Neal Stephenson - Interface

"Good evening, this is Cy Ogle," he said. "Is there any possibility that I could speak to the Governor? Thank you so very much." Ogle was actually capable of delivering this kind of dialogue as though he meant it.

"I have acquired Argus," Zeldo said. The screen of his Calyx system had come alive with a multiple-window display showing the status of some incredibly complicated system.

"Evening, Governor. You mind if I put you on the speaker-phone?"

One of the windows on Zeldo's screen was a rapidly fluctuating bar graph. It had been dead for a little while, but now it put on a burst of colorful activity.

"Okay," Ogle said, and punched a button on his phone.

"I hate these speakerphones," said a deep voice. When he spoke, the bar graph on Zeldo's screen came alive.

"They make me feel like I'm in a box," the voice continued. Aaron had finally recognized it: it was the voice of Governor William A. Cozzano.

"We want to test our communications link," Ogle said.

"That's what Zeldo told me," Cozzano said. "Go ahead and do something."

The armrests of Ogle's chair were huge, like the captain's chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. The right one was covered with small keys, like on a computer keyboard. Each key was labeled in small letters.

The left armrest contained a row of several joysticks or sliders that could individually be moved back and forth, left to right, between two extremes. Aaron stepped forward, leaned over Ogle's shoulder, and read the labels on the joysticks:

LIBERAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 CONSERVATIVE

LIBERTARIAN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 AUTHORITARIAN

POPULIST 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ELITIST

GENERAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 SPECIFIC

SECULAR 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 RELIGIOUS

MATERIAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ETHEREAL

KIND/GENTLE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 BELLIGERENT

Right now, all of the joysticks were set close to the middle except for GENERAL/SPECIFIC which had been set to 1 (GENERAL) and stuck in place with a piece of duct tape.

Ogle punched a button on his armrest.

"Bullet whizzing past my head," Cozzano said.

"Correct," Ogle said. "That means that you're under attack and you'd better take cover and defend yourself."

"Got it," Cozzano said. "Do another one."

Ogle punched another button.

"Apple pie," Cozzano said. "Which means American values."

Ogle punched another button.

"Ice cubes. Which means I should cool it."

Ogle punched another one.

"A B-52. A strong national defense."

They went on in this vein for several minutes. Ogle had a few dozen buttons on his armrest.

"Argus is Cozzano," Aaron said.

"Right," Zeldo said. "Argus was the mythological figure who had a hundred eyes. With Ogle's help, and with the PIPER 100 feeding him their emotions, Cozzano becomes the new Argus."

At first, Floyd Wayne Vishniak didn't know what it was: a burst of tinny music with sort of a patriotic brass-band sound to it. It sure wasn't coming from his TV set, which was tuned to a fishing program. Finally a flash of red-white-and-blue color caught his eye. It was coming from his wrist. From the big fancy wristwatch that he was being paid to wear. It was showing a logo, a computerized American flag image.

Finally they were doing something. He'd been wearing the damn thing for two weeks and hadn't seen anything on it except for occasional test patterns. He turned off the TV - the fish didn't seem to be biting anyway - cracked open a beer, and sat down to watch.

Chase Merriam was out on the lawn of his brother-in-law's house in East Hampton, Long Island, savoring a mint julep and enjoying the cool night air, when his watch came to life. It didn't much bother him, since this was a dull party anyway. The sound of the music attracted the attention of several other partygoers, and by the time the program got underway, he was in the center of half a dozen people, standing on tiptoe, staring at his wrist in fascination.

"This is ridiculous," he said. "Why don't we all just watch it on C-SPAN."

Dr. Hunter P. Lawrence, pundit extraordinaire, moderator of the Washington Hot Seat, and nemesis of Eleanor Richmond, was a veteran of the Kennedy glory days. He had come down from Harvard to serve as an Undersecretary of State for Cultural Affairs, "liasing" with Ed Murrow's USIA. After putting in his three years, he had returned to Harvard to take a joint appointment in the Political Science Department and as an administrator at the Kennedy School. He had a Savile Row tattered professional elegance with a hint of dandruff around the shoulders of his dark gray pinstriped suit. His graying hair, cut long in the back to com­pensate for its gradual retreat in front, defied the best efforts of spray and gel to get it to lie down, and the backlights of the set turned them into silvery scratches against the dark blue background. As the house filled up and the media consultants fussed over their candi­dates and the technicians ran around barking into their headsets, he sat in his chair, legs crossed, flipping listlessly through some papers.

In a normal debate, tickets would have been distributed equally among supporters of each of the three candidates. But William A. Cozzano was not technically a candidate at all, even though a spontaneous ground swell had put his name on the ballot in forty-two states. The President of the United States was continuing to pursue his Rose Garden strategy and would not be in attendance tonight, though some of his handlers were already cruising the press room, buttonholing journalists and trying to apply some prespin to the event. The only "real" candidate was Nimrod T. ("Tip") McLane. A reasonable number of tickets had therefore been handed out to the McLane campaign. Other than that, it was open seating; but given that the event was happening thirty miles away from Tuscola, the place was dominated by Cozzano supporters. Tip McLane was coming into the lion's den tonight, which was exactly the kind of situation in which he excelled.

Most politicians were soulless tools, windup dolls; but these two guys, Cozzano and McLane, could more than hold their own in intellectual combat. This was going to be a hell of a confrontation, and Dr. Hunter P. Lawrence was just the man to act as ringmaster and lion tamer.

As Dr. Lawrence was engaged in this rather self-satisfying series of ruminations, the voice of the set direction scratched from his earplug, "One minute to air." Lawrence set his papers down, sipped some water, did a phlegm check, walked unhurriedly to each of the debators and shook their hands warmly and firmly. At times like this, he had to consciously resist his normal tendency to apply what an overly honest colleague had referred to as his "fish kiss" handshake.

The theme of "Campaign '96" rose in the earplug, unheard by the audience, and on the monitors he could see the nifty computer graphics in which the globe segued into the United States which in turn segued into the flag which in turn blended into a rather nice establishing shot of the Decatur Civic Center, still brightly illuminated by the late evening sun of midsummer. The building was surrounded by buses and cars. People were streaming into the entrances. Most of them were students who had been bused in from local colleges and high schools.

Superimposed over these images were some credits. The logos of various sponsoring corporations were flashed up as the godlike voice of an announcer, prerecorded weeks ago in New York, intoned: "Tonight's debate is brought to you by MacIntyre Engineering, bringing American technological excellence to the world. Global Omnipresent Delivery Systems, the world leader in physical communications technology. Pacific Netware, creator of the industry-leading Calyx computer system. Gale Aerospace, providing new solutions for a changing world. And the Coover Fund, investing in America for a prosperous tomorrow.