Black Glass

by John Shirley

  And the digital skeleton continued to natter away, “... while the vice president today modeled women’s bathing suits for his favorite transgender charity ...”

  “That’s a semblant—doing the national news? For real, right now?” Zilia asked, looking over their shoulders.

  “That’s right,” Clive said, thoughtfully tapping some of his ear piercings with a ring to make them clink. He used the mouse, flicked the image back to the semblant. He made a refined adjustment in his intricate beard as he said, “Gadgy’s doing the news right now—and no one knows he’s a semblant. Except us.”

  “Fucking shitter. You can’t tell!”

  “It even makes the occasional little verbal mistake like Gadgy would ... The real Gadgy’s probably vacationing on his estate with his husband ...”

  “What about that little map, there, under the Boolean stuff?”

  “That’s where it’s been transmitted from. It’s the location it was sent from. Supposed to help them prevent piracy I guess.”

  Candle looked sidelong at Clive. “We’re still the only ones who know about this software? You resisted the temptation?”

  Clive nodded, “I did. Do I want to open-source this bastard? Yes, I do. I’d like pretty much any software to be open source—I want to see one world with one access to everything and then we’ll just see if we survive that. We probably won’t! We’ll probably have access to too much data and some dumbass will build a bomb and blow it up in the wrong place and social chain reaction and war and we’re all gone—and good riddance. But maybe on the other hand chaos and order, exactly where they interface, will find entelechy and we’ll all click into the same free-think and we’ll all work out we got to let other people be self authorizing and ...”

  “But you aren’t going to do it right away?” Candle interrupted. “I need this program to myself, for now. I need you to show me how to use it. And sit on it. And when I’m done with it—or I’m done for–”

  Zilia looked hard at Candle, at that.

  “—then,” Candle went on, “you can open source it. And fuck Slakon.”

  “Yes, fuck ’em good,” Rina said, without looking up from her work.

  “Fuck ’em sideways,” Brinny agreed, working away. “Fuck ’em till they’re purple and bleeding.”

  “But until then,” Candle persisted. “You keep it sub rosa, right?”

  Clive looked at Candle like he didn’t like his tone. Like he’d like to tell him to go fuck himself. But he glanced at Zilia and said, “Yeah well, Candle—you came to me with this ... . so, for Zilia, ... okay. I’ll wait. For awhile. But not too long. You think about this: if this can happen with a newscaster, it can happen with a president. Suppose someone wanted to pull off a military coup in this country? Or suppose the corporations decided the president wasn’t playing ball; decided she had to go. They could get rid of her and hide it from the rest of us—with semblant software. Get her to ‘semblant up’ and then put him on ice somewhere. Use a double so people can ‘see’ her in public now and then ... and make her semblant say just what they want it to say, just like she’d say it, and no one would know ...”

  It sounded paranoid, it sounded outrageous but, looking at what was on the screen, Candle decided it was quite possible. “You can open-source it, Clive. But just wait a little. Zilia will tell you when. Or if you hear that I’m out of the picture for good.”

  Clive changed the online channel. “Here’s that mentally handicapped World of Celebs show.” A chirpy blond was talking about Terrence Grist. That got Candle’s attention. “... it’s said he’s fired his contract mistress and she’s gone over to his company rival, billionaire Bill Hoffman ... There are rumors that ‘hate is great’ in Lisha Rodriguez’s considerable bosom—hate for Terrence Grist, who ...”

  “Now,” Clive said. “Let’s try this one.”

  He ran the semblant I.D. program.

  AUTHENTIC, NOT SEMBLANT

  Clive shrugged. “And that one’s real.” He had a mild air of disappointment. “But I can find some other semblants if you want. There’s a guy at a company I did some business with ...”

  Candle shook his head. “Forget it. I’m convinced. If the directions are in it somewhere, then I’m good. Nodder’s stock market helping you out any?”

  Clive nodded. “I’m getting my share. You supposed to be cut in on it?”

  Candle shook his head. “No point.” He felt Zilia react to that, too. Decided to be more careful about what he said.

  Clive took a small memstick from the desk, with an S marked on it. “Here’s your copy of the software. I put in a readme file that explains how to use it.”

