Subversive Elements (Unreal Universe Book 2) Read online

  “Sure is, sa. The major entertainment networks treat everyone the same. Have to, ever since some old actor proved there was no difference between someone on his staff getting paid millions of dollars to leak personal information over the nets and his own sorry ass auctioning secrets to make ends meet. Ever since then, info is info. There’s even a rate-log.”

  Garth looked wistfully at Huey’s ‘home’. If only … “All right, okay. You warned me this was gonna happen so … I s’pose it’s all good.”

  “Trust me, Garth,” Alix soothed, “N4U is the tamest of the bunch. I’ve seen the rough compilations already, and there’s nothing to worry about. If you like, I can arrange an advance copy. You’re going to look like the star you are.”

  “Why don’t I like the sound of that?” Garth demanded acerbically.

  “Because you are a star, that’s why.” Alix explained it patiently, even though she’d already done so more than once. The publicist feared this topic was going to be on the table forever. “You’re the perfect celebrity, sa. You hate the notion of being popular, which makes you one of the common folk. You might hate it, but you need to get this into your unreasonably thick skull! Regular Sallys and Samanthas out there connect with you. You’re charismatic, which draws a lot of other folks in, too. Then there’s all the charitable donations, blah blah blah. If you didn’t want to be famous you should’ve just either not come here or stuck your head in a bag and choked to death on all that hot air coming out of your mouth. Now, listen and listen hard, sa. N4U is a channel that is strictly on the up and up, which is why I contacted them first. Once it hits the ‘LINKS, everyone’s going to want something. And that’s when it gets … tricky.”

  “How so?” He was in the middle of a big ocean, paddling for his life. Beneath him, a giant robotic shark waited patiently for him to get tired.

  “Different channels, different demographics, different tactics, is how. N4U is dedicated to ‘middle-Lately’, the biggest demo of all. Their stories cover a little bit of everything without focusing overly much on any one particular facet of your life. The story airing today will cover your arrival to Hospitalis, your efforts to prove your desire to become Latelian, your dreams of building a better tomorrow through UltraSuperMegaMart. Stuff like that.”

  “UltraMegaDynamaTron.” Garth corrected. Idle thoughts of a robot turning into a laser gun filtered through the pressing business at hand and he stifled a chuckle.

  “UltraMegaDynamaTron. Sure. Fine. Whatever.” Alix waved a cigarette-toting hand. “Point is, N4U’s piece will reach billions of people. The boring Alices and Andreas of the system subscribe to N4U, so the tales they tell will be … vanilla-flavored boring on toast. When, say, Lately Tonight wants to run a story, they go for the juicy bits, so I’ll spread them a little bit of your time in Special Services on a cracker and they’ll eat it whole. For their target audience, you’ll become a warrior born, a soldier forged in the fires of burning whatever fighting the horrible forces of something something evil something. N4U’ll react by running a story about how your ability to fight is just one more sign that you were destined to become Latelian. At this point, Lately in Focus will get on the bandwagon, and here’s where things lurch off to the left; their audience is mostly older men and women, and they’re a bunch of wet blankets, so the bio they get will be tailored to highlight your unwavering adherence to principles, as scrupulously strange as those seem to be. It goes round and round like that until everyone realizes they haven’t actually spoken to you yet.”

  “What happens then?” A headache threatened to burst it’s way out of his skull. Alix was building a media storm instead of doing everything in her power to make all the interest in him go away. He wondered if there was a language he could use that would –in the absolute strictest and starkest way- force the chain-smoking crazy woman to do what he wanted instead of what she thought he wanted.

  “Interviews.” Alix snorted at the look on Garth’s face. “You let anyone see you looking like that on camera and you may just end your career prematurely, sweetie.”

  “That’s what I want!” The shout fell on deaf ears so he went another way. “I thought you said you didn’t lie or hold back the truth or let people think the wrong thing.”

