Mammoth Book of Best New SF 19

by Gardner Dozois

  “But — that’s blackmail,” Sage protested.

  Patty shrugged. “So? Times change. Usury used to be illegal; now we call it interest. Anyway, Metameme expanded into information supply. Tracking trends is still its bread and butter. But D. B.’s moved on. Today, he’s more interested in memetic engineering — creating and propagating memes deliberately.”

  “You mean starting fads, so he can be ready with the merchandise?”

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds. If anyone really knew the formula for a successful meme, he’d have made a billion billion by now.”

  After giving her instructions on how to find D. B.’s office when she was ready, Patty left. Alone, Sage went into the bathroom, thinking of taking a shower, but found that the shower stall had no spigot, and was lined with fat glass tubes. Cryptic safety instructions on the door led her to stand in the stall, arms raised and eyes closed. There was a flash of light, a puff of air, and she stepped out again, clean down to the roots of her hair. It was an enormously pleasant discovery. All the time and labor wasted on personal hygiene would be miraculously restored to her day. She understood now how Patty could maintain the elaborate hairdo — it could stay in place for a month without growing dirty.

  Considerably refreshed, she looked into her closet. It was full of clothes, all her size, but she did not trust herself to assemble any of it appropriately, so she stayed with her jumpsuit. Lying back on the bed, she decided to turn on the ceiling monitor, but could find no controls, only a laser pointer on the bedside stand. Experimentally, she pointed it at the screen, and the terminal flashed on, presenting her with a menu. She discovered she could use the pointer to make selections.

  Quickly she navigated to a news service and found she was the headline news, completely eclipsing the coming election. She surfed from site to site, seeing the same photos and video clips she had approved for sale, but given a variety of spins. To her surprise, not a single one was complimentary to Metameme or D. B. Beddoes.

  He was described as everything from “secretive infomagnate” to “indicted monopolist” to “evil genius.” Paging to a background piece, she learned that the court battle over her copyright had been brutal to Metameme’s image, and only in the last few days had it become clear that the company was going to lose. Then, without warning, Metameme had abruptly reversed position and substantiated her without consulting anyone. The uproar now was about why she had been whisked away into “Castle Metameme,” and what the evil genius had in mind. A senator spoke threateningly about human rights violations.

  She, on the other hand, seemed quite popular — the broadcasts dwelt lovingly on beauty-enhanced photos of her mysterious appearance before the reporters, her gawk transformed to glamor. With some ambivalence, she realized there was already a duplicate Sage Akwesasne in the noosphere — an image passed from brain to brain, growing more vivid at every step — chic, magnetic, untamed. It was no one’s creation, and everyone’s; but no one else had such power to alter it, or be it.

  Sage flicked off the screen and lay musing. The twenty-first century was a forest primeval, it seemed; but she was more than just wolf bait. She had hunter instincts herself, honed in the Darwinian jungles of Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was a match for this world.

  The hallways of D. B.’s house were sepulchrally silent. Sage was tempted to explore, but put it off. She needed to follow the track of information now. Patty’s directions led her past the pine tree room, down a hall, and through a security door that opened to her thumbprint. A camera swiveled to watch her cross the foyer.

  D. B. was alone in his office — except for the virtual presence of several harried employees on a double bank of monitors that served him for a desk. He was pacing up and down in stockinged feet, talking on his headset and brandishing one of his bedroom slippers. The other one was lodged on a tall bookshelf where he had apparently flung it. There was a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich and a Coke abandoned next to an unplugged keyboard.

  “Am I surrounded by morons?” he was saying. “Haven’t you ever heard of schadenfreude?” Seeing Sage at the door, he beckoned her in and pointed his slipper at a chair. She sat. “Yeah, schadenfreude. The feeling of pleasure at someone else’s misfortune. Public figures get a popularity boost whenever something bad happens to them. Unpopularity is bad, so it’s self-correcting. At least, that’s the theory. Give it a chance, okay?” He thumbed the touchscreen off and slumped into a leather office chair. “My own PR department thinks I’m nuts.”

