Wakers

by Ron Collins

“Fanatics.” Dad waved a dismissive hand. “Or rebels, right? Off-gridders? Don’t fall for the hype. Life in the old days was hard. Going to the Zone Control won’t help us save the compartment, but we’ll always have a place to live.”

  Maine stepped into the hallway and pressed the back of his head against the closed door as he chewed the last of the plapple with enough vigor he bit the inside of his cheek.

  Dad was right.

  Bay Pod 41 would get their boat plant, and his family would petition for a new compartment, and a week or two later something would either become available or be built and they would move on.

  But Maine wasn’t like that.

  Why couldn’t his dad see that?

  Being competitive was hard when the entire world was designed to give people anything they wanted.

  Sometimes kids even teased that if he didn’t slow down with his talk about the world record, the Central Inspector’s Office would be after him. No one plays a one-keyed piano, his mom had told him. And he saw that, too, though it wasn’t consistent. Some passionate people struggled, others didn’t. He saw it when Priss Arnett, who had always painted, started a collection of images that captured her teachers. She’d worked at a fever pitch until that point, then no more than three weeks later grew tired of it. From that point on, she talked about the latest news of this painter and that, but she never took up a brush again as far as he could tell.

  It would never happen to him, though.

  He promised.

  Back in the kitchen, Maine dropped the fruit pit into the matter collector so the system would remanufacture its organic material into something else, then he went to his pod and lay on his bed, his feet propped on a big pillow with Mercy North’s Panther icon stained into it.

  His legs were tired in a good way.

  He could still feel the burn of the track on the bottoms of his feet.

  He wanted to finish the module on Shakespeare tonight because tomorrow was Wednesday, which meant the session was going to discuss it. He hadn’t absorbed either Macbeth or The Taming of the Shrew yet. If he didn’t get those things done now, everyone would be ahead of him.

  They would make good-natured fun of him, but he would know what they meant. Beatrice would care.

  He smiled, thinking of her.

  She had linked into his practice run and he had taken her on a ride that had her oohing and aahing in ways he would like to know a lot more about.

  As far as he could tell, she experimented with about everything — always wanting to be on the edge, probably even more than Maine because, while he only pushed the boundaries when it came to running, Beatrice had no limits.

  He’d wanted to be with her last month as she scaled the remanufacturing warehouse walls, but he didn’t have the guts to do everything she did, nor would his coach appreciate the way she mixed the chemical, mental, and natural elements to go on her great runs of adventure.

  Painting, quantum theory, social debate, free fall, and yes, even running — she was interested in it all.

  And she could hang, too.

  Beatrice, he thought, was gorgeous, smart, and full of interesting ways of putting things.

  He lay back and toggled Think Space.

  The Taming of the Shrew, he thought.

  He wished it was Romeo and Juliet.

  Past Wave Regrowth: Business Background

  Bexie Montgomery came about his money the old-fashioned way, meaning he stole it from people who gave it to him willingly.

  He was born in 2021 to lower-middle-class roots in New Jersey.

  Went to school at Liberty Elementary, where the best that could be said was that, even then, it was obvious he had a talent for making things happen. In high school he joined every club on campus, which gave him reasons to avoid homework, but also made him popular enough that he always had someone to do it for him.

  School was too goddamned boring for him, though.

  Who really cared whether the Vietnam War started with the French, the Americans, or, for that matter, the freaking Mesopotamians?

  It just didn’t matter.

  The Civil War was about a state’s right to hold slaves. Done. World War I was triggered by the assassination of a prince gone wrong. Sure, it killed off a shit-ton of people. So what?

  Why look backward when the world was moving ahead?

  And English Lit.

  Hell, if he needed to write a term paper, he could get Freddie Palanter to do it for a Snickers bar and an introduction to Gail Redfern. Not that Freddie could make it with Gail anyway, but who was Bexie to get in the way of a boy and his fantasies when profit was to be had?

  Dreams, he came to understand, were the source of all desire.

  So, no, school didn’t teach him the things he wanted to learn.

  Which were basically about profit and loss, return on investment, and a knack for knowing when it was time to cut and when it was time to run.

  It didn’t hurt that he was growing into the athletic frame he inherited from his father — a frame nearly two meters tall and properly proportioned at that — and that his eyes were deep puppy-dog brown, his skin was velvet smooth and colored the butternut tone other kids were beginning to stain on or bleach to. It didn’t hurt, either, that his face was angular, and his cheekbones grew in as sharp as razors.

  When his dad lost his construction job the family moved to Maryland, where Bexie tried a community college. But none of the kids helped him, and they weren’t smart enough to get the grades he wanted anyway.

  It was a bad situation all over, and he knew it even before he got caught in the office of Professor Stansi, uh, taking care of her business.

  So, he started as a stock boy at Fesco and Sons — a small electronics warehouse with a walk-in front room. Seventy hours a week loading inventory, cleaning floors, and greeting customers.

