She pats the couch, indicating True should sit. “I know what you’re thinking.”
True sits and surveys the office. Lightning-bolt cracks are haphazardly caulked. He wonders about the quake’s capriciousness, why WWTV’s Tokyo bureau is left standing while buildings hugging it—like the convenience store, the sushi shop—have collapsed. And why some city blocks were consumed by fire but not Reiner’s. Futons rolled up, crammed in a corner. Reiner must sleep here, her home probably ground to dust mite food.
Reiner falls onto the sofa. Creaky breaths. “I use an icon because a different broadcast image works to my advantage. I go undercover, no one knows it’s me.”
“Does it help the ratings?”
“Who wants to see an old lady?”
“Where’s your dog, the black Lab?”
“How’d you know I had… oh, you saw the initial quake reports I did. I picked her up outside the office here. Got an aid worker to take her to Osaka. Tokyo’s no place for pets.”
“Did you read the data I dumped into your computer system before I left Luzonia?”
“Like a cheap thriller. Assassinations, secret weapons, plots to get you addicted to drugs and software. Where do you want to go from here?”
“Ever hear of a technology that can predict the precise time of an earthquake, or a machine that can cause one?”
Reiner presses an itch in her back. “No. Haven’t run across anything like that. It could be Sato’s superstitious. Decided a few years ago to pull out all his investments in the probability that a major earthquake would swallow Tokyo. Bankers and brokers don’t like to admit this, but they knew that when a big one hit Tokyo, the global economy would rumble. Lucky it didn’t happen when Japan was an economic superpower.”
“Like in the 1980s and early ’90s. Sato ever show such foresight before this?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He have any investments in a company with the kind of technology that could topple a metropolis?”
“Doubtful. I read through all the available information, and there was no explosion or anything like that. Just four fault plates rubbing up against each another. Your typical earthquake.”
“Typical except in its magnitude.” True by the window now, overlooking the sprawl. There are those signs again. “Why are so many buildings covered in scraps of paper? Is it a religious thing?”
“Change of address forms. Signs informing anyone who cares where the occupants went. Communications are still down.”
“They look like kids wrote them. I thought it might be some sort of cultural superstition. Like the purity of children, maybe.”
“Nah. The signs are by adults. Penmanship’s been deteriorating since last-century’s introduction of the PC.”
“Did you run a trace on International Soft Where?”
“I can give you an abstract or you can ask Odessa, who’s got the sum.”
“I want to meet him, in person. Let’s stay away from communicating over satellite feeds or microwave cables, at least for important stuff. Is he far from here?”
“This way, please.”
A door a few steps down. The room is crammed with computing equipment—micro-microchip boxes, wires, transformers, consoles stacked and neatly sorted, shining lights and whirs. Some of the equipment’s so antiquated it’s not even blue-book. Some of it is custom-made. Some warped beyond high-tech. All of it hooked up and running. A stirring in the midst of this techno-mélange. Odessa, dressed completely different from the one True “met.” He wears an off-white velcro-down shirt, blue jeans, sneakers, his hair mowed conservative, no jewelry.
Odessa stands, reaches out a hand. It’s soft, except for the fingertips, which are type-cast. “We’ve met.”
“We have.”
“Not what you expected, but people change.”
Reiner comes over. “When did your paths cross?”
Odessa’s eyes don’t stray from True’s. “I played a prank on him.” To True: “Sorry about locking you into that pol’s speeches. I was pretty arrogant back then.”
“Doesn’t matter now.” True wonders why Odessa is here. Did he hack the wrong corp, is he fleeing? Or did he only imagine this in Tokyo’s mirror? Memories or imaginings? Reality or his own creations?
“Reiner tells me you’ve been hooked into something cutting-edge. Don’t suppose you brought something I can use.”
True reaches into his pocket, hands Odessa the chip Piña gleaned from his home computer. Odessa jams it into a tiny porthole and sits. A screenless wall of images shoots up in front of him. He studies the code, then immediately shuts down. “There’s a virus in there, and by the looks of it, a pretty nasty one. I’ve never seen it before. I hope my containment systems can handle it.” Odessa types furiously. Stops. “I’m going to need time to let the systems work on it.” He spins around. “There seems to be a virtual world inside a virtual world in there.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.” True rocks on his heels.
“Makes two of us. But I can see from the code structure there’s a virtual world in there. Inside that virtual world is a gateway to reality.”
“Huh?” Reiner says.
True tries to fathom the idea. “So, I was in virtual reality. I didn’t know I was there. When I snuck into the net to look for incriminating evidence on Sato, I was actually in the infonet. So the information about Sato is true. And the chip I accessed from Sato is real. But then I passed it on to someone else before I left virtual reality.”
Odessa nods. “That’s right. Reiner fed me the data you sent. I’d say that electronic escapade you took was real. Whatever it was you took, you really took.”
“Somebody sent me in to grab that chip from Sato.”
“They used you. You were tricked into traveling through a real database to cull heavily guarded secrets. It’s a smart piece of engineering, but the program couldn’t do it without someone with an innate ability to navigate through tricky dataspace.”
