Freenet

by Steve Stanton

  “I’ll grab Zen from my apartment and get him cleaned up.” Roni checked the calendar on his eyescreen. “Meet you and the crew at the hospital in four hours?”

  “Fine,” Gladyz said, “but we need authentic clothing for the shoot, animal skins or tiger fur. What size is he?”

  “He’s large.” Roni hunched up his shoulders. “Bigger than me. The Balians have increased lung capacity to breathe the thin air. He’s built like an iron statue up top with a compact waist and muscular legs.”

  Derryn whistled with admiration. “Sounds like a hunk in a Tarzan outfit.”

  “This is going to be great,” Gladyz said as she turned to the door. “I’m going shopping.”

  Roni packed a box with breakfast for his protégé and hurried back to his apartment. Zen woke bleary-eyed and cranky, poor kid, and Roni clucked with sympathy as he roused him to action. The Bali boy might not have slept for days, or fitfully at best, trapped in a doomed transport all the way from Trade Station in a wall-slot no bigger than a toilet stall. He seemed disoriented and confused, but improved gradually after a shot of caffeine and a few sugar pastries. What the heck did Balians cook on their wilderness world? Lizard meat and cactus? He’d heard stories of psychedelic mushrooms from the deep caves where miners toiled on excavation machines to harvest silver and gold from cold volcanoes. And wild, fermented drinks full of uncontrolled organisms, a sure recipe for trouble on any planet.

  Zen picked up an orange from the box and sniffed it. “Is this right from the tree?”

  “Yeah. There are groves all around the city.”

  Zen nodded his approval and bit into the skin. He looked off into the imaginary distance as he chewed through the fibrous ­cover to find succulence below, tasting to the fullest as he slowly devoured the entire fruit bite by bite in sure ecstasy.

  Roni winced as Zen crunched seeds between his teeth. “More coffee?”

  Zen held up his mug for a refill. “So we’re going to see Simara today?”

  “Yep, with a full crew. Don’t be nervous about the cameras. Imagine friends or robots, whatever works best for you.”

  Zen puzzled on that for a moment, but shrugged it off. “Let’s take her some food for when she wakes up.”

  “No, the hospital is very strict about what goes in and out the door. It’s like a quarantine zone. Everyone’s concerned about biospheres these days. Don’t worry, they have lots of good food with all the necessary vitamins and minerals. This is all for you. Just eat whatever you want. There’ll be plenty more later.”

  Again the Bali boy paused with query on his brow, probably a victim of scarcity at home and that pasty goop they rationed on spaceships. “Where does it come from?”

  “We have a cafeteria at work for the staff. You know, like a restaurant.” Still no response from Zen. “A banquet table?”

  “A festival?”

  “Sure, that works. We have a celebration every day with all the food we can eat. It’s in our contract.”

  “And you can share freely?”

  Roni smiled at the opportunity to cement a solid relationship with the boy. “Just with our friends. You’re special to us. You’re a hero. My editor is off buying new clothes for you as we speak.”

  Zen picked another pastry from the box. He seemed to like the sweet stuff—probably go spastic into a hyper-sugar fit any minute. Did they even have sugar on Bali? What about allergens? What about inoculations? Oh, well, one day at a time.

  Zen’s paper clothes had pretty much shredded by now, so they found a jacket that was big enough to drape over his muscular shoulders and a pair of baggy sweatpants with an elasticized waistband. The kid had skin like tanned leather, roughened beyond his years, but he had bumps in all the right places for the camera and a sensitive voice for the microphone—the perfect media package.

  They took a tram to the hospital and hooked up with Gladyz and Derryn to doll Zen up in a public change room. Fake leopard skin, really? As if there had ever been a leopard born this side of the Macpherson Doorway! Fashion sense was nonsense half the time, but what could you do? They put pants on him at least, plain khaki dungarees, and gelled his auburn hair into soft, sexy curls. Zen looked fantastic by the time they were done, and Derryn was practically drooling as he fawned over the kid.

  The roadies crammed the wardroom with equipment as two little elf girls looked on in blank-faced wonder. Simara was sleeping soundly and snoring like a kitten in her coma. Derryn gave her cheeks a quick touch-up with his magic brush and painted her lips like an artist. Wow, the dark-haired pixie was beautiful in the right light!

