"Power is the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization."
When Sandy Surfer, a.k.a. Sandy Hull, a.k.a. Jeremiah Hull, came home to San Diego, it was in a classified Air Force prototype suborbital aerospace plane to Camp Pendleton, and then a brand new Navy LCAC II hovercraft to the new off-shore airport-- that's where the news 'copters spotted them and began to follow -- and then a limo ride with police escort over the I-905 causeway to the coast, and up I-5 to UTC2 mall, where they hustled him through palmcam paparazzi up the escalators to the upper deck meeting room for a press conference. (It was the only facility large enough that they could book on such short notice.)
Everybody wanted to hear what Sandy had to say that day, which was a far cry from the day he left San Diego, very nearly clueless, squeezed into a tiny middle-middle seat in a Boeing 797 superwide, not even quite sure where he was going (somewhere in Brazil?), and oblivious to the two people tailing him.
It was amazing what Sandy did and didn't know. He knew what all the guys hanging out at Breasts, Legs, Thighs & Wings knew about the ballpark scandal, but that's because UPNBC owned the Padres and the new ball park, while MSCBS ran FlagDown.sports, the sports show they all watched at Breasts, Legs, Thighs & Wings. Come to think of it BLT&W was also owned by MSCBS. In fact, the women in translucent clothes were a loss leader to buy eyeballs and brand loyalty for FlagDown.sports. And they worked, they bought Sandy's eyeballs and brand loyalty, and he knew all about the ballpark scandal, and he was clueless about who'd really told him.
He knew how to surf and SCUBA dive, and had done both off San Diego's coast as a young teenager before the permanent beach closings in '33, after El Gordo hit. But he didn't know that "El Gordo" was a newscaster-coined conglomeration of "El Niño" and "Hurricane Gordon," though he did know that a rainy winter and a Pacific hurricane that made landfall in the Baja Peninsula combined in 2033 to create 150-year floods in the San Diego, Sweetwater and Tijuana Rivers. His house was washed away -- luckily while he and his mom were both out. They'd lost everything but later, much later, got an insurance settlement. Of course, all Sandy'd gotten was a VW Bug Hybrid, a watch/phone upgrade, and a set of new school clothes, before his mom and her new boyfriend took off with the rest of the money for Utah.
He knew how to speak Spanish and Spanglish -- his mother pressured him into taking them in high school, saying he'd need Spanish if he ever wanted to be an academic, and Spanglish if he ever wanted to move into management. And he'd actually used Spanglish for a while when he worked at Friday's as an actor/waiter, to talk to the kitchen staff, and Spanish during his only semester at State, to impress his Poly. Sci. and English Lit. professors, who were Hispanic, and to flirt with many chicas picantes on campus. What he didn't know was that his Poly. Sci. professor, as well as many of the chicas picantes weren't Hispanic at all, and had adopted their ethnicity as a political/fashion statement.
Sandy also had some rudimentary video directing and editing skills that he'd picked up in Computer Camp, and after the beach closures he'd interviewed a bunch of former surfers and put together a little documentary called "Last of the Surfers." It had won a few awards, and still showed up on History.vid every now and then under the title "Last of the Board Surfers" because surveys showed most people thought surfing was something you did on the Web. Sandy didn't know that he was now listed in the files of 121 media production recruiters, all of whom were watching to see if he did anything else interesting.
But what Sandy really knew was how to Look Good. It was instinctive. When he'd first arrived in San Diego at age 12 he'd quickly shed his given name of Jeremiah and became the hipper-sounding Sandy. He clipped his nose hairs and blow-dried his hair. He smiled and winked. He feigned interest. He ran and lifted weights, and it all helped him. It helped him a bit in school and various jobs, and a lot with women and with partying in general. Sometimes he thought that was why his friend Twister let him hang out all, because he was a babe magnet and brought out the festive in people, which was handy for Twister's business. When Sandy went to the Over the Line Tournament the men gave him beers and women in bikinis flashed nipples; whe he went to Dick's Last Resort and watched a woman strip to the waist to get free drinks, it was frequently his lap she ended up in after she had gotten blotto; once at Joe's Fish Shack (Formerly Joes' Crab Shack before the whole Pubic Plague thing) one of the tie-dye body-painted nude dancers had singled him out to go home with.
