Interface

by Neal Stephenson

  She had found a lot of interesting things in the restrooms of the New York Public Library. They didn’t let you bring food into the building, so the wastebaskets were cleaner. Almost everything that was in there was paper. Actual merchandise like the lipstick stood out prominently.

  Mae Hunter spent a great deal of time in the library because she didn’t have a job, family, or home to distract her from her real mission in life, which was to improve her mind. For the past few months she had been working her way through Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She was halfway through the fifth of seven volumes.

  Reading was the most important thing in her life. She had found, over the year and a half since her husband died, that she could handle sleeping out of doors and dumpster-diving for food. She could handle the uncertainty and fear. She had been raped twice and she could even handle that. But the one thing that drove her nuts was the ignorance. She saw these people all around her, sleeping in the parks, spare-changing at Port Authority, checking themselves in to those awful homeless shelters, and none of them made any effort to improve their minds. You could hardly walk ten paces in New York City without coming across a discarded copy of The New York Times, the world’s finest newspaper, but none of these people bothered to avail themselves. As a former elementary-school teacher, she found that this really irked her. All that wasted brainpower.

  Another thing that annoyed her was people’s failure to take care of themselves, which is why she was being so exquisitely careful to get this lipstick on correctly. That done, she found a comfortable place and settled in against the base of a small embankment with some shrubs growing on top of it.

  She jumped as a burst of music sounded from nearby. Someone was listening to a transistor radio behind her, back in the bushes. “Hello?” she said. “Is someone back there?” But there was no answer.

  There was still barely enough light to see. She stood up and peered into the bushes. “Hello?”

  The music faded out and was replaced by the sound of an announcer. “From the National Town Meeting, four contenders for the vice presidency debate the issues …”

  She was almost positive that no one was back there. She walked back and forth in front of the bushes, peering in through gaps between the leaves, trying to see. Something was glowing back there. It looked like a little TV set. And no one was anywhere near it. She found a sort of gap through the little thicket where it looked as though someone had charged through it, flattening down the branches. She followed it in and picked up the source of the noise and light: a Dick Tracy watch.

  She debated whether to take it. It had obviously been stolen and dropped here by some criminal who might come back later to look for it.

  She looked at the screen. It was showing a TV program: a debate featuring four people who wanted to be William Cozzano’s vice-presidential candidate. One by one, the announcer introduced them as they nodded into the camera.

  “Brandon F. Doyle, former U.S. Representative from Massa­chusetts, currently on the faculty of Georgetown University…” This was a handsome, youngish man, probably in his late forties but young-looking for that age. He smiled a tight little smile into the camera and nodded. She didn’t like him.

  “Marco Gutierrez, Mayor of Brownsville, Texas, and a found­ing member of the international environmental group Toxic Borders …” This was a burly Latino man with a mustache and large, intense black eyes. He was leaning back in his chair, stroking his mustache with one finger. He raised his hand away from his face as his name was called and waved at the camera.

  Mae Hunter snapped the Dick Tracy watch into place around her wrist. She wanted to see at least this one program.

  The TV image cut to a blond, blue-eyed woman with one of those professional-looking haircuts that Mae always saw on the young women in midtown. She stared directly, and almost coldly, into the camera. “Laura Thibodeaux-Green, founder and CEO of Santa Fe Software, who, two years ago, came within a thousand votes of being elected senator from New Mexico.”

  Finally, to Mae Hunter’s surprise and delight, she appeared on the screen!

  “And Eleanor Richmond of Alexandria, Virginia, assistant to the late Senator Caleb Marshall.”

  The woman was so cool. She didn’t even look at the camera, didn’t react to the introduction at all. She was looking at some papers in her lap. Then she glanced up and looked around a little bit, calm, alert, but not paying any attention to the announcer or the TV cameras. She was so like a princess.

  What a terrible introduction that was! It didn’t do justice to the life and times of Eleanor Richmond at all. Mae Hunter knew all about her, she had followed her career in the discarded pages of The New York Times. She was a modern-day hero. Mae pushed her way out through the bushes and went on to the broad open bank of the Hudson to watch her girlfriend Eleanor.

  The moderator was Marcus Hale, a grizzled ex-anchorman who had gotten to the place in his career where he could write his own job description. He did a lot of work for TV North America now, because there, he didn’t have to keep stopping in midparagraph to pimp hemorrhoid remedies to the American public. And now that the candidacy of William A. Cozzano had developed into a media-certified Important Phenomenon, he had been all too eager to serve as the moderator of this vice-presidential showdown. He opened things up, in typical Marcus Hale style, with a lengthy editorial, though he probably would have preferred to call it analysis. Eventually he worked his way around to asking a question.

  And it was a doozy. “All of you are young people, in your forties. Chances are you’ll be around for at least another twenty-five years. One or more of you may even become president during that time. By then, people who are being born today will just be coming into the adult job market, and their success in that market will depend largely on the economic and educational initiatives that are taken during the next decade. These will be most important to the poorest people, who today face the most restricted opportunities. And without putting too fine a point on it, you know and I know that what I’m really talking about here is inner-city blacks. My question is: twenty-five years from now, what will life be like for these people, and what will you have done to make that life better?”

