Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Last, we derive from information theory the fact that any carrier signal can hold only so much information before noise obscures it, no matter how deviously the information is encoded.”

  Wargrave halted both his speech and his stride and regarded Howie closely.

  “I’m sure,” he said, “you can see where this leads us.”

  Howie shook his head in a gesture that could be interpreted as either yes or no.

  Wargrave resumed his lecture, perhaps with a trifle less certainty about Howie’s readiness to hear what he had to say.

  “Any group that adopts the enactment of Godelian unprovables as its goals can manipulate information in such a way as to impose its worldview on the rest of humanity. And by flooding the human brain with information, it is possible to exceed the carrying capacity of that rather primitive organ, rendering the mass of men unable to interfere.”

  Howie stared at his boss. Finally, as if his voice had grown rusty with disuse, he said, “But what—what are the goals?”

  “I would tell you if I could,” promised Wargrave. “But it is impossible to state them. We keep nothing secret, you know. Secrets are part of the old paradigm. Our methods embrace openness. We tell everything. All information is equally manipulable, equally valuable. We make no distinctions between secrets and common knowledge. Neither do we discriminate between viewpoints. We embrace everyone’s information.

  “We spread the views of the FBI, the CIA, DARPA, the NSA, the KGB, Ml5, M-19, the Cosa Nostra, Mossad, the Sandinistas, Service A, the National Information Service, the PLO, the Shining Path, the IRA, SWAPO, the Polisario, Islamic Holy War, the Red Army, the Posse Comitatus, Department Two, Gobernacion, Move, B’nai B’rith, and the Silent Brotherhood—just to name a few.

  “Our members belong to all religions and races and ethnic groups. We have operatives who are Catholics, Quakers, Protestants, Shiites, Sunnis, Sufis, Hindus, Buddhists, Baptists, Scientologists, Anglicans, Jews, brujos, and the followers of macumba and vodun. Every country feels our touch.

  “We welcome every possible outcome of our actions—and none. We are for flood—and drought. Fire—and ice. War—and peace. Anarchy—and totalitarianism. Love—and hate. We stand by leftists, rightists, and middle-of-the-roaders. We find every system of government equally congenial to our company. The world as you see it is just right for us. But we are working to change it.

  “Do you understand?”

  Howie sat speechless for a full minute.

  “I’m afraid,” he said at last, “I do.”

  7.

  Some revelations show best in a twilight.

  —Herman Melville

  Somewhere a door opened.

  Howie, eyes shut, heard it—ever so faintly—from within his music, eerie synthesizers and alien chimes tinkling in a hydrogen wind: “Deeper and Deeper” by the Fixx.

  Not particularly caring about who was coming into his room unannounced, Howie continued to listen to the music, probing its depths for some guidance.

  The music suddenly stopped; the pressure of the foam pads left his ears.

  Howie reluctantly opened his eyes.

  Lesley stood there.

  “Vegging out?” she asked.

  Her voice was light, but her face expressed concern. Howie felt an almost forgotten sense of responsibility to his girlfriend reawaken. Much as he disliked speaking now, he forced himself.

  “Yeah, I guess I am. Nothing serious, though. Just waiting for a call.”

  “From whom?”

  Howie shrugged. “You know. My job.”

  Lesley regarded Howie sternly from beneath her cap’s bill. “Howie, listen to me. This work is not good for you. I haven’t liked it from the start. And I know you haven’t told me everything about it. I’d probably like it even less then. Why don’t you just quit? Just ignore them when they call you.”

  “I can’t. I’m in too deep now.”

  Lesley made as if to throw down Howie’s expensive headphones and stomp them. Howie grabbed them back from her. She looked like she wanted to cry.

  “Howie, this is awful! You’re not yourself anymore. You’re all wrapped up in some wild-goose chase. You’re yelping after a red herring. You’re, you’re—you’re trapped in a fata morgana.”

  Howie jumped. “You know her?”

  “Know who?”

  Howie realized his mistake. “Nothing. No one. Just forget it.”