  Gladyz escorted Ngazi through the crowd and set him up like a lightning rod in the centre of the room, where he stood stiff and freakish, oblivious to his surroundings as he stared off at distant digital shores. His autistic talents were arcane, but in effect he amplified the emotional signals of the participants and sent them out over the V-net in a biofeedback loop with the wirehead audience to give dimensional depth and spiritual meaning to the show. He added scent and temperature for connoisseur users, along with other tweaks below the threshold of consciousness—full-spectrum awareness was an art form in itself. Ngazi never spoke, of course, but his black skin shone with flop sweat in proximity to humans and he tended to hum when he got excited, so he had to be carefully positioned off-camera and clear of the boom mikes.

  Gladyz wheeled in an intravenous bag on a stand to use as a prop behind Simara’s bed, and taped a data tablet to the headboard to add a clinical air to the scene. She positioned Zen in a bedside chair in half profile with a leopard shoulder to the camera, and placed Simara’s limp hand between his palms. A bouquet of fresh flowers bloomed with burgeoning romance on a table in the background as Gladyz primped the scene for detail, pulling folds out of blankets and tucking in loose corners, adjusting lamps to banish facial shadows. When everything was perfect to her meticulous editorial eye, she counted down five on her fingers and pointed to Roni with authority. He smiled on cue, and Ngazi poked his nose up as though sniffing promise on the ether.

  “Welcome to the Daily Buzz and thanks for tuning in. Turn off your peripherals for this one, folks, because we are breaking big news! This is Roni Hendrik reporting live from New Jerusalem West Hospital where Zen Valda from Bali is sitting in vigil on his honeymoon with his young wife, Simara Ying. How is she doing today, Zen?”

  Pan to the Bali boy in his leopard-skin costume. “No change. She’s in a coma.”

  Roni turned back to the camera with grim anticipation. “Our young couple recently jumped from a crashing Transolar troopship where they were abandoned by the crew, and flew unaided through space to Cromeus from an estimated altitude of one hundred miles! Pretty amazing, wouldn’t you say, Zen?”

  “Yes, it’s a miracle from Kiva.”

  Roni smiled with multicultural tolerance. “The desert god of Bali reached his hand across the heavens that day, but you had some help from your omnidroid partner, correct?”

  “Simara knew the ship was going to crash. She knew the captain had targeted us for death. But she planned every detail of our escape. I smuggled two spacesuits into a hidden locker, and we dove for the planet.”

  “Wow.” Roni spread his arms in a dramatic flourish. “Our honeymoon couple dove into open space to escape certain death at the hands of Transolar Corporation. Pretty scary!”

  Zen looked down and fondled Simara’s limp hand. Oops, the kid did not want to admit fear on camera in front of his family and friends. Okay, roll with it. “Simara Ying has been accused in the disappearance of her stepfather, Randy Ying. Do you think that was the reason the authorities abandoned you on the doomed troopship?”

  Zen tilted his head with a subtle wince. “I don’t know. She’s been accused of murder, but she couldn’t have done it. I’ve heard rumours that all the omnidroids are being targeted for decommission.”

  Whoa, the Bali boy caught Roni by surprise with a big word, but he took it in stride. “Many of our viewers might consider that to
be genocide, but it certainly fits with the facts this reporter has discovered. Seventeen accidents appear to have been engineered across Cromeus, and two omnidroid lives have been lost. Can we pan out for a minute?” He paused as the camera view widened. “Ruis Limkin and Elana Mant, may they rest in fond memory.” Roni laid out a hand toward the two elves standing nearby. “Brother and sister to these two biogen children watching in silent vigil as their elder, Simara Ying, lies a helpless martyr to a vast conspiracy of evil!” Roni glanced to his editor to gauge her reaction. She grimaced and nodded—he was flirting with the edge, but not over the top, not yet.

  Gladyz ducked her eyes to scan inner data for a few seconds as Roni rambled on with details about the helicopter accident. She looked up and signalled him to login. That was weird, and generally bad form during a live netcast—it could pull the audience out of the drama if they thought the anchorman was watching a different channel. He tapped on with a discreet touch to his ear. ::We’re getting great feedback, Roni. Transolar is falling all over us, of course, but there’s a message for Zen from the governor of Bali, Genoa Blackpoll. We need his permission for a shared feed. Do it now! We’ll go split-frame with the two of them.::

  “Zen,” Roni said without missing a beat. “I know you’ve just recently had an earbug installed, and many viewers will remember their first days surfing the V-net as children, how confusing that can be! But there’s an important message coming in from the governor of Bali, Genoa Blackpoll. Would you be willing to login and share with our news audience?”

