by Sean Platt
“It can be exposed,” Sam countered.
“It’s already exposed. We know the Beau Monde.”
“The public doesn’t.”
“The public doesn’t matter,” said Integer7.
“But why are they hiding?”
“Because they hide; 88 seconds. Tell me what you know and what you want.”
“It’s a conspiracy!” Sam regretted the sentence as soon as he’d said it. The word conspiracy conjured images of derelicts walking the streets in tattered coats, possibly wearing tinfoil hats. A thought intruded in the quiet gap between speakers: Am I really that far from them?
“There have always been conspiracies. Your Beam page is more articulate than you are now. Stop playing games and whining. When this connection closes, I will not be able to establish another that is sufficiently secure. We have just over a minute. Tell me what you know. Now.”
Trying to channel Shadow’s authority and confidence (something he found tricky to do with his voice rather than his fingers), Sam rattled off the quick version of what he suspected or knew about Costa, the parties, and the Ryans. Everything he’d given to Sterling Gibson to use in his book Plugged that the writer had either whitewashed or refused to publish. Gibson thought the material was too incendiary? Well, fuck Gibson. Sam would light the necessary fire himself.
“Interesting,” said Integer7.
“The only way to dissect it is to cause a disturbance in Shift,” said Sam/Shadow.
“We can’t disrupt Shift.”
“We can do anything. We are Null.”
Sam could almost hear the voice shake its head. “Disruptive belief only goes so far. Null will not disturb Shift. They want to cause chaos but cannot help but believe. Once out from behind their Fawkes masks, they are people, and those people are Directorate or Enterprise as deeply as if it were in their blood. The conditioning goes too deep for a groundswell against it. Disturbing Shift is asking them to slit their wrists and trust that bleeding will cease on its own, the bloodstains having mapped a utopia.”
“Then the system wins.”
“If you can’t break the table, break its legs,” said Integer7’s smooth, deep voice. “The Prime Statements are tomorrow. Presidents Vale and Reese. That event we can disrupt.”
It was as if Integer7 had proposed lifting the entire NAU above his head. “The Prime Statements are given in the White House!” he said.
“I have found a way to breach even White House security. Pull up the White House page on your device. Hurry; 36 seconds.”
Sam thought he might drop the handheld as he juggled. He tapped his screen, feeling seconds as they ticked. Integer7’s voice continued to come from the speaker.
“Are you on the page?”
“Wait. Yes. Now I am.”
“Watch the upper right.”
“What?” But before the word was fully out of Sam’s mouth, he watched in shock as the upper right corner of the page flickered with a tiny black icon. It was the Greek letter pi, there for a second and then gone again.
“How did you do that?” said Sam. His mouth was hanging open. The White House. Somehow, Integer7 had hacked its system.
Instead of answering, Integer7’s voice began to move faster, rushing, as he spilled his instructions.
“The Prime Statements are held in front of the Senate, with the Beam cameras facing out, giving the same view of the parties as all 101 senators see. President Reese will be on one side with the Enterprise cabinet, and Carter Vale and the Directorate will be on the other. Between them and behind their backs, visible to the senators and cameras, is the display wall. I can hack that wall the same as I can the White House page. Rally whoever you can trust. Look for people who may or may not think true change is possible but who truly want change if it is. Tell them all — including your audience — to watch the Primes tomorrow. Tell them to watch the display wall because I will fill it with the information you just gave me.”
“And what are we supposed to…”
The connection broke before Sam finished his thought.
Moving slowly, Sam pulled the handheld from his face. A million questions and conflicting feelings were racing through his mind. Among the soup of impressions, one stood out. A single directive. One ray of progress, and maybe of hope for the underlings.
He had an update to write on Shadow’s Beam page, and minions to rally because tomorrow, there would be a show.
A show, Shadow thought, that might just turn out to be the century’s biggest.
Chapter 5
Natasha felt her heart flutter as she took The Sap’s stage. Her breath was shallow in her chest instead of full and deep. The lights were too bright. Her palms were slick and clammy. Her mouth felt dry, even after taking a long sip from her ice water backstage. She felt like she had felt all those years ago, as a young girl, taking the stage in front of a crowd for the first time.
Natasha’s circulating nanobots could downtune her nerve response (releasing pacifying endorphins, blunting the release of epinephrine from her adrenal glands), but she accessed her internal dashboard and told them to stand down. It had been a long, long time since she’d been afraid onstage. It had been decades since she’d feared a crowd’s judgment and wondered if she’d be good enough for them. The feeling of raw stage fright was rusty enough to be alien. She had butterflies in her stomach and a lump in her throat. To Natasha, stepping onto the low stage and feeling the cool light on her skin, that was a good thing.
It was good to be afraid. Those who took bold steps were afraid. Those who changed the world were afraid. A life worth living was filled with fear — but it was the temporary terror that guarded new frontiers rather than the crushing, permanent pain that accompanied cowardice. She’d been a safe coward for too long. It felt good to be a reckless daredevil again.
