Distraction

by Bruce Sterling

  A small furry robot entered the office with a pair of plastic packets in its tubular arms. It placed the packets neatly on the carpet, and left.

  The abandoned packages writhed and heaved, with a muted internal symphony of scrunches and springs. Geodesic sticks and cabling flashed like vector graphics beneath the translucent upholstery. The packets suddenly became a pair of armchairs.

  Greta opened her new, executive-style purse and touched a tissue to her nose. “You know, the air is very nice in here.”

  Bambakias returned in gray silk trousers and undershirt, shadowed by a silent young woman, her arms laden with shoes, shirt, and suspenders. “Where’s my hat?” he demanded querulously. “Where’s my cape?”

  “These are very interesting chairs,” Greta told him. “Tell me about these chairs.”

  “Oh, these chairs of mine never caught on,” Bambakias said, jamming one scrawny arm through the ruffled sleeve of his dress shirt. “For some reason, people just don’t trust computation enough to sit on it.”

  “I trust computation,” Greta assured him, and sat. The internal spokes and cables adjusted beneath her weight, with a rapid crescendo of tiny guitar-string shrieks. She settled daintily in midair, a queen on a tensile throne of smart chopsticks and spiderweb. Oscar admired responsive tensegrity structures as much as the next man, but he sat in the second chair with considerably less brio.

  “An architect gets the credit for design successes,” Bambakias told her. “The failures you can cover with ivy. But weird decor schemes that just don’t work out—well, those you have to keep inside the office.”

  A silent group of krewepeople removed the massage table and replaced it with a folding hospital bed. The Senator sat on the bed’s edge, pulling up his gaunt bare feet like a giant seabird.

  “I noticed another set of these armchairs on the way in,” Greta said. “But they were solid.”

  “Not ‘solid.’ Rigid. Spray-on veneer.”

  “‘Less is more,’” Greta said.

  A spark of interest lit the Senator’s sagging face as his dresser saw to his shoes and socks. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Greta,” she told him gently.

  “And you’re, what, you’re a psychiatrist?”

  “That’s close. I’m a neuroscientist.”

  “That’s right. You already told me that, didn’t you.”

  Greta turned and gave Oscar a look full of grave comprehension and pity. Since her makeover, Greta’s expressions had a new and shocking clarity—her flickering glance struck Oscar to the heart and lodged like a harpoon.

  Oscar leaned forward on his thrumming piano-wire seat, and knotted his hands. “Alcott, Lorena tells me you’re a little upset by developments.”

  “‘Upset’?” Bambakias said, lifting his chin as the dresser tucked in his ascot. “I wouldn’t say ‘upset.’ I would say ‘realistic.’”

  “Well…realism is a matter of opinion.”

  “I’ve triggered a state and federal crisis. Four hundred and twelve million dollars’ worth of military hardware has been looted by anarchist bandits and has vanished into the swamps. It’s the worst event of its kind since Fort Sumter in 1861; what’s there to be upset about?”

  “But, Al, that was never your intention. You can’t be blamed for those developments.”

  “But I was there,” Bambakias insisted. “I was with those people. Yeah…I talked to all of them, I gave them my word of honor…I have the tapes to prove it! Let’s run through all the evidence just one more time. We should see this together. Where’s my sysadmin? Where’s Edgar?”

  “Edgar’s in Washington,” the dresser told him quietly.

  The Senator’s hollow face tightened drastically. “Do I have to do everything myself?”

  “I followed the siege situation,” Oscar said. “I’m very up to speed on developments.”

  “But I was there!” Bambakias insisted. “I could have helped. I could have built barricades. I could have brought in generators…But when that gas hit them, they lost their minds. That’s when it all really hit me. This wasn’t a game at all. It was no game. We weren’t players. We’d all gone mad.”

  There was an evil silence.

  “He spent a lot of time on the net with those Air Force people,” the dresser told them meekly. “He really was almost there with them. Practically.” Suddenly her eyes brimmed with tears. “I’ll find his hat,” she said, and left with her head hung low.

  A lunch trolley arrived, set for two. The chowder was served.