  “All right!” Lesley yelled. “I will!”

  She ran out, slamming the door.

  Howie re-donned his ’phones.

  Somehow a day slipped by. Maybe two.

  His telephone was ringing.

  The only reason he heard it was that his batteries were dead.

  He stood, moved, and picked up the receiver.

  The line was full of noise: interstellar static, subterranean tectonic plate grinding.

  Howie recognized Wargrave’s voice.

  “Mr. Piper. Would you please come to the office?”

  “Sure,” said Howie. “Be right there.”

  He hung up.

  What else could he have said?

  He made it to the offices of The United Illuminating Company in half an hour, stopping only for new Duracells.

  Wargrave handed him a folded sheet of paper. Studying him closely, the stiff-suited man said, “We have one final messenger job for you before you move into your new position. Please deliver this paper to the address indicated, and then return home. We will be in contact with you afterward.”

  “Sure,” said Howie mechanically, taking the paper.

  He went out.

  In the rattling, steamy subway car, Howie felt a minor curiosity akin to an itchy mosquito bite. Why wasn’t this message sealed? Could something that wasn’t secret still be potent? What did the paper say?

  Giving in, Howie unfolded it, expecting one of those duplicitous messages that shifted between examinations.

  This one didn’t. It was a map of the city. There was an X at the western end of the Queensboro Bridge. At the bottom of the map was written:

  GRASS TRUCKING—12:17 P.M. EVERY THURSDAY

  So much for potent secrets.

  Howie got off in Times Square.

  Aboveground he was struck by the welter, the barrage, the assault of information. The density here was incredible. Howie tried to ignore it as he walked toward the address given.

  On a plywood facade masking construction, layers of torn posters formed a palimpsest. Howie read, from several layers:

  PERFORM SMOKE SALE OF VALUES GREEN LIFETIME

  It reminded him of something Herringbone might say.

  At an intersection, Howie witnessed a near accident. The drivers swore vociferously at each other. Howie thought of Fatima Morgenstern, her eyes like cleaning fluid.

  Wind blew some unspooled recording tape around Howie’s ankles. He kicked it away.

  At the proper address, Howie went up two flights of shabby stairs and came to a frosted-glass door. He knocked, and a man’s voice said, “C’mon in.”

  The nondescript room held three people: two young bearded men, and a woman dressed in a military-style jumpsuit. One of the men extended his hand, and Howie gave over the paper.

  No one said anything else.

  Howie departed.

  Out on the sidewalk, he bought a newspaper, just to learn the day.

  It was Tuesday.

  On Thursday at 11:30, Howie walked down Fifty-ninth Street toward the Queensboro Bridge. As always, whenever he approached this particular structure, he found himself humming Simon and Garfunkel.

  “Slow down, you move too fast.…”

  Where the bridge debouched onto the street, Howie positioned himself to wait. He watched the people-buckets of the aerial tramway move fluidly on their cables, as if they could carry one up and up, out of the atmosphere and into another world.

  At noon, Howie thought he recognized one of the people he had given the map to. The man was carrying a large knaps
ack and a duffel bag.

  At 12:17 a big sixteen-wheeler came off the bridge and stopped at the red light. On its side the truck said:

  GRASS TRUCKING

  W.A.S.T.E.

  Instantly it was swarming with people with guns in their hands. One ejected the driver, while others stood guard. Still others began to attach things to the truck.

  Howie watched with an indifference that lay uneasily atop an incipient queasiness. The civilians around him, however, were not so jaded, and began to scream and run.

  One of the commandos lifted a megaphone to his lips and said, “Attention! This truck carries nuclear wastes every week through the streets of your city. We intend to stop this insanity. Therefore, we have now rigged this truck with explosives. You have one minute to clear the area.”

  Those who hadn’t moved yet—the eternal gawkers —now took off.

  Howie did too.

  Out on Park he heard the explosion rip the truck open, scattering its contents to the winds.

  Sirens began uselessly to wail.

  8.

