Geosynchron

by David Louis Edelman

  "You don't know that any of that's going to happen!" scoffs Horvil. "You're just throwing out doomsday scenarios."

  "Easy to do when it's doomsday." Natch sighs, wishing he could see his old friend again, even if just for a moment. It's difficult to pic ture the outside world from this blackness. And if he does follow through ... then it's likely he will never see Horvil ever again. "Horvil, this is the dilemma Margaret Surina faced. This is the dilemma she couldn't-or wouldn't-solve. If I activate the failsafe, hundreds of thousands could die. If I don't activate the failsafe, millions or billions could die."

  "But you'll die too."

  "I don't exist."

  He can practically hear the frustrated noises coming from Horvil's larynx; he can almost see the engineer's gritted teeth. "You don't exist? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You exist to me! You exist to Serr Vigal! You exist to all those people on 49th Heaven you freed from Chomp addiction. For process' preservation, we just found you. We're not going to lose you again so quickly."

  "That's all beside the point," says Natch. "The only relevant question is, will I save more lives if I activate the failsafe or if I do nothing? The answer seems pretty clear to me."

  "I don't understand why you have to take responsibility for Margaret's mess. That's just your ego talking. You didn't create MultiReal. And you're not the one throwing the program out on the Data Sea unfinished. It's Brone who's doing that."

  "But I created him. I made him the person he is today."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "The bear, Horvil. I led the bear straight to him during initiation. It was my fault."

  The engineer is clearly taken aback by this sudden admission of guilt after all the years of ambiguity. But that doesn't mean he's about to stop trying to change his old hivemate's mind. "Natch, that was years ago. Whether you're responsible for Brone's scars or not, that doesn't change the question of who's responsible for this debacle."

  I am, thinks the entrepreneur, deciding not to say it out loud. Maybe not wholly responsible, but I bear a large part of the blame. I could have compromised with Magan Kai Lee months ago. I could have agreed to work with the Council, to slow things down.

  "If you're not responsible," continues Horvil, "then why should you be the one who suffers for it? If the failsafe needs to be activated, let someone else do it."

  "Like who?"

  "Magan Kai Lee. Khann Frejohr. The Blade. One of those do- gooders from Creed Elan. Shit, Magan has legions of soldiers out there fresh from the battlefield. I bet he'd get a hundred volunteers for a suicide mission in a heartbeat."

  Natch tries to shake his head at his old friend's obstinacy. "So let's say one of them does volunteer. Any idea how you would track down the failsafe code in my OCHREs and transplant it to someone else's system in the next half hour?" Silence. "I'm sorry, Horv. We have no idea where the failsafe activation code is or how it works, and there just isn't time to figure it out. I don't care if this is virtual instantaneous conversation, programming still happens in real time."

  "Now you're just being pessimistic," replies Horvil.

  Natch laughs. "Maybe."

  "Listen, don't give up hope. Me and Quell, we'll get you out of there. He's plugging away at this bio/logic loopback you're in as fast as he can. He got a communication channel in here, it's only a matter of time before the whole thing unravels. We'll crack the code, and then you can-you can, fuck, I don't know. Tackle Brone or something. We'll figure it out. Just don't give up hope."

  "So explain this to me again?" says Jara. "You're ... where?"

  Natch does his best to sum up the situation, yet again, to his former analyst, now the master of the fiefcorp he abandoned. Brone's black code of nothingness and Quell's tunnel through it. Margaret's failsafe.

  "I suppose it makes sense," says the fiefcorp master after a moment's thought. "It's just strange. We're sitting here in Manila watching you on a viewscreen while Brone puts on his little circus. Hard to wrap my head around the idea that we can see what you're doing, but you can't."

  The thought makes Natch more than a little uncomfortable as well. "What am I doing?"

  "Just sitting there, as far as I can tell. They've got you propped up on a chair. Every few minutes, Pierre Loget comes over and tips a little bit of water down your throat. It's creepy."

  "And Brone's `little circus'? How's that going?"

