Noir

the forces battering the End Zone Hotel. “Then you’ve got ’em. That’s when you’ve got your customers right where you want them. And no production or distribution costs at all. You’re right-it’s perfect.”

“That’s what the DZ labs found. What they’d been looking for.” McNihil turned his face toward November. “The way to separate the dopamine flow down the axons from any physical source. A technology of regulation; the hand on the valve, the key in the ignition. So that all DynaZauber would have to do would be send out the right signals, on whatever wavelength they chose, and the customers would respond. Turn the valve one way-send the shutoff signal-and the axons between the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens start to narrow, constrict the dopamine flow from one neuron to the next, even close down completely. The result being the classic symptoms of drug-addicted systemic collapse, the crash of the individual neurosystem below normal operating levels. And the resultant urge, the overwhelming drive to reestablish homeostasis, to pay any price just to feel back to normal again.”

November gave a slow nod; enlightenment was beginning to come. “Been there,” she said. “Done that.” Threw up on my shoes-

“Everybody has. It’s the basic algebra of need.” With his thumb, McNihil pointed to Harrisch. “But what he and his bunch found was a way of reducing their side of the equation-what they’d have to supply-down to zero, and still having their customers’ numbers crunch out the same. They tried it before, with the whole push to get people on the telecommunications wire, have them value bits of information as much or more than the atoms of the real world, have them pay to be mesmerized by the pretty colored lights on their computer screens. That would’ve taken the suppliers’ costs down to zero as well. Only that equation didn’t work out; eventually, the boredom factor sets in with the customers, and their interest in the colored lights drifts down to zero as well. What DynaZauber finally put together was TOAW, the perfect equation.”

“You have to admit-it’s a cool thing.” Harrisch drew his legs up, resting his folded arms on his knees. Watching him, November figured that back at the boardroom, and in the DZ executive lunchroom, he and the rest of his bunch must’ve been fascinated by discussing the philosophical fine points of this TOAW project. “It’s really the refutation through economics of established physics principles. The laws of thermodynamics, all that stuff, they no longer apply. We’ve transcended reality-we’ve found a way of generating something from nothing. TOAW is not just a new stage in human evolution, it’s a transformation of the universe itself. It’s what the wired-up telecommunication theorists were trying to achieve, but could never pull off. Well, we did it.” Harrisch raised his chin defiantly. “And proud of it.”

“I don’t get it,” said November. “How’s it supposed to work?”

“It’s a replicating system.” McNihil continued his flat recitation of the facts. “Operates on basic viral-contagion lines. Plus some more brain-research material that DynaZauber bought up. More stuff before the turn of the century: the way people think can produce actual physiological changes in the structures of the brain. In this case, one of them is the orbital frontal cortex.” McNihil tapped the side of his head with a finger. “It’s right over the rear of the eye socket; it basically functions as the error-detection circuit for the rest of the brain. I already knew about it, because it’s part of what was changed inside my own head, so the way I wanted to see the world wouldn’t get automatically rejected by the rest of my mental processes. But what TOAW does is hook that up to things way inside the human brain, the caudate nucleus and the cingulate gyrus structures. Those are a couple of your basic fear and anxiety circuits. TOAW sets up a feedback loop among those brain structures, which gets stronger every time the brain takes in and processes information.”

“Until it’s unbreakable.” Listening to the asp-head, Harrisch couldn’t refrain from boasting. “That’s the beauty of it. Or part of the beauty, at least.”

“Yeah, it’s connecting lovely, all right. Especially when it’s hooked up to the other loop, the one running through the axons from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens. Because then you don’t just have a valve, you’ve got a stranglehold on the human brain and how it works-and what it wants. The classic junkie neural engine, driving all behavior, minus the necessity of actually having to shovel the drugs into the system. Because with TOAW, all that’s needed is a signal, a pretty colored light, a bit-and you get a response in the infected human neural system that’s stronger than what anything in physical reality could have produced. The axons narrow or shut off, the caudate nucleus and the cingulate gyrus structures fire up and go into a feedback spiral, and you just have to have a slot in the corporation’s front door for the customers to shove their money into-they’ll do anything to get the countersignal, the counterbit sent out, to get those axons loosened up again, to get the fear dogs inside their heads to let go for even just a little while. Until the signal is sent out once more, setting off the process all over again.”

