Emperor of Gondwanaland (49 page)

“It’s hard for me to imagine,” I confessed, “how you must have felt to reach such a pinnacle of success at so early an age.”

The Market’s coral lips left a smudge on her champagne flute. “A little frustrated, actually. There seemed to be no future goals for me to aspire to in my chosen field.”

“Which is why you offered yourself as the first human subject for the MIT-Caltech wetware implant.”

“Indeed. It was something no one else had ever done before. And it presented interesting, ah, possibilities.”

“Recovery from the operation was fairly swift, I know. You were out of the hospital within a month. But mastering the biological- cybernetic interface took a bit longer, I imagine.”

“Yes. It was a whole eight weeks before I felt confident in my abilities to surf cyberspace mentally. The operating system in the implant had a few glitches that I helped to fix.”

“But how did it come about that you began to focus exclusively on rationalizing the world’s financial markets?”

“Well, what could have been more natural? After all, my Ph.D. thesis concerned itself with maximizing marketplace efficiencies. At first I went into the digital representation of the market strictly as an observer. Even that experience was incredible. I learned so much about how the market actually functions on a quantum level. After a few of my suggestions for improvements in trading procedures were implemented manually with good results, I was allowed to start interacting directly through my wetware,”

“And a year after that—”

“A year after that, for all practical purposes, I was the Market.”

Dessert arrived, as well as an espresso for me and decaf for the Market. I watched her sip her coffee while I tried to compose my next question as delicately as I could. Finally, I decided just to be blunt.

“Weren’t you afraid to insert yourself into the center of a system that billions of people relied on for their economic survival? I mean, wouldn’t you say that your actions revealed quite a bit of arrogance and hubris?”

The unflappable Market merely smiled benevolently at me. “Not at all, Glen. You see, although the various interlocked markets that existed prior to my takeover were in their primitive way a wonderful creation—perhaps the most complex and efficient human system ever invented—they were still crude and buggy tools for putting capital to work. There was minimal coordination between many of the parts of the system, and very little correlation of data or player intentions. Why, just the fact that no one thought to extend the theory of mutual funds to other investment options was shocking! And then there was the problem of overt manipulation of the markets.”

“You’re talking about something like the scandals of the early years of the millennium. Or the DreamWorks Recession of 2012.”

“Exactly. Crooks and con men and unprincipled CEO’s were able to manipulate the market ruthlessly, inflating prices of worthless stocks and driving healthy companies out of business. Scams and insider-trading sucked the lifeblood out of the market, like parasites on a living being. Regulatory bodies like the SEC and the few artificially intelligent programs in place couldn’t catch more than a fraction of these schemes. And they certainly couldn’t help optimize the daily transaction flow. What was needed for optimal functioning of the marketplace was a single arbiter and facilitator, a judge and negotiator, a coordinator and enforcer. That role required a human mind trained in the subtlety of the market and in human motivations. A mind backed up by access to many additional teraflops of processing power. A unique mind belonging to a human who had no attachments or allegiances to any family or nation. And my mind was the only one that fit the bill. There was no arrogance or hubris involved. Just a recognition that I had found the one all-important task I was destined to perform.”

I reached for my PDA and shut off its recording function. I found myself somewhat shaken by our conversation. Perhaps finishing a whole bottle of wine on my own had contributed to my discomfort. The Market spoke from such an Olympian perspective that I felt buglike in comparison. But paradoxically, her erotic allure that I had been attempting to deny and ignore all evening had only swelled in power.

“Well, Adamina, thank you for being so forthcoming. I feel we’re off to a good start. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten, as we planned?”

“Certainly. The photo shoot should be fun.”

With an elegant demand for our attention, the waiter deftly slid the leather-jacketed bill onto the table. I reached for it, saying, “We’ll let the magazine take care of this.”

The gesture was foolish, but I made it anyway. By universal agreement, the Market was paid a salary pegged to the performance of her virtual counterpart and skimmed from every participating country. In sixteen months she had leapt onto the Forbes 1000, just below the guy who owned the patents to the tabletop sono-fusion power plant just going into production.

“Of course,” said the Market, “
Nuevo Vanity Fair
can well afford it.”

I shivered a bit, knowing that the Market’s words were not merely a perfunctory courtesy.

She was certainly accessing
NVF
’s balance sheets as we spoke.

The Market killed in a bikini.

The tiny scraps of fabric (displaying fragmented surface animations of their designer’s latest Paris runway show) revealed nearly all of the glorious body I had fantasized about at dinner last night. As the photographer—a short stocky fellow with longish blond hair and an annoying bark of a voice—directed the Market to assume various fairly demure showgirl poses, I had to turn away to hide my erection.

The shoot had started innocently enough, with the Market modeling various gowns and casual outfits. Adamina Smythe exhibited a natural grace and self-possession. She let the stylists and makeup techs interminably fuss around her without growing irritable or weary. She took direction from the photographer well, and didn’t wilt under the hot lights. Even granting that she had been at the center of incredible media attention during the past seventeen years, her performance was remarkable.

Only at one point did the Market call a halt to the proceedings. After blinking rapidly for several seconds, she said, “We need to stop now for a minute or so, please.”

Solicitous as a nursemaid, I rushed up to her side with a bottle of water. “Is everything all right? Are you getting tired? Do you have a headache?”

“No. It’s just that I’ve just been attacked by a really bad virus. I need to concentrate.”

The Market retreated to the dressing room, and everyone took a break for coffee or snacks or a smoke.

