Even Jara gasped. She had seen MultiReal's innards lying on a MindSpace workbench, and still Petrucio's feat hardly seemed possible.
Frederic continued firing with grim determination until the air grew hazy with darts. Each needle met its nemesis in midflight and ricocheted harmlessly off to the side. After a minute of this, Petrucio began to take the offensive, with similarly ineffectual results. Soon the brothers were fighting the kind of melee that only existed in the dramas: ridiculous amounts of ammunition, impossibly dexterous moves, and not a single hit on either side.
The muttering in the audience rose several decibels. Robby's tongue was flapping uselessly back and forth in his mouth.
Jara loaded up a mental imaging program and took a snapshot of the projectiles the Patels were blasting at one another. She zoomed in and studied them carefully. These darts appeared to be much larger than the normal variety, and they were coated with a mirrored substance that made them easier to see. The Patels were not firing directly at one another, but at an oblique angle that helped the odds considerably. But even given all that, Jara could think of no ordinary piece of bio/logics that would account for such marksmanship. This could only be the work of MultiReal.
Finally, at some predetermined moment, Frederic tossed his gun to the stage, where it was sucked down into the fume. "All this bickering is pointless, 'Trucio," he said.
Petrucio nodded. "In a MultiReal-on-MultiReal fight, there's only one possible outcome."
"And that's a draw," said Frederic, hopping off the platform and waddling awkwardly toward his brother, who had also shed his weapons. Jara noticed that Frederic's acting abilities were noticeably strained when portraying emotions like remorse and reconciliation.
The two Patels locked arms and walked together toward the foot of the stage. Petrucio appeared to be so exhausted that he was almost limping, though he was doing his best to hide it. "After all," said the elder brother, "couldn't we all use more safe shores these days?" Jara could have sworn he was deliberately looking in her direction.
"But it doesn't fucking work that way," Benyamin complained. "You didn't see Quell on that soccer field. When two people with MultiReal go up against each other, it all gets resolved like that." He snapped. "Instantly. In your head. If they were really having a MultiReal-onMultiReal fight, then the winner would have hit the loser."
Jara stretched her neck and luxuriated in the SeeNaRee breeze. It was nice to be back in a virtual environment at the Surina Enterprise Facility, even if she had to put up with Benyamin's whining. She wasn't sure which beach this was supposed to be, or perhaps it was an amalgam of several. What did it matter? Jara could feel muscles in her neck unknotting and sluggish nerve endings in her fingers tingle with warmth from the SeeNaRee sun. She wondered fleetingly what had happened to Greth Tar Griveth's petty blackmail scheme. Jara assumed that the lack of updates meant the situation was under control.
"I know that's not how MultiReal works, Ben," she said. "And the Patels do too. But what did you want them to do, get on stage and just stare at each other for an hour? I thought they did a pretty good job illustrating the concept. Besides, that wasn't the end of the show. Petrucio took a bunch of questions afterward, and he explained the whole thing in detail."
"Shooting down darts in midair," put in Merri from her spot nearby on the sand. "We should have thought of that." She sighed as the tide came trickling up the beach to lick her bare toes.
"Listen, we don't have time to worry about the Patels," said Jara. "Right now we need to be thinking about computational rules. We're going to have twenty-three people bouncing choice cycles all over the place in a week. It'll be a nightmare unless we make some decisions."
The blonde channel manager combed her fingers thoughtfully through the damp sand. "Why do we even need to worry about it?" she said. "Can't we just turn the whole MultiReal-against-MultiReal feature off?"
"You mean disallow competing choice cycles altogether?" said Jara.
Ben shook his head. "I don't think that's practical." He wanted nothing to do with the decadent SeeNaRee Jara's mood had conjured up, choosing to sit instead at a rigid oak conference table wedged incongruously in the middle of the sand. "If you don't have any competing choice cycles, you're defenseless against anyone who uses the program against you. That means the first person to activate MultiReal would always win. Right? Talk about a nightmare! People would flip on the program every two seconds, on the off chance that something important was about to happen."
