The Beam: Season Two (49 page)

AcUity worked so well it was eerie; it was almost as if the developer had a crystal ball for technology. As word spread about AcUity success stories — people running their households without lifting a finger; users who were able to craft mnemonic triggers to recall entire swatches of cloud memory at will — the app’s popularity skyrocketed. For a few years, you couldn’t walk through a public place without seeing a dozen people playing AcUity on their mobile screens, tapping at flashing icons and dragging puzzle pieces into place.
 

But what Isaac Ryan forced himself to remember as Aiden Purcell’s avatar materialized in front of him in the library simulation for their second meeting was that it was a mistake to take anything Aiden said at face value. Some people occasionally said one thing while actually meaning its opposite, but with Aiden, deceit was almost something you could count on.
 

AcUity’s true purpose, it turned out, was to mine data from the people who played it. Its inventors hired addiction experts who’d learned from early online role-playing games and the first mobile apps built on the in-app purchase model. What was true then was doubly true with AcUity: The primary goal, above all else, was to keep the user playing. The more time people played, the more the app could extract about their behavior, their neural firing patterns, their preferences and hidden motivations, and what they truly desired versus what they claimed to desire. AcUity was free and had no in-app purchases. Immediately addictive, it spread throughout the NAU. Users experienced phenomenal mental growth and told friends. And the more people who used AcUity, the more data Purcell’s company added to its database.
 

According to the stats that bought Purcell’s way into Panel (stats which Isaac and his brother knew about from their mother, despite being outside of Panel themselves), AcUity had amassed behavior analytics on 81 percent of the NAU population — including those below the line who played the free game on their cheap Doodads. Purcell made his vast fortune selling that data. At the time, only O’s covertly gathered user data was remotely comparable. But O’s data was highly specific (mostly sexual), and O wasn’t sharing. Purcell was always willing to — for a price.
 

“Isaac,” said Purcell’s avatar, walking past him to sit in the library simulation’s big leather chair. “It’s good to see you again.”
 

“Aiden.” Isaac nodded. He almost wanted to say that the feeling was mutual, but it wasn’t. Getting a visit from Purcell was like getting a visit from the devil in a fancy suit. You knew you were playing with fire, and both parties knew that you were only there because you hoped to throw that fire on someone else before it burned you alive.
 

“Have you decided on how you’d like to proceed?”
 

Isaac swallowed. He’d known the question was coming but was reluctant to volunteer his proposition. Purcell held a very important position within Panel and was in many ways the opposite of Isaac’s role within the Directorate Party. Isaac’s title was Czar of Internal Satisfaction, which basically meant that he was in charge of keeping the cattle sedated, happy enough to hold still for their milking. The joke in both parties (among those who knew about Panel, anyway, which was an almost nonexistent subset), was that Purcell was the unofficial Czar of Dissatisfaction. Purcell, in essence, was always holding a sharp blade. The question wasn’t
if
he’d cut someone, but rather who it would be, and the depth of the ensuing gash.
 

“Natasha’s decided to stage a new concert,” Isaac said. “The beauty is that it’s before Shift, so a sabotage there will effectively handle the other concert — the one after Shift — as well.”
 

Purcell, sitting in the large chair with his legs crossed, smiled. He had perfect dark-brown hair, combed straight back with a widow’s peak. He was wearing a dark suit with wide pinstripes, a red tie, and a white pocket square. His shoes were polished to a mirror finish, his teeth white like chalk. But what chilled Isaac most was the knowledge that while avatars could be dressed and appointed any way the user wanted, Purcell’s required none whatsoever. He was looking at the man as he’d appear in life — always stylish, always young, always immaculate in appearance, with a crocodile’s smile.
 

“Two for one.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Isaac.
 

Purcell nodded as he weighed Isaac’s request. Anyone who knew of Panel’s existence could request a meeting with the man, but the ensuing meetings always had the feel of a bargain for one’s soul. You didn’t tell Aiden Purcell to do anything. You didn’t even
request
that he do anything. You pitched him ideas, like an angel on his shoulder. If he liked the idea, he’d adopt it and take credit for it. If he didn’t like it, nothing happened, and there were no appeals.
 

“The way I figure it,” Isaac continued, drawing on his earlier discussion with Micah about the riots’ true nature, “it’s a good volley. Micah conducted a public upset designed to make Directorate look bad. This would be a fitting response.”
 

“Doesn’t it seem coincidental that so much Directorate/Enterprise strife would be carried out at the same woman’s concerts?” said Purcell.

“It would be a
perfect
place to cause a bit of controlled chaos, though,” Isaac argued. “Nobody knows she’s even planning the concert except for me and a few of Natasha’s toadies.”
 

“Really,”
said Purcell, cocking his head. That had been a dangerous thing to say to a man who prided himself on having the best information.

Isaac stammered. “It’s brand new. I only found out by going through her files. You know about this thing with the demonstrators and the fight downtown? Where the kids were trampled?”
 

Purcell laughed. He would. The issue had become a hotbed, with everyone accusing everyone else of misdeeds and holding the children high as evidence.
 

“Natasha wants to do a benefit for them,” said Isaac. “A small thing, but a
loud
thing. It’s on a rush. Not at the Aphora, which would be the obvious choice, but at a place called The Sap.”

“Hipster joint,” Purcell said.
 

