Infomocracy Page 16

  Even the safe disposal of the bomb is a cause for complaint. “If we had recovered the explosive device, we might have found valuable clues about how this was planned and by whom,” barks someone from the investigative team. Mishima wonders when she can leave. The obligatory scan showed that she didn’t need any medical care aside from some antiseptic for a few scratches, but the draining adrenaline has left her headachy and tired.

  When she finally gets back to her crow, though, sleep will not come. She flies to Kyoto to get away from the commotion at the debate site, finds a mooring lot by the river, goes for a walk. It is well past midnight, and this part of town is quiet: little shops bamboo-barricaded against the darkness. She keeps thinking about Domaine and his warning. Was he involved in this? It seems extreme compared to his record. She flashes back to the moment when she looked down on the politicians scrambling to get off the platform, how helpless they were, and imagines again the blood and fragments of an explosion. She rubs her forehead. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. She needs to think about something else.

  As she’s climbing back into her crow, she remembers Johnny Fabré’s statement. That gives her something to work on. She sends a message to Tabby in Singapore, asking if she’s found anything and attaching the clip. A reply doesn’t come right away (it’s that kind of night), and while she waits, she decides it’s time, past time, to throw a wider net. Mishima has been traveling for Information for two years now, and beyond what her official position offers, she has an extensive, if idiosyncratic, network of people she’s worked with one way or another. She spends some time composing a message that will alert people to what she’s looking for but not trigger panic, paranoia, or false positives, asking for any indications that high-ranking governments might be suggesting armed territorial aggression as a clandestine part of their platforms. Waiting for replies, she falls asleep.

  The next morning, she’s woken by an urgent message to call her boss’s boss.

  LaForge, a tall, frosted Westerner who looks like he was born in his suit, is seated behind his desk when his secretary lets Mishima project in. He gets right to the point, no small talk, no thanks for her efforts the night before. “I thought we were clear last week about not wasting resources on these unlikely suspicions you have about Liberty.” He softens from there: she is a huge asset, but with the intense stress of the election, the narrative disorder that he sees listed in her file seems to be affecting her work.

  “It always affects my work. Seeing these patterns before anyone else does is exactly what you pay me to do.” Mishima has learned by experience that, in matters of mental health, offense is the best defense.

  LaForge clears his throat. “Records show that at the debate, you accessed replays and transcripts and requested annotation rewrites while on duty.” A moment to let her see where he’s headed. “It seems that this conspiracy theory is affecting your ability to see other patterns, including those directly endangering you and those around you.”

  Mishima swallows two separate defensive answers before she opens her mouth. “I wish I had heard the laser cutter earlier,” she says. “But I’m certainly glad I heard it in time.” Her forearms ache, but she doesn’t want to rub them in case it’s taken as a sign of nervousness.

  “Indeed. Your actions last night were … heroic.” The tone makes it sound like a bad thing, as though she had been showing off. “But I think you can see the point. We’ve looked at this problem you cited. We—your peers and”—pointedly—“your supervisors—have come to the decision that it is not an efficient use of our resources—resources that include your abilities. Until the election, we are paying you to focus that expertise on the standard, so to speak, types of misinformation and fraud associated with campaigning. There is more than enough of that to go around. And, as a reminder, giving orders to regional offices on how to use their resources is not part of your purview.”

  “They weren’t orders, just suggestions,” Mishima says, but she knows it sounds argumentative, and she manages to keep her mouth shut while the high muckamuck gives her a brief review of chain of command and then unceremoniously dismisses her.

  At least she knows she’s still too valuable to fire.

  CHAPTER 16

  By the time Suzuki gets back to him, Ken’s already in Chennai.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” he says, brushing off Ken’s concern. “Really, Information security did a great job. So, down to business! I’ve been meaning to tell you what excellent work that was in Lima.”

  Ken refrains from mentioning that Lima was a continent and a half ago.

