David Edelman - Infoquake

"Demons of the Aether?"

"You know, those old stories about bio/logic programs that come alive ... and turn on their masters!" The fiefcorp master raised his hands in mock horror as he pantomimed the old dramas, the trite serials that used to exploit fears of the Autonomous Revolt. "So you think I was attacked by ghosts in Shenandoah. Is that it, Vigal?"

His old mentor smiled good-naturedly and rolled his eyes. "No, no, no, I didn't mean it that way. The Data Sea isn't conjuring up evil robots to interfere with your sales demos. There's a depressingly human explanation behind that black code incident, even if we haven't been able to figure out what it is."

"So what do you mean?"

Vigal ducked his head shyly and plowed on, his eyes glued to the carpet. "I mean that the world runs by natural laws, Natch. Just as there are laws of physics and thermodynamics and gravity, there are laws of social dynamics too. Laws of humanity. Figaro Fi was right: the universe does push and pull you in certain directions, but that doesn't mean it wants you to succeed. For thousands of years, we've been telling tales about the dangers that befall people who accomplish too much. Why? Because those tales have an underlying truth: power unbalances the natural energy of the world.

"Stop chuckling! I'm quite serious. You follow the bio/logic markets, don't you? You see this happen every day. A business triumphs over its rivals and gets stronger. Others become jealous and resentful. Eventually, the company's enemies conspire together to bring it down, or it rots from within. It's the same thing that happens with animals ... plants ... trees. Why? Because there's some mystical force guiding our actions? No, because too much power concentrated in one place creates stasis. And stasis is anathema to a universe that desires constant motion and change."

Natch grimaced and tugged at his hair, but there was more annoyance than anger in his voice. "Vigal, you can be so frustrating sometimes!" he protested. "All this nonsense about what the universe wants-you're worse than all the creed bodhisattvas put together! Why do you have to make some kind of-of fairy tale out of this whole thing? I'm just a businessman trying to sell some programs. That's all."

The neural programmer gave a self-deprecating shake of the head. "All right, you want more down-to-earth advice? Sheldon Surina once said, Practice should not precede theory. Savor your moment of triumph and don't do anything rash."

"If I never did anything rash, I'd still be coding RODs."

"All I'm saying is that Margaret worked on MultiReal for sixteen years without bringing it to market. She must have had her reasons. You've had control of the program for less than a week and you're ready to sell it to everyone from here to Furtoid."

"That's called capitalism, Vigal. What do you want me to do? If I don't keep moving, someone else will just snap up MultiReal and do the same thing."

All at once, Serr Vigal looked weary and old. He shrank deeper into his chair as if trying to will himself into the seams of the fabric. "I think you're too young to understand this. The natural wants of the universe do not work in our favor, Natch. Autumn always follows summer. Everything dies. You may be on top of the world now, but you cannot stay there forever. The world is not kind to conquerors."

The fiefcorp master stood at the window, facing the sunset with a gladiator's belligerent stare. He could feel faint echoes of death emanating from the black code inside him. But during the past twentyfour hours, he had found a new confidence flowering beside the dread, a confidence fertilized by desire and sprouted from fear. He had seriously expected to be dead by now, and the fact that he was still living and breathing and staring out Vigal's window gave him hope.

"Don't worry about me, Vigal," he said. "I can handle everything the world throws at me. Just watch."

Night came to London. For Jara, it was not a falling but a terrible rising, a mute upsurge of blackness that seeped from every pore of the apartment walls and puddled along the floors until it soaked her to the chest, constricting her breath.

Jara sat on her bedroom floor, Indian style, with her head cradled in her arms. She found a comfortable rocking motion between her haunches and the side of her knees, and tried to concentrate on that for a while. Every few minutes, she would open her eyes to peer at the window on the far wall, which was showing an exterior view of her building. But that was too depressing. With every glance, corporate office towers and tenements shrank more and more as their inhabitants left work or went to sleep. A succumbing to the blackness, visceral proof that the forces of Being were tottering on the brink of extinction.

Her old hive proctor had once told her that the universe was almost entirely comprised of empty space. He brought Jara and her hivemates into a green field SeeNaRee and used peppercorns and chestnuts to approximate the position of the planets in the solar system, with the sun represented by a rubber ball. The students were astounded to discover themselves standing hundreds of meters apart near their chosen planet. So what's in the rest of the field? What fills up all that space? Jara had asked. Nothing, the proctor had replied. Jara had been young and foolish enough to look upon that lacuna as a void to be filled by good deeds and great works. And the proctor had encouraged that passion. He had fanned those flames and then sent her off to initiation believing she had been the aggressor in their relationship, that she could set the empty heavens ablaze.

She wondered what her proctor would have thought of Natch.

She wondered what advice her proctor would give her now.

A scant three weeks ago, Jara was bemoaning her fate and counting the days until she could free herself of the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp's fetters. And now, as if responding to her silent command, events had conspired to spring her from her prison ten months early. Natch had given the apprentices twenty-four hours to liquidate shares and part ways, or continue their contracts with the new Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp.

So why was she hesitating? Why was she huddled here on the floor of her apartment, rocking back and forth and staring at inanimate objects, instead of liquidating her shares? If she cashed out, she need never see Natch again. She could just dissolve her apprenticeship and walk away right now, ink the final period in this chapter of her life and close the book on it.

She would have money. Jara fired a data agent at her Vault account and studied the number that returned. When she added the liquidated shares at current market value, she saw a nice round number with a small army of zeros marching off the end. Jara began to dream up things that these newfound credits could buy. A bigger apartment closer to Horvil's end of London, one with real windows and a garden that would put her meager daisy patch to shame. Stylish furniture to spruce up that apartment. Lavish dinners, expensive champagne, cosmetic bio/logic programs, weeks and weeks of decadent fun on the Sigh network. A trip to the neverending bacchanalia that was 49th Heaven. She could polish off her sister's tuition payment for that useless degree in metal sculpture she was pursuing in Sudafrica. Or she could simply stay put for a while, do nothing and decompress.

Then what?

Then she would have to look for work again. Perhaps a wise capitalman could stretch the money for five or six or even seven years, but her investment skills were moderate at best. No matter how prudently she acted, sooner or later she would find herself sitting across from some arrogant fiefcorp master answering questions about bio/logic analysis and trying to explain the gap in her curriculum vitae.