Interface

by Neal Stephenson

  “You have the next office, Mr. Harper?”

  “Yeah. Come on over any time you want to have a look at the courtyard,” he said, widening his eyes just a bit and staring significantly at the blank wall behind Eleanor’s desk. The office of Shad Harper was a big old master bedroom or something, and she could already see that he had lots of windows.

  These were all things that would bother her later. At the moment, nothing could penetrate the endorphin buzz that she had from actually being on a payroll.

  “Thank you,” she said, “you’re very kind.”

  “Saw you on TV. That was quite a little tantrum you threw in front of Earl Strong there.”

  “And what do you do for the Senator?” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, as if he were surprised that she didn’t already know, “I’m the BLM liaison.”

  “BLM?”

  “Bureau of Land Management,” he recited, with calculated nonchalance.

  Looking over his shoulder across the hallway, Eleanor could see a bleached longhorn skull hanging on one of the rare parts of Harper’s office wall that did not consist of windows. That, and the cowboy boots, told the story of Shad Harper.

  Bureau of Land Management. Colorado had a lot of land that needed to be managed. A lot of voters lived on or near that land. When the land did get managed, it was through federal programs. Shad Harper must be keeping tabs on a lot of money.

  He was very young. Which was not a problem in and of itself; Eleanor had known a lot of bright young things who were a pleasure to be around. But Shad Harper didn’t seem to realize that he was still a young man. He ought to be out riding a mountain bike around Boulder. Any man of his age who was not out goofing off was difficult to trust.

  He raised his eyebrows, showing exaggerated concern, and puckered his lips into a silent O shape. “I think your phone’s ringing, Eleanor,” he said.

  Eleanor turned around and looked at her phone, an elaborate, hightech, multiline model with lots of tiny little buttons on it. Each button had tiny little red and green lights next to it. Some buttons had red lights going. Some had green lights going. Some had both. Some of the lights were blinking others were not. It looked like a Christmas decoration.

  “Well, thank you,” she said, “but I don’t hear anything.”

  “I took the liberty of turning the ringer off while this office was vacant,” he said. “It was driving me crazy. I gotta get back. I’ll see you later, Eleanor.”

  He dodged out the door and across the hallway and made a diving grab at his own telephone, then burst into a good-natured, booming, masculine welcome. Whomever Shad Harper was talking to, if he had been there in person, Shad would have been pounding him on the back and possibly even giving him noogies.

  Eleanor set her box of stuff down on her desk, went around behind it, and looked at the silently ringing telephone. She wanted to sit down, but there was no chair in the office, just a desk.

  She knew the deal here. Shad Harper, being a boy, had figured out how to turn off the telephone’s ringer. And she, being a girl, was supposed to sit helplessly for a while, and then go across the hallway and meekly ask him to turn it back on for her. Ten minutes into her job, she would already owe him one.

  She already knew that she would rather shove a freshly sharpened pencil into her eye than ask Shad Harper for a favor. She picked up the telephone, clamping the handset down into its cradle with her thumb, and rotated it around, looking at all the tiny little switches and jacks and plugs and connectors. It took some looking and some experimenting, but eventually she found it. She flicked a switch. The phone rang.

  She picked it up. But before it even reached her ear she could hear a conversation, already in progress. It was Shad Harper listening to a crusty old rancher somewhere complaining about the cultural and genetic deficiencies of the Mexican race. He was doing this by listing all of the ways that, in his view, they were similar to “niggers.” After the man made each point, Shad Harper would say, “Uh-huh,” in a chuckling and indulgent tone of voice.

  Her phone was still ringing. She pushed another button.

  It was Senator Marshall himself, now in D.C., talking to someone about polls. Her phone was still ringing; she pushed another button.

  It was a young black woman who apparently worked here in this office, talking trash with another young black woman who apparently worked in someone else’s office. Her phone was still ringing; she pushed another button.

  “Hello?” a voice said. White female. Screaming kids in background.

  “Hello, Senator Marshall’s office,” Eleanor said.

  “I know I already reached the Senator’s goddamn office,” the woman said, “but who am I talking to?”

  “Mrs. Richmond. Health and Human Services Liaison.”

  “Finally. Jeezus, I been on hold for a quarter of an hour and my kids are going nuts here. Kin you hear ‘em?”

  The sound of the kids got louder for a few moments and Eleanor realized that this woman must be holding the phone out toward them, waving it around a motel room or trailer full of screeching and fighting rug rats like a rock star pointing his microphone at the crowd. Another Commerce City resident, no doubt.

  “Yes, I believe I can, ma’am,” Eleanor said. “How may I help you?”

  A brief moment of stunned silence on the other end of the line. “Well, didn’t I already just explain that about three times?” Then, her voice farther away: “Brittany! Ashley! You stay away from your goddamn brother or I’ll tan your hides!”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” Eleanor said, “you never explained it to me.”

  “Well, I explained it to the other gal.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’m not quite sure who the other gal is. But I’d be happy to listen if you’d care to explain it again.”

