John Shirley - A Song Called Youth

The guard came back, waited impatiently. Desperately, Spector said, “The man on the screen must’ve been…”

“It was you, Senator… the technicki recorded the transmission… it’s pretty damning evidence. But I’ll tell you what…” His voice creaked with mockery. “I’ll see if I can get you off with a ‘mercy execution.’ You know, death by injection, sedative overdose. I think you’ll prefer it to being clubbed to death on television. Well, good afternoon, Senator.”

The guard opened the door, let Bergen out, locked up behind him, and Spector was alone.

Except for the guy climbing off the top bunk. The guy looking at Spector and chuckling. “Hey, Spector, man, that guy’s really got a hard-on for you, you know? Public defender! Shit! Unless you get a Special Pardon—and I can’t remember the last time anybody got one—you’re fucked but good, man. Screwed royal. They ain’t gonna give you special treatment just because you’re a senator. That’s the PR cornerstone of the AntiViolence Laws, man: Everybody gets screwed—equally.”

He was a wiry little dude with a yellowed, gap-toothed smile, flinty black eyes, and the spiky color-shifting hair of a Chaosist. It was hard to get a real handle on what he looked like, though, because of the bruises, the swollen tissue, and crusted cuts on his face from the public beating. Still, he looked familiar.

“You almost recognize me, man? Jerome-X. At your service, home-bro.”

“Jerome-X,” Spector muttered. “Great.”

Jerome-X gave that slightly brain-damaged chuckle again. He was pleased. “’At’s me, my man. Yeah. Yeah. I got the hot trans ’n’ they know it up ’n’ down the freak-en-seize. I do some music too. I got a band now—shit, why not? I got the style. I got the name. I got…”

“You got caught. ” Spector observed.

“Hey, pal—thas better’n bein’ set up. You were right, man—sure as shit, they tampered with those vids. Not editing, pal—image reconstitution. You’re talking to the VideoMan Hisself. I know. Computer analyzes a digital image of a man, right? Gets him moving, talking. Then codes its analysis digitally. Samples it. An’ generates an image of the guy you can’t tell from the real thing. Uses, like, fractal geometry for realistic surface texture. And they can animate you to do whatever they want. Sample your voice, synthesize it to make you seem to’ve said whatever they want…”

“But that isn’t…”

“Isn’t justice?” Jerome-X shook his head. “You’re too much. I didn’t think justice was high on your list of priorities, man. I seen you on TV, Spector—I know about you… hey, how many people who ‘committed robbery’ or ‘murder’ were people who were annoying to the local status quo or the feds—or the Second Alliance? Especially the SA. So they’re videoframed. Convicted on the evidence of some security camera that just happened to be there… ri-ight. How many people died like that, pal, huh? Hundreds? Maybe thousands. About half the people convicted go down for videod evidence these days. That’s a lot of lucky cameras. Sure, maybe if there were more time, you could prove the tampering—but you, big shot, you’ve seen to it you got no time and no chance for appeal…. ”

“Videoframing… I don’t believe it.”

“Hey, you better believe it. But most people don’t know about it, so it’s no use tryin’ to tell the courts. The up-to-dates on computer-generated images is kept under lock and key. They want the public to think it’s really crude, see… and all the people involved, the government, the networks, no one wants to believe anything like that about it because, hey—this thing is a moneymaker! People got all jaded about violence from the last few generations of TV and movies, right? So they need it in big doses now—and the ratings are great on these shows so the advertising revenues are orbital, just sky-high, so the government makes big bucks off heavy-taxing that revenue and the networks—you get what I mean. No one wants to rock the boat… fuck it… me, I’m gettin’ out in the morning, already got my beatings for pirate transmissions, videograffiti… but you… they’re gonna splash you all over the studio, pal. ’Cause you’re the Case now. And you’re Big Ratings…”

“What you say, Charlie boy?” Angelo tapped the table with his credit card, meaning he’d pay.

“No, it fucks me up. The next day I always feel like shit.” They talked loud, and in Standard, to hear each other over the music.

“Come on, you’re not gonna get hung up on it, you’re not where you can get at it most of the time. Come on, I don’t like to do Room alone. And this is the best fucking Room in New York, absolutely bar none, no shit.”

“You’re a big help, Angelo. You know that?”

Charlie and Angelo were in a dark place that was splintered with light. On the private club’s stage, four nearly naked blacks and two Puerto Rican girls, all of them direct-wired to the muscle synthesizers, shimmied out a black sound that was something like sexy bagpipes and electric alto sax over salsa percussion; and the light came from behind the band, lasers and colored spots backlighting them, ricocheting from their sweat-shiny skin to dazzle the black ceiling, but lost in the deep dourness of the smoky club. Black walls, black floor. Sitting at a black table beside the black wall; one side of Angelo’s face in darkness, laser jitters making an expressionist painting of the other side.

Charlie and Angelo were playing a game that was like sexual coyness. It was drug coyness. Charlie wanted to score some Room, but he was scared to get started doing that again, knew it wasn’t responsible to the NR. So he needed to be able to tell himself that Angelo had talked him into it.

And Angelo sensed that. Angelo knew that the best way to get Charlie to do Room was to play to his guilt, cultivate his depression, hold something over him he’d need to get out from under. Saying, “Hey, it wasn’t like it was your fault. It was Spector’s. No one responsible but him. ”

But just mentioning it was telling him the opposite. Because Charlie felt funny about his part in setting up Spector. You watch a guy for days, you get a little sympathy for him, whether he deserves it or not. And he’d done more than watch Spector, he’d filmed him from behind the two-way in the panel truck when he moved around in public. They’d checked out the stock video of Spector talking to the public—but that wasn’t close enough, sharp enough for an animation-matrix.

The stuff Charlie got when Spector was walking around, was arguing with his wife in that café, that was something Charlie and the others could work with. Build up a computer data template of realistic movement style, speech style, grist for the animation…

“What you let it bother you for, Charlie? The guy’s an asshole. A hypocrite, a Fascist. Not SA himself, but he plays ball with ’em all the time. The AntiViolence Laws were an SA project, man.”

“Yeah, I know. I just hate the TV execution stuff so fucking much, it gets me so upset—and now we’re slotting somebody into it. I know all the reasons to do it. But it still…” He shrugged. “And then Sonia. And Baxter. Kojo. Killed real nasty.”

“Shit—Kojo was SA. Sonia and Baxter volunteered for that, no one talked ’em into it. Sonia tried to kill herself twice because her girlfriend Coochie got busted and snuffed on TV. You know Coochie? Sonia was fucking out of her mind, anyway. And Baxter, he was, like, into fanatic martyrdom stuff.”

“Yeah, but maybe we shouldn’t’ve played along with their sick problems for this.”