"Woo," he said, and blew out a short breath that might have been a laugh directed at himself. Then he stretched out facedown on the floor and got up again to walk carefully to the chair where his clothes were. And this time it was the right number of steps in the right way according to the music playing in his head. He dressed without any more problems.
The living room was tastefully luxurious, and empty. Over on a desk near the windows, a monitor was flashing his name. But he had to wait for a while, until the program director cued something up with a matching rhythm before he could go to it and press the message-waiting button on the control panel built into the desktop.
Thank you for your help in court, the screen told him. It was not absolutely vital in terms of legal procedure that you appear before the judge with us, but it did strengthen our case beyond question. Hope you rested comfortably. Press the printout button for a hardcopy map of the building and the areas that directly concern you. The hallway to your left as you face this screen leads to the elevator. Manny Rivera.
That was it? A Purge detox and not even a fancy French breakfast? What a bunch of cheap-asses.
H e was reaching for the map sticking out of the printout slot when he felt the difference in the air.
The kid was standing in the doorway, dressed only in a pair of colorless jockey shorts that had passed the stage of true wearability. Kindred soul, secret words or not.
"Visual Mark," the kid said.
He shrugged.
"I've seen a lot of your stuff. I always wondered what your real name was."
Mark gave a short laugh. "Who fucking knows? I lost track of that a while ago." Not quite true; some of the stuff he'd toxed out on in the past had had some bizarre lasting effects, but he could remember his real name, if he tried. Mostly, the effort was incompatible with the sound track.
"Yah," the kid said. "Well." He stared distractedly at a spot on the carpet about midway between them.
"Listen, guy-" Mark made a move toward him and stopped. It wasn't like he could help. The kid had said the secret words, and that had locked things up. He shook his head. "Guy, it's a stone-home Schrodinger world." He stuffed the map in his shirt pocket and headed for the elevator.
9
"So, then," said Dinshaw, pushing a hand through her frizzy red-gold hair, "after it's all approved and ready to go into the pipe, Manny comes back with just one more tiny little fix.' "
Over the civilized din in the Common Room, Dinshaw was holding forth to a less-than-rapt audience gathered more by inertia than choice around the circular table, a scenario more or less duplicated all around the room at the other tables, among the rest of the employees of the Advertising and Entertainment Division.
Gabe tried to give Dinshaw a semblance of attention, since he was sitting right next to her. He'd spent the morning tracking down headhunters in New Orleans with Marly and Caritha, and he was feeling alternately energized and drained. Marly and Caritha had blind-selected a voodoo track, and he had almost been crucified on a cypress tree. The authenticity may have been dubious, but the excitement had been real. Relatively. It seemed more real than Dinshaw's slightly nasal, slightly hoarse complaint, anyway.
Across from him LeBlanc was keeping one eye and ear on the six-screen dataline in the wall behind him, occasionally tabbing the remote in the center of the table, switching between What's Entertainment?, Dear Mrs. Troubles, and The Slurs, Crystals, and You Show. Next to her, Shuet was methodically breaking pieces off some unidentifiable snack food and tucking them into his mouth, the designer-sculpted jaws moving in a deliberate way, as if he were counting his chews. On LeBlanc's other side, Silkwood was also watching the dataline, his wide, wholesome face looking alternately anxious and hungry. LeBlanc nudged him. "How's the diet going? Should we switch to food porn?"
"No, thank you," he said primly. "The weight is coming off, I'm fine. I haven't watched food porn since I got my buttons."
"That's what you call them?" LeBlanc was amused.
"The buttons that switch off the urge to overeat. Is there something sick about that to you?"
"Hey, they're your implants. Excuse me, I mean buttons." LeBlanc shared a secret smile with Gabe.
"… concept's perfect, clothes're perfect, every little detail down to the spear carriers, all perfect," Dinshaw was saying. "But, Manny says, the client says I'm not thinking thin enough, the viewpoint character just didn't feel like a tall, slinky model stalking through the world, she felt like, and I quote, just anybody who'd buy off the rack.' Unquote."
Gabe nodded in automatic commiseration as LeBlanc made a sympathetic noise of disgust. "Did you tell Manny to take the test-driver and spin on him? Had to be a him, right?"
"Of course," said Dinshaw. "TexTones employs something like nine hundred women, and they can't spare one, not one, to test-drive the spot. Instead, we get one of their paunchiest old farts, and we shoehorn him into a hotsuit, stick a header on him, turn on the simulation, and say, 'Okay, now you're this gorgeous woman, roll with it, Zeke.' "
"Look at that," LeBlanc said, pointing at the dataline. "Damien Splader's going to do a talk show from prison. They send him up for life, and he gets his own show. Just what we need, another porn show. Prison porn. You know something like sixty-eight percent of all new programming on the dataline is some kind of porn now?"
"Where'd you get a figure like that?" said Shuet. "News porn?"
LeBlanc looked at him evenly. "Hey, a tabloid should know."
"Oh, how could there be prison porn? Who would get hot looking at prison stuff?"
"Who would get hot looking at food?" Silkwood said glumly.
"Are you sure those implants of yours are working?" LeBlanc asked him.
"Yes, I'm just thinking of my former bad habits." Silkwood eyed the now-empty wrapper in front of Shuet.
"Manny starts giving me this dissertation," Dinshaw went on, "about how a really good simulation can erase barriers and differences and convince a woman she's a father or a man that he's a sexy, high-priced model showing off daywear. And if it can't, it's just not vivid and alive enough."
"What about the companion spot?" LeBlanc asked. "Or have they gone budget-slashing cheap-assed, like Kickers, Boots of the Wild? I hope I never see another Kicker in my life."
"Amboy's working on it, from a template lifted off mine. The program'll automatically select it for a male viewer, and it's the default for flatscreen format. That means I can't change mine now."
"Sure you can," Silkwood said distantly. "Just zap a new template over to Amboy."
"Sure I can. And the minute I do, he'll be down in Manny's office, raising hell about how is he supposed to get anything done on time when Big Bad Emily Dinshaw keeps changing everything around on him. Then Manny'll call me in and give me a lecture on how he wasn't asking for a total recompose, just a little more feeling."
"Tell him to feel this," LeBlanc suggested.
"Not without a hotsuit. Not even with a hotsuit."
"That's what we need!" LeBlanc laughed. "Diversifications porn! Right? We could tell our horror stories for a cam, let the home audience know what kind of hell we go through to give them those commercials they eat up with two spoons. Sorry," she added to Silkwood. "No offense."