Infoquake

engineers sighed and nodded as one; it would have to do. 'You ready to take the baton, Ben?' said Horvil, stretching his sore arms above his head.

Benyamin's raven-black hair was in complete disarray from the action of nervous fingers. 'I've been keeping the shop up-to-date on our progress,' he said. 'They're all ready to go. Just give me the word, and I'll get them started.'

'Do you think they can do all that barwork in time? That's a big mound of coding, and Natch'11 be onstage in less than forty-eight hours.'

'I don't know. I've never had to put them on such a tight deadline.'

The engineer's eyes narrowed. 'No, Ben, don't tell me you're taking it-there. You can't, are you insane?'

Benyamin cast his eyes to the floor and stuck his hands in his pockets, mirroring one of Horvil's standard poses. 'We don't have a choice anymore. I had a couple of assembly-line shops willing to take on the job last night, but now this is the only one. And I had to call in a few favors even to get them on board.'

Quell watched the cousins' conversation from the opposite corner of the room, where he had stretched out on the floor. 'What's going on?'

Horvil let out a tsk. 'He's going to bring MultiReal to my Aunt Berilla's shop-his mother's company.'

'One of her companies,' corrected Ben. 'One of her many companies.'

'They do good work, I'll give them that-but it's not like they actually have to compete against anybody. Creed Elan throws them all kinds of softball projects without even soliciting bids. Which isn't any real surprise because Berilla is like this with all the Elan bodhisattvas.' He held two chunky fingers together like Siamese twins attached at the hip.

'Don't you get it, Horvil?' Ben replied defensively. 'Nobody else'll take on the project this late. We have to use them now.'

The Islander shook his head in confusion. 'So what's the problem?'

'The problem is that Aunt Berilla absolutely hates Natch with a passion. Don't ask me why. She doesn't want anything to do with him. She doesn't want us to have anything to do with him. If she realizes this is Natch's coding job-if she thinks it'll help Natch in any way-she'll yank it right off the floor. No, even worse, she might actually sabotage the fucking thing.'

'She won't find out,' Ben insisted. 'Really, Horv, this is all under control.'

Horvil sighed. 'Let's hope so.'

* * *

They returned to the conference room to find Jara and Merri in the midst of a heated debate. Jara had been up all night weeding through marketing theories for a model to use in the presentation until, desperate, she had asked Merri for help. Since the moment she stepped off the teleportation platform, the channel manager had been slingshotting around the globe to sales meetings with Robby Robby. She hadn't even found the opportunity to change out of the horribly unfashionable gray robe TeleCo made its customers wear during the transfer process. Yet, she had readily agreed to help, a decision she now appeared to regret.

A pack of SeeNaRee hyenas studiously watched the back-and-forth from a safe distance in the brush.

'Tell her we need something simple,' said Jara, turning to Horvil as if looking for an ally.

Merri frowned. In a futile effort to stop the trembling, a common side effect of teleportation, she was gripping her thighs hard enough to draw blood. 'The Four Phases of Technological Evolution are simple. They're not-'

'Creed propaganda.'

'They're not creed propaganda. Just because they're part of Objective doctrine doesn't mean they're not universal. Everyone knows the Four Phases-it's a part of the culture now.'

'I've heard people talk about them at Creed Elan,' said Benyamin.

'You see? It's really very simple. Observation: humanity distinguishes itself from nature. Exploitation: humanity establishes its dominance over nature. Synergy: humanity learns to become one with nature. Transcendence: humanity surmounts the rules of nature altogether. Take the example of teleportation ...'

Jara threw her hands up in the air. 'Natch wants simple. Fifteen minutes or less. Petrucio Patel kept crowing about `safe shores' in his promo. We've got to be excitement and adventure on the high seas. I'm sorry, Merri, but the Four Phases will just put everybody to sleep. We need a sales pitch, not a sermon.'

Quell, who had been standing quietly, now poked his sizeable nose between the two bickering apprentices. 'Maybe a demonstration would help,' he said. Merri looked up in shock at the giant Islander, apparently noticing him for the first time. 'I can't show you the latest version until it's back from the shop, but I can show you one of the prototypes Margaret and I put together.'

Merri and Jara looked at one another and nodded simultaneously.

'Good,' said Quell. 'Horvil, help me change the SeeNaRee. Can't do a thing with this miserable collar.'

The Islander whispered in his ear as Horvil cast his mind out to the Facility databases. A succession of three-dimensional pictures flashed in his head. He chose one, and the African veldt disappeared with a flash.

The air around the apprentices suddenly filled with bass-thumping music, the kind of xpression board monotony that instinctively caused teenaged girls' hips to gyrate. Then came the smell of freshly cut grass. The apprentices found themselves standing at the nexus of two inter locking diamonds in the dirt. A smattering of white hexagonal bags lay at the corners.

A baseball stadium.

'No, no, Horvil. I want a classic field,' said Quell. Horvil nodded and switched to the more traditional playing field endorsed by the classic leagues. Soon, the fiefcorpers were standing in a stadium set up like those the ancients had played: a single diamond, four bases, an enormous outfield. Without prompting, the engineer called up a catalog of baseball bats containing everything from laser-polished aluminum to synthetic ash. Horvil selected a squat Kyushu Clubfoot, summoned a cart of classic league baseballs, and then handed the equipment to Quell. 'Smoke and fucking mirrors,' muttered the Islander as he fumbled with the virtual bat, trying to get a grip on it. Not an easy task without a sense of touch, Horvil realized.

'See that target?' Quell pointed to a bull's eye painted on the outfield wall captioned with the words BETCHA A BOTTLE OF CHAIQUOKE YOU CAN'T HIT ME. Then he flexed a muscular set of pectorals, tossed a ball up in the air, and knocked it towards right field. The ball hurtled into the wall at the precise center of the target.

'So you can hit a baseball into a bull's eye,' sneered Jara. 'What does that have to do with multiple realities?'

The Islander said nothing. Instead, he reached into the cart of baseballs, threw them into the air one by one, and smacked them towards the ChaiQuoke promo. Bang bang bang bang. All twenty-four baseballs plunked the bull's eye in the same exact spot. Quell threw his ponytail over his shoulder and made a low purring noise of satisfaction.

Jara gaped at the collection of virtual balls lying under the bull's eye. Words escaped her.

A light went on in Horvil's head. He trotted around the infield, his jaw swaying this way and that with excitement. 'Don't you get it, Jara? The whole thing's just mathematics. The swing of the bat, the grip, the angle you're holding it, all those neurochemical reactions in your brain-you can describe it all with math. Possibilities just lets you try out different variables and choose the outcome you want.'

Quell nodded. 'An oversimplification-but yes.'

Horvil flopped down onto the grass and stretched out, snow angel style. 'So that's why we modified those dendrite modules ...'

Ben paced slowly towards the ChaiQuoke advertisement and rubbed the paint, as if he expected to feel some kind of magnetic generator in the wall. Meanwhile, Merri retreated into the visitors' dugout and watched the proceedings with hollow eyes as she tried to get a handle on her teleportation-induced trembling.

'Let me get this straight,' said Jara, seating herself delicately on the grass next to Horvil. 'Multi Real- Possibill ties-creates alternate realities inside your head?'

Quell strode onto the pitcher's mound. His voice took on the tone of a drill instructor. 'Let's start from the beginning.

'Forget about MultiReal for a minute. What happens when you throw a ball in the air and swing a bat? The mind takes in sensory input-the sight of the ball, the weight of the bat, the feel of the wind-and processes it. You