“But we’re on your team. You have to trust us.”
“No, James, you trust me. Maybe I have trusted you too far already.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let us be honest. You are too good a programmer for a video artist. You are too good a fighter for a Harvard pussy. So, you see, we all have our secrets.”
“Wait, you think—”
“I think if you want to be private about your history, fine. I don’t tell everyone my whole life either. But that means we take things a step at a time here. You keep doing such good work, and our team becomes very . . . intimate.” She slaps me gently on the cheek. I almost think she’s going to kiss me. But instead she flips open her phone. “I enjoy our little talk, but please excuse me. I have to call.”
Dismissed, I head back into the POD. Olya’s little wince of uncertainty when I brought up Exotica indicates a sore spot. I need to probe further to see if that was just a reflexive twitch, or if our otherwise thriving team has been infected by the Bug.
39
Late Tuesday night, Amazone is crowded with hard-core patrons, mostly financial players eager to take on the proverbial losing proposition. I actually have to wait for a minute to pay my cover. In the main room, I see Ben Mondano standing by the bar speaking with one of his bouncers, an older gentleman built like a septic tank.
Olya wouldn’t expressly admit that Mondano is her secret partner, but I’m betting a little pretense can extract an official confirmation from him. And maybe some more information about their plans. In light of Adrian’s warnings, I can’t resist letting him know there’s someone new on the team who will be watching him closely.
As I approach, his eyes pass over me without recognition. I sidle up next to him and say, “Hey, can we have a ‘sit-down’?”
The bouncer stares at me and says, “I’ll be with you in a moment, sir.” He turns back to Mondano.
“I’d like to talk to you, Mr. Mondano.”
He turns. “With me?” A slight slur tells me he’s pretty much in the bag.
“Yeah. In private.”
“Do I know you?”
The bouncer puts his hand gently on my shoulder. “Listen, guy, I’m sure I can help you with whatever you need here.”
I ignore him and focus on Mondano. “We met last week. I was working on a documentary.”
“Oh, yeah. How’s all that going?” He hits ‘that’ with derisive emphasis, the booze having spared me from the solemn mafioso routine.
“It’s over. I’m working with Olya now.”
Mondano looks at me for a second, deciding whether to admit that he knows what I’m talking about. Finally, he sends his guy off with a sideways flick of his head.
I continue. “I wanted to ask you about a disturbing rumor I heard about—”
“Disturbing . . . you know, I find it disturbing to be seeing you here again.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, you show up out of the blue asking me these questions about a missing fruit. And then I find out you’ve inserted yourself into Olya’s project. That a coincidence?”
“Not at all. We work together.”
“Yeah? Well I work with Olya too. She’s handling any arrangement we might make. So if you have questions, you need to just talk to her.”
“I could do that. But I don’t think she’d be real happy to hear that you’re not in any position to be throwing money around.”
“I’m not, huh?”
“Exotica Enterprises? I hear the most exotic thing about your enterprise is its tax return. So maybe you can explain to me how you’re planning to fund our space-age cybrator factory when you don’t have the capital to back a hot dog stand.”
Mondano stretches his jaw like a boxer preparing for the bell. “You’re beginning to piss me off.”
“Really? ’Cause I’m just getting started. Why don’t you tell me—”
Mondano goes volcanic with rage. He yanks my shirt so our faces are inches apart. “I’ll tell you this, motherfucker. Olya knows the money is not in doubt. I don’t have to justify shit to you.” He jerks me again. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see two bouncers walking toward us. He continues. “You’re fucking with things you don’t understand. This shit will get taken care of at a level way over your head. We are dealing with Olya. Only. You keep dicking around, she’ll have your nuts. And that’s not even close to what I’ll do if you come back here. You understand me?” He jabs his index finger at my face.
Though I’m suspicious that I’ve just been subject to his best Joe Pesci impression, I set my feet, preparing to make him wish he’d kept his hands to himself should this run to actual rather than affected violence. I say, “What I understand is that you’re not the only two-bit pornographer on the block. So I suggest you behave yourself.”
The bouncers arrive and look at him expectantly. But he just stares at me.
“I think I can find my way out.”
I wheel away from Mondano and brush past his security. He watches me go. His expression is now pensive but saturated with menace. Like he’s sorting through a list of ways to dispose of my body.
Both of the bouncers follow me out to the street.
40
Astinging sleet falls as I search for a cab on Eleventh Avenue. The ice feels as though it’s negotiating with the frigid wind to unite and form a full-blown fusillade of hail. Since precipitation instantly melts all available taxis, I resign myself to trudging the seven blocks to the Port Authority subway.
At home, I find that Red Rook Research has turned around my inquiries into the companies relevant to my investigation. The page on links between IMP and Exotica Entertainment contains only a rehash of the extent to which mainstream media companies benefit from adult content. They do. A lot. Who cares?
The next section deals with NOD. It lists a day-old post from a free-culture blog whose headline is “Four (w)Horsemen Fly.” Underneath this is a series of progressively closer photos of four casually dressed young men boarding a G5. The post reads:
Repent, cynners! The signs of the coming infocalypse are manifest!
