Virtually True (32 page)

“Interesting isn’t the word. Try extraordinary.”

CHAPTER 23

True’s studying paper scraps glued around the entrance to a downtown building, mostly in Japanese, some in English, Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Through glass he sees inside. A cavernous hall, families in tight rows, possessions heaped in corners. Some sleep, others play cards or mahjongg or talk, living on standby until the corps and bureaucrats decide what’s next.

He’s searching neo-Tokyo’s White Pages, translating non-English into English with his wrist-top, keying on words that he hopes will jostle his memory. A kimono-clad obaasan
,
bird-wing bow tied in the back, is eyeing him. Her face is powdered ghost. She points to a paper that’s been creased, recreased, finally posted.

“A peace crane.” Her English is creaky and unaccented.

“What?”

Heavy sigh lifted. “It was origami, a peace crane. But now… ” She indicates construction rubble across the street. “Who are you looking for?”

“A friend.”

“Have you found your friend?”

“No.”

She crooks her arm. Points around the corner of the building. “Everybody waits. Perhaps you will find your friend there waiting as well.”

“Waiting? For what?”

The woman starts her leave. “Everything. We must wait for everything these days.”

When he arcs around the building he understands. A mega-line of people and various containers. In the distance, fire licks at a cluster of apartments, warm wind sheeting down. True asks a man with gray hair crowning his skull what the line’s for.

The man has jaundiced teeth. Wispy strands jut from his chin. “When there is a line, you wait. There is bound to be something you need.”

True walks down the line, glancing at faces, sensing the collective fatigue. He keeps a running tally, mouthing as he walks: Japanese man, Japanese woman, Japanese woman, probably Korean. Mirroring the kilometer-long line. Ten minutes later, there she is. He knows it’s her by her hair’s red highlights, accentuated by real sun, and the way her jeans nuzzle her.

“Eden, it’s True.”

Eden whirls. True knows he should have gone slower, broken it to her gently, but there’s no time. “True. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

She drops a water jug. True picks it up, hands it back, then sweeps with his hands. “Do you know what you’re in line for?”

Her eyes, matte hazel marred by allergy red. Poets say the eyes are the mirrors to the soul; but True, who has seen more dislodged eyeballs than he cares to remember, knows it’s the face, the context, that is beauty.

She says, “Water. Food. Gas. If you walk to the front of the line, people get nervous you’re going to cut ahead, so you have to get in a line and wait, see if there’s something you need.”

“You could be waiting for nothing.”

“Theoretically.”

“Somebody could have started this line for no reason. What if there’s nothing up there? What if this line leads nowhere?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“It’s difficult to say sometimes why people do the things they do.” True wishes he could love her again, wishes he could go back. He scoops up a small piece of concrete, rubs his thumb against the grains. Bits sprinkle. “I wouldn’t have been able to find you if it hadn’t been for that newscast.”

Eden’s crying. True hears murmurings, knows someone’s translating the play-by-play. Her sleeve soaks up tears. “I did the interview because I knew you’d see me.”

“Why didn’t you look for me?”

She studies her shoes, or maybe the water jugs. “I started to. I called WWTV. They wouldn’t tell me where you were posted, and you weren’t on the air at all.”

“I was shooting footage for Rush Gelding in Luzonia.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t want to know. I wasn’t hard to track.” He thinks of Aslam and Bong Bong, ADC, and Sato. Tracking True has been easy. Until now.

“I felt responsible.”

“You were the dealer. I was the user. You could have cleansed yourself better by staying.”

“I was scared.”

True senses the man behind eavesdropping. He withers him with a granite stare.

She cries, nods, and bounces on her feet. Idiosyncrasies he once loved. “I made you sick.”

True remembers the teenagers in Luzonia’s ghettos, how they’d take two cats, tie their tails, hang them over electric cables and cheer until they clawed each other to death. “You work in international aid?”

“I fix donated computers. Make systems run on antiquated or recycled equipment.”

“A noble profession. After I was committed, what happened to your work?”

“Six Days, Inc? It was bought up by International Soft Where? I tried to destroy my work after I saw what it was capable of. But they sicced lawyers on me. They told me all my research was proprietary, so I didn’t own it. They gave me some money and I left. What else could I do?”

“ISW is owned by American Defense Corp. Right?”

“Right.”

“You know of any connection between ADC and Tsuyoshi Sato?”

“I don’t know anyone named Sato. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”

“Thanks. See you around.” True turns to leave. She squeezes his arm. “You’re so thin.”

“No one gave me fattening-up money to keep my mouth shut.”

She lets go, shakes. “They had my research. They had the power. All I had was me. Me!”