  A sigh of exasperation. "Oh, pretty much about how you'd expect. It was compelling when he started, but then he made this long-winded speech about the end of history and the power of the common citizen. Now he's got John Ridglee, Sen Siv Sort, and Mah Lo Vertiginous standing up to make these pompous rebuttals. Brone's trying to pretend he's being judicious and reasonable, but the consensus on the Data Sea is that he's already made up his mind. If he had any sense, he'd just go ahead and release the fucking program already. An hour of boring debate isn't going to change anyone's mind."

  Natch tries to imagine the scene, but this may be one instance where he's glad to be cut off from his surroundings. He doubts that the drudges really comprehend the enormity of the situation; they're just looking to milk the free publicity. As for Brone, he clearly just likes the sound of his own voice, something Natch has known since initiation. But why shouldn't Brone preen in the spotlight for an hour? What does he have to fear? Magan Kai Lee can't storm the Complex or lob a missile on it. Borda has stepped down. And Natch, as far as he knows, is powerless. There's no reason in the world that Brone shouldn't make a grand production out of this. Whether MultiReal is released or not, he'll never get another opportunity like it.

  "Listen, Jara," says Natch, "I ... I never thanked you."

  "Thanked me for what?"

  "For saving my life."

  The fiefcorp master seems surprised and not a little suspicious. "When did I do that?"

  "A couple of months ago. When you convinced Petrucio to limit the number of MultiReal choice cycles any one person could use in a day. That saved my life at the Tul Jabbor Complex. If I hadn't run out of choice cycles when Petrucio was trying to shoot me with black code, then he would have missed. He would have never hit me with the MultiReal-D code-which ended up saving my life in Old Chicago."

  Natch can practically see the stubborn frown on Jara's face. "You're buttering me up for something," she grumbles. "What is it?"

  He laughs. "What was that line from Phantom Distortions? `You can engrave your apologies on my tombstone'? ... No, Jara, I really did just want to thank you. But come to think of it, there is something I want from you too."

  "Which is?"

  "Your opinion. About what I should do."

  The connection goes quiet, and for the hundredth time Natch wishes he could see the look on the other conversant's face. He can conjecture, but it's impossible to know for sure whether Jara is angry, confused, irritated, amused, or unsure. "Horvil explained the situation about the failsafe to you, right?" says Natch.

  "Vigal did," she replies. "Horvil and Quell are too busy trying to get you out of there."

  "So what's wrong?"

  A pause to carefully consider phraseology. "I just can't believe you really want my opinion. You never wanted it before."

  "That's not true! I always valued your opinion, Jara, or I wouldn't have asked for it. That's why I brought you on to the fiefcorp in the first place. Because you've never tried to sugarcoat the truth. Even when I was ... emotionally manipulating you ... I could always count on you for the unvarnished truth. You have no idea how important that is. Take it from me-if you intend to run a successful fiefcorp after all this is over, you're going to need honest feedback, even if it hits you like a slap in the face."

  Jara sniffs amusedly. "Oh, don't worry about that. I've got someone who has no problem speaking truth to power. Assuming there are still fiefcorps after this is all over with."

  "Who?"

  "Benyamin," says Jara. "He's much more of a pain to me than I ever was to you, but he'll make a great number two once we're
free and clear of this MultiReal business.... Listen, we can talk about fiefcorps some other time. You wanted my opinion about what to do."

  Natch tries to nod, fails. "Yes. It's an ethical question, I think."

  Another laugh. "Merri's the expert in ethics, not me."

  "That doesn't mean I don't want your opinion. Look, it's a simple question. Should I activate Margaret's failsafe and effectively destroy MultiReal-or should I do nothing and let Brone release MultiReal?"

  "This isn't an ethical question at all," says Jara. "It's a math problem. Will you save more lives if you activate the failsafe or if you do nothing?"

  "If I activate the failsafe, Horvil thinks the death toll could be in the tens of thousands. Missing memories, chaos, malfunctioning programming. Worst-case scenario, that number could be off by a couple of decimal points. But if I let Brone release the program unimpeded ... there's a chance the entire computational system could collapse. How many could die then? Absolutely no way to know. Tens of millions? Billions?"

