by Stanley Bing
“Pete? Can you advance the conversation? I’m sure Arthur can take just a bit more, as long as it’s germane.”
“Of course,” said a relatively youngish executive, certainly no more than sixty. He was very tall and skinny, and had chosen to decorate his cranial implant with black and gray pinstripe, which Arthur thought was a nice touch. “There are other issues, beyond Athena itself, that you should be aware of, sir,” he said.
“Pete Hollister,” said Jerry. “He’s our chief operating officer. Number two. Pending your approval, Artie.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair and looked expectantly at Hollister. “Just the treetops, Pete,” he said. “I’m bumping into my ADD, and I’m sure you all want to get to my agenda before your colostomy bags are full.”
The board rustled. This guy, his tone, not nice. Above all, they liked things to be nice. Perhaps things wouldn’t be nice at all as long as he was around. Something for them to think about together. After.
Hollister stood, perambulated in leisurely fashion to the front of the room, and took his place not behind but next to the lectern, his elbow perched upon it in sprightly insouciance. “First, the good news,” he said. “The aggregation of all extant brands in all sectors is just about complete. We’ve got them all working under the same umbrella, segregated into verticals, with each vertical managed by a line organization reporting in by solid line to this building. We’re both highly centralized for accountability and functionally decentralized for operations.”
“What the fuck do you mean, ‘vertical’?” Arthur had always hated jargon.
“Agriculture,” said Hollister. “Essentially, all arable acreage from what used to be eastern Colorado to western Missouri are now one gigantic farm unit managed by the Archer Daniels Midland unit from Saint Louis.”
“We have control of Saint Louis?”
“Of the business operations there, sure, although the city itself is pretty much a total loss.”
“So what’s the problem?” Arthur could feel himself losing his patience.
“The workforce is saturated. We are the only employer of record. There’s no competition to work against, no chance of promotion, no personal sense of ownership in any of the operations. And this isn’t unique to the farm people; it’s kind of a ubiquitous issue in electronics, transportation—which is still managed out of what’s left of Detroit—even entertainment, which remains headquartered in the San Fernando Desert near LA. There’s no morale whatsoever throughout the operation. Productivity is down. A sense of disorganization and malaise has set in, and, particularly among the, you know, real people, who haven’t mutated into pinheads yet, we’re seeing defections into the ungoverned areas.”
“Are there many of those?”
“Well, yeah,” said Hollister. “Which means our potential marketplace of customers is peeling off, too. Going elsewhere.”
“What?” Arthur was confused. “You mean Mars or something? We control the planet! Where are people going?”
Hollister motioned at the screen wall, and a map of the continental United States appeared. The two coasts and certain urban areas were blue. Vast swatches of crimson swept across certain sections of the center zones and most of Florida. Pockets of green sprouted in the Great Northwest, New England, and the Hudson Valley. He went on: “There are whole sections of Idaho . . . Wyoming . . . even Iowa and Kansas . . . also enclaves in upstate New York and throughout the South, of course . . . that are basically without centralized government of any sort. We have no data on the inhabitants, because they buy locally. Most are not implanted with any electronics.”
A frisson of discomfort swept the ancients around the table. No electronics!
“They see themselves as American but not as citizens of the United States, such as it is. They pay no taxes, and any attempt to reimpose control over their territory has generally failed for one reason or another. In the heavily armed areas, pictured here in red, company representatives are viewed as invaders and either imprisoned, killed, or sent back with their heads shaved and their implants torn out. In the hippy-dippy green areas, security guys go in, but they just don’t come out.”
“Don’t come out?” Arthur was mystified.
“Nope.”
He thought back to the days when he was very, very young. He remembered the Rolling Stones playing at Altamont Speedway back in the ’60s, where he had dropped acid and met a girl he could never find again. And . . . the end of the road on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The Taylor Ranch. Ah! What a paradise. Everybody naked. Lived in trees. He could see guys going in to that kind of world and never coming out again. Not that they could be allowed to do so.
“Let me know when you want to talk about utilizing our significant military resources to take back that territory,” said a dry voice in a corner of the room. It was a short, squat man with the kind of beard shadow that was impossible to eradicate without state-of-the-art face peeling tech. Clearly, this guy had not been interested in that cosmetic procedure. Arthur looked him over. Tough customer. They exchanged glares. Hey, thought Arthur, this is a guy I’m going to need to talk to.
“Finally,” said Hollister, “we have almost completed planning for the physical consolidation of the Cloud.”
“I beg your pardon?” Here Arthur sat up. A brisk, cold wind blew through the room. His expression was not pleasant. Or, rather, it was excessively pleasant. Arthur had learned this expression from a media mogul who once ran Hollywood. When about to pounce, the trick was to radiate such excessive goodwill that the unsuspecting target of the coming eruption, unprimed by experience, had no idea that he or she was about to be charbroiled into a cinder and sent reeling into hell.
“As you know, um, Arthur, if I may call you that . . .” Here Arthur simply sat, pleasantly inquiring, and silent. “At any rate, um, sir . . .”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Spit it out.”
