"Welcome," said Brone, "to Possibilities 2.0."
38
The stalk carrying Brone and Pierre Loget's platform slid languidly down to the ground, giving Natch time to apply additional protections on the MindSpace bubble and shut it off. But Brone had no designs on stealing Natch's hard-fought code, at least for the moment. Instead he stood patiently beside the platform, eyes averted, and waited for the entrepreneur to finish his prophylactic measures. Loget, meanwhile, crept silently up the stairs without a word.
"Come," said Brone when the entrepreneur had dropped his bio/logic programming bars on the workbench. "Let's explore the city and find some coffee."
Natch nodded, still shaken by the bizarre MultiReal experience he had just been a party to. He could use some fresh air in his lungs, even if it was speckled with the debris of ancient conflict. The two strode out the door.
Chicago in twilight was a surreal vision. Natch had wandered through a few works of old-world SeeNaRee before, but they had all failed to capture the profound emptiness of a fossilized city. Kilometer upon kilometer of shattered concrete and rusty metal. Congealed blobs of melted rubber serving as boundaries for makeshift roads. The ghosted carcasses of office buildings standing mute sentry, some toppled. Books, machine entrails, fused glass. And through it all, no sound but the distant susurration of the wind. There was no sign of life that Natch could see; and yet, he couldn't help but feel like they were being watched.
"Let me ask you a question," said Brone, startling Natch out of his reverie. The bodhisattva was pacing slowly down the street with hands clasped behind him. "Why MultiReal?"
Natch snorted. "What kind of question is that?"
"I'm being completely serious. I watched that silly speech of Rey Gonerev's the other day. I've read all Ridglee's and Sor's absurd allegations: Natch doesn't care about MultiReal! He just wants money and power!" Brone let out a morbid chuckle as he sidestepped a piece of corroded plastic sheeting. "Ridiculous! You could have easily sold MultiReal for more money than you could ever spend in a lifetime. So why keep it?"
Natch thought back to Jara's question all those weeks ago, when MultiReal was nothing more than a will-o'-the-wisp hovering over the horizon. So what is the end? Where do all those means lead to? A hundred words jockeyed for position on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't choose among them. He simply stared ahead and said nothing.
Brone shook his head. "Typical Natch," he said. "You've been clawing your way up the Primo's ratings your whole life just to get an opportunity like this, haven't you? Like we were programmed to do in the hive. And you can't tell me why?" The habitual sneer was creeping back onto his face, but Natch didn't mind. A disdainful Brone was much more familiar than a welcoming one.
"Like it or not, Natch, you are the paragon of our trade," continued his old hivemate. "Even Margaret Surina was no match for you! She spent half a lifetime honing this technology to perfection-and then you came along at the last possible minute and stuck your name on it. As if you had anything to do with building Margaret's Phoenix Project! As if you even knew what it was when you signed up for it."
On another night, Natch might have raged at his former hivemate or sought to beat him bloody. Tonight, he was simply drained, beyond emotion. "But you knew what it was, didn't you?" he said. "Or, at least, your little sycophant Pierre Loget did."
Brone did not dispute Natch's characterization of his devotee. "Yes. As you know, Loget was the first one Margaret approached about licensing her Phoenix Project. You did know that, Natch, didn't you? Or is this something else she conveniently forgot to tell you?"
"I knew." I completely failed to see the importance of it-but yes, Margaret did tell me.
"Well, Loget's a first-rate engineer, but he's something of a buffoon," continued the bodhisattva. "Margaret practically laid MultiReal in his hands, and he didn't know what to do with it. It was only after Loget bungled the job that she went to the Patels-and Loget, meanwhile, came to me, the bodhisattva of his creed.
"But we're getting off track. We were talking about you, Natch. We were trying to unravel exactly why you've been defending MultiReal so doggedly these past several weeks. Here's what I believe. I believe that Serr Vigal was right. You want MultiReal because you believe it will give you freedom."
Natch, irritable, kicked at a jagged chunk of asphalt. "So why didn't you just fucking say that?"
