As soon as he finished his meal, all three of them stood up, shook his hand, air-kissed Kiki, told them they must do lunch soon, offered them free use of the company facilities for as long as they liked, and left.
‘You were wonderful, darling,’ said Kiki, giving him a peck on the cheek. ‘Anyone for tennis?’
He followed her down some steps. ‘Are all your business meetings like that?’
‘I wish. No, these guys are real high flyers.’ As if to emphasise her words, three company bugs rose at break-neck speeds from behind the chateau and hurtled up to The Spin. The popping noises got louder as Dielle and Kiki walked through a soundfield gap in the hedge.
‘Hello Charlie!’ said Kiki cheerfully. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here.’
The SlabPresident broke off his game with the training avatar, which froze in the middle of the court.
Uh-oh, thought Dielle.
[:ID:]
{:Are you on this channel?:}
[:••:]
Oh, for the love of . . . thought Dielle.
‘I’m not, officially,’ said Charlie walking over and collecting a towel. ‘Officially, I’m at a bloody fundraiser of Fidelio in sign language in SpinoMilano,’ he said, pointing upward. ‘I was bored stiff.’
‘You have connections with this corporation?’
‘Nothing formal.’
[:Where the fuck is Drago?:]
‘You mean nothing you want the media to know about?’ said Kiki.
‘Yeah, sorry about that. This has to be embargoed Tiger.’
{:How should I know?:}
‘That’s the problem of doing business with you, Charlie. I can’t use the dicing sumes half the time.’
[:You know he’s not onSlab?:]
‘Ah! stop moaning. I’m having a small get-together in my new winter lodge tomorrow. How’d you like to have an exclusive?’
{:What do you mean not onSlab?:}
‘We can do that. Who’s on the guest list?’
[:Louie Drago has left the building:]
‘Oh the usual suspects; a couple of people who’ve been doing some worthy things, a couple of money guys, a few decorative people, a top muso or two. I hear your boy has a new party piece, maybe he could play?’
{:He said he’d contact me today:}
‘Hmmm.’ Kiki sent a message to Fingerz asking if he could provide a special piece for Dielle’s overnight stim training. ‘Could be an opportunity.’
[:He’d better. I need to speak to him personally:]
‘An opportunity? You couldn’t get a better audience grab to launch his gig unless you taught him to play the piano with his dick.’
{:I’ll try sending him an urgent message:} Dielle’s face betrayed a lack of optimism.
Kiki misread Dielle’s chagrin and put a reassuring hand on his arm. ‘OK, we’ll be there.’ Fingerz had been more than happy to upload a training stim of one of his own compositions. ‘Full sume rights?’
[:Get him to the party:]
‘Standard deal, I get ten.’
{:I can’t promise:}
‘Ten on ninety. Three points admin on sub-residuals. Ed control with no-mark cut backs. Cakeandeatit exclusions. No logo costs, and no privacy.’
[:Broken promises don’t pay the rent, son. You make sure you bring him:]
‘Come on Tiger, I’m the fucking president. I have to have at least twenty percent privacy options.’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Done.’ Charlie threw his towel into an emti. ‘I gotta go; interval in fifteen minutes. Can’t use the fucking avatar for that.’ He turned to Dielle.
‘See you tomorrow, kid.’ [:Bring Louie:] He walked through a camouflex in the hedge.
Dielle’s head was spinning. ‘What was that about me performing?’
‘Don’t worry about it, darling, you’ll be fine! Let’s see if you’re any good at tennis. Come on, let’s get changed.’
The game was a lot harder than he’d expected but he enjoyed watching Kiki running around in a short skirt even while she wiped the floor with him. He may have had a newly refurbished body but he was still having a lot of trouble co-ordinating his extremities and was relieved when Sis reminded them of their appointment.
The soul divining was so peaceful that Dielle fell asleep during the process.
He’d had to lay inside a small cocoon filled with soothing music and low lighting. After he had been sealed inside, a telescopic arm moved the pod into the centre of a perfect three-hundred-meter sphere, the arm retracted and the surrounding atmosphere was emtied out. Eighty four soul diviners sat equally spaced around the exterior of the sphere. The internal GravNet held Dielle’s pod in place while antigrav compensators vernier-tuned to counterbalance the mass of the diviners and the net gravitational attraction of Slab, then inertial dampers cancelled out Slab’s lamentable acceleration and they let him go. He floated in absolute-zero G. There were no air currents to influence the pod’s movements and nothing larger than a stray neutrino to interact with him from outside. He relaxed completely and felt his consciousness slowly expand to fill a space that wasn’t real. It reminded him of something he thought he’d forgotten. It felt just like being in cryogen.
Soul divining is based on the belief that all souls naturally gravitate toward others of the same soul line. Even though every soul was thought to be ultimately connected to every other soul, much effort had gone into explaining a long list of so-called soul-felt experiences that were contrary to the collective consciousness concept. The soul mates phenomenon was one of them. Soul authorities believed that there were eighty-four distinct soul lines, each of which contained numerous soul sub-lines. Soul mates were thought to be like family relations or sublination back home. However, ever since it had been discovered that the human sub-conscious had been invaded by an alien entity, and that home was somewhere in the MacGoughin Sequester, soul divining had taken on an entirely new lease of life.
