Bruce Sterling - Distraction

Oscar sometimes liked to imagine that he was brilliant under pressure, but that was a pretense. He wasn’t brilliant. He was just extremely fast. He wasn’t a genius. He just burned more brightly, his internal chip-cycle ran a little faster. Now, with the fugue fading, he felt shaky — even with a solemn police promise of extra surveillance and bike patrols.

His assailant — a victim of senile paranoia — had almost managed to shoot him. But Oscar couldn’t seem to connect. The facts weren’t registering. He was numbed.

He went upstairs to his third-floor office. He unlocked his desk and retrieved his super-special crisis notebook. Also, a vintage Water-man pen. At times like this it always helped him to make a list. Not on a screen. With his own hands. He placed the journal down on his Eero Saarinen desktop, and began to write:

A. Become Bambakias chiif of staff.

B. Reform Collaboratory. Internal coup. Purge. Remove entire old guard. Cut budget drastically, reform finances. Note: with luck a success here will obviate any need for second committee assignment.

C. Huey. Is deal possible? Consider full range of countermeasures.

D. Augment personal krewe. Stop desertions. Note: Buna hotel must clear profit. Note: engage new security director at once. Must be trusted implicitly.

E. Return bus to FedDems, must pay for new paint job.

F. Greta. More sex, less email. Note: Boston Visit Imminent!!! Fly krewe members in for conference support, prepare total makeover. Note: use ALL extra days, insist on this. Note: prepare groundwork within Buna while she is OUT of lab — feigned illness gambit. PS I think I love her.

G. Need house-sitter.

H. Return stupid animal to Buna, arrange good cover story. Note: avoid corruption entanglements.

I. I really must stay alive and not be shot thru netwar harassment. Note: this issue needs much higher ranking.

J. Who the hell sent that demolition mob to the bank in Worcester? Note: rational game strategy not possible when pieces are invisible, intangible, or immaterial.

K. Emergency committees must go. They were basic source of Bambakias/Huguelet contretemps. American political situation basically impossible when constitutional authority flouted by irresponsible usurpers. Note: even chief of staff position is fatally subject to their caprice.

L. Sen. Bambakias — hunger strike physical state depression?

Oscar gazed at his list. He had already used up half the alphabet, and he could feel the very air around him swarming with the unforeseen. It was all just too much. It was chaos, madness, a writhing nest of eels.

It was just too complex. It was utterly unmanageable. Unless… unless somehow the process was automated. With more specific goals. Some reengineering. Critical path analysis. Decentral-ization. Co-optation. Thinking outside the box. But then there were so many other people . They all depended on him. He had to deputize…

He was stymied. He was surrounded. He was through, finished, crushed. There was no possibility of coherent accomplishment. Nothing was ever going to move.

He had to do something. Just one thing. Get one single thing accomplished, put one issue finally away.

He picked up the desk phone. Lorena’s secretary fielded the call. He fought his way through.

“I’m sorry, Oscar,” Lorena told him, “I have Alcott on another line. Can I call you back?”

“This won’t take long. It’s important.”

“Yes?”

“There’s news. Moira is in jail, here in Boston. I tried to reason with her about the situation. She lost control, she got violent. There happened to be a policeman handy, luckily for me. The Boston cops have nailed Moira on a domestic battery charge.”

“Good Lord, Oscar.”

“I don’t plan to press charges against her, but I don’t want to tell her that. I want you to handle it now. It’s time for you to take over. Moira’s in the slammer, I’m playing the angry heavy, and you’re her forgiving guardian angel. You see? You’re going to smooth it all over for her, keep it all quiet. That’s how we have to play it with her, because that’s how it’s going to work.”

“Are you kidding? Let her rot!”

“No, I’m not kidding. I’m handing you a permanent solution here. Think about it.”

A long and thoughtful silence. “Yes, you’re right, of course. That is the best way to handle it.”

“I’m glad that you see it my way.”

“I’ll have to grit my teeth a little, but it’s worth it.” A meditative pause. “You’re really amazing.”

“Just part of the job, ma’am.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No. Wait. Yes. Tell me something. Does my voice sound all right to you?”

“For an encrypted line, this is a great connection.”

“No, I mean, I’m not talking really fast? Not, like, a high-pitched squeal?”

Lorena lowered her voice to a croon. “No, Oscar, you sound great. You are completely wonderful. You are handsome and charm-ing, you are completely dependable, you are Mr. Realpolitik. I trust you completely. You have never, ever failed me, and if I had owned that goddamn lab in Colombia I would have cloned a dozen of you. You are the best in the whole wide world.”

Greta arrived after midnight, in an unmanned cab. Oscar checked his door monitor. A Greenhouse nor’easter had come in, and fat snowflakes swirled in the conical glow of alerted streetlights. A wan-dering police drone zipped behind Greta’s head like a black leather swallow. Oscar unlocked his door, peering with a game and cheery grin from behind its bulletproof facing.

She stamped in with a face like a thundercloud. He rapidly abandoned the notion of embracing her. “You didn’t have any trouble getting here, I hope?”

“In Boston? Heavens no.” She yanked her hat off and knocked snow from its brim. “Boston’s so civilized.”

“There was a little trouble in the street earlier.” Os-car paused delicately. “Nothing too serious. Tell me all about your conference.”

“I’ve been out with Bellotti and Hawkins. They were trying to get me drunk.” She was, Oscar realized belatedly, very drunk indeed. She was plastered. He re-lieved her of her coat like a nurse removing a bandage. Greta was dressed in her best: knee-length woolen skirt, sensible shoes, green cotton blouse.

He hung her hat and rumpled coat inside the entrance alcove. “Bellotti and Hawkins would be the gentlemen study-ing fibrils,” he prompted.

Her scowl faded. “Well, it’s a pretty good conference. It’s just a bad night. Bellotti was buying us drinks, and Hawkins was shaking me down for lab results. I don’t mind talking results before publication, but those guys don’t play fair. They don’t want to reveal their really hot stuff” Her lips thinned with contempt. “It might have commer-cial potential.”

“I see.”

“They’re industry hustlers. They’re all cagey, and edgy, and streetwise. They’re hopeless.”

He led her through the dayroom and snapped on the kitchen lights. In the sudden cozy glow, her face looked congealed and waxy. Smudgy lipstick. Loopy-looking crisp dark hair. The unplucked eye-brows were especially unfortunate.

She closely examined the pedestal chairs, the chromed table, the ceramic rangetop island, the built-in resonators. “This is some kind of kitchen you have here,” she said wonderingly. “It’s so… clean . You could do labwork in this kitchen.”

“Thanks. ”

She settled with drunken caution into the white plastic shell of a Saarinen tulip chair.

“You have every right to complain,” Oscar said. “You’re sur-rounded by exploiters and morons.”