24
The next five days in Villa 4 passed with a frenetic, exhausting pace and merged into an indistinct mass when Jay remembered them later. Because each of the boys felt such a strong gravitation toward the wonders of the place, they slept less and less the longer they stayed. By the third day, Jay was sleeping only about six hours a night, something he convinced himself was acceptable. He was almost positive the other two slept even less. They were rarely in when he woke, and it was even more uncommon for them to be back when he, trying vainly to wait for them, would doze off on the sofa in the living room.
For the most part they spent the days alone. Faraji had already made a meteoric rise within Blizzard's Gate—something, he said, came with a strange amount of stardom within the game, but none outside it. The Raiders had accepted him, and he was learning a great deal from the more savvy members; Epoch's Guide listed them as the Elder Council: “A more than competent, yet rather esoteric group of cyber-warriors, who don't let their white-collar backgrounds get them down.” On the afternoon of the third day, Jay had caught the boy racing in and out of the dinning room for a speedy lunch and gotten a spluttering and excited earful on the subject. Most of this had sounded like technological jargon to him, except when, with wide eyes, the boy had started talking about breaking through cyber security nets, something that strangely enough, he said he could learn in Blizzard's Gate.
To Jay's increasing worry, Billy became more withdrawn the more he went to Oz. He went there every morning, usually earlier than either Faraji or Jay would rise. He was obstinate when they would ask him questions. He sometimes volunteered a few comments on one of the experiences he had had, but never with enough excitement to put Jay's mind at ease. Jay knew him well enough to know he was leaving something out.
He hadn't been sure whether he should be surprised when a parcel arrived at the boy's living room, hailed by a flashing light above the dumb waiter and the alluring voice of the computer informing him of its arrival. It was the morning of the fourth day, and the standard white post envelope addressed to him was thick with £8,000 in fifty pound notes. He'd torn it open and taken the money straight to Infohogs the same afternoon—stopping only to write “thank you” on the back of the envelope for Odin—avoided Piper's eyes at the door, and spoken with Ms. Omid about using the café’s services. She had enrolled him in what she called the Flash Course, which, it turned out, had been extremely useful, and since the software was designed to work within any subject, he had started his research that very moment.
He found he already knew how to process large amounts of information. Every page was a storm with millions of driving characters. But he found it second nature to scan for only vital words or sentences, found it easy to trail an idea through multiple sources. Nothing special, he thought, even his father could do that.
Eventually, the aid of the software became more obviously vital to the collection of what he needed, especially because he wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for. His search had started very broadly. The first day alone he had spent ten exhausting hours collecting all manner of data and storing it in Infohog's self-proclaimed “deadly secure” digital vault (which Ms. Omid had said was “protected by the finest in cyberspace security”). That day was the day when he tried to verify the two stories he had heard from Nkiruka—just how had the Outskirts become the Outskirts and why? His search immediately met with a small hitch. The training software indicated an authorial inconsistency: a change in almost all the documents he could find. He found the same error message through multiple sources:
Date modified differs significantly from date created. Possible manipulation of documents. To view separate edits move here.
So this was it. It seemed almost impossible, but somehow Infohogs had saved, or at least could access the ghost of the dead web. Hard to fathom, that he had ingress to a tool with such unbelievable power against censorship. It was without doubt an arcane feat of storage and bandwidth. Anonymous access to all the cover-ups of the Net.
What he found that day validated parts of Nkiruka's story; he found article after article from international media outlets, each telling two different stories. The earlier, pre-edit, version were almost as coldly indifferent to the Outskirts as the later versions, but contained more concrete facts and figures, and more stories—a few even told stories of displacement and woe. Later versions had been cleaned, or sterilized, by someone—Jay could only guess who. Articles on the Within Reach and Proof of Property acts were easily accessible, but, after much time pouring over different edits, he realized many second and third versions of documents had omitted the specific cause of their enaction. Where an earlier version might note its relation to growing fear of an increasingly restless migrant population, or even to the murder perpetrated by Hadi and his two friends, later ones only noted obscurely the need for increased security and individual transparency.
The first day drained Jay in a way he had never experienced before. He had returned in a zombie state and slumped onto the nearest chair with so little mental energy that the computer had asked him if he was feeling sick. Billy was still out, but Faraji had come over to ask if he was okay. After Jay had told him what he had discovered, the boy's sympathy had been erased by his curiosity, and he had insisted on coming along the next day. This was not a problem, though Jay had to tell him that they would have to share, since he had already paid a week's worth in one room, and now didn't have enough to pay for another.