  This is where he learned to convince people they wanted the Excelsior A rather than the base model, because the company had added feature X-de-Y that let you track your dog, or your cat, or whatever animal the client happened to say they had. For pet haters, there was always the husband, wife, or significant other.

  Instinctively, Bexie learned that if you made a man believe he was brilliant, he’d do about anything you wanted him to do.

  And that women were the same, but more complex.

  Women needed more convincing. More focus. They didn’t start from a point of view that said their brilliance was a given, and every one of them was different.

  Then there were the rest. Nonbinary, trans, layers of ethnic identities, class questions. The categories went on forever.

  Ten seconds, though.

  That was his goal.

  He had ten seconds to figure out exactly what motivated any person who walked in the door.

  Anything under ten seconds was a win, anything over was a loss.

  Within a month he was playing .500 ball. A year later that figure was closer to .900.

  Fesco promoted him to sales.

  Two years later he swung a deal to lead the appliances department, and from there it took him only six months to take over an entire region — mostly because by that time he could, as the saying went, sell sand to a sheik in Saudi Arabia.

  He “yes ma’amed” elderly ladies, and bullshitted kids.

  He confided secrets to men, showing them things they knew were true until, finally, they would trust him with their car keys if he just asked.

  He could smell a cheapskate coming from all the way across town, and would whisper conspiratorial comments to them. Paying a little more isn’t always best, he’d agree. To hell with the service contract — you know that these fucking engineers are just designing things to last exactly one day past the warranty anyway. He’d lean into the conspiracy theorists. You’re dumb as dirt if you buy anything more than a barebones system. He’d agree with the garden-variety skinflint. And, yeah, just give me a call when this one wears out and we’ll hook you up with another that will probably be even cheaper
in a year.

  And women.

  Ah, women.

  Watching him in a bar in the early days was like watching a magician. You knew he was hiding something, but you could never see it. A grin here or a touch there. A joke. A confession. A comment about her friend. Whatever it seemed to call for, Bexie Montgomery had the knack.

  The money he threw around in the early days wasn’t as extravagant as he would eventually become known for, but it wasn’t shoe change, either.

  At twenty-nine he was a regional director.

  At thirty-one an executive vice president.

  Two years later he closed the deal that merged Fesco with a Chinese manufacturing facility and a Syrian distribution giant, creating Montgomery Industrial Corp, and expanding outside electronics to become the eighth largest distributor of product in the world.

  He did engagements at top business conferences, and the paparazzi, of course, followed him like he was a Corporate Rock Star. Magazine reporters lined up for months in advance hoping for exclusives, which he would grant as long as he could control their message and imagery, focusing, for example, on photos like ones that had him escorting Trina Hallwedge to the Academy Awards.

  She had lost, but the consolation sex had gone well past unforgettable.

  A year later Montgomery Industrial was the number 4 distributor across the globe.

  Six months later they bought number 1.

  Not that life was perfect.

  His dad passed that year, and he had to put his mom in a care facility the year after. He fought a stomach disease a while before agreeing to a stem cell procedure to replace his stomach lining, and then there was the dual paternity case brought on by the N’Taito twins.

  On the one hand, the case was embarrassing, on the other, it said he had it in him.

  He milked it for everything it was worth while he was dealing with Prince Ricard of Monaco. The kid basically challenged Bexie to a chick-fest, a two-week spree that left the female population of the French Riviera in ruins and saw the principality agree to a twenty-seven-trillion-dollar deal with Montgomery Industrial, after which Prince Ricard declared the challenge a standoff.

  “We’ll have to have a rematch when the contract runs out,” the prince was quoted as saying.

  Privately, Bexie, closer to forty than thirty, didn’t know if he could handle another bout with the twenty-five-year-old, but he said he was willing to die trying.

  The press sopped it up, and so did the prince.

  CHAPTER 6

  “…Human-run companies could not compete, and soon came what is now known as the Great Collapse.

  Unlike business models that created goods for consumption, this product automated workforces that could operate forever, that came with a single expenditure, and that did not consume anything beyond energy.

  When, finally, the fellowship of China and Russia…”

  Bexie shut down the link and pushed the table hard to get it out of the way. It was made of some kind of black composite as heavy as stone. The table juddered with a loud screech.

  “This is bullshit!”

  He was in a learning chamber — an oblong room of moderate size with curved walls that were barren and painted white so that the room had space to convey immersive, panoramic images and the situations around various elements of history. The flooring was a beige carpet of some type, the ceiling rounded and lined with acoustic tiles. Now the space around him was so quiet the room seemed to suddenly close in on him. Sweat pooled at his armpits, and the air tasted stale.

  Winnie, his guide, stood a short distance away, serene as always, in a dress with a purple top that deepened to indigo at the long skirt. The waist was cinched with a simple belt. Her dark hair fell in a wave over her face, growing so naturally from the organic material of her scalp, but designed that way, perfect, he thought. Too perfect.