  “Never have, never will. Each of these stations knows how I operate. They’re already very aware that they’re getting structured pieces to target their specific audiences. Matter of fact, they’re actually getting more than they’ll ever air. It’s all about the audience. If I let them do it, shift things around, how much of your gold mountain do you want to wager you’ll come off looking like the bad guy? Don’t answer that. Don’t ever answer my rhetorical questions. By providing them with ready-made press statements and signing off on specific story lines, I guarantee nothing they air will damage you. If a citizen wants to know everything there is to know about you, all they have to do is watch all the news stations and piece your full history together. Nothing is hidden. Just … moved around.”

  “I dunno.” Garth admitted skeptically. “Sounds like it’s too good to believe, Alix. How long will all this rose petal bullshit will work?”

  “Not long.” Alix answered quickly. “That’s where the One-Two-Slam and other gags like the Hey-How-Are-You come into play. As long as you keep cool and follow my lead, everything should be dandy. I know what you want, and that’s to be left alone. I know you don’t want things this way, Garth, but if you go it alone you’ll be buried, and you don’t want that. If you screw up, if you fall out of favor too quickly or over the wrong thing… nothing can save you. If there’s one thing Latelians love more than heroes, it’s heroes who become villains. If you survive a critical fall from grace, you’ll certainly never be left alone. There’s a rhythm and flow to getting you out of the limelight, and it’s got to be done properly. And you, my dear, beautiful sa, couldn’t do that on your own, not in a billion years.”

  “How long will all this take?” Garth shut his eyes.

  “A few years, maybe less. I suppose it all depends on you.” Alix grinned widely, showing off pearly white teeth. “For now, you’re stuck.”

  Years. Unbelievable. Years. He needed to get into the ship now. Once he completed the ‘mission’ by gaining entrance into Bravo, he suspected it wouldn’t matter one way or another what Latelyspace thought of him. “When can I leave here without trailing a pack of reporters out of my ass?”

  “Didn’t I tell you, sa?” Alix asked sweetly. “Right away. Between N4U’s story and the interviews you’ll need to do is the absolute best time for you to run around enjoying yourself. I’ve forced the other Big Channels to back off for a while.”

  A surge of gratitude suffused Garth. Finally, he’d have time to recon The Museum; he’d always meant to read up on the iconic building in the heart of Central City, but with the endless reams of historical data requiring just as much attention, he’d never gotten around to reading word one about the place. As a citizen, he could wander around inside the musty structure for hours on end and no one would realize he was planning a heist.

  If, he thought gloomily, The Box stored within wasn’t a fake. A smile splitting his face, Garth spoke. “Nice. How long do I have?”

  “Five days, maybe a week. That all depends on if you can keep out of trouble and I’m being charitable by pretending you can do that. Probably closer to three days. Once that time passes, you’ve got to give them more.” Alix grimaced. “You’ve got this look on your face like maybe you want to thank me.”

  “Well, I think I might…”

  “Don’t.” Alix interrupted around a mouthful of smoke. “Don’t think. Clients can’t think. Clients react; clients say stupid things in public, clients aren’t people. They’re clients. You trying to think ruins the relationship. I’m the meanest person in your life, sa. Just because you have some free time doesn’t mean you’re going to get more. I get that you don’t want to be a celebrity. It’s plain as the nose on your handsome face. Nevertheless, there’s something y
ou don’t appreciate. I’ve said this a few times, but it seems to be bouncing off that unreasonably thick skull of yours. I said we Latelians hold on to our famous people far beyond their best-by date, and I am not kidding. We’re notoriously willing to forgive and forget so long as you’re entertaining. That … well, that idolatry can take a vicious jump if you upset us. If you don’t follow my suggestions to the letter, you’ll go from Number One Celebrity to Prisoner #4300 in a flash. No matter how badly you want to be free of all this, there’s a right way and a wrong way. You’re a nice enough fellow. I’d hate for the rest of your life here be filled with misery and loathing. And with all the things you’re not telling me about what you did before you came here, well … let’s just say that you play nice, how about that?” She dropped that last with enough insincerity to kill a horse.

  Anger instantly replaced gratitude. “I’m not a fucking retard, Alix. All you fuckers are completely fucked in the head, you know that? I thought celebrity status was crazier than hell where I come from, but this … this is mental. You’re telling me there’s no middle ground? I’m either a celebrity or everyone hates me?”