Brone did not take umbrage at the entrepreneur's impatience or alter his steady walk down the boulevard in the slightest. "Because it proves a point, Natch. I understand you. I know what you're searching for, because it's the same thing I've been searching for since the hive. Margaret Surina called it freedom from cause and effect. But only Kordez Thassel had the courage to call this freedom what it really is: selfishness."
The bodhisattva came to a halt in the middle of what must have once been a mighty crossroads, a center of ancient commerce. Four separate roads converged and mingled in a daisy loop, while doddering towers kept vigil. A hand-painted sign labeled COFFEE sat atop the doorway of one tower. Natch did a double take, feeling like he was reading the punch line for an obscure joke. Brone had suggested they get coffee, but Natch had taken it for a figure of speech, an excuse to get out of the old hotel. Did he really expect to find anything drinkable in these ruins? Apparently so, for he disappeared inside the doorway without another word.
Natch took a quick glance behind him to make sure the way back to the dilapidated hotel was clear, not because it was any kind of sanctuary, but because at the very least it was a familiar setting. There was still this eerie feeling of constant surveillance, like there were eyes around every corner. He turned back to the COFFEE tower and looked through the murky windows for signs of life. There seemed to be people stirring in there after all, residents of this horrid city, though who and how many Natch could not tell.
He followed Brone inside.
Not only were there people inside the building, but the substance they were slurping from their crude stoneware mugs did indeed smell like coffee. Brone gave a genial nod to a group of thirty-something men lounging on a pair of tired sofas; the men nodded back. Their clothing was ragged, but not so ragged that it couldn't simply pass as bohemian in connectible society. Natch followed Brone down a narrow staircase, tight-lipped, wary of what might be waiting at the bottom.
It was a cafe.
Perhaps not a cafe like those that dotted the sidewalks and shopping clusters of Shenandoah, but close enough. A score of old wroughtiron tables were arranged loosely in a low, wide interior courtyard that might have been open to the sky back in pre-Revolt days. Now a pair of monstrous concrete pillars slanted across the skylight, both blocking out the sun and keeping the rubble at bay. There were perhaps twenty people scattered throughout the cafe in clumps of two and three, nursing cups of coffee.
So these are the diss, thought Natch. Most of the sources he had seen on the Data Sea portrayed them in two-dimensional stereotype: grimy street urchins clothed in rags, militant proles plotting sedition. But, fashion sense aside, these could have been the patrons of any other cafe in Shenandoah or Vladivostok or Beijing; only the technology was missing. It felt disconcertingly like initiation. No multi projections, no holographic viewscreen displays, no private messages. Here among the diss, ConfidentialWhispers really were confidential whispers.
Nobody seemed to object to Natch's or Brone's presence, despite the fact that they clearly did not belong. Only when the bodhisattva lifted a pair of earthenware cups off a shelf and filled them from a nearby thermos did someone take notice. A gruff woman with hair like straw walked over and exchanged a few indecipherable words with Brone. Satisfied, the woman nodded and shuffled back to her table.
Moments later, Natch was sitting with Brone at one of the wrought-iron tables, drinking coffee. Perhaps not the best he had ever tasted, but decent enough. "What's going on?" said Natch, puzzled. "Did you threaten that woman?"
"Threaten?" The bodhisattva smiled. "No, I didn't threa
ten anyone. We have an arrangement with these people. We do mechanical repairs for them; they tolerate our presence and provide us with the occasional ... amenity." Brone made an ostentatious slurp from his cup, then smacked his lips.
Natch took a dubious look at their surroundings. There was a dank pile of earthenware shards sitting in the corner, evidence of a broken mug that had been simply swept out of the way and forgotten. Besides tepid coffee, what kind of amenities could residents of a place like this possibly provide?
"Don't tell me you've bought into the government propaganda," said Brone, reading the disdain written on Natch's face. "The diss aren't out here because they're paupers, Natch ... they're here because they're dissidents."
Natch made a sour look. "Could've fooled me."
