Pranksters was the first theory. But videotapes of the event deepened the mystery. It had been a live broadcast from the 1960s, and no tape of it was known to exist. Attempts to pinpoint the source of the signal failed until the Defense Department reported that one of its satellites had also picked up the bubbly broadcast. It had come from outer space.
Aliens was everyone’s second thought. Green men had picked up our planet’s electromagnetic ambassador and, in a mortifying commentary on Earthling musical taste, returned him to sender. But when the scientists at Princeton turned their attention to the spot of sky from whence the beam had come, they found no planets teeming with music critics. Instead, they found evidence of the closest black hole yet discovered.
They announced what had happened in a packed press conference where none of the computer graphics worked, and the physicists resorted to scribbling diagrams on pads of paper. The television signal, launched in the 1960s, had traveled outward into space for twenty or twenty-five years before encountering the black hole. There, unimaginable gravity had bent a portion of the signal around in a U and sling-shotted it back, focused and amplified in the weird electromagnetic environs of the singularity. Peapack had had the honor of passing through the returning beam. If future viewers picked up reprises of Bonanza or Mister Ed, no one should be alarmed.
What happened next was more secretive.
It had occurred to the scientists almost at once that it would be possible to use the black hole to send a message to the future. What very few of them knew was that in a secret research institute outside Boulder, Colorado, experimenters had been perfecting a new method of space travel. With a particle beam, they disassembled an object, recording its molecular structure. That information, encoded into a beam of clarified light, was sent to a receiver that reassembled the object in its exact original configuration. They had started by sending gumwads and bottle caps across the laboratory, and graduated to begonias and rabbits. There had been a few messy slip-ups, but we won’t go into that.
The drawback of this system for space travel was that you needed a receiver at the other end before sending anything through. It would be necessary to ferry receivers out to the stars by slow, conventional means. But with a handy black hole to boomerang the message back, sending someone to the future was a real possibility.
“Don’t worry, we’ll leave a note on the refrigerator,” the scientists joked to their volunteer time traveler, when she raised the point that someone in the future would have to be expecting the message.
What else could they say? There were no guarantees.
The volunteer’s name was Sage Akwesasne, and she stood out in the army of balding math nerds – not only because she was as tall and lean as the Iroquois hunters of her ancestry, but because she was a person who took in much and said little. Not even she could have explained why she had volunteered for such a hazardous experiment. It certainly wasn’t deep trust in the reliability of scientists. She was a newly minted postdoc in an era with few job prospects, but that wasn’t it, either. There was just something about the idea of flaming across the parsecs as a beam of pure information that appealed to her.
No one consulted OSHA, or got a permit for black-hole travel. They just did it.
The first thing that came to Sage’s mind, after the electric shock that restarted her heart, was surprise that it had worked. She was lying on a polished steel surface, covered with a thin hospital blanket. Experimentally, she wiggled her fingers and toes to make sure everything had been assembled in the right configuration.
An elderly man with a large pocked nose and wild gray hair leaned over her. A doctor, she thought, concerned for her health. “Sage,” he whispered urgently, “don’t sign anything.”
Whatever happened to “How do you feel?” Perplexed, she sat up, clutching the blanket. After a moment of vertigo, she saw that she was in precisely the kind of place she had expected: a laboratory full of enigmatic devices. She looked back at the assembler machine that had just reconstituted her. It looked bigger and more well-funded than the one they had had in her time. “What year is it?” she asked.
The man gave a sheepish, tentative smile. There was something familiar about him. “Five years later than you were expecting. I’m James Nickle, by the way. Oh, here.” He remembered to hand her a bathrobe he was carrying.
“Jamie,” she said, too detached to be embarrassed she hadn’t recognized him. He had been a graduate intern on the project. Then, he had been a peculiar-looking young man with a large pocked nose and wild brown hair.
“You came in on time, just as we planned,” he explained as she pulled on the bathrobe. “But you’ve been on disk for a while.”
“On disk?” she said blankly.
“Yes, because of the court case. You were impounded until they figured out who owned your copyright.”
“My copyright.”
