Bold as Love

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘Music publisher? Shit, yes I do.’

  ‘Also hacker… Small world.’

  ‘You’re working in a virtual reality?’ Ax looked closer at the dizzying landscape, ‘In there?’

  ‘Nah.’ The skull kept staring ahead, the wrap around its eyesockets looking very weird. ‘I never had much time for frolicking around in cyberspace dressed as the Easter Bunny, if we could spare the bandwidth. I wear my mask on the outside. The machine I’m using is standalone. What you see there is an image of what my cellmates and I are trying to do, but we’re working separately. I prefer to have their chat as lines of type, it’s less irritating. But I can talk to them; and I can send them updates in plain code by cable. For a while longer,’

  There was a glowing ball rolling up one of the slopes. As Ax watched, it slipped back. ‘Can you tell me anything I’ll understand?’

  ‘Oooh, okay. Look, this is part of a reconstruction of the original Ivan.’

  The landscape on the centre screen vanished, replaced by a lot of code.

  ‘Ivan is…slow. Polish anti-Russian comment. That’s where GOD MUST BE A MUSCOVITE comes from, in whatever language you’re using. Apparently it’s a quote from a letter of Chopin’s…meaning, God’s always on the side of the bastards. Ivan slows things up a tiny amount, but over a few billion iterations, it clogs the works. That’s what Ivan does. Very simple. What Ivan is, is fucking outrageously complicated. This is not some plug-the-modules late-capitalist-slacker conceptual art. This is a class act. The shits who put Ivan together could have got a fucking nobel prize for this kind of coding. But no, they are hippies. They prefer to tear things apart. And that’s why I’m in on this, by the way…there.’

  Sage pointed at a section of teeming code, at random for all Ax could tell, with a virtual finger. ‘That’s from Morpho. I wrote that.’

  The Heads’ first album, which had burst on the world like a solar flare, a new dimension: telling a retro-handicraft guitarist he might as well pack it in. If Ax had been prepared to listen.

  ‘Oh. So…if you wrote it, then you must be able to unwrite it?’

  ‘No such fucking luck. I was a lot cleverer when I was seventeen, and the Morpho code is back at the dawn of time by now. Precambrian. I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘What about Lara? What does she do?’

  ‘Oh, Lara. Bless her. What d’you think she does? She wanders around looking for things. She jumps, she runs, she can get into impregnable strongholds, and she is…strangely attractive. But you knew that. Lara is also seriously over-determined, extremely complicated: a labour of love. You should be proud of these people, Ax.’ The hands moved with bitter precision, doing something that made the ball hop around in a wistful way, like a bored toddler…‘They are genuine post-futuristic artisans. We have the guys who wrote Lara on the team, as you probably heard: couldn’t turn themselves in quick enough, and they are very sorry. They can’t help much. She’s back at the dawn of time too. Trouble is, nothing we already thought of works. This is like, chaotic alien molecular biology. Oh, someone will work it out. Someday. But it’s not going to be me. Other problem, worse than the weirdness of Ivan/Lara, is the revolution. Trying to contain a really smart virus, never mind zap it, under pan-European CCM Crisis conditions, is fucking impossible.’

  ‘So the Lara part sneaks itself into different systems, then the Ivan part slows things down, and this causes all hell to break loose.’

  ‘You got it.’

  The question that Ax had wanted to ask was answered by the skull’s bleak expression, the tired, angry sound of his friend’s voice. He sat down anyway, clearing a stack of immersion storyboard notebooks from a chair: thinking of Yap Moss, the great comfort of having Sage by his side through that whole ordeal. Wishing he could do something, bewildered that he could not, hoping that by being here he could offer some support.

  After a very few minutes, the astronaut couch swivelled around. Sage pulled off the eyewrap. The skull wasn’t looking friendly. ‘Ax, I had a visit this morning from the Babes. I spent an hour trying to explain quantum cryptography to them. I don’t know why I did that, I am weak and vulnerable. Would you kindly fuck off. I’m busy.’

  ‘Okay, sorry. I’m leaving. Just one more question.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are we winning?’

  ‘No.’