  Brandon F. Doyle of Massachusetts went first, and he looked scared. It was easy enough for an old man like Marcus Hale to drag these scary and difficult issues into the limelight. It was a lot harder for someone like Doyle to deal with the resulting mess, especially considering that he was sharing the stage with a black person who could shoot him down whenever she wanted.

  “Well, first of all, Marcus, let me say that opportunity - for all people, white or black - is a function of education. This is a message that we have always taken to heart in Massachusetts, which has a long heritage of brilliant institutions of higher learning. It’s my hope - and my intention - that twenty-five years from now, a lot of the people you’re talking about will be entering graduate school, or law school, or medical school, and they’ll be doing it with the full assistance and support of a government that takes these things with the utmost seriousness. Which is not to support big-spending government programs. I prefer to think of education as an investment, not an expense.”

  Next came Marco Gutierrez, who had a heavy, stolid, calm affect. That and his hair and his clothes had all been developed to make him seem like a cool norteamericano, not the jumpy, emotional Mexican that blue-eyed Duluth voters were afraid of. “Well, I would second a lot of what my friend Brandon said, but where we differ is at the end. Look. Government has a moral duty to educate its children. No matter what it costs. To say that education is a good investment misses the point. Even if it cost every penny in the Treasury, we should educate our kids to the best of our ability, because it’s the right thing to do.”

  It was Laura Thibodeaux-Green’s turn. “Kids spend seven hours a day in front of the television. Seven hours a day. Just think about that for a second. That’s a lot more time than they spend in the classroom. Well, my opinion is that TV
doesn’t have to be mind-rotting garbage. It has the ability to educate. And the digital, high-definition TV that’s just starting to be introduced to the living rooms of America can be the most potent educational tool ever devised. I advocate a massive program to develop educational software that can run on these TV sets of the future, so that those seven hours a day spent in front of the TV can turn our little kids into little Shakespeares and Einsteins instead of illiterate couch potatoes.”

  Finally, Eleanor Richmond got her chance. “Look,” she said, “Abe Lincoln learned his lessons by writing on the back of a shovel. During slavery times, a lot of black people learned to read and write even though they weren’t allowed to go to school. And nowadays, Indochinese refugee kids do great in school even though they got no money at all and their folks don’t speak English. The fact that many black people nowadays aren’t getting educated has nothing to do with how much money we spend on schools. Spending more money won’t help. Neither will writing educational software to run on your home TV set. It’s just a question of values. If your family places a high value on being educated, you’ll get educated, even if you have to do your homework on the back of a shovel. And if your family doesn’t give a damn about developing your mind, you’ll grow up stupid and ignorant even if you go to the fanciest private school in America.

  “Now, unfortunately, I can’t give you a program to help develop people’s values. Personally, I’m starting to think that the fewer programmes we have, the better off we are.”

  For the first time, the live audience broke into applause.

  “Amen to that!” Mae Hunter shouted, her voice echoing out across the gray Hudson. A couple of passing joggers glanced at her, then looked away quickly and pretended not to notice the crazy lady.

  Cy Ogle saw a screen flare bright green in the corner of his eye, and turned to look. The name at the bottom of the screen was CHASE MERRIAM.

  It was amazing. Out of all these candidates, Merriam’s clear favorite, so far, was Eleanor Richmond. Between the poor people and minorities on the bottom, and the women and people like Chase Merriam on the top, an astonishing number of people liked Eleanor Richmond.

  But on second thought, Ogle reflected, maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all. Months ago, when she had confronted Earl Strong in the shopping mall, he had pointed his finger at her image on the screen and pronounced her the first female president of the United States.

  45

  Eleanor went straight to her hotel room after the debate, talked to her kids in Alexandria, watched some TV, went to bed, and slept until ten Friday morning. When she opened her eyes, she knew without looking at the clock that she had lost control of herself and overslept massively. The red light on her phone was flashing like a police car, the blackout curtains on her hotel room windows were limned with the hot, hysterical white light of midday. She felt wizened and dehydrated and headachy.

  She opened her curtains about six inches, letting a slab of arid light into the room, ordered some room service (yogurt, a large infusion of juice, and lots of coffee), and took a shower. The yogurt arrived with a stack of message slips from various journalists, most of whom had deadlines that had already expired. She was still sitting on her bed in her hotel bathrobe, trying to get the coffee into her system as fast as possible, sorting these messages into stacks, when someone knocked at her door. Shave and a haircut, two bits.

  It was her girlfriend Mary Catherine Cozzano, turned out in a smashingly professional navy blue ensemble. Mary Catherine was doing some major grinning, showing some serious dimple action this morning.

  “I’m not worthy,” Eleanor said, placing one hand to the breast of her white terrycloth bathrobe.

  “My daughter costume,” Mary Catherine explained.

  “Well, I knew I overslept,” Eleanor said, ushering her into the room, “but looking at you I feel like I am way behind the curve.”

  “You don’t know how right you are,” Mary Catherine said provocatively. She groped for the curtain pull and yanked it decisively, flooding the room with light. Then she turned around and sat down on the unmade bed, facing Eleanor, who was squinting between her fingers.