  “It was so clear,” Ken agrees. “What more could we want?”

  “Our person in Okinawa got some damning recordings of Liberty too; at this point, we have everything we need on them. The thing is,” Suzuki goes on, after a brief pause, “after the debate, we have to be careful.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Ken, although Suzuki’s tone tells him he’s not going to like it.

  “The way the debate worked out, it was us against the corporates. And then with the attack, people are going to be very focused on antielection violence. If we bring out these conspiracy theories about a participating government now…”

  “They’re not theories,” Ken says. “I mean, I’m not sure we have legal proof, but we have very convincing intel.”

  “That’s not the point,” Suzuki says. “No matter how convincing it is, at this point in the game, it simply wouldn’t look right. We’d lose as many votes as we gain.”

  Ken doesn’t buy it, but he tries another tack. “If you don’t want to use it, why not pass it to Information? They can sanction Liberty, or … or do something about it, anyway.” He’s not sure what Information can do to stop war from breaking out.

  “We don’t think that’s the play right now,” Suzuki says. “It would be public Information that it came from us, and it could get very complicated very fast. This close to the election, we can’t risk it.”

  Ken doesn’t say anything, and after a pause in which he was probably hoping for agreement, Suzuki goes on. “We’ll bring it up after the election, try to get something done.”

  “What if they win?” Ken says. “What if they start a war?”

  “They won’t,” Suzuki says. “Have you seen the latest polling data?”

  Ken has, and he flicks the polls open again. Heritage is ahead by 2,309 centenals, but that’s well within the normal swing range. The last time he looked, Liberty was in third behind PhilipMorris, but now they’re in second, in front of 888. Those three are bunched too closely to call. He suspects that Suzuki’s referring to the Policy1st trend: a sharp bump with the merger and the debate, and a slower but continued rise since then. Fifth place, but pretty far behind that top group.

  “So, what do I do now?” Ken asks.

  “Where are you? Look, go to the nearest office and see what you can do to help out for the last few days of campaigning. Wherever it is, I’m sure you’ll be a huge asset. We’ll talk in Tokyo once this is over.”

  “I understand,” Ken says, trying to sound more enthusiastic than resigned.

  “Oh, and Ken?” Suzuki lets the pause hang in the cyberspace for a moment. “You have to stop seeing that woman. At least until after the election.”

  * * *

  Mishima’s first impulse, after that meeting, is to vent to someone (Can you believe what he said to me? And the day after I…). Maybe uncover some similar stories, document evidence of a pattern of mismanagement or discrimination, bring a formal complaint, topple the hierarchy. But right now, nobody has time for that, not even Mishima. Whoever’s not working on the attack investigation is frantically cross-referencing the wild claims and overblown assertions of the frenetic last days of campaigning, which is exactly what she should be doing. LaForge was right about one thing: there is plenty of “standard” preelection work to do. Mishima throws herself into it for a few hours. She points her crow south and immerses herself in the backlog of questionable st
atements until the concentrated effort has cleared some of the frustration from her brain.

  When she pauses for a tea break, she lowers her security a few notches to check her feeds. An advid slips in, rendering a beautifully detailed jar the size of the workspace, packed with uncountable jellybeans and glowing with color. Guess how many, reads the text, briefly. By the time the answer comes up, Mishima sees where this is going. They say your vote counts, but if the contents of this jar represented eligible voters, you wouldn’t even be a jellybean. You’d be a grain of sugar. Use your resources where they can do some good. The projection morphs rapidly through scenes of hungry children, homeless elderly, smiling women ladling food in soup kitchens, a teenager helping a child with her homework. Civic duty is more than voting. Mishima rolls her eyes. Then she sees the message from Ken from the night before.

  * * *

  When an advid inexplicably worms its way in through all his firewalls, Ken is annoyed, but then it unrolls in his palm, and his pulse quickens as he sees nine blank slots. He whispers Mishima’s code into his hand.