  By the seventh day, people were worried. It had even dawned on the Few that their livelihoods were at stake. Bill came up to the studio to tell him that Sayyid Muhammad had called for special Friday prayers from all the Faithful. Huh. Muslims don’t argue with God. Think I don’t know that? Christian and Hindu leaders followed suit, not to be outdone. Did no good. Gaia obviously had the divine intervention angle well closed down.

  On the ninth day, they knew they had to give up.

  ‘Hey, Arek… Theo… Reckon it’s time to call Mission Control?’

  …Way past time, dear Sage. But convince our team leaders. Who likes to admit defeat?

  Theo had stopped talking. He sent a poem. The poem said, everything is fucked, the only thing left is to die with dignity. It didn’t seem to Sage like an over-reaction.

  The team-leaders decided to quit about six in the evening.

  The morning after the virus-crackers surrendered, four skull-masked Heads turned up at the Insanitude together. The Few had been there all night. Ax had been waiting for a summons from the Prime Minister, who would tell him what the Internet Commission had decided to do. The PM had called at midnight to say he had no news yet. Nothing since. Everyone was in the Office, drinking dishwater coffee and staring at the flyeye. Nearly all the cells were blank. Two were playing kiddie programmes, there was one black and white movie, and a single French station, reporting with very bad sound from Lyons on some fearsome street-fighting. The radio news had nothing, either.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Verlaine. ‘How are we supposed to find out what happened?’

  ‘Go out and buy a paper?’ suggested Chip.

  ‘It’s an idea,’ said Dilip. ‘Are you going to call the PM, Ax?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ll wait.’

  It felt like Pigsty all over again, but the monster they were shackled to this morning was a bigger killer. The mutated virus had already murdered hundreds or thousands, directly or indirectly. Left millions more stranded without power or water, destroyed Europe’s e-commerce, slashed billions from the finance markets. And it was theirs. It would be called theirs. A product of the Green Revolution, if not the English CCM: wreaking apocalyptic havoc—

  George said, ‘This network’s been offline since well before Ivan/Lara struck. We’re clean. Let’s power up and log on, see if we can get out.’

  ‘We can’t do that!’ protested Allie. ‘We’ll catch the virus! What do you mean? Get out of where?’

  ‘Someone hasn’t been paying attention,’ said Bill Trevor.

  ‘Fucking bizarre,’ said Peter Cack Stannen. ‘And yet she’s a whizz with a spreadsheet.’

  Sage sat at one of the office terminals, powered up, and (with a sour grin for the Heads) ran the new virus-checker they’d installed. After taking Allie so severely to task for her appallingly poor security, the Heads and Sage had both been wiped out within minutes of the strike. Fiorinda must have been among the last hitters to see them alive. There was no defence against Ivan/Lara.

  ‘Might as well,’ said Bill. ‘Why not.’

  Everyone stood around, praying they wouldn’t see GOD MUST BE A MUSCOVITE.

  ‘Off to Australia,’ said Sage. ‘Straight from our gate, no changing planes.’

  No entry.

  ‘Well, fine. I don’t like Australia anyhow. Too many huge blond guys, getting hammered and falling over things, crap like that. I think I’ll go to India.’

  No.

  ‘Let’s go to Russia, watch some war movie—’

  No.

  ‘What about China?’

  No way into China. Or Africa South, or The West African Union, or Uni
ted-Islamic-Republics. Or Israel, or ASEAN.

  ‘Shit, this is boring. Shall I try Venezuela? Nah, let’s go an’ ask the masters of the universe what the fuck? What kind of way is this to run a communications business—?’

  No entry to North America.

  It was the charnel look today, dry and yellow, with the clinging slivers of flesh. The upper joints of the virtual fingerbones on his right hand were stained nicotine brown, sly touch. He went on trying and failing, cheerily rattling in the codes, seeming to take a mordant pleasure in it, until he had covered the whole wide world. He pushed himself away from the desk.

  ‘That’s it. Meltdown. We do not exist.’

  ‘Maybe they just upped the barriers,’ suggested Bill.

  ‘You wish.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a solar flare,’ said Chip. ‘It would be like our luck—’

  ‘Not at this latitude,’ said Verlaine wisely.

