David Edelman - Infoquake

Thus, Natch and his apprentices were in a celebratory mood.

Horvil arranged for a platter full of margaritas to be delivered to the conference room and made a big production of turning off his alcohol-metabolizing OCHREs. He clinked glasses loudly with Jara, Merri, Benyamin and Quell in a show of solidarity. Even the multi- projected Vigal sipped an illusory drink from a virtual glass. Natch had never cared for the unsatisfying sensation of multi food; all taste and no substance. Yet, he too had a confident smile on his face, and his tranquil mood inspired the room to summon a cozy New England SeeNaRee. The conference table sat on a bearskin rug in the midst of an old-fashioned ski lodge, while a fire crackled on the hearth behind them.

"Anybody been scouting around the Data Sea for reactions from the drudges?" said Horvil.

"Of course," replied Jara. "Everyone is totally polarized over your demonstration, Natch. Some people are wondering if you released some hallucinogenic black code on the audience. And there's an amusing debate going on about whether or not you actually swung the bat 500 million times."

"Did you?" asked Ben, a little uncertainly.

Natch laughed. "Not even close! Five hundred million possible swings, but only one actual one. You want to take a stab at explaining, Horv?"

"It's simple, really," began Horvil. "Once MultiReal has reduced the swing of the bat into a formula, you just plug in parameters and create a mathematical progression of realities. So, you swing the bat at 90 degrees and then 91 degrees and then 92 degrees and on and on ... and then you don't actually have to do them all."

"Then you'd have an infinite number of baseballs," Benyamin pointed out in confusion.

"No no no." Horvil conjured up a virtual calculator on the conference table and began drunkenly plugging in numbers. "See, if you convert the field of vision into a grid of Cartesian space and calculate the coordinates of each audience member, then you can plug x, y, and z values into the MultiReal program and work backwards to generate a baseball hit to that point. Then, of course, you have to factor in wind resistance and gravitational pull-"

"Enough, Horv!" interjected Jara. "We get the point. What I want to know is why everybody remembered those discarded realities. Quell, you told us nobody would remember them unless they were using MultiReal themselves."

"Right," said Quell. "That was the alteration Horvil made at the last minute."

"I wasn't even sure it was going to work," mumbled the engineer. "Just lucky it did, I guess."

"The important thing is that few people seem to doubt that the demonstration was genuine," said Serr Vigal. "Billions of people watched the whole thing over a video feed, and most of them accept what they saw as the true and actual version of events."

Quell stretched his beefy arms out behind his head and leaned back in his chair, looking well pleased. "I can't imagine a better way to introduce MultiReal to the world," he said. "A little girl holding a baseball. You don't get much better PR than that."

"Natch, who is Magan Kai Lee?" blurted Merri out of nowhere.

The fiefcorp master's visage darkened. A sudden gust of wind caused the cabin door to slam open, and a SeeNaRee coyote started baying off in the distance. "Why?"

"Someone by that name keeps sending me urgent messages," responded the channel manager sheepishly. "Four times in three days. He even showed up at my apartment the other day and scared Bonneth out of her wits. He won't say what it's about, but I assume it has something to do with MultiReal."

Serr Vigal planted his chin on his fist with a look of exhaustion. He exchanged a dark glance with Natch, who passed him some silent signal to proceed. "Magan Kai Lee is Len Borda's number two man at the Defense and Wellness Council," said the neural programmer. "He was there with the High Executive during our meeting this morning. We think Borda has put him in charge of dealing with MultiReal."

"Lee ... is he the guy who's been speaking at the Council news conferences lately?" said Horvil, scratching his head. "He's real short. Chinese, I think."

Natch gave a weary nod. "That's him."

"I don't understand," said Jara. "What do they want from us? If Borda's so worried about infoquakes, why are they terrorizing Merri? We didn't have anything to do with that disturbance during Margaret's speech. Shouldn't they be talking with the Data Sea architects?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet?" said Natch. "These infoquakes- if they even exist-are the least of Borda's concerns. MultiReal is dangerous, Jara. Think of an assassin who can fire a black code dart that hits its target every time. That's scary enough. But imagine what an army of people running MultiReal could do."

Nobody said anything for a good two minutes.

"So yes, Merri, we're going to be hearing a lot more from Len Borda and Magan Kai Lee," said Natch. "You can count on it. They're going to be our biggest hurdle from here on out."

All trace of levity had vanished from Benyamin's face. "Our biggest hurdle? What other hurdles are there?"

"Don't be naive, Ben! It's a big world. All kinds of fanatics are going to decide MultiReal is the solution to their problems. Do you think everyone's going to sit patiently and wait for us to go through the product development process?"

"Someone has already decided not to wait," interjected Merri in a hoarse whisper.

Silence shrouded the room once again.

"Have we made any headway on the black code problem?" said Jara. "Do we know what it does?"

Vigal shook his head. "I've taken a few cursory scans of Natch's system, but I haven't been able to come up with much. It's capable of putting him to sleep. That much is clear. All I can say is, be patient. There are thousands of OCHRE machines in the human body. It may take some time to examine them all."

"How do you know the code is still there?" asked the bio/logic analyst.

"Programs have signatures, Jara," explained Horvil. "They leave traces." His alcohol-inhibiting OCHREs were back on in full force; the engineer was now stone cold sober. "Your typical piece of black code self-destructs after it's done all its dirty work. No incriminating evidence, right? But there's so many safeguards against erasing OCHRE programming that you usually know it if a piece of black code selfdestructs inside of you."

"That is often the only way people know they've been infected at all," added Vigal. "They don't notice the insertion, but the selfdestruct they can feel."

"So who are the prime suspects?" asked Jara.

Natch muttered something noncommittal.

Jara tugged at a few stray curls of hair in frustration. "Well, who do you think did it? The Patel Brothers? Lucas Sentinel? This other bodhisattva you've been working with? Who?"

The fiefcorp master's face suddenly twisted into a rictus of fear, anger and pain. His right fist flew out and slammed into the conference table with a reverberating thump that caused everyone to gasp in astonishment. "I don't know!" he cried out. "I just don't know, Jara! But it's my problem-not yours! Leave me the fuck alone!"

Nobody spoke for a few moments as Natch wrestled with his emotions. The fiefcorp master seemed to be on the verge of losing complete control. Vigal raised a hand and started towards Natch's left shoulder, then thought better of it and returned the hand to his lap.

The SeeNaRee picked up on the foul mood and hurled a blistering wind across the plain outside. There were so many possibilities, so many potential enemies. Everyone had heard stories about the shadowy organizations that existed outside the dominion of the Prime Committee and the Defense and Wellness Council. The violent factions of the Pharisees who yearned to bring humanity back to God's Natural Order ... the unpredictable masses of the diss who escaped, eluded or just plain ignored the edicts of the law ... creed bodhisattvas on the fringes who preached destruction while spurning the normalizing umbrella of the Creeds Coalition ... radical libertarians who denied the legitimacy of the central governments and actively worked for their destruction. And this list didn't even include the disruptive forces arrayed against them inside the bounds of civilized society. L-PRACGs desperate to get their hands on any ultimate weapon that could put an end to ancient ethnic rivalries ... unscrupulous fiefcorps which would leap headlong into thievery and murder if it would help them make a profit ... drudges and demagogues with narrow personal agendas who could whip the public into a revolutionary frenzy ... conservative politicians who could quarantine MultiReal behind a wall of rules and regulations to ensure that the program never saw the light of day.