Virtually True (2 page)

“Never mind. It’s you we’ve come to discuss.”

“Who’ve you sold out to?”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll rephrase the Q.
Who do you work for now?”

“Can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t matter to you yet.”

But it does. True’s a journalist who’s shot off the data runway so many times he isn’t sure he ever left; smoked targets for scillions of bits of raw data, the lifeblood of his profession, and this helped him crack stories, spill news to an info-addicted world. More than once he became entangled in webs of information that took on a coherent shape only later, megabits of evidence that helped him uncover conspiracies, odd factoids here and there that were the springboard to a major epiphany, uncrunched numbers disproving statistics, a verbal slip, a gesture out of place, a break with habit that led to pay dirt. The trick is to keep pressing, suck up a crumb here or there until you can make sense of it.

Aslam’s eyes fall on a VR weapons game. A pudgy tourist in khaki is leading an assault, missiles and stealth planes cloaked invisible until firing. Out of the jungle a few weeks and already Aslam’s eyes are giving him away.

“So,” True says, “you’ve booted into a gig with a weapons contractor.”

Aslam’s eyebrows modulate. “Forget me. I’ve got something for you.”

“What? A scoop? You’ve left the insurgency and converted to Judaism? Now
that
would be a ratings star.”

“Just because you’re going to burn in hell doesn’t mean I will. No. A business proposition.” Aslam’s eyes, effervescent, back on the urge. “Listen, True. The world’s changing. Corporate power is still on the rise. Want my advice? Hitch on now. Soon government won’t govern shit.”

“Government already doesn’t govern shit.”

“So you know the way of the world. War is being revolutionized. Some of the new technologies in advanced stages of R & D are bound to change the global balance of power.”

“So?”

“Some of the technologies are bad. Real bad. One corporation monopolizes them, that’s major trouble for the rest.”

“What’s some corporate battle technology got to do with me?”

“My idea. We need a digithead who can suss out some info. I said I knew the
modeiant
one.” Aslam coughs, extinguishes his
bidi
. “An ice cream habit.” Clears his throat. “I should nix the nic from my life.”

“Why don’t you quit?”

“No discipline.” Aslam stands, smoothes his suit. “I’ll get some drinks.”

Long strides to the bar. True covers Aslam with his eyes, ready to counter possible threats, but Aslam doesn’t seem worried. The bartender stands behind a hole protected by impenetrable clear plastic: money goes in; drinks, drugs come out. Barbed wire winds double helixes throughout the see-through shield, more decorative than functional. On stage, whores feasting on hardcore kink, all types in addition to the usual balloon-breasted amazons—freaks with skin tinted across the ROYGBIV spectrum, female bodybuilts with Popeye forearms and rice-terrace abs, chicks with dicks, dykes, gays, contortionists.

In this age of bargain beauty they strive to fill a niche, and when market forces dictate a change, the cost is a few tricks, a few hours of surgery, a few years lopped off a meaningless life. At the game center, a virtual siren beckons through a haze of incense and sex oils, her body rounder, skin a touch more radiant, curly jet-black hair glistening. More real, more alluring to True than the surrounding pros, whose by-the-hour leers he parries by pretending to read from his wrist-top.

Aslam hands True a Kamikaze.

“Ah, a tragic drink.” True sips, remembers days past when fiery drinks like this would KO his taste buds. Now, only a faint tingle. “Comes with a vomit-proof warranty. Goes down, fucks you up, is guaranteed not to return.”

“You’re going to accept this gig. Want to know the terms?”

“I don’t vet out data unless it’s for a story.”

“Why not? Your journo career’s maxed out. You fucked up, you’re stuck in Loser-onia, and you’ll never be able to reboot your career. The network is waiting for you to just make one little shitty-assed error so they can delete you from their payroll. Pretty soon you’ll be sitting home in some coffin apartment, hooked up to VR games, subsisting on government checks, jerking off to virtual babes.”

There’s something disturbing about hearing your life so perfectly described, True thinks, as if Aslam read his mind, was there the whole time, experienced the impotence of watching everything important to True combust. But Aslam was snaking through jungles furthering the cause of insurrection, was not around during this ugly time, was not witness to the destruction of True’s mind. “How do you know all this?”

“
Donnez-moi un break.
I know more about you than you can imagine.”

“Like what?”

“Like first of all, you
will
data-retrieve for us. Assured. I also know what happened to you, how you ended up in the hospital an emotional bulimic. I also know what WWTV has planned for you. Believe me, my friend, you will not chill to the tune of it.”

“Tell me how you know.”

“I have a whole computer model on you, all known information, and not just the stuff in your dossier. I know all the times during the Pakistani-Indian war you chugged yogurt to cool out the spices when you shit. I’ve seen your dreams. I know what happened to the woman in your life.”

True’s cheeks turn the color of roast pork. “What happened to her?”

“That can wait. You see, I do know what it will take to get you to chase down the gravy train. And I can’t afford to dick around. I’m giving you a chance to leave this dead-end journo job, make some serious bucks, tell that shit anchor boss of yours to fuck off.”

“The model tells you under the right circumstances I’ll work for you?”

