Reamde - Страница 50

• Brother John had posted an update on Dad’s latest round of visits to medical specialists. Nothing huge to report on that front.

Richard closed his laptop. He reached over and took one of the free “Flow State FAQ” handouts and flipped it over so that he was looking at its back side, which was blank. He reached into his shoulder bag and pulled out a Sharpie and used it to write

...

DEVIN

FUCKING KNOCK IT OFF

on the back of the FAQ. Then he got up and walked out of the waiting area and back across the parking area, passing the old trailer again, all the way to the entrance gate. He slapped an override button that caused the gate to pull open, then went outside and positioned himself in front of the video camera that monitored incoming cars. He held up the sheet of paper in view of the video camera and stood there while he counted to twenty. Then he walked back through the gate and returned to his position in the waiting area.

Five minutes later, Wendy came in and announced that Devin had emerged from the flow state earlier than was his wont and that they were welcome to go in and see him.

“I know the way,” Richard said.

THE SPACE WAS windowless. Or, if you were willing to consider giant flat-panel screens as being windows into other worlds, it was a greenhouse. In the middle was Devin’s elliptical trainer, or rather one of a pool of treadmills, elliptical trainers, and other such gadgets that were swapped in and out as he ruined or got sick of them. Depending from the ceiling was a massive articulated structure: an industrial robot arm, capable of being programmed to move along and rotate around a myriad of axes with the silence of a panther and the precision of a knife fighter. It supported an additional large flat-panel screen and a framework that held up an array of input devices: an ergonomic keyboard, trackballs, and other devices of which Richard knew not the names. Devin, naked except for a pair of gym shorts emblazoned with the logo of one of his favorite charities, was stirring the air with his legs, working the reciprocating paddles of the trainer. Invisible streams of cool wind impinged on his body from perfectly silent high-tech fans, not quite evaporating a sheen of perspiration that caused all his veins and tendons, and his twelve-pack abs, to pop out through his skin, as though the epidermis were shrink wrap laid directly over nerve and bone. According to this morning’s stats, Devin’s body fat percentage was an astonishing 4.5, which placed him into a serious calorie debt situation that in theory should extend his life span beyond 110 years. The slight up-and-down bobbing of his head and upper body was compensated for by equal movements of the robot arm, which used a machine vision control loop to track his attitude through a camera and to calculate the vector of translations and rotations needed to keep the huge screen exactly 22.5 inches away from his laser-sculpted corneas and the keyboard and other input devices within easy and comfortable reach of his fingers. A custom-made headset, with flip-down 3D lenses (currently flipped up and out of the way) and a microphone enabled him to dictate ideas or take phone calls as necessary. A chest harness tracked his pulse and sent immediate notification of any flipped T-waves to an on-call cardiologist sitting in an office suite two miles down the road. A defibrillator hung on the wall, blinking green.

You laugh, Richard had once said to a colleague, after they’d visited the place, but all he’s doing is applying scientific management principles to a hundred-million-dollar production facility (i.e., Devin) with an astronomical profit margin.

“Hello, Dodge!” he called out, only a little short of breath. The system was programmed to keep his pulse between 75 percent and 80 percent of its recommended maximum, so he was working hard but not gasping for air.

“Good afternoon, Devin,” said Richard, suddenly wishing he’d remembered to bring a hat, since it was chilly in here. “I apologize if our arrival came as a surprise.”

“Not a problem!”

“I had been assuming that with all your support staff and whatnot, someone here might have made you aware of the schedule.” This for the benefit of the half-dozen members of said staff who, unaccountably, had crowded into the room.

“No worries!” And he sounded like he meant it. If it was true that exercise jacked up one’s endorphin levels, Devin must live his whole life on something like an intravenous fentanyl drip.

“You remember Pluto.”

“Of course! Hello, Pluto.”

“Hello,” said Pluto, looking put out that he was actually being chivvied through this meaningless program of social pleasantries.

“Can we talk about something?” Richard said.

“Sure! What’s on your mind?”

“We,” Richard stressed, “as in, you and me.”