"So then let's just deactivate competing realities for the exposition," said Merri. "We don't have to figure everything out today, do we?"
"Not everything," said Jara, "but we can't put these decisions off forever, Merri. Things are moving so quickly, we might not get another window like this. We need to make some decisions today."
Benyamin smacked his palm on the table and looked up with inspiration gleaming through his pores. "What if we just let the market decide?"
Jara frowned skeptically. "How would that work?"
"The whole program's based on choice cycles. Every time you jump to another potential reality, you create another one. So why not just charge by the choice cycle? That way you wouldn't waste money using MultiReal to grab the last cracker on the buffet table-you'd save your choice cycles for the things that really matter. The things you're willing to pay for."
"A libertarian solution," mused Merri. Her circles in the sand grew wider and wider until the sea washed them away.
Jara leaned back on her elbows and let Ben's suggestion roam through her mental hallways for a minute. It seemed like a solution that Speaker Khann Frejohr would love. It seemed like a solution Natch would love. "I don't think that would work either," she said after a moment of reflection.
Ben was peeved. "Why not?"
"It wouldn't turn out the way you think. You're basically saying that the richest person in the room is always going to get what he wants. Do you really want to put a system like that in place?"
"But sometimes that's just the way the world works," the young apprentice retorted. "You make more money, you have more choices."
"This is totally different, Ben. Remember Horvil's story about haggling with that street vendor? We're not just talking about kicking soccer balls around here. Think about it-there must be a thousand Lunar tycoons with more money than half of Creed Elan put together. They'd get the upper hand on every deal. All they'd need to do is keep dishing out money for more choice cycles. It wouldn't be fair."
"Life would be pretty harsh for the diss, too," added Merri. "You'd literally get pushed around all day, and there'd be nothing you could do about it."
"And let's not forget the Islanders and the Pharisees," said Jara.
Benyamin rose from the table and began stomping to the edge of the water and back. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. Not fair?" He threw his hands up toward the sky. "This isn't a question of ethics, Jara. It's basic economics. If our product doesn't give customers unlimited choice cycles, then someone else's will. Do you think the Patels are going to sell their customers a limited product?"
"They don't have a say in it," said Merri. "Natch said that limited choice cycles are built into the Patel Brothers' licensing agreement. They can't run a product with unlimited choice cycles."
"I didn't realize that," said Ben, vindication sculpted into his face. "This is great-we're going to crush them in the marketplace. If our version of MultiReal gives you unlimited choice, and theirs just craps out at some point ... who's going to buy from the Patel Brothers?"
Merri nodded hesitantly. Jara got to her feet and took a few steps toward the bay. She watched the tiny virtual sand crabs scurrying on the beach, jousting with each other in accordance with the SeeNaRee algorithms.
And suddenly she felt her thoughts line up like dominoes. Xi Xong telling Jara that Petrucio knew she was attending the presentation ... The two Patels blazing away at one another fruitlessly ... Frederic Patel discarding his weapon onto the stage ... Al
l this bickering is pointless, 'Trucio. In a MultiReal-on-MultiReal fight, there's only one possible outcome. And that's a draw.
"Wait a minute," said the analyst. "I understand now. The Patel Brothers. They were trying to tell us something with that demo."
Benyamin's mouth curled into a sallow frown. "Like what?"
"They're trying to tell us that there's another way," Jara continued. "A more egalitarian way. What if we give everyone, say, ten thousand choice cycles a month? Or fifty thousand? Whether you're a Lunar tycoon on Feynman or just some L-PRACG bureaucrat in Beijingwhether you bought Possibilities 1.0 from Surina/Natch or SafeShores 1.0 from the Patels-you get the same number of alternate realities as everyone else. And you can't buy any more, under any circumstances."
Ben wasn't mollified in the slightest. "So you're saying we should handicap our product so the Patels can compete with us?"