“And the software program offered me a built-in incentive. I thought I was saving my own ass.”
Reiner: “Odessa. By reading the chip, can you replay everything that transpired?”
“It depends on this virus. The funny thing is, I can’t tell if it was planted in there as protection or it just ended up in there—possibly from some incorrect coding.” Odessa ponders a pause more. “Might even be alive.”
“Alive?” True mouths.
“Not alive per se. Alive in the sense that even when not plugged into hardware, it grows. I know there were a couple of powerhackers onto a generation of software that could become more intelligent in time. This interactive program, by being able to tap into your mind, it could grow. In a sense, you’ve customized this software. Your thoughts, ideas, experiences may have spawned greater complexity.”
“So … ” Reiner looks at True. “He is the virus.”
“Yeah. And the thing may have continued to grow even after you were disconnected.”
“Can I be stopped?” True’s skin sprayed with cold pickle juice. “Should I be stopped?”
“I don’t think we want to stop you—your virus-mirror, actually.” Odessa checks the readout. “We’re in luck. There’s an automatic self-destruct program within the software, but the virus blocked implementation.”
“It wants to survive. My will to survive has interacted with the software codes. That’s where the virus came from.”
Reiner slaps her thigh. “And we wouldn’t have it unless this happened. So, there’s our answer, how we can ensure this virus is kept under control.”
Odessa brushes his scalp with his palm, indicating Reiner’s gone over his head.
Reiner frowns. “Don’t you get it? If you wanted to survive, if someone offered you a place you could go that was comfortable, where you could spend the rest of your life, would you go?”
True understands. “Hose it into another database, a place where it has room to grow. Just make sure it doesn’t leak.”
Odessa slacks over the console. “How come I didn’t think of that?”
True wonders what the characteristics of a virus impressed with his thoughts and memories would be. Would it wreak havoc, erasing hard-fought data, leaving a trail of empty in its wake? Would it soak up info, add to the glut of statistics strangling humanity? His choice: virus as truth serum. Stamp out some of the deceit crushing the world.
True to Odessa: “Before you start, do you have PR on International Soft Where?”
“The American Defense Corp subsidiary, yeah.” Odessa pulls it up. “ISW handles weapons programming for ADC. They were established ten years ago as a licensor of different technologies. They rely less on developing their own software than on buying up promising operations. Here’s a list of small companies they’ve bought or absorbed.”
Reiner places a hand each on True and Odessa’s shoulders. “I’ve got to file some stories, so I’m going.”
“I’ll stay with Odessa.” True’s eyes hopscotch down the list. “I’m sure I can make myself use—” Stops at the name Six Days, Inc. “Forget it. I’m going with you.”
Odessa looks up. “Find something interesting?”
Six Days, Inc. The world is indeed a small place. Six Days, Inc. Of course. It makes perfect sense. No wonder he was targeted. No wonder the software he was enveloped in was so intimate about his inner workings. So obvious he wants to kick his own ass.
“Interesting isn’t the word. Try extraordinary.”
CHAPTER 23
True’s studying paper scraps glued around the entrance to a downtown building, mostly in Japanese, some in English, Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Through glass he sees inside. A cavernous hall, families in tight rows, possessions heaped in corners. Some sleep, others play cards or mahjongg or talk, living on standby until the corps and bureaucrats decide what’s next.
He’s searching neo-Tokyo’s White Pages, translating non-English into English with his wrist-top, keying on words that he hopes will jostle his memory. A kimono-clad obaasan, bird-wing bow tied in the back, is eyeing him. Her face is powdered ghost. She points to a paper that’s been creased, recreased, finally posted.
“A peace crane.” Her English is creaky and unaccented.
“What?”
Heavy sigh lifted. “It was origami, a peace crane. But now… ” She indicates construction rubble across the street. “Who are you looking for?”
“A friend.”
“Have you found your friend?”
“No.”
She crooks her arm. Points around the corner of the building. “Everybody waits. Perhaps you will find your friend there waiting as well.”
“Waiting? For what?”
The woman starts her leave. “Everything. We must wait for everything these days.”
When he arcs around the building he understands. A mega-line of people and various containers. In the distance, fire licks at a cluster of apartments, warm wind sheeting down. True asks a man with gray hair crowning his skull what the line’s for.
The man has jaundiced teeth. Wispy strands jut from his chin. “When there is a line, you wait. There is bound to be something you need.”
True walks down the line, glancing at faces, sensing the collective fatigue. He keeps a running tally, mouthing as he walks: Japanese man, Japanese woman, Japanese woman, probably Korean. Mirroring the kilometer-long line. Ten minutes later, there she is. He knows it’s her by her hair’s red highlights, accentuated by real sun, and the way her jeans nuzzle her.
“Eden, it’s True.”
Eden whirls. True knows he should have gone slower, broken it to her gently, but there’s no time. “True. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
She drops a water jug. True picks it up, hands it back, then sweeps with his hands. “Do you know what you’re in line for?”