  ‘Maybe it’s World War Three—’

  ‘Oh, excellent idea,’ The skull turned on her with such a vicious snarl, poor Allie actually jumped backwards. Everyone else involuntarily also moved back.

  Sage tapped his wrist. ‘Olwen… Hi, Olwen. How’s Serendip?… Thank God for that… Well, I am feeling superstitious. Yeah, we just found out…’ Silence, Sage listening, sombrely attentive. At last he said, ‘Thanks. Yeah, you too.’

  The Office, with its stacks of flyers and acetates, documents and reference files, everything neater than usual because of the network overhaul, seemed to watch them as they waited for him to explain. On the wall above his desk was a cork noticeboard stuck with map pins and messages. A cartoon clipped and put up by Fiorinda: guitarist bends vampiric over his girlfriend’s lovely throat. Think bubble says: Why! She’s got a neck just like my Stratocaster.

  A dance beat thumped from the club venue, where life was going on. The San was established now, it had its deadpan entry in London Listings:

  Great system, no dress code, very mixed crowd. Resident DJ is classic IMMixer DK; if you really want your brains burned, must catch Aoxomoxoa and George.

  ‘This time yesterday,’ said Sage, ‘We thought we could see Ivan/Lara starting to downscale. We couldn’t prove it, and we couldn’t take the risk. Today, Olwen says someone’s proved that the virus will fade, soon. It’s too late. Ivan/Lara sneaked into the US somehow, and flared up there yesterday afternoon, Eastern time. They’ll be okay, it’s contained, but this made up the Commission’s minds to proceed with the most extreme of the sanctions options. They’re building clear water firewalls around Europe, to remain until we have replaced the infected networks from scratch.Which is not going to happen, the state things are in. So that’s it. We are fucked. The Dark Ages begin here.’

  He stood up and put his arms round Allie Marlowe. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have yelled at you.’

  This unprecedented move did not last long. Sage backed off at once, Allie just nodded, hurriedly, still looking scared. But it confirmed the grim awe of the situation.

  ‘What does clear water mean, exactly,’ said Chip, cautiously. ‘In this context?’

  ‘Sudden death. Physical exclusion, besides the software barriers and signal jamming. Cut the undersea cables, fry the earth stations, police the ionosphere. They’ve had two years to watch what’s been happening in Europe, and plan for this kind of disaster. They were ready to go. They’ve already cut the transatlantic cables, and zapped Madley and Cobbett Hill. Also Goonhilly, as somebody over there feared we might raise the dead.’

  ‘Jee-sus…’ breathed George. ‘Can they do that?’

  ‘I just said, they’ve done it. They’re the firemen. They can do what they like. And since Ivan/Lara has been going around destroying modern civilisation, for a while at least, wherever it strikes, I don’t fucking see how we can blame them.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ whispered Felice, the senior Babe, ‘How could things get so bad, so quickly?’

  ‘It’s one of the high impact, high probabilty losses,’ said Ax, wearily.

  When he spoke they realised that he’d been silent, and that their cyborg was standing apart, watching them across what suddenly seemed an abyss. Fiorinda instantly went and put her arms round him. Ax’s head went down, face hidden against her shoulder for a moment. He looked up.

  ‘Welcome to my world, folks. I told you we hadn’t reached the end of the slide. Remember when you wouldn’t let me explain the details?’

  They went on staring, some of them looking very weirdly concerned.

  ‘Oh, don’t be stupid. What d’you think I’m going to do? Stick a jack in my eye-socket? I will not catch Ivan/Lara. Fuck’s sake, let’s get this in proportion. It was more or less bound to happen, it’s not new bad news: and we’ll deal with it.’

  The phone rang at last. Ax went off, and was gone for hours. Rob and the Babes went back to Lambeth Road, to bring the household up to speed on the state of the calamity. The others stayed. The world seemed in suspension. It was like a metaphysical power-cut, a loss so formless it felt like a physical symptom: a dull headache, a hangover, a bereavement.