“Oh, it’s better than that,” said Harrisch smugly; the discussion also appeared to have drained his fear away, for the time being. This place could fall out from beneath him, thought November, like some massive practical joke, and he wouldn’t care. Not now. “TOAW’s got it all,” continued Harrisch. “The feedback loop it sets up inside the head contains its own signal-generating ability, which doesn’t require any further input from us. The infected brain produces its own signals and countersignals; it’s the translation into reality of all those Foucauldian theories of self-surveillance. The brain watches itself and administers its own stimuli and rewards, with DynaZauber as the beneficiary. And really-let’s face it-money is just a crude bookkeeping device in a system like this. Money is for people who have options, and the whole point of TOAW is to eliminate options. It’s the height of mercantile capitalism: you chain your customers to their lathes and running- shoe assembly lines, and you throw the key to the padlock down the black hole you’ve put inside their heads. So who needs even the concept of money? All you really need is enough of an uninfected elite at the executive level to rake off the profits, and the whole thing runs itself.” Harrisch unfolded his arms, spreading his hands apart. “What could be more beautiful than that?”

Another wave hit the building at street level; a far corner of the rooftop disappeared with a rumbling crash, bricks and structural beams tearing loose to fall down the hotel’s flank. “Maybe I better make that call,” said November, looking nervously over her shoulder at the increasing damage. “This isn’t looking so good-”

“Never looked better,” said McNihil. “To me, that is. This is one of those classic situations, right out of the old movies inside my eyes. It’s what you’re always supposed to get at the end: a nice long explanation of everybody’s crimes.”

“I’m sure that’d be fine, but I don’t think we have time for that.” November glanced around the rooftop, or what was left of it. “You know?”

“There’s always time.” The asp-head’s voice sounded eerily confident. “Plenty of it. Once you get to a certain state. Nothing but time, you might say.”

“Excuse me, but… I’m beginning to agree with her.” Harrisch pointed to November. His face appeared gray and anxious, as though the pleasant high that came with recounting TOAW’s details had started to fade. “This is an untenable situation, in my opinion.”

“Really?” The look in McNihil’s eyes was further evidence that whatever had happened to him out here had been enough to take him over the edge. “I’m enjoying it.”

“You shouldn’t be,” said Harrisch. “Since you lost. It’s all over; you might as well admit that. We’ve got a vision, and it’s not just limited to DynaZauber; it’s all of us.” The exec’s voice heightened to a fervent pitch. “What was it Orwell said would be the future? A vision of a human face, and a boot stamping on it forever. He was wrong, of course. The future is a bloodied human mouth, with a cock shoved down its throat, the perfect connection forever and ever, world without end. Amen, asshole. And you helped make it all come true. Like I said before, you were connected over before you began.” Harrisch’s thin smile looked even uglier and more woundlike. “You realize that, don’t you? So it shouldn’t surprise you too much, if I’ve decided that your usefulness to us is at an end.” Harrisch suddenly reached inside his jacket, to the other side from where he’d kept the cell phone. His hand came out with a darker and heavier device. He aimed the weapon, a snub-nosed parsifal, straight at McNihil. “Consider yourself unemployed.”

The shots leapt out of the gun, one after another, a tight pattern in the center of McNihil’s chest. The first knocked McNihil off his feet; he landed hard on one shoulder, the hole the bullet had torn in his shirt and chest exposed. A few yards away, the tannhauser skidded to a stop, knocked from McNihil’s outflung hand. Harrisch continued to fire until his own gun was empty. The repeated impact of the bullets, in a tight pattern around the first one, shoved McNihil back against an aluminum ventilation duct.

When there was silence again, the noise of the weapon fading into the smoke-heavy air, Harrisch lowered the empty weapon in his grasp; he stared, aghast and amazed, at the figure across from him-who was still alive. Slowly, McNihil stood up.