Interface

by Neal Stephenson; J. Frederick George

  The formerly high-gloss floor of the showroom was covered, patchily, with swaths of bleak off-brown indoor-outdoor carpeting, and the occasional half-unrolled length of battered and scarred gray foam rubber. A gridwork of black iron pipes hung down below the ceiling, and a few dozen theatrical spotlights were clamped onto the pipes here and there.

  Other light fixtures were affixed to tall, telescoping poles mounted on tripods. The tops of these devices had big white umbrellas on them to serve as reflectors; the effect was that of a sparse field of gigantic sunflowers. Heavy black electrical cables, bundled together with gray tape, snaked all over the floor.

  It was a stage. And the stage had props, scattered around irrationally: a couple of heavy, impressive wooden desks. Plastic plants. Several bookshelves loaded with books. But as Aaron found when he looked at one of these, it was fake. There were no books on the shelves. What looked like a line of books seen on edge was a hollow plastic shell. The entire bookshelf weighed all of about twenty pounds.

  There were some muffled clunking noises, and some lights came on at one end of the room. Aaron could only see about half of the showroom floor from here, the rest of it had been blocked off by flimsy partitions.

  Finally he made out the streamlined pear shape of Cyrus Rutherford Ogle, standing next to a gray steel circuit-breaker box bolted to the wall, clunking lights on and off.

  “Goofy,” Ogle said, “my favorite.”

  “Oh. If I’d known, I would have brought you a souvenir.”

  “I get a souvenir every time I meet with one of my clients, haw haw haw,” Ogle said. “Come on back, my offices are back here, such as they are.”

  “Interesting building,” Aaron said.

  “We figured we’d leave the big CADILLAC up on the roof,” Ogle said, “to attract Republicans.”

  Aaron walked toward the back of the showroom, picking his way over cables and rolls of carpet padding.

  “You might wonder why a man who has been described as a cross between Machiavelli and Zeffirelli would hang out in Oakland. Why not Sacramento, where the politicians are, or L.A., where all the media scum hang out?”

  “The question had crossed my mind,” Aaron said.

  “It’s a tug-of-war. Closer I am to Sacramento, the better it is for the politicians. Closer I am to L.A., the better it is for the creative talent.”

  “You’re closer to Sacramento. So I guess the politicians win.”

  “They do not win, but they predominate. See, media people have no scruples. They will go anywhere. Politicians have no scruples either. But they like to act as though they do. And it is beneath their sense of artificial dignity to go all the way to L.A. because they still think that I am just a huckster and it makes them think that they are groveling to the false gods.”

  Ogle turned his back on Aaron and led him through a maze of partitions.

  “So why not set yourself up in Sacramento, if media people will go anywhere?” Aaron said, strolling after him, looking around.

  “Media people will go anywhere, but I won’t. I won’t go to Sacramento because it is a dried-up shithole. And San Fran is too damn expensive. So here I am, the best place I could ever be.”

  They were approaching some kind of an elaborate construction, a room within a room. It was a three-dimensional webwork of two-by-fours surrounding and supporting a curved wall. An old-fashioned, lath-and-plaster wall.

  One side of the construct had been slid away so that Aaron could see inside. The room as a whole was elliptical in shape, now split open like a cracked egg.

  Ogle noticed his curiosity and gestured at it. “Go on in,” he said. “Nicest room in this whole place.”

  Aaron sidestepped the unadorned beams of the wooden framing and passed through the gap into the oval room.

  There was a nice desk in here. It was an office. An oval office.

  It was the Oval Office.

  Aaron had seen the real Oval Office in the White House once when his high-school band went to Washington, D.C. And this was the same. If the two halves were slid back together, it would be an exact replica.

  “It’s perfect,” he whispered.

  “On TV it’s perfect,” Ogle said, ambling into the room. “On film, it’s just pretty good. Good enough for the yokels, anyway.”

  “Why would you need something like this?”

  Ogle tapped the big leather swivel chair with the palm of his hand, spinning it around toward him, and fell into it. He leaned the seat back and put his feet up on the presidential desk. “Ever hear of the Rose Garden strategy?”

  “Yeah, vaguely.”

  “Well, the White House is a busy place, what with all of those tour groups traipsing in and out, and as I said, most of the media types are here in Cal. Sometimes it’s more convenient to pursue the Rose Garden strategy right here in Oakland.”

  “I didn’t know you operated at that level,” Aaron said. “I didn’t know you worked for presidential candidates.”

  “Son,” Ogle said, “I work for emperors.”

  “In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. But no one will ever have as much character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.”

  Ogle had broken a six-pack out of a junky old refrigerator behind the “Oval Office” and set up the cans on the presidential desk. Aaron had pulled up another chair and now both of them had their feet up on the desk and beers in their hands.

  “So what’s it about now?” Aaron said.

