Infomocracy Page 5

  Tabby nods. “Still fairly recent, though.”

  “There could be a mistake somewhere,” Mishima says. “Or this might not have been fully vetted, might have been put out by someone who has gone rogue. It’s a huge organization.”

  “They might have changed leadership,” Tabby says. They both know she is not talking about Johnny Fabré, the glossy good-looker who has been the public face of Liberty for over a decade. “Changed direction.”

  “Four weeks before the election?” Mishima asks.

  “Or…” Tabby says.

  “Or they could have been planning this all along.”

  “Laying the groundwork.”

  “Establishing their credibility as a major, legitimate corporate government, committed to micro-democracy, while making sure that the people they want to reach would hear the dog whistle.”

  “Making sure those people want war.”

  Every hypothesis seems scarier than the last.

  “Do they have a chance at the Supermajority?” Tabby asks finally.

  Mishima shrugs. “A chance? Yes. They are the fifth-largest government now, and you know the margins are tight at the top. How much of a chance?” She leaves the question hanging. Information employs hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, with an unprecedented technological infrastructure, and still their projections of election results are little more than guesses. Mishima’s intuition is one of the reasons she’s so valuable to them, but she’s still not ready to predict the Supermajority winner, not two weeks out.

  “So?” Tabby says, impatiently. “Did you find anything?”

  Mishima opens a sheaf of files on the projector. “It’s all small stuff—very circumstantial. They’re being careful.”

  “But why…” Tabby stands back, shakes her head. “There are plenty of governments that want to change the system.”

  “But they’re all fringe governments. Liberty is huge. They might take the Supermajority—they could make this happen if they win. And if it breaks too soon, they lose their chance. Look at this one.” Mishima opens an advid playing in eastern sections of Europe. The images are innocuous: the usual peace and prosperity, shot through with corporate icons. Mishima isolates the soundtrack. “So, this means nothing to anyone who didn’t grow up hearing … this.” She pulls up an ancient advid, a television ad. “This was ubiquitous in those areas of Europe forty to fifty years ago.” It’s for the digital upgrade of the game Risk, and the same jingle plays through it over videos of children advancing their avatars across a map of the world.

  “Wow,” Tabby says. “That’s … subtle. Are you sure it would get across to anyone?”

  Mishima shrugs. “If it were only that one, I’d say maybe it was a coincidence, but take a look.”

  Tabby flips through Mishima’s projection, scanning the documents as they hang in the air in front of her eyes. All the search terms are so oblique as to be almost counterintuitive, a reminder, if Tabby needed one, of how good Mishima is at her job. “You were being careful,” she says.

  “I think they’re going to be looking for someone looking for them.”

  * * *

  Yoriko is looking for them. She starts by using Information, reading everything Liberty has put out in Okinawa over the past three months. Not unaware of the danger (although she tells herself it’s silly, this isn’t a spy vid, nothing dramatic is going to happen), she hopes her searches will look like those of a potential new voter practicing due diligence. She finds it hard to imagine anyone doing this much background research for voting, though; most of her friends don’t even talk about the election except to say how annoying all the advids are.

  The searches don’t turn up much. The adwriters for Liberty have been careful (if there is anything to be careful about). They stick close to their tagline of Freedom, and attach it to everything. Economic Freedom, Family Freedom, Educational Freedom, Consumer Freedom. Mostly Economic Freedom, the headline accompanied by sharply animated 3-D vids explaining wordlessly how lack of regulation leads to economic growth. Yoriko’s seen it all before, during the last two election cycles and lots of times this one, but even so, she finds herself sliding closer to the almost-convinced voter she’s pretending to be. Wouldn’t it be great to have a whole house for her family? To take vacations somewhere far away? She wonders how much Suzuki will pay her if she gets him what he needs.

