Emperor of Gondwanaland

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Well, what could have been more natural? After all, my Ph.D. thesis concerned itself with maximizing marketplace efficiencies. At first I went into the digital representation of the market strictly as an observer. Even that experience was incredible. I learned so much about how the market actually functions on a quantum level. After a few of my suggestions for improvements in trading procedures were implemented manually with good results, I was allowed to start interacting directly through my wetware,”

  “And a year after that—”

  “A year after that, for all practical purposes, I was the Market.”

  Dessert arrived, as well as an espresso for me and decaf for the Market. I watched her sip her coffee while I tried to compose my next question as delicately as I could. Finally, I decided just to be blunt.

  “Weren’t you afraid to insert yourself into the center of a system that billions of people relied on for their economic survival? I mean, wouldn’t you say that your actions revealed quite a bit of arrogance and hubris?”

  The unflappable Market merely smiled benevolently at me. “Not at all, Glen. You see, although the various interlocked markets that existed prior to my takeover were in their primitive way a wonderful creation—perhaps the most complex and efficient human system ever invented—they were still crude and buggy tools for putting capital to work. There was minimal coordination between many of the parts of the system, and very little correlation of data or player intentions. Why, just the fact that no one thought to extend the theory of mutual funds to other investment options was shocking! And then there was the problem of overt manipulation of the markets.”

  “You’re talking about something like the scandals of the early years of the millennium. Or the DreamWorks Recession of 2012.”

  “Exactly. Crooks and con men and unprincipled CEO’s were able to manipulate the market ruthlessly, inflating prices of worthless stocks and driving healthy companies out of business. Scams and insider-trading sucked the lifeblood out of the market, like parasites on a living being. Regulatory bodies like the SEC and the few artificially intelligent programs in place couldn’t catch more than a fraction of these schemes. And they certainly couldn’t help optimize the daily transaction flow. What was needed for optimal functioning of the marketplace was a single arbiter and facilitator, a judge and negotiator, a coordinator and enforcer. That role required a human mind trained in the subtlety of the market and in human motivations. A mind backed up by access to many additional teraflops of processing power. A unique mind belonging to a human who had no attachments or allegiances to any family or nation. And my mind was the only one that fit the bill. There was no arrogance or hubris involved. Just a recognition that I had found the one all-important task I was destined to perform.”

  I reached for my PDA and shut off its recording function. I found myself somewhat shaken by our conversation. Perhaps finishing a whole bottle of wine on my own had contributed to my discomfort. The Market spoke from such an Olympian perspective that I felt buglike in comparison. But paradoxically, her erotic allure that I had been attempting to deny and ignore all evening had only swelled in power.

  “Well, Adamina, thank you for being so forthcoming. I feel we’re off to a good start. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten, as we planned?”

  “Certainly. The photo shoot should be fun.”

  With an elegant demand for our attention, the waiter deftly slid the leather-jacketed bill onto the table. I reached for it, saying, “We’ll let the magazine take care of this.”

  The gesture was foolish, but I made it anyway. By universal agreement, the Market was paid a salary pegged to the performance of her virtual counterpart and skimmed from every participating country. In sixteen months she had leapt onto the Forbes 1000, just below the guy who owned the patents to the tabletop sono-fusion power plant just going into production.

  “Of course,” said the Market, “Nuevo Vanity Fair can well afford it.”

  I shivered a bit, knowing that the Market’s words were not merely a perfunctory courtesy.

  She was certainly accessing NVF’s balance sheets as we spoke.

  The Market killed in a bikini.

  The tiny scraps of fabric (displaying fragmented surface animations of their designer’s latest Paris runway show) revealed nearly all of the glorious body I had fantasized about at dinner last night. As the photographer—a short stocky fellow with longish blond hair and an annoying bark of a voice—directed the Market to assume various fairly demure showgirl poses, I had to turn away to hide my erection.

  The shoot had started innocently enough, with the Market modeling various gowns and casual outfits. Adamina Smythe exhibited a natural grace and self-possession. She let the stylists and makeup techs interminably fuss around her without growing irritable or weary. She took direction from the photographer well, and didn’t wilt under the hot lights. Even granting that she had been at the center of incredible media attention during the past seventeen years, her performance was remarkable.

  Only at one point did the Market call a halt to the proceedings. After blinking rapidly for several seconds, she said, “We need to stop now for a minute or so, please.”

  Solicitous as a nursemaid, I rushed up to her side with a bottle of water. “Is everything all right? Are you getting tired? Do you have a headache?”

  “No. It’s just that I’ve just been attacked by a really bad virus. I need to concentrate.”

  The Market retreated to the dressing room, and everyone took a break for coffee or snacks or a smoke.

  Despite the world’s growing widespread prosperity, a few international dissidents to the new order still skulked beneath the burnished woodwork, opposed to the Market for a variety of ideological reasons—the 1929-ers, the Anti-Souk League, the New Barterians, the Alan Greenspammers … With the reduction in importance of physical trading establishments like Wall Street and the London, Hong Kong, Moscow, Beijing, Rio, and Tokyo exchanges, these terrorists had fallen back on virtual attacks, attempting to disrupt the portions of cyberspace that the Market inhabited. Luckily, the Market’s bodily safety—like that of any other citizen—was guaranteed by the various Homeland Security organizations of whatever country she happened to be residing in, without resort to such obsolete safeguards as special squads of bodyguards.