  The strip of text, the size and appearance of a fortune-cookie fortune, flips over. Ken stares at the message for a long time. Although his spoken Japanese can be mistaken for native, his reading is rudimentary at best. He finds it less a disadvantage than a pleasure to occasionally wander Tokyo without his visual translator activated. Each character is so decisive, so clearly pointing at a specific meaning that is invisible to him. It’s soothing to be so aware of so much Information, all around, incomprehensible to him but transparent to everyone else.

  This time, he wishes he could read the message without mediation. He stares at the characters, as if concentrating hard enough will make them give up their secrets. He knows enough to see that the message is informal, or maybe familiar is a better word. Intimate, even? He wonders if Mishima drew the characters herself, an improbably romantic but not impossible scenario.

  Finally, he turns on his visual translator, and the message resolves: Nothing to do on Preelection Day. Wanna go on vacation?

  The answer is obvious. The only reason he pauses at all is to consider the best response: skip the question, step to the next level. Where should they go? Some place democratic but with as little election drama as possible, and easy to get to. He has no idea where she is right now, so the latter applies only to him. How about the Adapted Maldives? he suggests, checking the spelling and then writing it out in his kindergarten kana.

  * * *

  Mishima was being somewhat disingenuous when she said she had nothing to do on Preelection Day. The campaign ban in the twenty-four hours before the election is almost impossible to enforce, and Information will take all the help it can get on monitoring and evaluating infractions. But the work is obvious, petty, and mechanical, and she has so much vacation saved up, they can’t say no. She decides to take Election Day off, too. There are plenty of Information grunts who can observe poll behavior, spot-check identification verification software, and crunch the numbers as they come in. Mishima prefers, whenever possible, to do work no one else can do. Besides, she has sore muscles and blisters on her palms, and her organizational loyalty is at a low ebb.

  She likes Ken’s proposed destination. Like some other small islands and archipelagos, the Adapted Maldives—along with Resilient Tuvalu, they changed their name as a political statement once the last natural land in their archipelago was underwater—have a dispensation giving them centenal status even though their population is fewer than one hundred thousand people. They’re democratic, so she doesn’t have to feel guilty about spending money there, but not hotly contested, so there shouldn’t be much stress, ads, or shenanigans in the air. She does some quick cross-referencing and finds a place to stay, sends the location to Ken with a question mark and the offer to pick him up on her way out. She can use her crow for nonbusiness travel as long as she pays for the energy use at a reasonable per-kilometer rate.

  He gets back to her a few minutes later with a thumbs-up for the hotel but tells her he’s already close and he’ll meet her there. Ken likes boats and can get a cheap and convenient one, and getting picked up seems an awkward beginning for a romantic getaway, especially with the memories already floating around her crow. ETA 5.5 hours after close of campaigning, he writes, and gets back to work.

  * * *

  Domaine is under no restriction from campaigning during the day before the election, and he plans to enjoy it. He is making sure to get the last advid out to as many markets as possible that day. Shamus refused to touch it, especially after Domaine admitted that most of the quotes were recorded without the knowledge of the dictator in question. “Come on,” Domaine had argued. “You can’t exist today, much less be a dodgy, widely hated world leader, and not assume that your every action is being documented.”

  “Assuming it is one thing,” Shamus replied, “and not killing people for doing it is another.” He agreed, grudgingly (“I’d drop your account altogether if I knew what was good for me”), to run the jellybean spot he’d already put together, but Domaine had to find another, less reputable agency for the recordings.

