Chapter 2: It’s the Water
From /Signified ---- Book Two of 2084 Quartet
PLEASE NOTE: The following material is intended for mature readers only.
A Note on Language
It is inevitable, in a work of speculative fiction, that futuristic technologies, technical terms, and even everyday slang appear in the course of the narrative. For the convenience of the reader, the first time each of these neologisms appears in the story, it will be marked in boldface and hyperlinked to the Glossary of Terms and Slang, where you will be able to find a definition. Additionally, on occasion a non-English language will be used in the dialogue among characters. While no direct translations have been provided, never fear. The reader will be able, quite readily, to discern the meaning of these utterances within the context of the story.
Quick Plot Recap
Chapter 1 opened with Bleached Wheat reviewing in detail—to the ArcNet soldier he was about to kill—the intricate cat-and-mouse game he’s been playing with EVe. The enigmatic leader of TexArc then called a meeting of his top management team to discuss the crisis at hand. At that meeting, we met Dockers, the mayor of BoiCity, as well as Brand, an expert in Cultural Construct at the Yale School of Reconstruction. We also came to understand better the mechanisms of personal and social control TexArc implements on its population. In the end, while keeping all of his subordinates off-kilter as to his true intentions, Bleached Wheat orders Dockers and Brand to work together to counteract the Uncle Wobbly messages that have been causing so much unrest in and around BoiCity.
Chapter 2
It’s the Water
Oak dangles his filthy feet in the water—the dazzlingly cold and clear water—of Redfish Lake. For the life of him, he can’t rightly remember the last time he had his boots off—honest-to-God had them off. The past few months have been that plain butt-ugly. It must be getting near to mid-June by now. The heavy spring surge is over. All the snow is melted off the Grand Mogul and Mount Heyburn, both those peaks sitting off to his right, poked up over the pine tops along the lakeshore. No snow means low flow—and that means from here on out, past late summer and into early fall, the game is to conserve. Even them damned giant thunderboomers don’t add much to the aggregate. Only this year, Oak’s got a bit of a different game in mind. One they’re not going to like playing much down in BoiCity. It’s called kiss his ass. They’re not getting a drop if they don’t.
Oak reaches down and cups a palm-full of cold water to bring up to his forehead. He gingerly washes away the blood there. It’s just a nip, but it feels big enough to scar. That’s nothing new. He’s been getting plenty worse, lately. He’s sitting at the tip end of what’s left of the old tourist docks. He comes here now and again to sit when he’s in a particularly foul frame of mind. He’s learned the hard way to sulk on things awhile before making any chief decisions. Don’t rush into anything. Be commonsense joe. This situation now is going to take some deep working out. This time the fuckers snuck up along Fishook Creek and got way the hell down almost to the lake before his boys finally caught wind of them and opened fire. Damned suckyank Terds. They’re clever bastards, he’ll give them that. This new bunch here looks to be so clever he’s worried they might be Net. It’s that damn mindfuck how close they got without being seen. What the hell were they after? He splashes on another two handfuls of icy water to numb up the sting and to get thinking clear. Watery blood drifts in the lake. Oak wonders if there ever were red fish in here. Old folks say they heard old folks tell stories that there were. He would have liked to see them.
Oak’s sulked on things long enough. He pulls his boots on, jumps up spry, and walks fast off the pier back to the Lodge. That’s an old two-story built out of logs. It’s also the only building in the compound that’s still got a full roof. He heads inside and checks with Hap at the Situation Desk.
“Where the fuck we holding them?”
“Honeymoon Cabin.”
Oak’s got to chuckle at that.
“How many dead of ours?” he asks.
“Fucking twelve, most by that purple-headed bitch.”
Both men shake their heads.
“And theirs?”
“Just the one. A cock.”
“Well, at least that leaves a bit more sweetpuss to go around.”
“At least.”
“There any more?”
“Don’t know yet. I got men out looking.”
“In our vehics?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Okay then. I’ll be over there.”
“Your head okay?” Hap points. “That there’s a bit too close for comfort.”
Oak touches the graze. The bleeding’s stopped. “Don’t mean a damn thing,” he says.
He walks past the crumbling gazebo on his way to the Honeymoon Cabin. Underfoot the ground is soft. A mix of sand, loam, and brown pine needles. There’s not a speck of cloud to be seen anywhere in the bigsky. Just the sun blazing down to beat hell. Just the air smelling bone dry. High summer is setting on. It can fry a man to death.
Inside the cabin is dim and sultry. Jiplap and six other Wobblies aim their automatics down at the Terds sprawled around the floor. There’s five of them. One yank and the rest puss. It should have been easy profit to take them out. But the gals fought like damn hellcats. Oak pulls out his minimister and kneels in front of the purple-headed bitch. She’s been beat on worse than the others. Black-and-blue is raising all over her face. Already one eye is swelled shut. He pokes the minimister’s snub nozzle up her nostril, extra deep and irritating. Early in the campaign Oak dubbed his little weapon The Terd Persuader. If he doesn’t get what he wants out of a Terd, a spray of plastic pellets up the nose scrambles the brains nicely but without making too big a mess. Do one Terd like that, and the others tend to get real cooperative.
“So why’d you tell your crew to stop fighting?” Oak asks the bitch, leaning in close so they can smell one another.
“Pigdog,” the woman rasps. With a barrel up her nose she has no choice but sneer. “You can on my ass pucker suck.”
The Wobblies around the cabin laugh, impressed mainly. Oak looks over his shoulder to nod at his brothers and grin.
“Well, anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, sister,” he tells her. “I always say biz before selfoblige.”
“I told her to. Leave her alone.”
This is the tall black-haired bitch talking. The one with the blistering eyes. The one that all the time looks like she wants to kick you in the kernels. In truth, Oak’s the most worried about her. Worried she might be Net—even though he never thought Net would let any puss join up. Worried she might know all about their operations. Something about this bitch spooks him. Maybe it’s the sleeveless skinshirt she’s got on that’s sweated gray. Maybe it’s her soldier pants with all kinds of fancy pockets. She looks a runner or some kind of ball player. She looks just too damn smart for a puss of any kind. Oak pulls the minimister out of the purple-headed bitch’s nose, squat-waddles over to this other Terdbitch, and sticks it up her nose.
“That why you in particular never shot back?”
“Yes.”
She hadn’t, either. Oak had distinctly seen that during the firefight. In fact, this bitch had tried to stop the whole thing from the start. That’s the main reason, afterwards, Oak went out onto the dock to ponder on things awhile. That and the funny way all these Terds talk. None of the Wobblies have ever heard anything like it.
“So, what, you telling me you’re way the hell out here for a social call?”
“More like solidarity.”
At the mention of this Wobbly word, Oak withdraws the minimister from the woman’s nose. He looks harder at her face.
“Now what the hell you mean by that?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. The one big union. The greatest thing on earth.”
“Now how’d she know that?” says Jiplap. “That’s some spooky shit, Oak.”
“The fuck it is. Net would be monitoring all the feeds. She just stole that.”
“But where did Uncle Wobbly come from in the first place?” asks the Terdbitch. “Who’s feed is that? It’s sod-all not coming from ArcNet or the Pyramid, is it now, brother?”
Jiplap says what’s turf got to do with anything. Oak tells him to shut up. He jabs the minimister back up the bitch’s nostril.
“Your Terdbitch sisters, there, killed twelve of my men. That ain’t solidarity, so don’t you go calling me brother.”
“Self-defense,” the woman hisses. “Your men opened up, Oak. What else could we do until we knew you were Wobblies?”