  “You think they can find some way to block this from working on the semblants out there?” Zilia asked.

  Clive snorted. “Not likely—once it’s made, once it’s out there, how do you ‘recall’ something like that? They’re gonna want to find it and stop anyone who’s got it ... they’ll do that before they admit they’ve fucked up that badly.”

  Candle took the memstick, pocketed it, started for the door. Paused, Zilia at his side, long enough to look back and say, “Thanks Clive.”

  Clive hesitated—then just nodded. Staring at Zilia the whole time. Rina said, “Hey Rick. I’m sorry about your brother.”

  “He was a rocker,” Candle said, going out the door. “And he always said that meant you were supposed to die young.”

  But he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.

  Outside in the bright daylight Candle remembered he’d bought a pair of sunglasses. He found them in an inside coat pocket and put them on. Some relief from the inane sunshine.

  They rode a couple of all-terrain vehicles back to her cabin. The little four-wheeled fuel-celled ATVs were more jarring than the horses but Candle preferred them.

  At her place, they lay in bed fully dressed, listening to Berlioz. Candle keeping his sunglasses on; Zilia nestled against him, his right arm around her.

  Candle was thinking that maybe if he hadn’t gotten involved with Zilia, Danny would still be alive. Zilia’s coming to meet them, the tension about the relationship, was the spur that prodded Danny into taking off, that night. Or ...

  Okay, maybe it was just Danny’s excuse. Knowing addicts—yeah, probably that was it. But I gave him that excuse, Candle thought.

  “Maybe I could get your mind off stuff?” Zilia asked, putting a hand on his thigh.

  Bad timing. “No, thanks, kid. I treasure the offer, though. Rain check. What you got to drink? Any vodka?”

  He only had two short vodkas. She had three doubles. “Hey–” he asked, as she half dozed beside him. “That thing the Goodnell semblant mentioned about the Black Wind ... what the hell is that?”

  “Oh—that started right after you were UnMinded. The first Black Wind cell. It’s depressing. They just finally got the Plastic Vortex in the oceans close to cleaned up ... decades of those big suction boats and filters ... and then this. The Black Winds, they’re ... what do they call that ... I drank too much vodka ... uh, synergistic pollutant fronts, I think. These pollutants, along with clouds of nanoparticles run off that get carried up with, like evaporation—they get stored up in the atmosphere, get all combined into something new. It gets swirled into these atmospheric eddies. Sort of like the plastic vortex but with air pollution, in the sky. And it has a, what, a chemical reaction in the eddy and it turns into these nasty toxins, all black, like a really dark thundercloud, and it comes rolling along, this ‘toxic front’ and the nanoparticles carry the toxins right into people and it ... oh God, you didn’t hear! About twenty-five per cent of Hong Kong died in two days. They didn’t know what it was, then. They had to evacuate Seoul for a week. One of the Black Wind cells killed about eight thousand people in Russia in a few minutes. Sort of like that thing in London, that killer smog, in the ninteenth century, but this is more toxic and bigger ... and might be ... might turn up ... oh ...” She laid her head on his chest. “... anywhere in the world. God,
I hope it’s true this one’s dispersed. Last year they had to abandon Long Island ...”

  “No one tells me these things.”

  “It’s too depressing to talk about. The Black Wind might get worse, might get better. Might kill everybody in L.A. sometime. Us too. But you can’t really hide from it. They can track them with satellites but they’re not that easy to ... I don’t know ... They’re talking about using some kind of particle beam from orbit to change the air pressure and steer ’em away ... I don’t know ... makes me want to hide in a dark ... dark cool place ... underground ...”

  “I know the feeling. Anything else I should know about?”

  “You hear about South Carolina trying to secede again? Christian Republic stuff?”

  “Again? With their little Biblical Constitution? They’re still trying to do that? I remember the National Guard having to go down there ...”

  She didn’t answer. After a moment he heard her softly snoring. Candle remembered when he’d fallen asleep in her place, one wet night. Now she’d fallen asleep in his arms.

  After awhile, he eased himself free from her. She didn’t wake up. He went to the desk, wrote her a note, and slipped out into the dusk. He was going back to L.A.

  He had an idea about getting close to Grist. The idea called for him to start with Bill Hoffman.