Her eyes, matte hazel marred by allergy red. Poets say the eyes are the mirrors to the soul; but True, who has seen more dislodged eyeballs than he cares to remember, knows it’s the face, the context, that is beauty.
She says, “Water. Food. Gas. If you walk to the front of the line, people get nervous you’re going to cut ahead, so you have to get in a line and wait, see if there’s something you need.”
“You could be waiting for nothing.”
“Theoretically.”
“Somebody could have started this line for no reason. What if there’s nothing up there? What if this line leads nowhere?”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“It’s difficult to say sometimes why people do the things they do.” True wishes he could love her again, wishes he could go back. He scoops up a small piece of concrete, rubs his thumb against the grains. Bits sprinkle. “I wouldn’t have been able to find you if it hadn’t been for that newscast.”
Eden’s crying. True hears murmurings, knows someone’s translating the play-by-play. Her sleeve soaks up tears. “I did the interview because I knew you’d see me.”
“Why didn’t you look for me?”
She studies her shoes, or maybe the water jugs. “I started to. I called WWTV. They wouldn’t tell me where you were posted, and you weren’t on the air at all.”
“I was shooting footage for Rush Gelding in Luzonia.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t want to know. I wasn’t hard to track.” He thinks of Aslam and Bong Bong, ADC, and Sato. Tracking True has been easy. Until now.
“I felt responsible.”
“You were the dealer. I was the user. You could have cleansed yourself better by staying.”
“I was scared.”
True senses the man behind eavesdropping. He withers him with a granite stare.
She cries, nods, and bounces on her feet. Idiosyncrasies he once loved. “I made you sick.”
True remembers the teenagers in Luzonia’s ghettos, how they’d take two cats, tie their tails, hang them over electric cables and cheer until they clawed each other to death. “You work in international aid?”
“I fix donated computers. Make systems run on antiquated or recycled equipment.”
“A noble profession. After I was committed, what happened to your work?”
“Six Days, Inc? It was bought up by International Soft Where? I tried to destroy my work after I saw what it was capable of. But they sicced lawyers on me. They told me all my research was proprietary, so I didn’t own it. They gave me some money and I left. What else could I do?”
“ISW is owned by American Defense Corp. Right?”
“You know of any connection between ADC and Tsuyoshi Sato?”
“I don’t know anyone named Sato. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“Thanks. See you around.” True turns to leave. She squeezes his arm. “You’re so thin.”
“No one gave me fattening-up money to keep my mouth shut.”
She lets go, shakes. “They had my research. They had the power. All I had was me. Me!”
“Me me me me,” True arpeggios. Can’t believe how cruel he is. Doesn’t care. “I just went through another VR trip. Someone set me up. If you’d stuck around last time, maybe none of it would have happened.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all I’ve got besides—” She breaks.
“Yeah.”
She gets it out. “Besides being in love with you.”
“Yeah, well, I think you didn’t love me enough.”
“Do you think being apart has been easy for me? Every day without you is a day without happiness.”
“Happiness is an elusive goal.”
“We can be happy.” A chapped lipped kiss.
But True walks anyway. For a while, as he puts distance between them, he hears her sobs, then only imagines them, and these memories haunt him all the way to Reiner’s. But that’s fine. It’s natural. It’s life.
CHAPTER 24
Odessa’s replaying True’s virtual escapades on a mon
itor, tweaking the color and clarity when necessary. True watches the schizo-split screen images of him alone: one side clenching air, writhing on the floor, the other side playing out his VR tale. Odessa freeze-frames True delving into Sato’s mainframe, after Reiner’s icon speeds toward old age and death.
Reiner jabs True’s shoulder. “Your opinion of me was pretty goddamn low.”
“It wasn’t all me. Your death advanced the story I was playing out.”
Odessa zooms in on the chip True stole. Analyzes it on screen. Flips it over; cuts away sections to see inside. “Racist view of me, too, by the way. But your thoughts are your own.”
“No, they aren’t; otherwise we wouldn’t be watching them now.” True parries embarrassment, wonders what Reiner or Odessa’s thoughts would be like, but decides no one should have to go through what he did.
Odessa runs a coded sequence under the image. “See, you’re back in reality, right there, or virtual reality at least. That really is a chunk of Sato’s property right there.”
“Can you tell what’s on the chip?”
“Not yet. That’ll take a lot of code crunching and time. It’s scrambled, and remember I don’t really have it. I only have a virtual representation.”
“Did you run down background on the relationship between Six Days and International Soft Where?”
Reiner coughs. Doesn’t feel comfortable out of the information loop for long. “I did. Six Days was known for brilliant VR software R & D and interactivity. It was a small, innovative public company. Owed its existence to seed money from a secret source.”
“Sato’s corp, by any chance?”
Reiner lips a popping cork noise. “You’re full of surprises True, in all worlds. How’d you guess?”
“There had to be some connection between ADC and Sato. How did Sato lose Six Days to ADC?”
“Hostile takeover. ADC planned it carefully. Slowly had International Soft Where? buy up Six Days stock, then convinced a Sato shareholder to turn over his shares. Coincidently, the guy who sold his shares to ADC is dead now.”