  “Scrutiny. We are in the Age of Scrutiny. A public figure must withstand the scrutiny of the media,” Ogle said. “The President is the ultimate public figure and must stand up under ultimate scrutiny; he is like a man stretched out on a rack in the public square in some medieval shithole of a town, undergoing the rigors of the Inquisition. Like the medieval trial by ordeal, the Age of Scrutiny sneers at rational inquiry and debate, and presumes that mere oaths and protestations are deceptions and lies. The only way to discover the real truth is by the rite of the ordeal, which exposes the subject to such inhuman strain that any defect in his character will cause him to crack wide open, like a flawed diamond. It is a mystical procedure that skirts rationality, which is seen as the work of the Devil, instead drawing down a higher, ineffable power. Like the Roman haruspex who foretold the outcome of a battle, not by analyzing the strengths of the opposing forces but by groping through the steaming guts of a slaughtered ram, we seek to establish a candidate’s fitness for office by pinning him under the lights of a television studio and counting the number of times he blinks his eyes in a minute, deconstructing his use of eye contact, monitoring his gesticulations—whether his hands are held open or closed, toward or away from the camera, spread open forthcomingly or clenched like grasping claws.

  “I paint a depressing picture here. But we, you and I, are like the literate monks who nurtured the flickering flame of Greek rationality through the Dark Ages, remaining underground, knowing each other by secret signs and code words, meeting in cellars and thickets to exchange our dangerous and subversive ideas. We do not have the strength to change the minds of the illiterate multitude. But we do have the wit to exploit their foolishness, to familiarize ourselves with their stunted thought patterns, and to use that knowledge to manipulate them toward the goals that we all know are, quote, right and true, unquote. Have you ever been on TV, Aaron?”

  “Just incidentally.”

  “How did you think that you looked?”

  “Not very good. Actually I was kind of shocked by how strange I looked.”

  “Your eyes looked as if they were bulging out of your head, did they not?”

  “Exactly. How did you know that?”

  “The gamma curve of a video camera determines its response to light,” Cy Ogle said. “If the curve were straight, then dim th
ings would look dim and bright things bright, just as they do in reality, and as they do, more or less, on any decent film stock. But because the gamma curve is not a straight line, dim things tend to look muddy and black, while bright things tend to glare and overload; the only things that look halfway proper are in the middle. Now, you have dark eyes, and they are deeply set in your skull, so that they tend to be in shadow. By contrast, the whites of your eyes are intensely bright. If you knew what I know, you would keep them fixed straight ahead in their sockets when you were on television, exposing as little of the white as possible. But because you are not versed in this subject, you swivel your eyes around as you look at different things, and when you do, the white part predominates and it jumps out of the screen because of the gamma curve; your eyes look like bulging white globes set in a muddy dark background.”

  “Is this the kind of thing that you teach to politicians?”

  “Just a sample,” Ogle said.

  “Gee, it’s really a shame that—”

  “That our political system revolves around such trivial matters. Aaron, please do not waste my time and yours by voicing the obvious.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s how it is, and how it will be until high-definition television becomes the norm.”

  “Then what will happen?”

  “All of the politicians currently in power will be voted out of office and we will have a completely new power structure. Because high-definition television has a flat gamma curve and higher resolution, and people who look good on today’s television will look bad on HDTV and voters will respond accordingly. Their oversized pores will be visible, the red veins in their noses from drinking too much, the artificiality of their TV-friendly hairdos will make them all look, on HDTV, like country-and-western singers. A new generation of politicians will take over and they will all look like movie stars, because HDTV will be a great deal like film, and movie stars know how to look good on film.”

  “Does any of this relate to me, or are we just speaking in the abstract here?” Aaron said.

  Cy Ogle rotated his beer back and forth between the palms of his hands, as if attempting to start a fire on the tabletop.

  “A human being cannot withstand the scrutiny given to a presidential candidate, any more than a human being could survive the medieval trial by fire, in which he was forced to walk barefoot across hot coals.”

  “But people did survive those trials, didn’t they?”

  “Ever taken a fire-walking course?”

  “No. But I’ve heard they exist.”

  “Anyone can walk barefoot across hot coals. But you have to do it right. There’s a trick to it. If you know the trick, you can survive. Now, back in medieval times, some people got lucky and happened to stumble across this trick, and they made it. The rest failed. It was therefore an essentially random process, hence irrational. But if they had had fire-walking seminars in the Dark Ages, anyone could have done it.

  “The same thing used to apply to the modern trial by ordeal. Abe Lincoln would never have been elected to anything, because random genetic chance gave him a user-unfriendly face. But as a rational person I can learn all of the little tricks and teach them to my friends, eliminating the random, hence irrational elements from the modern trial by ordeal. I have the knowledge to guide a presidential candidate through his trial in this, the Age of Scrutiny.”

  “What kinds of tricks?”

  Ogle shrugged. “Some are very simple. Don’t wear herringbone patterns on TV because they will create a moire pattern. But some of them are—and I do not use this term in a pejorative sense—fiendish. That’s where you come in.”

  “I gather you want to use the IMIPREM to monitor people’s reactions to political debates, or something.”