At being named by the woman, Oak glares at Jiplap, who stares guilty down at the floor. Jip hardly has a brain in him, let alone any sense of damn security. None of the Wobblies are keen on Net knowing exactly who they are. Worse than any of that, though, is this bitch talking good sense. Good damned commonsense joe. Just where in the hell does the Uncle Wobbly feed come from? That irksome thought has been crossing Oak’s mind a lot lately. But there’s one overwhelming fact that’s got to be realized about Servs and Terds. They hate one another, each for their own reason. Terds hate Servs from guilt, the guilt of knowing they’re fucking them over. Servs hate Terds from shame, the shame of always being stupid in front of them. And one thing Oak was flat done doing was feeling ashamed in front of any more damned Terds.
“Listen, pussbitch,” he says low and calm, pulling the minimister back out of her nose, “I don’t give a good shit what all you can spout off about Wobbly. It won’t save you. You’re Terd for certain, and probably worse. You’re most likely fuckmother Net come to wipe us for good.” Oak brings his face close up to hers, so she can smell his rotten Serv breath and see his brown Serv teeth. “Now I ain’t made it this long out here taking bonehead chances, and I sure as shit ain’t about to start now with you.”
Oak stands and backs toward the doorway.
“Jip,” he orders, “have two boys take that one dude there outside and shoot him.” Two of the Wobblies jump at the chance. They drag outside the barely conscious man. “Meantime, you can get things started off on this one. On little Miss Wobbly, here.”
“Can do, boss.”
Jiplap hands off his automatic rifle and signals to a buddy to flip her on her belly and sit on her head. Meantime he moves around behind her and begins jerking down on her pants.
“Sorry to muss up your fancy britches, darling,” he apologizes with a grin.
The purple-headed bitch lets out a war-whoop and lurches up to claw at Jiplap’s back. Another Wobbly applies the butt of his rifle sharp to the side of this puss’ head to knock her back tame.
“Now wait your turn,” Jiplap jokes at the woman lying on the floor dazed and bleeding from the ear. “It won’t be too much longer now before I get to you.”
He smiles and winks up at the other Wobblies around the room. He resumes working down the pants on the first Terdbitch and finally tugs them down around her boots. He climbs in between her long legs and begins forcing them apart with his knees. With the man sitting on her neck, she fights for air while screaming and kicking backwards at Jiplap.
“Now, now, darling,” Jiplap coos, petting her bare butt cheek while unzipping loose his hardnob. “You best just get used to this. There’s lots of us Wobblies up here in the primitive area these days.”
With no warning a blank bewildered expression freezes onto Jiplap’s face. He keels onto the floor. An instant later he’s thrashing on his back, gurgling drool and huffing like he’s having a heart attack. Before any of the Wobblies have a clue what’s happening to Jiplap, it happens to them, too. Every last guy goes blank, hits the deck, and starts pitching a fit. Then the CorpTroop comes sailing in through the window. He shoulder-rolls, quick gunsweeps, then in a flash is over hitching back up the Terdbitch’s pants. Then he’s standing over Jiplap, gut-kicking the holy hell out of him.
“Enron, stop it!” shouts Mall, rolling over and buttoning up her fly. The CorpTroop already has his hunting knife drawn.
“Yank that! I’m going to cleave off his little pecker and stuff it down his fucking throat!”
“No! Don’t! Please!”
She places a hand on the CorpTroop’s arm. He gives her a hard look, but the hand seems to calm him. He places a boot-toe on Jiplap’s Adam’s apple and presses. “You touch her again,” he tells the Wobbly, “and this knife goes up your ass. No joke.” Whether Jiplap hears this or not is anybody’s guess. He’s still writhing like a demonic possession. All the Wobblies are.
“Whatever’s wrong with them?” Mall asks.
“Got me,” shrugs Enron, scanning to assess the room. “Ask Sinalco. Like usual, she’s got them wired up doing some damn thing.”
“I have them set on the scramble,” Sinalco explains as she steps through the doorway. She holds up and offers to pad new instructions onto her palmbook. “I can fry their brains all the way to the crisp if you like, maybe? I can do that without the problem, tu sais.”
“No, no, that’s all right,” Mall tells Sinalco. “Just leave them at it for now. Where’s Blaupunkt? They drug him outside a moment ago. Is he hurt?”
“He’s good,” says Enron. “Sinalco got them all fidgetin’ before they could shoot old Blau.”
“Thank god for that.”
“Et alors, où est Forbetr?” asks Sinalco, surveying the floor of the cabin.
“Dead, I’m afraid,” answers Mall. “Killed in the skirmish back at the creek.”
Enron, bent over the foray team to check injuries, says bitterly, “I told damn Cardinal not to try to sneak up on these boys.”
Cardinal has propped herself up on her elbows. Her face is pulp and she’s seeing double. Still, she manages a weak kick to the side of Jiplap’s head, which is just in range of her bootheel.
“Very soon you I kill one night,” she spits at him, “as you sleeping.” She focuses next on Enron, his blurry face hovering over her to make sure she’s all right. “Fuck all you...fucking cowboys,” she tells him, slurring the foreign words. “You are only...the pigdogs...” Then she’s passed out. Enron settles her in a corner where Pernod and Migros, both less battered, can tend her.
“So what we do now?” Sinalco asks Mall.
“Well, tempting as it is, I suppose it would be bad form to carbonize their skulls.” At this point Mall notices Oak watching her, even as he contorts on the floor. Somehow he’s willing his eyes to stay wide and his head fixed on her despite the punishing electrostimulation. That’s tenacity, thinks Mall—and loathing. Impressive. Mall returns the stare of those feral eyes for several moments before saying to Sinalco, “But I suppose we’d better release them. We’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
“Let me collect up these guns, first,” says Enron, policing around the cabin. “I already took the ones from all the fellas outside.”
“They will be angry after this,” Sinalco points out. “You know?”
“That makes us even,” says Mall.
Sinalco pads in a long series. Oak is the first Wobbly back on his feet. “You crazy bitches!” he shouts at then. “How the fuck you do that to us?”
Enron steps forward, shouldering many automatic rifles and pointing the bizend of one at the tip of Oak’s nose. “Why, Oak Wat,” he nods in wonder. “You sorry son of a bitch. What in fuck’s name are you doing way out here at Redfish Lake?”
“Uncle En?” Oak asks, more astonished than ever now. “That...that really fucking you?” He looks back at the strange Terdbitches then back at Enron again, horribly confused. “What...what the fuck you doing mixed up with...with fucking Net? Or...” he slowly frowns, studying again the strange-talking women—especially the monstrous blond bitch with the magic touchpad. “Wait a minute,” he works to piece things together, “these fucking slits ain’t...” he juts an accusatory thumb, “...these fucking slits ain’t...ragheads...are they?”
“You know this delightful chap?”
“Yeah, Mall,” admits Enron, “I know him. This little prick’s my nephew, believe it or not. On top of that he’s about the only man I ever heard of who washed out of CorpTroop training for noncompliance and lived to tell the tale.”
“You don’t ever wash out, Uncle En,” Oak says proudly, “you know that. I fucking skipped out.”
“Really?” says Mall, stepping closer to study the darting, flashing eyes of the stunted Serv. “You know, Oak,” she says to him, “we can get rid of that glassy problem for you.”
Oak looks to Enron—and notices for the first time that his uncle’s eyes aren’t blazing away with the all4s. He also notices—how did he miss it before?—the snug mesh cap Enron’s got rolled down over his head. It looks like he’s wearing a sock. Oak looks back to Mall. He answers hopefully.
