Chapter Fifteen
Uri Farone suggested that they retire to the “back room.” Dex agreed and they linked into a small but impressively decorated office with a few expensive-looking chairs and fully functional liquor cabinet. Dex quickly excused himself and went offline to refill his glass and empty his bladder, then rejoined Farone in his office. Farone was clearly still in sales mode and he couldn’t blame the man. Bish had obviously mentioned Dex to him in passing and guys like Farone could smell a mark a mile away. Still, Dex had to give the man credit for being willing to have a conversation. Though at his prices, a single sale would be well worth a chat and a few glasses of virtual single malt.
“These days people think of Stella as just a project manager,” Farone said, “but what she does is a lot more complicated than that. Sure, she’s the middle layer in a lot of fairly simple transactions — I want a widget, you make widgets, Stella gets us together and takes ten percent. It’s a time honoured model and pretty much everyone is happy with it.”
“But what about the widget makers she doesn’t play with?” Dex asked.
“Well, there is that,” Farone said, sipping his scotch. He seemed to savour the moment, then tipped the glass toward Dex. “You sure you don’t want effects?”
“I’m sure,” Dex said.
“Okay.” He paused, Dex guessed that he was running the conversation back to remind himself of where they left off. “It’s surprisingly competitive in here,” he continued, “and everyone knows that Stella’s people are the best. Not to mention that it’s just easier to deal with one known quantity rather than try and dig up someone yourself to do the work for you.”
“You seem to be doing all right,” Dex said, “and it certainly doesn’t look like you need Stella Bish to get work.”
“No, I don’t,” Farone said, “not anymore. But I wasn’t always in the memory enhancement biz. I used to be a code monkey just like a million other schmucks out there. But I was lucky. I got on with Stella and was successful enough that I was able to quit my day job. Then I had the time to develop my pet project and eventually quit Stella’s gigs, too.”
“And that was okay with her?”
“There was a line up of guys banging down the door looking for work behind me,” Farone said. “Stella isn’t exactly hard up for people. Besides, she gets a kickback every time I get a referral from her, so she’s still in the loop.”
Dex smiled. “So she’s really the lynchpin of the underground economy here, isn’t she?” he asked.
“There isn’t a whole hell of a lot that goes on without her,” Farone agreed, “and a place in her stable is almost a guarantee to get out of the work a day world out there. After a couple of years most people have made enough money and contacts that they are free to live almost exclusively online. There’s even a rumour that she’s building a giant apartment complex in Europa for the staff.”
“Just how many people does she have on the payroll?” Dex asked.
“It’s not a payroll,” Farone corrected. “They’re all independent contractors.”
“Right, whatever,” Dex said. “How many?”
“Let me see. Give me a second.” Farone’s avatar stopped animating and stared disconcertingly just past Dex’s right ear. In a moment, he flickered back to life and said, “Looks like it’s about 143, give or take.”
“Oh,” Dex said. “You, ah, happen to have a staff list there?”
“Yeah,” Farone said, “you want it?”
Dex was in two minds about whether Farone was toying with him. Not that it mattered if he actually could get a list, so he simply said, “Yes.”
“Okay, then,” Farone said and pinged Dex’s system. He accepted the download and felt the brief weight in his head. “There’s a list of people waiting to get on, too. I’ll send you a link.” Dex wondered how he managed not to find any of this information until now. That was the trouble with instantly accessible information — you still needed to know what you wanted before you could find it.
Dex took a pull on his impotent virtual drink. “So, I have to say that everything you’ve told me makes me wonder how working for her is any different from working for a firm,” he said.
Farone was silent for a moment, then said, “It’s the hope, I guess. The hope that one day you get to call your own shots, that you can live the way you want. Maybe it’s just a change of pace. But it seems different when you’re living it. And a few of us do get out, get to do our own thing.”
Maybe, Dex thought. Back in the privacy of his room, he shook his head, clearing the thoughts from his mind. He spent a few more moments talking with Farone and took the custom price sheet the man prepared for him. Linking out of Marionette City he wondered what kind of freedom it was that leaves a person bound to a different master.
• • •
Dex stood and stretched his legs. He finished his drink and refilled the glass with water. He stood and brought up the staff list in his viewer. The price sheet for Farone’s memory upgrade was still open and the list partially covered it. Dex scanned the names, stopping at Reuben Cobalt. Out of curiosity, he skipped down to the end. Velarian, Ventner, Vespa... no Velasquez. No news there. As far as Bish was concerned, Ivy was a non-entity.
Dex refocussed on his physical surroundings and stood. Not having any other outlet for the strange feeling in his body, he began pacing. He didn’t stalk around his apartment often, but he was getting restless. He could feel very old, very well hidden patterns trying to reassert themselves. Dex grabbed a jacket and fled the apartment. He stepped on the down lift platform and as it lowered him to the ground floor, the desire to pour another rum and fire up the video viewer strongly imposed itself onto his mind. He pushed it aside and stepped into the dark twilight.