  “Don’t ever say IMIPREM again. I hate that word,” Ogle said. “It’s a clumsy high-tech name. It’s the worst trade name ever invented. Right now, your device is going to get subsumed into a larger group of technologies. It is going to become one very important element in a large and extremely complicated technological system. The name for that system is PIPER. Which stands for poll instantaneous processing, evaluation, and response.”

  “You asked me if I could make it small enough to be portable,” Aaron said.

  “That I did.”

  “You want to have your poll subjects carry these things around with them. You want to monitor their reactions to the campaign in real time. That’s poll instantaneous processing. And evaluation must mean that you’re going to feed all the data into your computers so that you can analyze and evaluate the incoming data as fast as it arrives.”

  “You are very perceptive,” Ogle said.

  “How about response ?”

  “How about it?”

  “I understand the instantaneous processing and evaluation. But how can you respond to a poll instantaneously?”

  “As I said,” Ogle said, “your device will be only a small part of a large system.”

  “I understand that. But I’m asking—”

  “Similarly, you, Aaron, will be only a small part of a large organization. Not the leading man anymore. A small price to pay for financial security, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes. I’m just wondering—”

  “One of your responsibilities, as a part of this large team, will be to use your head a little bit and not try to delve into matters that are remote from your own little sphere. You can’t understand everything.”

  “Oh.”

  “Only I, Cyrus Rutherford Ogle, can understand everything.”

  “I was just asking out of pure curiosity.”

  “What is this the Age of, Aaron?”

  “Scrutiny.”

  “Guess what is going to happen to you and your company when you become part of the PIPER project?”

  “We will get scrutinized.”

  “Guess what is going to happen, then, if you insist on asking infelicitous questions, out of pure curiosity?”

  “I will get roasted alive on hot coals.”

  “Along with me and everyone else involved in PIPER, including my clients.”

  “Say no more, I will be discreet.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what my responsibilities will be in PIPER.”

  “To work with our chip people and miniaturize your device. I have already made an appointment with some clever fellows at Pacific Netware, up in Marin County. We will go up there tomorrow and meet with them, like medieval monks gathering in a remote orchard, and we will build high the flame of, quote, rationality, unquote.”

  nine

  TUSCOLA IN late morning was silent except for the whistles of hundred-car freight trains thundering north-south along the Illinois Central or east-west on the B&O, and the occasional distant blatting noise of a truck downshifting on the highway. Cold winter sunlight was slanting in through the beveled-glass windows surrounding the front door, forming a spray of little rainbows on the aging shag carpet that covered the living room floor. Cozzanos had always placed a premium on warmth over exquisite taste and so they had shag carpet. William A. Cozzano had known for a long time that there was good oak flooring under there and had been resolving, for the last twenty years, to peel up the carpet and sand it and refinish it. It was one of those things that would wait until his retirement.

  But he wouldn’t be able to do it now. There was no way he could handle a big floor sander. He would have to pay someone to do the work for him. He had always done his own work on his own house, even when it meant waiting until he had a free weekend.

  The street was made of red brick. So was the sidewalk. The bricks were heaved up from place to place by the roots of the big oak trees in the front yard. In other spots they were gradually sinking into the lawn. Kids from the afternoon kindergarten class were ambling down the sidewalk on their way to the Everett Dirksen Elementary School two blocks away, which had been retrofitted into a former hospital. They took no notice of the house. Olde
r kids, who could read the words THE COZZANOS on the little sign hanging on the lamppost in the front yard, always stared and pointed, but the kindergartners didn’t. Cozzano recognized a grandnephew twice removed and tried to wave, but his arm didn’t work.

  “Goddamn it,” he said.

  When he moved his tongue, a wave of drool crested over his lower lip and ran out the left side of his mouth. He felt it running in a thin stream down onto his chin.

  Patricia came back into the room, of course, just in time to get a good look at this. She was a local girl, former babysitter to James and Mary Catherine, had worked in Peoria as a nurse for some years, and was now back home in Tuscola, working as a babysitter again. This time for William. Before the stroke, she had treated William Cozzano with awe and deference.

  “Whoops, did we have a little accident there?” she said. “Let’s just wipe that right up.” She took a diaper out of her pocket and ran it up Cozzano’s chin, a brisk uppercut. “Now, here’s your coffee—decaf, of course, and pills. Lots of little pills.”

  “What are those pickles?” Cozzano said.

  “I’m sorry, William, what did you say?”

  He pointed to the little plastic cup that Patricia had set down next to him, filled with colorful circles and oblongs.

  Patricia heaved a big sigh, letting him know that she’d rather he didn’t ask such questions. “Blood pressure, anticlotting, heart stimulation, elimination, breathing, and then of course some vitamins.”

  Cozzano closed his eyes and shook his head. Until two weeks ago he had never taken anything other than vitamin C and aspirin.

  “I put some skim milk in your coffee,” Patricia said.

  “I take it purple,” Cozzano said.

  Patricia beamed. “You mean you take it black?”

  “Yes, goddamn it.”

  “It’s just a little hot, William, so I wanted to cool it down a bit so you wouldn’t burn your mouth when you took your medicine.”