  Sage said, “Well, you are getting pretty badly beat up on the net.”

  He swiveled to face her, staring intently through round lenses. “Have I violated your civil rights?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Have you?”

  He didn’t answer, just drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. He seemed incapable of sitting still.

  “So you sell information,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, still drumming, preoccupied. “Engine of the economy.”

  “In my day we thought information ought to be free and available to all.”

  “Well, that’s how capitalism expands, by commodifying what people find valuable. The Native Americans thought you couldn’t buy and sell land, and where are they now?” He focused on her suddenly and said, “Oh, sorry. I forgot about your ethnic identity. That’s amazing hair you’ve got, by the way.”

  “It comes with the ethnicity,” Sage said tolerantly.

  “I figured. Makes for great graphics.”

  Patiently, Sage steered the conversation back to him. “There’s got to be a lot of perfectly worthless information out there. How do you know what’s valuable?”

  A flash of boyish animation came across his face. “That’s the question! That’s the whole question. On one level, it’s the same as any other commodity: what’s scarce is valuable, what’s abundant is not. When I first got into the business, no one had any control over supply, or any way of forecasting demand.”

  “How can you get control over the supply of information?” Sage tried not to let on how sinister she found this.

  “Not by hiring a bunch of information workers,” D. B. said. “That’s how a lot of companies went broke: they weighed themselves down with payroll. I put my money on entrepreneurship. I offered global brokering for knowledge workers — engineers, image designers, researchers, programmers, composers, graphic artists, scriptwriters. Anyone with a viable product could come to us, and we’d package it, find a buyer, and get them top price. God, it took off. Pretty soon all the content providers were going independent to get out from under the stale old corporate work models, and I was everyone’s best and biggest market. Companies started economizing by laying off their information producers, because they could buy ideas better and cheaper from me.”

  For a moment, he looked nostalgic for old times. Then he snapped into focus again. “But the real question is still your first one: what information is valuable? Obviously, I’m not out to buy all of it, only what there’s most demand for. Well, without giving away trade secrets, there’s a near-insatiable demand for certain kinds of information; you can always sell more. Other kinds don’t repay the cost of production. To oversimplify, it’s governed by the Urge Pyramid. At the broad base of what people want are the primal urges: fear, sex, hunger, aggression, and so on. Only after those are satiated do people want to be stimulated by beauty, novelty, sentiment, and the other mid-level urges. And at the tiny tip of the pyramid is desire for rational thought; it’s the last thing people want. Information is nutrition for the brain, same as food. We’ve got to have it, roughly in the proportions of the pyramid.”

  “Your view of human nature is way cynical,” Sage said.

  His reaction was abrupt and angry. “I’ve made a couple hundred billion based on my assumptions. What’s your proof?”

  She didn’t react, and as quickly as his anger had flamed up, it was gone. He started wandering around the room, his hands in his pockets, talking. “The w
ay not to do an information-delivery system is top-down. You can’t give people what you think they ought to have, you have to give them what they ask for. Elitist distribution systems get all caught up in accuracy and ethics, quality and high culture. Like ballet on television, for cripes sake, and not wrestling. It’s not just unprofitable, it’s undemocratic.”

  “Wait a second,” Sage objected. “A democracy depends on a well-informed populace, citizens who know the issues. How can people have a sense of investment in society if they’re flooded with urge-fulfillment programming, and not quality information?”

  “Spoken like a true elitist,” D. B. said. “You want to dictate to the populace instead of trusting them to demand what they need. Democracy is all about giving people what they want. That’s why the free market is the most democratic institution ever invented.”

  “Even if it deprives people of accuracy and ethics?” Sage said.

  “Oh, accurate, ethical information is still out there,” D. B. said. “It’s just expensive.” To her astonished stare he said defensively, “Well, it costs money to get the story right, and there’s less demand for it. Wonks ought to pay a premium.”

