An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (39 page)

“It’s the ‘more’
that’s
being
object
ed
to, sir
.
Your hiring of the bounty hunters to go after Mr. Sammis
might’ve
interfered with an ongoing corporate operation, had it not
been
caught in time
.
I personally removed all four of your hirelings
.”
Mitch started almost imperceptibly
.
“Ah, there are more
.
How many more did you hire, sir
?”
Marks took only half a step forward
.

“One
.
Only one more.”

“Excellent
.”
Marks didn’t have an orgasm
,
but a smile crossed his face
nonetheless
.
“Now
,
you can dictate your resignation while I watch
.
Then you will
simply
disappear
.
I suggest you remain off the net for the rest of your life
.
If you ever show up, one of us will pay you a visit
…
of
‘
that kind
,
’
sir.”

* * *
 

The group sprawled around a red and white checked linen
cloth spread
beneath one of the trees in an idyllic park
.
They carried a picnic basket and munched on fried chicken, even if the real chicken content of their dish equaled zero
.
As everywhere, protein contents were substituted
interchangeabl
y
.
Since
very
few
foodstuffs still grew on
E
arth
,
and chickens
never really
took to space travel, they were
o
n the endangered species list
.

A gentle breeze brought the briny smell of a nearby simulated ocean
.

“I always wanted to spend the afternoon in here but couldn’t afford it,” Tony said as he leaned back against the trunk of the tree.

“This seems obscene,” Suet said clearly
.

“It does seem out of place,” Sonya offered quietly from her typical lotus position.

“I know,” Tony offered, “but the best place to hide is in plain sight
—
purloined letter style.”

“It still seems as if
we’re
inviting the enemy to our meetings,” Andrew shuddered, looking at the huge
Nanogate
sign hanging on the side of the building that enclosed the wooded acreage.

“Don’t worry
.
Our cover as the Beaverton Bomber Bowling League went over perfectly
.
Many of the bowling leagues have buy-ins just for this kind of thing after the
season’s
over.”

“But the
DNA
scanners we submitted to?”

“We
be nab’
on
th
e way ou’
…”

“Not going to happen,” Augustine interrupted
.
“With the information Tony supplied about the security on the low
-
risk areas
,
I easily rode into
Nanogate
’s files and switched all our
DNA
profiles with those of some
midlevel
functionaries in other companies.”

“Yeah, I can just imagine the visits
they’ll
receive when this finally unravels, all thanks to our local net jock
.”
Tony nodded at the elderly woman
, his friend
.
“And before you ask,
she’s
already masking our conversation
—
replacing it, actually, with bits and pieces of other groups
of visitors
amongst the trees.”

“What about eyes?”

“The floating surveillance is also being similarly redirected,” Augustine said in disgust
.
“You think I’m not thorough
?”
No one commented into her challenging stare.

“I think we can safely call this meeting to order,” Sonya said
.
“I
’d
like to congratulate Andrew, Jonah
,
and
Frances
for their rather spectacular destruction of the
Nanogate
factory in
Lusk
,
Wyoming
.”

“Grats!” several yelled boisterously
.

“Agreed
.
The planning and execution rivaled perfection itself,” Sonya said, adding to the praise
.
Frances
blushed while Andrew just got more solemn
.
“The results speak for themselves
.
Our recruitment of operatives and the monetary contributions from anonymous donors is at an
all
-
time high, even though Augustine’s
shrewd stock market moves
ha
ve
made the latter less important than ever
.
But even more
impressively
, despite the firm lid
Nanogate
put on all our deeds, their stock
has
plummeted to nearly all
-
time lows.”

“As good as this is,” Tony said in a prearranged tradeoff from Sonya, “it isn’t enough
.
We need more
.
We need to drive
Nanogate
into bankruptcy, but frankly I’m running out of targets
.
Does anyone have any that we’ve missed
?”