“No shittin’?”
Mall laughs kindly. “No, absolutely not. No shitting.” She pronounces the word deliberately. Then she strikes the back of her fist across his mouth, leaving it bleeding from the corner. “My name is Mall, Oak. I’m not a Terd. I’m not a slit. I’m not Net. I’m not a raghead. Are you following me so far?”
Startled and holding his mouth, Oak nods.
“Good,” Mall continues, “because there’s so much more for me to tell you. So very much more.” She puts an arm around his shoulder and starts to walk him outside. “Oak, you and I are going to be fast friends,” Mall says as they go. “But I must warn you about one thing. If you ever tell one of your men again to touch me or anyone else on my team, or if you ever try to do that yourself, I will kill you even before your Uncle En can kill you. Even before that purple-haired bitch can kill you. Understand me?”
**********
Brand lounges in the shade of a small grove of palm trees. Her atoll is a coral crescent cupping a jade lagoon surrounded by a wide turquoise sea. Gull cries float in the air, blending with the soft slapping of waves on the beach. An occasional breeze stirs the massive palm leaves drooping overhead. She is suspended a few inches off the white sand, quasi-reclined in her relaxer. When lost in thought, Brand runs her fingers through the warmth of the sand. A thinscreen is propped on top of her knees. She’s studying it closely. A tall-necked tumbler of herbal tea sits at her elbow, sending up trails of steam. The island jingle starts to play. Someone is at the door.
“Yes?” Brand calls, still studying the screen.
“More shit,” comes back a perturbed voice.
She sighs, then calls out, “Come, please.”
Dockers steps onto Brand’s island. As always, he refuses to bodyenhance, to play any role at all in her caprice. He’s disappointingly himself, dressed in his everyday Crat wear. Today that features a collarless shirt with more than his usual amount of western flair. The quilted embroidery about the shoulders is decidedly cowpoke—and tacky. To accompany his absence of imagination, Dockers has zero fashion barometer, either.
“What’s the problem now?” asks Brand after a few moments, looking up finally from her thinscreen. For her part in the whimsy, she sits topless, displaying massive, exquisite boobs that betray absolutely no tan lines. A shapely nine or ten more kilos fleshes out her frame, and her thong is the newest thing: ultranarrow colored shockneon pink. Gathered into a high ponytail is long blond hair nearly white as the sand. Silky strands of it curl coyly down about her impeccable hooters. As for the atmospherics, Brand keeps that set on heavy musk.
“Jesus,” Dockers complains, reacting to the cloying ambience and unable to stop himself from staring at those tits, “when are you going to stop fucking around in here?”
Brand has always noticed how Crats dislike being in digiland. Something about Terdfantasy upsets them, even seems to scare them a bit. Someday she really must undertake a formal study of this phenomenon. For right now, she just smiles back at Dockers and removes her darkglasses. Revealed are her luxurious sapphire eyes—a perfect color match for the endless ocean stretching out around them.
“I’m sorry if my work environment upsets you, Mayor. Personally, I find it relaxing. I’m much better able to concentrate in here.”
“Well start concentrating on this.”
He brusquely hands her a CorpHQ dispatch. It’s from subceo Wells. She reads it carefully. It seems that, just recently, the Wobblies have made a technological quantum leap. They’ve figured out how to link all the hydrofacilities scattered around the wilderness area into one large network. In other words, they’re managing the water just as well—or better—now than the BoiCity Terds were able to do before the Wobbly uprising.
“What does this mean for us?” she lowers the dispatch to ask Dockers.
The megmayor has tried to strike a power pose for the meeting, planting a fist on either hip. Under the swaying palms, he looks a bit ridiculous. He also kicks a foot out sideways in an annoyed effort to keep the digiland sand from sifting into his cowhide loafer.
“Yank if I know. Lucky for us, the big bossman doesn’t seem too worried about it at the moment. But who the hell knows how long that luck will last?”
“Could it be that maybe these Servs aren’t as stupid as we think?”
“Oh, please. Spare me your Yale libby horseshit, sweetheart. Parkers can’t stick their own thumbs up their butts straight. There’s no way they’d be able to operate something so maze as the hydroworks. You’d know that if you’d ever spent a damn minute mingling with shitubers.”
“I conduct lots of focus groups,” Brand defends herself, “to test the accuracy and the effectiveness of my pitches. I’ve dealt with lots of Servs.”
Dockers snorts. “Yeah, safe behind a bulletproof viewmirror, I bet.”
“Well...”
The megmayor is quite right. Brand always sends in her graduate students—wearing outbreak-bug breathing masks and sanogloves—to do the actual interviewing. She calls it service-learning. She always makes sure that ample security is standing by, too.
“I thought so,” Dockers nods. “Look, sweetmeat, no one is blaming you. I can’t stand the smell or the sight of the fuckers, either. Just don’t go thinking there’s any noble savage in them. Hell, if it wasn’t for us telling them what to do, Parkers would drink and yank their days away. Then those litters of damn parkrats they squeeze out would starve to death. We’re doing them a big damn favor organizing their lives with work the way we do.”
Brand sits up straight. Suddenly she wishes she didn’t have the mammoth jiggling digimammaries attached to her chest. “So what’s different now?” she tries to sound serious, savvy. “How are they able to manipulate the water so well out there?”
“Shit a brick, Doc. For a hire-educated woman, you sure are dumb. It’s got to be the yanking EVe terrorists, sweet-tart. Obviously, they’ve joined fucking forces with the Wobblies—just like you warned us they might back at CorpHQ. Remember?”
“Yes...” Brand’s talking to herself, “...that would be their next obvious move.”
“No damn kidding. And while for some mindfuck reason the big bossman doesn’t seem to be giving much of a shit about these developments, I can tell you for a damn fact that Wells and Fargo sure as hell give a shit about what’s going on out here. They’re both hopping mad and ready to hop down my throat.”
“What do you need me to do?” Brand asks as professionally and as earnestly as she can under these digiland circumstances.
Dockers sits down on the relaxer next to Brand’s feet. He reaches out and fondles the huge digital breasts, more experimentally than ardently.
“For starters,” he says, “stop dicking around in here safe in your own little personal paradise. I hate to be the one to break the newsbig to you, darling, but your little ad campaigns aren’t accomplishing squatdoodle out there in the real world. In fact, shit’s getting worse.”
“What do you mean?” Brand asks in a sober tone—but is helpless to put a stop to his ironic virtual molestation. All she can do is ignore him. “What else has happened?”
“Nice of you to ask. This breaking news just in, Bahama Mama. The fucking Wobblies have overrun Anderson Ranch Dam and Arrowrock Dam. A coordinated attack, no less. Carried out in the late afternoon—in broad fucking daylight. They took both installations like my Damguard wasn’t even there.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means that not only have the Wobblies suddenly gotten a lot smarter, they’re also getting a lot stronger. In numbers. In tactics. In damn firepower. Sweetmeat,” Dockers abruptly drops her boobs, “I’ve got reports coming in of deserter CorpTroops fighting with the Wobblies now. Yanking CorpTroops, darling.” He stands and moves toward the door to leave the island. “Now, CorpHQ hasn’t caught wind of these latest developments yet. But they will, soon enough. And when they do, Doc, trust me when I say that they’ll go fucking ballistic. Absolutely toto ballistic. Yanking Fargo and Wells for sure, but probably the big bossman, too. How can he not? This shit is getting way out of hand.”