There was a discreet cough, and Sage realized that another man had entered the room. This one was small and sleek as a ferret, dark-skinned and bearded. Something about his immaculate cuffs and narrow lapels said “lawyer.” With a restrained manner he came forward and said, “I am Mr. Ramesh Jabhwalla. I represent the Metameme Corporation. I regret to have to inform you that you are not Sage Akwesasne.”
“I’m not?” Sage said.
“Legally, you are a replica produced through a patented process, using proprietary information owned by the Metameme Corporation. It is our contention that your copyright resides in us.”
Sage wasn’t sure she was getting this straight. “You mean, you’ve copyrighted my story.”
“No,” said Mr. Jabhwalla. “You.” He opened his briefcase and showed her a large data disk with a stylized MM logo on it. “The code that was used to create you.”
“You’re crazy,” Sage said. “You can’t copyright a person.”
Behind Mr. Jabhwalla’s back, Jamie was nodding vigorously. But the lawyer was unperturbed. “They patented the human genome,” he said. “That was the legal precedent. There is no substantive difference between the biochemical code to create a human and electromagnetic code to do the same.”
Jamie said apologetically, “It’s why this technology has never taken off. All the legal questions.”
Sage’s head was spinning.
Impeccably polite, Mr. Jabhwalla said, “However, Metameme has recently decided not to continue pursuing the case. The copyright question will remain moot. Instead – ” he fished a thick, blue-covered contract out of the briefcase and presented it to her – “we are offering you a contract with our wholly owned subsidiary, PersonaFires. They will market your persona for a very reasonable twenty percent commission, plus expenses. It’s a good deal, Ms. Akwesasne-dupe. Most people would kill for a PersonaFires contract. Sign here.” He offered her a polished wood fountain pen.
No doubt the twenty-four dollars’ worth of beads for Manhattan had seemed like a good deal at the time. “And if I tell you to get lost?” she asked.
“Then, who knows? We might be forced to create a more agreeable duplicate of you.”
“You can’t do that!”
“Can’t we?” Smiling pleasantly, he lifted the briefcase with the disk an inch.
“Then I guess I have to think about it.”
He hesitated, but seemed to sense Jamie scowling over his shoulder. “Very well,” he said, and pocketed the pen. “Till then, allow us to be your host in the twenty-first century.”
She got down off the assembler slab, ignoring Jabhwalla’s offered hand. Standing in bare feet, she was six inches taller than he. Jamie ushered her into a bathroom where there hung a many-pocketed jumpsuit that made her look like an African explorer when she put it on. She examined herself in the mirror, wondering if her nose had really been so long before.
Mr. Jabhwalla was waiting when she emerged. He led the way to a door, but paused before opening it. “I’m afraid the press knows about you,” he said.
The next room was packed with reporters. When
she entered, the sound of cameras going off was like a bushful of crickets. Round-eyed video recorders tracked her every move. “Sage! Sagie! Honey, look over here! Have you signed with Metameme? What do you think of the future? How does it feel to be so many years out of date?”
Three people crowded forward to shove endorsement contracts at her, talking fast about tie-ins and face time and profit exposure. Others tucked business cards into her pockets. In seconds, the room was a muddle of elbows and frenzy. Then Sage saw Mr. Jabhwalla’s hand wave, and two bodyguards in suits with Metameme logos waded in on either side of her, clearing a path to the door.
They came out into an airy, high-ceilinged lobby, pursued by cameras and action. The bodyguards were hustling Sage along so fast she barely had time for a glimpse. “Where are we going?” she said.
Mr. Jabhwalla answered, “I am taking you to meet the most powerful man in the world.”
“The President?” Sage said, astonished.
The lawyer looked taken aback. “No, do you want to meet him?” He glanced at one of the bodyguards. “Hans, who is president, anyway?”
“Don’t know yet,” Hans answered. “The election is day after tomorrow.”
“Oh, of course. Well, that has to wait. Today you are going to meet D.B. Beddoes, Chairman of Metameme.”