The second day was useful not for its success in dredging up useful information, but spending time with Faraji allowed Jay to learn much he didn't know, as well as discuss Billy's recent isolation. The two went together in the morning and situated themselves together in front of the screen. Jay would listen as Faraji recounted details of his flight and his life in the Outskirts and tailor his searches to them.
The single most startling detail that Faraji brought up was the monsters. This was how the younger boy had described them, although Odin had done so differently. Jay wasn’t quite sure why, but somehow this most naked of peculiars had slipped his mind. Their descriptions were so outlandish that Jay scarcely believed that they could exist, and on top of that the only proof that they could find on the Web was hardly conclusive. Even talking with other Hogs and seeking Ms. Omid's help yielded only an unedited, but otherwise ridiculous sounding, tabloid article about a women seeing three “Ten Foot Tall Ruffians Haunt the River Thames." At the end of the day, despite hours of reading and searching, they had found nothing conclusive on the subject, and had to retire back to their apartment to eat.
On the next day Faraji returned to Oz, saying that he had a meeting to attend, and Billy as usual was missing before midmorning. So once again Jay was left to his own private detective work. It was on this day that he tried attention-enhancing drugs for the first time, at the ardent suggestion of another hog named Poet Piccolo. Poet's real surname was apparently Wordsworth, but he had adopted the pseudonym after years of teasing as a boy at school. The two had seen each other twice the day before, and after meeting in the lounge had struck up a conversation that had at first revolved around Faraji's absence but then moved on to an awkward, or perhaps wary, discussion about data searching. Poet had spoken most of the time, with Jay only adding affirmative nods or grunts for punctuation.
Sort'n the shit from the soil's not always easy. 'specially after an hour or two. Things start to get hazy. It's hard to make yourself focus. Don't know why I'm telling you. You know. We all know, but, my young friend, these little things over here solve that problem, and quick.”
Poet's face and arms were covered in dense reddish brown hairs that with his heavy set figure gave him the likeness of a poorly bleached gorilla. The man gestured to the clear plastic counterfront, unmanned, filled with an organized tiering of energy drinks and concentration pharmaceuticals in blue and white glossy boxes. Poet began rummaging unceremoniously in his pockets, both hands at once, until he finally found a tin colored pill box and bunged it down on the table.
Now, listen, kid. I just want you to know that I'm not telling you to try these for me—or because I take them. I'm not asking for money. I don't sell. They're legal, and they're not addictive—least not physically . . . but if you've got the craving or need to know things under the surface of the Net . . .” He shook the little box until two round purple pills spilled out, spinning on the table in front of them. “This particular one is called Midalin. The only reason I’m giving it to you, really, is charity. You won't believe what you can do—some people think its cheating. I think the way I learn needs improving; there's enough trolls trolling around the goddamn place as it is, ignorant and shitting their half knowledge right where you're trying to walk.”
Jay had never been one to fear alternate states of mind, and even though he couldn't be sure he really needed it. He accepted Poet's offer graciously and took the two pills from the table and put them in his mouth. He was a little surprised when they melted into sweet syrup before he could swallow them. He thanked Poet and stayed in the lounge a while longer listening to this new fellow's diatribe. It became clear to him after a while that Poet's incessant conversation was in fact proof of his claims about the drugs he was talking about: they were more than the simple caffeine pill, or the cup of coffee that had so enlightened him in the past. Poet’s conversation was unstoppable, almost frustratingly focused and on topic. It took Jay minutes just to lead Poet away from talking about the “Net of Informed Fools” and the drugs he so admired. After he’d exhausted those topics though, Poet had started a new rant, one that, thanks to the increasingly noticeable effect the Midalin was taking, was not so hard to follow as those previous:
Boy, I'll tell you a little something I dug up the other day, it's really a gold nugget too, believe: you know, Oz, of course you do. Ever been? Doesn't matter. Well Oz is a good place and all, too damn good actually. So I was looking last week for information on how they maintain their systems—ask me about that later—you know, I wanted to know just how the hell they keep all that glorious hardware up, free, with no viruses, no diseases. Never found out, but I did find a link, one from a very bizarre forum post made by some poor lonely bastard. Link takes me to, get this shit, a fansite for a computer program. Wait maybe that's not accurate . . . A website for lovers of the same person: named Calliope.”
Wait, a person or computer program? You mean lovers?”
I can't tell you everything, lad. But from what there is on the Net, it seems that Calliope is an exquisitely beautiful, intelligent, charming, and above all affectionate computer program—man or woman—changeable in all ways and genius enough to know how to make real living, breathing, shitting, f*cking, human beings, love it. Literally.”
