Black Glass

by John Shirley

  A song by Jerome-X, “Sexual Identification Strata”, came thumping on through the sound system. She came dancing out from behind the bar, pulling off her top. Her small brown nipples were pierced, Candle saw. That was new. She still looked good. Taut stomach muscles. Candle tried not to stare as she rippled her flat belly and spun the blouse around in front of the camera ... and it tilted its lens toward her.

  So that answered a question: it was a man on the other end of the feed, reacting with a knee-jerk male response. Just long enough. Funny, Candle thought, all that techno-enhancement and he’s just as responsive to sex as a caveman.

  She danced as Jerome-X rapped out raspily, right on electronica-grime beat, with guitar stylings by the aging Dweezil Zappa:

  Sexual

  I.D. strata,

  The rise ‘n’ fall

  o’ your very very

  very very very very

  personal data

  Hormone-hot

  state o’ mind

  Holo shot

  inside the rind ...

  And she danced nearer to the flying camera ... which drifted a little nearer her as she swung her blouse with one hand and started to tug on her pants with the other. The boyish Norwegian, drinking aquavit, pounded on the table and whooped as Rina danced past him, rhythmically sidling ever closer to the drone.

  Any second now, Candle figured, as Shortstack tugged him toward a door to a back room, the drone operator was going to realize ...

  Then Rina was close enough, and she tossed her blouse over the drone, tangling its wings. It clunked to the floor, clattered and buzzed there like a wasp in a bottle.

  She stepped over to it and, still with the beat, stamped it several times, smashing it thoroughly. “Oh shit it got lubrication oil on my blouse ... Okay, you can go now ...”

  “Come on, Candle,” Shortstack said eagerly. “This way.”

  Nodder and Candle followed the energized Shortstack through a room that had once been used for mug shots, through another door, down a back stairs, along a corridor where a couple of dying fluorescent light-strips flickered unsteadily like the last thoughts of a dying man. “You want to tell me where we’re going?” Candle asked.

  “Not really,” Nodder said.

  “Not much use being cagey, Nodder,” Shortstack said, chugging along ahead of them. “I made up my mind we’re going to trust him. You don’t think he’s undercover? They’re not going to put somebody in that place four years just to go undercover. Rina knew all about it. Rina says he’s okay, he’s okay ...”

  Nodder shook his head. “I don’t like it. I think we shoulda felt it out longer.”

  “Still didn’t tell me where we’re going,” Candle pointed out.

  “We’re going to the back room,” Shortstack said. “Way, way in back. The room where the girls are.”

  “I didn’t do that kind of time,” Candle said. “I don’t need to get laid that bad. To me it was just yesterday they put me under.” This wasn’t exactly true, though. His body knew the difference and it had been prodding him hard, while he watched Rina dance.

  Nodder chuckled and shook his head.

  They reached the end of the corridor and Shortstack opened a door into a room on their right, a dusty office empty except for a series of abandoned workstations, cobwebby cubicles. The only light shafted in through a window, illuminating whorls of dust motes. The light dimmed for a moment as a police flying cruiser drifted past. Gone, and the light returned.

  That’s how it is to people like Nodder and Shortstack, Candle thought. The cops come around and it’s like a shadow falling over everything. To a cop—to me, back then—it was like we were shining light in dark corners. My light blinds you; my light is your darkness ...

  He still wished he was in that cruiser, and not here. It’d been hard to take, surrendering his badge.

  Nodder closed the door behind them and they went to a cubicle pressed against the wall, its workstation piled with old computer drives. But the random stack of drives were glued together like something in a stage set, Candle saw, looking close—realizing they were camouflage as Shortstack easily pulled the cubicle away from the wall, and walked through the low opening hidden on the other side. It was a rough door shape cut in the wall; Candle and Nodder had to stoop to get through. Shortstack reached back and pulled the cubicle back into place behind them as Candle looked around the smaller room ...

