by Smith, Skye
"The problem is, you don't know who is best to choose until they have already done a lot of damage. It's like you need a time machine, so you can choose, and then go back in time to jail them. That is the basis of a lot of Sci Fi books and movies."
"Yeah, like the Terminator." she said, getting interested, and moving her hand slowly down his belly to see how deep in thought he really was.
"The problem is that these days so much of the evil is done by evil organizations, not individuals. Most corporations are psychopathic institutions."
"Blah, blah, blah"
"Companies often act like psychos," he re-explained.
"Better."
"So, getting rid of one guy from a big corporation, or a political party, is not going to change much. The culture around him will choose a replacement who could be just as bad."
"So like, you can't jail just one guy, you have to jail him and all his friends."
"Political regimes have known that for centuries, millennia."
"Huh,"
"Never mind. I have an alternate solution. It came to me that this is a binary problem, and requires a binary solution."
"Blah, blah, blah."
"Find a situation where there is a very good candidate and a very bad candidate for the same power position, and then jail the bad one. In that way, the good prevails, rather than the bad being replaced with more bad. Not only that, but the new good guy may dismantle the bad culture."
"I was expecting an answer with a name, not a formula."
"But the formula is always more important than one solution. It means you can repeat the solution over and over."
"Blah, blah, blah. Go to sleep."
"It's depressing."
"I thought you worked out a solution."
"It's depressing that the bad guys are already using the solution. Have been for millennia. The bad guy kills the good guy, so a bad guy gets in, and then the bad guy dismantles the good guy's culture."
"You said kill, not jail."
"Yeah, well, we are talking about the bad guys. They like the death penalty a lot because it is so final."
Erik crawled into bed and turned off the light just in time to hear the last of the discussion. "If you two are going to be depressing, I'll sleep in her room." Maya kicked out and screamed as Erik laid his cold hands on her bum to warm them up. She rolled over him so that Erik could be in the middle and be warmed by both of them.
"I took Emma to lunch today," Karl whispered to the darkness.
"How did that go?"
"Well I politely, and warmly made it clear that we couldn't sleep together any more. That it wasn't fair, because as much as I loved her as a friend, our relationship could never evolve into anything else."
"Did she pour the coffee in your lap?" asked Erik.
"Or throw her knife at you?" asked Maya.
"She was, uh, upset, but sucked it up into cold politeness. Don't be surprised if we get firebombed during the night."
"Do you want me to talk to her?" asked Maya.
"Actually, it would be good if you could soothe her. She is such a nice lady."
"Manana" she yawned and started drifting to sleep. It had been a full day. "Oh," she woke up a little. "I have a work visa now," but there was no answer.
* * *
* * *
MAYA'S AURA - the Refining by Skye Smith
Chapter 15 - Three years earlier at Vancouver Airport
Randy changed lanes effortlessly in his clunker truck to make the Airport exit. Bimmer's dived out of his way, leaning on their horns but giving him a wide berth. Marique had on her travel skirt with belt loops and a belt, so that she could wrap the strings of her secret pouch around the belt and hang the pouch down inside her skirt and just behind her hip. "Merde, I feel like I have forgotten something," she said.
Randy looked at her, suddenly worried. They were a bit late anyway because they had picked Maya up. "Got your passport, got your ticket, got your money?"
"Oui, oui, oui," she replied.
"Then you have all you need." He turned on the cd player and hit the forward button until he found the song he was searching for. The three of them sang along with Mick Jagger, especially the part "if you try real hard, you get what you need." He pulled into the taxi stand and told the girls to run, and he would catch up after he had parked.
Arm in arm, and looking fabulous in their coats and skirts, the two blondes ran to the KLM check-in line, and then Marique started filling out labels for her big pack, and her carry-on pack. Randy caught up to them at the security gate, where Marique was forced by the security check to get rid of her bottle of water.