  Another silence. Eleanor couldn’t figure out why this woman was being so quiet until her voice came back on again, and it was obvious that she had begun to cry. “Well, I ain’t going through the whole goddamn thing again! But let me tell you, bitch, that if it don’t get taken care of today, I’ll-

  “You’ll what, ma’am?”

  “I’ll go out and find wherever it is that I’m s’posed to register and get myself registered to vote and go out and vote against that old fuck that you work for next time he comes up for reelection! Bitch!” Then the woman slammed the phone down.

  The phone began ringing immediately. Eleanor was starting to get the hang of this now; she pushed the button with the blinking light next to it.

  “Hello, Senator Marshall’s office,” she said.

  “Finally!” someone said. Black female. Then, away from the phone: “Hey, I finally got through!” Then, back into the phone: “You have any idea how long I been waiting on the line?”

  “A quarter of an hour or so?”

  “Shit, I been waiting all day.”

  “It’s only 9:13 - but I’m sorry for the delay, ma’am. How can I assist you?”

  “I took my little daughters to a unlicensed day-care at my neighbor’s house down the street and when I come home from work, her boyfriend had come in during the day and molested ‘em, and I want to know if I can force him to take an AIDS test.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Shit no. Why would I want to call them?”

  “Because a very serious crime has been committed.”

  “Shit. I called you for serious advice, girl.”

  “I’m giving it to you. Call the cops. Tell them what happened. Send the bastard to jail.”

  “This G done already told me if call the cops he come kill me.”

  “Ma’am, how could being killed possibly be any worse than having your daughters raped?”

  Stunned silence. “What kind of an attitude is that?”

  “It’s a reasonable attitude. It’s the kind of attitude that any parent should have.”

  “Well, who are you to be telling me this?”

  “I’m a woman who was raised right by her
parents and who’s been trying to raise her two kids right.”

  “What are you saying, that I ain’t been raised right?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, if you care so little for those two precious daughters of yours that you won’t even seek justice for them. If anyone in my family ever got raped, nobody would rest until the perpetrator was dead or behind bars.”

  “Well, I didn’t call you up so you could give me abuse.” “Girlfriend,” Eleanor said, “I’m gonna tell you something real important right now and you better listen.”

  “I’m listening,” the woman said. She sounded cowed and meek now.

  “This that I am saying to you is not abuse. It’s the truth. It’s just that sometimes the truth is so harsh that when people hear it spoken, it sounds like abuse. And one of the problems we got in this country, not just among black people but with everyone, is that everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say the things that are true. Now, I just told you what to do. You go and do it. And if you have to go out and get a gun to protect you from that son of a bitch that raped your daughters, you damn well better do it, because that’s your responsibility, and if you can’t handle it, then you don’t deserve to have those two little angels that are a precious gift from God.”

  Eleanor slammed the phone down. It started ringing.

  “Senator Marshall’s office.”

  The creaky voice of a very old man said, “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

  “Good morning, Senator Marshall, how are you?”

  “Wide awake and full of inspiration, after that!”

  “After what?”

  “Your motivational talk to that young woman. Well done!”

  “You were listening to that?”

  “I always listen in on my liaison staff,” Senator Marshall said. “It’s an essential part of the job. And if I had managed to get through to you before you actually swung into action, I would have given you fair warning. But now you know.”

  “Well, I don’t normally shoot my mouth off this early in the morning, but-”

  “You weren’t shooting your mouth off. You were doing just fine. All those people out there are crying for more welfare checks when what they really need is to have someone like you pound some common sense into their heads.”

  “I don’t necessarily agree with that,” Eleanor said, mortified.

  “Anyway, nice to see you changed your position on gun control. You’re going to fit right in at the Alamo!”

  “Who said anything about gun control?”

  “You did,” Senator Marshall said. “You were pro-gun control, weren’t you?”

  “In theory, yes,” Eleanor said, “but I have a gun, and I know how to use it.”

  “Well, tell me something. If that woman you were just talking to had to fill out a bunch of forms and get permission from the government to have a gun, she wouldn’t be able to take the advice you just gave her, would she?”

  Eleanor shook her head in exasperation. “You are just full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you?”

  “No, I just like a good discussion, is all.”

  “I have important people to talk to,” Eleanor said, and hung up on him. Her phone rang immediately.

  25

  Aaron Green put his feet up on his desk at Green Biophysical Systems in Lexington, Massachusetts, enjoying the first lull in the action since his big conversation with Cy Ogle back in January. They had ironed out all of the problems that they could think of having to do with the PIPER miniaturization project. Responsibility had been transferred to the shoulders of the Pacific Netware people. Aaron had brought in a New York Times and a Boston Globe, and was reading some astonishing results from the Illinois primary, which had taken place the day before.

  Several members of the party in power had challenged the incumbent President. Usually such efforts were purely symbolic, but the President’s policy on the national debt had provided fodder for a more serious challenge this time around, and these candidates had racked up some surprisingly high numbers.

  The situation in the other party was even more interesting. There were two announced candidates - three, if you counted the Reverend William Joseph Sweigel, which almost no one did. Everyone knew, and had known since Super Tuesday, that the real race was between Tip McLane and Norman Fowler, Jr., the boy billionaire of Grosse Pointe.