Glass doors drew back before them. At the curb waited a white limo equipped with approximately half a block of tinted glass. One bodyguard opened a door; the other propelled her inside. She was thrown back against soft leather as the car took off.
The dark inside of the limo looked like an electronics store, screens everywhere. An out-of-shape, rather pasty blond man in wire-rimmed glasses was seated in a swiveling recliner, viewing a recording of Sage getting into the limo. He was wearing a baggy sweater, jeans, and bedroom slippers. He scrolled the picture back to the point when Sage entered the roomful of reporters, and watched it again, jiggling his leg restlessly. “That went well, don’t you think?” he said.
Mr. Jabhwalla had been flung into a seat opposite her, but he was not the one who answered. Instead, a young woman whose skin was startlingly dyed in gold and black tiger stripes said, “Right on script.” She leaned forward to offer a friendly hand to Sage. “I’m Patty Wickwire, President of PersonaFires. We’re an image marketing company.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Sage said.
“Yes, I know.”
Patty looked too young to have a job, much less be company president. She was wearing a leather vest and tiny shorts that showed off her picturesque skin. Her hair was piled on her head in a teased and tousled whirlwind. Little objects were caught in the cyclone of hair: a cigarette, a tiny working television screen, a miniature Statue of Liberty. Sage thought she detected irony in the choices.
“You’ve got to approve some photos of yourself for replication,” Patty said, directing Sage’s attention to a screen at her side. “I’ve already weeded the bad ones. Press ‘Accept’ to send them out to auction.”
The photos had been taken moments before. They were unrealistically flattering, as if they had been doctored. “They must have taken three hundred photos of me,” Sage said.
“They can take them, but they can’t replicate them without paying a royalty,” Patty explained. “Every image is proprietary. Laws have improved since your time. All you need is someone to enforce them for you.”
Sage pressed “Accept” to see what would happen. Across the car the doughboy was talking on a wire headset. He said, “The photo’s going on the block right now, number 47. See it? No, don’t buy it, you dipstick, we want it in Elite or Hip. That’s the fashion image we’re imprinting on the upscale set.” With an air of savage, myopic concentration he studied a screen in front of him. “Damn! It went to Fox. Okay, change of plan. Replicate her jumpsuit in denim, under fifty bucks. Flood the Bargain Bays. Can you do that by tomorrow? Good man.” He poked the screen and it switched to a complicated 3D chart. “Hot damn, will you look at that! Her penetration’s close to 80, and it’s been logarithmic since 40. Her contagion index is off the charts. She’s taking over the bandwidth like smallpox.”
“You’re a genius, D.B.,” Patty said in a tone that implied he already knew.
He checked another screen. “Endorsement bids are rolling in nicely. Disney and ATW are duking it out for rights to the action figures, the biopic, and the immersion game. The plastic surgeons are waiting for the specs on her face.” He peered through wispy bangs at Sage. “Thank God they didn’t send some bald guy with bad teeth.” A terminal beeped. He turned to it. “The photos sure went fast. Congratulations, Ms. Akwesasne. You just made your first $30,000.”
“That was easy,” Sage said.
His face lost all semblance of softness. With a cold intensity he said, “No, it wasn’t. You have no idea how hard it was to set up the system that just made you all that money.”
Sage focused on him more clearly. No one had introduced him, presumably because he needed no introduction. It occurred to her that this was no man to trifle with. His puppy-dog looks hid a carbon-fiber personality.
“Why are you selling the specs on my face?” she asked.
“That’s the business we’re in, Ms. Akwesasne. Sorry, I thought Jabhwalla filled you in. Metameme is an information wholesaler. We don’t usually do end-product consumer delivery; there are lots of companies in place for that. We buy from information producers and supply the data to publishers, manufacturers, media outlets, and other businesses.”
“An information middleman,” Sage said.
“Right.” A terminal was warbling; he swiveled around and touched the screen. “Hi, Steve. What’s up?” He listened for a moment. “No, she’s from turn of the millennium. Golden age of innocence, remember? Mass markets. Marriage. Internal combustion. When they thought jaded hackers would hippify the world. If you’re interested, I’ve got a whole line of classic revival concepts posted for bid. Use access code ‘Nostalgiapunk.” ’ He jabbed the screen off. “Sheesh, how do these people stay in business, so far behind the curve?”