  Now, apparently, hidden hackers had launched one of their trademark virtual attacks.

  I dithered nervously while the Market did whatever she had to do to combat this threat. I called my editor, Zulma Soares, to fill her in on my progress, and learned that she had allotted another five pages to my article, based on a recent poll of the Market’s popularity. Great. More pressure.

  Eventually the Market reappeared, apparently unruffled by her brush with disaster. “The virus is safely partitioned now. My support staff are analyzing it to guard against any such future incursions. We can resume.”

  Shortly after that, the Market made another trip to the dressing room, emerging in her bikini.

  That was when I nearly lost it. Up till then, I had managed to keep my lust for the Market somewhat hidden and in check. Berating myself for unprofessionalism and idiotic, impossible daydreams, I left the room, determined to stay outside until my excitement grew less visible.

  The physical evidence of my adolescent delusions had just vanished when the Market herself tapped me on the shoulder. She wore loose linen pants, a white blouse with three-quarter sleeves that flounced at their edges, and sandals. A straw hat sloped back atop her thick fall of unrestrained silvery hair.

  “Glen, is everything okay?”

  “Fine, fine, I just had to, uh, attend to a call of nature.”

  “How did you think the photo session went?”

  “Perfect. They’ll use one of the swimsuit shots on the cover, you know. Does that bother you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “You don’t mind exposing yourself like that to millions of strangers?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just my bod
y, after all. Everyone’s got one. But I really don’t understand people’s interest in such things. I’m already such an intimate part of their lives, it seems almost redundant for them to be fascinated by what I look like.”

  “That—that is almost a nonhuman attitude.”

  There it was. I had said one of the things that I had been holding back from saying. But there was no avoiding the topic now, so I pressed ahead in somewhat contentious adversarial-reporter mode.

  “Do you feel truly human, Adamina, after all your modifications? Did you ever think that possibly you’re some sort of alien, planted among us?”

  Completely unfazed, the Market just shrugged. “This is something I’ve thought about for a long time, Glen. But how would I know whether I feel human or not? I know what my interior life is like, but how do I decide whether my mental states are comparable to the human norm? How do any of us know we feel the same emotions others feel, or think the same way? It’s like seeing color. When I say something’s red, and you agree, are we really seeing the same color? You just can’t know. As for literally being an alien or some kind of spontaneous or engineered mutant, of course I’ve thought about the possibility. My strange origin after all might be a clever charade, a means of inserting me into human society for some nefarious purpose. But all I can tell you is that every medical test so far reveals me to be completely human. And I don’t have any hidden allegiances to the Tentacled Flesh Eaters from Mizar Five.”

  The Market laughed, and I did, too, out of relief. “Okay, then, I’m glad that awkward bit’s out of the way. I wouldn’t have been much of a reporter if I didn’t ask, and I hope you’ll excuse my impertinence.”

  “You’re excused. Now, it’s a beautiful day out there, and I haven’t been in New York in the past six months. Let’s walk around a little and then grab some lunch.”

  Out on the sidewalk, I spontaneously offered the Market my hand. Her fingers grazed mine briefly, imparting a little friendly pressure before she withdrew them, but all my doubts about her humanity vanished.

  Over the next several days I was not out of the Market’s company for more than the regular hours devoted to our separate sleeping. Much of our time together we spent in public places, and I was startled by the reactions of the average people who recognized her. That walk after the photo shoot had first introduced me to her adoring fans.

  Every few feet we moved down the Manhattan sidewalks people stopped the Market, just to say hello or smile wordlessly or thank her or ask for her autograph. Men and women of all ages and classes responded equally to her, although of course among the males there was that extra component of slack-jawed sexual attraction. I found myself getting jealous of the guys, until I forced myself to remember that I had no particular claim on the Market’s attention.

  Nor did any man.

  People with children made a big point of explaining to their kids who the Market was and what she did and how she was responsible for all the good things this youngest generation enjoyed as unquestioned appurtenances of their privileged lives. The kids reacted with wide-eyed admiration and reverence.

  After a while, I felt like I was second-in-command to the leader of some cult out for a stroll among the faithful. To witness any other person I had ever met as the focus of such adoration would have struck me as repugnant. I would have labeled the object of all this reverence—a CEO or famous politician, a Bollywood starlet or world-class scientist, religious leader or famed solar-sail racer—as an insufferable egotist, soaking up the ignorant worship of the masses. But something about the Market’s pristine demeanor negated any such harsh judgment. She was just so gracious and selfless, so transparent and goodhearted that the effusive praise did not bloat her, but instead seemed to pass through her. She was a two-way conduit for power from above and gratitude from below.

  One evening I told her about all these thoughts, and she just smiled mysteriously and said, “Giving and receiving are just two sides of the same coin.”

  Somehow this sentiment lost its triteness coming from the Market’s lips.