  Three women in jogging suits worked quietly side-by-side at three workstations, under a whispering air condition vent; a plump blond, a freckled, willowy brunette, a tall black woman with her head shaved, hoop earrings. Candle recognized the blond as a former hooker from Sunset Boulevard, and the other two had the hardened look—and the hand-inked prison tattoos—of women the street had known intimately. Delicate sensor headsets hooked them wirelessly to the computer, ball keyboards flickered and spun under their rapt fingers. The blond, he noticed, had her hair styled and colored to duplicate Marilyn Monroe’s classic ‘do. She had drawn on a beauty mark in the right place, too.

  The room was windowless, but animated posters of natural scenes, a waterfall, breakers crashing on rocks, broke up the sense of confinement. Music played softly, chugging enticingly along, a neo-reggae band just becoming popular when Candle had been UnMinded: The Sober Jamaicans.

  “Got a visitor,” Nodder said.

  Brinny, the short-haired brunette, turned to glare at him—Candle vaguely remembered booking her for illegal-software. She’d have been pretty if her eyes hadn’t been a trifle too close together. “That guy—he’s a ... ain’t he?” She broke off, frowning, not sure she should say it out loud. Maybe she should be pretending there was no reason a cop shouldn’t be here. She looked questioningly at Shortstack.

  “He was a cop,” Shortstack confirmed. “He’s O-source now.”

  “Says you!” Brinny scoffed. “He was undercover, sneaking around Johnny Ebo. Shot Johnny through the head, all gone’n took his woman.” There was something very trailer park about Brinny’s accent, her diction.

  “When I was undercover, I was looking for sex slaves, Brinny,” Candle said. “I know you don’t support that sex slave thing. Tell the women they’re getting jobs in the States and they end locked in a room with a bed. That’s not legit sex work.”

  “Johnny wasn’t in that,” she persisted, scowling.

  “But he knew who was. And I only shot him when he was going to hurt Rina. You hear a lotta dropcall on the street about me, isn’t true.”

  “So you going to work with us?” the black woman asked, looking at him sidelong.

  “This is Pell Mell,” Nodder said, indicating the tall bald black woman. “We usually just call her Pell. You know Brinny. This is Monroe. They’re all damn good—they’re all leet. Ladies, Candle here might be working with us—then again he might not.”

  All three women looked at him in vaguely hostile confusion.

  “Don’t know what you’re doing—or what I’d be doing,” Candle said. “But I can tell you, I’m not a cop. Not anymore. That just isn’t happening. I’m not busting anyone, anywhere.”

  Even as he said it—and Brinny sniffed skeptically—he wondered if it were entirely true; there were crimes he probably would report to old friends on the job, if he saw the crime going down. Some crimes—but not many.

  “Not like we’ve never done business with police,” Pell said. “I sucked many a pig dick to keep out of jail.”

  Candle winced at that. Pig dick.

  “Yeah,” Monroe said, her voice almost believably breathy. “We used to pay ’em off when we were dealing ... well.” She shrugged and went back to work.

  Candle was slightly more than half convinced Monroe used to be male.

  “Yeah well—if he was undercover before,” Brinny pointed out, “maybe he is now. But whatever, I’m-a let you guys worry on it.”

  She went back to work, fingers flying over the keyboards. Candle marveled at the dexterity of her fingers.

  “Okay
here’s the texer, Candle,” Shortstack said, “What we got here is–”

  “Ah, ’Stack,” Nodder interrupted, “are we entirely certain. . .?”

  “Nodder—we can trust the guy!” Shortstack insisted. “We’re doing this!”

  Even Candle wondered why Shortstack was so sure. But he suspected that the little guy had a big ego, and refused to admit he was wrong once he’d set a course for himself. Candle also suspected Shortstack was just trying to please Rina by helping Candle.

  As he spoke, Nodder pulled a stim-patch from a pocket and thoughtfully peeled it, applied it above the last one on his arm. “Well ... Brinny’s right that the guy was undercover. I mean, seriously ’Stack, what if ...”

  “If I were undercover, you’d be done for already, with me getting this far,” Candle said. “But I’m not. I’m just ... not.”

  He looked Nodder in the eye. Nodder pursed his lips—then made a gesture of benediction to Shortstack.