  “You have this look on your face like you are in possession of important state secrets that you can’t wait to blab,” Eleanor said. “So let me assure you that I have a Top-Secret Alpha clearance. Coffee?”

  “No thanks,” Mary Catherine said. “I had breakfast four hours ago.”

  Eleanor laughed and pretended to be ashamed of herself. “In Alexandria my neighbor’s dog starts barking at five a.m. sharp,” she said, “so I never get the opportunity to sleep in.”

  “Well,” Mary Catherine said, “I think you’ll find that the accommodations are much quieter on the grounds of the Naval Observatory.”

  “Naval Observatory?”

  “Yeah,” Mary Catherine said innocently.

  The Naval Observatory was a circular patch of land along Massachusetts Avenue, northwest of downtown D.C., in a part of town that Eleanor had rarely visited while growing up there. Its function was to provide very nice housing to a few important Navy types who needed quick access to the White House. And it contained the official residence of the Vice President of the United States.

  She inhaled sharply and looked at Mary Catherine’s face. Mary Catherine was sucking in her cheeks, trying not to break out laughing.

  “I’m going to be made an admiral?” Eleanor said.

  Mary Catherine shook her head.

  The idea was too stunning. Eleanor couldn’t speak. It couldn’t be.

  If Cozzano were a fringe candidate, she’d understand it. A purely symbolic candidacy, like the Libertarians or the Socialists, might pick someone like her as a running mate. But Cozzano was no fringe candidate.

  Hell, Cozzano was the leader. All the polls had him out in front. It was impossible.

  “You’re playing with me, girl,” Eleanor said.

  Mary Catherine just shook her head. She put one hand over her mouth, trying to contain herself.

  That one gesture finally brought it home to Eleanor. This wasn’t just some nice young lady she had made friends with at a convention, after all. This was the daughter of the candidate himself. And the way she was dressed-

  “You came here to do some serious business,” Eleanor said.

  Mary Catherine nodded.

  “You came here to NOTIFY ME!” Eleanor said, and finally she couldn’t hold back any longer; she slid forward out of her chair, on to her knees, put both hands over her face, and started screaming. Mary Catherine, laughing hysterically, wrapped Eleanor up in her arms and held her tight.

  In some deep, remote part of her soul, Eleanor knew that she was acting just like the winning contestants on the game shows that she used to watch when she was unemployed. But she didn’t care. Come to think of it, it wasn’t a bad analogy. She had gone on the biggest quiz show of all time and won the penultimate prize.

  The results were so odd and yet so important that Cyrus Rutherford Ogle ran one more test, shortly before the announce­ment. They were starting off the broadcast with a round-table discussion among the four metapundits whom Ogle had hand-picked from Central Casting.

  One of them was a gruff, grandfatherly old man who projected traditional American family values. He had made a comfortable living playing a cowboy patriarch in various Westerns and an admiral on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Another was a tweedy academic (lab-coat wearing pseudoscientist on a couple of drug commercials). Then there was a middle-aged, professional-looking young women whose role was to puncture the egos of the two men (occasional lawyer on L.A. Law). Finally, they had a stylish, younger black woman with a Hispanic surname and generically progressive politics (roommate/best friend to better-known actresses in various films). All four of the metapundits would gather every evening and engage in a spirited discussion of political issues that had come up during the day’s events at the National Town Meeting. All four of them had, at one time, worked in soap operas and
had the ability to memorize dialogue rapidly, which came in handy since Ogle and his staff scripted the discussions.

  During tonight’s discussion, the tweedy academic metapundit delivered a bombshell several minutes into the program by announcing that he had spoken with a high-level Cozzano operative minutes before the program and that this person had confirmed that Eleanor Richmond would be the vice-presidential candidate.

  Cy Ogle was ensconced in the Eye of Cy at the moment his line was delivered, and the results were intense and striking. There were a few discrepancies between the new information and last night’s debate results, but they were not big discrepancies. Richmond had a hard core of support that would never change. There was also a smaller but strong anti-Richmond segment, led by Byron Jeffcote (Trailer-Park Nazi, Ocala, Florida) and by a few others like the Post-Confederate Gravy Eater and the Orange County Book Burner.

  But reaction among more moderately conservative whites was not half-bad. And the big surprise was still there: Chase Merriam loved Eleanor Richmond. Cy Ogle picked up the phone and got his press secretary.

  “Go ahead and announce it,” he said. “The demographics are perfect.”

  “Richmond?” the secretary said, still a little uncertain about this whole idea.

  “Eleanor Richmond,” Ogle said.

  On the other end of the line, he heard keys whacking on a computer keyboard. The press release was now being transmitted digitally to the wire services, computer-faxed to every press outlet in the Western world. Cozzano’s state and local campaign managers, in all fifty states, were receiving information packets on Eleanor Richmond - pictures, videotapes, and canned sound bites for them to toss off to the local media. It all happened in an instant.

  “It’s done,” his press secretary said.

  “Good” Ogle said. “White House, here we come. I gotta go,” he concluded. “I have a call on another line.”