She began her set with “Lost,” forcing notes out through sheer will, feeling the non-lubricated way they moved through her throat. The audience wouldn’t hear her nervous heart pounding with each note (she was a professional, after all), but it felt good to let the nerves take over — or rather, to let them crawl to the edge, reminding her that while she was no longer seventeen, she was onstage for the first time since her disastrous concert at the Aphora. She was moving from the party of security to the party of risk and reward. She was putting herself out there (this time truly raw) before an audience that might scorn her and call her a sellout. They might hate her and throw things — not because they were Directorate rabble-rousers, but because she simply wasn’t good enough.
You’re shit.
You’re a sellout.
As notes left her wealthy, privileged, decades-in-Directorate lips, Natasha’s mind fed her a discouraging litany. She found that she wanted to hear every word. She wanted to revel in self-loathing. To roll in the filth she’d created, like a pig. Natasha’s move to Enterprise wasn’t only about giving Isaac an elegant, callus-free finger. At its root, she was making a long-overdue move to where she truly belonged. It really was about her, as an artist, reclaiming the art she’d surrendered. She’d earned the bad things the sheets had said about her. Right here and now, naked and waiting for audience’s judgment, she wanted to feel every barb of those insults. She wanted to swallow those words and let them rumble inside her. She had sold out. She did have an uphill battle ahead to regain her oldest fans’ affection. It was a good thing. There was no victory in accomplishing what she was supposed to accomplish. Victory came from overcoming adversity, as she had in her youth. And right now, she wanted all the adversity they’d ever thrown at her.
You’re a bitch.
You used to be good, but you lost it!
You gave up. You became a trophy wife. Worthless arm candy to a powerful man.
A burden on a top-heavy society.
Natasha looked out at the crowd. They were different than the people who’d attended her disastrous last show. The Aphora was large and elegant, well lit when the lights were up. It was hung with chandeliers.
The walls were all arches, most of them old and faux-authentic. The Aphora had been built in the 2030s to mimic something built in the 1930s…which in turn mimicked a theater from the 1830s. The seats were backed with red cloth, their accents of brushed Plasteel made to look gold. The Aphora guests had been dressed in finery. The mood, until the riot, had been sober and respectful. Almost drugged.
By contrast, The Sap crowd was gritty and on-the-ground. The stage was low; Natasha, if she wanted, could lean out past the old and pointless stage monitor speakers to touch those in the front row. They were standing, not sitting. They were dressed well, but that was because Natasha, when she’d planned the event, had nursed an ulterior motive. Now, onstage, she cursed it. This had begun as a PR move, but now it was her triumphant return. She suddenly didn’t want to sully her concert with politics. She didn’t want the door to charge a charity price. As she stood on the stage and saw hard life in the eyes of the children’s working-class parents, Natasha felt herself reconnecting with her roots.
You’re only here as a publicity stunt.
You’re a fraud.
They hate you. They all hate you, and you deserve their hate. You have earned it.
Natasha felt the fear. She embraced it, holding it tight. It wasn’t likely that the crowd was thinking the terrible things she was telling herself, but it still felt good to savor them. She’d had a friend growing up, Paulette, who used to cut her arms with a razor. I want to feel something, Paulette had said. Natasha had never understood Paulette until now. Natasha was using thoughts instead of a blade, but she was cutting herself just the same. It felt terrible, and the terrible felt good. For the first time in years, she felt more than numb.
You’re shit you’re shit you’re shit you’re shit you’re…
The red churn of hurt swirled behind her eyes, rising into the final, tremulous note of “Lost” — an appropriate oldie to start her set, written in the years just following the worst of the chaos, when she’d had no home. The lyrics were the same, but the feeling behind them had changed. She had been lost back then. Now, as her heart returned, gripped in fear, she was finally clawing her way back to found.
The crowd applauded as she finished, but it was a more grounded applause than what had erupted from the Aphora floor. She wasn’t being given their approval as a rubber stamp. She was having to earn it note by note.
The parents of the children were in the front row. Behind them were others from the groups of protestors, selected using AI behavior software as those most unlikely to cause trouble. They’d all been carefully placed for the cameras so that Natasha would come off shining for the press, but she didn’t feel shining yet. They were a hard audience, but that was okay. It meant Natasha would have to wow them. She needed to be great. And after all those years under Isaac, she deserved a chance to be great again. She deserved their skeptical looks — their eyes wondering if Natasha actually cared about the children or was using them — and deserved the chance to turn them around, winning them over as a young, pudgy singer had once won over their parents’ generation.
The next song — another oldie, “Down Deep,” began with the strum of a harp and a tremulous note. Natasha’s chest rose. She felt her heart find a rhythm, from nerves to calm to exultation.
She was glad she had insisted on a minimal security detachment, deciding to trust the AI that had selected her audience. Having too much muscle present would have ruined the experience. Only big stars — especially when they were slumming below their proper level — brought armed guards. She had James in the back, but the single bodyguard was enough. There would be police in the area, of course, and there was a detail outside with slumberguns, plus a private contingent circulating the block on screetbikes. But Jane had wanted them inside the venue, ready with their riot gear out and visible. She said she didn’t want a repeat of the Aphora. But how could the crowd sink into emotion with armed men at the doors, their faces blank behind helmets? How could they emote if they knew they were untrusted at best, or held captive at worst?
