David Edelman - Infoquake

He activated Possibilities 1.0.

A resounding crack echoed through the arena.

Jara had found a comfortable position in the middle of the crowd where she could get an objective reading of the audience. So far, the speech she had written was performing as planned. Natch's folksy tone of voice was soothing nerves and smoothing wrinkles, providing an antidote to the poisonous invective the drudges had been spewing over the past few days.

Her apprehension began when Natch did his spinning-andpointing routine. The script had been clear, hadn't it? Natch was supposed to point at an audience member-a single audience memberand start popping fly balls his way, one after another in quick succession, then repeat as necessary. What kind of fool stunt was the fiefcorp master trying to pull?

Jara nearly collapsed in shock and horror when Natch swung the bat.

There was just one ball flying through the air-and Natch was making no motion to hit another.

Already Jara had begun a mental search for scapegoats. Was Natch unable to activate the Possibilities program? Had Horvil and Quell bungled the coding somehow and caused the MultiReal engine to sputter? Did Benyamin's assembly-line shop miss a few connections? Was this another of the Patel Brothers' perfidious acts of sabotage, or the work of the black code flowing in Natch's veins?

And of all the hundreds of millions of people to choose from, why had Natch decided to hit the ball directly to her?

Jara stretched out her hand and winced as the ball landed squarely in her palm with a soft thud. She felt the light sting of horsehide on flesh. The analyst turned the ball over in her hand and brought it closer to read the letters printed around the stitching.

The fiefcorp apprentice blinked, shook her head, and looked at her empty palm. You're daydreaming, Jara, she told herself. There's no baseball in your hand.

But this was no daydream. The baseball had been there-and now it wasn't.

A few seconds later, gasps of astonishment simultaneously burst out of five hundred million spectators as comprehension slowly filtered through their brains. Five hundred million stinging palms, five hundred million empty hands. A collaborative process.

Jara smiled in spite of herself.

"You have just experienced the awesome power of Possibilities," said Natch after the initial shock had worn off.

"Five hundred million swings of the bat. Five hundred million possible catches. Five hundred million possible separate realities, all created up here"-the fiefcorp master tapped his forehead-"and experienced out there." He gestured broadly to the audience.

"But we don't live in a world of multiple realities. MultiReal may give you hundreds of millions of possibilities, but we still have to make a choice. A single choice. And so the path I have chosen is-this one."

Natch snapped his fingers, causing a spotlight to spear a tiny figure far away in the crowd. A wave of applause came crashing towards Jara, rippling out from the center of the spotlight until it enveloped the entire audience. In the center of the spotlight stood a girl not more than eight years old holding her father's hand, grinning adorably and brandishing a MultiReal baseball in her elfin little fingers.

"Let the word impossible be permanently eliminated from our vocabulary!" cried Natch. "There are no more impossibilities! We have entered a new Age of Possibilities-a new Age of MultiReal-and from now on, the choices are yours.

"Towards Perfection, and I thank you for choosing to attend."

Robby Robby stuck to Horvil's side like a bad odor.

"They're going absolutely offline out there, Horv-o!" the channeler squealed, his cube of hair bobbing enthusiastically to some triumphant march playing inside his head. "My team is getting mobbed-it's like being in the middle of a fucking orgy! Everyone wants to hear more about MultiReal!"

"Yeah," said Horvil, his own face sporting a lopsided grin. "Including me." Robby let out a laugh that continued much too long to have any correlation to the wit of Horvil's comment. If Merri hadn't shown up and ushered him out to join the sales blitzkrieg, he might have kept going until his spleen ruptured.

The chaos continued for over an hour after Natch had vanished from the stage. Horvil's cousins and uncles and cousins-of-cousins and third-cousins-twice-removed-by-companionship multied in from every crevice of the known universe to pat him on the back. Every member of the extended family except for Aunt Berilla, whose hatred for Natch apparently outranked her pride in Horvil and Benyamin. Once the family had dissipated, friends and business acquaintances that Horvil didn't even recognize began pressing in from all sides asking for more details about MultiReal. The engineer did his best to provide vague answers, especially when some of his "old hive buddies" revealed that they had taken up the drudging profession.

Horvil shook off his pursuers and scanned the foot of the stage for the rest of the Surina/Natch apprentices. They all seemed to be in the same pickle. Jara was being mobbed by a horde of L-PRACG represen tatives trying to negotiate a bulk rate on the spot. Ben was happily enfilading an entire squadron of creed devotees with upbeat chatter about MultiReal. Quell was engaged in a vigorous argument with a small pocket of Islanders, all tugging uncomfortably at their connectible collars. Merri was presumably still off crowd surfing with Robby Robby. Only Natch and Serr Vigal had made a clean getaway.

Somewhere in the middle of the confusion, Horvil noticed a line of white-robed Defense and Wellness Council officers moving silently out the door, their guns safely holstered.

"Did you hear?" he said in a rush as Jara walked up to him. "Sen Sivv Sor tracked down the little girl who caught the baseball. Apparently, the kid lives in a hive that just got its budget slashed by a bunch of L-PRACG bureaucrats. Can you believe that luck? I wonder who Natch wants as our next spokesperson. A stray kitten? A monk? Or maybe a prostitute with a heart of gold who-"

Why am I laying it on so thick? thought Horvil.

Jara waited patiently for the engineer's shtick to ramble to a close. "Good publicity is good publicity," she said softly, distantly.

Horvil smiled and nodded, then began inching away from the analyst towards an exit. He could ponder the mysteries of womanhood another time. Right now, too many loose ends needed tying up. Like who had ambushed Natch and shot him full of black code? What kinds of surprises did the Patel Brothers have waiting for them later tonight? And how in the world had Len Borda gotten mixed up in all of this?

"I swear to you, Natch," said the man, "I had nothing to do with this. I didn't hire anybody to ambush you in the street. I don't know any group that runs around in the shadows wearing black robes attacking people, and I wouldn't have anything to do with them if I did."

Natch's eyes blazed with doubt as he looked at Petrucio Patel.

He could only guess why Petrucio had agreed to come talk with him here in the Surina Enterprise Facility, mere hours before the Patel Brothers were due to take the stage at the Thassel Complex. Natch's cold rage would have been evident from the instant Petrucio stepped into the conference room and found himself enveloped in the windswept Arctic tundra, a forbidden land with Lovecraftian menace lurking over every hillside. If he didn't already know that his rival was beyond such emotions, Natch might have guessed that Petrucio was experiencing shame or guilt.

"I don't believe you," said Natch.

Petrucio burst into laughter. "You don't believe me! You think Frederic and I hustled the fiefcorp off to Shenandoah and started handing out robes and dartguns? Wait-you didn't see a short, fat one in the group, did you? Maybe that was Frederic. He's quite the marksman, you know."