Augustine offered her opinion almost immediately.
“I’ve done thorough research on all of
Nanogate
’s properties, both those publicly disclosed and those that aren’t
.
There’s
some small off-planet facilities and a few distribution points we might target, but
that’s
about all
.
I might suggest we use the noobs on these targets
.
They’re
much higher risk
now that everyone
’
s alerted to our modus operandi.
”

“Good idea,” Tony jumped in. “I was afraid
Nanogate
might be too narrow of a target.”

“Too narrow
?
You
’
re the one that told us we needed to narrow our targets,” Linc said, sitting up from his semi-re
c
lined position leaning on one elbow.

“Yes, but many of these companies are linked, if
you’ll
pardon the pun
.
Other companies are funneling money to
Nanogate
to keep them afloat
.
We need to find these others and target them as well.”

Lin
c
said gruffly, “Want me to tail your cheating wife
—
fine
.
Want me to dig up the guy that stole your identity on the wire
—
fine
.
Want me to figure out how companies are interlinked
—
I’m lost.”

“Oh, don’t go being pessimistic, yet.”

“Check other companies’ stock prices against
Nanogate
’s for correlation over time,” Christine said in
her normally
empty tone
.
That she spoke
at all
kept the entirety of the group stunned and looking at her for several moments
.
Her eyes still held their near vacant expression
.
Tony
wondered what went on behind those eyes
, t
hen decided he didn’t
want to know
and
shuddered
visibly
.

“I have correlations,” Augustine said
.
Her surgical link provided nearly instantaneous access to data from the web
.
Her smile said it all
.
“
Nanogate
stock and the stock of seven, possibly as many as ten
,
other corps
fluctuat
e
as a single entity
, albeit one to two orders of magnitude out of phase
.”

“Gentlebeings, I would say that we have additional targets.”

* * *
 

Greysky scratched his left arm where flesh met synthetic as he leaned inconspicuously in the
steel
-
irised doorway of the ground level slum
.
In the eight years since he
had
voluntarily traded his meat limb for one of plastic and metal,
imbalances in the
nerve
-
to
-
circuit junctions made themselves known as an itching sensation
.
 

A
s a
freelance artist, Greysky had been doing private enforcement work for nearly ten years
.
That his PE license expired the previous year didn't matter
.
A license meant eight hundred credits a day, in the wrong direction
.

Over the top of his projected solido-paper he surreptitiously watched a tube hotel across the street
, i
ts g
arish pink neon sign at least
forty
years old
.

“Sleeping tubes disinfected daily,” crackled an almost incomprehensible electro-mechanical speaker
.
“A full
half
cubic meter more space than chain hotels
.”
Transient quarters all over the world were the same
.
Put your credit into the slot and slide into a
2.5
meter long by
1
meter wide cylinder for
twelve
hours of relative insulation from the outside world
.
This
particular
tube sleeper even accepted coins and paper bills
,
catering to those who didn't even have universal credit
.

Greysky snorted softly
.
He remembered having to resort, at one time in his life, to sleeping in one of those plastic coffins
—
and
that’s
what they usually were, too, coffins
.
People live there and die there
.
They never lift themselves above a grinding level of poverty and their only purpose is to be insignificant monetary bits in an immense
economic
machine
.
Greysky's
finances long ago warranted a
home
far from this place
.
He was the exception
.
But then he
wasn’t
here to sleep
—
he was here to deliver a message
.

Just as he started
reading
t
he story, “
Pope Vows to Increase
Heretic Deportations
,”
the intended recipient of his current employers' missive walk
ed
into the lobby of the sleep establishment
.
The blond hair, a rare trait these days, gave him away
.

Greysky
leaned farther into the doorway, striking a coffee stick on the wall next to him and tucking the business end into his mouth
.
Watching through his magnifying eye, his target put coins into tube 312 and climbed in
.
The tube end went opaque, making it time for Greysky to deliver.

He angled across the street diagonally, not pushing people out of the way but blending into the rest of the destitute throng
.
He put his head down and shuffled along, the bulk of his body and the tools of his trade hidden amongst the people and his
shin
-
length jacket
.
As the pink neon bathed him
,
he pounded on the end of 312
.