by Eikeltje
given me the keys."
"Urn," Schaum says, and looks up at Sanmin. She is leaning against the
edge of Nathan's desk, arms folded. Jill guesses they are going to establish
some sort of deadline for the information they need. She postulates that their
suspicions will be aroused if Roddy does in fact supply the conclusion of the
holographic portion before the deadline; they will find such a coincidence
unlikely.
As advocates, Schaum and Sanmin have little faith in things that turn out
simply, or that have simple explanations. Jill is sometimes put out by such
human complexity--no doubt developed after years of dealing with fellow
humans.
"We'll need to have some judgment from you on the nature of this material..,
as soon as possible, Jill," Nathan says.
"I can estimate the size of the portion should it be completed, but nothing
more," Jill says.
"We can't sit on this more than a couple of days, if Jill's right," Sanmin
says.
"We've put INDA monitors on all of Jill's I/Os," Nathan adds. But not all
of her I/Os are being watched. She is deceiving them this far, and she hopes
DO mor'.
It is with some sense of mixed shock, intense interest, and dread that she
receives a brief touch from one of her protected selves, wrapped around the one
J
I/O she has kept hidden from Nathan and the others. Her isolated self reports
that Roddy is again sending data, dozens of terabytes, filling in the holographic
data sent earlier.
Jill does not tell Nathan or the advocates. She does not want to cast herself
in the wrong light. And if the material is not useful--does not match with
the holographic portion, or is completely unrelated to the previous material--Jill
decides she will close off this I/O using her own arbeiters.
The three humans depart to another room to continue their discussion. The
room is not accessible to Jill. There is an arbeiter in that room that regularly
records its surroundings, however, and Jill may be able to persuade it to play
back the discussion later.
She suspects the advocates do not trust her. If she were them, she knows
that a strong hypothesis would be that she is making up Roddy, as a kind of
imaginary playmate.
The existence and character of Roddy seems unlikely even to Jill.
The situation is getting uncomfortable for all concerned.
/
SLANT 171
GREATER UPSTREAM
Movies were dying. Vids had blossomed into a bush of interactive
branches, pumped straight into the home: dataflow as you like it, characters
and stories adjusted to your taste, community entertainment where
"neighbors" from around the world could join electronically and participate in
exploring new worlds... And then came Yox, all of this and more fed directly
into the inner self through spinal inducers and ingested microscopic robot monitors.
The monitors made their way from your stomach into your blood to sit on key
somatic nerves, to perch in your brain like medical diagnostics, harmless (but oh what
a public flurry at first!) and ready for outside signals...
And so many vids and Yox could be made on relatively inexpensive equipment
brought into the home! With complete control over every pixel in a visual frame, and
every digit or waveform of sound, and finally, over every jangling extrasensory nerve
end, individual artists and their boutique buddies could conjure up visions just as
striking (and a hell of a lot more innovative) than any studio, and market them directly
over the ribes and sats... And a lot of them were real hotshots at promotion. They
had lived and breathed the ribes since childhood.
The death knell was tolling for the big-budget studio-bound production, killed by
new tech just as television and motion pictures had slowly, across a century, strangled
the novel and short story.
The great entertainment studios, funnels for so much money in the past, retreated
into theme parks, but even the ultimate thrill ride, a jaunt into space, could not compete
with a well-tuned Yox--and carried substantial risks, beside. Why build real
spaceships when a Yox ship could take you from one end of the galaxy to another,
safe as a baby in its mother's arms?
The public did not want real adventure. The entire world was willing to settle for
the unreal.
But with remarkable prescience, the big-money brand-name-CEO studios had
bought into something no individual could compete with... Character Estate Marks,
the name and image rights to famous stars, beautiful people, the best and brightest
of the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Old or young, dead or alive, they provided
a wedge... And the voyeur's revolution was on.
It began with the famous dead, still unaccountably sexy, like gods, and it
spread... Studios knew how to make people famous, how to sign unknowns and
give them world-wide exposure, and then license the rights to their lives, their intimate
moments...
Big business in the 21 st Century made freewheeling celebrity sex into a family affair,
vid and Yox; big bucks from bucking bucks on does, does on does, bucks on bucks,
much dough into the sadly empty coffers of once-glorious studios. Explicit sex had
driven much of vid and Yox already, but most of the efforts were crude and boring.
