“Thank God for the Augment League!” Rami announced. “Where tiny women can give huge men an enormous butt whooping and men in the stands even more enormous erections doing it! Thank you, Preeti, also on red we've got Mohammed in Kuta, where you calling from, Mo?”
“Rami, I'm calling from the Wunderbar here on Khan Street. They're having a bikini wax competition tonight, special guest starring the entire chorus line of the hit RK Road musical ‘Mardi Gras!’”
“Oh, hell, yes!”
“The best bikini line, as voted by drunken fools in the audience, will win an entire Michelle Mauvin swimwear collection and the undying gratitude of about three hundred men in the audience.”
“And a wad of goo in the left eye, no doubt.” Behind her sound barrier, Liz the producer rolled her eyes.
“And I'm going to get you some vision on the Rami Matrix!”
“Awesome, make sure it's a real low angle, you know? Thanks, Mo!”
His feed meter showed close to a million direct links across the city tonight—a Friday, and every Friday was a party night in Tanusha—and Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays—political crisis or not. The ad market feed was showing twenty-three thousand dollars a minute and up to forty-five for premium, not a bad rate of return given the competition from other sources. But when the shit hit the fan in Tanusha, people got drunk and danced. Usually Rami found that admirable. Tonight, less so.
“Here's the news!” he announced, not missing a beat. His night beat style was tempo tempo tempo, never a break save for feed crosses. “Malini Chopra's tits grew a little smaller today…can you believe that? Breast reduction, Malini?”
“No!” called Angus from the other mike.
“Yes, that wailing sound you hear is a thousand teenage boys throwing themselves out their apartment windows. And if the old Malini had been lying on her back on the road beneath them, they'd all survive, dammit!” Angus and Caitee's laughter gave him a beat. “In other news, Finance Minister Richards’ penis, just as small as ever.”
More laughter. The minister's wife had been photographed in bed with a male stripper three days ago, giving comics three nights of running gags.
“I mean, poor Mrs Richards,” said Rami, scrolling through multiple feeds on his board, already scanning ahead for the next three segments. “Four centimeters just doesn't cut it, right? It used to be six, but then there were those budget cuts…” Laughter. “Liz, what say you?”
“Five,” said Liz with confidence. “Absolute minimum.”
The secret to Rami's success, as with most comics, was that he never felt apologetic for what he found funny. Dick jokes, fart jokes, breast jokes…hell, he had six hours to fill, and he loved it, and mild literary puns wouldn't fill the time or pay the bills. It was old reflex, and he could yammer on like this all night, the quickest wit in Tanusha and everyone knew it. But tonight, somehow, it didn't make him happy.
“In other news,” he announced, “writer and Very Serious Man Justice Rosa denounced Operation Shield! He said it was all a scam and a con job, and he'd go down to the local park with some friends to protest about it! Two hours later, someone tried to shoot him. So I guess we can just put that down to coincidence, right?”
Liz gave him a wary look.
“Well, the shooter was a well-known anti-GI nutter,” said Angus. “Can't really blame the GC for some loon who thinks Rosa's for emancipation.”
“In further news,” Rami added edgily, “the ghosts of two hundred and fifty recently killed GIs on a remote island in the Maldaris want to know why this guy gets called an anti-GI nutter, while the Federation chairman who had them all killed for no immediately provable reason gets called a hero.”
“Oh, great, he's going after the Chairman now. How big's his penis, Rami?”
“Surely much, much bigger after he killed 200 people for no obvious reason.”
“No obvious reason aside from the coup plot that they have recordings of, Rami, your buddy Kresnov planning in private conversations.” Angus's job was to give Rami something to bounce off, and to fill the silences. But this was politics, not dick jokes, and his heart wasn't in it.
“Wonderful,” said Rami, “a media professional who listens to a couple of recordings he could cook up in five minutes in this studio, and automatically believes they're genuine. Angus, you're a great loss to the legal profession.” Angus made a face. “In other news, there was a lot of shooting in the Supreme Court building today. The authorities refuse to tell us who was shooting, or why, or at whom, because, you know, we're just the public, the people who pay for all this shit, why would we care?