"Dey don't want me to drink good water on the plane," she called, "dey want to sell me booze instead." She ran to him and gave him the bottle, and a huge kiss. "Be good, mon cher," she said and then gave Maya a big hug and kiss and then went back to the guy at security.
"Do you mind if we wait until the plane is off the ground?" Randy asked Maya. "You know, just in case."
"My mom told me that in the old days you could wait with your lover until they actually got on the plane."
"Yeah, right. Maybe in Bogart's day." He stopped and listened to an announcement. "Ooh, scary. Shades of Casablanca. They just announced the plane for Lisbon. Come on, let’s sit over there by the window. At least we can see her plane."
"I bet you miss her already," Maya said as she sat down. She liked Marique, liked her a lot, so she could imagine how Randy must be feeling.
"Not yet, but soon. She's my best friend. I was sure hoping we could go to Goa again this winter. Now we aren't even going to spend the winter together."
"She had to go. With the beach weather over, how could she make money?"
"Yeah, the beach weather is over. I fear the beach is over, anyway."
"Tired of the scene? How many years have you been doing it."
"My mom used to take me there with my plastic bucket and spade. I learned to skimboard there before I got my first woody. Soon, there will be no scene. The digital cameras are winning. By next year, the young people won't be taking their clothes off any more. Between digital cameras and the web, there is too big a risk that pictures of your nudity will be plastered all over the world."
"You mean, my picture may be there now?" she asked.
"Good chance of it. We found some of Marique from last year when she was shining shoes, and a recent video of me walking around with a boner. That was your doing. Please stop doing that to me. It's not funny."
"Sorry, I'll stop. So were those photos easy to find on the web?"
"No, but then neither of us are on Fadebook."
"What's Fadebook?"
"It's the latest craze in keeping up with your friends," explained Randy, "It allows you to keep like, a mini website of your own, and then connect your friends to it so you can share stories and photos and things." He looked around. "See that little girl over there with the netbook? She'll be using Fadebook. Go and have a look."
The girl was about ten or eleven and sitting beside her mother. Maya sat on the other side of the girl and peeked at her screen. The title at the top was Fadebook. "Oh, are you using Fadebook? So many people have told me about it. How does it work.? She looked at the mother. "Uh, with your permission?"
Mom looked up frowning, slightly annoyed to have her cellphone call interupted. She saw nothing threatening in the friendly blonde teenager, and waved her okay. She had the passing thought that the teenager had to be Amish or something, not to know about Fadebook. Sigh. Some people were so behind the times.
The little girl, like all ten-year-old girls, was eager to be helpful to strangers. Especially one who was blonde and pretty, older than herself, and didn't know anything about something as cool as Fadebook. She hadn't yet reached the stage of complete bitchiness that girls reach at thirteen. "Well, first you have to register. See, here is my registry page. Only I can change it."
Maya scanned the page. It contained name, age, sex and a bunch of othe
r really personal information.
"I had to lie about my age. Besides, my dad says its best not to tell them the truth. He says they use it to show me advertising of little girl stuff like tiny pink cell phones. They use his to show him advertising about cars and tools and Viagra. So look, see, I can tell all my friends what I am doing, and things about my life, and see, there is my dog and my school and my house. And see. I click here and I go to my best friend's page. See, that's her. Look, she is telling everyone that she has swimming lessons tomorrow at three at Kitsilano pool. "
Maya felt chilled to the bone, and suddenly very nervous, and then angry. She managed a smile. "Thanks for showing me," she said and walked back to Randy.
"I can't believe parents let their little girls use that Fadebook thing. It's like, a predator's dream come true. Once a predator finds her page, he knows everything about her. When she is alone, the route she walks to school, what she looks like, how old she is, even that her favorite thing is little white puppies."
"Hey, not just little girls use it. Every student at U.B.C. uses it. The problem is not the software so much as the security. People leave it wide open to strangers. So, say I take a digital photo of Alicia walking around on Wreck Beach. I can post it on the web and connect it to her Fadebook page. Now all her friends and family, her boss, her teachers, like, everyone can see it and she can't get rid of it."