  * * *

  Ken initially considered Suzuki’s ad hoc order to go to any random Policy1st campaign office and chip in borderline insulting, but within three hours of signing on, he realizes that this is the most satisfying experience he’s had since campaigning began. In part, this is because of the Chennai campaign manager, Xavier, who not only has every centenal within a fifty-mile radius painstakingly mapped but also shows an impressive intuitive grasp of his top targets. He quickly sizes Ken up. “Go with Keerthy to the university; we’ve got a twenty-four-hour booth there—no, no, no, no more new advids; everything should be person-to-person from now on.” He raises a finger to Ken, indicating that this last was for his earpiece. “See if you can get one of the priests to come with you. Yes, use my name. Okay.” He comes back to Ken with a head waggle. “There are a lot of foreign students there; you can work on them for wherever they’re voting from, but keep an eye out for professors; they are mainly local and have influence. You want to emphasize how forward-looking we are, touch on science but especially the importance of policy in a rapidly growing city, smart traffic and electrical grids, you know. We have some chance in that centenal, so every vote counts. Oh, and if you see the PhilipMorris paan cart, take as many free samples as you can. I’m hoping they’ll run out.” Xavier grins, not very optimistically. “I’ll send you data as it comes in. If you have any other ideas for what we can do, let me know.”

  Ken is partway out the door when Xavier calls to him from a flurry of signature requests, newly crunched polls, and volunteer organizers. “I almost forgot—there’s a group of off-brand Liberty supporters that’s been making trouble near the docks; be sure to steer clear of them.”

  Ken hovers. “Trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” Xavier says, waving his hand. “Somehow, they’ve gotten the idea that if they win, they’ll be invading Sri Lanka, and they’re going around yelling about it. Crackpots. Best to stay out of their way.”

  * * *

  Mishima is doing as she was told, scanning the latest set of comparison sheets, albeit with somewhat less verve than usual, when she gets a message from Tabitha Sung in Singapore. SORRY IT TOOK SO LONG TO GET BACK TO YOU, SO BUSY WE CAN BARELY CROSS-REF HERE, it starts, and Mishima realizes it’s about Liberty. So, LaForge didn’t publicize his edict against following up on Liberty. Either he believes it’s so ludicrous that no one else would bother, or he’s avoiding scrutiny. She goes back to the message. GLAD YOU WROTE THOUGH, BECAUSE I’VE BEEN KEEPING A CLOSE EYE ON WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT. NOTHING DEFINITIVE, BUT I DID FIND SOME UNUSUAL PATTERNS. NO IDEA IF THEY MEAN ANYTHING, BUT THEY’RE REPEATED OUTSIDE THE REGION. CALL ME IF YOU NEED MORE—LET’S TALK AFTER THE ELECTION MADNESS!

  Mishima checks the attached data: purchase records, but not for weapons. Mostly comms stuff, but fairly generic. The strange thing, as Tabby noted, was how uniform the p
urchases are across Liberty centenals. The invoice notes state that the gear is for postelection citizen-relations initiatives. Mishima makes a note to cross-reference and see if she can find any plans or promises matching that description, but she doesn’t see an immediate threat and time is short, so she goes back to the comparison sheets. Heritage looks increasingly desperate, bringing up security issues at every opportunity. Mishima remembers Domaine’s warning. It’s true, Heritage winning again has risks for the system, but what if they are unwilling to lose? People like to think micro-democracy is stable, safe, unbreakable, because there have been two successful elections with plenty of power shifts at the centenal level. It’s too easy to forget the system hasn’t seen a peaceful Supermajority transition yet.

  * * *

  Campaigning in Chennai closes at 5 p.m.—midnight on the international date line. Ken is deep in conversation with an undecided voter outside a grocery store, and Keerthy has to nudge him a couple of times before he drops off with a regretful “Well, think about it.” They’ve been campaigning nonstop for the past two and a half days, taking turns to drop for a couple of hours of sleep on a cot in the tiny booth. They held conversations like these with whoever stopped by, talked to any news compilers they could find, and conducted intermittent data analysis to see where an extra door-to-door push might give them the votes they need to stretch over the top. The idea for the last six hours has been to try to raise discussions that people will continue among themselves over the next day while campaigning is prohibited; Ken was the one who suggested targeting grocers, barbers, and other social dominos. He feels like he hasn’t stopped talking in weeks.