Rik raised an amused eyebrow, for the Garbage Guy seemed to have his curmudgeon levels set on high. Regardless, there was no arguing that the lane certainly looked much cleaner than it had when Rik had come down it last. “You ever find anything worthwhile in all this stuff?” he said.
The Garbage Guy shrugged, looking at Rik with watery blue eyes. “Sometimes you pick up a gold piece someone dropped after a bar fight,” he said. “Some little weapon they don’t care about, a piece of jewelry . . .” He shrugged again, dropped the bag into the wheelbarrow. “It’s a living.”
But is it much fun?
Rik wondered. Though you did meet some strange types in Omnitopia: people who had trouble interacting . . . even some who seemed to have no real world life at all. Some of them were best avoided: there were entirely too many online panhandlers, creep-out cases looking for a way to walk off with some of your gold. Other people, less creepy but just sadder—poor players, unlucky ones—sometimes you wished you could find a way to help. A lot of the time there was nothing in particular you could do.
But now Rik thought of that sign hanging glowing in the sky, and started to wonder whether that was strictly true anymore. “Listen,” he said. “I’m building a Microcosm. Maybe I could use some help. Come on over and work for me.”
Garbage Guy gave him a funny look. “Sure,” he said, utterly skeptical. “Funny. Very, very funny.”
“No, I’m serious! I’m really a MicroLeveler. You can check my game profile.” Rik grinned: this was the first time he’d told anybody in the game but his own group about it. “Just getting started. You can help me beta it.”
The Garbage Guy stuffed his hands into a tangle of rags: Rik assumed there were pockets in there somewhere. When Garbage Guy looked up again, there was an odd look in those pale blue eyes: like someone who’d forgotten what kindness sounded like. The expression was half startled, half sad. “Why?” he said. “Why me?”
It was the question of the day, it seemed. Rik found himself having to search for an answer that didn’t make him sound snotty or stuck up. “Uh, I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “You seem like a smart guy, and I don’t see why you should be doing
this
for gold when you can do something more interesting.”
Garbage Guy’s odd look didn’t quite go away, but it looked a little less sad. “I don’t know how much I’m going to make off this,” Rik said, “but if you’re going to help me beta, I’d certainly pay you what your time is worth out of what I make.” And no sooner had he said it than Rik was tempted to laugh at himself in sheer scorn.
One percent of infinity,
he thought.
Right. What’s one percent of nothing?
For there was absolutely no guarantee—especially at the rate he was going at the moment—that he would ever make anything from his Microcosm at all. One newsfeed story Rik had seen had suggested that one out of every three new Microcosms survived for less than a year: and Omnitopia Inc. wasn’t forthcoming with data on the subject, at least not to gamers at Rik’s level.
He was startled out of the sudden fit of downheartedness by a cackle of laughter. Garbage Guy was laughing at him, those watery eyes actually tearing with amusement. For just a moment Rik wondered once more whether he was dealing with a game-generated character. But there was something about this man’s face that made Rik wonder whether he was perhaps dealing with the kind of player who used their own genuine face as part of their game presence, certain that as long as they kept the rest of their identity properly concealed, you would never find out who they were.
“What’s so funny?” Rik said.
Garbage Guy wiped his eyes and got control of himself. “Never had a real steady job before,” he said. “Before this one, I mean. And now somebody offers me another one.”
“Well,” Rik said, “will you take it? It’s going to take me a day or so before I can get back in here, but I’ve got some troubleshooting to do when I do.”
Garbage Guy sniffed and wiped his nose, then reached back into his raggy clothes and came up with a blue-glowing profile token, the kind of electronic business card you gave other players who you wanted to meet again. He handed it to Rik. “Here,” Rik said, and dug around in his pouch to find a similar token to give Garbage Guy.
And I can’t keep calling him that—
He eyed the token he’d been given as he passed his own over: but it had no sigil or name branded on it. “What’s your name?”
The Garbage Guy gave him a shocked look. “I didn’t mean your
real
name!” Rik said hurriedly, for in his experience the vast majority of gamers guarded their privacy jealously: their bosses or families didn’t always approve of where they spent their time and money.