  "The biggest hole in your calculations is you're assuming the public will be fanatically interested. What if Brone releases MultiReal and nobody cares?"

  "With all the buildup surrounding the program over the past few months," says Natch, "I don't think that's likely."

  "Maybe people will actually listen to the Council and stay away from MultiReal."

  "Given all the mistrust Len Borda sowed in the public for all those decades, I wouldn't count on that happening either. You know that Brone is going to get on the Data Sea and tell everyone to ignore the Council's propaganda. He doesn't have to convince everybody for this to turn into a catastrophe. You heard Rey Gonerev's numbers. If just the hard-code Thasselian devotees out there ignore the Council's warnings, that could crash the computational infrastructure." He begins calculating the odds in his head again and slips off into completely unverified conjecture.

  "How confident are you of all this?" asks Jara. "Give me a percentage."

  The entrepreneur tries to factor all his suppositions and suspicions down to a single integer. "I'd say I'm about seventy percent certain."

  "There's something else to consider." Jara pauses, clearly trying to formulate a question in her head. "Let's say Possibilities 2.0 is as groundbreaking and revolutionary as Brone says it is. Let's say the program frees us all from the tyranny of cause and effect and throws off the yoke of the Council forever, or whatever he's claiming. How many lives is that worth?"

  Natch does not hesitate. "None."

  "No, it's not that easy. Think about this for a second. Everyone from here to Furtoid with the power of Possibilities 2.0, in a world without cause and effect. We're talking about the potential to end war, the potential to end murder-for process' preservation, this could end conflict altogether. Don't you think that would save billions of lives in the long run?"

  "Come on, Jara," scoffs Natch. "A world completely free of death and conflict? You know human nature as well as I do. It's never, ever going to happen. Conflict is the engine that powers the universe. You can't get rid of it. If the human race is headed for a future without cause and effect, it's not going to happen overnight just by releasing a bio/logic program. It's going to be a long, hard slog, century after century, one day at a time."

  Jara is clearly taken aback by this answer. "So you wouldn't let anyone die for that?"

  "Not a single life. Not even-not even the lowest wretch in the sewers of 49th Heaven. I wouldn't sacrifice a single person for Possibilities 2.0, even if it's everything that Brone claims it is.,,

  "But you would sacrifice yourself to stop it."

  "That's different."

  There's a long pause as Jara tries to take in Natch's point of view. He can tell that she doesn't quite understand his perspective, but she respects it.

  "Listen, Jara," continues Natch, "you can't look at this like a math problem. You can't look at it in the abstract. We're talking about human beings."

  "I can't believe I'm hearing this from you, of all people. Of course you have to look at it in the abstract. There's no way to make decisions involving billions of people on an individual basis."

  "But I do. I can. I feel every single one of those people, like a weight around my neck."

  "Don't try to pretend that this is personal for you," says the fiefcorp master, her voice suddenly tinged with bitterness. "Because it's not. Not like it is for me."

  "You're talking about ... you and Horvil."

  "This failsafe could cause massive memory lapses. Blacked-out memories. Personality shifts. Who knows what could happen? Everything I've worked for in the past six months, everything I've accomplished-everything Horvil and I have accomplished-it could all get wiped away in a millisecond. Are you prepared to carry that around your neck too?"

  Pause. "Only if it's better than the alternative."

  "Then it seems that you've made your decision, haven't you?"

  41

  Merri's voice, plaintive, footsteps away from panic. "Natch," she says. "I don't know what to do."

  Once Natch would have inwardly scorned the channel manager's helplessness, if he didn't scorn it outwardly for all to see. But now he feels an inexplicable urge to embrace her neediness and her constant inability to stay on steady ground. He wonders if by elevating Merri's weakness, he is subconsciously seeking to validate his own actions on 49th Heaven. Enough, he tells himself, pushing such speculation to the side. You don't have the luxury of playing psychologist anymore. "What's the problem?" he says.