Despite the world’s growing widespread prosperity, a few international dissidents to the new order still skulked beneath the burnished woodwork, opposed to the Market for a variety of ideological reasons—the 1929-ers, the Anti-Souk League, the New Barterians, the Alan Greenspammers … With the reduction in importance of physical trading establishments like Wall Street and the London, Hong Kong, Moscow, Beijing, Rio, and Tokyo exchanges, these terrorists had fallen back on virtual attacks, attempting to disrupt the portions of cyberspace that the Market inhabited. Luckily, the Market’s bodily safety—like that of any other citizen—was guaranteed by the various Homeland Security organizations of whatever country she happened to be residing in, without resort to such obsolete safeguards as special squads of bodyguards.

Now, apparently, hidden hackers had launched one of their trademark virtual attacks.

I dithered nervously while the Market did whatever she had to do to combat this threat. I called my editor, Zulma Soares, to fill her in on my progress, and learned that she had allotted another five pages to my article, based on a recent poll of the Market’s popularity. Great. More pressure.

Eventually the Market reappeared, apparently unruffled by her brush with disaster. “The virus is safely partitioned now. My support staff are analyzing it to guard against any such future incursions. We can resume.”

Shortly after that, the Market made another trip to the dressing room, emerging in her bikini.

That was when I nearly lost it. Up till then, I had managed to keep my lust for the Market somewhat hidden and in check. Berating myself for unprofessionalism and idiotic, impossible daydreams, I left the room, determined to stay outside until my excitement grew less visible.

The physical evidence of my adolescent delusions had just vanished when the Market herself tapped me on the shoulder. She wore loose linen pants, a white blouse with three-quarter sleeves that flounced at their edges, and sandals. A straw hat sloped back atop her thick fall of unrestrained silvery hair.

“Glen, is everything okay?”

“Fine, fine, I just had to, uh, attend to a call of nature.”

“How did you think the photo session went?”

“Perfect. They’ll use one of the swimsuit shots on the cover, you know. Does that bother you?”

“Why should it?”

“You don’t mind exposing yourself like that to millions of strangers?”

“No, of course not. It’s just my body, after all. Everyone’s got one. But I really don’t understand people’s interest in such things. I’m already such an intimate part of their lives, it seems almost redundant for them to be fascinated by what I look like.”

“That—that is almost a nonhuman attitude.”

There it was. I had said one of the things that I had been holding back from saying. But there was no avoiding the topic now, so I pressed ahead in somewhat contentious adversarial-reporter mode.

“Do you feel truly human, Adamina, after all your modifications? Did you ever think that possibly you’re some sort of alien, planted among us?”

Completely unfazed, the Market just shrugged. “This is something I’ve thought about for a long time, Glen. But how would I know whether I feel human or not? I know what my interior life is like, but how do I decide whether my mental states are comparable to the human norm? How do any of us know we feel the same emotions others feel, or think the same way? It’s like seeing color. When I say something’s red, and you agree, are we really seeing the same color? You just can’t know. As for literally being an alien or some kind of spontaneous or engineered mutant, of course I’ve thought about the possibility. My strange origin after all might be a clever charade, a means of inserting me into human society for some nefarious purpose. But all I can tell you is that every medical test so far reveals me to be completely human. And I don’t have any hidden allegiances to the Tentacled Flesh Eaters from Mizar Five.”

The Market laughed, and I did, too, out of relief. “Okay, then, I’m glad that awkward bit’s out of the way. I wouldn’t have been much of a reporter if I didn’t ask, and I hope you’ll excuse my impertinence.”

“You’re excused. Now, it’s a beautiful day out there, and I haven’t been in New York in the past six months. Let’s walk around a little and then grab some lunch.”

Out on the sidewalk, I spontaneously offered the Market my hand. Her fingers grazed mine briefly, imparting a little friendly pressure before she withdrew them, but all my doubts about her humanity vanished.

Over the next several days I was not out of the Market’s company for more than the regular hours devoted to our separate sleeping. Much of our time together we spent in public places, and I was startled by the reactions of the average people who recognized her. That walk after the photo shoot had first introduced me to her adoring fans.

Every few feet we moved down the Manhattan sidewalks people stopped the Market, just to say hello or smile wordlessly or thank her or ask for her autograph. Men and women of all ages and classes responded equally to her, although of course among the males there was that extra component of slack-jawed sexual attraction. I found myself getting jealous of the guys, until I forced myself to remember that I had no particular claim on the Market’s attention.

Nor did any man.

People with children made a big point of explaining to their kids who the Market was and what she did and how she was responsible for all the good things this youngest generation enjoyed as unquestioned appurtenances of their privileged lives. The kids reacted with wide-eyed admiration and reverence.

After a while, I felt like I was second-in-command to the leader of some cult out for a stroll among the faithful. To witness any other person I had ever met as the focus of such adoration would have struck me as repugnant. I would have labeled the object of all this reverence—a CEO or famous politician, a Bollywood starlet or world-class scientist, religious leader or famed solar-sail racer—as an insufferable egotist, soaking up the ignorant worship of the masses. But something about the Market’s pristine demeanor negated any such harsh judgment. She was just so gracious and selfless, so transparent and goodhearted that the effusive praise did not bloat her, but instead seemed to pass through her. She was a two-way conduit for power from above and gratitude from below.

One evening I told her about all these thoughts, and she just smiled mysteriously and said, “Giving and receiving are just two sides of the same coin.”

Somehow this sentiment lost its triteness coming from the Market’s lips.

The Market and I continued our professional dialogue in any number of locations and circumstances. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the intricacies of the world’s economy. If I never heard the words “arbitrage,” “debenture,” “munis,” or “futures” again, it would be too soon. Truth to tell, the Market could be kind of a drone sometimes.