  Are we not threatened with a flood of information? And is this not the monstrousness of it, that it crushes beauty with beauty, and annihilates truth by means of truth? For the sound of a million Shakespeares would produce the very same furious din and hubbub as the sound of a herd of prairie buffalos or sea billows.

  —Stanislaw Lem

  The boat rocked.

  Howie sat on a toilet, the door to his stall closed and bolted.

  He was on the Staten Island Ferry, the Samuel I. Newhouse. He had been living in the toilet for a week, ever since the guerillas had blown the W.A.S.T.E. truck. He had fled the scene unthinkingly, trying to get as far away from the consequences of his actions as he could.

  When he hit the southern tip of the island, he stood and stared at the water. Spotting the ferry terminal, he went instinctively inside, paid his quarter, and boarded the outbound ferry.

  He hadn’t left since.

  He lived off purchases from the concession stand. He washed at times in the sink. He read newspapers left behind, following the spread of radioactivity, the cleanup efforts, the panic, the suffering, the noise. At times he stood on the stern or the bow, watching either Manhattan or Staten Island retreat or approach, depending on the trip. The ferry ran twenty-four hours a day, in an endlessly reiterated voyage.

  No one bothered him. He had one tape. Steely Dan. He listened to “Bad Sneakers” over and over:

  Do you take me for a fool, do you think that I don’t see

  That ditch out in the valley that they’re digging just for me?

  Howie looked at the door of his stall. He contemplated going out. He thought about contacting the authorities. What could he say to them that wouldn’t add to the noise level? No, everything seemed like too much trouble. Turning his head, he saw new graffiti that someone must have written during one of his visits to the concession stand:

  BOG LIVES!

  Howie felt sick. The light hurt his eyes.

  Without warning, he heard the outer door of the lavatory open.

  The footsteps of two people sounded. He smelled cigarette smoke.

  Shoes appeared outside his stall, below the partition.

  A man’s pair. A woman’s.

  Howie waited for the owners of the shoes to speak.

  “Gibbons procreate moonily hung slick over wildly called tales,” said the man.

  “Come out, Howie,” said the woman. “Merde. Fuck. Christ on a crutch.”

  Do you remember a time before the Internet and the Web? It wasn’t all that long ago, although of course that faded day and age seems an eternity away. In those olden days, we struggling SF writers had a hard time pinning down the lines of the silicon creature yet to be born. And today, for instance, we still don’t have William Gibson’s cyberspace in its full “consensual hallucination” form. Nonetheless, a few of us sensed that something big was on the way. In this story, I tried to envision our digital future fairly rigorously, resulting in a mix of hits (the lower classes becoming digital have-nots) and near misses (“Net” as the term for the welfare system). Maybe I upped my lifetime predictive batting average a little. In any case, I had fun with the story and hope it still works despite its unfulfilled prophecies, as another of my “little guy’s reach exceeds his grasp, but what’s a heaven for?” tales.

  Agents

  1.

  The ABCs of Avenue D

  What the hell did a guy with cojones need two real lungs for anyway?

  Rafael Ernesto Miraflores asked himself this far-from-hypothetical question as he sauntered with mock bravado down Avenue D toward his appointment at the chop-shop. His chest already felt empty, as if a bloody-handed butcher had scooped out his lights with a laugh and a swipe. A stiff wire of cold seemed to have been rammed up his spine beside his nerve sheath, as if the metamedium—not content with already occupying his every waking thought—had somehow infiltrated its superconducting threading into his very body. He felt really lousy, for sure, wondering if he was doing the right thing. But what other choice did he have, if he wanted an agent?

  And want one he most certainly did. Not only was one’s own agent the source of an intrinsic fascination and status, but it represented vast power, a way out of the Net.

  Too bad Rafe was going to have to step outside the law to get one.

  Overhead, the hot summer sun hung in the smogless New York sky like an idiot’s blank face, happy in its ignorance of Rafe’s troubles. No indication of whether he had made the right choice seemed forthcoming from that direction, so Rafe swung his gaze back down to the street.