  "What's the problem? You know what the problem is. She's always the problem. Bonneth."

  "The failsafe."

  "Yes. It's-she'll ... Natch, this is going to kill her." He's never heard Merri so distressed before, and that's saying a lot. "Ten times as bad as an infoquake, Quell says. Prepare for the worst. Bonneth, she's frail. If Dr. Plugenpatch goes down, or the GravCo services on Luna fail, or-or-or anything like that ... she won't make it! She won't make it through this."

  Natch considers Bonneth's predicament: as frail and helpless physically as Merri is emotionally. Yes, her situation is as dire as her companion is making it out to be. There are literally thousands of ways in which the failsafe might claim Bonneth's life. OCHREs misfiring or not firing at all, starvation or oxygen depletion due to lack of supplies from Earth, violence from the chaos of too many people and too few resources.

  Merri's tears are evident in the shakiness of her voice. "You can't do this, Natch. You can't. How could you do something that could kill my companion? It's wrong. It's murder. If you activate this failsafe, you're a murderer."

  "Merri-"

  "Yes, I ... I know. I'm sorry," she says, abruptly switching into apologetic mode. "I know how hard this decision is for you. And yesyou're right, I suppose that if you activate the failsafe it'll save lives in the end. Bonneth probably doesn't have a much better chance if Brone gets his way. But she's my companion, Natch. She's the woman I love. What do you want me to say?"

  "Can you get the Council to help?"

  "No. I-I already asked Rey Gonerev. She said they're going to need every single officer they have to deal with the failsafe. But I can't get in to see Magan Kai Lee. Do you think you could ... talk to him for me?"

  Magan is in a surprisingly contemplative mood and willing to discuss the ethics of the situation.

  "The Blade is right," says the lieutenant executive. "I can't spare any officers. Especially not for a single woman on the moon."

  "I suspected as much," replies Natch.

  "And even if I could spare an officer ... I'm not sure that I would. Merri's companion is a convenient reminder, in a way. Even if you can save one disabled woman with Mai-Lo Syndrome, there are going to be thousands of people you can't save. Maybe even millions. You need to know that before you make this decision."

  Natch thinks of Rodrigo on 49th Heaven. The last he heard from Molloy, the boy had found a taste for Chill Polly and was sliding down the greased slope towards addiction once more. Rodrigo'
s odds of surviving the year are slim enough as it is; Natch wouldn't give him much chance of making it through the apocalypse to come if Brone releases Possibilities 2.0 to the world. The entire orbital colony faces an uncertain future, in fact. Even if the boy can make it through the initial crush, can he weather the days of malfunctioning OCHREs, of dwindling supplies, of cold and darkness and hunger? The toughened ascetics of Allowell might stand a chance, but the prospects for the sybarites on 49th Heaven are grim.

  "Bonneth's odds of survival aren't good if I activate Margaret's failsafe," says Natch wearily. "But I have to believe she's got a better chance than if Possibilities 2.0 gets out there. At least Margaret's failsafe will likely affect everyone equally."

  "So you are confident in your decision?"

  "Confident? No. Are you kidding? I'm supposed to make one of the most important decisions the world has ever seen-but I have no data to base it on. I'm getting conflicting pieces of information. All I have are estimates and hypotheticals. The word of my friends and advisors. No precedents whatsoever. How am I supposed to be confident in my decision?"

  A slightly rueful laugh. "Now you have some idea what it's like to be the high executive of the Defense and Wellness Council," says Magan. "In the real world, there are no failsafes or rollbacks."

  "I suppose. At least ... at least I have the consolation that this crisis will be over soon."

  There is a long pause, and not for the first time Natch wishes that the calculating mind of Magan Kai Lee was not so airtight in its emotions. "I don't care what you say to your friends and your colleagues," says Magan tersely, "but your lies won't work with me."

  If Natch had a face in this blackness, it would be flushing crimson right now. "What do you mean?"