  “I can fucking talk now?” Shortstack asked, sidling up next to Brinny, putting a hand on her thigh and looking at the screen in front of her. The figures on the screen were three-leveled, stacked in three dimensions, and represented, Candle suspected, only a small part of what Brinny was seeing: the headset probably sent signals to interfacers along her optic nerves. “Okay, so the texer is that this is the L.A. locus of the Black Stock Market, Candle. Things were bad when you got sent down, got even worse the last four years. All the controls on monopolies are just ... gone. Dismantled. There’s the Fortune 33 and that’s just it, man. Oh sure, some Chinese outfits, yeah, but the 33 run the fucking planet. Privatizing everything—that’s why all the infrastructure’s gone to shit. The 33 rule. Except for the Black Stock Market! There are other businesses, millions of small ones, some that come and go in a few days, some that go on and on, some that change their names and show up under, like, all these different guises but, you know, same company, right? They’re pretty much under the radar of the 33. Lots of ’em are Mesh based, lots others are wi-net, others are brainchippers, others are little shops that move around, work outta the back of trucks, some are sizable small companies in Third World Countries—you get the idea. So they need support, right, they need money coming in, so we sell ‘quick stock’ for these people, a few thousand WD for a few thousand shares for some of ’em—others are more expensive. But it’s all a quick turnaround. They repay the buyer by Internet or wi-buy transfer within thirty-six hours if the profit’s there. We monitor it and they trust us with their data. Some have longer term deals, it’s monthly, got some going twice yearly. We take a cut.”

  “I’m sure your staff here does a great job,” Candle said, “but I’m surprised you don’t use expert systems for most of it, maybe some underground cloud computing ... I mean—once you’ve bought them you don’t have to pay them and they’re likely to be fast—and they’re not going to give state’s evidence to get less time–”

  Nodder flicked his hand dismissively. “They exaggerate how flexible and intelligent those systems are. We do use some adjunct expert programs. But they’ve got short horizons. Anyway, people who’ve dodged the law, they have ... almost a sixth sense, an intuitive ability ... they know when to dodge the law. And there’s another thing—really it’s the main thing—most of the existing programs and robots have software hidden in them to report back to the feds if they’re used for something illegal. These ladies are not burdened that way.”

  “And it’s only illegal,” Shortstack said, “because Congress is owned by the 33 and the 33 calls it ‘unregulated’. But we do regulate it—we stay fair. We got to, or people will come after us. And anyway we make more money being fair to people. They come back because we pay off.”

  “But the 33—they’re dogging you?” Candle asked.

  “Yeah. Starting to get close. Oh, we got the best encryption, we got a lot of noise-floggers to create cover. Only now—shitter-shatter, boy, we had some close calls. We’re looking to you to come in, provide expert protection. You the Man, you know law enforcement. You worked computer crime for awhile ...”

  Candle shook his head, dubious. “I don’t know—that stuff updates, like. every few months. I’m way behind by now.”

  “You got a feel for it though,” Shortstack insisted. “You can get caught up. Anyway we think Slakon is particularly interested in us. They don’t know who we are or where we are but they know that we are. And we represent a ... a ...” He looked at Nodder for the right words.

  “A dangerous phenomenon that threatens their control,” Nodder said.

  “Yeah! And we figure you’re motivated to run interference, Rick. You know Slakon, you had your run-ins ... Takes a cop to fool the cops ... Anyway, hode, what else you got going on? And this’ll give you a chance to get some of your own back, a little taste of revenge against those Slakon fucks. You know there was no real reason for them to go after Danny the way they did—that was so small time. Such a small amount of rake-off. It was “make an example’. And it turned out you had to be the example. So what you say?”

  It occurred to Candle that since he was being targeted by Slakon, it wasn’t that smart of Shortstack and Nodder to bring him in—he would bring even more heat on them. He figured that was Rina again. She was mad at him. But she wanted him around. “Rina put you up to this?”

  Shortstack looked carefully blank. “She’s a major investor. She’s part of all our decisions.”