  Zen looked up with alarm. “Does it have something to do with the investigation?”

  Roni smiled to put him at ease as he backed out of camera view and Ngazi stiffened with galvanic energy. “Let’s login and find out, shall we?”

  Zen touched his ear. “Login. Genoa Blackpoll. Are you there, Governor?”

  Roni watched the split-view on his eyescreen as a staffer handed him a bottle of water out of frame. Genoa Blackpoll stood propped behind a lectern, a grey-haired statesman with an aura of dignity, perfect for the job and probably the centre of a hastily organized media scrum. Why did politicians always look so good on camera? Was it truly survival of the photogenic fittest?

  “Zen, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. I have good news, and I’ve been holding the release so that you would be the first to hear from me personally. They found the flight recorder from Simara’s shuttle by following your pinpoint instructions. They analyzed the data and discovered both voices on the record. Randy Ying was clearly alive after Simara left the ship. She could not possibly have killed him, and all charges have been dropped by the Crown attorney. You saved her, son.”

  “Thank you, sir. That’s great. Thanks so much.”

  “I understand you’ve run into some trouble on Cromeus, and I wish you well. Whatever happens, know that I’m proud of you and all Bali stands with you. Your family and every member of Star Clan rejoice in your survival and sacrifice, and you bring great honour to the memory of your father.”

  Roni choked on his water and wiped his chin. Holy crap, better and better! It’s the great surprises that make history in news, those on-air twists of fortune that turn myths into legend and personalities into prophets. He rolled the bottle out of view as Gladyz gave him a three-count to camera. “You heard it here first, folks. Congratulations to Zen and Simara. Wonderful news! Our martyr, falsely accused from the beginning, has earned a reprieve from condemnation. Who, then, will dare slander the omnidroids now?” He stabbed out a palm to Simara, asleep on her hospital bed with the intravenous stand in the background, a pitiful sight to all, then turned to Zen. “Or continue to ignore the proud people of Bali who toil underground in the dark to bring us the strategic metals we use every day of the week? Let’s remember our friends today, all of us, and hug our families close. Let’s be quick to forgive and slow to accuse, and may the desert god Kiva bless us all. Perhaps Zen Valda will honour us with a final word to summarize his experience at this critical moment.”

  Roni nodded to Zen as Gladyz relayed instructions in his inner ear, more news coming in, a feedback frenzy. The Bali boy sputtered nonsense and cried openly for Simara, predictable stuff, but he could have spoken a different language for all it mattered now. Fate had shone a wide spotlight on his haloed head, and he could do no wrong. Ngazi dripped with perspiration as he beamed out public sympathy and consolation, having a co-creative heyday with all the wirehead brains linked to the feed. Zen blubbered and thanked everyone for their support as the two elf children came on camera to stroke Simara’s forehead and whisper in her ear. Roni let him blather on to milk the moment as the netcast went viral and a shitstorm of new viewers came onstream.

  Finally he put up his hand and waved for attention. “We’ve just received word …” He waited as Zen finished and sniffed his way back to composure. “We’ve just received word from the chairman and CEO of Transolar Corporation, Elron Pritchard, and I’ll paraphrase here for the sake of brevity. In light of the recent systems malfunction aboard a Transolar troopship that almost resulted in loss of life, and in view of the false accusations pressed against an innocent omnidroid woman that led her into harm’s way, the Board of Directors has established the Transolar Foundation, a new charitable organization designed to aid and improve the lives of all biogen children throughout the three planets. Elron Pritchard has personally kicked off the foundation with a donation of one million credits to start the ball rolling, and invites everyone to join with him in showing love and compassion for all people regardless of their mental configurations.

  “Whew. Fabulous news, folks, and thank you to Transolar Corporation. We’re almost out of time. I’m all choked up about this, and I know our friends from Bali have celebrating to accomplish, so I’ll sign off back to the studio for now and see you all tomorrow … bringing the future to life … on the Daily Buzz.”