• • •
Dex walked down the street, aimlessly moving forward, feet pounding the sidewalk. There were few people on the street, mostly city folks moving from work to home as quickly as possible with hardly any stops in between. Looking closer, Dex saw the usual street dwellers, people like the old woman he encountered the other night, huddling in groups in the corners and potholes of the city. He walked down the street, looking for any public place, somewhere where people might gather together. He knew there were others like him, people who just couldn’t get everything in a virtual wrapper, people who needed the funk of real flesh. There were bars where they met, in every town. He knew there were some right there, in his city.
He walked for a half hour, headed for Green Sector. He had tried to forget the good squad’s report a few weeks previously of a gin joint in that neighbourhood that served the real stuff — booze, food and drugs. It was not the kind of place a good guy would usually be found, but its description had reminded Dex of his old hangouts. He nearly missed the door, but he could smell the heady fragrance of smoke, cooking and human armpits. He pushed open the door and the sound of the place froze him in his tracks. People. Live and in the flesh. People talking, arguing, singing, crying. The whole human gamut of it all. And it took Dex’s breath away.
He must have been standing in the doorway for some time, because he didn’t move until a large man with a dirty beard shouldered his way past him. The big man roughly pushed his way out the door, knocking into Dex as they passed. He scowled at Dex and mumbled something about getting out of the way, but Dex didn’t notice any of that. His attention was focussed on the part of his shoulder the man had grazed on his way out the door. The man was long gone, but Dex could still feel his touch as if his flesh had been singed. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him. His vision blurred.
It was too much. He turned around and blindly banged out the door and into the night. It had started raining again and Dex turned his face up to the sky to let the cold drops wash over him. He walked back to his apartment in a daze, wondering if there was anywhere in any world that would ever feel like home to him again. The only time he ever felt even close to comfortable was when he
was working a case or lost in his memories. He got back to his apartment and dried off in the lav, thinking about his life. Every time he craved companionship, he just opened up the bottle and one of those files. And, why should this day be any different? Once he was dry, Dex poured his drink, sat in the chair and watched.
• • •
The next day, Dex awoke, got himself off to work and pinged Stella Bish. He’d had enough of asking questions behind her back; it was time to get to the source. He asked for a meeting in Marionette City and she eventually agreed, after several attempts to avoid it. She seemed willing enough to talk to him — she’d offered to have a voice or text conversation, but oddly enough Dex wanted the full 3D deal. She finally acquiesced and they’d agreed to meet that evening at the open marketplace.
Dex spent the workday alternately handling irate B&B customers and poking around the boards for independent programmers. He posed as a client looking for some custom work in Marionette City and tried to see whose name floated to the top. The first few boards he came to were more focussed on M City society, so the posters there just pointed Dex to pre-existing businesses operating in Marionette City. He hinted that he was looking for something special, but no one there had any information for him — at least nothing they were willing to share.
From there, he found some links to another board that dealt with the programming behind Marionette City. Here the talk was well beyond Dex’s limited knowledge, but he suspected that he might be on the right track. The trouble was that they had a strict non-commercial rule about the posts, so he couldn’t just barge in and start soliciting programmers. He decided to take a chance. He sent a message to the moderator of the board explaining that he knew the board was non-commercial, but he was looking to engage the services of someone competent and was hoping that he could get a link to somewhere that would allow him to post his request.
Dex was forced to endure two full customer calls before he got a reply from the moderator. First, the mod had suggested that Dex contact someone who specialized in this sort of thing and had even included a direct link. Unfortunately, it was for Stella Bish. The mod did, however, also include a link to a board that was described as “Mostly full of crap, but you might get some joy there. Good luck, you’ll need it.”
Dex paged over to the board and had to admit that the mod was right. It was more or less unmoderated and pretty close to chock full of ads for stuff few people would admit to wanting. There were the ubiquitous virtual genital enhancements, with full three dimensional imagery to go with each ad, not to mention the strippers, hookers and “full featured fantasy play vacations.” Dex wondered if a link over to this board might help explain to Annabelle why he found virtual intimacy so off-putting.
He spent a long time scouring the boards for anything legitimate, but Dex was getting nowhere in a great hurry. There were only so many graphic images of the various body parts he could buy or rent that he could stand. He spent a few moments cobbling together a script that would strip out the obvious crap and just leave him with the other posts. It would take a few minutes to run, so Dex just set it and forgot it.
He went back to his cranky callers and placated, mollycoddled, argued and cajoled until his new and improved abbreviated workday was done. His script finished running during the train ride back to his neighbourhood and he saved the results to a separate file. He wouldn’t have time to work through it all before his meeting with Bish, so he set a reminder for later that evening to bring up the file and see if he could make anything of it.
Dex had a few minutes before he was scheduled to meet with Stella Bish and he used the time to take care of some physical world maintenance that he knew he’d let slide. He set the apartment to clean itself the next day when he was at work and found all the nutrient bar wrappers, bottles and cans that had collected in his apartment over the last weeks. He took them all out to the hall and dumped them into the apartment building’s communal recyclatron. Back in his apartment, he changed, poured a drink, went online and made his way to the market. He turned up to the meeting place early and sat on a bench. He watched the virtual birds twittering in a false sky, saw avatars feeding them bits and bytes as they walked hand in hand with their virtual lovers. He almost felt like he was missing out on something, almost felt a little envious. Almost, but not quite.