How else to interpret these photos we get by way of Planespotting.org? Oh yes, the flying fetishists caught the founders of the righteously anti-corporate NOD Collective boarding that classic conveyance of capitalists: the G5.
And not just any G5. See that tail number N071MT? Fellow cynners, that serial registers as the number of the IMP! The plane is the dread flying chariot of the devil himself: Blake Randall. Expect news of NOD getting its 30 pieces of silver presently. Shall the faithful NODlings be thrown into the fiery pit of “special premium access accounts”? Judged for the cyns of gambling and obscynity?
One thing is clear: the end is near!
In the closest shot, one of the NOD founders has spotted the photographer and attempts to hide his face with the leather portfolio he’s holding. On that folder are printed the words GOBLIN CAPITAL, underneath which is a nicely embroidered logo of a toothy goblin. The creature was clearly drawn by the same artist who designed the IMP cyclops statue in Blake’s apartment. Instead of a giant eye, the goblin has an enormous open mouth, tiny beady eyes, and a wild thatch of electrified blue hair. A beast geared toward consumption. Gobbling, I suppose, enterprises.
So Goblin Capital must be the acquisition arm of Blake’s business development efforts. I’ve been trying to figure out why Billy’s unearthed his father’s relationship with the sex industry in the seventies. But now I see that all the ancient history is but a prelude to his main point, which I’m starting to think will be some form of:
Like father, like son.
A substantial portion of NOD’s user base has sex on their mind when they’re logging in, but you can say the same thing about the internet in general. Billy’s indictment remains weak. There must be something else.
His other major endeavor has been antagonizing Olya. It can’t be a coincidence that she’s dealing with this guy whose father used to do business
with Robert Randall. So how does IT relate to Billy’s family morality play?
Let’s try the skeleton key for unlocking someone’s motivations: money.
Mondano said, “Olya knows the money is not in doubt.”
Olya said, “When I find Ginger a husband, he will be rich, respectable, and committed. He will put a kingdom at her feet.” That does not describe Exotica. So if Mondano’s involved, he’s either a junior partner or a front.
Where then is the money coming from?
I hear Blythe say: “I think the imp to which my brother seems most attuned is Poe’s, not our father’s.”
Mondano said, “This shit will get taken care of at a level way over your head.”
They’ve all been hinting at the same thing, and until now it was going over my head.
Over my head: like at the rarefied level of billionaires. Billionaires with grand visions who can assemble portfolios of companies in order to implement them. To lay a kingdom at Ginger’s feet. Blythe isn’t referring to her brother’s self-destructive propensities. She’s talking about his corporate strategy.
As obvious as it is in retrospect, I wish I could say I knew it all along. Maybe the idea was simmering in my subconscious, but it took this NOD acquisition to shove it into my forebrain.
Blake is the real backer behind IT.
I can see it: Olya decides she’s going to reinvent sex. She initially contacts Mondano for help, and he pulls in Blake to provide the funding. They grew up within miles of each other and have been acquainted for years due to their fathers’ business relationship. I make a note to check for common schools or peewee football teams.
So Blake hears about the IT project and likes the idea. He’s aware of the conjugal genesis of IMP and sees an interesting parallel between his father and himself.
But the nature of the opportunity and the coming hearings on his sister’s big merger prevent him from grabbing it with both hands. If he starts ordering industrial quantities of K-Y jelly from his corner office, it will not go unnoticed. So the operational aspect has to be delegated to Mondano, a man with a familial tradition of successful transactions with the Randalls.
But Blake could invest in the idea through clandestine subsidiaries like Goblin. So he starts buying up companies like NOD that will help create this vast new virtual playground.
I’ll bet some digging will place Blake behind the LibIA cybering suite. The goal being to put sex on the brain of every avatar in NOD. A whole population just waiting for IT to be unveiled. Waiting for a product that finally lets them really jack into their fantasy world with the long-awaited wet interface. After all, why jerk off at your desk when for the price of a cheap dishwasher, someone else can reach across the country and do it for you?
Like his father helping fund the transition from stag films to adult video, Blake wants to midwife a new era of sexual commerce. While the knave tinkers with bits and bolts, the king builds an empire of Eros.
Thinking about Blake’s schemes causes me to consider Billy’s as well. I call Adrian, wanting to bring his netporn savvy to bear.
“De-Jim-erate! I knew you’d be back for more. Dirty pictures can be habit-forming, buddy.”
“I’m well aware of that, but right now I’ve got another question for you. What do you think Savant is all about?”
“You mean besides child abuse and poop?”
“I’m just thinking that no one does all that work without an agenda, right?”
“Segmented marketing,” he says.
“What?”
“Seriously. Learning someone’s kink is more valuable than gold. I’ll bet whoever’s responsible is using Sade’s carnal catalog to slice up the NOD user base by their fetishes. Extremely valuable information if you’re trying to move product. Think about selling your sex robots. Wouldn’t you like to know whether to show someone an ad featuring a man, a woman, or a donkey?”