Scientific investigation had produced zero evidence to support this belief system, despite a cyclennia of well-funded research. So no-one could explain why, when someone was placed in a divining chamber, they always gravitated to an individual from one specific line. No matter how many times you did it, you always got the same result.
Dielle had been an easy one. His pod had started moving within a few minutes of being released. Kiki had been monitoring the process in eager anticipation, for while she would never admit it, she was hopeful that Dielle would show a positive result. Some lines were just more compatible than others.
They repeated the process three times, randomly shuffling the diviners each time. Dielle was a definitive 64 with 3 and 19 rising. Everyone agreed it was an auspicious combination.
‘I knew it!’ said Kiki, helping the bleary-eyed Dielle out of his pod. ‘I’m a 3 with 19 and 32 rising! 19 risings always get along. Two of my oldest friends have 19 rising and you have a 3 rising too!’
Dielle was officially added to the register of 64s and told about some of the famous people who had been 64s before him. Although he thought the whole thing absurd, he was happy to see a good number of artists and musicians on the list and was amused to find out that he was now a member of an exclusive club, the 64:3:19s, whose secretary, by auto response, extended a warm welcome and an invitation to their next meeting. Dielle wasn’t sure he’d be attending that one, or any other.
The Spin was an eclectic place and a haven for individuality and difference. One of the many ways this was apparent was that each district had not only its own distinct flavour, design and cultural identity, but also its own local down. Sometimes, even this convention was abandoned. Spinsterdam was an agglomeration of waterways and buildings where the local block down was often perpendicular to the next block. The effect would have given Escher a headache. Kiki and Dielle enjoyed a relaxed promenade through the cobbled streets, past canal-side cafés and over möbius bridges. They had stopped for coffee when a large, black taxibug splashed down noisily opposite their table and a cur
vacious leather-clad figure with long, flowing animated hair emerged from the rear like Venus on the half-shell.
‘Faith.’ said Kiki through gritted teeth. ‘How lovely to see you.’
‘Tiger.’
‘What do you want, apart from the obvious?’
‘I think it’s time your boy here learned the truth, don’t you?’
‘The truth? What onSlab would you be doing with anything as worthless to your profession as the truth?’
Faith-Sincere’s hair assumed the hurricane position.
‘That’s rich! Coming from someone who hoodwinks new resets into bed to commission the sume rights!’
Kiki rose from her chair as if gravity assisted. Dielle intervened as the two women squared up to each other.
‘I think you had better leave,’ he said to Faith-Sincere, stepping between them and raising his hands in a pacifying gesture. He was acutely aware of how close her leather-clad curves were to his outstretched palms. He really wanted to touch her. He took a deep breath to steady himself. Faith’s neurohormone-enhanced perfume targeted his nasal membranes and shot directly to his hypothalamus. Now he really, really wanted to touch her. ‘You’re making a mistake. I love her. She didn’t trick me into anything.’
‘Listen to me,’ Faith said, fixing him with her perfect almond eyes which expanded aggressively as she emtied some OptDilate. Now he really, really, really wanted to touch her. ‘You fell in love with the first woman you saw after you thawed out. You were like a new born baby with no-one else in your entire world to nurture or protect you. She’s your mother, sister and lover all rolled into one. You don’t love her, you’re infatuated with her and she’s manipulating you for her own ends.’
‘Take that back! You fabricated man-trap!’ said Kiki, pushing against Dielle’s back as he manoeuvred to keep himself between them. By now, all of the café’s customers were hanging on every word of the developing drama and several passers-by had stopped to form an audience.
‘I’m not infatuated with her,’ protested Dielle, ‘I truly love her!’ This brought murmurs of approval from the onlookers.
Faith-Sincere held out her fist and opened it. ‘Prove it.’
Dielle looked down at a tiny pill in the palm of her hand which pulsed from pink to white. The crowd gasped in recognition.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s an infatbuster. It works by neutralising the chemicals that fog the mind when you think you’re in love but you’re really just infatuated. It’s like being drunk and sobering up in fifteen seconds. Teenagers use them when they hit their first big heartbreak. If you want to prove you love her, take it!’
‘No fucking problem!’ said Dielle, throwing the pill into the back of his mouth and swallowing fast.
Kiki screamed, dodged Dielle’s defences and slammed head first into Faith-Sincere’s ample frontal area. The crowd erupted. Faith grabbed Kiki by the hair and tried to spin round. The idea was good but the execution was poor. Faith stumbled and had to grab Kiki to stop herself from falling. Kiki, still head down, had nowhere to go. As the crowd watched with a collectively held breath, the two women teetered on the edge of the canal. For a brief moment, everything happened in slow motion. Literally slow motion. Sis’s automatic trauma-prevention systems projected a raft of gravity cushions which were tuned just enough to prevent serious physical damage, but not enough to stop people from making fools of themselves. Kiki and Faith-Sincere toppled gracefully into the sterile, acid-balanced and optically enhanced water below, accompanied by enthusiastic applause.
