, peered at one. “The New Straits Times article looks a little skeptical . . .”

  “But not overtly negative.” Milla bit into one of the croissants, took another sip of tea. “A lot of them—the Mumbai Senachar, Khaleej Times—just reprinted our own canned stuff.”

  “Yeah, well,” Dev said, paging through the rest of the printouts, “not all of them. And I tell you, if I see the phrase ‘former hacker wunderkind’ again today, I’m going to barf.”

  Milla picked up one printout, glanced down it. “This one says ‘erstwhile’ . . .”

  Dev gave her a dry look. Milla shrugged. “Once upon a time,” she said, “ ‘hacker’ just meant somebody who hacked away at a program until it worked.”

  “Doesn’t mean that anymore,” Dev muttered. “And I never like the implications when they use it. Well, never mind.” He glanced over the files. “How are the markets?”

  “Asia and Europe are buoyant,” Milla said. “The Dow finished up last night. We topped out at nine ninety.”

  “Psychological barrier there,” Dev said, closing the last file and pushing it back. “I really want to see us break a thousand during the launch. What are the odds?”

  “Better ask Mr. Margoulies about that,” said Milla. “I wouldn’t venture an opinion.”

  “But you’d bet.”

  Milla flashed a grin at him, got up, and picked up the files. “Everybody here bets,” she said. “And tries not to get caught. Should I incriminate myself?”

  Dev laughed and got up too. “Not on my behalf. What about on-campus business? Any problems last night?”

  “Nothing unexpected. Security’s noted that there’ve been a few more attempts than usual to get into the campus after shutdown. They’re putting it down to a combination of people getting excited about the rollout, and post exam excitement.”

  Dev chuckled softly. Omnitopia shared the city of Tempe with the biggest campus of Arizona State University, and graduation day was only a few days after Throw the Switch day. Understandably, the seniors were starting to get frisky. “Kids looking for somewhere to get plastered in private,” he said.

  Milla nodded, her expression suggesting that she was above that kind of thing, though her senior year wouldn’t have been that far behind her—she was one of Omnitopia’s youngest executive hires, a masters’ degree holder at nineteen. “Okay,” Dev said. “Everything seems to be running as expected for the moment. Thanks, Milla. Tell the staff over at ops that I’ll be along in about half an hour.”

  “Yes, Mr. Logan. Good morning.”

  Milla headed for the door, closed it behind her. Dev stood there for a moment looking toward the courtyard windows, and the slowly growing light of dawn beyond them. Then he turned and headed back toward the bedroom side of the suite.

  When he looked in the door, he found that Mirabel was lying on her back with her arms crossed over her eyes. “What time is it?” said the muffled voice from under the arms.

  “Just after six.”

  “It’s not fair,” Mirabel said. “You didn’t get to bed until three.”

  “I’ll sleep in October.”

  It was a traditional answer in their household to anyone who complained about short sleeping hours. Mirabel snorted at him, unfolded her arms. “October never comes. Or never the right one.”

  “It’s not going to come in the next three days, that’s for sure.” Dev sat down on the bed beside her. “What’s your schedule like today?”

  She stretched,
plopped her head back against the pillow. “Oh, God, let me think . . .”

  Dev glanced at the bedside table. “Where’s your PDA? Won’t it be in there?”

  “Always you with your machines,” Mirabel said, and yawned. “Let me use my brain a moment, okay?” She stared at the ceiling. “I need to go into town first . . .” Between the two of them this meant Phoenix; downtown Tempe, closer and smaller, was “the village.” “Got to meet with the board for the homeless charity about the new shelter.”

  “They finally get their planning permission?”

  “Nearly,” Mirabel said, rubbing her eyes. “One or two snags to iron out.”

  “Money snags?”

  “No, it’s something about the plumbing. The attachment to the city sewerage. Don’t ask me for the details; Cara has those.” Cara was Mirabel’s PA. “Eleven o’clock, I think. I’ll take the baby to preschool before I go.”

  “Okay,” Dev said. “What then?”

  Mirabel sat up in the bed and hugged her knees. “Uh, I think Cara said yesterday that the dress for the University Ball is ready. That’ll mean I need to go for the fitting this afternoon. After that . . .” She pushed the covers away, got up. “Maybe I’ll take Lola down to Coldstone Creamery in the village. She kept asking for an ice cream yesterday. ‘I was good today, Mommy . . .’ ”

  Dev grinned at the loving and perfect imitation of their daughter’s voice. “Was she?”

  “She drew a great picture of your bike,” Mirabel said, going to the in-bedroom casual closet and pulling her white silk bathrobe off a hanger.

  “Somebody’s angling for one of her own . . .” Dev said. His big heavy black Dutch city bike was a source of much amusement among his staff, most of whom couldn’t understand why he didn’t ride one of the ubiquitous Omnitopia golf carts around campus, or at least a bike with a little more class to it. But Dev had his reasons.