The bodhisattva sniffed drolly. "Yes, admittedly some wander out to the old cities because they can't hack it in connectible society. But most of them belong to the diss because they prefer it here. They've taken our society and stripped it down to its bare essentials." He made a slight gesture toward a group of middle-aged men who seemed to be playing cards using actual laminated cards. "Tell me you don't understand that impulse, Natch. No Primo's ratings, no fiefcorp tax break pressures, no drudge gossip-just simple transaction. Barter. Here's what I can do for you ... now what can you do for me?
"You want freedom from society's pressures? You want the complete and utter freedom that Margaret and Kordez were looking for? Rey Gonerev was right. This is the only place you're going to find it today, in the diss cities. Which leads us back to-"
"Selfishness." The entrepreneur expelled a loud breath full of contempt and slammed his cup down on the table. Hot coffee sloshed off the side, narrowly missing his hand. "Listen, you brought me out here. You saved me from Len Borda. Great. Thank you. But I'm not going to sit and listen to your elliptical bullshit forever. Get to the fucking point."
Brone smiled and gave his old hivemate a placating nod. He took another large swig of coffee, then set the mug aside. "Fine," said the bodhisattva, leaning forward with an intense look in his eyes. "Let's get down to it then. We were talking about Kordez Thassel. Old Kordez may have been a bit ... unhinged, shall we say ... but his teachings led me to a startling discovery. Selfishness is not `evil,' Natch. It's not `wrong.' On the contrary-it's simply low-tech. Tell me this ... if you and the Patel Brothers could both achieve number one on Primo's, would you object?"
"It doesn't matter," muttered Natch. "We can't, and that's that."
"You're right, of course," said Brone. "The universe doesn't give us this option. Instead it gives us the zero-sum game. In order for you to win the highest ratings on Primo's, the Patel Brothers and Lucas Sentinel and Bolliwar Tuban and all of those other fools must lose. Am I right? For someone to be on top, by definition someone else must be on the bottom.
"Oh, you can mask the sting of defeat by rewarding the effort and not the result. We all tried very hard to reach number one on Primo's, so we all win! But the selfish ones like you and me, we refuse to participate in this childish game. We play to win, and so people call us cruel. They call us malicious. But I know you, Natch-you're not malicious. You don't wish anyone else harm, even the Patel Brothers. You just want to be left alone to concentrate on your own priorities.
"But what options do the selfish ones have? We can bury our desires. We can press on and ignore the slanders from the Sen Sivv Sors of the world. Or we can run away to a place like this. A place where the bonds and restraints of community are practically nonexistent." Brone made an expansive gesture around the cafe. The woman with the straw hair was managing to keep one eye on Natch while still keeping up with her companions' debate over orbital colony politics. "Society has never been able to resolve the conflict between the group and the individual, because we simply haven't had the technology. Until now."
Natch could feel a trickle of sweat creep down his brow and make its way to the side of his nose. "MultiReal," he breathed.
The bodhisattva nodded. "Exactly! What did Margaret Surina promise us? She promised us the ultimate freedom. The ultimate empowerment. She said she would give us the path to complete control over our destinies. Sadly, Margaret did not live to deliver on her promises-but you and I will. That's what Possibilities 2.0 is about. Together you and I will deliver a world of complete and total selfishness without destruction.
"A world permanently wiped clean of the zero-sum game."
Natch had caught a number of suspicious looks from the corner of his eye in the past fifteen minutes, but only when Brone paused his little oration did the entrepreneur realize what was going on. He had not been imagining the stares and the surveillance, nor was he imagining the deference they were paying the bodhisattva here. The diss weren't merely tolerating Brone's presence; they were protecting him. Natch studied the woman with the straw hair and her companions, now pointedly staring back at him, and he wondered what these people pos sibly stood to gain from this whole Revolution of Selfishness. He wondered what they would do if he gave in to his impulses and clocked Brone over the head with a coffee mug.
"So you want to use MultiReal to end the zero-sum game," said Natch, doing his best to ignore the watching diss. "How?"