“I understand,” says Brand, trying to sound dependable.
Dockers stops, turns to look her in the sapphire eyes. “Do you, honeypot? I sure fucking hope so. Would you mind, then, putting some kind of serious-ass propaganda out there for a change? The kind that might actually do some fucking good? Just because the big bossman wants to go all artsy-fartsy on this one, I don’t want to end up with my butt in a sling.”
As soon as the megmayor leaves, Brand vanishes her atoll. She looks out the thick, sloping Pyramid window of her workquarters. That awful IMS sun finally has disappeared below the horizon. Quickly, she changes into her unispandex and laces up her Nike Ultaletes. Time to train, at last. She’s been more than a little frustrated with BoiCity as a meg. Not only is it small and culturally blighted—not a top bistro to be found and less than nothing in the way of live theater—but it’s only a demicircle because of the mountains. That means the half-moon shape of its Gater District seriously curtails her ultrarunning. When you’re out for a fifty-to-sixty kilometer trainer, you don’t want to be backtracking all the time, seeing the same scenery. Of course, Brand dares not run in the Parks. She avoids even getting up too close to the wall, if she can help it. Fortunately, what’s called the Brown Belt runs through the District, following the river. It’s pleasant enough, as repetitious running routes go, although recently, for reasons she doesn’t really understand, the water in the river has gone inexplicably low. The mud that’s been exposed reeks, even after the sun bakes it dry. But Brand doesn’t have a choice. She uses ultrarunning to clear her head, to map her conceptions. This evening, though, even with the first ten-k under her belt, nothing starts to conceive. Not an inkling. She keeps rewinding her past few weeks of failure, thinking if she can pinpoint where she’s blundered, she’ll locate where to start new. Brand has found that the ads she’s struggling to counterpitch are every bit as maxevasive as the slice that feeds them.
She began the account with what she anticipated would be a knockout punch—biggov. A standard, for sure, but it always rings the bell. In the spirit of retro, she revived an antique hobbyhorse. Tax Freedom Day. “You remember, folks, in the bad old days when you worked one-third, one-half, two-thirds of the year just to pay off your bigtaxes, leaving you and yours just nickels and dimes of your hard-earned DollArcs?” The visuals were choice. The music both heart-breaking and heart-warming. The voiceover folksy but not too syrupy. And flags. There were lots and lots of TexArc flags. It was well-made material. Everyone on staff thought so. They focus-grouped it. Got the nod. Fed it. Hoped. Looked for signs of tangible impact. Nothing.
Within hours, Uncle Wobbly counterpitched Brand’s counterpitch with a slant-ad of his own. Exploitation Freedom Hour. “You know, folks, that point in your workday—coming real early in your shift, as a matter of fact—when you’ve earned enough money to support you and yours, but how the rest of your day is spent earning money for that fat-ass, loafer bossman of yours?” That is: the Monopoly Man round as an elephant, feet up on his desk, puffing a big cigar. The parody overwhelmed the original and it was back to the drawing board.
Brand tried another standard—but the ass-kicker, one celebrated in account-planner circles as can’t miss: Bootstraps. Rugged TexArc Individualism. Don’t Tread On Me. Servs eat it up. Crats love for it to be served. Her angle was the parkport and shrewd savtrade. Her hero: the investor-pioneer. That freemarket Mountain Man undaunted by sizedowns and negtrends. That High Plains Drifter knowing it’s all part of the venture-cap long-game. “Our freemarket needs room to roam, partner. And I ain’t afraid to roam with it. Give me my bottomline in stockopts only. Wages is for libbywimps and whiners. I’ll quad my profit in no time flat with savvy markstrat. Don’t fence me in with employment!” Brand’s team produced an entire series of fast-paced, cut-scene pitches depicting the exciting world of daytrade and the insane bonanza awaiting the nimble and the ballsy. They capped it by producing several lengthy infopitches featuring rags-to-riches Servs who hit it bigtime in the daytrade. Not only did these risk-takers zero-out their credspending, but they were able to buy incredible luxury items: a custom-extended penicycle, indoor plumbing, a mobile on rubber tires. “The sky’s the limit! Go daytrader nation!” These Servs, of course, were Terd actors in heavy makedown. They couldn’t locate any actual rags-to-riches stories. But everyone’s heard of them. That’s just commonsense joe.
After a while, Uncle Wobbly countered again. But with just one devastating pitch. It showed Monopoly Men raining out of tall buildings, splattering hard on the sidewalks. As they lay in crumpled heaps with x’s for eyes, a scruffy dog with a hobo bandana tied around its neck walked calmly about lifting its leg to pee a fine stream on them all. While the dog went about its biz, a series of numbers ran across the bottom of the frame: ’29...’87...’00...’06...’08-11...’22...’26...’37...’42...’48...’54...’61...’72...’78. That is, just the really big crashes. The ones everybody knows about. At the end, Uncle Wobbly’s wistful face came into view. “Ah,” he smiled, “now them were the days.” Any modest gains in the opinion polls her bootstraps ads had generated were wiped out in an instant.
Growing desperate, Brand resorted to her least favorite ad stratagem—jingofrenzy. The oldest saying in the account-planner game is “It’s never too late to turn up the hate.” With nothing else sticking and CorpHQ impatient for results, Brand’s hand was forced. Jingo it must be. Of course, several members of her staff had wanted to run with jingo from the start. They’d advocated all along fabricating the standard schlock: swarthy ragheads raping blond girls, greasy outlanders gunning down grandma. The usual fare that always scored points. But even when doing jingo, Brand prefers tugging on the TexArcan heartstrings rather than wrenching the TexArcan gut. So she devised a dramatic miniseries of five ads, five minutes apiece, celebrating and lionizing the Corp Founding Principles: PA. With soft-focus lens and uplifting background strings, she told five stories of intrepid corpagents ensnaring enemy combatants just in the nick of time to preempt a terrorstrike. At the end of each episode, after each triumph of Total Information Awareness, we see grateful Servs in the streets bowing their heads and reverently declaring: “PA!” The pitch won every top academic award that year. It was lauded as inspirational, groundbreaking, taking the genre of ServFeed to new emotional and intellectual heights. With this gratifying recognition from her peers, Brand had started to hope that she’d finally hit the mark. Beeper studies, fixed camera analysis, and shadowing all looked to confirm her hopes. Reactions were altogether positive. The BoiCity Parkers were buying it.
Then came Uncle Wobbly’s counter—a long and detailed burlesque filled with slapstick and scatological humor. At its finale was also a street crowded with Servs. But this time, as one people, they drop their workpants, bend over to point their bare bottoms at the sky, and fart out: “PHHHHA!” After that, Brand’s pitch never stood a chance. It zeroed-out in post-counter focus groups. Abjectly zeroed-out—like it never existed. If patriactor fails to sentimentalize, if corpatriotism won’t hunt, what in the hell is left to try?
Lost in her thoughts, Brand’s warm-down becomes extra-long. The path along the riverside is paved and well-lit. The air is still quite warm from the day. She finds herself walking and walking, avoiding going back to her workquarters where she knows she’ll face more defeat, draw more blanks about what her next move should be. She’s dripping sweat and smelling of ammonia. She sucks down the last bottle of Ultaide off her carrier belt. The heavy District traffic roars dully nearby on T-184. Finally, reluctantly, she turns around to start the long saunter back southeast towards Julia Davis Park. There, she’ll turn northeast on Pyramid Boulevard and follow that to Pyramid Park. There’s no avoiding it. She’ll stretch in her rooms, get something to eat, call her staff together, and get back to work. On what, she can’t conceive at the moment. She’s worse than totoblank.
