Part 9 (2/2)

Smoke began to curl around the foot of the stage until it covered the entire floor. A soundtrack heavy on the bamboo flute echoed across the auditorium. The spotlight speared a circular platform that rose about a meter out of the smoke. Standing atop the platform was the jowly Frederic Patel, forehead furrowed, a pair of dartguns at hand. Seconds later, another platform rose on the opposite side of the stage carrying a similarly decked-out Petrucio. His waxed mustache practical y glistened.

”This rivalry has gone on long enough,” said the elder Patel with an exaggerated sneer.

”Yeah?”

replied the younger. ”I'd like to see you do something about it, 'Trucio.”

”If you don't put down those guns, I wil . I've been waiting for this a long time.”

”You don't have the courage,” snorted Frederic.

Jara felt Robby's elbow dig into her side. ”Phantom Distortions,” he said, sotto voce. For once, the a.n.a.lyst was glad for the interruption. She knew she recognized the Patel Brothers' banter from somewhere, but hadn't been able to place it.

Jara had only seen Phantom Distortions once, several years ago, and thought it irritating and cliche-ridden. But the drama had won so many awards and penetrated so many strata of society that even she could recite its climactic scene from memory. This was the part where Juan Nguyen's character took careful aim at his traitorous brother andPetrucio fired the dartgun in his right hand. A sliver of poison vaulted across the stage and landed in the exact center of Frederic's belt buckle. ”Aren't you glad I'm using SafeSh.o.r.es 1.0 by the Patel Brothers?” said Petrucio. And as Frederic stood there in slapstick dismay, the elder Patel proceeded to shoot a dozen more darts along his brother's belt line in quick succession.

The audience howled with laughter. It was a nice play on the real line: Aren't you glad I don't have the courage? delivered with maximum swagger. Jara al owed herself an appreciative smile. It looked like the Patel Brothers had final y figured out how to put together a decent marketing presentation, even if they were clinging to their lame ”safe sh.o.r.es” motif with too much vigor.

Frederic made a cartoonish grunt of rage that seemed a little too convincing and then raised his own gun. ”Wel , so am I, Brother,” he said. And let fire.

In the original Phantom Distortions, this was the moment where comedy mutated into pathos, where the brothers' long rivalry exploded into the open with ruinous consequences. But in the Patel Brothers' version, Petrucio was too quick on the draw. The dartgun in his left hand shot off with a reverberating thwing-and mil iseconds later, there came the indescribable sound of two darts striking one another in midair and clattering to the stage.

Even Jara gasped. She had seen MultiReal's innards lying on a Minds.p.a.ce workbench, and stil Petrucio's feat hardly seemed possible.

Frederic continued firing with grim determination until the air grew hazy with darts. Each needle met its nemesis in midflight and ricocheted harmlessly off to the side. After a minute of this, Petrucio began to take the offensive, with similarly ineffectual results. Soon the brothers were fighting the kind of melee that only existed in the dramas: ridiculous amounts of ammunition, impossibly dexterous moves, and not a single hit on either side.

The muttering in the audience rose several decibels. Robby's tongue was flapping uselessly back and forth in his mouth.

Jara loaded up a mental imaging program and took a snapshot of the projectiles the Patels were blasting at one another. She zoomed in and studied them careful y. These darts appeared to be much larger than the normal variety, and they were coated with a mirrored substance that made them easier to see. The Patels were not firing directly at one another, but at an oblique angle that helped the odds considerably. But even given al that, Jara could think of no ordinary piece of bio/logics that would account for such marksmans.h.i.+p. This could only be the work of MultiReal.

Final y, at some predetermined moment, Frederic tossed his gun to the stage, where it was sucked down into the fume. ”Al this bickering is pointless, 'Trucio,” he said.

Petrucio nodded. ”In a MultiReal-on-MultiReal fight, there's only one possible outcome.”

”And that's a draw,” said Frederic, hopping off the platform and waddling awkwardly toward his brother, who had also shed his weapons. Jara noticed that Frederic's acting abilities were noticeably strained when portraying emotions like remorse and reconciliation.

The two Patels locked arms and walked together toward the foot of the stage. Petrucio appeared to be so exhausted that he was almost limping, though he was doing his best to hide it. ”After al ,” said the elder brother, ”couldn't we al use more safe sh.o.r.es these days?” Jara could have sworn he was deliberately looking in her direction.

”But it doesn't f.u.c.king work that way,” Benyamin complained. ”You didn't see Quel on that soccer field. When two people with MultiReal go up against each other, it al gets resolved like that.” He snapped. ”Instantly. In your head. If they were real y having a MultiReal-onMultiReal fight, then the winner would have hit the loser.”

Jara stretched her neck and luxuriated in the SeeNaRee breeze. It was nice to be back in a virtual environment at the Surina Enterprise Facility, even if she had to put up with Benyamin's whining. She wasn't sure which beach this was supposed to be, or perhaps it was an amalgam of several. What did it matter? Jara could feel muscles in her neck unknotting and sluggish nerve endings in her fingers tingle with warmth from the SeeNaRee sun. She wondered fleetingly what had happened to Greth Tar Griveth's petty blackmail scheme.