  “I see.” Anyway, hode, what else you got going on? “Tell you what ...” He looked at the seething tables, charts, data piling up on the Black Stock Market screens. It was like the movement of a seismograph of true laissez-faire commerce; it was an electroencephalograph of the real market place. It was the dance of individuals struggling to survive, signifying, in the small market squares of the world. There was something romantic about it that drew him. “This is the kind of illegal that ... should be legal. This is ... this is something I don’t feel like I can say no to. If it pays reasonably well. I just hope I’m not bad luck for you.”

  “Yeah,” Brinny muttered. “I fucking hope so too.”

  IT’S NOT VERY SLICK, NOT MUCH OF A TRICK—HELL, HODE, IT’S JUST

  CHAPTER SIX

  Five holographic faces appeared on the Multisemblant array, set about a circle, looking outward, away from one another.

  “I hope y’all know what you’re doing,” the Bulwer semblant said.

  “This will give us an edge over the rest of the Fortune 33,” the Grist semblant said. “Oh he knows what he’s doing.”

  The Claire PointOne semblant frowned. “The prospect is repellent. It’s, like, a violation of my inner being.”

  “Semblants,” Grist said, “shut up. I’m thinking.” He and Sykes were standing under the bluewhite buzzing lights, gazing at the array. Grist was feeling like he was on the verge of changing the world, in some way. And he was almost convinced it was a change that the world needed. It was, anyway, one that Grist needed. That had always been good enough before—so why was he hesitating now?

  “... So you see,” Sykes was saying, unwrapping a marijuana-tinged Yum Wad and cramming it into his mouth, “I had to separate the merged ones—to re-establish full coalescence of all five, we had to start from scratch—and once we’ve got merge this may offer a more unified model ...” He chewed vigorously, mouth open, eyes glazing, as he appraised the five restless holographic heads. Yatsumi, Grist, Bulwer, Alvarez, Claire PointOne.

  “What about Hoffman?” Grist asked.

  “Still too much distortive resistance. But I thought five’d come out coherently. Only, I have to form it around a primary personality mode—it needs a unifying personality principle or it’s just a confused psychotic mish-mash, like last time.”

  “What principle?” Grist asked.

  “Ah well—it depends on how you’d define it. Some call it ‘acquisitive egoism’.”

  Grist shrugged. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Sykes tossed the wrapping paper on the fl
oor, where it joined a dozen others. A plasticine snowfall. “Oh well—another way of describing it is ... megalomania.”

  Grist shifted his weight to his other foot, feeling a vague discomfort. Suddenly, for no reason, his joints ached. He might need to have them rebuilt. “Megalomania? I’ve been accused of that often enough. What successful businessman in this century hasn’t? It’s all smokescreen, that talk of ‘megalomania’—it’s disingenuous flummery, designed to hide sheer envy. We want the multi-semblant to be driven! Motivated! Yes—grasping! Carpe Diem! The day must be seized! And to seize you must grasp!”

  “So that works for you?” Sykes nodded, sniffing. Chewing. “I mean—as a mind cohesion strategy?” He dug in an ear absentmindedly with an index finger. “Okay. Okay then.”

  “Why are you waiting? Go for it.”

  “Um—not sure what the results will be, short term or long term. Don’t want to make you mad. You do have a way of threatening me with some nightmarish fate or other when you’re mad. Glue my rectum shut, wedge my mouth open or something. If it doesn’t come out right—you’ll blame me. I’d be crazy not to hesitate.”

  “Yes yes, I’ll take that into account. When we’ve merged this thing, we’ll observe it for a time—then we’ll add more. And in the end we’ll have the most powerful business mind on the planet. A mind who’ll anticipate what all the others are thinking and doing—it’ll be one step ahead of all of them at once. And then ...”

  He broke off. He didn’t want Sykes, or anyone, to know about the ‘and then’.

  “Oh yes,” the Grist semblant said, chuckling. “And then!”

  “Just can it, semblant,” Grist said.

  “Shall I go ahead and do the merge, Mr. Grist?” Sykes asked. “I mean—shall I do it right now?” His hand hovered over the controls.