“You and I are both here, Richard,” said Devin.

Richard held eye contact for a few moments, then broke it and scanned the faces of everyone else in the room. “This is not material,” he said. “Devin and I are not going to be generating intellectual property. And neither is it some kind of a brainstorming or strategizing effort in which we will be wanting ideas and input from amazingly bright and helpful people whose job it is to supply that. No record of the conversation needs to be made.” Richard could see people’s faces falling as he ticked his way down the list. Finally he looked back at Devin. “I’ll see you in the trailer,” he said, “just for old time’s sake.”

THE TRAILER WAS cleaner and, at the same time, even more of a dump than he remembered. Someone had definitely hit all its surfaces with a diluted bleach solution. The place probably did not contain a single intact strand of DNA. As always, the information technology had aged badly: the plastic shell of Devin’s elephantine cathode-ray-tube monitor had turned the color of dead algae. To his credit, he had a cheerful red diner table in the kitchen, and three chairs to go with it. Richard sat down in one of these and looked out the window as Devin, now in a tracksuit, strode across the lot followed by a train of rattled and nettled assistants. The caboose of that train was Pluto, forgotten and bemused.

Devin’s sleek elven frame made scarcely an impression on the structurally compromised stairs. He banged the door shut and came in looking pissed.

“I’m sorry,” Richard said, “but there is some stuff that we have to sort out.”

Skeletor had not been expecting Richard to lead off with an apology and so this shortened his stride. “The wo-er,” he said.

“Yeah. You know, the last time I came here, the day after Thanksgiving, I was playing the game at a Hy-Vee on my way down and I saw some stuff going on that looked funny to me at the time. But a month later, when the Wor started, it was obvious in retrospect that I had been seeing certain preparations. The creation of a fifth column. Probing been preparing for the Wor one month in advance, who’s to say they weren’t preparing for it six months or even twelve in advance?”

Devin shrugged. “Beats me.” Not the most adroit answer and yet Richard was wrong-footed by its sincerity. He had known Devin for a long time and thought he could read the man’s body language reasonably well.

Another tack. “The thing is,” Richard said, “not half an hour ago I’m pulling out of the airport with Pluto and I see that huge billboard for K’Shetriae Kingdom, with the blue-haired guy on it, and in the light of all that has been going on, I can’t help seeing that as dog whistle politics.”

“Dog whistle politics?”

“A signal that only certain people can hear. The very blueness of that hair is a shout-out to the Forces of Brightness. Earthtone Coalition people see it and don’t go any further than to shudder at its tastelessness and look the other way. But Forces of Brightness people see it as a rallying point.”

“I think it’s just that a blue-haired humanoid is more eye-catching. And the purpose of a billboard is to be eye-catching.”

Richard could hardly contest those points. He leaned forward, put his elbows on the red Formica of the diner table, clamped his head between his fingertips. “What bothers me is the trivialization,” he said. “T’Rain is one huge virtual killing machine. It is just warriors with poleaxes and magicians with fireballs fighting this endless series of duels to the death. Not real death, of course, since they all just go to Limbo and get respawned, but still, the engine that makes the whole system run — and by that, I mean generate revenue — is the excitement and sense of competition that comes out of these mano a mano confrontations. Which is why we had Good vs. Evil. Okay, it wasn’t very original, but at least it was an explanation for all the conflict that drives our revenue stream. And now, because of the Wor, Good vs. Evil has been replaced by — what? Primaries vs. Pastels?”

Devin shrugged again. “It works for the Crips and the Bloods.”

“But is that the story you’ve been writing?”

“It’s every bit as good as what we had before.”

“How so?”

“What we had before wasn’t really Good vs. Evil. Those were just names pasted on two different factions.”

“Okay,” Richard said, “I’ll admit I’ve often had similar thoughts myself.”

“The people who called themselves Evil weren’t really doing evil stuff, and the people who called themselves Good were no better. It’s not like the Good people were, for example, sacrificing points in the game world so that they could take the time to help little old ladies across the street.”