“
Précisément
.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the best. Not just because I think so. Computer says so too.”

“Flattering.”

Aslam slaps the table, like enough of this bullshit. “So when you going infospace for us?”

“Like I said. I’m not going.”

Aslam pokes a splinty finger into True’s chest. “It’s not like you’ve been prospering. Look at your clothes. Look at you: You’re still a handsome gene-machine, that I grant you, but you’re thirty-five, passed
Go
more than a few times and none the healthier for it.”

True’s gaze slides down his chin, his body, around slender arms and legs. Has to agree his is not the body of a prosperous man.

“How can you reject this more-than-generous offer?” Aslam’s Pakistani lilt is more pronounced in anger.

“I don’t work for corporations.”

“Well fuck you very much. What do you call WWTV?” Aslam scratches his arm, rolls up his sleeve to unveil a circular cicatrix on his arm and shoulder; the shape of the Ouroboros, True thinks, the tail-biting snake, the ancient symbol for eternal disintegration and rebirth.

“What happened? It looks like a laser wound.”

“The usual bullshit band-aid cuts and scrapes.” Aslam stares ahead, silent so long True thinks he may have forgotten about him. “A laser wound, but not what you think. You can’t imagine.” Traces the scar full circle. “You know, you
will
work for us. Just a matter of a few more clock ticks. It’ll take more than money to sway you, I know, but you’ll see reason eventually.”

“I am seeing reason. Besides, there’s an ethics problem.”

“There are no ethics in journalism.”

True, caught in a pale lie, doesn’t argue.

“How’d you know I work for a military contractor?”

“Who else would hire an ex-jungle insurgent?”

“You know, this weapon remains secret, the world will be irrevocably changed.”

“There was a time I would have jumped at this, feeding off the danger. But I don’t have the tools anymore. Since getting out of the hospital all I feel like doing is getting by, focusing on the day-to-day, not the grand scheme of things. It’s hard enough waking up every day.”

“Bullshit excuses. If you don’t hurry, it’ll be too late.”

“It already is.”

Aslam sips the Kamikaze, swishes it around his mouth, glares hard at True. “Sometimes, no matter how many times I tell myself not to feel anything, I can’t help myself. Months ago, before I left the insurgency, we set up camp near a river, and a little girl from a friendly village nearby, she must have been about nine, would bring us food. One day she ran off too far, and it was several hours before we realized she’d disappeared. The next morning we found her. She’d been captured by some ethnics, tied up and stretched over bamboo seeds. But these were not the regular variety of bamboo. They were the kind that grow very quickly, overnight.

“She was still breathing but the stalks had begun to climb through. And we were faced with a no-win: If we lifted her off, she’d die—there was extensive organ damage—and if we left her, she’d die anyway. Know what she said when I held a pistol to her head?”

True waits.

“She told me she wanted to stand one last time.”

“What happened?”

“She died.” Aslam crunches an ice cube. “But she took control of the little life she had left. Will you?”

“No.”

“True, you’ve given up the struggle. What happened? You once said there’s a whole world to be conquered with each act and statement.”

True knows Aslam’s lying. “We’ve been through a lot together.”

“Yes.”

“I saved your life.”

Aslam sputters.

True says, “OK. You saved my life. And suffered terribly for it.” There: the toxic guilt that poisons their friendship, that split-second decision that resulted in a half-dozen years of separation—yet still, in many ways, bonds them together. True hopes Aslam’s ready to bridge it.

But not this time. Instead, “Aren’t journalists supposed to keep their facts straight?”

True, torn between relief and the desire to let go of the past, takes Aslam’s lead. “It’s the unpleasant memories. Twice a year I get a monumental case of the runs, thanks to your cronies’ bowel-busting Moghul meals. But I’d wager your computer model told you that already. Don’t put too much stock in it. You think it takes everything into account, but it can’t. Trust me, reality is some messy business.”

They finish their Kamikazes, wash down another with another with another. True’s numb, a warm herring-boned crack of optimism spreading through him. He’s comfortable and confident in altered states. The room throbs with fourth-world tongues mixing with benzene melodies. Mercenaries play Blade Roulette, a game where contestants splay the fingers of one hand on the table, stab at the empty between, the winner the fastest to go three (pain-free) revolutions. Standing on tiptoes, peering over shoulders, Indian Dhobis flip paper dollar gliders into a betting pool, each sheet folded uniquely—into triangles, pentagonal stars, birds of prey, creased in much the way their ancestors marked laundry on the banks of the Ganges. Threats, insults, blood thick with aggression.

Time to lock up the evening. On the way out True and Aslam run a gauntlet of narc dealers (many of whom are ex-U.N. peacekeepers), smugglers, travelers, and freelance guerrillas, the usual flotsam and jetsam living on the edge of a world teetering on the brink. Their shuffling whispers: Shrooms, VR FREEze, Cum Gum (
Chew for that 2-minute orgasm!
), Speed Cocktail. Aslam’s wrist-top pulses blood (read: potential danger). His computer scans the DNA of the dealers and ran background checks. Aslam doesn’t seem alarmed. He’s probably packing enough portable weaponry to wipe out a small country anyway.