  “And cut,” Gladyz said as she strode forward. “That’s a wrap. Thanks to New Jerusalem West for their gracious hospitality. Let’s pack up and let these people get on with their work.” The corridor outside was crowded with onlookers as doctors and nurses stood clutching databoards to their chests in silent awe. Gladyz strode over to Roni as the whole thing started to sink in. “That sure smells like culpability,” she whispered. “Good job. You always were light on your feet.”

  Roni nodded, feeling vacuous as adrenalin seeped away. He had reacted with pure instinct to a stellar convergence of events, but what did it mean? What the hell had just happened? The real story seemed deeper now and farther away than ever.

  “Funny thing about news,” Gladyz said with a whimsical smile, “it travels fast and turns into history so quickly.”

  Zen came over with an elbow up like a wrestler performing a blocking manoeuvre. “Thanks for everything, Roni.”

  “Uh, sure.” Roni lifted both elbows up like chicken wings, one after the other, unsure of etiquette, and Zen twisted awkwardly to cross his forearm with a manly prod.

  “Can I buy you boys dinner?” Gladyz said. “We can start planning tomorrow’s show.”

  NINE

  Was it possible for news to be too perfect, the centre of the media hurricane too calm? Roni couldn’t sleep as he analyzed the bare facts in his mind, running events over and over, forward and back. The orchestrated message from Genoa Blackpoll, on a time delay from Bali no less, had set off a chain of events among the executives of Transolar, who surely must have been primed in advance to have their pocketbooks so close at hand, perhaps by usage data related to Roni’s own research or scuttlebutt among the hornets he had stirred.

  And the little elf girl sleeping in a coma. How had she vaulted into stardom without lifting a finger? Roni had made her famous on a whim, or so he had thought. Her and the Bali boy on a magic honeymoon of misadventure—in retrospect, it seemed an obvious melodrama served up on a silver platter. What anchorman could resist such a potent lure? Was Simara Ying using the Daily Buzz somehow, manipulating the news, pulling pup
pet strings with strange telepathy? Was Simara scripting dangerous events to serve her own agenda? Had she sacrificed herself to secure a future for her omnidroid family? No, that was crazy space. Roni needed to get some sleep, just a few hours until dawn.

  He tossed in his bunk and checked the time on his eyescreen. Too late to take a pill now—he’d be groggy until noon. He still had a show to grind out six days a week, and it’d be a hard act to follow after such mind-expanding success. Okay, back to work, back to basics, he’d peek behind the purple curtain and follow the money on its telltale journey. Who secured the most economic gain from yesterday’s spectacle on the Daily Buzz? Not Simara stuck in a coma, not the penniless Bali boy at her side, not the Transolar executives now forking out creds to save their corporate reputation. The omnidroid children were the only real beneficiaries of this drastic change in public paradigm—once reviled, now recompensed, once persecuted and slandered, now lauded across three worlds.

  Roni Hendrik sighed and reached to touch his ear. “Login,” he told the darkness above his bed, “bring me up all the data on the omnidroids.” His mind brightened into a honeycomb of windows, and he began to peer through them with methodical rigour. Time of manufacture and place of upbringing, school records, career highlights, social contracts, who, what, when, where, why—the newsman’s invocation. Forensic analysis was not much fun, but often yielded surprising results. Every scrap of data was recorded on the V-net, every voice message, every download.

  Roni blinked and scrolled, picked and niggled, reclining in his bunk with three worlds dancing before his eyes in a manic rush of inspiration. All the other omnidroids were younger than Simara Ying, the three oldest just fifteen years of age, the youngest seven—twelve boys and twelve girls in ideal balance, all manufactured by the same company, Neurozonics, a private corporation registered in New Jerusalem by numbered proxy agents. As with all biogens, the omnidroids enjoyed full citizenship by legal proclamation, including the rights to vote and to produce children. They could not be owned like robots or machines, though technically they were created beings. They were human, or at least they looked human, and their programming was by nurture and nature just like everyone else’s—they had problems, deficiencies, variations of design, but their one major cerebral augmentation was unlimited access to the V-net and no bandwidth filters. Omnidroids were born into zero-day digital space and lived in a fantasyland far beyond the mortal sphere of intelligence. Physical experience and bodily sensation were only tiny fragments of their transcendent existence, mundane accessories to digital infinity. In time, life itself might become a vestigial appendage. Anecdotal evidence indicated difficulty in social interaction, reticence in speech and public conduct, fear of crowds, and lack of common sense, whatever that was. Rumours suggested the possibility of precognition.