“You’re selling information about me?” Sage said.
“Brokering it for you. Don’t worry, you’re getting royalties. You’re very lucky you landed with us. We’re the best as well as the biggest. I’ve run the projections myself. As intellectual property, you could go exponential.”
“Wait a minute,” Sage said. “What if I don’t want to be a celebrity?”
D.B., Patty, and Jabhwalla all stared at her as if the words “don’t want to be a celebrity” weren’t in English. D.B. was first to recover. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, leaning forward, suddenly intent and earnest. “In a way, this isn’t about you at all. It’s about the idea of you, and that transcends all of us. You answer a yearning in the culture. Our world is hungry for heroes. The brave woman who gave up her life to become a beam of light, and traveled around a black hole to come back to us – it’s Promethean, it’s Orphic, it hits us at this limbic level. You are a heavenly messenger. And if you don’t pull it off with style, you’ll disillusion a generation of kids, and people who still want to believe the way kids believe. You’ve come to redeem us from our cynicism, and I can’t let you let us down.”
Everything but the flicker of screens was frozen for a moment after he stopped speaking. Then D.B. shook his head, as if emerging from some kind of fugue state, and turned to Patty. “Did you get that?”
“Yup,” she said, holding up a recorder.
“Put it in a marketing plan or something,” he said.
For a moment there, he’d practically sold Sage to herself. With a pang of disappointment, she forced herself to be skeptical. “Then why did you keep me on disk for five years?”
D.B. blinked as if the question had ambushed him, but he only lost one beat. “Five years ago we weren’t ready for you,” he said. “You would have gotten your fifteen minutes, and that would’ve been it. Today, you could be the next wave. I don’t just mean popular, I mean dominant paradigm.” He
turned to Patty. “What is your marketing plan on her, anyway?”
Patty bit her lip. “Actually, D.B., I need to run it past you.”
“Of course,” he said.
“No, I mean, it’s a little bit novel.”
“Novel’s good.”
“Let’s talk about it when we get to the house.”
“Yes! What the fuck is it?” he snarled at the air. For a moment Sage thought he was having a psychotic episode; then she realized a call had come in on his headset.
The video screen at the front of the car showed the road ahead. They were entering a one-lane tunnel. Ahead, a steel gate rolled up to let them through. They passed a manned checkpoint, then rolled to a stop next to a set of elevators. The car windows went transparent, and Sage realized that there was no driver. Mr. Jabhwalla got out and held the door for Sage, the perfect gentleman. Meanwhile, D.B, had gotten absorbed in a densely detailed discussion with his caller. He gestured them on, never glancing from his terminal.
As they waited for the elevator, Patty said in a low voice to Mr. Jabhwalla, “Maybe you better stay with the Idea Machine, in case he has another inspiration spasm. I’ll take Sage up.”
Mr. Jabhwalla nodded. Patty and Sage got on the elevator. Patty’s stripes undulated when she moved.
“So, what do you think of D.B.?” Patty said when they were alone.
Sage shrugged. “Nothing wrong with him a little Ritalin wouldn’t fix.”
Patty laughed nervously. “He’s my client, too, you know. I’ve been trying to get him to ditch that geek-boy persona. It was useful at first; everyone bought into him as eccentric genius mogul. But it’s gotten old. He needs to grow up.”
“Maybe it’s just who he is,” Sage suggested.
Patty shook her head. “He is who he needs to be to run Metameme. It’s not an insurgent startup anymore. He’s a public figure now, and this isn’t the twentieth century.”
After a long ride, the elevator doors opened onto an airy entry hall. The front wall was glass, three stories high, and looked out on a dramatic mountainscape. They were at a high elevation; patches of snow lingered in shadowed spots, and a bank of clouds hid the lowlands below. The room had been built around three old-growth white pines that soared up to the skylight roof. At their base, a Japanese fountain played in the sunlight.
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