Earthweb

by Marc Stiegler

  Their hamburgers arrived, and Jessica added ketchup as she continued. "Well, that prediction made a pretty big ruckus, and somebody else saw an opportunity. They created a website to manage the bets heaping up—the bets couldn't be paid off for five years, and if nobody managed 'em, the contracts would get lost, the money wouldn't be escrowed, etc."

  "You really do know something about this," the General said with pleasure. "That bet-management website was, in effect, the first full-service financial 'castpoint."

  "Yeah, I guess you're right. Didn't they make it possible to add new forecasts? And buy and sell positions on all of them?"

  "They certainly did, Jessica."

  Jessica looked hard at the General; there was something funny in his voice again, but she couldn't tell what it was. "Anyway, in the end Earth Defense surprised everybody. Not only did they embrace the idea of using dogs for recon, they encouraged people to use 'castpoints to stimulate the general development of new ideas. EDA even funded a couple of the first 'castpoint startups, right?"

  The General grunted. "Like I said, you're telling the pop version of the story, though you've got it down pat. Actually, idea futures are much older than Earth Defense. There are some fragments in the pre-Crash Web archives pointing to an idea futures market formed before the millennium, back in 1989."

  Jessica laughed in disbelief. "But there wasn't even a Web then."

  Samuels shrugged. "It was a local market. The buyers and sellers and the 'castpoint manager all lived around Palo Alto." The General smiled. "They weren't dummies back then, you know. After all, they had to invent the Web for us."

  Jessica bit into her hamburger. They continued to talk about various things, but she was distracted. Twice in this conversation General Samuels had said things that rang warning bells in her head. There were things he wasn't telling her, things she should know. She knew what she was going to do about it, too. Right now, she had no mental energy to spare. But after they killed this Shiva, she was going to turn her attention to the General. She would empathically learn his behavior as she had once learned Christina's, as she was now learning MacBride's. Once she had his mind inside hers, she would study him. And there in his mind she would discover the truth.

  * * *

  Chan Kam Yin shut off his welding torch, looking up at the undercarriage of the antique '67 Mustang with satisfaction. He loved the old groundhuggers. They were so mechanical, so visually understandable. It made them entirely different from computers and integrated circuits—you could look at an integrated circuit through a blasted microscope and still not see anything you could understand. Even with a modern skycar the real action was in the methane fuel cell, where molecules quietly changed their arrangements and brought forth electricity with stealthy efficiency. A piston engine like the one in this baby was, however, a beast of another kind. What could be easier to understand than driving a piston with periodic detonations? He could wrap his head around it.

  He ducked out from under the car and released the hydraulic lift. The Mustang settled gracefully to the ground. He looked at the polished chrome and sighed. Someday he'd have a car like this, just for show, the way the owner of this one did. And he'd have a ten-fan skycar for serious travel, the way the owner of this one did.

  The Dealer washed up and flipped on his palmtop. "Honorable Lao, your Mustang is all fixed up. Wanna come down and check it out?"

  Kee Sun Lao replied, "Thanks, but I've gotta jump out of here in about five. Can you come back next month for the maintenance check?"

  The Dealer tapped his palmtop. "Already scheduled. Catch you later." The Dealer strolled out of the garage, looked up at the mansion towering over it. Well, even if he didn't own the old car, he had to confess he enjoyed working on it. Indeed, in some ways it was better; after all, with the current arrangement he was the one who got paid, while the owner wound up doing the paying. It was almost as good as a scam. He turned and fired up his own groundcar, a clunky old (as opposed to antique) hunk of lime-green junk (could you believe that color was ever popular?). It took him only twenty minutes to get back to his apartment. Traffic, he noticed, was lighter than it had been a year ago, just as it had been lighter a year ago than the year before. Skycars and telecommuting were at last taking over in Guangdong Province. It was about time.

  He grabbed some left over chow fun from the fridge and heated it in the microwave, then threaded his way around the table and the bed back to his desk. He tapped on the touchscreen, being careful not to spill lunch on it. His Webcrawler brought forth his daily dose of news and information, his logon Factoid followed by serious subject lines only. He stuffed a chopstick's worth of chow fun into his mouth and began reading.

  His Factoid of the Moment told him:

  When a frog vomits, it first expels its stomach and then scrapes the contents out with its hands. It then swallows its stomach again.

  The image quite overpowered him. He swallowed quickly, then carefully put the rest of the chow fun at the far corner of his desk.

  He scanned the subject lines. One article's topic made him blink in amazement, and he popped over Reggie Oxenford's website. He had a subscription to Oxenford's news stories, so there wasn't any payment hassle.

  The report "Interview with the Predictor" knocked him flat. He'd known there was good money in the Earth Defense 'castpoints, but this guy was a billionaire! Dragon's teeth!

  There just had to be a way to get in on the gravy. His work as a fence paid the bills well enough. He was even putting the occasional chunk of change into the mutuals. But he'd still never own Kee Sun Lao's Mustang the way he was going.

