Virtually True (31 page)

“You killed him? Why?”

She shrugs hammy deltoids. “So everybody thinks you’re dead.”

“But what about the guy?”

“He was dying anyway, plague or something.”

“Piña’s saying he’d have died anyway? In what, six months?”

“Two.” She pats the skateboard. “Get on.”

“I’ve got to check out something in my apartment.”

“Piña cleaned it out when they took you away. Got everything you need. This too.” She tosses True’s wrist-top to him. True accepts a microchip access from her, copies the wrist-top contents onto it, then hands it back. She gives him a coin envelope. “This, too. Piña hired a hacker who said this is the only thing that doesn’t fit right in your home system. Told Piña it’s bizarre shit, so watch out.”

True flips her his wrist-top, pockets the microchip access and coin envelope. “Piña better be careful, too. Whoever has my wrist-top won’t be of this world long.”

“Decisions, decisions. There are so many motherfuckers Piña’d like to give it to.”

True studies the zigzaggy part dividing her yarny hair. “When Piña rifled through my apartment, she see, like, any blood-red holograms of me?”

Piña hacks up phlegm. Actually she’s laughing. “That’s from a TV show. ‘The Program Contact.’ About spies and shit.” She pats her skateboard. “Get on.”

“Thanks.” Almost free now. A little giddy. He leans down, kisses Piña’s cheek, and is amused to see her break out in a rash of embarrassment.

CHAPTER 22

Tokyo is the same except for the aftershocks, which True didn’t include in his virtuopia, which should have told him things weren’t what they seemed, but he missed it and now he’s back, hoping he’ll score higher this time around. Although plenty of buildings are charred and streets are buried in rubble, it isn’t as unbearable as his version. Most Tokyoites have swarmed into police-protected refugee camps or moved in with relatives and  friends in other cities. Scriggly kanji-signs decorate doors of abandoned dwellings.

True and Reiner at WWTV’s Tokyo Bureau on the top-floor of a battered building. She’s nothing like her broadcast icon. Not in her mid-thirties, not the statuesque, stiletto-tongued TV anchor. More like late sixties, hair soaked gray, age spots tinting hands, dry, curling skin.

She pats the couch, indicating True should sit. “I know what you’re thinking.”

True sits and surveys the office. Lightning-bolt cracks are haphazardly caulked. He wonders about the quake’s capriciousness, why WWTV’s Tokyo bureau is left standing while buildings hugging it—like the convenience store, the sushi shop—have collapsed. And why some city blocks were consumed by fire but not Reiner’s. Futons rolled up, crammed in a corner. Reiner must sleep here, her home probably ground to dust mite food.

Reiner falls onto the sofa. Creaky breaths. “I use an icon because a different broadcast image works to my advantage. I go undercover, no one knows it’s me.”

“Does it help the ratings?”

“Who wants to see an old lady?”

“Where’s your dog, the black Lab?”

“How’d you know I had… oh, you saw the initial quake reports I did. I picked her up outside the office here. Got an aid worker to take her to Osaka. Tokyo’s no place for pets.”

“Did you read the data I dumped into your computer system before I left Luzonia?”

“Like a cheap thriller. Assassinations, secret weapons, plots to get you addicted to drugs and software. Where do you want to go from here?”

“Ever hear of a technology that can predict the precise time of an earthquake, or a machine that can cause one?”

Reiner presses an itch in her back. “No. Haven’t run across anything like that. It could be Sato’s superstitious. Decided a few years ago to pull out all his investments in the probability that a major earthquake would swallow Tokyo. Bankers and brokers don’t like to admit this, but they knew that when a big one hit Tokyo, the global economy would rumble. Lucky it didn’t happen when Japan was an economic superpower.”

“Like in the 1980s and early ’90s. Sato ever show such foresight before this?”

“Not that I know of.”

“He have any investments in a company with the kind of technology that could topple a metropolis?”

“Doubtful. I read through all the available information, and there was no explosion or anything like that. Just four fault plates rubbing up against each another. Your typical earthquake.”

“Typical except in its magnitude.” True by the window now, overlooking the sprawl. There are those signs again. “Why are so many buildings covered in scraps of paper? Is it a religious thing?”

“Change of address forms. Signs informing anyone who cares where the occupants went. Communications are still down.”

“They look like kids wrote them. I thought it might be some sort of cultural superstition. Like the purity of children, maybe.”

“Nah. The signs are by adults. Penmanship’s been deteriorating since last-century’s introduction of the PC.”

“Did you run a trace on International Soft Where?”

“I can give you an abstract or you can ask Odessa, who’s got the sum.”

“I want to meet him, in person. Let’s stay away from communicating over satellite feeds or microwave cables, at least for important stuff. Is he far from here?”

“This way, please.”

A door a few steps down. The room is crammed with computing equipment—micro-microchip boxes, wires, transformers, consoles stacked and neatly sorted, shining lights and whirs. Some of the equipment’s so antiquated it’s not even blue-book. Some of it is custom-made. Some warped beyond high-tech. All of it hooked up and running. A stirring in the midst of this techno-mélange. Odessa, dressed completely different from the one True “met.” He wears an off-white velcro-down shirt, blue jeans, sneakers, his hair mowed conservative, no jewelry.