  But apparently in the last week before the Illinois primary, unspecified persons had initiated a write-in campaign for William A. Cozzano, the Governor of Illinois, who was in the hospital recovering from a stroke. It seemed to be a genuine, spontaneous ground swell. People had begun showing up in T-shirt stores and asking to have Cozzano printed on shirts and hats. Crudely fashioned, xeroxed Cozzano posters had begun showing up on mailboxes and in car windows.

  In yesterday’s primary, a lot of people had written in the Governor’s name. A lot of people. So many that the counting of the ballots had been delayed. But the results available as of the middle of the night before, when the newspapers had gone to press, suggested that Cozzano had actually won a number of precincts, made a strong showing overall, and might actually come in second to Normal Fowler, Jr. He had been so strong, in fact, that he had actually gotten several thousand write-in votes in the other party’s primary.

  When Aaron saw the preliminary numbers printed in the paper, he turned on the TV in his office to see if he could get some up-to-date numbers. He never used to pay attention to this stuff, but since he had started hanging out with Ogle he had become very election conscious.

  The news networks were full of Cozzano. Cozzano in Vietnam. Cozzano being carried around on the shoulders of fellow Bears. Cozzano raking leaves in front of his big house in some backwater town in Illinois. Cozzano waving from the window of his hospital room in Champaign. And the name Cozzano, crudely printed on Tshirts and homemade yard signs.

  He was startled to realize that someone was standing in his office doorway. It was Marina, the office manager, word processing and desktop publishing genius, fixer, diplomat, you name it. She looked a little dreamy. If this had been a Warner Brothers cartoon, she would have had stars and birds circling around her head.

  “I just got the weirdest phone call,” she said.

  “Tell me about it,” Aaron said.

  “This guy called up. A guy with a southern accent. I think it’s that guy you’ve been dealing with out in California.”

  “Cy Ogle.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, what did Mr. Ogle have to say?”

  “That I was fired.”

  “He said what?”

  “That I was fired. That the corporation was undergoing a restructuring and that I could apply for reemployment later.”

  Aaron was more nonplussed than he was angry. It had to be Ogle’s weird sense of humor at work. “Well, who the hell is Ogle to be saying stuff like that?”

  “Exactly what I asked him. He said he was the chairman of the board of directors.”

  “I’m the chairman,” Aaron said.

  “I know that.”

  Another person appeared in the hallway, standing behind Marina. It was Greg. College buddy of Aaron’s. Cofounder of the corporation. Chief biologist. “I have just been informed that I’m fired too,” he said. “But maybe it’s not so bad since our stock is selling for twice its normal value today. So I’m worth twice as much.”

  “Good,” Marina said, “so am I.” Marina had lots to stock too.

  “Selling?” Aaron said. “None of our stock has changed hands in months.”

  “Get with it,” Greg said. “Fifty-five percent of it changed hands at 9:05 this morning.”

  “What you’re saying is that our venture capitalists sold us to someone else.”

  “That’s what it amounts to.”

  “And Cy Ogle claims to be that someone,” Marina said.

  The telephone on Aaron’s desk began to purr. Aaron picked it up, indicating with a hand gesture that it was, o
kay for Greg and Marina to stay in the room.

  “You’re probably pissed because I just fired half of our company,” Ogle said. “Which is understandable. It’s hard to run a tight ship based on emotion and personal loyalty. Damn hard.”

  “Who’s next? Me?”

  “Nope. You’re staying on, along with your two electronics guys. We can use them. Everyone else has served their purpose.”

  “How am I supposed to run an office without Marina?”

  “You don’t have to worry about running an office anymore. We have plenty of room down here in Falls Church.”

  “But I don’t live in Falls Church, Virginia. I live in Arlington, Massachusetts.”

  “Then you better get used to a hell of a long commute,” Ogle said, “because a moving truck is showing up at your office door in five minutes to pick up all your equipment and drive it down here.”

  “Now, wait just a second,” Aaron finally said. He had been fighting the impulse to get pissed off ever since this weirdness started. “This is just totally unacceptable. You can’t just uproot our lives like this. Hell, I don’t even know for sure that you’re the real chairman!”

  “I am,” Ogle said, “but there’s no point in your getting pissed off at me.”

  “There certainly is,” Aaron said, “if you’re the chairman.”

  “I’m the chairman of Green Biophysical Systems as of 9:05 a.m.,” Ogle said, “but as of 9:03 a.m. I was no longer the chairman of Ogle Data Research.”

  “Huh?”

  “I got bought out too.”

  “By whom?”

  “A whole bunch of folks. MacIntyre Engineering. The Coover Fund. Gale Aerospace. Pacific Netware. They own me now. And the first thing they did was tell me to buy you. So I did. And then they told me to initiate a radical downsizing program. So I did. And part of that is closing the Lexington office and moving it down here to Falls Church.”

  “And all of these events took place during the first five minutes of the business day.”

  “Yup.”

  “Gee,” Aaron said, “a guy could almost get the impression that the groundwork for this whole thing had been laid well in advance.”

  “Draw your own conclusions. Throw a tantrum. Call me names. Just don’t be late for the meeting.”