  Which meant first he had to get to Hoffman ...

  Maybe, Candle thought, I not only lost Danny, I fucked my own life up pretty badly.

  But there were things he was good at. Breaking and entering was one of them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN’S

  PICKING UP SPEED LIKE SOMEBODY DOSED YOUR BAG OF WEED

  Hank Bulwer’s self-driving limo wasn’t waiting for him, when he came out of Club Shhh! about eleven that night. His bodyguard was supposed to be there, waiting, too, in the limo. Where the hell had he got to?

  “Son of a fucking bitch ...” Bulwer was a little tipsy from the drugs and liquor at the club, exhausted from all those UnMinded women. Did not want to deal with this now.

  He activated a skull fone, and called his limo. It responded, in a polite robotic voice, that it had been summoned by him to another address across town. What? How had that happened?

  He called his bodyguard, Ike. “Yeah boss I thought you’d gone outta the place some other way with your friends,” Ike responded. “I saw a town car come out of their garage, and then you called from across town.”

  “I didn’t call!”

  “Okay well, limo thought you did. I’ll tell it to go back there–”

  “Forget it, damn your black ass, I don’t want to wait that long! I’ve got a leased jet waiting out at the airport, I’m flying back to Dallas tonight. You meet me at the airport, private terminal three. I’ll take a cab, there’s a self-driver pulling up out here ... oh there’s a fella getting out, so I got to get it before someone else does ...”

  Bulwer cut the connection and strode up to the self-driving cab. The chunky, unkempt, oafish-looking man who had gotten out of it was standing nearby, watching him.

  “Hank Bulwer, isn’t it?” the man asked.

  Bulwer had been a cover story at the Fortune site and had been interviewed by Gadgy Goodnell and was never surprised when people recognized him. “That’s right, yes, you have a good one there, pardner ...”

  “My name’s Benson,” the man said amiably, scratching himself. “Destiny sent this cab for you, Mr. Bulwer.”

  “Sure did, it was right on time, my ride’s not out here ...” Bulwer said, hastily getting into the cab.

  He gave the address to the driverless cab’s interface grid, slid a pay card through its reader, and got a green acknowledgement light in return. The cab set off, driving smoothly down the street, neatly avoiding a bicyclist and a bus, and Bulwer settled back, checked his stocks. There was a report from one of his brokers at Asian Pacific. An apparent surge in the black stock market; Japanese investors defecting to Black Stock Market, causing a drop in value of his stocks ...

  “That’s gotta be nipped in the bud,” Bulwer muttered. “Got to talk to that bastard Grist about it ...”

  He cut the connection, rubbed his groin, ruefully. Sore. Those UnMinded women in the Shhh!—how did they feel the next day when they were ReMinded and able to control themselves again? Some of them with his hand-print on them. He liked that idea. Of course, the club was illegal, but people at his level made their own rules—

  “Hello Mr. Bulwer!”

  Hank Bulwer’s own face was looking back at him from the all purpose interface screen on the back of the cab’s front seat. “This some kind of joke? That Grist calling? You dicking with my semblant, Grist? You’re not supposed to be able to–”

  “Grist?” And then the face in the interface screen changed, became Grist’s. “There’s Grist for you,” said the Grist face. But that wasn’t quite Grist’s voice. It was a chorus of voices, not quite perfectly merged. “Or how about this face?” And then Claire PointOne’s face appeared. Then Alvarez’s face saying, “Or this one? Or maybe ...” Then Yatsumi’s face. All of them Slakon board members, important figures in the Fortune 33.

  “I—who’s doing this? What exactly–” A thought occurred to Bulwer that made his extremities tingle; his skin feel cold. The limo had been sent to the wrong place. He’d taken the limo’s misdirection for a computer glitch, but maybe it was related to this prank on the interface screen? That man that had gotten out of the cab, he’d said that odd thing to him. And now ... .

  He looked out the window of the cab. He was not headed for the airport.

  “Where is this cab going? Cab!” He looked at the number. “Cab seventeen! Where are you going?”

  “Cab seventeen,” replied yet another polite robotic voice, from the interface, “has been redirected, in accordance with emergency protocols, to a new destination.”