“And in local politics, Callayan President Vikram Singh crawled a little further up the Grand Council's collective butthole today! Who knew there was still room up there? What with all the local media and the Callayan Parliament all crammed in there together…way to stick up for Callayan rights guys! That'll show ’em.”
On his board, the ad market feed began falling to twenty-two thousand. Thirty thousand links disappeared just like that. He was supposed to be in a perpetual good mood, but sometimes Tanusha made him angry. Behind her window, Liz was gesticulating frantically at the boards.
He took a deep breath. “We've got Juanita on the line! Where are you, Juanita…whoa! Vision on line five, what the hell is that behind you?”
“This is Callay's Largest Pizza competition, Rami, and behind me is the biggest pizza on the planet!”
A call light was blinking. And on Rami's uplinks. The blinking was accompanied by beeping, quite distracting; it shouldn't do that. He looked at Liz, as Juanita rambled on about sauces and toppings, and Liz looked puzzled.
“I'm trying to block it,” she said on their private line, “but it won't go away.”
Rami just had a feeling. He wasn't sure. But he felt it was worth the risk.
“I'm sorry, Juanita, we have an unscheduled caller, who is this?” And connected the call.
“Hi, Rami. It's Sandy Kresnov.” And the whole studio just stared, as though stunned by some jolt of electricity. Followed by frantic activity, as new links were made to ad markets, to publicity houses, to feeder nets.
“Sandy. Wow.” Rami put his boots down off the opposing chair and felt a deep chill. His heart suddenly thumping in his chest. Every now and then, he did serious. Usually he did it on his own terms, rarely if ever on his famous weekend night beats. One of those serious sessions, long ago, had been with Cassandra Kresnov. Since then, they'd done a few more, the only sessions at any length, and away from pure journalism, she'd done with anyone. Some jokingly called Rami “Kresnov's favourite journalist,” which was meant as an insult, because he wasn't one. To which Rami had told them all, on air, that he didn't think Cassandra had favourite journalists—she'd talk with anyone whose morals and ethics were superior to a blood-sucking insect, and she hadn't found any actual journalists whose weren't, so she chose him instead.
Beyond the window now, Liz was gesturing furiously for him to continue. So fickle, Liz.
“How are you Sandy?”
“To paraphrase a great writer long ago, reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.”
“I can hear that. Or at least, well, we don't have any visual feed of you, but…can I just tell listeners that I just received a shock when your call lit up my board, I've no idea how you do that, you got past all the network barriers and I don't know who else could do that but you.
“Sandy, Operation Shield. Is it real?”
“Oh, it's very real, Rami. Justice Rosa said it best, there has been a coup plot executed against the Grand Council, and Operation Shield is it. Rami, I only have a little time before I have to get off…”
“Okay okay,” Rami rushed. From the corner of his eye, he could see his link meter shrieking upward, passing three million now and on its rapid way to five and beyond. The ad rate climbed to…one hundred thousand a minute! New bids rolling in for the next available slots directly after this interview…five million for thirty seconds! Eig
ht million! “Sandy, what should we do? Ordinary Tanushans, why should we believe you, and what should we do about it?”
“Firstly, you should believe me because every piece of evidence they've presented is easily fabricated. You work in media, you know this, that stuff of me and others talking in rooms under surveillance, that's scripted work, it's pure fantasy. In itself it proves nothing because it can't be proven real.
“Secondly, who benefits? Everyone who opposes 2389, everyone who could speak out against Operation Shield, has been either arrested, assassinated, muzzled, or subject to attempted assassination, like myself. The GC will now pass amendments that will change the shape of the Federation to suit 2389 perfectly. This should be unconstitutional, but I'm predicting they'll go after the Supreme Court Justices next, they should be put under 24-hour surveillance, but guess who's in charge of that? FSA and CSA, both suspended, so it falls to the OID, who are certainly behind this coup. Clever, isn't it?”
“That shooting in the Supreme Court Building today, what was that?”
“That was trouble, Rami. Trouble that tells me it might be too late even for the court.”