  Oscar moved his featherweight responsive chair and flicked a linen napkin ostentatiously. “This is not a defeat, Al. It’s just a skirmish. There’s still plenty of space on the old go board. A Senate term lasts six years.”

  “A lot of good that does them. They’re in camps now! Can you believe that our government is that cynical? They’ve left our soldiers in the hands of the man who gassed them!” Bambakias waved a hand at the flickering screen behind him. “I’ve been watching him spin this. Huey. As if he’d rescued them. The son of a bitch is their public savior!”

  “Well, it was a very ugly incident, but at least there were no fatalities. We can put that behind us now. Tomorrow’s another day.” Oscar lifted his gleaming soup spoon and creamed off a layer of chowder. He sipped it pretentiously. It was, as always, superb.

  “Hold on,” he told Greta, who had made no move to eat. “This isn’t right.” He sat up. “What’s with your chef, Alcott? Canned chowder?”

  Bambakias scowled. “What?”

  “This is not your special chowder.”

  “Of course it is. Has to be.”

  “Try it,” Oscar insisted.

  Greta nodded permission, unneeded since the Senator had lunged from his bed and grabbed at her spoon. He sampled the bowl.

  “Kind of a coppery undertaste,” Oscar alleged, squinting.

  Bambakias had two more spoonfuls. “Nonsense,” he growled. “It’s delicious.”

  The two of them ate rapidly, in rabid silence. “I’ll find another chair,” Greta murmured. She rose and left the room.

  Bambakias settled into Greta’s vacated chair and crunched half a handful of oyster crackers. His dresser arrived again, and set the Senator’s hat and cape nearby. Bambakias ignored her, bending over his bowl with a painful effort. His hands were badly palsied; he could barely grip his spoon.

  “I could sure do with a milk shake right now,” Oscar mused. “You know, like we used to have on the campaign.”

  “Good idea,” Bambakias said absently. He lifted his chin, gestured with two fingertips, and spoke into apparently empty air. “Vince, two campaign power milk shakes.”

  “Did Sosik show you the latest polls, Al? You’ve done a lot better by this episode than you seem to think.”

  “No, that’s where you are both totally wrong. I’ve ruined everything. I provoked a major crisis before I was even sworn into office. And now that I’m a stinking criminal just like the rest of them, I’ll have no choice—from now on I’ll have to play the game just the way they like it. And the Senate is a sucker’s game.”

  “Why do you say that?” Oscar said.

  Bambakias swallowed painfully and raised one bony finger. “There are sixteen political parties in this country. You can’t govern with a political culture that fragmented. And the parties are just the graphic interface for the real chaos underneath. Our education system has collapsed. Our health system is so bad that we have organ-sharing cliques. We’re in a State of Emergency.”

  “You’re not telling me anything new here,” Oscar chided. He leaned over and stared enviously into Bambakias’s chowder. “Are you going to finish that?”

  Bambakias hunched over his bowl with a wolfish glare.

  “Okay, no problem.” Oscar raised his voice to address the hidden microphones. “Vincent, hurry up with those shakes! Bring us more chowder. Bring dinner rolls.”

  “I don’t want any damn dinner rolls,” Bambakias muttered. His ey
es were watering and his face was flushed. “Our wealth disparities are insane,” he mumbled into his soup. “We have a closed currency and a shattered economy. We have major weather disasters. Toxic pollution. Plunging birth rates. Soaring death rates. It’s bad. It’s really bad. It’s totally hopeless, it’s all over.”

  “Vincent, bring us something serious. Quick. Bring us teriyaki. Bring us some dim sum.”

  “What are you rambling on about?” Bambakias said.

  “Alcott, you’re embarrassing me. I promised Dr. Penninger some good food here, and you’ve gone and eaten her lunch!”

  Bambakias stared at the dregs of chowder. “Oh my God…”

  “Alcott, let me handle this. The least you can do is sit here with us and see that your guest is properly fed.”

  “God, I’m sorry!” Bambakias moaned. “God, I’ve been so wrong about everything. You handle it, Oscar! You handle it.”