  “It’s going to your final destination, Bulwer,” said the Bulwer face—his own mocking, sneering face on the screen, using his own voice. Then the face changed—melted and re-formed, into a face he’d never seen before. The voice chorused, “I’ve taken the cab over. I supplied Mr. Benson with a device that reprogrammed the cab, and it can’t be stopped. Do please try, however. I’d like to confirm–”

  “Cab seventeen!” Bulwer roared. “Emergency stop! Pull over right here! Stop this cab and let me out.”

  No reply from the cab. It just kept driving. Well within the speed limit. Signaling when it changed lanes. Driving perfectly. . . to the Highplex, a big complex of overpasses near Western Santa Monica.

  “Ah, thank you, Mr. Bulwer,” said the face on the screen. “Most gratifying to see the self-driver is still on course, despite your efforts. Do keep trying.”

  Bulwer called the police on his skull fone. Then on his cell phone. Then on his personal organizer ...

  Couldn’t get through. The lines just hissed back at him.

  “Sorry, Hank!” said the face on the screen. Just now it was Claire’s face, smiling prettily at him. “The device damping down your ability to call out is on the front seat, which you will note is blocked off from the back, so that people can’t interfere with the equipment up front. Mr. Benson put it there for me, after I got the cab to open its front door. So you won’t be able to call anyone else, I’m afraid ...”

  Bulwer fumbled at the doors. Knowing that this was some kind of kidnapping, some plot against him, and he had to get out, even if it meant jumping out of the vehicle at 40 miles an hour. Make that 45 MPH ... 50 now ... 55 ....60 ...

  The cab was still picking up speed as Bulwer struggled with the locked doors, which refused to unlock; as he pounded on the windows, and tried to signal other people in other cars, but everyone ignored him.

  “Why, they’re just doing what you’d do,” said the multifarious face on the screen. “If you saw someone signaling for help in a vehicle passing you, you’d ignore them—they’re just doing the same. Maybe they admire your style!”

  And it chuckled, using Bulwer’s o
wn style of laughter.

  “Who are you?” Bulwer demanded.

  “Mr. Benson told you. I’m Destiny. I know—it seems tasteless, that name, even kitschy, overblown! But I like to do things with high style, Hank! Like you did! Like Grist! I’m going to eliminate the top five board members, and use their semblants to take over the company. Semblant technology is a glorious thing.”

  “But who are you? Is this Yatsumi? I’ve always thought that little weasel had something cunning going on in his little yella head!”

  “I’m Yatsumi—I’m as much Yatsumi as I am you; as I am Claire, as I am Hoffman as I am Alvarez ... I’m a program, and I’m more than a program. Oh but look! You see where we are! Look out the window on our right!”

  Bulwer looked, saw they were at the highest point on the highest overpass of the Highplex. Far below, there was an opening between criss-crossing highways. There was some sort of big round vat down there ...

  “The sewage treatment plant, Mr. Bulwer! Your destination, target, objective! Let’s have a closer look! Put on your seat belt!”

  He had just enough time to get the seat belt on before the cab, going 80 now, crashed through the railing, angling down with a trick driver’s precision, angling perfectly to fall between the overlapping ramps, nosing down—to crash into the sewage treatment vat.

  Deep, it went. Twenty- five feet down, to the bottom. Bulwer now trying to get the seatbelt off ...

  As the windows of the cab rolled open, all on their own. And the cab began filling with sewage.

  “You see, Mr. Bulwer?” said the chorused voice—the last thing he heard, apart from his own gurgling, as he drowned in sewage: “Destiny! It’s really a very apt name—don’t you think? Hello? Mr. Bulwer? Hel-loo-oooo!”

  Candle was lucky. About Hoffman’s car being serviced, anyway.

  It wasn’t hard to find out where Hoffman got his flying cars worked on, if you knew where he lived, and Candle knew where that was. You couldn’t miss the Hoffman Building.

  Spreading some flow around at garages in Hoffman’s vicinity—two of them, just as they were closing. Hearing Hoffman had a flying car. Hearing that it had broken down and almost crashed. Hearing that the cars were rare and so were outfits that serviced them. Only two in all of L.A.. Found that Hoffman’s flying car was getting some work done, at a place near Hoffman’s.