“So what do we do, Sandy? What do you do?”
“There's hardly anything I can do, Rami. The network runs on basic codes that the GC now controls, it's very hard even for me to do anything without the net. So I'm calling on all you underground types, all you frauds and hypocrites who say you love your freedom but are now sitting passively while Operation Shield walks all over your faces. Defy them. Get angry, get busy, get arrested if necessary. Bring the whole thing down if you have to. Don't let them steal your freedom from under your noses, because if you lose it now, you might never get it back.”
“You're calling for civil disobedience?”
“Yes, especially online. Look, don't do it for me; I know a lot of people are very suspicious of me right now, and that's fine. Take me out of the picture. Look at them. Look at what they're doing, how they're behaving. I'd be angry. Why isn't everyone else?”
“I think maybe because this is dressed up as an anti-Federal cause. 2389 are the anti-Feds, they're trying to limit Federal power, and President Singh of Callay, the biggest anti-Fed there is, is backing it to the hilt so far.”
“That's because he's in on it.”
Rami could barely breathe. He was a comedian, dammit. That he should be dealing with this accusation, from her, was crazy. “That's…well, I think he'd say that statement was treasonous.”
“Well, then I have a message for President Singh. I'm going to get you, you mealy-mouthed son of a bitch. You should be scared. You know what you've done, and who you've tried to screw, and I'm going to get the lot of you.”
Click, and she was gone.
“Holy crap,” said Rami. Quite conversationally. “Well, Sandy Kresnov just promised to bring down the entire Federation and Callayan governments on my show. Anyone mind if we stay with politics for a moment more, or should we go back to talking about fucking pizza toppings?”
It was getting late when Danya arrived in Denpasar District. The taxi cruised down a main strip, office crowds now dissipated, replaced by the late-night crowds, out for a meal, a concert, or a party. Lights everywhere, massive ten-storey displays, projected holograms that appeared to block sidewalks and even roads, only to part like some magic waterfall when you passed through it. Cruisers coming in low to a roadside rooftop park, running lights strobing. Crazy fucking city, it still blew him away. Ari had lived here all his life and said the same.
He hit the stop button on the passenger display, and the automated vehicle found the next convenient autopark and pulled over. On Danya's AR glasses, he saw his credit score deducted a small amount. Nothing much, this credit account was seriously maxed out from yesterday, a mysterious pile of electronic money just appearing. Sandy, he had no doubt, having arranged for that to happen automatically if she didn't renew some code in twenty-four hours. These three kids were now loaded, by kids’ standards anyway.
He pulled the glasses off as he got out, onto the sidewalk, and immediately he could feel it. This wasn't a typical Tanushan party night, the street music, the enticements, the happy prowling of people just looking to be entertained. Many of the holographics were displaying odd things. Crazy patterns, news images, slogans. A lot of people were just standing about and staring at them, commenting amongst themselves.
On the next corner, a huge wraparound display was showing scenes from the war, battle images, brief flashes of armoured GIs in action, brutal vision, guns blazing, people dying in that horrid way they did on real vision but didn't in the movies—without close-ups, without drama, without clever direction and editing, just dying, with an utter lack of romance. Danya knew real vision from fake, he'd seen plenty of the real stuff himself. And now his earbuds picked up the display audio, “I'm going to get you, you mealy-mouthed son of a bitch. You should be scared.”
Sandy's voice, from that comedian guy's show she liked. These displays were hacked, at least half of them. Whether they were pro- or anti-Sandy, he couldn't tell. Here on the corner, a police car sat, lights flashing, two cops with pistols prominent standing by their vehicle and just watching the crowds. Danya had never seen that before in Tanusha.
He walked on, a little surprised the air traffic was still flying. There were reports of the traffic net crashing in parts, which never happened. Kiril told him the net was crazy, everything was tangled, a lot of things not working. Not all of it was hackers taking Sandy's advice, a lot of them were taking the other side, but all were causing trouble, and there were attack programs everywhere, smashing official constructs to debris, rerouting automated functions, doing all kinds of stuff Kiril couldn't explain. And the busy Tanushan streets were still crowded but buzzing with a different, darker kind of energy.