  Then he remembered the one time his father had bet on a cockfight when the experts were playing. His father had found out where they were putting their money and had very quietly bet the same way. Needless to say, the loser of the fight had been the "favorite," the one the amateurs had backed, and the experts—and the Dealer's father—had made a handsome killing.

  Now it was obvious to the Dealer how to scam the 'castpoints. All he had to do was figure out who the Predictor was, and then he could ride the expert forecast the same way his dear old dad had done.

  Of course, figuring out how the Predictor took positions in the 'casts wouldn't be easy. Reggie Oxenford had actually taken the simpler path when he merely found the Predictor's true name and home. The Dealer didn't care what the Predictor's name was, or where he lived. He just cared about the Predictor's anonymous identities, the ones he used to buy and sell positions on forecasts. If the Dealer could map the Predictor's brand, or even just his behavior, to a set of identities on the 'castpoint, he could ride the forecast.

  The Dealer looked out his window toward the glow of light above Hong Kong. He wasn't exactly sure how he'd do it—after all, anonymous identities were anonymous because they had no traceable link to a brand—but he'd pull it off.

  "Thanks, Dad," he murmured. This time he was partly sincere.

  Chapter Five

  T minus Eighteen

  The moment of decision came. The sudden transformation of Jessica's palmtop from a quiet companion into a demon from the Depths heralded the event. The offending palmtop vibrated the room with the thunderous clap of electric guitars. The country metal group Avatars had a new hit single, and Jessica's computer had shown great inspiration by choosing the melody to sing her to consciousness.

  Jessica made an executive decision. She slapped the palmtop more forcefully than it deserved. The Avatars' music disappeared from the room as quickly as it had arrived. Jessica muttered to no one in particular, "Ten more minutes."

  Jessica drifted in and out of sleep. She scrumaged through the sheets, searching for the warmest spot remaining in the bed. She wished the bed were her own. If she were in her own bed, she could merely worry about Andrew Clay's problem with building a management team around his socially-retarded-but-brilliant VP of engineering. If she were in her own bed, she wouldn't worry about the survival of Earth. She wouldn't dream about pain, blood, and
lost lives.

  Jessica had never liked working in her sleep, though she did it often. Normally working dreams kept her in limbo, left her unrested. Now her dreams kept her in hell and left her exhausted.

  She tossed to the other side of the bed, tumbling like a soccer ball in a brutal game. Her training cycle was only going to get worse. Soon she would start work as a Combat Controller. Real people would die; those deaths would be her responsibility. Those deaths, those people, would haunt her dreams forever. And she hadn't even met them yet.

  The alarm came to life playing yet another tune. She did not recognize this one, but it ground her nerves even more than the Avatars. Only surrender could save her. She struggled to her feet to greet the day.

  Jessica bent over and plunged her hands deep into her thick mane, massaging some life back into her scalp. Her brain felt as thick and tangled as her hair. At least she knew how to comb out the wild disarray in her hair.

  She was fastening the silver belt of her green jumpsuit when a polite knock wrapped at her door.

  "Coming," she yelled. "Just a minute." She dropped her brush and grabbed the deodorant. After two quick blasts, she realized it didn't smell quite right. When she looked at the can, she realized she'd just used her hairspray under her arms. She closed her eyes and groaned softly. It was going to be one of those days. At least she was dressed.

  She opened the door to find General Samuels towering over her. "Breakfast?" he asked.

  Jessica raised an eyebrow. "What about the morning sim?"

  The General shrugged. "We're videotaping it; you can study it later. I want to hear how you're doing with 'castpoints, which are now as important to our victories as MacBride himself."

  The General walked down the sandstone hallways with an easy stride; Jessica found herself skipping from time to time to keep up. They reached his office, where Jessica found the aide laying out coffee for her, tea for the General, and danish pastries for all parties. She couldn't resist harassing the aide. "Coffee and danish, my favorite breakfast. Tell the truth now. Have you been videotaping me, learning about me the way I'm learning about Morgan?"

  The aide laughed graciously. "General Samuels told me what to procure for you, Ms. Travis."

  She raised her eyebrow at the General. He shrugged. "I knew you drink coffee because when we first met, I caught you stare longingly at your autoperk, wishing the coffee would hurry up. The danish is a lucky guess. But don't get confused, Jessica. Although we haven't been videotaping you outside the cocoon, remember, our contract authorizes it. So don't be surprised if we do it sometime." He sipped tea from his High Accuracy mug. "Actually, I can't imagine why we'd want to any time soon."

  Jessica's eyes flickered around the room as she tried to think of a circumstance under which someone like the General might want to scrutinize her life. She found it. "But later, if I lead an Angel team and destroy a Shiva, you'll want to do to me what I'm doing to Morgan. That's why you've got that clause in the contract, isn't it?"

  The General smiled. "Excellent analysis. Even if you don't take over Morgan's job, perhaps you can take over mine."

