“Welcome!” she said at last and with fervor. “Welcome all to the House of E-Pluribus!” She held her graceful arms aloft and bowed her pretty head. Her audience applauded rowdily. “Dear guests,” she continued, “you have been chosen to join us today in the very important and quite exhilarating task of preference polling. As you know, society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them. Thus, society turns to you for guidance. Each of you possesses a voice that must be heard, and a heart that must be plumbed.”
She raised her hand to the ever-morphing statue high above them. “You, all of you, are the true E-Pluribus Everyperson. When Everyperson speaks in the halls of Congress or Parliament, in corporate boardrooms, jury rooms, and voting booths, it speaks with your voice.”
She paused a beat and added, “Now I’m aware that some of you may find our methods a little overwhelming, especially if this is your first visit with us. Therefore, we have arranged for a few of my friends to stop by.”
The host of simstars behind her chorused a resounding, “HELLO!” and the daily hires cheered.
“We invite each of you,” Beijing continued, “to select your most favorite celebrity in the whole world, from any time period, to be your personal guide throughout the day. Feel free to choose your biggest heart throb. She or he is bound to be here. And please, we’re all friends at E-Pluribus, so don’t be bashful. Choose whomever you want. Even me!
“Now then, we have a full day of taste-testing, opinion-polling, and yes—soul-searching—planned for you, but before we begin, please review the terms and conditions of hire, and if you approve, authorize them. Then call out the name of your heart’s desire, and he or she will come down to be at your side.”
Few of the daily hires bothered to read the contracts that appeared in the air before them. They swiped them impatiently and called out the name of Beverly Bettleson or Cary Grant, Anguishello del Sur, Humphrey Bogart, Yurek Rutz, Marilyn Monroe, or Ronald Reagan, or one of thousands more. Every name called brought a hearty “PRESENT!” from the Academy. To trumpeted fanfare, the chosen demigods descended the grand staircase of the pyramid to join their gaga guests.
Bogdan took the opportunity to slip behind an invisible blind where he knew one of the service elevators waited to take him down to the employee fitting rooms. He passed Annette Beijing on the way.
“Hello, Boggo,” she said, using her private name for him. “Got a smile for me?”
For her he had all the smiles in the world. She just so happened to be his own heart’s desire. Though she was an adult, and though she was only a holographic sim, he loved everything about her.
“Sure, Nettie,” he said, using his own private name for her, “though I am—ah—running a little late this morning.”
She smirked and said, “We noticed. I won’t keep you except to pass along a request from HR.”
“HR?” Bogdan said, his voice cracking on the R. He tried again in a deeper octave. “HR? What do they want?”
“They’d like you to come in to see them on Wednesday afternoon at three-fifteen.”
“What for?” Bogdan said. “Is it because I’m late? It was an accident. I couldn’t help it. I’ll never be late again.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” she laughed. “You’re a very punctual young man, so maybe that’s not it. Checking the calendar, I see that Wednesday is your first anniversary with us.”
Bogdan did a quick mental calculation. “You’re right, my first anniversary. I’d forgotten.”
Annette winked and said, “Well, perhaps E-Pluribus hasn’t forgotten. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Boggo, I have some stragglers to move along.”
Behind her, Bogdan saw that two stalwarts were still trying to decipher their employment agreement. The others were already embarked on the long stroll across the vast marble plain with their chosen hollyholo companions. Their destination was a pavilion, barely visible, on the far horizon. The distance was only half illusionary; the actual distance was from the tower’s southernmost bank of elevators to its northernmost stairwell, a distance of half a klick. It would seem even farther, however, with Harrison Ford, Count Uwaga, Audrey Hepburn, or Jim Morrison hanging on their every word. And by the time they arrived at the pavilion and were fitted with their potty plugs, E-Pluribus would have uploaded their personal upref files, established occipital neurolingual calibration, recorded an evoked response baseline, and tailored a morning’s worth of test scenarios for them and them alone.
Bogdan shook his head in smug satisfaction as he entered the service lift. He had to admit he was getting to be an old hand at the upreffing biz. Maybe E-Pluribus had noticed the excellent quality of his work. Maybe Human Resources was going to extend his contract. Or give him a bonus or maybe a raise.
THE VISCERAL RESPONSE Probes—the so-called potty plugs—were the same for the regular E-Pluribus employees as for the daily hires. A probe consisted of a fasciculus of motile electrode filaments, tipped with synaptic couplers, in a hydrogenated glycol casing that melted at body temperature. It was fourteen centimeters long and conical in shape. It looked like a greasy, spindly, miniature Christmas tree. It smelled like bath powder. Application was simple. Bogdan had done it so many times he hardly thought about it, though it amused him to think of the first encounters with it that the daily holes must have. He entered a “fitting” booth, closed the door, opened the crotch of his jumpsuit, and sat on a toilet seat. The seat slowly lowered him onto the probe. A bull’s-eye every time. There was a fleeting discomfort, a sense of fullness, as the casing dissolved and was absorbed into the submucosal lining of his transverse colon. There was a mild peristaltic spasm or two as the electrode filaments maneuvered to interface with his vagus nerve. By the time he refastened his clothes and exited the booth, he was a walking, talking, assay-kicking machine.
Bogdan hurried to his third assignment for the day; he’d already missed the first two. In a small auditorium, he joined a dozen daily hires seated around a holospace. They were still keyed up by the novelty of it all. Two of them were iterants—steves—who had already abandoned their hollyholo chaperones in favor of their own company. A few more holes—chartists—sat together in companionable silence. Bogdan gave the latter group a charter wave, which caused some doubtful looks—he wasn’t wearing his Kodiak colors.
The auditorium lights went down. Theme music, like that of a comedy show, came up. Emitters transformed the auditorium into the lounge of a Chicago body clinic where a triad of attractive people—two women and a man—awaited the results of tests they had just undergone. These three had decided to surgically graft themselves into one individual, but were still debating about what configuration to use.
Bogdan, from his year’s worth of experience at E-Pluribus, suspected that this was a consensus vid, his least favorite kind, in which the combined attention of audience members drove the plot. Bogdan watched the vid with resignation. Professional experience told him it would quickly devolve into a little urban tale of lies, deceit, and hurt feelings. The three beautiful, witty, obviously aff young people decided to graft their three heads onto one body, but whose body? And which sex? Or maybe a combined sex? For three people wanting to merge into one, they seemed curiously unable to agree on anything, and their bantering humor grew absurd.