Odessa stands, reaches out a hand. It’s soft, except for the fingertips, which are type-cast. “We’ve met.”

“We have.”

“Not what you expected, but people change.”

Reiner comes over. “When did your paths cross?”

Odessa’s eyes don’t stray from True’s. “I played a prank on him.” To True: “Sorry about locking you into that pol’s speeches. I was pretty arrogant back then.”

“Doesn’t matter now.” True wonders why Odessa is here. Did he hack the wrong corp, is he fleeing? Or did he only imagine this in Tokyo’s mirror? Memories or imaginings? Reality or his own creations?

“Reiner tells me you’ve been hooked into something cutting-edge. Don’t suppose you brought something I can use.”

True reaches into his pocket, hands Odessa the chip Piña gleaned from his home computer. Odessa jams it into a tiny porthole and sits. A screenless wall of images shoots up in front of him. He studies the code, then immediately shuts down. “There’s a virus in there, and by the looks of it, a pretty nasty one. I’ve never seen it before. I hope my containment systems can handle it.” Odessa types furiously. Stops. “I’m going to need time to let the systems work on it.” He spins around. “There seems to be a virtual world inside a virtual world in there.”

“I didn’t know that was possible.” True rocks on his heels.

“Makes two of us. But I can see from the code structure there’s a virtual world in there. Inside that virtual world is a gateway to reality.”

“Huh?” Reiner says.

True tries to fathom the idea. “So, I was in virtual reality. I didn’t know I was there. When I snuck into the net to look for incriminating evidence on Sato, I was
actually
in the infonet. So the information about Sato is true. And the chip I accessed from Sato is real. But then I passed it on to someone else before I left virtual reality.”

Odessa nods. “That’s right. Reiner fed me the data you sent. I’d say that electronic escapade you took was real. Whatever it was you took, you really took.”

“Somebody sent me in to grab that chip from Sato.”

“They used you. You were tricked into traveling through a real database to cull heavily guarded secrets. It’s a smart piece of engineering, but the program couldn’t do it without someone with an innate ability to navigate through tricky dataspace.”

“And the software program offered me a built-in incentive. I thought I was saving my own ass.”

Reiner: “Odessa. By reading the chip, can you replay everything that transpired?”

“It depends on this virus. The funny thing is, I can’t tell if it was planted in there as protection or it just ended up in there—possibly from some incorrect coding.” Odessa ponders a pause more. “Might even be alive.”

“Alive?” True mouths.

“Not alive per se. Alive in the sense that even when not plugged into hardware, it grows. I know there were a couple of powerhackers onto a generation of software that could become more intelligent in time. This interactive program, by being able to tap into your mind, it could grow. In a sense, you’ve customized this software. Your thoughts, ideas, experiences may have spawned greater complexity.”

“So … ” Reiner looks at True. “
He
is the virus.”

“Yeah. And the thing may have continued to grow even after you were disconnected.”

“Can I be stopped?” True’s skin sprayed with cold pickle juice. “Should I be stopped?”

“I don’t think we want to stop you—your virus-mirror, actually.” Odessa checks the readout. “We’re in luck. There’s an automatic self-destruct program within the software, but the virus blocked implementation.”

“It wants to survive. My will to survive has interacted with the software codes. That’s where the virus came from.”

Reiner slaps her thigh. “And we wouldn’t have it unless this happened. So, there’s our answer, how we can ensure this virus is kept under control.”

Odessa brushes his scalp with his palm, indicating Reiner’s gone over his head.

Reiner frowns. “Don’t you get it? If you wanted to survive, if someone offered you a place you could go that was comfortable, where you could spend the rest of your life, would you go?”

True understands. “Hose it into another database, a place where it has room to grow. Just make sure it doesn’t leak.”

Odessa slacks over the console. “How come I didn’t think of that?”

True wonders what the characteristics of a virus impressed with his thoughts and memories would be. Would it wreak havoc, erasing hard-fought data, leaving a trail of empty in its wake? Would it soak up info, add to the glut of statistics strangling humanity? His choice: virus as truth serum. Stamp out some of the deceit crushing the world.

True to Odessa: “Before you start, do you have PR on International Soft Where?”

“The American Defense Corp subsidiary, yeah.” Odessa pulls it up. “ISW handles weapons programming for ADC. They were established ten years ago as a licensor of different technologies. They rely less on developing their own software than on buying up promising operations. Here’s a list of small companies they’ve bought or absorbed.”

Reiner places a hand each on True and Odessa’s shoulders. “I’ve got to file some stories, so I’m going.”

“I’ll stay with Odessa.” True’s eyes hopscotch down the list. “I’m sure I can make myself use—” Stops at the name Six Days, Inc. “Forget it. I’m going with you.”

Odessa looks up. “Find something interesting?”

Six Days, Inc. The world is indeed a small place. Six Days, Inc. Of course. It makes perfect sense. No wonder he was targeted. No wonder the software he was enveloped in was so intimate about his inner workings. So obvious he wants to kick his own ass.