Adrian’s idea seems to fit. Billy must have found out what his brother and Olya are up to and decided to interfere. To “rain down fire” on his “festering Sodom.” If he seeks to disrupt his brother’s plans for the Dancers, maybe he wants to do more than just expose them prematurely. Maybe he’s offering an alternative story line as well, one his players will discover as they tease out the purpose behind his game. Given Savant’s initial video preferences, Billy’s implying that Exotica is at some level sponsoring the game. So perhaps we’re to conclude that Blake and Mondano are members of the Pyros, and that this Satanic Elks Lodge is developing the Dancers as part of a worldwide Sadean conspiracy to debase our culture. To that end, they’ve set up this monstrous game to cultivate and then harvest the secret desires of their future customer base. A fantasy, of course, but might it be compelling enough to color the way other people view our machines?
If Billy discloses Blake’s investment through his game, then he’s setting the terms for the controversy the Dancers will inevitably stir up. He’d be dragging his brother into his jaundiced fantasy world in a less literal but more significant way than his fecal effrontery.
Sadly, I can’t test that theory on Adrian, so I say, “And I guess I could be confident that someone who’s spent a lot of time with Savant is going to consider a sex robot about as scandalous as a StairMaster.”
“That’s for sure. The whole point of 120 Days is that in matters of vice, you must always escalate. Same thing with technology. The eternal question: ‘What comes next?’”
“And the two often come together.”
“Since cave painting, dude. Any time we think up a new way to communicate, we use it for smut. Writing, photos, film, phone. Maybe even smoke signals. You, my friend, are walking a well-trod path.”
“But teledildonics won’t just be an incremental step. More like a giant leap. I fear for the children.”
“Well, if everyone’s fucking robots, maybe there won’t be any more. But don’t worry about the kids we’ve got. They’re already irredeemably warped: the first generation who have all seen bestiality vids before their first kiss. With all their ‘sexting,’ they’re used to making their own porn. Online they simulate all kinds of sex long before they get down to the real thing.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to drain all the mystery from the real thing. I mean, what’s it going to be like to lose your virginity to a machine?”
“Better than the town goat, Jimmy. Don’t be going soft on us now.”
When his cell goes right to voicemail, I say, “Blake, we need to talk.”
41
But it was Blythe who got back to me.
I’m steeling myself for another meeting with her two hours from now when she texts me to reschedule. We’d planned to meet in Tribeca after a cocktail reception for the Women in Media roundtable she had to attend. That engagement has been canceled due to a carbon monoxide leak at the venue, so she asks me if I can head up to her apartment.
This is my second invitation in a week from a woman with whom I’m not supposed to be working. I wonder if her place has a steam room.
I’m just turning under her building’s awning when a Mercedes Maybach with reinforced windows pulls up. Blythe slips out, riveting as ever in a pale blue cocktail dress. She tells me to stay with the car. She’s just going up to change, after which we can go somewhere else to chat. Then she disappears into her building. A bell guy makes way smartly, darting a glance at her legs as she passes.
Disappointed, I follow orders and crawl into the car, giving a mopey salute to her bodyguard/driver Brooks, who’s calling in a status update. He turns around to look at me and is about to say something when the left side of his face goes orange from a bright flash of light.
The sound hits with a breathy roar. We both duck instinctively.
“The fuck was that?” I yell.
Brooks lifts his head for a peek out the driver’s-side window, squinting at the light. I conclude it’s safe to look.
Across the street from us, high flames lick the frame of a car, spewing smoke thick enoug
h that you can see it even in the dark. For an instant, Brooks and I are captivated. Then we hear a woman scream.
Both of us jump out of the car and careen across the street. Oncoming traffic has already stopped, and people are getting out of their cars to bear witness. Brooks runs right up to the burning vehicle to check for passengers. I hesitate, thinking about how bomb makers love to plant a small preamble charge to draw a crowd before the big one hits. Then I hear the scream again and see that it’s coming from a large Hispanic woman lying on the sidewalk a couple feet away. Dropping my cowardly calculations, I run over to her, where I’m quickly joined by two bellmen and the security guard from Blythe’s building. We’re all yelling questions about where she’s hurt in what must be a confusing clamor.
It turns out she was screaming mostly with terror. Also that she’d dropped her leash, and her dachshund, Tupac, had elected to get the hell out of there. One of the bell guys rushes off to search for him. While she’s bleeding from a couple scrapes she suffered in hitting the deck, I can’t see any major injuries. I’m relieved at the sound of approaching sirens.
Brooks comes over to render assistance, having found no one in the car. The flames are dying, and really there wasn’t much of an explosion at all. The frame is intact, and I notice that it’s an eighties-vintage sub-compact, an unusual specimen in this neighborhood. While flames are still billowing out the open windows, there’s not even any glass spread around.
The glass.
If that was a real car bomb, this lady would have been peppered with glass from the exploding windows. But she’s not. Implying what? That the windows were rolled down and the windshields . . . removed? Which means someone took care that this car fire wouldn’t hurt anyone. Which means—
Strange Flesh Page 21
