Read Online Multireal by David Louis Edelman - Free Book Online

She had pointedly not
fallen half a step behind him like Papizon, but walked at his side like
an equal. A message meant not so much for him as for the other
Council officers in the hallway-the ones she would be jousting with
someday when it was Magan's turn to step down from the high executive's seat.
    Papizon: "So are we going to try to pick him up again?"
    "No," said Magan, shaking his head. "Just keep an eye on him for
now-and make sure he knows we're doing it. Make his life unpleasant."
    "Unpleasant," his subordinate echoed with a nod, then slipped
down a side corridor and disappeared. Making Someone's Life Unpleasant had been honed to a science at the Defense and Wellness
Council, and Papizon was a true authority on the subject. Unpleasantness meant snooping programs that left clear traces of their presence. It
meant ghostly figures that followed you on the periphery of your
vision. It meant a few unexplained transactions in your Vault account,
too small to be of consequence yet too large to go unnoticed.
    "And me?" said the Blade.
    "You," replied Magan, "will be planning the main attack on this
fiefcorp master. I don't care how much you spend-you have the coffers of the Defense and Wellness Council at your disposal. We need
unprecedented coordination. Propaganda, logistics, regulatory, personnel, finance. This man has weaknesses, Rey. I want to know what
they are, and I want your plan for exploiting them."

    Gonerev nodded sagely with the look of someone taking notes in
her mental log. "What about Margaret Surina?"
    "Let her rot in her tower for now."
    "And our time frame?"
    "Two and a half weeks. MultiReal must be in our hands when the
new year's budget goes into effect."
    The Blade didn't blanch at the urgent timetable; if anything, she
seemed to relish the challenge. Magan thought briefly about the day
when he would find himself with Rey Gonerev's dartgun pressed into
the back of his neck. That day would surely come, but it was still
decades in the future. Would he go quietly? Or would he cling to
power far beyond his time, resisting oblivion with every last breath in
his body, like Len Borda? And if he resisted, how far would she be prepared to go to take him down?

2
THE NOTHINGNESS
AT THE CENTER
OF THE UNIVERSE

    6
    Geronimo: twenty-two years old, heterosexual, Caucasian, xpression
board player for the Dregs of Nitro. A self-styled dissident, a philosopher, a poet, a lover. Or so his profile on the Sigh network claimed.
    Jara wondered who he really was.
    In the more prosaic world offline, the sullen man across the room
wearing the CALL ME GERONIMO T-shirt might really be a diplomat or
a black code junkie or a fugitive from the law. There was no way to tell
for sure. Some sociologist had recently published a formula that purported to describe the ratio of truth to falsehood in Sigh profiles. Jara
couldn't make heads or tails of it, but apparently the formula had
something to do with Fibonacci numbers.
    "Geronimo" spotted her and threw her a look. Jara could feel the
incandescent knife of lust twisting in her abdomen. He rose from the
purple couch and began strutting toward her through the crowd.
    From a distance, the resemblance was uncanny. Average height,
hair sandy and slightly tousled, physique trim yet not quite muscular.
Eyes a vivid sapphire blue. If only science could provide a way for Jara
to have him at a distance before he opened his mouth.
    "Perfection," said Geronimo as he approached, in that incongruous
half-lisp of his. "How you doin', Cassandra?" Of course, Jara didn't use
her real name here on the Sigh; few people did. But at least she projected her own pixyish body onto the network instead of some idealized substitute, which was more than most could say.
    "Towards Perfection yourself," Jara replied, standing on tiptoes to
give Geronimo a hungry hello kiss. The kiss quickly evolved into a fullon tongue-dueling affair until the pain in her toes made her