"I'm saying we should prevent MultiReal from turning into an endless arms race of who can stockpile the most choice cycles." Jara stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. "I suppose it works to Frederic and Petrucio's advantage. But that's not why we would do it."
"Natch isn't going to like this at all," said Ben, walking around the analyst to confront her face to face. "I don't like it. You're putting an artificial cap on a system that doesn't need one. That won't work. It never works."
Jara shook her head. "This isn't sociology class, Ben. MultiReal is dangerous. Haven't you figured that out yet? We can't afford to make a reckless decision here. People's lives could be at stake."
"Don't be so melodramatic," interrupted Ben, throwing up his hands. "I get the point already. But these things have a way of working themselves out. They always do. The Lunar tycoons would waste all their choice cycles trying to one-up each other. They wouldn't care what goes on down here."
Merri climbed to her feet and eyed the conflict between the two apprentices with unease. Ben and Jara were standing toe to toe now, glaring at one another with a hostility that the Patels had only pantomimed this morning. The SeeNaRee noticed the discord and hurled a strong wind along the shoreline, kicking up bits of sand and shell to nip at their ankles.
"This is just wrong," said Benyamin, a contentious frown on his face. "Crippling MultiReal won't help anyone. It'll only help Frederic and Petrucio drive us out of business. Once we're gone, the Patels will own the program outright and start selling unlimited choice cycles anyway."
"I don't think so," replied Jara. "You didn't see that presentation at the Kordez Thassel Complex. Frederic and Petrucio agree with me."
"What if the Patels only want you to think they agree? How do you know Magan Kai Lee didn't put them up to this?"
Jara's brow furrowed. The very mention of that name was enough to spike her blood pressure and make her sweat. "Why would he do that?"
Benyamin put a hand on her shoulder. "Because once we bring our version of MultiReal down to their level, the Council can use the Patels' version to get to us-and we won't be able to stop them."
Jara opened her mouth, nonplussed, but the pat response she was waiting for to leap to her rescue did not come. She was ashamed to admit that such a tactic had never even occurred to her. Everything always came back to the Council in the end, didn't it? "I guess that's just a chance we'll have to take," she said under her breath.
13
January 2: the day the fiefcorp was scheduled to unveil the winners of the MultiReal exposition lottery. The day that twenty-three lucky citizens would be given an appointment to experience the wonders of multiple realities firsthand.
The morning dawned blustery and brutish, with a fresh assault of hail in Shenandoah, a barrage of rain in London-and news of another infoquake in central Asia.
The Defense and Wellness Council managed to suppress the news for forty-eight hours. But even Len Borda's agents couldn't keep such a scoop hidden from the drudges forever. By midmorning, details were splashed across the headlines of every gossipmonger on the Data Sea. This infoquake was not nearly as severe as the last one, which had left hundreds dead and thousands wounded from Earth to the orbital colonies. The computational blizzard was centered in Tibet, though flurries were observed as far away as Andra Pradesh and Vladivostok. The death toll hovered at a mere two dozen-but the details of their demise were almost gruesome enough to eclipse the MultiReal exposition lottery. Drudges pounded the Council with questions about the cause of the infoquakes, but all the Council flaks could do was utter bureaucratic euphemisms for we don't know.
Forty thousand drudges, channelers, and capitalmen wedged themselves into a sunny Sao Paulo soccer stadium that morning to witness the lottery drawing. It was the same venue Natch had rented for the exposition itself, and with its newly reupholstered seats and dizzying array of giant viewscreens, the stadium made quite a spectacle. Merri worked the crowd with the help of Robby Robby's merry band of channelers, salting the cognoscenti with a heavy coating of marketing buzzwords. By midday, chatter about the latest infoquake had died down to a whisper, and the drudges were ready for Natch.
But Natch was not there.
Jara couldn't believe the entrepreneur would put everyone through this crap yet again. It had to be foul play, a clandestine strike by the Council, a mugging, black code. Then a flustered Serr Vigal rushed in at the last minute with news from Natch. He was on a tube train with Quell heading for Andra Pradesh and would not attend the drawing. A stunned Horvil spattered the freshly painted walls of the stadium's locker room with a mouthful of ChaiQuoke.