We don’t want another riot, Jane said.
There won’t be. These people were hand-selected.
It’s better to be safe than sorry.
You mean conduct my comeback under guns and batons?
She was coming back. She was returning. She was not the woman she’d so recently been.
In the middle of her third song (“We Are All,” from Saint Sebastian in 2069), a bold and devilishly reckless thought occurred to Natasha — a way to accelerate the return to her old Enterprise self and silence her haters at the same time. She’d put her existing bank account into a trust or other irrevocable fund then live on what she earned going forward. She could even move out, away from her secure Directorate husband. She’d rent an apartment across town, pay on a lease, and make a show of it even if she never actually bought furniture or spent time there. She’d treat her new rent as non-negotiable just to prove that she could survive on her own. She’d buy her own food. Her own clothes. All using her own new money — none of Isaac’s, and none of the old. Oh yes. She could definitely do that. It felt like riding a bicycle across a tightrope, with no net beneath. If she lost her fans, she could always crack open the trust or return to Isaac, but the idea of crawling back was incentive enough to never let that happen.
She could do this. She could be Enterprise again. For real. And once she’d done that, just let Isaac and the sheets try to say that…
Natasha felt more than heard her voice falter as she caught a flicker of movement from the room’s rear. For a millisecond — as the note she was singing chopped but didn’t cease, causing a few heads in the audience to strobe with curiosity — she didn’t know what had startled her. It was just someone at the back. There was no reason to…
But the person was dressed in black from head to toe. He wore a solid black helmet, with a visor covering his face.
For a few more notes, uncertain why she felt so unsettled, Natasha kept singing. But her composure had broken, and her spell had shattered on the audience like a dropped plate. They could sense her unease. Audience eyes ticked in the direction of her straying gaze. They saw a second figure in black slip through the front then close the double doors behind them. There was a click, loud enough to be heard onstage.
Security.
Fucking Jane had hired security after all. She’d gone behind Natasha’s back and invited intimidating people into her intimate room. Hadn’t she realized it would startle her singer onstage, and shatter her rhythm?
Trying to regain her composure, Natasha struggled to finish the song. Singing became difficult. She saw black-clad, black-helmeted men gathering at the room’s edges. They placed themselves at regular intervals like good soldiers, large black guns in their hands.
Guns. Fucking guns!
Natasha fought a knot, gnarled and wanting to swell inside her. She had to find Jane, wrap her delicate, manicured nails around her tour manager’s throat, and squeeze until the woman couldn’t breathe. She had to…
All at once, Jane’s security force broke ranks and surged forward. Their black visors shimmered and became holo projections of Guy Fawkes masks.
They weren’t security after all. They were Beamers…or worse.
One of the men in black rushed into the room’s center while the others pressed the crowd inward. Natasha had stopped singing and stared moving backward onstage, gape-mouthed. After a moment, she looked back, fighting déjà vu as she waited for Jane to summon her to a hover. But as the curtains parted, she didn’t see Jane or James. Instead, she saw another of the men in black, his holo-projected Fawkes mask smiling its idiot smile. In his hands was a large black slumbergun. He wasn’t pointing it at her, but his meaning was clear: Stay where you are, and watch what happens.
The first man in black had reached the room’s approximate center. He threw something hard at the floor, and there was a flash not unlike an ancient magician’s incendiary. Rather than simply exploding into flash and smoke, a concussiv
e wave knocked a circle of concertgoers to the floor, each falling back into unconsciousness. Or death.
When the smoke cleared, the man in black was still standing in the area he’d cleared, somehow protected from his own device. He held one hand aloft on a stiff, straight arm. There was something in his black-gloved hand. It was a stunner. If he activated it and set it off, half the crowd would paint the walls in crimson.
“Listen up!” said the man, shouting from behind his visor, his mask’s eyes pointed toward the Beam camera parked in the room’s corner. His voice had the curious electronic affect that all Beamers shared, amplified by the helmet’s speakers so he wouldn’t sound muffled. “Null has tired of the posturing surrounding the sham of Shift! We represent the faceless millions! You are fed a ceaseless stream of propaganda from both parties, and The Beam tells you this is reality. But it is not! It is contrived! Enterprise does not matter! Directorate does not matter! Null knows, and we are legion! You do not see it because he who controls the feed controls the world! But we will no longer be held down! It is not a matter of numbers! You are shammed by a few, but they are almost none and we are many!”
The crowd — beyond the unconscious circle surrounding the terrorist — seemed to be terrified into paralysis. Women were clutching their husbands. A few of the husbands (and this made Natasha think of Isaac) were clinging to their wives for support. Everyone in the crowd was trying to become invisible. Natasha, who’d so recently wanted to be open and raw, found herself standing exposed without any skin.
The man in the mask looked at the camera then pointed back toward Natasha.
“Manipulation! You think this is about charity? It’s about changing minds! Your minds, out there across the NAU! Natasha Ryan is Directorate, and is richer than you could ever dream. After Shift, she will be Enterprise, and she will still be richer than you could ever dream! Your actions choose your masters, and this bitch is nothing but a piece on their board!”