“Well, the idea, which was approved by the entire board, may I add.” Here Hollister looked around the room for support, and, finding nothing but extreme vacuity to his left and right, soldiered on. “The idea was to save untold trillions of dollars by consolidating the physical servers that make up the thing that we know, of course, as the Cloud, which is really nothing but a lot of hardware sharing redundancies and trading data from sources all over the world. Up until a few years ago, the servers were all over the place, but this led to collection inefficiencies as well as a certain sense that any pod of servers was less secure from terrorists than a strong centralized location staffed by trusted security people provided by Mr. Mortimer here.” He nodded at the scowling, bullet-headed figure, who was dressed in a suit that was a little too small to hide the bulge at his hip. He was having trouble sitting, in fact, and had to lean to one side to accommodate his weapon inconspicuously, which made it even more conspicuous.
“I’ll give my report on this subject later,” said Mortimer. Unlike the rest of the room, Mortimer was young, under fifty, at any rate, and did not seem eager to ingratiate himself with anybody. Arthur was starting to like him.
“So, to wrap it up,” Hollister said very quickly, “the consolidation is almost complete, and the new Cloud is set to go online in perhaps two weeks.”
“Are you planning a big ceremony?” Arthur asked cordially.
“Not really.” Hollister was jovial now, his report all but concluded. “Just a few dozen people. We’re deciding whether to include spouses.”
“Canapés?” said Arthur. There was a short silence. It was suddenly hard to read him. He had gone opaque. “Has it occurred to anybody,” he said, scanning the room as if he were about to suggest a hand of whist, “that by centralizing the Cloud, you’ve put the brain stem of the entire civilized world at risk . . . you . . . fucking . . . morons!”
He stood and looked over the cringing table. And there it was. Within the space of three simple words, Arthur had descended into psychotic fury, demonstrating an executive power that cannot be taught, has to be built in. He
continued, dark now, a growling beast prepared to gut and eat the entrails of any creature who stood too close to him. “You’ve made it easy for anybody with a mind to do so to throw us back into the fucking dark ages. Did that ever occur to any of you nitwits?”
“Yeah,” said Mortimer from his end of the room. “It occurred to this nitwit.”
“You can stay after class, Mr.”—here Arthur peered at the small name card in front of the speaker—“Mortimer.” Then he just sat at the head of the table again, staring at the shriveled little beanbags in the high-back seats before him. He ran his fingers through his thick, sensuous mop of auburn hair and began the salvo he knew he must win.
“Okay, sports fans,” he said, dead level. “I’ve heard enough. One thing is clear: you guys are too old to manage this company effectively. You need to take a step back and let a younger man pick up the stick. Here’s how it’s going to be. There will be three classes of stock. First, C stock, which anybody can buy and has no voting power whatsoever.”
“Hey, Artie,” said Jerry. “Wait a minute.”
“The B stock will be available to board members and their wives, key executives, and others within the inner circle. It will have voting power, but in its aggregate, it will amount to perhaps twenty percent of the voting shareholder base. That is my gesture to you guys.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jerry. “We’re talking about management transition here, not change of ownership.” His face had turned from his normally rodentine pink to a deep, eggplant blue.
“The A stock in the corporation will be a supermajority of voting shares, amounting to eighty percent of the total. I will own all of that class.”
“I’m going to take this opportunity,” said Jerry, rising, “to thank Arthur for his time today and adjourn this meeting, so that we can deal with some of these ideas in the privacy of our—”
Arthur rose from his seat, circled the table, and, with a ferocious leap, landed directly on Jerry’s lapels, which he seized with both hands. He then lifted Jerry entirely out of his seat and shook him very hard, not playing around, so that the old man’s head snapped back and forth, and his shoulders rattled.
“Are you gonna fuck around with me, Jerry? Huh?” he barked, boring his face down into his adversary’s. “Did you bring me all the way here to waste my fucking time?”
“Artie, please, dude.” Jerry was green. “You’re fucking killing me, man.”
“Yeah? Well. That is just too . . . fucking . . . bad.” Arthur held the limp, trembling body of the former CEO of the largest corporate entity in the world in front of him, eighteen inches off the ground. Then he threw it back into its chair the way a child would dispose of a toy in which it had lost interest after deciding not to rip off its head.
“I’ll have all the A shares,” said Arthur, resuming his seat and brushing himself off to remove any imaginary dust. “Let’s put it to a vote.”
“May I ask a question?” a reedy voice piped up from the farthest corner of the room. “My name is Nord. I am general counsel.” The speaker was a very small sparrow of a woman. While not quite the dried husk of a certified board member, she was still extremely advanced in years, with a tuft of white hair and a large proboscis that tapered down into an invisible chin. Her role as arbiter of the corporate law was made clear by the steamer-trunk-sized suitcase that rested by the side of her folding chair. The rest of the mummies sat quietly. The possibility of physical injury had changed the entire game for everybody at the table. These people spent a significant part of every day caring for the physical instrument. The idea that it could be broken was never far from their minds. And here was this crazy motherfucker who not only held the secret of digital immortality but also was willing to shake Jerry to death. That former senior officer was still the color of a spoiled grape, all white and green and blotchy. Yeah, they were paying attention to whatever Arthur wanted.