“It’s a hipster
event
. Very socially aware. She’s doing it before Shift as a PR move. She’s still Directorate, see, so the thinking goes like this: Why would she do an extra concert when she gets her regular dole regardless? Clearly, she’d only do it because she has a heart of gold, so everyone should love her. If I had to guess — and knowing the predictable dickholes she works with — she’ll start some sort of a fundraiser early, begging her showbiz friends to buy expensive tickets and donate them to the kids’ parents. Then she’ll deck the place out in 2-Ds and video. She’ll have neurals culled from all the existing news footage — AI predicted, I mean, and with Beau Monde Beam AI, so it’ll be good data — and she’ll know the cues to put into video montages of the crushed kids in order to best get the mothers crying on camera. She’ll work one night, raise a fuckload of money for hospital bills (idiotic, seeing as all but one of the families are Directorate, but nobody will remember that), and come out looking like a queen. Then, after Shift, she can cash in on her comeback show.”
 

“Without consequence, you mean,” Purcell said.
 

“Right. The goodie-goodie of the pre-Shift event will make her immune in the post-Shift event. Why
not
support Natasha Ryan in her bold comeback as she puts her neck on the line, moving out to perform without a net, in Enterprise once again? She’s an angel who helps kids, not a greedy, duplicitous cunt.”
 

“Not a bad move on her part,” said Purcell, grinning, clearly enjoying Natasha’s manipulative mind.

“Well, sure. But it’d be even more advantageous from your position — well, I mean,
I
think, not that I’m telling you your business or anything — if you, I mean if
we
, or if
I
…”
 

“I gave Micah my blessing on his plan to stage riots at her concert because it was elegant.” Purcell shifted in his chair, looking up at Isaac as he remained standing. “The trick is to keep the tension on just enough that everyone has someone to blame for where they are. Someone other than themselves, I mean. Enterprise is a poor structure because although everyone thinks they’re special, almost no one is. So when they get frustrated, they need someone else to look to, to account for their own failure. Otherwise, Enterprise crumbles.
Enterprise
isn’t the problem, they feel; it’s that the Directorate slobs out there are messing up the works! Same goes from the other side. Directorate is flawed, too, because the line is set so low that few people truly have what they need. That’s partially by design, of course — people need something to chase beyond what they’re given; it keeps them awake — but we can’t have them realizing it. They must feel that
Enterprise
is the reason society’s ruined. Each wishes the other would go away so that everything could be hunky-dory, and that makes them allegiant to
their
party. But arranging those pieces on the board is an art, Isaac. Push too hard, and anger turns toxic. It’s like tending a controlled fire. They burn swatches of land to renew forests, but if they’re not careful, well…”
 

Isaac looked around the room, still searching for a place to sit. The simulation’s artificial reality was telling his leg muscles that they were restless and fatigued, and he was feeling disproportionately cowed by Purcell’s presence as he stood before him like a supplicant. But there was nowhere to rest, and if he called for a chair, the disruption would seem almost insulting.

“I see where you’re going,” Purcell continued. “But if it’s true that I like a volley — and I do — then it seems to me that Natasha is doing it well enough on her own.”
 

“That’s not a volley,” said Isaac. “Two big strikes against Directorate. Which, by extension, are strikes against me.”
 

“You realize that I don’t care how this impacts you?”
 

“Well…”
 

“I understand what you’re saying, though. Even though she’s still Directorate, it’s a move toward Enterprise, and what benefits her now benefits her post-Shift. But I care what happens post-Shift even less than I care about what happens to you.”
 

“Micah said my position — being his brother — is essential. In the public eye.”
 

“Well, yes. You have to exist, and you have to be the czar.” Purcell chuckled. “But frankly, it’s fun to root against you.”
 

“What about the Directorate Party?” said Isaac, aghast and unable to hide his mingled senses of indignation and despair. “Doesn’t Directorate deserve a champion?”
 

“Not really. I’ve always regarded them as a party of people who will do what they are told, and hence don’t mind a figurehead who is like them.”
 

“You
would
say that. You’re Enterprise.” As Isaac said it, he realized how vastly he’d overstepped his bounds. Here came a death blow, and according to the rules, he’d have no choice but to accept it.
 

But instead of reacting in anger, Purcell smiled.
 

“There’s no such thing as Enterprise and Directorate, you idiot. You haven’t figured that out?”
 

Isaac, who’d flinched against anger, could only return Purcell’s look.
 

“There is just ‘up’ and ‘down’ in our society, same as there has always been. I made my fortune. You were given yours. Micah did something in the middle. Your wife ripped throats out all the way up and, honestly, even in her current jaded state, is more worthy of applause than you are. But below us — once you get below what’s commonly called Presque Beau — citizens are citizens. They merely need to
think
there are sides — other than the
true
two sides of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ of course.”
 

Isaac thought he’d caught something in that last sentence that he didn’t like: a very, very subtle tic in the word “us” that almost seemed to imply sarcasm directed at Isaac.

“My job is to keep that balance — or perhaps, that
im
balance,” Purcell continued. “Can’t let the parties get too chummy, or they’ll start melting together and lose their sense of difference. It doesn’t take much to maintain a healthy animosity between them, and even that matters little once Shift is over. People settle into their lives once all the hubbub dies down. It’s only at the next Shift that they start to wonder who they are again, who the others are, and if they’re where they should be.”
 

“And if too many of them shift Enterprise because you’ve skewed things so far in their favor?”
 

Purcell shrugged, as if to indicate that the matter was irrelevant. “You seem to be trying to convince me based on an argument about party membership,” he said. “If you want to persuade me, convince me that a response is actually warranted. We’re a week out, and there’s been a major clash on the streets since you first came to me. Maybe
too
major. I don’t think there’s any danger of a breakout of cross-party friendship circles in the time left before Shift, and that’s all that matters to me. You know I’m nonpartisan. So, you want my blessing? Tell me: How does sabotaging Natasha’s little benefit help the NAU’s larger aims?”