"So why do people use it?" Maya couldn't think of anything worse than having her private life revealed to the world like that.
"It's like a popularity contest. They get sucked in. I mean, it's good stuff if you know how to use it, but almost nobody spends the time to learn how to use it, and certainly not how to secure it."
"So, this is just in Vancouver?" She feared the worst.
"Like, where have you been? It's growing around the world faster than Google did."
"You mean that soon the predators will be able to choose from a whole world of little girls?"
"Hey, it's the little girls who are the most keen to sign up. They don't want to miss out."
Maya's head was swimming. How could people be so stupid? "Well, why haven't the police closed it down? They close kiddie porn sites down. Why not close a site that make life easy for predators and psychos?"
"Money. Big money. The stock bookies can't wait for it to go public. The advertisers love being able to focus their ads by age and sex and location. Besides, their defense is simple. The parents should make sure their kids are safe. The security tools are there to do it."
"The plane is backing out." They both stood in the window and waved. They were hoping that Marique was watching them. There was no way of knowing for sure.
"Damn," he said, "I wish she wasn't going. We could have worked something out."
"She told me she had been approached to hook, you know, escort hooking. I'm glad she's gone."
"Oh that, that was just an idea I was kicking around. Like, well, I'm big. You've seen it. And like, she is really tight. That's why sex is not the big thing with us. Until she has a kid, I'm just too big for her."
"Eww! TMI" She wrinkled up her nose.
He was baffled. "What do you mean, TMI?"
It was Maya's turn. "Well, where have YOU been? It stands for Too Much Information. What you're telling me is kind of personal. If you are on the make, like, you just blew it."
"Naw, I'm not on the make." Actually, he'd love to make this girl who always got him so horny, but he had the feeling that he was already on shaky ground. She was also Marique's friend, and it was good talking about her with Maya. It sort of helped ease his missing Marique. " You see, if we could lessen the risks of hooking, like you know, disease and violence and stuff, then we were sort of thinking about it, for big money, like."
"I'm afraid to ask." Actually she was afraid she was going to laugh.
"Well, you know all the escort ads in the entertainment weeklies? We were thinking of putting in an add for, like, wife swappers for hire. I mean, we were hoping to connect with older, rich Japanese tourist couples. Marique would make him feel big, and I would make her feel small, and they are used to Japanese prices, so we would earn big. The main thing is that Marique would always be safe, because I would be around. I mean like, all four of us would be safe."
"So what happened?" she asked, still trying not to laugh. She was imagining the negotiations, all bowing and polite-like over sake and sunumomo salad.
"Nothing happened, you bought Marique that ticket using the money from that guy that attacked you on the trail."
"It wasn't the.... never mind." The less said the better.
She had Randy drop her off at the studio. She never did let Randy or Marique know which house she lived in.
* * *
The guard at the gate saluted her and let her walk straight in. "Don't I have to sign in?" she asked.
"Nope, you're on the list of regulars, just walk on in."
She saw Wendy, and Wendy changed direction mid-step and grabbed her by the hand. "So far they have you written into four big scenes, with lots of lines. You're going to get fifth billing and twenty thousand. Is that enough or do you want me to hold out for more?"
"I'll talk to Karen about it. See what she says."
"Karen is management. She'll tell you to take it," Wendy groaned.
"Then I'll take it, but only if that is what she tells me."
"Okay. Well, you may as well join the party in the meeting room. Mike put some digital video cameras in the makeup room, and Gerry and Karen spent the morning there playing around with adlibs. They are about to show them to the writers, so they can copy down the best material."
She snuck in the back and took the last chair. The cameraman was fast-forwarding to where the real stuff began. For a few minutes it was clumsy, and then something started to click. By ten minutes into the scene, everyone was either groaning or chuckling. By twenty minutes they were laughing. By thirty minutes the cameraman had to press pause so that people could catch their breath.
