Neal Stephenson - Interface

"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."

It wasn't just any old phone line. This was a special line that Ogle had agreed to keep open. The only person who had this phone number was Buckminster Salvador. Cy Ogle's boss. Rarely heard from, rarely seen, but always there.

"Ogle," Ogle said.

"Hold everything!" said the voice of Mr. Salvador, which was barely recognizable; his throat was tense to the point of strangula­tion. "Don't move! Don't push any buttons or make any phone calls or let anyone do anything!"

"I am alone. Alone and powerless," Ogle said. "You have my undivided attention."

"Thank god I reached you in time," Salvador said. "I knew there was something wrong with that whole Eleanor Richmond thing."

"What do you mean?"

Salvador spent most of his time hanging out in ODR's fake headquarters in the office tower above Pentagon Plaza, so that he could monitor all of the PIPER 100 data at the same time as Ogle did. And he did so constantly, as Ogle had learned; scarcely a single campaign event went by that Bucky Salvador didn't phone him up right in the middle of it and provide his own commentary on how the PIPER 100 were reacting. He fancied himself something of an expert. And, dilettante that he was, he completely failed to grasp the mediagenic advantages of Eleanor Richmond.

"Chase Merriam called me just a few minutes ago. He just got out of the hospital."

Ogle laughed. "Haw, haw, haw," he said, "don't tell me. He had an operation. He was on laughing gas or something during the debate."

"Worse than that. He was in a car crash. Wednesday night. Some hoodlum stole his watch. We have no idea who's wearing that thing!"

"A late-middle-aged black female homeless person with good education and traditionalist values," Ogle said.

Salvador was caught off guard. "Oh. You've found the watch, then?"

"Nope," Ogle said, "just an educated guess."

"Well," Salvador said. "Well."

"Well what?"

"This changes everything!" Salvador said, shocked by Ogle's seeming indifference. "The statistics are completely fouled up!"

"If all the PIPER 100 got together and traded watches, that would foul up the statistics," Ogle said. "One person doesn't foul them up too bad."

Deep in his heart, Ogle knew Salvador had a point. But he didn't want to agree with him. He did not really get along with Salvador very well.

"That's ridiculous!" Salvador said. "You told me yourself last night that the single strongest thing in Richmond's favor was the fact that Chase Merriam loved her. You said it was a key factor in making your decision."

"Hey," Ogle said, "try to keep this in perspective. We're talking about the goddamn vice presidency here. It just doesn't matter."

"So you admit that Richmond is the wrong choice. Salvador said triumphantly.

"From here on out, she's the right choice. She's a brilliant choice. A daring, incisive, masterstroke of leadership on Cozzano's part," Ogle said, "because she's a choice we already made."

"Not true," Salvador said, "the formal announcement doesn't happen for another hour."

"The formal announcement doesn't mean diddly," Ogle said. "We already unleashed the cascade. Stories have already been filed. Hell," Ogle said, grabbing a remote control and clicking channels on a nearby TV monitor, "I got Koppel on screen right now with a picture of Eleanor Richmond over his shoulder. And when Eleanor's peering over Ted Koppel's shoulder on national TV, and Koppel's got that smirky know-it-all look on his face, it's just too goddamn late."

"Good lord." Salvador sighed, sounding quiet and defeated.

"When I got into this thing, I never realized how complicated it was going to be."

"Cheer up," Ogle said, turning his attention back toward the Eye of Cy. "Look at the screens. I am seeing a generally green color this evening. The electorate is mellow and satisfied. If Richmond turns out to be a wrong choice, we'll just send her to kiss babies in Guam."

"I see a case of measles," Salvador said. "I see a lot of red screens. Look at Economic Roadkill! Economic Roadkill is a key bloc. And tonight, Economic Roadkill is frightened."

Ogle looked at the screen labeled FLOYD WAYNE VISHNIAK. As Salvador had pointed out, it was bright red. "It's nothing," Ogle said. "He does that all the time. He's in another bar fight."

Suddenly, Vishniak's screen turned bright green. Ogle and Salvador both laughed. "Ha ha!" Salvador said, I'll wager his opponent is out cold on a barroom floor in Davenport, Iowa!"

Floyd Wayne Vishniak strode into McCormick Place and heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. A cascade of sweat fell out of his hair and showered his face. He had made it through the metal detectors!

The Fleischacker had performed as advertised. It was a ceramic-and-plastic gun, made in Austria, that didn't trigger metal detectors. After cashing in his latest check from Ogle Data Research, picking up his paycheck from detasseling, and pawning all of his other weapons, he had finally raised the capital he needed to purchase the Fleischacker at a gun store in Davenport and to top his truck's fuel tanks. That done, he had made the trip across northern Illinois in two hours flat, blasting across the nearly empty pavement of I-88 at an average velocity of eighty-five miles per hour. He had wanted to leave himself an adequate time cushion upon reaching Chicago, because he wasn't sure how to locate McCormick Place. But that turned out to be a snap. He just took the interstate into town and, to his astonishment, began to see signs for the damn place. A whole series of big signs that took him straight where he wanted to go.

This kind of thing did not happen to Floyd Wayne Vishniak very often, because usually he went places where no one else wanted to go: cornfields that needed detasseling, riverfront bars, and defunct factories. He had been forced to develop a certain amount of navigational cunning over the years. He had assumed that once he trespassed upon the borders of Chicago, he would, as usual, spend a considerable amount of time idling on the shoulder of various roads and in the parking lots of convenience stores, pouring over his Chicago map collection.

But it wasn't like that. All he had to do was pay the tolls and follow the signs. And as he was doing so, it dawned on him that this was natural and logical, because if he had the correct understanding of it, a convention was a thing where a whole lot of people came together at once for a purpose. Which meant that a whole lot of people were having to find their ways to McCormick Place all the time, every day.

Like most of the other new ideas that entered Floyd Wayne Vishniak's head, this one came in the form of a pang of bitter resentment. It hit him straight between the eyes and made him grind his teeth and mumble indistinct profanities.

The whole world was set up for the benefit of the rich folks. That interstate, four beautiful lanes of pavement cutting straight across the state of Illinois, had been put there just to ferry the wealthy and privileged into Chicago so that they could go to conventions and meet with others of their kind and plot new conspiracies to keep the common man in his place: on the bottom. Far be it from these people to find their own way to McCormick Place. Oh no, these people were too busy and dignified and important to actually buy maps and find their own way. No, they had to have special signs.