  Avenue D itself was filled with pedestrians, Rafe’s fellow dwellers in the Net. Occasionally, a small, noiseless electricart threaded its way among them, bearing its official occupant on some arcane business an agent couldn’t handle. Below Rafe’s feet, the mag-lev trains rushed through their vacuum chutes like macroscopic models of the information surging through the meta- medium.

  Rafe checked out the latest pop murals adorning the monolithic, windowless residences lining both sides of the Avenue. He thought he recognized the styles of several friends who were experts with their electrostatic splatterers. One caricature of a big-breasted chica—who resembled the metamedium star Penny Layne—Rafe recognized as the work of his friend, Tu Tun, whom all the uptown culture-vultures were already acclaiming as the hottest wall-artist to watch. Rafe felt just a little jealous of Toot’s growing success, and how he would soon escape the Net.

  And without selling so much as a quart of blood.

  Shit! For an instant, he had managed to forget where he was heading. Now the imminent sacrifice he was about to offer on the altar of twenty-first century commerce swept over him in all its gory glory.

  It wasn’t that Rafe had anything against prosthetics, like the huge cohort of old-fashioned elderly citizens born in the last century, who clamored for real-meat implants. He knew that his artificial lung with its tiny power source would be more reliable than his real one, unscarrable and efficient. No, it was just that he believed in leaving well enough alone. Why mess with something if it was working okay? It seemed like extending an invitation to Bad Luck, a force Rafe recognized and propitiated with a solemn consistency.

  But what other choice was there?

  And hadn’t he already run up against this unanswerable question before?

  Reaching the end of the block, Rafe stopped at the intersection. So absorbed in his thoughts had he been that he had to pause a minute to realize where he was.

  It was East Fifth Street, his destination. The cross-town blocks here on the Lower East Side had been converted to playgrounds checkered with benches, trees, and floral plantings. Mothers watched their children dig in sandpits and clamber over jungle gyms that looked like molecule models. Old men played chess in patches of shade. A few lightweight, nonthreatening drug deals were consummated, customers and dealers clad alike in iridescent vests and slikslax.

  Seeki
ng to divert his nervousness, Rafe tried to imagine his familiar neighborhood as it had looked sixty years ago, when the first of his family had arrived as refugees from the Central American flare-up. Only Tia Luz remained alive from that generation, and the stories she told in her rambling fashion were hard to believe. Acres and acres of devastation, burnt-out buildings and rubble-filled lots, homeless people wandering the dirty streets, all in the midst of the world’s wealthiest city. It seemed impossible that such a thing could ever have been, or that, if it had existed as she described, the Urban Conservation Corps could have fashioned the ruins into what he knew today. And yet, the information he had laboriously accessed from the metamedium seemed to confirm her tales. (And what other marvelous facts could he have easily learned, if only he weren’t bound by his lowly position in the Net to such a limited interface with the metamedium?)

  Shaking his head in mixed anger and wonder, Rafe turned down Fifth, heading toward Avenue C. Halfway down the block he came to one of the entrances to the enormous arcology that occupied the land bounded by Avenues D and C, and Fifth and Sixth Streets. (His own home building lacked a chop-shop, so he had been constrained to visit this portion of the Lower East Side labyrinth. Hoping the fresh air would clarify his thoughts, he had taken the surface streets, avoiding the underground slipstrata.)

  At the entrance, one of the building’s security agents was on duty. The shimmery, translucent holo was that of a balding white man of middle age, wearing the uniform of a private security force.

  Anywhere you saw an agent, an interface with the metamedium existed. Each interface consisted of at least three components: a holocaster, an audio input/output and a wide-angle video lens.

  Rafe passed beneath the attentive gaze of the agent, whose head swivelled with utter realism to track his movements. The agent’s initial expression of boredom switched to one of alert interest. Rafe wondered if the agent’s overseer was actively monitoring, or if the agent was autonomous. There was no way to tell; not even engaging the agent in conversation would offer any clue.