Jara a.s.sumed that the lack of updates meant the situation was under control.

”I know that's not how MultiReal works, Ben,” she said. ”And the Patels do too. But what did you want them to do, get on stage and just stare at each other for an hour? I thought they did a pretty good job il ustrating the concept. Besides, that wasn't the end of the show. Petrucio took a bunch of questions afterward, and he explained the whole thing in detail.”

”Shooting down darts in midair,” put in Merri from her spot nearby on the sand. ”We should have thought of that.” She sighed as the tide came trickling up the beach to lick her bare toes.

”Listen, we don't have time to worry about the Patels,” said Jara. ”Right now we need to be thinking about computational rules. We're going to have twenty-three people bouncing choice cycles al over the place in a week. It'l be a nightmare unless we make some decisions.”

The blonde channel manager combed her fingers thoughtful y through the damp sand.

”Why do we even need to worry about it?” she said. ”Can't we just turn the whole MultiReal-against-MultiReal feature off?”

”You mean disal ow competing choice cycles altogether?” said Jara.

Ben shook his head. ”I don't think that's practical.” He wanted nothing to do with the decadent SeeNaRee Jara's mood had conjured up, choosing to sit instead at a rigid oak conference table wedged incongruously in the middle of the sand. ”If you don't have any competing choice cycles, you're defenseless against anyone who uses the program against you. That means the first person to activate MultiReal would always win. Right? Talk about a nightmare! People would flip on the program every two seconds, on the off chance that something important was about to happen.”

”So then let's just deactivate competing realities for the exposition,” said Merri. ”We don't have to figure everything out today, do we?”

”Not everything,” said Jara, ”but we can't put these decisions off forever, Merri. Things are moving so quickly, we might not get another window like this. We need to make some decisions today.”

Benyamin smacked his palm on the table and looked up with inspiration gleaming through his pores. ”What if we just let the market decide?”

Jara frowned skeptical y. ”How would that work?”

”The whole program's based on choice cycles. Every time you jump to another potential reality, you create another one. So why not just charge by the choice cycle? That way you wouldn't waste money using MultiReal to grab the last cracker on the buffet table-you'd save your choice cycles for the things that real y matter. The things you're wil ing to pay for.”

”A libertarian solution,” mused Merri. Her circles in the sand grew wider and wider until the sea washed them away.

Jara leaned back on her elbows and let Ben's suggestion roam through her mental hal ways for a minute. It seemed like a solution that Speaker Khann Frejohr would love. It seemed like a solution Natch would love. ”I don't think that would work either,” she said after a moment of reflection.

Ben was peeved. ”Why not?”

”It wouldn't turn out the way you think. You're basical y saying that the richest person in the room is always going to get what he wants. Do you real y want to put a system like that in place?”

”But sometimes that's just the way the world works,” the young apprentice retorted. ”You make more money, you have more choices.”

”This is total y different, Ben. Remember Horvil's story about haggling with that street vendor? We're not just talking about kicking soccer bal s around here. Think about it-there must be a thousand Lunar tyc.o.o.ns with more money than half of Creed Elan put together. They'd get the upper hand on every deal. Al they'd need to do is keep dis.h.i.+ng out money for more choice cycles. It wouldn't be fair.”

”Life would be pretty harsh for the diss, too,” added Merri. ”You'd literal y get pushed around al day, and there'd be nothing you could do about it.”

”And let's not forget the Islanders and the Pharisees,” said Jara.

Benyamin rose from the table and began stomping to the edge of the water and back. ”I can't believe I'm hearing this. Not fair?” He threw his hands up toward the sky. ”This isn't a question of ethics, Jara. It's basic economics. If our product doesn't give customers unlimited choice cycles, then someone else's wil . Do you think the Patels are going to sel their customers a limited product?”

”They don't have a say in it,” said Merri. ”Natch said that limited choice cycles are built into the Patel Brothers' licensing agreement. They can't run a product with unlimited choice cycles.”

”I didn't realize that,” said Ben, vindication sculpted into his face. ”This is great-we're going to crush them in the marketplace. If our version of MultiReal gives you unlimited choice, and theirs just c.r.a.ps out at some point ... who's going to buy from the Patel Brothers?”

Merri nodded hesitantly. Jara got to her feet and took a few steps toward the bay. She watched the tiny virtual sand crabs scurrying on the beach, jousting with each other in accordance with the SeeNaRee algorithms.

And suddenly she felt her thoughts line up like dominoes. Xi Xong tel ing Jara that Petrucio knew she was attending the presentation ... The two Patels blazing away at one another fruitlessly ... Frederic Patel discarding his weapon onto the stage ... Al this bickering is pointless, 'Trucio. In a MultiReal-onMultiReal fight, there's only one possible outcome. And that's a draw.

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