  Jessica snagged a cherry danish from the table and sat down. The danish was fresh and warm. She rolled her eyes. "Heavenly."

  The aide nodded his head to her and departed. General Samuels turned to her. Suddenly, he was every bit the professor. "What new have you learned about 'castpoints since our last discussion, Ms. Travis?"

  Jessica took her time and swallowed before answering. While working through college she'd done a stint as a researcher for Pacific Arbiters Inc., and in applying those research skills she had uncovered some very interesting tidbits. Her immediate problem was how to sneak up on Samuels with her surprise. "You know, before coming here, I'd always sort of looked on the 'castpoints as a big gambling game, like Vegas and Anguilla." She shook her head. "I must confess, there's more to them than meets the eye."

  "That's a beginning. Can you tell me why Earth Defense spurred the development of 'castpoints in the first place?"

  Jessica smiled; this was a question to which she knew the answer. "You were swamped with ideas coming off the Web. Worse, you were swamped with good ideas."

  The General just shook his head in delight. "Wonderfully put. Go on."

  Jessica shrugged. "During the final Shiva II assault, over half a billion people were watching the battle through the live webfeed." She took a sip of her coffee, which was, she found, fresh roasted and almost as sweet as the danish. "Lots of the people who were watching were talking at the same time. I've looked at some of the Web archives, and the whole world was alive with newsgroups and chatrooms full of proposals for how to deal with the new roboguards, guessing how Shiva was laid out, arguing about what kinds of opposition you'd get going different directions. A lot of it was garbage, of course, but here and there it was brilliant."

  The General's eyes reflected agony as he stared past her, past the wall, and into history. "You were what, fourteen at the time? You can't imagine how frustrating it was to know that, somewhere in those twenty-five million conversations, someone was predicting exactly what would happen, for exactly the right reasons. But we had no way of finding that one thread of genius." His eyes focused on her again, waiting for more.

  Jessica felt her face warm, blushing for no reason she could find. She felt like a wayward student speaking to a kind but determined professor. "Anyway, I found three different people in the archives who independently suggested the eventual strategy for killing roboguards. One of them came up with the idea seven hours before Morgan and Cochran figured it out. If Morgan had been able to find that idea on the Web, two of the Angels would not have gotten killed early in the engagement. We might have even gotten somebody out." For Jessica personally, the consequences of the lost opportunity had actually been much greater. Because it took the Angels so long to reach the Gate, Shiva II had survived long enough light off a missile at Silicon Valley. A lucky countermissile had gotten a piece of it, enough to deflect it from its target, but not enough to avoid tragedy: the multimegaton warhead had detonated near Sausalito, where Jessica's parents' home had been located.

  The General looked into her eyes like he was reading her thoughts. "A terrible tragedy, the loss of northern San Francisco." He sipped his tea. "At least Shiva warheads don't produce a lot of radiation. If they did, we'd have lost far more, and wouldn't be rebuilding for a hundred more years."

  Jessica had a tangential thought. "You know, if we didn't have 'castpoints today, not even Morgan could get an Angel into Shiva's control room. But if we'd had the 'castpoints then, I think we could have beaten the early Shivas without him."

  The General nodded. "Undoubtedly." He returned quickly to professorial mode. "But now, please explain how the 'castpoints solved the problem of finding the widely spaced threads of genius in the Web."

  Jessica squished up her eyebrows. "Well, it's sort of obvious."

  "I wish everyone thought that. There are still plenty of people in the military who don't get the point."

  "Well, how do you spot a good idea or a good forecast? Obviously, you make people put their money where their mouths are. Let them back a forecast with real bucks, and the serious ones will go for it, while the rest just hang out in the chat rooms. No muss, no fuss. No debating. No mediocre compromises. Just say it with money."

  The General swallowed the last of a danish and sat back, finished. "Any other critical new insights, Jessica?"

  Jessica started circling her biggest revelation. "Another thing I found in the archives was the startup of the first 'castpoint. It would seem, General, that that first one didn't get started the day after the million-dollar bets were made."

  "It didn't? Really!" the General asked with mock surprise. Jessica could see he was laughing again—with her or at her, she wasn't so sure.

  "Not at all. Those bets were actually placed a while before the US, NATO, and the UN worked out the Earth Defense concept."

  "So the idea was already in pl
ace, ready for Earth Defense to pick it up."

  "Well, Earth Defense didn't pick it up right away, either."

  The General sipped his tea. His expression said he knew where Jessica was going, but that he would let her get there in her own time. And he would enjoy the journey. "Shocking! Perhaps they were bureaucrats after all."

  "Perhaps. General Celenza, who'd commanded the US attack on Shiva II, was in charge for a little while, as caretaker while they picked the new Chief of Staff." She paused. "It would seem, General, that idea futures really took off just moments after you took over."

  The General nodded sagely. "Interesting. Coincidence?"

  Jessica stood up. "Coincidence my ass." She pointed a finger at him. "It was you, General Samuels. You started the 'castpoints."