At the bottom of 14th Street, well off the Brown Belt pathway and down by the river in that awful-smelling mud, Brand spots someone stooped over. It’s a maintenance Serv. He looks to be clearing debris from the mouth of an overlarge discharge pipe. The pipe itself, in fact, is gigantic. Plenty wide enough for someone, slightly hunkered, to walk up into. For some reason, Brand decides to leave the path and pick her way down toward the Serv. Even as she goes, she’s telling herself to turn back. To her relief, she soon sees that he’s quite frail with age, probably in his late forties, and thus harmless. They don’t often let the young bucks do demesne work in the District. Just on big projects, and then never at night.
“Hello, there!” Brand calls out, hoping to sound friendly.
The Serv stops his work and turns to look up at her. He’s holding a thick piece of driftwood in one hand and some kind of furry drowned animal in the other. He tosses these items out into the flow of the river before answering.
“Howdy!” he shouts back, a bit too loudly, like he’s hard of hearing.
Brand approaches a little more, as near as she can come without getting her trainers in the mud. She’s near enough to see the Serv’s hollow cheeks and his gray stubble, to watch the glistening dance of the glassy in his eyes.
“Can I ask you something?” she says, again hoping to sound friendly, non-imperious. Her tone is actually that of speaking kindly to a stray dog.
The Serv doesn’t answer or move. Brand’s not sure he heard her. After a few moments, she’s not sure if he even knows she’s there anymore. He’s looking right at her, but behind the glittering of his eyes she can’t be certain he’s still registering her. Servs can get easily distracted like that. She’s witnessed it often in her focus groups, from behind the bulletproof viewmirror. She notices how the old man’s breathing comes heavy and irregular, maybe from his task, maybe from disease. Brand can’t help thinking that the new unpleasant odor she’s smelling is probably his Servstink, added to the putrid stench of the mud. She decides to try again.
“I’m trying to figure something out, and I was wondering if you could help me?” Once more, no response. Just standing there staring at her. She’ll press on. “I want to ask you a question—a big question. Is that okay?” Still nothing. “Okay. Well, here goes anyway. If you could have anything you wanted, anything at all, no matter what and no matter how unlikely, what would that be?” Brand pauses hopefully, thinking maybe the novelty of her question will shake something loose. Some moments later she elaborates. “I’m talking outrageous now. Anything,” she emphasizes. More silence on the fetid riverbank. She’ll summarize, then give up. “What, out of anything at all in the whole wide world, would you want? The sky’s the limit.”
Brand wonders what in the world, for a Serv, that might even be. Freedom? Opportunity? Education? A trillion DollArcs? She imagines he’s thinking it over. He still hasn’t moved since returning her greeting. His boots and his coveralls are caked thick with mud. His mouth gapes from what might be surprise—or an over-occupied field of vision. Just as Brand gives up and turns to go, the Serv grins, showing mainly gums at her, and shouts abruptly in a phlegmy voice.
“A cold Oly and a hot sweetpuss!”
His gurgling cackles dog her slow steps back to the pathway. On her solitary walk back to Center District, they stick in the craw of her memory. Beer and Babes. She should have known. What else did she expect? It’s the oldest law of the pitch: you get out what you simulate in. What an idiot she was even to ask—
Then it hits her. Absolutely hits her. So much so that Brand stops in her tracks and does what she never does. She talks out loud to herself.
“Audience. You stupid fucking dykebitch. Audience. You’re pitching the wrong one.”
**********
It’s past ten and Jjill is still cleaning up. Tonight makes eight late nights in a row. Eight. In a yanking row. She knows the Latin root of gradstudent is shitwork. But even this is pushing it. She knows her advisor is bigtime as they come and that this account assignment is more than doublechoice. But this time her mentor has lost it. Shit-ass fucking lost it. This meg has turned into a pitch black hole.
How many focus groups can you run, productively, in one day? Her advisor suddenly seems to think that number is seven. Seven in one fucking day. And for—gosh, let’s count—eight goddamn days straight. That’s fifty-six foci in a row. And she’s alternating groups of Terds and Servs. What the fuck for? Why focus Terds at all? You know how they’re going to sample. And she’s giving realfood to the Servs. Why waste calzone on the walking dead? Jesus, Servs give Jjill the frissons. Their epic pong. That iband soldered right across their scalps. Ugh.
“When you’re finished over there,” Doctor Eb calls to her from across the session room, “we’ve still got some exit numbers to crunch.”
Jjill answers with her best plaintive whine. A melodrama of beleaguered gradstudenthood with just a touch of flirt thrown in for good measure. “Awww, E. B. Come on. Can’t the numbers wait until morning to be crunched?”
“In the morning you’ll have an appalling hangover.”
“Exactly my point, Doc.”
She watches his cute assistant prof smile crack against his will. He was a gradstudent not too long ago. He remembers the drudge.
“You frame a strong argument. What’s on tap for tonight?”
“Consent Tent Night at ClubSpud, over on West Bannock and North 16th. Check your inhibitions at the flap, slip into their complimentary bodycondom, and shank the night away.” She flashes him her flirtiest grin, letting him conclude whether she’s serious or not. “Care to join me?”
“As appealing as drunken frenzy and victimless sex always is,” Eb smiles back, “thank you, no. We really do have a lot of data tonight, but I’ll sift it out. You go ahead.”
Jjill doesn’t need inviting twice. She drops what she’s doing and hurries across the room to gather her things. Before she goes, out of a wisp of guilt, she peeks over Doc Eb’s shoulder at all the figures.
“Mm, lots of numbers. Can’t deny that. But I bet you can’t tell me what we’re looking for.”
Eb sighs and lowers his thinscreen, and his voice. “So you’ve noticed, huh?”
“E. B.,” Jjill pats his shoulder, “everyone’s noticed. She’s getting her ass kicked.”
“Well...”
Eb’s voice trails away. He knows better than to negspeak about the tenured—and not to a gradstudent who may or may not have just propositioned him. Jjill sweeps the lank green hair out of her eyes and decides to press the issue a trace.
“But she really doesn’t know where we’re going anymore, does she? How else do you explain these ultramarathon focus groups? The contrary narratee groups? Holding sessions outside the Pyramid? Her actually rubbing elbows with these crusty fucks? That’s all quasi, Doc.”
Eb clears his throat and lowers his voice even further. “It does seem...out of character. Yes. I’ll grant you that.”
“What bumfuzzles me most, Doc, is that she’s sampling Terds. Why pitch the sold? And those prototypes she’s feeding the Servs? Those ads are way overdetermined. They’re filmic, for fuck’s sake. They overstim the Serv feed times ten. No way Servs can take in that much information.”
“God, I know. And I’ve told her as much. But she seems to be working in her own little world at the moment. Just like that digiland island she’s in all the time.” Eb looks about then leans closer. “Honestly, no one on staff knows what’s up. But what the hell can we do? She’s Chair.”
“She’s lost it, Doc. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Like this new slogan she’s obsessed with. ‘Whatever Is, Is Right.’ What the fuck’s that all about? Servs don’t have a prayer of getting that one. And besides, our job is just to point the dumbfucks in the right direction. Why bother trying to persuade those turbo-charged fart-factories of anything?”
“I know,” Eb can only nod lamely, “I know.”