Panic had yet to set in when the apprentices received another surprise guest. Robby Robby oozed into the locker room, leading by the hand the world-renowned soccer star Wilson Refaris Ko. The man was rugged and handsome, with troll-sized hands and a chin the size of a graveyard shovel. "So where do I pick 'em?" grinned Ko.
"Pick them?" said Jara, feeling like her head was full of yarn. "Pick what?"
Ko, confused, scratching his ass: "There's usually a barrel with little plastic tags in it."
Horvil laughed. "You got a barrel that holds three billion plastic tags?"
"We've already got a program to pick the lottery winners," explained Jara. "All you need to do is read the names. Right?" She looked to the other fiefcorpers for backup, but nobody else had any idea what Ko was supposed to do. Jara shrugged. "Right. I'll go out there and introduce you, and you just read the names."
"Oh." The man was crestfallen.
Ko might not have had the keenest intellect, but what he lacked in brainpower he made up for in star kinetics. His panther strut caused men and women of all sexual orientations to drop their jaws, and his husky reed of a voice could mesmerize even the sourest drudge. Jara never knew for certain whether Natch had hired him directly or if his appearance was the work of Robby Robby, but it didn't really matter. When Ko walked onto the field, there was not a murmur to be heard from the crowd.
The soccer player cleared his throat and prepared to recite the names fed to him by Horvil's algorithms. Jara could sense a billion necks arching forward in front of viewscreens across the world. "And the winners of the Surina/Natch MultiReal lottery are ..."
A leukocyte specialist from Dr. Plugenpatch. A mother of four pledged to Creed Bushido. An OrbiCo technician who spent most of his time jetting between the colonies of Allowell and Nova Ceti. A bio/logic programmer in Beijing ...
The names rolled on. Jara breathed a sigh of relief, although she couldn't say why. You could tell precious little about someone from a name and job description; any one of those lottery winners could easily be on Len Borda's payroll. Or Khann Frejohr's, or Creed Thassel's, for that matter. But the names were out there now, and it was time to sit back and let the Data Sea journalists do their detective work.
His task completed, Wilson Refaris Ko cut his multi connection and vanished back to the Neverland of self-important celebrities. Merri took his place on the platform at the end of the field, smiling, her boldest Creed Objectivv pin riding high on her chest.
B
en tried to convince his cousin not to go out there, to wait until they had gotten Natch's explicit approval before announcing the exposition rules.
"You're really upset about this, aren't you?" said Horvil.
The young apprentice shoved his hands in his pockets and gave a sallow nod. "I'm not upset because I don't agree with the decision," he said. "If Natch decides we should give MultiReal users limited choice cycles, that's fine. It's just Jara hasn't even talked to him about it. She made up her mind without consulting anybody."
"She consulted Merri and Vigal. They both agree."
"Do you?"
The engineer bobbed his head back and forth slowly like the pendulum of a fat grandfather clock. Did he believe that MultiReal should be released with limited or unlimited choice cycles? He didn't know. Usually Horvil was content to wallow in the numerology and let Natch make the policy decisions. But like a black hole, MultiReal warped the very moral and ethical dimensions around it. Horvil could feel the program's infinite density tugging at strings inside him that he had never realized he possessed. This program demanded that he abandon his neutrality and pick a side.
But not quite yet. "I dunno if I agree or not," Horvil said at length. "I think I do. But I haven't really given it enough thought."
Ben was clearly disappointed. "Well, Natch's opinion is the only one that counts, unless Margaret decides to come down from that tower. I wish he'd answer his fucking Confidential Whisper requests." The apprentice kicked an empty bottle on the locker room floor and watched it ricochet off the concrete wall. "Come on, Horvil. You know what Natch would say. You know what he's going to say when he hears about this. He'll agree that the market should set the number of choice cycles."
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