  In the afternoon, after the last clubbers had gone home, Fiorinda went looking for Sage. He was in the ballroom. How strange, if they’d just been bombed back into the Stone Age, that he was still able to search the fx index, and plant this huge, ivory-white carved column of coherent light in the middle of the floor.

  He was staring at it, arms folded.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Trajan’s column,’ he said, without looking round. ‘Scanned from the plaster cast in the V&A. Amazing, isn’t it. Did you know, the Romans had military technology that wasn’t reinvented in the West for fifteen hundred years? Battlefield medics as good as anything until World War Two. Brock used to be full of shit like that. Pub quiz answers.’

  ‘Brock?’

  ‘Re-enactment nut, up in Yorkshire. He’ll be a happy man today. Those guys on the losing side are Dacians. Romanians. I think my friend Theo killed himself last night. Not sure, but I think he did.’

  She could feel the pain and anger that surrounded him, pulling him into the dreadful spiral where nothing is any good. ‘Sage, is there anything I can do?’

  The skull turned on her a look of cold, final distaste. ‘Leave me alone.’

  That evening the club was closed. The door police, catering and bar-staff either didn’t turn up or were sent home. The Few and friends gathered in the Bow Room, where the nightclub chill-out lounge opened onto gardens. No one wanted to be in the Office, with those Sunspark screens staring like the eyes of dead animals. Rob and the Babes had returned with a stack of takeaway, the cartons were scattered around: none of it very appealing but people were eating anyway. It was something to do. Everybody was longing for Aoxomoxoa to jump up, saying ‘Ah, this is no good!’ and make it all right. Not this time. Sage was sitting in bleak silence, the avatar mask doing fuck off and leave me alone; the other Heads grouped around him in defensive guard.

  ‘We should cut a collaboration,’ said Dora, the middle Babe, huddled by the windows to the terrace; propped against one of the Bow Room’s coloured marble columns. It was summer evening out there, but so cold you looked for frost on the grass. ‘Call it Dead In The Water.’

  ‘What fucks me up,’ said Cherry, the youngest babe, ‘Is the way it goes on. One damn thing after another, one damn thing after another.’ She was near to tears. ‘It’s never going to stop, never going to let up and if I ever have a life again I’ll be so old I’ll have nothing left to do but spend ten fucking years dying of cancer.’

  ‘It’s a tough way to spend the last days of my youth,’ agreed Roxane, wryly. ‘At my age, catastrophic disasters show up far too clearly in the mirror.’

  ‘You probably won’t die of cancer,’ Ax told Cherry. ‘It was an epidemic, we brought it on ourselves, it’s on the way out. The Green Movement and the price of oil can share the honours.’

  ‘Gee, thanks Ax. That really helps.’

  ‘Who needs canc
er,’ said Sage, bitterly, out of his dark distance, ‘When we have fifteen hundred strains of viral pneumonia, and no drugs for any of them.’

  Ax had returned from his trip to Downing Street looking haggard. They were not in trouble. They’d been fools to think they could be. This for certain was not the moment for the government to be picking a fight with Ax Preston. In every other way, everything was as bad as it had looked this morning. The Ivan/Lara devastation went on, and they had been dumped out of the world.

  Apart from grey areas that didn’t count because they were in worse disarray than Western Europe, the only protest against the sanctions had come from South America, where a few countries were asserting that they would maintain some form of data relations. How they would manage this, in defiance of the Commission and across the firebreaks, remained to be seen: but it was comforting to know that they’d like to. Ax Preston and the Chosen had always been mysteriously big in Brazil.

  The status of Ireland, where some of the Commissioners had been gathered, in Dublin, since the Ivan/Lara emergency began; and of Portugal—for different reasons reckoned clear of infection—was under discussion. Scotland and Wales were with England, deep in shit.

  ‘Losing the cables and satellites is a fucker,’ said Ax. ‘But we still have short-wave radio. Olwen picked up the news from the US quite easily, this morning.’

  ‘Whatever “policing the ionosphere” turns out to mean—’

  ‘Look, it isn’t so bad. The European finance markets have survived so far, money is still moving around, which is vital. And there’ll be the Commission’s quarantined satellite link, which we can access; and the multinationals aren’t going to give up and go away—’