Garbage Guy relaxed a little. “. . . Dennis,” he said finally.
“Dennis? Hi. I’m Arnulf. Arnulf Manyfaced.” He put his hand out.
The little man reached up and clasped arms with Rik. Rik caught a whiff of what Dennis had been rooting around in, but kept his face straight. “Arnulf,” said Dennis. “Well, young Arnulf, when do I start?”
“Uh. Tomorrow night?”
Dennis paused to consider. “All right,” he said. “You’re on. Now would you put that back where you found it so I can see what I’m doing and finish this up?”
“Sure.” Rik stepped back to the cresset holder, shoved the torch back into it, then tried to wipe his arm clean of what had gotten on it without the gesture showing. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow, then.”
“Fine, yeah, tomorrow,” Dennis said and got back to business with the garbage again.
“Game management?” Rik said.
“Listening, Rik,” the control voice said in his ear.
“Egress to home space and logout, please.”
“Thank you. Exit recorded at seventeen forty-one local time, and come back soon to Omnitopia!”
Troker’s Lane vanished. Rik pulled off his headset, blinking at the early evening light coming in the den’s windows, stretched in his chair, and got up to go find Angela and tell her about his “day.”
In Troker’s Lane, eyes glittered with amusement in the torchlit darkness, then turned their attention back to the garbage.
SEVEN
T
HE SHADOWS OF THE SKYSCRAPERS were leaning low and eastward over the river. It had been an unseasonably hot day down there; in the canyons between the steep cliffs of glass and steel you could see the heat haze wrinkling silvery against the sidewalk, if you cared to look at it. Phil didn’t care to. He wouldn’t have to feel that heat for more than the ten seconds it took him to get across from his building’s front door to his waiting car. All the same, he was already thinking of the weekend out at the Hamptons: the cool wind, the gray-bright glitter and dazzle of the surf, the dry crunchy squeak of the pale sand underfoot as he walked eastward along his beach. Yet at the same time, even now, Phil already knew that when he got there something would inevitably go wrong with the weekend perfection. The Hamptons just weren’t what they’d used to be when he first bought the house. Something was missing. Once again, as he had many times this last year, Phil thought about selling the place; trading up a little for an area up the coast somewhere, possibly a little less well serviced but also less tony, less full of posers.
Anywhere the chopper can get to an within an hour,
he thought—
no, make that three-quarters of an hour—would be fine with me. Something to talk to Dean about next week—
Phil gazed out at the river, hardly seeing it for the moment. “You were always a hippie, goddamn it,” he said under his breath, finally turning away from the window with a frown. “Even after all the hippies were
gone
you were still a hippie. . . .”
He made his way back to his desk and sat down at it, gazing out the window, still mostly unseeing. All of today’s inconsequentia had been cleaned off its shining granite-topped expanse: which was just as it should’ve been, since he had four assistants whose job was to keep his desk clean of everything except the most important business. And right now, that boiled down to the phone call Phil was waiting for.
He stared at the phone, already getting angry at the way the call he was expecting was taking so long. Unfortunately, that was the nature of working with some of these hired- in people; they weren’t old-school business types and couldn’t be depended upon to manage an owed-call list correctly. Also, in their small, nasty ways, they were not above a few high school power plays, tiny passive-aggressive attempts to make you understand who was really running things, based on the idea that you should somehow be grateful to them for getting down in the dirt and getting the work you needed done. Phil smiled thinly.
Well,
he thought,
let them think that’s the way it is.
For at the end of the day, it was all about getting the result.
That was the only thing on Phil’s mind, and it surprised him sometimes that some of his allies and some of his enemies never fully wrapped their brains around that concept. He glared at the phone, got up from the desk again, and went up the stairs to the gallery level of his office, where he began to pace. Phil’s office had been built to accommodate that pacing; it was how he did his best thinking, and his desk stood a few feet below the gallery walkway, which wrapped around inside the corner of the building as the rest of the office did. Here he could keep an eye on the desk, and any visitors—not that many people had entrée here—while also being able to gaze out at the river. Here Phil could wander up and down, thinking on his feet, dictating to the office note management system or to his assistants, while at the same time keeping a weather eye on the view southward toward the Battery, and the wrinkled flow of water where the Hudson poured out into New York Bay. “The widow’s walk,” some of his assistants called it, joking, though never to his face.