Bringing sex entertainment much-needed talent and style, the grimy adolescent
172
GRE6 BEAR
and pushed into public acceptance by studio after studio. Most of the product went
direct through ribes and sats into the private home.
And back up the link flew hundreds of billions of dollars.
Some say the sex industry, with its newfound acceptance, led the way for the
Federalist Surge and the elitist Raphkind presidency, and all of its political horrors; it
forced the moralist hand, which turned out to be corrupt, extreme, and ultimately
dripping with gore. The failure of the conservative moralists to exhibit truly moral
leadership created an anything-goes backlash
Every decade has brought new technologies and expanded audiences, and the
same old same old, tarted up and occasionally even profundified, given artistic legit-imacy--that
ancient much-masticated blue movie has rolled on, and on, lubricating
the pipes of the great flow.
--The Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie
10
The advocate for the estate of Terence Crest sits beside Mary in the old, dignified
brown and cream office of Seattle Oversight on the ground floor of
Columbia Tower.
j
The Crest advocate, Selena Parmenter, is in her early thirties if appearances
can be trusted, and she acts bored. She has said little to Mary as they wait for
the deputy district director of Seattle Oversight, the honorable Clarens Lodge,
to take his seat and listen to their appeals.
Oversight was created in the teens. The first states to use the procedure
were California and Washington. With so much information on citizens recorded
daily by vid, home monitors, fibe and satlink uploads, and neighborhood
surveillance systems, a separate branch of the judiciary was established
to hear appeals from th
ose seeking to use that information for legal purposes.
Early abuses--and the far worse systematic abuse under the Raphkind pres-idency--has
made the system painfully complex for all concerned. Each avenue
of information has been wrapped in labyrinthine rules of legal engagement;
and an appeal for release of data can be made only once a year for any given
case.
The deputy district director enters and takes his seat behind the broad steel
desk. Clarens Lodge is a small, boyish male in his late twenties, with thick
black hair and a pixie expression that he tries with some success to make
/
SLANT 173
Terence Crest, recently deceased and with judgment of suicide as cause of
death... All right, I've gone through the voir, let's hear the dire. Miz
Parmenter?"
"Seattle PD has requested the private and protected apartment vid records
of my client without compelling cause. Under Citizen Oversight Code twenty-seven
c in Public Data Access, Washington State, Book Nine, amended Federal
twenty-two c Book Nine, Public Defense must have clear evidence that a crime
has been committed to even solicit private vid records. No crime has been
committed; Mr. Crest has been presumed by our assigned medicals and by the
state to have killed himself. Suicide has not been a crime in this state for
thirty-seven years."
This appears to amuse Lodge. He tightens a beginning smile, completely
out of place it seems to Mary, into a not very stern frown. "Miz Choy?"
"Seattle PD forensic medicals have stated that while the cause and time of
death can be established with certainty, we have no way of knowing whether
the death is suicide or homicide or even accidental. We believe that state
judgment may be premature, and we are still investigating to establish motives
and opportunities. We need to learn the circumstances and mental attitude of
Mr. Crest in the hours before his death. We're also investigating the possible
role of a visitor to Mr. Crest's home just prior to his death."
"You were investigating Mr. Crest on another matter before his death,"
Parmenter says. "Is that matter still pending?"
"It has been given a temporary open status until we can assemble a complete
picture of Mr. Crest's situation."
"Temporary open status is hardly urgent," Parmenter says. "As you know,
sir, temporary open implies all smoke and no fire, no real case at all."
The deputy director nods studiously. "Miz Choy, why should Oversight give
Seattle PD access to the private records of a man who is not likely to be charged
with any crime, since he is now dead, and the case is weak to begin with?"
Mary has been through Oversight hearings dozens of time in her career; she
has never enjoyed them. Oversight, it seems to her, has become a kind of
fiefdom for the least competent of an already pompous judiciary. She has never
yet met a director or deputy director who impressed her. This director, she
thinks, is perhaps the least impressive of all.
"The presence of a Miz Alice Grale needs to be explained, sir."