"Let's start at the beginning," replied Brone. "What makes MultiReal so revolutionary? The ability to dodge darts and hit baseballs? No, of course not. Those are parlor tricks-gimmicks to get people's attention. Margaret's real breakthrough was figuring out how to unharness the brain from the bridle of real time. Millions of possible outcomes mapped out in the space of an instant. Loget's told me all about it: a giant grid stretching out in every direction. Infinite possibility is only a state of mind!
"Now here's where you need to abandon linear thinking. With infinite possibilities at your disposal-with all those realities ripe for the plucking-why stop at just outputting one?"
Natch snorted. "Because there's only one you," he said. "I'm not an idiot. I know what you're getting at. Throw two coins, catch them both. But you can't catch them both. You've only got one set of hands. We proved that back at the hotel."
Brone drilled Natch with his intense stare. "One set of real hands, yes. But what about in multi?"
Natch pursed his lips but said nothing.
"Clearly our little demonstration at the hotel proved one thing," continued the bodhisattva. "Our minds have more than enough processing power to run several tracks of consciousness at the same time. Consciousness is itself little more than a parlor trick, a low-bandwidth illusion. We've known this since ancient times. Yet we've never been able to duplicate it, until now.
"You say multiple simultaneous realities are useless in a world where we only have one set of flesh and bones," said Brone. "Fair enough. But how much time do we actually spend in that world of flesh and bone anymore? This is a programmable world, Natch! We live sixty percent of our lives in virtual environments. Your Vault account is just a row on a stratospheric database table. The layout of your apartment is malleable and subject to change with a thought. The postings you make on the Data Sea, the music you listen to on the Jamm, the bio/logic programs you tinker with in MindSpace: all virtual. The physical world doesn't hold us back anymore. The only barrier is that single consciousness-and Margaret's MultiReal program shatters it."
The entrepreneur's head felt bloated, too clogged with contradictions to respond properly. "But what good is it? Why would you want to live multiple lives like that?"
"What good is it? What good is any technology?" Brone was getting too agitated for the chair to contain him, so he stood and leaned on its back like a lectern. "Technology expands choice," he said. "It liberates us from cause and effect, just like Margaret promised. Don't you remember her speech a couple of months ago? I remember every word of it. What would our lives be like if we had made different choices? In the Age of MultiReal, we will wonder no more-because we will be able to make many choices. We will be able to look back at checkpoints in our lives and take alternate paths. We will wander between alterna
te realities as our desires lead us.
"Just imagine it! Two roads diverge in a wood. Why choose between them when you can take both? You can spawn separate multi projections to travel them and give each one a separate consciousness to experience them. Who's to say you can't choose two different jobs, two different companions, two different Vault accounts? And if one of these lives leads to bad consequences-well, then wipe it out! MultiReal can erase your memories, Natch, and the memories of those around you! Don't tell me you've lived your entire life without regrets."
"Of course not," said Natch, "but-"
Brone abruptly yanked off his prosthetic arm and slammed it on the table. All conversation in the cafe ceased. "Don't tell me you've never made a choice you wanted to take back," he snarled, his voice brimming with sudden rage.
Awkward and embarrassed silence held sway in the room as everyone watched the pale limb sitting on the wrought-iron table. Natch took a sidelong glance at the middle-aged card players, who were staring at him with open contempt. He doubted that the diss knew the story of the Shortest Initiation, but clearly they understood the inference of Brone's gesture. Natch cursed the bodhisattva silently. How funny that his handicaps only seem to be an inconvenience when it suits him, he thought. He remembered how Brone had used the limb to similar effect during their meeting last month.
The silence continued for another minute, and then finally everyone turned back to their mugs of coffee as if by unspoken consensus. The bodhisattva reached over and quietly reattached his appendage without a word.
"Listen," hissed Natch. "I see what you're trying to do, but this Possibilities 2.0 would never work. You'd have to get governments to rewrite laws. The Vault and the Data Sea engineers and Dr. Plugenpatch and who knows who else would have to buy into it."
"I never said it would be easy," replied Brone blithely, taking his seat once more. His anger seemed to have dissolved as quickly as it had appeared. "I never said it would happen overnight."
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