“And it’s even worse if she thinks she’s pitching Terds with this new catchphrase. Why rub in inevitability? Terds already know what’s right. Better the Servs than us—right? We’re fine with their plight. Just keep diverting us with flash showbiz and juicy overconsumption—anything to brighten our day—and we’re all good. Am I right? Isn’t that one lesson that we’ve grasped pretty damn well?” Playfully, Jjill pats Eb’s cheek three or four times, just to confuse him further about whether she’s seriously flirting with him or not. “No, Doc. Believe me. She’s lost it, all right. Must be the fucking altitude out here in post-neo-naziland. It’s fried her board.”
“Still...” Eb shakes his head, “I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve seen her get like this before when she goes cutting edge. She might be building up to something really fringe.”
“Well, all I can say is I hope she gets there soon.” Jjill kisses Doctor Eb sweetly on that cheek she was patting. “Like before all of our careers flush. Right now we’re one big gayboy joke to these cowboy Crats out here.”
Brand bustles in from the adjacent screening room, searching for something. Eb and Jjill freeze, as though caught red-handed. Instead of noticing them straight away, though, Brand continues her preoccupied search for several moments before jumping when she finally sees them.
“Oh my God!” she all but screams, slapping her hand to her chest. “Are...are you two still here?”
In an overly normal voice, Eb explains, “We were just checking over the last showing numbers, Doctor Brand.”
Brand is too twitchy to pick up on his peculiar tone.
“Jesus. Yes. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” Brand manages a deep breath. “Sorry, you two. I thought everyone had left hours ago. Give those to me and you both take off. Escape. Go!” She hurries over to be handed the thinscreen. “Doctor Eb, I’m sure you’ve got an article you should be polishing. And Jjill—well, I bet you’re any number of vodka shots behind for the evening. You’d better get out there and catch up.”
“You got that right, Doc B.”
“Go forth and don’t multiply. You have my blessings.”
Once her colleagues are gone, Brand sits in the session room staring at the day’s results. Once again, she has no idea what to make of them. For the first time in her career, she’s not looking for something. She’s looking for something to look for. There’s a huge difference. One she’s underestimated. Before now, Brand has only ever Reconstructed—altered existing discourse in order to enhance ideology previously feedmastered in by her predecessors. Construction is wholly dissimilar. What do you hook, for example? Something inborn in an audience? What in the hell might that even be? Or do you enrich differently—somehow—the doctrines already installed? That approach strikes Brand as too rote, too Reconstructive. She doubts her message will punch and stick with the jolt she needs it to. And that’s the crux of her quandary. Yes, she wants to amp beliefs that are TexArc commonsense joe—but no, she doesn’t want to stream any pitch typical of the highmodern freemarket drone. Their own research shows that the brain shelf-life of messaging diminishes rapidly with reiteration and familiarity. That’s why Yale Reconstructs relentlessly. That makes Brand’s challenge, then, more than a little mindfuck: she needs to break through her own clutter.
The Serv numbers in this hunt, of course, don’t matter. Brand continues to sample them as a ruse. A way to keep Dockers off her back and, in case they’re watching, the Wobblies off her trail. The Servs are simply a smokescreen. What’s taken Brand off guard, though, is her discovery that these people aren’t as simpleminded as she’d always assumed. Nor are they quite so pitiable. In the controlled settings of test groups—and equipped with nostril plugs—Brand finds she enjoys the company of their unique perspective on the world. Time spent with them is most instructive. The least she can do is provide them some actual food in return, give them an hour or two of downtime. That strikes her as a nice thing of her to do. Of course, then, the numbers that vex her are those of the Terds. Their samplings are scrambled. Contradictory. She’s never sure what to make of them. And because Brand pretends to test them only as a control group, she can’t sample as many as she’d like. She’d like to have hundreds and hundreds more Terd responses to her trial pitches. That way she might actually get a bearing on her new target. Her real audience. For Brand pursues things unattempted yet in pitch or Simulacrum. She seeks to deepen, anew, convictions already planted in-deep—fundamental—into the TexArc Terd. Convictions she’s convinced she needs to plant in-deeper. Even more foundational. But how? How to make the same-old distinct? How, out of the blue, to deliver something that seems a brand new Dmega doublechoice? How to create what’s already held dear—what’s already been crafted dear by way of incessant affective computing and deep emotional shaping—concepts that become the neoteric standard of Terd commonsense joe? This is Brand’s impasse.
The pressure changes in the room. Someone’s come back in. Probably Eb. He’s a worrier. That’s why he’ll go far as a pedanterd. Brand calls out without looking up from the thinscreen, “I thought I told you to escape! To go home!”
There’s no answer for a long time. Then she hears a strange woman’s voice, one with an accent that’s more than strange. An accent that Brand has never heard before, has never been able to imagine before.
“Would that I could.”
Brand looks to the entranceway. Two figures have entered the session room. Both wear the tattered ponchos of Servs. But neither moves like a Serv, postures like a Serv. They’re too steady on their feet. Too sure of themselves. The nearest figure lowers its hood. The no-nonsense face of a young, dark-haired woman emerges. Her eyes are opal in the muted ceiling lighting. Brand sets aside her thinscreen. She’s not going to be needing these useless numbers anymore.
“Can I help you?” she asks, standing up.
“Is there anybody else here?”
The lilt of the woman’s voice is charming. Captivating. Somehow magisterial. Brand immediately wishes she could use it in her new pitches.
“No,” Brand answers. The figure that’s still hooded goes into the screening room to see for itself. “Are you looking for someone in particular?”
“No,” answers the woman. “We’ve found her right enough.”
Right enough. What an amazing phrase. The other returns, shaking its hood.
“Are you Wobblies?” asks Brand.
“After a fashion.”
Brand needs a moment to decipher this expression. “Are you two from EVe, then?”
The woman doesn’t answer right away. Instead, she has a good look at Brand, up and down. The nervy body painting. All the jewelry adornments. The hued sprout of hair. The sex-toy costume.
“At your service.” There’s contempt in the voice. “And am I to presume that you are some manner of Lunar Princess?”
Brand glances down at herself, genuinely amused by the observation. “So it’s true,” she says.
After a long moment, “What’s true?”
“You’re not ragheads. You’re blood-in-the-face. Like us.”
“Like ‘us’?” The woman’s astonishment turns to sour smile. “Oh, you great, stupid wanker.”
Brand knows that GaterPol will come bursting in at any moment to drag these two away. Once Dockers gets hold of them, she doubts she’ll ever see them alive again. Best pump them for all the cultural information she can. If she’s soon to be pitching EVe, she’ll need it.
“My name’s Brand,” she offers. “And you are?”
The woman looks to her partner. The partner shakes its hood no, but the woman shrugs it off. “Mall,” she answers.
“Mall,” Brand repeats. “It’s my pleasure.”
“To be sure.”
Ironic? Polite? Both? Brand is loving this Mall person.
“And what do you do in EVe, Mall? What’s your job? Libby spy? Military assassin? Terrorist mastermind? Or does everyone just freeload off of government handouts over there in your entitlement society?”
“My job?” Mall ignores the twaddle to scoff at the term. “My avocation, if you must know, is with the Signification Committee. Old England.”
“Signification as in semiotics?” Brand clarifies, even more intrigued. “As in signifier/signified?”
Mall nods.
“Holy shit. That’s nothing short of amazing, Mall. Is that an academic position over there?”
“It is and it isn’t. Like yourself, we’re practically oriented.”
“How very fascinating. And your degree work?”
“CultRhet.”
“Cultural Rhetoric?” Brand ventures.