  “But that means —”

  “Listen,” he interrupted, “I don’t just have populism on my side, I’ve got natural law, too. Free markets operate according to the same underlying principles as ecosystems. The driving forces in both cases are competition and natural selection. Innovations are constantly getting injected into the system, and competition sorts out the ones that are viable. Or innovators form coalitions that are more viable in symbiosis — and then the other organisms call you a monopolist and take you to court.” For a moment his voice grew bitter.

  “Never mind, this is the point: in the information market, rival memes are always competing for habitat space in our brains, and the successful ones are the ones that are most contagious. You know what makes a successful meme?”

  “Uh…a true one?” Sage said.

  “Wrong! Couldn’t be wronger. A successful meme is one that tweaks its host’s urge pyramid, and makes him want to pass it on. True memes are actually at a competitive disadvantage. You know why? Because, oddly enough, the world doesn’t work in a memorable or interesting way. That’s why fiction is so much more satisfying than truth: it caters to our brains, and what they want. Reality needs to be productized in order to be convincing.”

  One of D. B.’s terminals was buzzing urgently; he thumbed it on. A bright-looking young man appeared, clearly nervous at speaking to the boss. “D. B., I think I may have a solution for us.” He saw Sage, and froze, staring.

  “Go on,” D. B. said.

  “Right. You know there’s a war in central Asia.”

  “There’s always a war in central Asia.”

  “Well, we’ve got atrocity reports coming out now. Refugees. I thought we could push them really hard.”

  “As a distraction?” D. B. said, incredulous. “Oh, right. Like no one’s ever thought of that before. Sheesh. Give ’em some credit.”

  The young man looked crestfallen. “Oh. Well then, what should we do with this war?”

  “We’ve marketed three wars in the last six months,” D. B. said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Their sponsorship potential’s crap.”

  “Oh, we’ve got some insurance companies and HMOs interested. We can make it a brand-name product.”

  “Well, run the projections, then. I think the mass markets are saturated with refugees; it’s become a cliché.” He pondered a moment, then said, “I know. Pretend you’re trying to downplay it. The egghead outlets will think we’re trying to suppress something, and they’ll jump all over it. They’re total suckers for suppression.”

  “But then we’ll become the story,” the young man protested.

  “So? You will have sold your war.”

  “Well…okay.” The screen went dark.

  D. B. turned back to Sage. She said, “How can war become a cliché? A cliché is rhetorical; war is real.”

  He shrugged. “We don’t lead. We are led.”

  “Oh good, I’ve found you,” Patty said, standing striped and windblown in the doorway. A flash of irritation at the interruption crossed D. B.’s face, but he snagged a loose chair and rolled it over the carpet toward her. As she sat, she looked hintingly from her boss to Sage and said, “D. B., have you…?”

  He snapped his fingers, remembering, and turned to Sage. “I forgot, I was supposed to be suborning you with lucre. Well, I’m sure you picked up the subliminals.” He gestured at the rest of the house. “This could be yours, and so on.”

  “D. B.!” Patty protested, annoyed at him. “That’s —”

  “That was charming,” Sage said. “I’m touched.”

  “Touched enough to sign a contract?” D. B. said, suddenly purposeful as a nail gun.

  “No.”

  “Oh, well. Tell Jabhwalla I tried.” He turned to Patty. “So what was this marketing plan of yours?”

  Patty shifted nervously in her chair, looking about fifteen. “D. B., you’ve got to promise not to get mad when I say this.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “I never get mad.”

  Sage laughed out loud. “Sorry,” she said, covering her mouth.

  “All right, this is my idea,” Patty began.

  D. B. had settled in his chair; now he sprang up again. “Let me tell you my idea first.”

  Resignedly, Patty said, “Okay.”

  “This isn’t based on research; I’ve just got this gut feeling.”