Literally . . . love it?”
A true modern day siren, or Galatea. I wonder just where our Pygmalion is, probably hooked up to his or her creation non stop, who knows. Anyway, the experience is called Calliope’s Rocks. If she's a siren, the rocks are inactivity, but this siren’s song is a little more complicated. Love, mental connection, and my oh my, physical connection too. More than all the dirty depths of the Net combined.”
Blake opened his mouth in stunned expression. Suspicions crawled imp-like through his hair.
Exactly,” Poet kept going, “plenty of poor bastards have already succumbed. I read their titillated professions of love. They sound like idiots, wishing they could spend more time with her, or him—some admitted to divorcing their spouses. ‘Poor flawed soul' one called his ex-wife. Other talked about the sex . . . not sure who exactly was behind the creation of the body net that Oz uses, but he or she sure as shit wasn't a saint.”
With the rest of the day, Jay learned more in less time than he had in the last two days. Much more. It seemed that Midalin aided both concentration and recall as well. For the first time he realized how the clientèle at Infohogs read so quickly. They were all taking these drugs. Ms. Omid might have disagreed, said it was the café’s learning course and streamlined software, but now he knew better. This first day on Midalin his reading speed increased fivefold, and he remembered it all, word after word sinking deep into his brain in a seemingly endless stream of information.
Jay soon unearthed even more reports of the “monsters” that Faraji had so passionately professed to seeing. The very same that Odin had blamed for the death of Rufus. On a lark, actually, Jay had returned to the subject after looking through variable libraries of information on the Outskirts’ decline. Later he'd related what he found to Faraji: a rash of reports rated so low by the search provider that they had missed them the day before. The most startlingly thing was their consistency with one another. Some were just forum posts, others appeared to be pure entertainment reporting, very ridiculous and sensational in their tone and coloring, so much so that even their author's seemed incredulous. Still, all mentioned three men, almost men, taller than the tallest man in the country by witness estimation, always seen from far away, appearing misshapen, sometimes fighting each other, and always sighted near the Outskirts.
Faraji met the news triumphantly—perhaps he had sensed Jay's skepticism.
But Jay still had more to say.
On a hunch, (he refused to say it might have been the Midalin) hoping everything was related, he had searched for information on the Villa and genetic experimentation together. On the second subject he had found nothing but unreliable and ill-reasoned conspiracy theories, but together the terms had yielded some rather suspicious information, and, in turn, the name of two companies and one man. He read their history in a flurry of white noise alarm bells: Mollec Inc, major contributor to quasi-liberal MPs. This history included a recent centenary following a period of relative quietude—analysts valuing competitors stock far above—yet never much internal turmoil, at least not leaked to the press. Mollec was one of the world's rising corporate entities, providing for its employee's and stockholders in ways previous corporate opulence only just grasped. It’s success stemmed from it's central role as coordinator of the Villa construction projects—essentially a brilliant middleman—the ones responsible for sales and eventual payback of government subsidies—profit motivated keepers of tax dollars. Infohog's magnificent software had brought up a money trail to Biomerge Inc, England's richest and least transparent bioengineering company: unknown headquarters, with a platoon of labs in China and, according to one anonymous ranting broken English forum post, an outpost in war torn Congo. And one man was on the board of directors for both companies.
His name is Cassius Bellick. Even with the name pictures were somehow unavailable, but the man was too important to avoid the Net. The man's assets probably rose into the billions, but his influence thrust him even higher above the common citizen. His seniority on the Mollec board and indeterminate leadership at Biomerge were not his only corporate positions. He was also listed as a “Consultant for Government Relations” on the Seventh Day website. Seventh Day, for lack of a more specific description, was a technology company, and one that was also intertwined with the Villa's sticky web. This company was particularly low-flying, so Jay during another lounge break had asked Poet about them. Poet had asked Xia, who had pointed them to a Japanese fellow by the name of Hideo, who had three small and hard won facts to tell him: the company was headquartered in Nagasaki, was a major supplier for the Villas—responsible for many of the project's special tech, experience rooms software and security network—and though they traded in electronics of all sorts, their next project was rumored to be mechanized urban farming. The exact phrase Hideo had used was “robot cultivation.”
All this, deep and frightening as stepping into quicksand, was still only abstract information until Jay found an article about the massacre that had started it all, had entrench the Outskirts in some perverse and hopeless war against the elite. The headline read: