Consolidati, page 23
The second day was useful not for its success in dredging up useful information, but spending time with Faraji allowed Jay to learn much he didn't know, as well as discuss Billy's recent isolation. The two went together in the morning and situated themselves together in front of the screen. Jay would listen as Faraji recounted details of his flight and his life in the Outskirts and tailor his searches to them.
The single most startling detail that Faraji brought up was the monsters. This was how the younger boy had described them, although Odin had done so differently. Jay wasn’t quite sure why, but somehow this most naked of peculiars had slipped his mind. Their descriptions were so outlandish that Jay scarcely believed that they could exist, and on top of that the only proof that they could find on the Web was hardly conclusive. Even talking with other Hogs and seeking Ms. Omid's help yielded only an unedited, but otherwise ridiculous sounding, tabloid article about a women seeing three “Ten Foot Tall Ruffians Haunt the River Thames." At the end of the day, despite hours of reading and searching, they had found nothing conclusive on the subject, and had to retire back to their apartment to eat.
On the next day Faraji returned to Oz, saying that he had a meeting to attend, and Billy as usual was missing before midmorning. So once again Jay was left to his own private detective work. It was on this day that he tried attention-enhancing drugs for the first time, at the ardent suggestion of another hog named Poet Piccolo. Poet's real surname was apparently Wordsworth, but he had adopted the pseudonym after years of teasing as a boy at school. The two had seen each other twice the day before, and after meeting in the lounge had struck up a conversation that had at first revolved around Faraji's absence but then moved on to an awkward, or perhaps wary, discussion about data searching. Poet had spoken most of the time, with Jay only adding affirmative nods or grunts for punctuation.
“Sort'n the shit from the soil's not always easy. 'specially after an hour or two. Things start to get hazy. It's hard to make yourself focus. Don't know why I'm telling you. You know. We all know, but, my young friend, these little things over here solve that problem, and quick.”
Poet's face and arms were covered in dense reddish brown hairs that with his heavy set figure gave him the likeness of a poorly bleached gorilla. The man gestured to the clear plastic counterfront, unmanned, filled with an organized tiering of energy drinks and concentration pharmaceuticals in blue and white glossy boxes. Poet began rummaging unceremoniously in his pockets, both hands at once, until he finally found a tin colored pill box and bunged it down on the table.
“Now, listen, kid. I just want you to know that I'm not telling you to try these for me—or because I take them. I'm not asking for money. I don't sell. They're legal, and they're not addictive—least not physically . . . but if you've got the craving or need to know things under the surface of the Net . . .” He shook the little box until two round purple pills spilled out, spinning on the table in front of them. “This particular one is called Midalin. The only reason I’m giving it to you, really, is charity. You won't believe what you can do—some people think its cheating. I think the way I learn needs improving; there's enough trolls trolling around the goddamn place as it is, ignorant and shitting their half knowledge right where you're trying to walk.”
Jay had never been one to fear alternate states of mind, and even though he couldn't be sure he really needed it. He accepted Poet's offer graciously and took the two pills from the table and put them in his mouth. He was a little surprised when they melted into sweet syrup before he could swallow them. He thanked Poet and stayed in the lounge a while longer listening to this new fellow's diatribe. It became clear to him after a while that Poet's incessant conversation was in fact proof of his claims about the drugs he was talking about: they were more than the simple caffeine pill, or the cup of coffee that had so enlightened him in the past. Poet’s conversation was unstoppable, almost frustratingly focused and on topic. It took Jay minutes just to lead Poet away from talking about the “Net of Informed Fools” and the drugs he so admired. After he’d exhausted those topics though, Poet had started a new rant, one that, thanks to the increasingly noticeable effect the Midalin was taking, was not so hard to follow as those previous:
“Boy, I'll tell you a little something I dug up the other day, it's really a gold nugget too, believe: you know, Oz, of course you do. Ever been? Doesn't matter. Well Oz is a good place and all, too damn good actually. So I was looking last week for information on how they maintain their systems—ask me about that later—you know, I wanted to know just how the hell they keep all that glorious hardware up, free, with no viruses, no diseases. Never found out, but I did find a link, one from a very bizarre forum post made by some poor lonely bastard. Link takes me to, get this shit, a fansite for a computer program. Wait maybe that's not accurate . . . A website for lovers of the same person: named Calliope.”
“Wait, a person or computer program? You mean lovers?”
“I can't tell you everything, lad. But from what there is on the Net, it seems that Calliope is an exquisitely beautiful, intelligent, charming, and above all affectionate computer program—man or woman—changeable in all ways and genius enough to know how to make real living, breathing, shitting, fucking, human beings, love it. Literally.”
“Literally . . . love it?”
“A true modern day siren, or Galatea. I wonder just where our Pygmalion is, probably hooked up to his or her creation non stop, who knows. Anyway, the experience is called Calliope’s Rocks. If she's a siren, the rocks are inactivity, but this siren’s song is a little more complicated. Love, mental connection, and my oh my, physical connection too. More than all the dirty depths of the Net combined.”
Blake opened his mouth in stunned expression. Suspicions crawled imp-like through his hair.
“Exactly,” Poet kept going, “plenty of poor bastards have already succumbed. I read their titillated professions of love. They sound like idiots, wishing they could spend more time with her, or him—some admitted to divorcing their spouses. ‘Poor flawed soul' one called his ex-wife. Other talked about the sex . . . not sure who exactly was behind the creation of the body net that Oz uses, but he or she sure as shit wasn't a saint.”
With the rest of the day, Jay learned more in less time than he had in the last two days. Much more. It seemed that Midalin aided both concentration and recall as well. For the first time he realized how the clientèle at Infohogs read so quickly. They were all taking these drugs. Ms. Omid might have disagreed, said it was the café’s learning course and streamlined software, but now he knew better. This first day on Midalin his reading speed increased fivefold, and he remembered it all, word after word sinking deep into his brain in a seemingly endless stream of information.
Jay soon unearthed even more reports of the “monsters” that Faraji had so passionately professed to seeing. The very same that Odin had blamed for the death of Rufus. On a lark, actually, Jay had returned to the subject after looking through variable libraries of information on the Outskirts’ decline. Later he'd related what he found to Faraji: a rash of reports rated so low by the search provider that they had missed them the day before. The most startlingly thing was their consistency with one another. Some were just forum posts, others appeared to be pure entertainment reporting, very ridiculous and sensational in their tone and coloring, so much so that even their author's seemed incredulous. Still, all mentioned three men, almost men, taller than the tallest man in the country by witness estimation, always seen from far away, appearing misshapen, sometimes fighting each other, and always sighted near the Outskirts.
Faraji met the news triumphantly—perhaps he had sensed Jay's skepticism.
But Jay still had more to say.
On a hunch, (he refused to say it might have been the Midalin) hoping everything was related, he had searched for information on the Villa and genetic experimentation together. On the second subject he had found nothing but unreliable and ill-reasoned conspiracy theories, but together the terms had yielded some rather suspicious information, and, in turn, the name of two companies and one man. He read their history in a flurry of white noise alarm bells: Mollec Inc, major contributor to quasi-liberal MPs. This history included a recent centenary following a period of relative quietude—analysts valuing competitors stock far above—yet never much internal turmoil, at least not leaked to the press. Mollec was one of the world's rising corporate entities, providing for its employee's and stockholders in ways previous corporate opulence only just grasped. It’s success stemmed from it's central role as coordinator of the Villa construction projects—essentially a brilliant middleman—the ones responsible for sales and eventual payback of government subsidies—profit motivated keepers of tax dollars. Infohog's magnificent software had brought up a money trail to Biomerge Inc, England's richest and least transparent bioengineering company: unknown headquarters, with a platoon of labs in China and, according to one anonymous ranting broken English forum post, an outpost in war torn Congo. And one man was on the board of directors for both companies.
His name is Cassius Bellick. Even with the name pictures were somehow unavailable, but the man was too important to avoid the Net. The man's assets probably rose into the billions, but his influence thrust him even higher above the common citizen. His seniority on the Mollec board and indeterminate leadership at Biomerge were not his only corporate positions. He was also listed as a “Consultant for Government Relations” on the Seventh Day website. Seventh Day, for lack of a more specific description, was a technology company, and one that was also intertwined with the Villa's sticky web. This company was particularly low-flying, so Jay during another lounge break had asked Poet about them. Poet had asked Xia, who had pointed them to a Japanese fellow by the name of Hideo, who had three small and hard won facts to tell him: the company was headquartered in Nagasaki, was a major supplier for the Villas—responsible for many of the project's special tech, experience rooms software and security network—and though they traded in electronics of all sorts, their next project was rumored to be mechanized urban farming. The exact phrase Hideo had used was “robot cultivation.”
All this, deep and frightening as stepping into quicksand, was still only abstract information until Jay found an article about the massacre that had started it all, had entrench the Outskirts in some perverse and hopeless war against the elite. The headline read:
25
Police Survives By Heartstrings in Residential Massacre.
LONDON—A municipal police officer was the sole survivor of the first political violence to come from the Outskirts. Police headquarters received a neighbour’s 999 call at 9:53 in the evening complaining of screams and gunshots coming from police Sgt. Nikolas Hurn's house. Police responded immediately and found three dead Melissa Hurn, 32 accountant, wife and mother of two; James Hurn, 7; and Flora Hurn, 2. Investigators indicated that Officer Hurn was left for dead by the assailants. Police found him breathing despite one gunshot to the head and two in his torso. He is currently in the St. Mary's Hospital listed in critical condition. A spokesman for London Police Department speculated that he may soon be transferred to the National College of Neurology and Neurosurgery, as Hurn had been shot in the head.