  “Your gut is golden,” Patty said. Sage didn’t think it was entirely flattery.

  “I think the outsider angle is going to catch on. The visitor from a simpler, more innocent time comes face to face with our complex, corrupt world — and conquers it through natural goodness.”

  “Kind of a noble savage thing,” Sage put in ironically.

  “Yeah, Rousseau without the colonialist baggage.”

  “That’s great, D. B.!” Patty said enthusiastically. “It fits right in with my idea.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Well, who’s the ultimate symbol of the complexity and corruption of our time?”

  Patty paused; no one answered. “You are, D. B.!” she said. “She’s got to conquer you!”

  He looked utterly blank. “I don’t get it.”

  “Love, D. B.! You bring her into your house for some questionable end, but her natural goodness turns the tables, and you fall for her. No one will expect it. It’ll humanize you, make you sympathetic. The man who never has to compromise is finally conquered by love.”

  There was a long pause. D. B. was motionless for the first time since Sage had seen him.

  “You’re not mad, are you?” Patty asked.

  “I’m not mad.” He turned away from them, brooding.

  “You’ve got to move forward, D. B.,” Patty coaxed. “Your image needs this.”

  Without turning, D. B. said, “I think you’d better ask her.”

  Sage had been wondering when they were going to get around to that. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “First you try to copyright me, then you abduct me, then you try to suborn me. Now you want me to collaborate in a false scenario you’re selling to the press.”

  “Right,” Patty said. “Jerking around the publicity machine.”

  “And this is going to benefit me how…?”

  “Oh, your stock will soar,” Patty said. “Can you imagine, the richest man on earth? This is the ultimate image synergy.”

  “Just imagine for a moment that I don’t want the publicity,” Sage said. “Can you give me one reason why I should do this?”

  D. B. looked at Patty; Patty looked at D. B. The idea flow seemed to have run dry. At last D. B. ventured, “For the fun of it?”

  Sage kept thinking it couldn’t get any more surreal. “Listen, you may find this quaint or naïve. But I’m a scientist. Scientists are trained not to lie. I can’t lie for you.”
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br />   D. B.’s expression was awestruck. “My God, Patty,” he said. “Do you know what she is? She’s the real thing. The real fucking thing.”

  Mornings (Sage learned the next day) were, by tacit custom, set aside for catching up on news and communications. It was the only way people could consume the enormous amounts of information required to keep the economy humming.

  The terminals in Sage’s room boasted a vast array of competing infoservice subscriptions, each combining a different mix of television, phone, fax, rental movies, games, chat, shopping, and a host of less familiar options, all accessed through the Internet. Choosing a service at random, she tried to do a search for the people and project that had sent her here. In minutes, she felt awash in junk information. A search engine that claimed to specialize in history linked her to a nostalgiafest of pop culture from the last forty years — celebrities and entertainers, scandals and scuttlebutt. She tried her favorite encyclopedia site. The brand name was still there, but the entries had all been auctioned off to advertisers. Her searches for scientific subjects kept turning up “Top Hit Topics” pushed by their sponsors. On a whim, she queried the encyclopedia for Leon Trotsky, and found him missing in action. Not profitable enough, apparently. No market potential.

  At last, remembering what D. B. had said, she backed out and found a way to arrange the list of his infoservice subscriptions by cost. His monthly bill was staggering. An average person could obviously afford only a single service in the midrange — and in that range, there were only a few clonelike choices. Below them, cheap services clustered like vermin in the cracks, offering colorful, kinetic interfaces like Saturday morning cartoons, but only rudimentary access to bargain shopping, pornography, lotteries, and sports, heavily larded with advertising. So she headed for the high end. The true vastness of the information resources only became apparent here, where the search engines were sophisticated enough to find them. But they were not free. Oddly enough, the higher the price of admission, the rawer the data became, until the business and professional portals opened onto arcane libraries of unmediated information, like the neural architecture of civilization.