Neal Stephenson - Interface

Shad himself spent most of his day out of the office, deeply enmeshed in some kind of plot involving the Ramirez family.

By the time the sun rose on Friday morning, illuminating the new headline:

"BIANCA: I WANT MY MAMA!"

nothing had really changed. Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre was going to release Bianca at 6:05 p.m. By an astonishing coincidence, this put her release just a few minutes into the local evening news programs, making it an ideal candidate for live TV coverage. Their new PR Director, who had been on the job for five days and had already received a raise and a bonus, insisted that this was just a coincidence and that the time of the release had been set for purely medical reasons.

He deserved his raise. From a media/PR standpoint, Highlands had started out the week gut-shot and had made a miracle recovery of their own until they now looked like archangels in white coats, their arms brimming over with fuzzy stuffed animals. At 6:05, they would roll Bianca Ramirez out into the horseshoe drive where their uniformed valet parking attendants stood guard twenty-four hours a day, and release her into the world. This would be good for two reasons: it would cement their reputation as medical geniuses and it would clear out the hyperbaric chamber so that heavily insured middle-aged diabetics could get into it again.

The question was: who was going to take charge of Bianca when her wheelchair reached the curb? The fact that no-one knew the answer to this question turned the entire scenario into a certified Real-Life Drama and insured vast saturating media coverage.

Colorado was still trying to get a court order making Bianca a ward of the state, but the Ramirezes' high-profile lawyer and his team of young legal ninjas had thrown this action into a procedural snafu that would take weeks to un-tangle. Barring any last-minute action by the judicial branch, Carlos and Anna would still be Bianca's legal guardians as of 6:05.

But Carlos and Anna were illegal aliens and the INS was still looking for them. As a matter of fact, the INS was right there at the hospital, and had been for three days, waiting for them to show up.

So if Bianca's parents actually showed up at 6:05 to take custody of their daughter, they would immediately be taken off to the slammer and someone else would have to step in to take care of Bianca. This would probably end up being Anna's sister Pilar, but there had been rumours that the state might use the arrest of Carlos and Anna as a pretext to seize Bianca, in which case the media could look forward to a tearful three-way Solomonic showdown right there in the horseshoe drive.

All the networks showed up, and as early as six o'clock on Friday morning, twelve hours before the Big Event, Highland's new PR man was already out in the horseshoe drive with a thick piece of blue chalk, marking out camera position: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CHAN 4, CHAN 5, CHAN 7, and more.

As one journalist could be heard remarking to another journalist while they waited in the car-rental line at Stapleton Airport: "It's got a coma baby. It's got a miracle recovery. Weepy parents. A crooked senator. And it's even got a fucking cowboy!"

By itself, the story was plenty, but things got even better, if that was possible, in the middle of the day, when rumours began to circulate that one of Senator Marshall's staff members had documents incriminating another staff member in the Lazy Z Ranch grazing scandal that had triggered this whole mess, and that she was going to be there this evening to lay the whole thing out before the massed forces of the national press. And when this rumour was embellished a little, to the effect that the woman in question was the famous bag lady who had recently cut Earl Strong's nuts off in public, journalists all over Denver had to put down their drinks and breathe into paper sacks for a while.

Eleanor Richmond strode like a gunslinger into the horseshoe drive at 5:55 p.m. cradling a three-inch-thick stack of xeroxed handouts. Before she said a word, she held out one of the handouts up next to her face and stood motionless for a few seconds. She had learned this from watching pros in action. It gave the video people a chance to adjust the white balance on their cameras so that she, and everyone who followed her into the centre of the maelstrom, would not look pink or green on television. At the same time, it was a great pose for the still photographers. Dozens of motor drives whined, clearly audible in the astonishing silence that had suddenly fallen over this makeshift technological amphitheatre.

If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had chosen this moment to gallop through the horseshoe drive on their fiery mounts, the journalists would have chased them out of the shot with verbal abuse, and possibly interviewed them later, after the main event. The only figure who dared break into the frame was a helpful reporter from the Washington Post who scurried up to Eleanor, relieved her of the stack of handouts, and frisbeed them wildly into the crowd.

"My name is Eleanor Richmond. I am the Denver health and human services liaison for Senator Caleb Roosevelt Marshall. I have held that position for one month.

"When I began working for the senator I was convinced, based on his past records and statements, that he was a racist. I am now convinced that he does not have a racist bone in his body. I have never met a man more willing to judge people on their individual merits, or lack thereof.

"However even the most perceptive judge of human nature can occasionally be fooled by ambitious persons who practice to deceive. It is my unpleasant duty to report to you that several such people have risen to positions of influence on the Senators' staff and, unbeknownst to Senator Marshall, have abused the power of his office for private gain.

"Going direct to the media is not the best way to handle this situation. I should have met with the Senator first. I have made repeated efforts to try and reach him but he has been unavailable. Unfortunately I cannot wait any longer to release this information, because it has a bearing on the matter of Bianca Ramirez, and if, by inaction, I were to cause damage to her family, I could never forgive myself. So I am releasing the information now and I am also offering my resignation to Senator Marshall at the same time."

"Eleanor!" shouted all of the journalists at once, raising their hands.

"Excuse me, excuse me, but I think that I should be given an opportunity to speak," someone said, coming up behind Eleanor.

She turned around and looked directly into the face of Shad Harper.

And then she hesitated. She had her back to the lights and cameras now; he was facing them, every pore in his face exposed to their pitiless illumination. She felt like an interrogator as she stood there staring into his face, weighing the situation, trying to make up her mind.

He didn't look good. Shad was just a boy, after all, not very well seasoned, and although he had a few on-camera skills, he was hardly a master of the game. And right now, he was really, really upset.

She knew that if she let Shad talk, he'd cut his own throat. He'd do it because he was a man and he had been conditioned. All his life, to deny his fear, to act before thinking, to get in over his head. A women, or an older man, would have backed off, thought it over, chosen the right time. Not Shad; Shad had to confront her right now, he couldn't let her win even a single skirmish.

"Be my guest," she said, and stepped away from the microphone.

"I'm Shad Harper," he said, his voice cracking. "BLM liaison for Senator Marshall. And since I'm still on his staff, unlike Eleanor here, who has apparently resigned - and if she hasn't resigned -which I can't say for sure either way, since I have not seen and do not have any independent knowledge of any letter by which she might have resigned - if she hasn't resigned then she will probably be fired, and in any case no longer speaks for Senator Marshall, if indeed she ever did - I do speak for Senator Marshall and so, since it appears that very damnable allegations are being made about him that I should step up and say something."