Abruptly the cops got back into their vehicle and sped off, central traffic yanking other vehicles out of their path. Chasing someone, Danya thought, walking briskly onward. Ahead there was an argument, one group of strangely dressed people pushing and yelling with another group of strangely dressed people. He did not hang about to find out the nature of it, and just walked faster. Crack, boom! He flinched, but it was fireworks somewhere about, echoing off the towers. Illegal in regulated Tanusha, but tonight that wasn't stopping anyone. The crackle in the air was anarchy, and when he'd first arrived, it had been the last thing he'd expected to find.
“Guys, where are you?” He spoke into the little headset, detached from his glasses, just earbuds and mike.
“We just got off at the station,” came Svetlana's voice. “It's a little bit crazy around here. Some shop windows have been smashed, there's cops chasing people.” The distant sound of a siren. “That's an ambulance, it's a block away.”
“Just keep your head down and meet me at the rendezvous.” They could not travel together lest any person or surveillance program reckon who they might be, and it was Svetlana's turn to mind Kiril. Because Kiril was now insisting that they had to come here, Denpasar District, Patel-Clarkeson intersection. He saw something, he said, and couldn't really explain it…except that he saw it so much more clearly than anything else on his uplinks, and it was coming from here. Logically the only thing that might stand out like that was similar technology to what Kiril used. There was only one person in Tanusha with similar technology uplinks, and that was the guy they were looking for—the mysterious Ragi. Danya thought it worth a shot.
“Doesn't do much good smashing windows,” said Svetlana. “Or throwing things at the cops, it's not the cops’ fault. Why don't they go and smash some Feds instead?”
“Because Feds will shoot them,” said Kiril quite sensibly.
“It might be useful to Sandy if the cops are spread thin,” he reasoned. “I mean there's really not enough of them. Sixty million people could go nuts in this city with this few cops, they're not used to people going crazy.”
It could make the people in power nervous. Tanushan defences were designed to stop high-tech
special operations attacks, terrorist bombs, and the like. But what would Parliament defences do if screaming mobs broke into the President's house and dragged him away? Or dragged anyone away? Would they order troops to open fire on unarmed crowds? And Ari said weapons were easy to get with all the material printers—what if the crowds didn't stay unarmed for long?
Kiril's destination was a market. It occupied the open two floors of a city block along Clarkeson Street, where architects had left an open space beneath the building. It was nearly 10pm, but still it bustled and thronged, lights ablaze, shoppers spilling onto the pavement. Crisis or no crisis, Tanusha had to eat, and liked to eat fresh.
Danya took a seat at a noodle bar opposite and ordered a bowl, still hungry after a light dinner hours ago. The noodle guy did not blink at a thirteen-year-old out at 10pm, it wasn't uncommon, and with all the residential buildings around, he might have been minutes from home. He sat at the bench and looked through the window at the market, as a couple of cars cruised past, tough-looking underground types hanging out the windows blasting heavy metal music from speakers. Ominous and pounding, it suited the street mood entirely.
He put his glasses back on—wearing them all the time was trouble, Feds looked for that sort of thing, plus they could blind you, make you dependent on technology he'd survived five years in Droze without. But now, sitting with his excellent noodles, he wanted to see what Kiril was seeing.
The feed was crowds, then shoes and bags, then fresh fish. Kiril's hand, tightly in Svetlana's, as she led him through the market throng, people buying, people talking, people laughing. Danya had thought a high-tech city would buy everything at the flick of an icon, but Tanusha loved everything personal and face to face. Things were still bought at the flick of device on device, but here, food was handled, smelled, prodded, questions asked of talkative sellers. You could do that on VR, he supposed, but that was a simulation. Maybe it was one of those inverse relationships, where the more synthesized everything became, the more people came to value the real experience. While tech heads saw technology as all heading in one direction, they forgot the people who made it all happen and resisted what they didn't like.
Cassandra Kresnov 5: Operation Shield Page 45