“Very good.”
“At?”
At first Mall doesn’t understand the question. Then it dawns the woman is sniffing for academic pedigree. “Oxford,” she tells her. With that trace of name pride. “You’ve heard of it?”
Brand’s eyes widen. “My God, yes.” Even in TexArc the ancient university is known. “But I thought it was a myth.”
“No. We are quite real. And doing nicely.”
“Should I be addressing you as Doctor Mall, then?”
“You should not.”
“I am speaking to the creator of Uncle Wobbly, though. Am I not? Not just some feed lackey they sent over here to tend the stream.”
Once more Mall looks to her partner first before replying. The hooded figure just stares back, unmoving—knowing Mall wouldn’t heed its warning anyway.
“Too right you are.”
Again, untangling meaning takes Brand some moments.
“He’s too good,” Brand concedes. “No matter what I try,” she lies, “I can’t break back in. You’ve taken over my audience.”
“You mean your drooling pawns.”
“The ladder is there for anyone to climb. We operate on competition and choice in TexArc. On making our way. The freemarket is a medium of pure consent, Mall. Of supply-and-demand treating everyone as free and equal and rational agents.”
“My arse. You run a right proper robber barony here, Doctor Brand.”
“I realize how it would be difficult for you to cognize, Mall, but within Corpfeud our bizmen are our public servants. Our heroes. Crats take all the risks. They create all the jobs. Their constant venture is to better serve the customer. Hence they deserve the greater reward. Besides, Servs benefit immensely from this entrepreneurial leadership.”
From the hood of the other figure comes the most startling fart sound. Long and derisive. Mall cannot contain her smirk.
“And you Terds, I suppose, just grease these noble entrepreneurial wheels out of the kindness of your hearts?”
Brand is not accustomed to her lectures being jeered. Especially not her best set piece. She tries to rally. “And I suppose, in Libby Land, you have it all figured out? Hot and cold running milk and honey?”
“Not with you lot hovering over us. Nor does Shangri-La exist. As someone once told me, comfort’s in heaven, Doctor Brand, and we are on the earth. But I will say this. Sod liberal. In EVe, we’re not afraid really to compete. To be socialist. We take care of everyone. We educate everyone. Everyone gets a reasonably evenhanded chance. It’s an enormous bloody nuisance, to be sure. But the alternative is frankly too shameful to contemplate. The primitivism of your exploitation is undeniably powerful. I grant you that. But it’s hardly the responsible way of doing things.”
“Auch nicht menschlich,” adds the cowl.
Brand visibly flinches at these additional strange and abject sounds.
“Also not human is bloody well right,” Mall agrees with her companion while maintaining her glower into Brand’s eyes. “I must say, Doctor, you TexArcan Terds are quite the conundrum to me. The advantaged powerless. How do you stand yourselves? You must be the stupidest educated mob in human history. And, mind you, that is no meager accomplishment.”
Brand is too preoccupied to absorb the full critique. Where in the fuck is GaterPol? They should have kicked down the door minutes ago.
“Die Zeit,” says the hood. Again Brand jumps at these guttural noises.
“Quite right,” nods Mall. “We’ve been messing about here long enough.”
Mall strolls over to the nearest sampling station. She presses the big orange button and looks down at the picture-questionnaire that pops onto the screen. She smiles to herself.
“At least you won’t have to pretend to be sampling Servs any longer.”
Brand stiffens. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes you do. I’ve snuck in several times to be part of your sampling sessions. Excellent calzone, by the way. Really tasty. Quite the godsend, I must say.”
“Then you’ll know I’m having no success breaking back into the BoiCity Serv feed. You’ve got the cocks and balls all locked up. All to yourselves.”
“Oh, you couldn’t get at the BoiCity Servs even if you were to break back into the cocks and balls. They’re not on your nasty feed any longer.”
“What do you mean? That’s...that’s not possible.”
“Not only possible, but factual, Doctor Brand. You see, we’re manufacturing masses of little caps that obstruct your signal. All the Servs are wearing them these days. Plus we’re now signaling a wave of our own. WobblyNet. It has replaced your odious ArcNet. For the past several weeks, in fact, WobblyNet has been signaling strong in the wilderness area. Recently we’ve expanded into most of the BoiCity Parks. Very soon every Serv in the area will be aligned in.”
“WobblyNet?” Brand asks, astonished by this techpertise.
“Quite.”
“But how did you manage to stream-isolate our Servs?”
“How can that matter, Doctor Brand? You’re no longer pitching to your Servs. Are you?”
It’s at this moment that Brand’s breath leaves her body. That suddenly her heart pounds in her ears. That she feels the threat.
“I don’t—”
“I’ve attended your sessions, Doctor. I know perfectly well what you’re up to—even if your own staff or the dimwitted Crats do not.”
“So I guess you’ve come to kill me?”
“Crikey, no. Nothing so melodramatic as that, Brand. We’re here to take you with us. What’s the old saying in TexArc: ‘If you can’t beat them, make them join you’? That’s what we’ve come to do. That is, if you’re quite finished stalling things until GaterPol arrives.”
Without thinking, Brand looks to the corner of the ceiling, where the microcams always are situated.
“That’s right,” says Mall. “We’ve disabled all of those. None of this is being vid or aud recorded. We’ve been perfectly by ourselves all this time.”
“Why would you possibly want to take me with you?”
“Because you’re a tip-top trendologist, Brand. I can thwart you. But I see now that I can’t beat you. Not in your home stream. Quite simply, I need you to join me in order to take the Wobbly message the next step.”
Mall approaches Brand. She places a kind hand on her skeletal shoulder. Brand recoils slightly, but then allows the touch. This woman is dangerously exotic to her. Outlander. Canny beyond the pale. Smelling of wood smoke and stale sweat. Saying things, thinking things, doing things that Brand never dares. Not under the Crats.
“I didn’t mean all those things I said before. About Corpfeud,” Brand says, looking at the floor.
“Let’s hope not.”
“I thought they were watching.”
“Indeed. Then you’ll come along?”
“Why? Specifically.”
Mall thinks this a fair question. “Your new advocacy project, of course. ‘The Best of All Possible Worlds.’ It’s brilliant. Too bloody brilliant. I can’t allow you to get it out to Terds.”
“It’s not brilliant at all. It’s not taking. I can’t get the core of it to stick.”
“That’s because you need to invert the message. Right now you’re constraining it to be negative. But everything about the ads inclines positive. The discourse. The figure. The ground. Those interactions are complex. Rich. They invite the viewer to think intricately, to feel empathetically. Yours are the filmic components of affirmative messaging. Good lord, if I didn’t know better, I’d say they were Clucasian inspired.”
Brand looks up.
“But they are. Exactly.”
“You know the films of Yeoman Clucas?”
“Of course I do. Everyone in the academy does. The question is, how do you know him? Over in EVe?”
“We’re not so provincial. And he happens to be my maternal grandfather.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Tragically serious. I never knew him. Never met him. Don’t know whatever became of him. He got caught up, apparently, in the troubles, you know.”
Brand assembles her words tactfully. “Yeoman Clucas was executed. Publically and with considerable fanfare. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that.”
Mall ruminates on this news a moment, finally saying, “My word.”
Brand waits, then asks in a brighter tone, “Your favorite?”
Mall smiles. “Imperfect Enjoyment, unavoidably. You?”
Brand nods, smiling back. “The same.”
“Die Zeit,” the hood reminds Mall, not urgently, but mindfully.
Mall nods once. She requests, “Can you please check the street?”
