Chapter 2


He passed arbitrary hallways filled with processed air and the distant humming of a space station; the way offices should be. Finally he reached an open door. "Dr Lino Wen, Director". English was a working language in most places. Annoyed at the delay, Rick logged his arrival.
  "It's after midnight, tell me more tomorrow," Tina yawned.
  "OK out," he said, transferring to UN Control in Tashkent. The usual guided tour. An alert watch officer assigned a Monitor code. A Broomer might listen in.
  He knocked, and stepped into the sunlight from a tall window. The bass beat from hidden speakers stopped. One of the few remaining heavyset men glanced up. No one shook hands anymore, they DMed. In a way, everyone knew everyone.
  "Good day, I'm UN inspector Rick Parkland, Organizations Group." He flashed the badge with the new blue-and-white eye logo, the "Blind Beast" (the eye looked closed because the UN listened. There were other explanations). "I'm investigating a software event."
  "Not AIMan 41 again?" Lino grimaced. "2.65 has more holes than a Swiss cheese convention."
  "It's the human brain, 1.x," Rick continued seriously.
  The man at the desk was about fifty, with heavy eyebrows over a wide face, and noticeable lines under his eyes. He wore a garish T-shirt. Something like a welding mask was balanced on his forehead. A blue PowDer box stood under his desk.
  "Not my favorite system," he said, "but interesting. Forgive the cover-up. We're doing an experiment." He furiously pounded his keyboard. "Mind if I scan your Box? Full background takes one minute." Animations danced over his screen, clear and bright. There hadn't been static in twenty years.
  "Of course."
  "Shhh." More pounding brought up Rick's face.
  Rick looked around, fascinated by the clutter. One wall was a stack of data cassettes, probably simulations no one knew how to process. University 5153 led the development of half a million square kilometers in four countries. The area contained the Earth's population center, one of two points the planet would balance on, if people were the only objects with weight. In the past five years, many new residents had been drawn to the cheapest real estate outside the Sahara. They suffered from social compression: the old vertical hierarchy of family, neighbors, and country had been replaced by Fam networks. Lino compared it to having a friend exactly like him, spread out over many people. Too much friendship could be bad.
  Social software formed groups based on backgrounds and genes, strangers who understood each other. A mix of jobs and skills, where each member believed the others were less competent in some way. Once a language barrier had formed, a Fam was born. The main categories were spiritual, technical, dysfunctional, and the most common one: temporary. Many Fams had to be suppressed. They controlled their members' lives, reinforced existing talents, and turned people into caricatures. They marketed lifestyles, with dense support networks and celebrity gossip. The happiest ones had a strong leadership and many loopholes. Each Fam had a core group, but most merged into each other, and most people belonged to several such groups. The UN claimed there was only one Fam, and everyone was a member. Relationships had become more predictable, and people got along better, though that wasn't saying much.
  The most ambitious Fams came here to form their own tiny nations, every culture and creed, advancing across the dry grasslands toward the real deserts of Kazakhstan. Paradise gardens and techno-caves, cloned designer babies with genes from all members, and artificial languages where the grammar changed mid-letter. Rick had learned many members would not betray their Fam to save the world.
  Lino studied his guest. UN inspector Parkland (39), average height and build, sea-bleached but deceptively neat hair, an off-duty slacker. Expressionless eyes. His face was described as abnormally average, more symmetrical than most, but easily forgotten. Parkland's D-map indicated he was unusually relaxed. Most O-Group agents took themselves very seriously. Last week they had issued a warning about anaerobic bacteria in seabed-mined sulfur nodules.
  Rick had a nondescript multicultural look, not entirely Caucasian. Perhaps he had Ainu blood. "Do you have any ancestors from my country?" Lino asked.
  "My Aboriginal-Basque grandmother."
  Rick had misunderstood the question, but they had already formed a rapport. Lino finished the public "List" biography. He read Parkland was an amateur actor, with minor roles in several games; mostly crowd scenes. His eccentric date at the last UN banquet had gotten into an argument with the Inspector of the Year. He was with the Remote Locations program. Someone wanted to get rid of him? Parkland tended to get obsessed with his cases, but he ignored the consequences. How could he make himself useful here?
  Rotating the keyboard, he asked: "How do you keep getting into these crazy situations?" In the 2040's, strangers talked as if they had known each other for years.
  Rick smiled self-deprecatingly. "I don't know when to stop."
  "What is your mission here?"
  A thin keyboard opened like a map from Rick's sleeve. He sat down and played the silver buttons.
  "It's probably nothing," he said, tapping the keys. "I have to check anyway." Getting this far had been like sipping an elephant through a straw.
  Text on Lino's blackboard screen replaced a hologram of Mount Pinatubo. Lino's glasses became transparent, and he magnified the text with his eyes. "Another Intercognition census?" It sounded like a sneeze. His mood changed with his thoughts. No one could claim his undivided attention.