“Just to make this really clear,” said Nord, her voice drained of all affect, “this will mean that you will own the company. It will be yours. All its operating divisions, but more importantly . . . you’ll own . . .” Here her professional sangfroid failed her, and she simply stared at Arthur for a moment or two.
“Yeah?” said Arthur.
“You will actually be the sole proprietor of the Cloud. Like, you’ll own it. Personally.”
“Yup. Pretty fucking great, huh?” There was a silence into which one might drive an eighteen-wheeler from the now-dead past into an uncharted future.
“So moved,” said a board member—it doesn’t matter who.
“Second,” said another.
“All who say aye?” asked Nord.
“Aye,” said the board.
“All who say nay?” Another pregnant silence.
“The motion is passed,” said the lawyer. Then they all just sat there.
“Okay,” said Arthur. Then he roared at the top of his lungs. “Bob!”
The double doors of the boardroom hissed open and in stepped the master of science who would grant them all eternal life. “This is Bob, who will explain the tech to you,” said Arthur. “Say hello to the room, Bob.”
“Hello to the room,” said Bob.
17
The Three Amigos
There is a special feeling in a conference room that has done its duty for the day. Everything is just a bit off. There are dirty glasses on the table. All the food is gone except for a couple of quinoa power bars, low-carb candy, the occasional cookie growing stale. There is coffee in the urns, but those who try it will be rewarded with a mouthful of tepid phlegm. A few half-dead teacups remain, the scum of dairy creamer crusting their surfaces. The shades, once closed against the distractions of the world outside, are now raised to welcome in the twinkling of the night: the lights of the campus far below; the seething glitter of the urban haze just beyond the arc of the earth.
In this particular war room, on this particular silent night, a few recessed lights shone in their invisible cornices, lending a gentle glow to the three amigos who sat quietly where the meeting had just ended. The board members had been sent to take a nap, recharge their variety of hardware and implanted prosthetics and electronics, infuse some fresh plasma, perhaps, and otherwise prepare for the ceremonial dinner that would conclude the day’s important events. They were all looking forward to it very much, for at least two reasons: first, it was quite possibly one of the final times they would all be chewing digestible slop in unison in their current physical incarnations, and, second, it was at Nobu, where it was devilishly difficult, even for them, to get a reservation. In this case, Arthur had possessed the presence of mind to secure the entire establishment for the event. He figured, hey, why not? It was the last time he would see any of the dehydrated little fucks.
Three gentlemen now sat at disparate corners of the enormous oval. Arthur himself was still at the head, leaning back in an almost completely prone position in the comfy recliner, his feet up on the hallowed surface, hands behind his head, eyes on the landscape beyond the windows. In the middle of one side was Bob, hunched over his tablet, doodling with his electronic pencil, very, very upset, although he didn’t show it. In the middle seat on the other side of the table was Mr. Mortimer, the head of security, who had been asked politely to remain after the rest of the players had departed. A companionable silence reigned over the cordial trio. This was the space between what had just occurred and what was about to happen. The agenda was up to the man who had just acquired more than any one individual had ever owned, in exchange for life eternal. The other two were content to wait.
“Bob,” said Arthur after a little while. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Mortimer here for a few minutes. You can stay if you like. But it’s not going to concern you all that much. After that, I do have a few important thoughts I’d like to share with you.”
“That’s okay, Arthur,” said Bob, looking at the body of Gene as he did so. He couldn’t help it. This was the physical entity he had created in the print shop and
then kick-started with the core of his own consciousness. The data he had downloaded from his brain into Gene’s were very basic: mostly a certain knowledge of the world as it existed, a simple frame of reference, some cultural data that gave the boy a template that could be filled later by the aged monster who had funded the project. The uploads from the minds of the board would also be comprehensive: everything a recipient host body would need to assume the character, the life experience—the entire consciousness—of the donor.
The recipient hosts would have to be printed, of course. They were already being spun into existence back at the lab, their DNA acquired from a variety of unwitting sources who believed their genetic material had been gathered for the purpose of ascertaining their ancestry. These brand-new bodies, empty of consciousness, would be ready before too much longer. It was remarkable how much could now be stored on a single chip. The computer that would house this entire database—the container of more than a dozen entire human souls—was no bigger than a wine cooler. The whole thing was miraculous. He had to admit that.
This omnipotent personage that Bob saw before him, leaning forward now on both elbows and clearly gearing up for the next phase of the business he intended to execute, was at this moment one of a kind, and in that splendid creation he was well pleased. But still. It was weird. And he found himself missing . . . somebody. The feeling of missing somebody or something was so intense, suddenly Bob was shocked to find that he might have actually burst into tears if he were that kind of person.
“I’ll just hang out here and take it easy until you’re ready for me, Arthur,” is what he finally choked out. Then he rose and went to the sideboard to fetch a power bar and a bottle of water, his back to the two who now faced each other across the field of battle.