When did they stop telling jokes around me?
Phil thought briefly. Then he shrugged the idea away.
Not a problem, not for here and now, anyway.
There were too many things to think about today.
He paused in the walk, glaring down at the phone again. It still hadn’t rung.
It’s almost end of business here,
he thought;
they know they were supposed to be in touch with me by now
.
How am I supposed to make my final assessments on this move if they don’t—
Then Phil shook his head, went back to walking. There was no point in getting all type-A about it. The whole purpose of this business was to make other people sweat . . . one in particular.
The phone rang. “Sorensen,” he said immediately.
“Mr. Sorensen,” Brandy’s voice said from the outer office, “I have Link Raglan on the line.”
“Put him through.”
“Mr. Sorenson,” Link’s voice said, “I’ve got those end of day download figures for you.”
“Go,” Phil said.
“Total downloads to five p.m.,” Link said, “four million, three hundred and eighty thousand, two hundred and twelve.”
“That’s great,” Phil said. And it really was, though it was strange how flat he found this small triumph in the actual moment of its achievement. Those numbers were nearly half again what he had expected—half again what even the most enthusiastic and optimistic of his trend-trackers had suggested they might achieve this week. Phil smiled again at the thought that Omnitopia was not going to have everything its own way. “So go ahead and issue the statement we prepared. Just make sure you swap in the new numbers.”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“And while you’re at it,” Phil said, “you might want to add a little something to it along the lines of how even our most ambitious competitors couldn’t have predicted such a jump in product interest. How plainly the players are as interested in established, reliable platforms as in new, unproven, blah blah blah . . .”
“Got it,” Link said, and Phil could faintly hear scribbling in the background. “You want to see it before I pass it on?”
Phil thought a moment, shook his head. “No need,” he said. “Just make sure you copy it to me and the usual PR people in e-mail. Meanwhile—” He looked out and down through the wall-wide window at the skyscraper shadows moving slowly out across the river, gnomons of a sundial that he watched every day.
Almost five-twenty now,
he thought.
Over there it’ll be—
“Any news today from our normal inside sources?”
There was no question what he meant when he said “inside.” There was only one other inside that mattered to Phil. “Nothing that we weren’t expecting,” Link said. “They’re all scrambling around trying to patch software holes, exactly as we knew they would be.” There was a pause. “Obviously you were right about this. They got a little too ambitious for their own good. Got themselves married to this particular date because of some weird symbolic quality—”
Phil nodded. “It’s the solstice,” he said. “And Dev always was hung up on winter solstice this, spring equinox that, all these artificial, outwardly imposed due dates. It’s a weakness, and it’s strengthened by the fact that we know about it. Never mind.” Phil was still amused that he’d known the new Omnitopia’s most likely rollout date long before any of his people inside had been able to bring in the news, long before any press release had been issued. The man was just too predictable in some ways, and the fact sometimes made Phil sorry for him. “Meantime,” Phil said, “make sure you and your team keep a close eye on what’s going on over there in the next forty- eight hours. If anything happens or goes wrong that we can exploit, I want to hear all about it, and I want a press release ready to go within minutes. Any of their publicity that we can attach ourselves to over the next three days, that’s fine with me. Dev may have paid for it, but we’ll reap the benefits.”
“Yes, Mr. Sorensen,” Link said.
“All right,” Phil said. “That should be it for today. You and your team be in early tomorrow. Things are going to start speeding up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good-bye.”
The connection shut down. Phil stood there for a moment, went on looking out and over the river. One of the Circle Line cruise ships began creeping across the reflection and shadow of his own skyscraper’s tower, turning it briefly into a bright hash of interference patterns and wave crests.
That release will come out in . . .
He glanced at his watch.
Maybe an hour.
And whoever in Dev’s organization was tasked to keep an eye on
him
and
his
company’s business would see the article, make a note of it, and bring it to Dev—