  There are a few places that make her pause the vid to rewatch. One explanation of economic growth shows Liberty’s centenals, colored an attractive aquamarine on a stylized map, spreading toward an island that looks vaguely like Kyushu. This wouldn’t mean much, standard campaign “yes, we will be the Supermajority” sort of signaling, except that Yoriko notices that particular vid was only shown in Okinawa. Feeling slightly squeamish, she pulls up Liberty vids from other parts of the world, vids that were only shown in limited regions. It takes some looking, since they weren’t released on the same day, but she eventually finds a counterpart for Aceh, with an undefined archipelago being threatened; a release for Malaysia, showing the tip of a peninsula being surged by light turquoise color; and a version for China, with Liberty swamping an island that’s shaped more like Taiwan. She doesn’t bother to look beyond Asia.

  Spooked, Yoriko closes her feeds—then worries that she closed them too suddenly. She reopens to watch as many more Liberty vids as she can stomach. When she has calmed down—after a bath, a short nap, and a couple of innocuous fares in her taxi—she begins to think it’s less significant. It’s a campaign, and there’s always posturing. Not every government is going to be like Policy1st, so principled they won’t even use spokespeople. Yoriko shakes her head. When she finishes her shift, she’s going to start checking through Liberty’s public appearances in Okinawa. Maybe she’ll even go to one.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ken’s first stop the next morning is at the Policy1st office. He’s undercover, but with all the election activity in Jakarta, he thinks it’s safe enough, and at this point in the cycle, he wants the latest data, to the nanosecond. Plus, he wants to see if he can learn anything about Liberty’s possible malfeasance. Looking through the office’s existing files will save him specific Information searches that might alert others to what he’s on to. He didn’t want to make the office an obvious home base, though; rather than the slightly squalid, windowless place around the corner from the Policy1st office that the travel coordinator suggested, the hotel Ken chose is a little farther away and significantly more pleasant.

  It makes for an entertaining walk to work. Jakarta is hot and smells of durian. It’s in season, apparently; Ken sees thorny slabs of it laid out on rough wooden tables along the road. He abstains until he reaches a centenal governed by UNICEF, which is supposed to have better food hygiene standards, and buys some rujak from a pushcart. The vendor hands him a small paper envelope of typhoid inoculation with his purchase, which Ken rips open and sprinkles over his fruit with the chili-peanut sauce; so much for hygiene. He uses an elongated toothpick to eat the pieces of papaya, starfruit, mango, and pineapple while he walks, but has to rush to finish before crossing the all-but-invisible border to the next centenal, warned by dancing public service pop-ups along the walls that not only street-vending but also street-eating is illegal there. He considers going around that territory, but a glance at a map projection tells him it sits squarely in the middle of the shortest route to the office. He’s already running late, and he’s almost done with the rujak anyway. Besides, strolling through that uptight centenal has its own pleasures: the tropical gardens are well tended, their fragrances painting the humid air, and the street-vending prohibition doesn’t extend to musicians, who seem to be encouraged. Ken does note that most of them are cleaner than average. Maybe a government program rather than free-flowing capitalism, although he doesn’t bother to check.

  Policy1st’s offices are, as usual, in a Policy1st centenal (Ken has argued to Suzuki that they should open satellites in the territory of any government that will allow them t
o, at least during this last month). Ken is pleased to see that their policies have been adapted to the local context. The accountability board, available for immediate projection as always, has also been painted in appealing colors and fonts on a wall by one of the main streets. When he examines the demographics of the centenal on Information, he sees that levels of education and handheld penetration are in fact quite high, which tracks with most Policy1st demographics. Maybe the mural’s not strictly necessary, but it’s still a nice touch.

  As he turns onto the side street where the Policy1st office is located, a pop-up catches his eye. He’s not sure why, something about the particular degree of sparkle on the jet-black coloring, or the font, which is somewhat reminiscent of the KISS band logo, or the rhythm of its bounce in the air; something about it says “cooler than all the other advids,” and his eyes stick for the briefest microsecond as they slide past. The sophisticated sensors in the ad projector notice, and the ad immediately flies to the forefront of his vision.