  “There we go, honey. Let me have it. And no,” Though she was a bit concerned about how quickly her client raged white-hot, Alix continued, smoothly ignoring his diatribe, “that’s not what I’m saying at all. See? If you didn’t have me, you’d’ve already put your stupid immigrant foot in your stupid mouth, in public, in front of people who are stupider than you are. I said if you don’t follow my instructions, that’s what’ll happen. You automatically glossed over the unhappy truth that this is going to take time. Everything in Latelyspace takes time, sa. There’s a smooth way to go, and you’re about as smooth as The Peak.”

  “Do you go out of your way to make people hate you or is this something you come by naturally?” Garth couldn’t help himself.

  “My cat likes me just fine, sa. I’m the only person in your life who’s going to tell you the truth, even –especially- when it hurts.” Alix fired up another cigarette. “Look, you’ll be fine. I promise. Just don’t eat any babies where anyone can see you.” She hung up.

  Garth looked morosely from Huey’s computer to the Screen. He didn’t know which was worse: having no AI to help him or a jaded-but-truthful dowager running around doing ‘what was best for him’ without really doing anything of the sort.

  What irked him the most was Alix made sense: if he followed her lead and did precisely as she said, his ‘career’ could be over with little or no social stigma. But, following her lead would take too long; the window of opportunity to hit The Museum was only available now, while News4You ran his stories. It’d only take a few seconds to determine if The Box there was his.

  If, by some miracle of miracles, that Box was Bravo, then he wouldn’t have to worry about fighting God soldiers or his TVQ or anything any damned person said every again. He’d be whole, hale, hearty and able to focus on wasting the next thousand years of his life doing nothing more strenuous than spending money faster than he made it.

  If not, two weeks –or thereabouts- remained until his qualifying fight to secure his spot in the Final Game.

  If not … if that Box was also fake… the thought of slogging through the bizarre maze of Latelian fame and fortune while he searched in vain for the real ship made him sick to the stomach.

  For a man allegedly able to blend into any society anywhere in the known Universe…

  Garth snorted. He was the most visible ninja ever.

  It was best not to dwell on the negative. The Box in The Museum was Bravo. It had to be.

  Because if it wasn’t, there wasn’t a good goddamn thing he’d be able to do to keep his head attached to the rest of his body.

  Of Sheet Extruders and French Fries

  “Well I’m sure that I don’t know exactly what he’s doing with the Extruder, sa, but unless he’s actually breaking it, there’s nothing I can do.” Si Joanna said apologetically. She hung up the Sheetcomm and summoned her manager.

  “Yes, Joanna?”

  Joanna flashed the complaints over to Sa Steve so he could follow along on his prote. “This is the third complaint we’ve gotten concerning Sa Nickels. The ...for… the man in the Ultra Suite?”

  Steve was already fully aware of Garth Nickels. One of the more high-profile guests they’d had in some time, Hotel Management had asked that he be prepared to deal with any difficulties that would arise because of the man’s … more unique… approach to life.

  Research Garth Nickels as any good employee would, Steve knew the following; he was a Gameplayer, he had a small fortune worth of illegal weapons under lock and key, and he was the richest man ever. If it was just one or the other, Steve wouldn’t hesitate to drop Garth off one of the top floors to rid themselves of a problem, but it was the money that concerned Management. They were willing to do anything to keep those endless coffers on Hotel grounds. The man clearly had no understanding of money and was –for a normal guest- hemorrhaging huge sums.

  Anything short of murder was entirely acceptable in the course of doing business so long as Garth continued to spend his money on Palazzo’s wide variety of unique –and atrociously costly- services.

  Steve reread Joanna’s précis, winding up more confused than when he’d woken up this morning in a stranger’s bed. “I don’t quite understand why he’s been getting complaints … he’s using an Extruder? Why is that a problem?”