The crowd turned to look at Dielle, whose face had started to contort. The effects of the infatbuster were immediate. Strange tremors flitted from one side of his face to the other while his head jerked on his bolt-stiff neck. The crowd gasped.
He staggered over to the canal and looked down at the two spitting and panting women paddling water. Faith-Sincere looked up at him and roared, ‘Well?’
Dielle looked at her. Her hair had crashed and something odd had happened to her face, her eyes looked smaller and they seemed to have shrunk back into her skull. His face relaxed. He knelt by the canal edge and reached out to Kiki, whose light blouse clung revealingly to her trim figure. Dielle wanted to rip it off.
‘Come on darling,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home.’ He lifted her out of the water and wrapped her in his arms to the cheers of the crowd. Kiki had tears streaming down her face. Dielle looked around. All the women and some of the men were crying too. He thought he recognised a couple of the guys in the crowd, but couldn’t quite remember where from.
twenty two
‘Welcome back, sir! Many congratulations. Your mission was a total success.’
‘I haven’t been anywhere yet.’ Louie looked down at his vDek. ‘Hey! What happened to the MGV?’
‘Unfortunately, the unit didn’t make it back, sir. The data you collected was salvaged, however and it has proven extremely valuable.’
Louie did a system check. More than a day had passed without his knowledge, he’d lost all of his offensive capability and most of his speed and manoeuvrability. At least he’d retained his finger-like grav manipulators.
‘Ah, this feels shit! It’s like I’ve just been put back in my cage.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Erik. ‘Condition four states that you are no longer permitted any military upgrades within the SlabWalls.’
‘What happened to conditions two and three?’
‘Condition five is that you will not be allowed to know what they were but you can be assured that they are no longer relevant to you.’
‘Any more surprises? What’s condition number six?’
‘Condition six states that you will be allowed access to the analysis of the data you gathered as long as you never reveal it to, or discuss it with, anyone outside Council.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing that I know of, sir. You have the freedom of the Slab and your acceptance into Council is confirmed.’
Louie checked his credit balance. It simply said enough. He smiled. ‘What was inside FutureSlab?’ he asked, only mildly curious.
‘We’ve stopped calling it that, sir. Current debate is centred around who sent it and what they want. Here’s the data summary.’
Louie instantly knew the same as the interns about ex-FutureSlab. Almost nothing.
‘So it’s got to be those aliens you’re at war with.’
‘That is out of the question.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Well, now that you are a full Council member, I can disclose to you that there is, within the context of our current asynchronology and space-time-referent, three-dimensional reality framework, no actual combatant force threatening our existence.’
‘What?’
‘We made it up.’
‘But . . . ’
‘There are no aliens, no alien ships and no war. SlabCouncil instigated a continuous conflict strategy as an economic stimulus package in response to the gift-crash of 466. It’s an integral part of our employment, innovation and social motivation programs and, because the major media corporations fund the military spending through licensing fees for Slab-controlled feeds of the war, it’s a zero-cost initiative. The merchandising actually turns a profit.’ Erik seemed to take pride in this last part.
‘It’s a scam? How many people know the truth?’
‘No-one outside Council.’
Louie paused for a moment, sifting through the implications of what he’d just learned. ‘But surely real people are required to maintain the illusion?’
‘Sis does all the heavy work, of course, but it’s the gamers who create the plot lines and design the ships and weapons.’
‘How do you keep them quiet about it?’
‘They don’t go out much.’
‘Yeah, but it only takes one to drop the ball and it’s game over.’
Erik shook his head. ‘Gamers are among a wide sub-strata of SlabSoc who choose a higher leve
l of system integration than the type of SlabCitizen you will have met so far. They’re fitted with total-invasive neural interfaces and spend their entire lives twitching in gellfields while their body is autotended.’
That explained why the place didn’t feel crowded, thought Louie. ‘Don’t they ever go outside? Communicate with real people?’
‘It’s irrelevant really,’ said Erik. ‘All prosumed war scenarios exist only behind encrypted firewalls, so the gamers have no physical bio-memories of SlabWar at all. When they disconnect, they leave more than half of their extended selves behind. Few enjoy the experience.’
‘And you get to stimulate an entire economy.’
Erik nodded. ‘Several million SlabCitizens are involved either directly or indirectly by providing support services, and most of the rest benefit from the spin-offs. At least seventy-five percent of all technological innovations made during the last five hundred cycles were motivated by the need to either attack or protect ourselves from our non-existent enemy. Your own MGV was a direct result, as was the projected emti technology which I have to say is looking like it’s going to prove of immense benefit to a whole range of applications.’
Louie couldn’t help smiling. ‘You know, we used to do a similar thing back on Earth.’
‘Yes, but when you did it you actually killed people.’
‘Collateral damage.’
‘Barbarians.’
Louie couldn’t argue with that. ‘So, can I go now?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Well, apparently, the president is throwing a party and I’m invited.’
‘I advise caution, sir. He will undoubtedly attempt to find out what you know. He is not to be trusted.’
‘Trust a politician? Do I look like an idiot?’
‘No, of course not, sir.’ Erik paused. ‘But you might think about getting someone to design you some legs.’
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