  IGNORANCE, it says, in that sharp-edged script, humming in place.

  The word flies away and is replaced by another.

  IS

  BLISS

  And then it’s gone in a scintillating starburst. No feed address, no Information link, no explanation of what they’re selling. Hurrying on with his eyes firmly fixed on the door of the office, Ken wonders if he was wrong and rather than an ad, it’s some attempt at street art. Either way, he finds anything that flies in his face too annoying to appreciate.

  His irritation only grows as he walks into the office. Given how dynamic and competitive the city is, Ken finds it surprising that the Policy1st office in Jakarta isn’t more impressive. Not physically; Policy1st’s aesthetic tends to be understated and geeky, representing its positioning as the wonk that cares about substance rather than flash. No, what Ken finds unimpressive is the management. Agus, the office head, keeps Ken waiting for ten minutes and then talks at him from behind his desk, twiddling a pen while blandly refusing to be of any help whatsoever.

  “Liberty? I wouldn’t have much on them beyond what you can find in Information.”

  Ken always reacts badly to Agus’s particular brand of obfuscation, and based on his chat with Tanty last night, he’s starting to suspect that Agus knows this and is doing it on purpose. “I am asking you instead of searching Information myself, because I don’t want people to be able to figure out what I’m looking for.”

  “What are you looking for?” Agus asks, but it was probably just provocation, because he doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’m asking because you’ll be exposing me and this office by going through us, so I think I have a right to know.”

  “As the campaign office here, it makes sense for you to have a file on the main competitors.” Ken says. “In fact, you don’t have to do any new searches. Just show me what you have already.”

  Agus doesn’t seem to like that much, probably because he hasn’t been doing his job properly and doesn’t have much opposition research to show. “Well,” he drawls, leaning back in his chair and swiveling it, “we don’t consider Liberty one of our main competitors for the Supermajority. I mean,” he adds to Ken’s raised eyebrows, “obviously they’re a competitor, but we don’t think that we’ve got a lot of overlap with them in terms of potential voters. On the global scale, we’re focusing much more on SavePlanet and Economix, for example.”

  Ken happens to know—no, he doesn’t happen to know; he did his homework before coming, that’s how he knows—that SavePlanet doesn’t have a single centenal in JaBoDeTaBekBan. “I thought your job was to win centenals in Jakarta, not to worry about the Supermajority.”

  “I thought your job was to get Suzuki where he’s going and then wait for him in the car,” Agus shoots back. “What are you doing here, anyway? Some supersecret errand for the big man, huh? Don’t start checking up on me, son. Leave the real work to the experts.”

  Ken thinks about hitting him, can actually see it play out. Leaning over the desk, knuckles connecting with jaw. Not very hard, because he’s leaning so far, but then it wouldn’t take much to tip that chair over. That stupid pen flying across the room, Agus scrambling up from the floor, calling security … Ken cuts it off there. He’s not worried about his job. Suzuki appreciates a man of action and has bailed him out from worse scrapes than this would be. But Ken doesn’t like to call in favors from his boss, since he’s aware there might not be a bottomless supply. More importantly, he’s unlikely to get the intel he wants that way. They’re fourteen days out, the first debate is in thirty hours, and some wack shit is going on. He doesn’t have time for fisticuffs.

  “Yes, it is a job for Suzuki, and your boss works for him too. Why don’t you give me whatever you have so that he doesn’t come asking for it himself?”

  Agus shrugs and with a few motions, sends a file to Ken’s workspace. “Here,” he says, tossing in a few others. “So you can see what campaigning looks like.”

  “Great, thanks,” Ken says, pretty sure that they won’t be helpful anyway. “See you later.”

  He heads for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Agus asks.

  “To talk to some informants,” Ken says, backing out the door. “You know—real campaigning.”