  Joanna ‘LINKed their protes and highlighted the specifics. “It isn’t an extruder, sa. He’s depleted three so far and is working on the fourth as we speak. According to the guest in 414, the noise is ‘unbearable verging on cataclysmic’. Owing to the nature of the man making the complaint, it’s more than a little inaccurate, but we must …”

  “Yes, yes, ‘we must treat all complaints as if they were real’. You needn’t quote the manual at me, si.” Steve accessed the security feeds for the hallway that floor and corridor, fascinated; a fully stocked Extruder was capable of producing between fifteen to twenty Sheets before needing replenishment. Patrons of the Palazzo had a tendency to go through Sheets at an accelerated rate as most of them found it easier –and less worrisome- than using their own protes.

  At a price of up to a hundred dollars per unit, Garth had already spent thousands on devices he clearly had no intention of using.

  Steve and Joanna watched the live feed, mesmerized.

  xxx

  On the fourth floor, Garth stood amidst a pile of Sheets of varying complexity.

  Never as flexible or as powerful as a proteus could be, on its own, a Sheet was very nearly a direct transplant from the 20th century; with all the varying options available to a customer, each wafer-thin Sheet was virtually identical to long-ago smartphones. It all depended on how much a person wanted to spend.

  For a few dollars, the Extruder spat out the cheapest of gizmos, a Sheet that was little more than a glorified telephone. You could use it to surf the ‘‘LINKS, but you wouldn’t want to. A hundred dollars got a top-of-the-line doodad and it was a supreme technological achievement; with one of those in your hands, you really didn’t need a prote at all.

  Between the bargain-basement Sheet and a top-of-the line model there was an endless array of choices. The only thing that mattered was how much you wanted to spend and a finicky person could waste an hour or more simply picking and choosing the different functions he or she wanted.

  Once the selections had been made and money transferred, the Sheet Extruder began the magic of creation. After two solid hours of moving from floor to floor and machine to machine, Garth thought he knew what made the goddamn thing tick. And it was hair-raising.

  Nanotechnology!

  The most hated and feared of all the advanced sciences, nanotech was outlawed across the width and breadth of Trinityspace, and for good reason; it was unpredictable. Extremely, violently, destructively so. No matter how many security protocols were in place or how many different avenues of safety were explored, subato
mic machines of any sophistication proved unstable and rapacious, consuming people and planets without differentiation, without hesitation. A single outbreak of a handful of nanotech spores could destroy a planet in hours. If Trinity Enforcers didn’t catch that epidemic in time, the world-sized dandelion-puff of deadly machines would spread throughout the system, slowly but inevitably consuming and converting everything it touched. Everything.

  Garth had witnessed the ravages of systemic nano-tech infection firsthand. He had seen, not only the maddening and horrific effects of nano gone wrong on a cellular level –the men, women and children of Goren had been transformed into matter-eating zombies, for fucks sake-, but worlds absorbed, the matter bent to the task of creating a cosmically-sized… something.

  The nightmares only reared their ugly heads once or twice a year now. Thank God. In the beginning … in the beginning, they’d plagued him when he’d been wide-eyed awake… To this day, it took a major effort of will not to flinch when he ran his hands across a dusty surface.

  Garth still didn’t know if the cellular machines in Goren had failed or if that was how they’d been programmed. He reckoned he never would and besides, the point was moot. He’d halted the spread of The Cloud’s unknowable purpose minutes before completion and Trinity had forever sealed that stretch of space off. Goren was as dead a system as there ever had been, with nothing remaining beyond the vague hint of a solar system-sized machine and deadly hungry spores. No stars, no asteroids, no moons, nothing. Nothing save whatever The Cloud had been trying to build and … and in the middle … a badly resurrected, zombified Enforcer by the name of Shyla Sin.

  What a nightmare.

  And all before he’d even been officially inducted into Special Services. That file didn’t exist. It would never exist. People knew he’d been to Goren and that was all anyone would ever know. And he would rather die than tell anyone what’d happened there.

  Garth shuddered in his own skin. Nanotech made his skin crawl. He didn’t know how he’d managed to avoid infection, why he hadn’t been absorbed into The Cloud like everyone else on Gorensworld. Even though he hadn’t, nanotech terrified him. It was dangerous. The most dangerous thing in the entire Universe.