  The Market and I continued our professional dialogue in any number of locations and circumstances. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the intricacies of the world’s economy. If I never heard the words “arbitrage,” “debenture,” “munis,” or “futures” again, it would be too soon. Truth to tell, the Market could be kind of a drone sometimes.

  The Market had a healthy appetite and a moderate taste for luxury, and I ate more fancy meals than I usually indulge in. At the end of a week, I was having trouble bonding the stik-tite closures on my pants. Finally, however, we began to run out of things to talk about, and my deadline was imminent. Zulma was pressing me to see a first draft of the piece, so she could start thinking about pull-quotes. But I still hadn’t broached my second awkward question on an essential topic—a topic that Zulma had specifically enjoined me to tackle.

  I decided at last to confront the Market over lunch on what would be the final day of our time together.

  After the waiter had taken our orders, I asked, “Tell me, Adamina, do you ever think about sex?”

  The Market did not respond immediately. And was that a faint blush suffusing her cheeks?

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Glen. Some drudgester just posted news of a big water-strike on Mars and the NASDAQ went through the ceiling. What was that question again?”

  The NASDAQ and Dow Jones functioned like the Market’s temperature or an EKG. I would guess that such a spike might represent a fever or a case of heart arrhythmia in a mere mortal. For the first time it occurred to me that the unverifiable demands her job made on the Market’s attention could also serve as a convenient excuse not to hear something. But I was not to be rebuffed.

  “I asked about your feelings on sex. Specifically, how does it feel to be a virgin at your age, with no prospect of ever experiencing normal physical love?”

  “What do you want me to say, Glen? That the situation doesn’t bother me? I told you I was physiologically human in all respects. But I simply can’t indulge in sex. The hormonal and neural and endocrinal turmoil that intercourse involves would wreak havoc with my wetware. My connection with the market—well, as the experts love to say, ‘Results would be unpredictable.’ So do I obsess about this lack or limitation in my life until I’m miserable? Or do I just accept it as part of who I am, and concentrate on what I do best and on all the rewards it brings to me and the rest of the world? It’s not so unusual, is it? After all, I wouldn’t be the first person to choose celibacy as an aid to a higher goal, would I?”

  I felt like a louse, and decided to cut the thread short. “Fair enough, Adamina. I’m sure you realize that our readers would have felt cheated if we hadn’t addressed this aspect of your life.”

  “I understand. But I’d prefer to talk about something else now, Glen.”

  So we did.

  As we were leaving the restaurant, a young woman rushed up to us. The stranger threw her arms about the Market and spontaneously planted a kiss on the Market’s cheek.

  The Market shied back in a manner not typical of her usual generosity toward such impulsive displays, and I knew my insensitive probing must have disturbed her usual composure. I immediately took the Market back to her hotel.

  Sometimes my job made me feel like shit.

  But nothing in my professional experience had prepared me for what came next.

  Now, of course, everyone knows that the woman who kissed the Market was a member of the Counterfeiters’ Army, whose nom de guerre was Penny Candy, and that her kiss was laced with a potent designer drug engineered to function on contact as a general emotional disinhibitor. Having failed to disrupt the Market through attacks on her cyberspace extensions, this group of malcontents had hit upon the strategy of sabotaging her implanted wetware.

  And quite a successful strategy it proved to be.

  A few hours later I knocked on the door to the Market’s hotel room, intending to say goodbye and to thank her for
her cooperation as an interview subject. Like some timorous teenage suitor, I carried a box of Godiva chocolates and a small hair clip she had admired once while window-shopping with me.

  What could you actually buy the woman who had everything?

  Who was everything?

  The door jerked open and I faced the Market. Her hair was in disarray, with tendrils plastered to her sweaty face. Her shirt was half unbuttoned, and she was barefoot. Her usual perfume was overlain with a musky reek.

  She put the back of her hand up to her brow. “Oh, Glen, it’s you— What is it?”

  “I just wanted to come in to say goodbye. But if this is a bad time—”

  “Yes. I mean, no, it’s not. Come in.”

  I took a seat, expecting the Market to do likewise. But she instead paced up and down the room, talking unceasingly, her words on the edge of sense and craziness.

  I should have left then. I half suspected something bad was about to happen. If I had just stood up and exited, I would never have played such a pivotal role in the Orgasmic Meltdown of 2022.

  But then I knew subconsciously that some other man surely would have taken my place.

  And that was a prospect I couldn’t tolerate. Along with my infatuation with the Market, jealousy compelled me to stay.

  And in the end, both Penny Candy and I were equally complicit in the Market’s downfall.

  “Glen, I just don’t know how to feel about anything anymore. Suddenly everything looks different to me. This busy world, all the people eager for more, more, more— Have I wasted my life? What was I thinking? Who appointed me God? And all these numbers! They’re driving me insane! There must be more to life than getting and spending. Money, money, money! It’s in my bloodstream, Glen. It’s in my blood!. I’m burning up!”

  “Adamina, calm down. I’m sorry if anything I said caused you to feel this way. Here, let me get you a glass of water.”

  I stood up and moved toward a carafe on a sideboard.