  Ken’s antennae jiggle frantically as he walks away from the building, but he figures that’s Agus staring daggers at him from the window and ignores it. He’s got to get his overeager grad student vibe on.

  * * *

  Domaine does get rid of his fro for the meeting in Saudi, but only by braiding it up tight. It’s a style that has come into fashion in the Gulf states recently, but no one will know he’s following it unless he takes off his keffiya. The important thing is that he now looks not far off from Arab.

  The meeting is with a sheikh he has connected with through the intercession of a music star who prefers to remain anonymous, but who is willing to put both money and social networks (a publicly traded commodity) to the cause of reforming (or “overturning,” as she put it in an overenthusiastic message) the election system.

  And now Domaine is here, shifting uneasily in his robes in the thick air conditioning, rare as bananas these days. He wants to get self-righteous about it, but after briefly experiencing the heat outside, he can understand, if not condone, why they still use it.

  It’s not his first time meeting an Arab prince. Back in his private-sector days—before he saw the dark—he was in and out of Dubai all the time. He knows the drill: the trappings of multinational politeness, the echoes of tribal customs made infinitely more comfortable. He’s looking forward to the tea, rather less to the small talk. And he can’t deny his nerves, those intimately measured connections trembling just below his skin. He assumes they have body-stat monitors here, and can only hope that they take his anxiety as a compliment. Saudi, even what’s left of it, is not Dubai, and he’s not sure how much leeway he has here.

  The sheikh enters, preceded and followed by the cloud of his entourage. Tea is poured, small things (“The weather? Ah, still hot.”) discussed.

  But the sheikh, also a multitrillionaire CEO, does not have a lot of time to waste on formalities. “It is election time again, I understand,” he says, as if it were something he happened to notice at the bottom of one of his feeds, as if just because Saudi doesn’t participate in the election system, the outcome wouldn’t affect his multiple business interests in thousands of ways.

  “It is indeed,” Domaine replies. “Trillions of bits being spent in six months of global pageantry.”

  “We, as you know, are not involved,” the sheikh says, although what Domaine does know is that he has personally donated billions to not one but several of the major governments that he thinks will be favorable for his investments and corporations. Domaine tries to swallow the disgust rising in him.

  “Given that perspective,” he says, “we hope that you can support our opposition to the system.”

  The sheikh is practiced at this and merely pla
sters a sage expression on his face, but Domaine notices that some of his henchmen are smiling. “We do not get involved in the sovereign affairs of other governments,” the prince proclaims, another statement Domaine knows to be false. “If the other peoples of the world wish to hold these events, that is their affair. We choose not to do so here.”

  “The peoples of the world didn’t choose it, though,” Domaine says. “Did they? I mean, the system was dreamt up and pushed through by some soon-to-be-ex-UN officials who grew a pair, and ratified by governments under duress or false promises, not all of whom even called themselves democratic.”

  “I am not,” the sheikh says, “the most ardent believer in democracy, so this perspective is not exactly troubling to me.” It’s the only true thing Domaine has heard him say since they agreed that the weather was hot.

  “Which is exactly why we should work together,” Domaine says.

  The sheikh deigns to raise his eyebrows. “You, who believe the system is not democratic enough, and I, who believe it is far too democratic?”

  “Exactly,” Domaine says, making his voice vibrate with urgency. “We form a coalition. Now is the time, before a new government takes over the Supermajority and starts to cement its power.”

  The sheikh shows interest for the first time. “You believe that Heritage will lose the Supermajority?”

  “Our Information makes that look like a serious possibility,” Domaine says. He twists his wrist, and in a nice bit of coding showmanship, a globe projection leaps out and slowly revolves. It shows what Domaine believes the sheikh would like to see, to the extent that Domaine thinks the sheikh will credit it: the major governments, corporates and traditionals, splintering the vote until the domination of Heritage is in doubt. “Of course, there is still time, and the debates, so nothing is certain.”

  He doesn’t bite. “Regardless, I am not interested in changing a system that I do not participate in.”