"Yes, there's a story going around in the ribes that she's involved," the
deputy director muses. "But it should be her advocate seeking records to clear
her name, and as far as I know, we have no such request." He looks to Par-menter.
"What do you know about this woman's involvement? Apparently she
was employed by Mr. Crest as a sex care provider..." He smiles openly at
this polite phrasing and refers to his pad. "Agented by Wellspring Temps,
specializing in entertainment... And you, Miz Parmenter, have frozen payments
to her agency. Why?"
174
GR pounds BEAR
Lodge grimaces. "Shaky, Miz Parmenter. My records indicate Mr. Crest put
his seal on the disbursal before he died. It was a legitimate transaction, and I
suspect Wellspring, should they decide to press the matter, will receive their
money, as will Miz Grale."
Parmenter says nothing to this.
Lodge frowns, and this time with more conviction. "Do you believe that
Miz Grale had some role in his death, perhaps in changing his mood, exacerbating
the circumstances in what must have been a tense evening for him? Is
that your reason to deny her just payment for services?"
"The estate does not believe that the quasi-legal business of prostitution--"
"Sex care, please," Lodge insists, with a wry grin. "Last I dipped into the
state code, it's fully legal and even licensed in most counties. Something to do
with Business and Occupation taxes forty years ago. But you're too young to
remember."
Mary is prepared to change her opinion about this deputy district director.
Parmenter is not amused. "We must protect the interests of the estate's
heirs, and Mrs. Crest did not file any authorization for her husband to
spend substantial joint funds pending final settlement of their divorce--not
that I represent the former Mrs. Crest--but this is all beside the main
point, sir."
"Yes, yes, but the apartment vid will surely settle these issues, and may in
fact be requested by Wellspring in their case, should they decide to pursue
it--and for seventy-five thousand dollars, I certainly would. An extraordinary
amount of money for the services of a mere prostitute, don't you think?"
"The going rate is about five thousand for an evening," Mary says.
Lodge turns on
a
"Please,"
says. "My
her
with
look
of
mock
affront.
he
sensibilities are ar least as delicate as those of Miz Parmenter."
"We do find the circumstances irregular," Parmenter says reluctantly. "Irregular
enough to contest payment, and I do not like to say more without
conferring with the estate."
"Do you have a description of the vid?" Lodge asks.
Parmenter appears distinctly uncomfortable. "Advocates are prevented from
releasing details about personal evidence in dispute," she says, "until Oversight
rules to release it for legal purposes. You know that, sir."
"Miz Parmenter, I assume Mr. Crest kept a vid record of all his personal
affairs, as so many important people do, though with many different motives,
and I can't presume to guess what Mr. Cresr's motives were. But such systems,
in my experience, keep at least a minimal visual-to-text log, transcribed by an
automated secretary. You have of course looked at this log?"
"Yes, sir. It is vague as to details."
"But what does it say, broadly?"
"It indicates the presence of two individuals in the apartment until Mr.
/ SLANT 175
"We alerted the medicals in Crest's building," Mary says. "The log must
show the presence of SPD officers at that point."
"Appearing for an appointment with Mr. Crest to discuss this other case,
now temporarily kept open," Lodge says. "A man has sex with a woman, whom
he pays an inordinate amount of money, and then commits suicide. He's involved
with shady investments... With companies or individuals who have
negligently allowed young women to die in a horrible manner. He's a very
/> complex man, this Terence Crest."
"Yes, sir," Mary says.
"It seems to me," Lodge says, "that there are a number of compelling reasons
to release these records to the SPD, specifically to Fourth Rank Mary Choy, to
clear up these ambiguities."
"We do not agree, sir," Parmenter says, now very uneasy. "But if that is
your pending judgment--"
"I believe it very well might be."
"Then I have been authorized by the estate to reveal a recently discovered..,
ah... a modification to the circumstances of the records in
question."
"Yes?" Lodge asks, raising his eyebrows.
"All vid and audio for that day have been retroactively erased by the machine
keeping the apartment records."
"Erased?" Parmenter asks. Mary sits up straighter in her chair, prepared to
be very interested, or perhaps officially angry.
"Without our knowledge until just before this meeting. The transcribed
record is intact but as I said, vague."