The hooded figure exits the room.
“You won’t be able to get me out of the Gater District,” Brand asserts. “Security is doubletight now. And I’m considered important.”
“No need to worry,” replies Mall. “We have our own way in and out of the District. And the authorities don’t seem concerned enough to check on you very frequently, now, do they?”
Brand turns around, disengaging Mall’s hand from her shoulder. On her wispy, now trembling legs she makes her way to the back of the session room, as far away from the door as possible. There she puts her back against the wall and slumps down to the floor. She pulls her bony knees up tight against her bony chest. She hides her oval face behind her pixie hands.
“Don’t make me go,” she says timidly. “Please. I’ve never been outside of a Gater District. I don’t want to be raped and beheaded on WobblyNet.”
Mall walks the length of the room softly to crouch down in front of Brand. She speaks calmingly to her.
“Nonsense. None of that will happen to you. And, believe me, breathing some fresh mountain air will do you a world of good. Come see.”
Fat tears roll to pool on Brand’s sharp chin, then plop onto her lean upper thighs. “You may not want to kill me. But the Servs will. The Wobbly Servs have been slaughtering TechTerds out in the wilderness area. Don’t think I don’t know that.”
“My darling Brand, Servs and Terds have been slaughtering one another with equal ferocity out in the wilderness area. That’s why I want to bring you along with us. To put a stop to that very thing. Isn’t that right, Cardinal?”
Brand drops her hands instantly to peer warily over Mall’s shoulder. The hooded figure has returned. Its hood pushed back. There’s a woman’s face now. Marked with horrible, healing bruises. Otherwise all freckles. And half of her hair, from the roots out, is chocolate brown. The rest hangs to her shoulders as an eccentric copper-purple hue. This creature glares at Brand while answering Mall.
“Ja. Einfach so,” she says. The eccentric talk requires odd jaw movements that reveal a mouthful of misaligned teeth. Brand shudders at this spectacle.
“Leave me inside the District,” she begs. “I’ll be more use to you here. I can throw them off your trail. Mask your slice. Counterpitch my own pitches if you like. Whatever you need.” Brand warms to her sell. “There are plenty of Terds like me in TexArc. Closet libbies. Fed up with the Crats. We just have to act companyman. No one with any brainpower buys all the bullshit corp throws out. We just have no way to fight back.”
“I’m offering you a way.”
“But I’ll get snapped in half out there. Just look at me. You said so yourself. I’m a fucking Lunar Princess.”
“You’re a runner, Brand. I’ve watched you. That means you’ve great resilience and reserves. You’ll do fine. I know you will, because I did. And you will not be alone. We will protect you. Cardinal, here, will protect you. Believe me, she will and she can.”
“Nothing happen you,” comes harsh reassurance from across the session room.
Brand buries her face back into her hands. “Bullshit.” She begins to sob. “You’re just taking hostages.”
Mall looks over her shoulder to Cardinal. Cardinal shakes her head grimly. Mall doesn’t want to shoot this woman where she cowers. She has minutes to turn the outcome otherwise.
“Brand, my darling.” Mall sets a gentle hand on each of Brand’s kneecaps. “Here is the God’s honest truth. No bullshit. The Wobbly cause soon will die if I cannot create solidarity between Serv and Terd. It’s as simple as that, and you know it’s true. That’s precisely why you abandoned pitching to Servs. Why now you are crafting pitches to Terds that will deepen their already profound antipathy toward Servs. You’re working to prevent any solidarity from forming between the educated and the laboring classes. And quite rightly so. You recognize that such a union poses the only serious threat to the Crat regime. Clearly, you have studied your history. Were I in your place, Brand, I would be working feverishly to accomplish the same. Therefore, at present, my darling, you and I are at cross-purposes. You see that, of course.”
Mall reaches up to coax Brand’s hands off her face. The result is their holding hands, meeting eyes.
“But here’s the thing, Brand. I’ve no interest in taking you hostage. I haven’t the wherewithal to maintain you as one out there, and I doubt very much that the Crats will regard you as a bargaining chip for anything at all. Don’t tell me that you believe those of the Pyramid hold your life at any value whatever.”
Nearly inaudibly, Brand admits, “No. I don’t.”
“Good. So we understand one another so far. But listen carefully to me now, Brand. Neither do I want to kill you. Quite the opposite. I want to collaborate with you. Or, more correctly, I need you to collaborate with me. You see, Brand, I require your help. And in two distinct ways. One is technological. We can tap into the Terd feed to see what’s streaming there. But we find it impossible to slice anything into that feed. It’s too complex. Too well guarded. Something unusual is taking place there that we just can’t crack. Without your specialized guidance, we’ll never be able to upload any materials to shift Terd attitudes. But you possess this technical fluency.”
“If I show you how to gain access into the Terd stream,” Brand clenches Mall’s hands, “ArcNet will kill me.”
“I know. They’ve been after me for some time now.”
Brand explores Mall’s eyes. She finds only candor.
“What’s the other way you need my help?”
“Cultural. But this matter is a bit more mutual. You and I pitch the Terds together. As I said before, inverting the message.”
“What do you mean?”
“The businessman-hero you’ve created as the centerpiece of your ads. He’s brilliant. Kindly, grandfatherly, wise. But you have him advocating exactly the wrong macro-principles for the gut-response you’re triggering.”
“No I’m not.”
“Come now, Brand. He spouts the cupidity of mammonism after fostering the mutuality of communitarianism. That’s why the core of your pitch is not taking. Because it’s rotten. It makes no emotional or rational sense. In a word, Brand, it’s Crat bullshit. And you know that it is.” Brand’s Moment by Moment mood makeup flushes hot pink. “Together, you and I can turn your ads—and, with hope, some Terds—to the Wobbly cause.”
Skeptically: “How?”
“A two-part advocacy trap. We continue to lead your viewers down the familiar garden path of self-interest, as you’ve already begun. Then we spring a dramatic reversal. We have your businessman turn, without warning, humane. We make camaraderie, of a sudden, the core appeal. Your viewers will be well primed for the volte-face. You’ll see. After all, you have them halfway there right now. Don’t you?”
Guardedly: “What are you talking about?”
“We’re tapped into the Terd steam, Brand. I’ve just told you that. We’ve been watching your new pitches feed to the BoiCity Gater District for some time. They seem to be having an impact.” Brand betrays no reaction. Mall goes on. “We’ve been interested to see, as well, your streaming them down to Mountain Home ArcAir Base.” Brand’s silence now becomes stern. “Tell me, why have you been test-feeding your pitches at that particular facility, Brand?”
Awkward moments of indecision follow. At last: “I was told to. That Base is crucial.”
“Oh, indeed it is.”
“Jetzt oder nie,” Cardinal notifies Mall.
Mall stands. Offers to pull Brand up off the floor with her.
“Do I have a choice?” Brand asks.
“Yes,” answers Mall. “Between two bad alternatives. But one is decidedly worse than the other.”
Brand takes the hand up. She grabs her coat and some few other things that Cardinal will permit her. As the three exit the session room, she remarks nervously to Mall, “I guess this means I’ve mustered the courage to stop serving the plutocracy. That I’m a libby now.”
Mall laughs. “Indeed, it might. We shall see. But there is one thing you must simply unlearn.”
“What’s that?”
“Liberal, in fact, is part of sodding Conservative. It’s just bloody splitting the summit.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“I’m aware that you don’t. But you will. And awfully soon. After two, maybe three days at most out in our wilderness area.”