  Two milk shakes arrived in fluted glasses, their bases caked with frost. The chef himself brought them in, on a cork-lined salver. He gazed at Oscar with a look of dazed gratitude and backed hastily out of the office.

  Bambakias’s lean Adam’s apple glugged methodically. “Let me tell you something really awful,” he said, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. “This whole business has been a tragic error from day one. The Emergency committee never meant to drop that air base. Their management and budget software was buggy. Nobody ever double-checked, because everything the stupid bastards do is an official emergency! So when the screwup became obvious, everybody just assumed it had been done deliberately—because it was such a clever, sneaky way to screw with Huey. They’re dying to screw him, because Huey’s the only politician in America who knows what he wants and can stick with it. But when I went looking for the silent genius who was running this brilliant conspiracy, there was nobody there.”

  “They gave you that line of guff? I hope you didn’t believe that,” Oscar said, silently switching Bambakias’s empty glass for his own. “These Emergency creeps are geniuses at sleight of hand.”

  “Yeah? Then tell me who has been trying to get you shot!” Bambakias belched. “Same issue, same controversy—you could have been killed because of this! But whose fault is it? Nobody’s fault. You hunt for the man responsible, and it’s some nasty piece of software half a light-year out of the chain of command.”

  “That’s not political thinking, Alcott.”

  “Politics don’t work anymore! We can’t make politics work, because the system’s so complex that its behavior is basically random. Nobody trusts the system anymore, so nobody ever, ever plays it straight. There are sixteen parties, and a hundred bright ideas, and a million ticking bleeping gizmos, but nobody can follow through, execute, and deliver the goods on time and within specs. So our politics has become absurd. The country’s reduced to chaos. We’ve given up on the Republic. We’ve abandoned democracy. I’m not a Senator! I’m a robber baron, a feudal lord. All I can do is build a personality cult.”

  Five of Bambakias’s krewepeople arrived in force. They were thrilled to see the man eating. The room became an instant bedlam of kevlar picnic tables, flying silverware, packs of appetizers and aperitifs.

  “I know that it’s chaos,” Oscar insisted, raising his voice above the racket. “Everybody knows that the system is out of control. That’s a truism. The only answer to chaos is political organization.”

  “No, it’s too late for that. We’re so intelligent now that we’re too smart to survive. We’re so well informed that we’ve lost all sense of meaning. We know the price of everything, but we’ve lost all sense of value. We have everyone under surveillance, but we’ve lost all sense of shame.” The sudden wave of nourishment was hitting Bambakias hard. His face was beet-red and he was having trouble breathing. And he had apparently stopped thinking, for he was quoting his campaign stump speech by rote.

  Greta reappeared at the doorway, dodging the hospital bed as two krewemen wheeled it out. She entered and sat demurely in a newly structured chair.

  “So you might as well just grab whatever you can,” Bambakias concluded.

  “Thank you, Senator,” Greta said, deftly seizing a skewer of teriyaki chicken. “I enjoy these little office brunches.”

  “See, it all moves too fast and in too complex a fashion for any human brain to keep up.”

  “I suppose that’s why we can sit on it!” Greta said.

  “What?” Oscar said.

  “This furniture thinks much faster than a human brain. That’s why this fragile net of sticks and ribbons can become a functional chair.” She examined their stunned expressions. “Aren’t we still discussing furniture design? I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize, Doctor,” Bambakias told her. “That’s my worst regret. I should have stayed in architecture, where I was needed. I was getting things accomplished there, you see? A truly modern sense of structure…that could have been my monument. I might have done wonderful things…Doctor, that old glass dome of yours in Texas, it’s twenty years behind the times. Nowadays we could create a dome ten times that size out of straw and pocket money! We could make your sad little museum really live and bloom—we could make that experiment into everyday reality. We could integrate the natural world right into the substance of our cities. If we knew how to use our power properly, we could guide herds of American bison right through our own streets. We could live in an Eden at peace with packs of wolves. All it would take is enough sense and vision to know who we are, and what we want.”