Karen leaned forward towards Gerry and kissed his cheek. "We've cracked it. We are going to have a hit on our hands. This banter, this transition, can only get better. We haven't even worked out the transition of James Bond into Bond Flambé, or the transition of butch cop to cop porn queen. Oh, this is going to be good. Really good."
Maya spoke up from the back. "Maybe we can have Bond Flambé kill a vampire with a curling iron. You know, through the heart." It didn't take much to get them all laughing again. As she spoke she saw the lead writer scribble it down. Once people had refilled their coffees, the cameraman pushed play, and the laughing began again.
"My only regret is that I didn't have a big camera in there with them," said Mike, "but no problem, this video is better than a good script." He settled down again and started making notes for angles and composition. At the end of the video he announced that he wanted all the new scenes to be worked out in front of the digital cameras, and he wanted an editor to work with the writers to put together a 'best of' video.
"Maya, you're next," said Karen, "I need some ideas on working the scene where I go from cop to porn slut, and then work around you taking pity on me and calling your uncle. Oh, I feel good about this."
* * *
They got on a roll and didn't knock off until after eight, so Karen took both Maya and the Bond Gerry back to her hotel suite for some food. Gerry took one look at the room service menu and the prices and disappeared for twenty minutes. He returned to the room carrying trays of sashimi and bottles of Prosecco.
"Thanks sweetie," Karen kissed his cheek. "All these phone cameras have made my life hell. It used to be you only had to worry about the paparazzi. Now everyone with a cell phone is as bad as the paparazzi. I don't enjoy going out anymore. Someone always recognizes me, and then I have to play the role and make sure I don't slip off the pedestal. It's a pain."
They ate and talked and traded ideas for the morning shoot, and drank and drank until Maya looked at Gerry, hoping for a ride home.
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"Not from me, love," apologized Bond, "I can't afford to lose my license."
Karen phoned down to the hotel desk for a limo, and when the call came back that it had arrived, she walked Maya to the door, hugging close the whole way. Maya stood in the open door and looked back to see where Gerry was, and Karen whispered in her ear. "He's mine tonight. You are going home alone."
By the time she was home, and washed, and sneaking into bed, the guys were both asleep. She tried to crawl in between them, but Karl woke up just long enough to pout. "It's my turn to be in the middle." What could she say? It was his turn. She slipped in on the other side of him and had him spoon her to get warm and then, because he was half, umm, awake anyway, she fell asleep connected to him and feeling delicious.
* * *
* * *
"Now the hard work begins." Karen grimaced as she savored another of the shrimp from the top of the noodle dish. Noodles were a no-no for her but she loved them. She promised herself to only have a couple.
Gerry finished his mouthful and replied, "So what do you call what we have been doing? Maya, how many hours do you think we put in this week so far? Seventy?"
"Yeah, well, the editors have enough miles of film to make a movie," Karen said as she slurped a Thai noodle, "now we have to go out and sell it. Our schedules have been cleared for the rest of the day so that wardrobe can own us. Tonight we run the paparazzi gauntlet and schmooze with the nobs."
"Oh, the Olympic team benefit," laughed Gerry. "I was going already, but not as Bond. This could be fun."
"Don't you believe it," Karen moaned. "It's the part of the job I hate the most. Having to smile your best smile for hours for assholes with money and dimwits with cameras. Hey, it's the business. We've made a movie, now we have to jiggle the hook in front of the audience. That's why I told Maya to hold out for fifty thousand. She has no choice but to do it. It's in her contract." She looked at Maya. "Did they give it to you?"
"Yes, mostly, and now I understand why. I'm what they will jiggle on the hook," Maya observed. "I don't have to wear a school uniform, do I?"
"Think Dior, or whichever design shop the wardrobe mistress is currently taking bribes from. Whatever, you'll look divine. I wish we could trade hips for the evening."