  He had come to understand what Winnie was, a bio-int, a biological intelligence, a clone like Julia, but different from his nurse in that every cell in her body was infused with processing power — which helped her handle the massive holographic aspect of the chamber. As such, her movements were as smooth as a human’s but sometimes — if processing power lagged during major projections — her sync was a perceptible moment offbeat.

  Very far-future corporate, Bexie had thought at first introduction.

  As Winnie came to stand beside Bexie’s desk, her voice came through his direct feed.

  “Why do you say this is bullshit, Mr. Montgomery?”

  He pressed his hands hard against the tabletop.

  The warmth to her smile felt condescending.

  “Don’t give me any of your ‘that’s so sweet,’ crap,” Bexie said. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe things work like this.”

  “Several of our Wakers have required extra days to absorb these examples of how your world has changed since you were last cogent.”

  “Robots?”

  “If you want to call us that, though the term is considerably out of date.”

  “What would you call yourself?”

  “It depends.”

  He clenched his teeth.

  “As you’ve already determined, we are a collection of mechanical, virtual, and biological devices that perform all the work that goes into supplying nearly any fundamental demand a human being might have. Our experiences span a wide range from true mechanicals to integrated clone and artificial intelligences. Which of us do you want to talk about?”

  “And you’re telling me there is no money?”

  “Robots require no payment, sir.”

  “No credit? No loans?”

  “When a human wants something — or a human clone, for that matter.” Winnie paused for effect. “They merely request it and the proper manufacturing entity will deliver it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Winnie said nothing.

  “The Middle East alone would fight to the death before giving each other the time of day, better yet join a centralized economy.”

  “The people of the land you knew as the Middle East now exist in shared spaces designed to layer over one another.”

  “So, they each live on their own holy ground?”

  “Yes. There are still skirmishes, but they live in separate layers in Think Space at least, and the CIO has removed certain weapon systems from existence, so the intensity of conflict has been reduced.”

  Bexie stood up and paced to get rid of pent-up energy. After a moment he stopped and pressed his hands against the projection room’s hard walls, feeling it for the prison it still was.

  “What if everyone in the world wanted a fifty-carat diamond?”

  “It is unlikely that everyone will want a fifty-carat diamond at the same time.”

  “Humor me, Winnie. Let’s say they did.”

  “Then they would be made.”

  “How?”

  “Either matter generators or pure harvesting of existing resources. A large quantity of diamonds still exists in the natural environment, after all.”

  “Yes, yes. But you’re saying that if resources were depleted, the system would just make more.”

  “Yes.”

  “Atoms in, anything out.”

  “Exactly. Of course, once people have access to everything, they often find they need very little.”

  Bexie shrugged. “Sure. Oversupply chokes demand. But not everything that can be desired is something that can be built.”

  “You mean something like land?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Human land consumption is managed by zones and its use is voted on by all affected members.”

  “That’s socialism.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “So, who gets to be Stalin?”

  “It’s very democratic, Mr. Montgomery. Everyone gets a vote, and every vote counts the same.”

  “Jesus.”

  Bexie leaned into the wall, feeling its smooth projection contours rounding against his muscles.

>   This was a fucking nightmare.

  It was a lie. It had to be. All of it.

  He saw it in the way her eyes glimmered underneath that calm interior.

  Someone was reviving the richest Wakers and bilking them of their cash.

  Now it was his turn.

  They were feeding him this tripe to get him off guard. The long con game, three-hundred-years-in-the-future style. Was it even 2372? Jesus, that would be sick.

  He ran his hand over his forehead.

  He had to get ahead of them. If he could get them off guard like they had him, maybe he could make some headway. When in doubt, take the simple answer, and the simplest way to do that was to follow the money.

  “All right,” he said, leaning back against the rounded wall and crossing his arms. “I give. But what about something like art?”

  “Art exists everywhere.”

  “Let’s talk about the Mona Lisa.”

  “All right.”

  “There’s only one.”

  “That is correct, only one original. The Mona Lisa you are referring to is at the Wright Institute in the area known as Zimbabwe during your first lifetime. Today we know it as the South African province of Katalla.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. What if I want it? What would it cost to acquire it?”

  “You would make a request, sir. And a manufacturing facility would make a duplicate within a few weeks.”

  “No. I want the original.”

  “The duplicate would be the same as the original in every way.”

  “Not in every way.”

  “Down to the atom.”

  “The duplicate would be different because it would not have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Since no entity in existence would be able to separate the two, that is not relevant.”

  Bexie tried not to laugh. “It is totally relevant if you’re selling it to someone who cares about that.”

  Winnie remained silent for long enough to ensure he was done speaking.

  “I think it is time we draw this session to a close, Mr. Montgomery. I’ll have the nurses show you to your room. It would be good if you could exercise. We can start again tomorrow.”

  “What if I took it?” he said. “What if I go to Katalla and forcibly remove the Mona Lisa to keep it at my house?”