  “That sounds wonderful, Senator. Why don’t you do it?”

  “Because we’re a pack of thieves! We went straight from wilderness to decadence, without ever creating an authentic American civilization. Now we’re beaten, and now we sulk. The Chinese kicked our ass in economic warfare. The Europeans have sensible, workable policies about population and the weather crisis. But we’re a nation of dilettantes who live on cheap hacks of a dead system. We’re all on the take! We’re all self-seeking crooks!”

  Oscar spoke up. “You’re not a criminal, Alcott. Look at the polls. The people are with you. You’ve won them over now. They trust your intentions, they sympathize.”

  Bambakias slumped violently into his chair, which thrummed alertly. “Then tell me something,” he growled. “What about Moira?”

  “Why is that subject on the agenda?” Oscar said.

  “Moira’s in jail, Oscar. Tell me about that. Do you want to tell us all about that?”

  Oscar chewed with polite deliberation on a dinner roll. The room had gone lethally silent. Against the glass block a mobile mosaic had established itself, gently altering the daylight. A maze of dainty lozenges, creeping like adhesive dominoes, flapping neatly across the glass.

  Oscar pointed to a netfeed. “Could we have a look at that coverage, please? Turn the sound up.”

  One of Bambakias’s krewe spoke up. “It’s in French.”

  “Dr. Penninger speaks French. Help me with this coverage, Doctor.”

  Greta turned to the screen. “It’s defection coverage,” she translated. “Something about a French aircraft carrier.”

  Bambakias groaned.

  “There’s been a statement from the French foreign office,” Greta said tentatively, “something about American military officers…Electronic warfare jets…Two American Air Force pilots have flown jets to a French aircraft carrier, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. They’re asking for political asylum.”

  “I knew it!” Oscar announced, throwing his napkin on the table. “I knew Huey had people on the inside. See, now the other shoe drops. This is big, this is a major twist.”

  “Oh, that’s bad,” Bambakias groaned. He was ashen. “This is the final indignity. The final disgrace. This is the very end.” He swallowed noisily. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “Help the Senator,” Oscar commanded, jumping to his feet. “And get Sosik in here, right away.”

  Bambakias vanished in a cluster of panicked retainers. The room emptied as
suddenly as a Tokyo subway car. Oscar and Greta found themselves suddenly alone.

  Oscar watched the screen. One of the American defectors had just appeared on-camera. The man looked very familiar, utterly cynical, and extremely drunk. Oscar recognized him as an acquaintance: he was the public relations officer for the Louisiana air base. He was wearily delivering a prepared statement, with French subtitles. “What a genius move! Huey’s dumped his Trojan horse people into the hands of French spooks. The French will hide those rogue airboys in some bank vault in Paris. We’ll never hear from them again. They’ve sold out their country, and now the crooked sons of bitches will live like kings.”

  “What a convenient interruption that was,” Greta told him. She was still eating lunch, pincering her chopsticks with surgical skill. “The Senator had you pinned down and right on the spot. I can’t believe you had the nerve to pull that trick.”

  “Actually, I was keeping a weather eye on that screen all along, just in case I needed a nice distracting gambit.”

  She sampled the dim sum and smiled skeptically. “No you weren’t. Nobody can do that.”

  “Actually, yes, I can do that sort of thing. I do it every day.”

  “Well, you’re not distracting me. What was it about this Moira person? It must be something pretty awful. I could tell that much.”

  “Moira is not your problem, Greta.”

  “Ha! Nobody around here is addressing my problems.” She frowned, then poured a little more soy. “Really good food here, though. Amazing food.”

  “I’m going to get to your problems. I haven’t forgotten them. I just had to shelve those issues for a minute while I was getting the poor man to eat.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t get him to keep it down.” Greta sighed. “This has certainly been eye-opening. I had no real idea what to expect from your Senator. Somehow, I imagined he’d be just like you.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Oh…a Machiavellian, showboating, ultra-wealthy political hack. But Alcott’s not like that at all! Alcott’s a real idealist. He’s a patriot! It’s a tragedy that he’s clinically depressed.”