  Rick nodded. "Belgrade Game University. Everyone hides their online identities. We encourage advertisers to spy on everyone."
  Lino knew about peer routing, public retrieval, honey pots and junkyards. Data reorganized itself into false memories. "I fully support the UN tracking program," he said. "What kind of games?"
  "Lu-cid worlds."
  Reality had become too boring to live in. Above 1GB/sec, anything could seem real. On Lino's screen, an island-sized dragon darkened the canopy of a redwood forest, as costumed monkeys leapt for cover. The treetops rustled like a sea of jewels, each echo partially calculated. Flat watercolor wire-frames became an airbrush symphony.
  "How someone plays reveals their very soul," Rick said. "Belgrade monitored the Net game 'Supercluster'. Billions of solar systems, and a top-secret plot. You must be nominated by four Gamemasters to play. You get a spaceship realistic enough to live in." Rick tried to sound serious.
  The first universe simulation fractal had been released in 2009. "Supercluster", the sequel to a popular TV show, stretched the mind like a soap bubble. They saw oval stars like flashbulbs, Black ribbons that erased galaxies, the secret spaceship controlling all reality.
  Players floated in an inside-out chair, a lightweight framework stowed inside ordinary furniture. They maneuvered with muscle movements detected by smart clothes, which also provided force feedback. It was called "dreamwalking". The target audience became hooked in seconds. Players realized 24 hours had passed, their muscles aching, their urine reabsorbed.
  Rick had spent months organizing his data, until his Box knew enough to start asking questions. At that moment the case officially began. Now it wouldn't stop even if he died.
  He acted as if he was doing Lino a favor, revealing a great secret. "Whenever someone played 'Supercluster', Belgrade made a profile of them." The screen showed a jagged sculpture that began to look like a face. D-maps revealed how each player deviated from the "average human", a 41-year-old Nigerian woman.
  "Here are the profiles of an unknown person I call "Player-0". Each time he played, his profile was slightly altered. After six months it had changed completely. Player-0 got a new personality, which is impossible." There was instant silence when he stopped talking.
  Lino suddenly leaped up when a person hurried past the office. He shouted something down the hall and the employee yelled back, while Rick sat quietly. Lino dropped back in his chair and closed his eyes, studying Player-0's D-map in his memory. It felt like an intruder, something important he had forgotten about.
  "This is the age of instant education," he said. "People forget who they were. Player-0 simply reinvented himself."
  "We don't understand memory yet. Chemicals in the brain's white matter compete to form links. Player-0 must have used a drug halfway between Transcendex and a sledge hammer. I need to find him." Finished explaining, Rick felt empty.
  Lino opened his eyes. "Last week I met the advance team of a new Fam. They were like cyborgs, cross-trained to make me feel inferior. Your player was stranger than them."
  D-Maps provided the unbearable proof that people were not equal. They showed reaction speed, common biases, stability. The results were called "BLEP" files - banks, landlords, employers, police. In a different world, a great leader would have become a mediocre criminal. Player-0's results were in the genius range, probably indicating a charismatic man in his late forties.
  Advertisers recognized dozens of personality types. "Adaptive learners" were the most desirable, as popular as free money. They got hired anywhere, had spectacular careers, and were usually the happiest. "Passive resisters" were the least popular. 80% were on welfare, courtesy of the machines that did all the hard work. They got a tiny apartment and a little spending money: utter paradise by the standards of history. Income differences were bigger than ever, with a dozen trillionaires living in permanent bliss. Most had cheated, or been very lucky. These days every skill was common. There were fewer wealthy entertainers, but more successful entrepreneurs. Corporations had been replaced by unstable cartels. Strangers formed temporary Fams to compete, contractors and consultants, a string of vague intentions adding up to a factory.
  Lino lifted an ebonite sculpture of a bird with a human head, an enigmatic smile carved on its face. It seemed to be spinning. "Perhaps he upgraded himself, or it's a new type of identity theft. What was the proper response?"
  Somewhere in the building, a coolant pump started to hum. The sound increased in pitch until it became inaudible, but they still sensed it. "Player-0's location is a mystery," Rick said. "I sent him my data to shock him into revealing himself."
  "He didn't know about his own changes?"
  Rick frowned. "We talked for fifty-two seconds inside a simulation of his own choosing. I couldn't record it and don't remember much. I felt like a figment of his imagination." Like acting out a script. "Player-0 stole some of my knowledge before breaking the connection. He pretended to be an old friend who died." Rick was still mad at himself. He watched Lino's reaction. "The trace leads to this building."
  Lino could not be surprised. "Would you like to see the biggest mass of doped silicon in the universe?" he asked, while checking his money market and stock portfolios.
  "Your new Optic mainframe?" Rick asked. As if it could be anything else.
  Lino stopped typing and opened a door to a private stairway.
  "Tenure benefit." Rick followed him up the red-and-white metal staircase, their footsteps clanging hollowly.