“Me me me me,” True arpeggios. Can’t believe how cruel he is. Doesn’t care. “I just went through another VR trip. Someone set me up. If you’d stuck around last time, maybe none of it would have happened.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all I’ve got besides—” She breaks.

“Yeah.”

She gets it out. “Besides being in love with you.”

“Yeah, well, I think you didn’t love me enough.”

“Do you think being apart has been easy for me? Every day without you is a day without happiness.”

“Happiness is an elusive goal.”

“We can be happy.” A chapped lipped kiss.

But True walks anyway. For a while, as he puts distance between them, he hears her sobs, then only imagines them, and these memories haunt him all the way to Reiner’s. But that’s fine. It’s natural. It’s life.

CHAPTER 24

Odessa’s replaying True’s virtual escapades on a monitor, tweaking the color and clarity when necessary. True watches the schizo-split screen images of him alone: one side clenching air, writhing on the floor, the other side playing out his VR tale. Odessa freeze-frames True delving into Sato’s mainframe, after Reiner’s icon speeds toward old age and death.

Reiner jabs True’s shoulder. “Your opinion of me was pretty goddamn low.”

“It wasn’t all me. Your death advanced the story I was playing out.”

Odessa zooms in on the chip True stole. Analyzes it on screen. Flips it over; cuts away sections to see inside. “Racist view of me, too, by the way. But your thoughts are your own.”

“No, they aren’t; otherwise we wouldn’t be watching them now.” True parries embarrassment, wonders what Reiner or Odessa’s thoughts would be like, but decides no one should have to go through what he did.

Odessa runs a coded sequence under the image. “See, you’re back in reality, right there, or virtual reality at least. That really is a chunk of Sato’s property right there.”

“Can you tell what’s on the chip?”

“Not yet. That’ll take a lot of code crunching and time. It’s scrambled, and remember I don’t really have it. I only have a virtual representation.”

“Did you run down background on the relationship between Six Days and International Soft Where?”

Reiner coughs. Doesn’t feel comfortable out of the information loop for long. “I did. Six Days was known for brilliant VR software R & D and interactivity. It was a small, innovative public company. Owed its existence to seed money from a secret source.”

“Sato’s corp, by any chance?”

Reiner lips a popping cork noise. “You’re full of surprises True, in all worlds. How’d you guess?”

“There had to be some connection between ADC and Sato. How did Sato lose Six Days to ADC?”

“Hostile takeover. ADC planned it carefully. Slowly had International Soft Where? buy up Six Days stock, then convinced a Sato shareholder to turn over his shares. Coincidently, the guy who sold his shares to ADC is dead now.”

“Anyone we know?”

“No one important. Just a pawn, I think. As a result, ADC was able to scarf down everything, including the pissoirs and mops. The big deal was the interactive R & D. And that they were backed by American courts.”

“Because of all that corporate maneuvering, ADC knows me better than
I
know me. A lot of their R & D was tested on me. They used that to get me to steal from Sato for them.”

Odessa moves the chip into a different program. Jabs at it with analytic software.

Reiner ahems. “Since we know Sato’s economic behavior before the quake was eerily clairvoyant, what do you think? I mean, he sold everything that would sustain losses in a major quake yet kept construction company investments, power companies, food, and raw material import companies. He knew about this quake before it hit.”

“You think it’s a quake-prediction software?”

“Has to be.”

“No.”

“You think it’s a quake-make weapon?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“First I go back, take a look-see.”

Odessa’s attention away from his work. “Into Sato’s database? Yeah.”

Reiner scowls. “You’re not going to risk your life in there again, are you? Haven’t you done enough mind candy? Why don’t you stick to real reporting?”

True eye-rolls. “Real reporting means getting the job done. I have to get inside. Find out what Sato knows.”

*          *          *

Since Sato’s defense systems are hampered by frequent powerouts, it’s easy for True, initially, to slice through. Odessa rides shotgun from the outside while Reiner watches via monitor. True somersaults beyond Sato’s investment portfolio, skips by blocks of companies propped up by Sato money, leaps over to Sato’s personal log. Locked—access denied.

“It’s tricky.” Odessa’s voice from somewhere inside True. “I know that encryption device. Two wrong codeword guesses, you’re braised journo. Give me a sec. I can crash it.”

“How?” True mouths. Doesn’t want to tip off his presence.

“It’s based on my invention. Scratched my initials in the design so I could always gain entry.” Odessa lasers a string of code, fiery light. Nothing happens. “Shit. One guess left.”

True climbs away, up to Investment Portfolios, and peers down.

“Don’t be a pussy, True. I’ll get you in.” Odessa fires again and the door swings open.