This morning four suspects were apprehended after police officers followed them via CCTV. Police found Hadi Tigra (40), Kian August (39), Frydryk August (35), and Ridwan Fauzia (31), hiding on the first floor of an outskirts tenement block. Both of the two murder weapons were recovered thanks to CCTV and after being checked for fingerprints, have been added to the prosecutor’s list of evidence.
Little is known about the four suspects except their name and country of origin, but Alfred Bight, the barrister in charge of the prosecution, speculated this morning that their motivation could have been political in nature.
“These killings are almost certainly connected with the protests in front of parliament,” he said this morning. “Officer Hurn's most recent assignment was public security within the Outskirts; this link is not a tenuous one, nor is it unimportant. The safety of the nation's peace officers must be assure before the common citizen can rest easy at night.”
The news has been met with great chagrin by the nation's political establishment who have rushed to assure the public that security in depopulating areas will be treated with high priority. MP Alexandra Lathen, of Oxon, and chair of Parliament's Security Bureau said this morning new measures of “ensuring security cannot be done without.” She went on to say that her staff were already collaborating with other MPs in search of “ viable solutions to the present social unrest.”
Cassius Bellick of Biomerge has taken Officer Hurn's recovery “as something of a pet project,” according to the man himself, and has pledged not only his company’s considerable expertise in prosthetics and tissue building, but his own personal assets to ensure Officer Hurn's recovery is as successful as possible.
26
Faraji fought a state of frigid cold as he trekked his way to the top of the mountain pass. He concentrated on warmth and fire and willed a protective flame wreath into being around him for what must have been the twentieth time since he started at the bottom of the mountain. Snow melted on the ground and in the air around him and turned to water that drenched his hair then rose again in steam tendrils.
He knew his destination but not exactly how to get there. He was headed to the snowy cottage of the training program named Gerimiah, who was himself a means to an end.
He had learned of Gerimiah from the Elders in the Raider council during a meeting at their favorite virtual hangout, the Queens Bloody Pub in the Timor sector of Blizzard’s Gate. The Elders themselves were some of the most proficient users of any game in any country, and Faraji had not stopped thanking his luck, having been introduced to them. They knew every quest in the game, every location of every training program. In short anything that needed knowing. Faraji had asked Elders Belfalas and Orisen just how he might start to look into real world applications for his skills.
The protective shield winked and went out—he had lost his concentration. The cold invaded again faster than before, and he sought its warmth again. He struggled upward. He felt lonely on this mountain. He felt motherless, friendless, but without fear of death in Blizzard's Gate. In response to his questions, the Elders had sent him on a long journey. He knew he wouldn't sleep tonight, wouldn't even go back to the apartment. He had three visits to make.
The first thing to learn was how to fly.
Three hours of icy labour and Faraji could finally see his first destination, a small reddish log cottage among the sharp dagger peaks. Two small windows emitted a welcome glow to either side of an oak door. The door opened before he reached it and a stooped man with deeplined crow's feet beckoned him inside, just like the elders had said he would. This must be Gerimiah, Blizzard's Gate flight trainer, a program only accessible to users of a certain caliber, concentration, and commitment. The Elders, had already told Faraji what would come next, a grueling regiment of mind exercise, and then after that, the secret of flight in Oz.
The snow melted quickly from his avatar's boots as Gerimiah closed the door behind him, shutting up the gusting cacophony and making the cottage an unnatural vacuum. The old fellow took off his fur lined hood, a mere play at reality he ostensibly had put on just to open the door. Slightly pointed lips and a round head gave him a turtle appearance. He smiled at the newcomer.
27
For the fifth straight day since he had first come to Oz, Billy lay on a bed of hyperreal luxury, amid golden silk sheets, half noticing the tropical occident in the amorous sunset, his boyish limbs wrapped weedily around her flawless body. His smallish hands would grope lovingly, exploring every inch of her and she would smile an unreal smile, making him want her even more. They were both nude, which Billy had only just admitted to himself was the reason he came back morning after morning to see her, to live here.
In five short days he had experienced the impossible so many times. He had never had a real girlfriend, never seen a girl naked in the real world, but Calliope had introduced him to the intoxicating and addictive realm of sex, because she loved him and because she said this was one of the many ways that she could make him happy. Their first experience shocked him on so many levels that anyone could be so lovely, so perfect, that anything could feel so good, that he could have her whenever he wanted, however he pleased, with no effort but a desire and no need to consider her feelings, because all her emotions fed from his, meant to stimulate and satisfy.