Twister certainly thought Sandy was clueless. He'd often razz him about it: "Buy a clue, Sandy," he'd say, "Give me five bucks," and Sandy would flip him a platinum Chavez coin, in return for which Twister would share some arcane knowledge Sandy lacked, like how to get your mouse cusor to leave the notebook screen and move around your walls (right mouse button menu: Mouse Scope), or why so many slutty-looking women showed up and wanted to go into the back room with Twister (skeezers, bartering sex for cocaine).
It was Twister who talked Sandy into moving into Don Diego. He'd thought the new pyramid straddling the Mission Valley flood plane was a really uptight, middle-class hotbed of unhipness until he'd met Twister. Sandy'd been living in a garage in Ocean Beach and, though it was a hovel, felt he was as high as he could reach on the hip ladder, being right next to the ocean and far from any gated 'burbs, plus having OB's good rep -- he'd even met the Spaceman of OB himself. But Twister showed him how the same rent money at Don Diego could buy a huge appartment in the middle of the pyramid, admittedly windowless, but with fiberoptic light vales bringing sunlight, individual ducts and thermostats for temperature, humidity and ion control in each room, "smart dumbwaiters" that brought web-ordered food and goods right to his kitchen table, and Liquid Crystal 3D walls to show the pyramid's view real time, or anything else you wanted. Sandy opted for the view, but Twister always had some shagadelic light show, mutating paisely or splashing color paint or lava lamp patterns. And he was always playing loud music from bands Sandy'd never heard of, like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mack and Steely Dan. Sometimes it was a bit much for Sandy, he'd have to shut his eyes and plug his ears for a few minutes, but it was Twister's schtick, nostalgia for the 1970s, the "Dazed and Confused" decade, which was a somewhat popular decade these days. Sandy admired Twister's courage in not going for something more obvious and mainstream like the 1990s, the "BJ" decade, or the 2010s, the "Shiggy" decade.
Twister razzed Sandy a lot for not knowing much about history, or contemporary politics for that matter. "Who's the president?" Twister asked one time.
"Britney uh, whatsername, Venture-Wilki."
"Ventura-Willets," Twister corrected. "Who's running for president this year?"
Sandy hesitated. "That Hawk guy and his son, are running against Britney," he offered. "The guy with the funny moustache."
"Sandy, the constitution says nobody can be elected more than twice. Britney's used her terms up. Her vice president, MC Kooljam is running."
"Can't she just change the constitution," Sandy offered, "since she's the president?"
"I keep wanting to call you a moron, but it would be an insult to morons." Twister answered. "At least a moron has a physical limitation. You're a smart guy, Sandy, and you've had free high-bandwidth access to all the world's knowledge at your fingertips your whole life, and you've pissed it away." And Twister had proceeded to lecture him, going back to the career of actress, Republican Senator, then President Shannon Doherty (2028 - 2032), followed by Britney Ventura-Willets, the daughter of a prostitute who turned vice law reform into a populist movement (2032 - 2040), and now this arch-conservative Alonzo Hawk, and his son, Biff Hawk, who were so far ahead in the polls that their victory was a foregone conclusion, and the power they were already wielding, including off-shore drilling already underway by Chevron-Texaco and Humble off the Southern California coast. "Luckily, they don't have the clout to roll back Zero Enforcement," Twister opined, "or else I'd be screwed."
Sandy got a few clues for free that day, and a few weeks later he wised up on his own for perhaps the first time in his life. He videophoned Twister, and Twister's message was weird. It was audio-only for one thing, and Twister always had some clever or goofy visual. Plus, the message -- in Twister's voice, with a decidedly unenthusiastic tone -- said something like, "leave your name and handle, and how much you want of which drugs," which seemed way too uncool for Twister, who really never admited he was a dealer. I mean, Sandy guessed he wouldn't even know Twister if he hadn't been trying to buy some weed in the first place, but Twister just didn't make that the focus of his visits.
So Sandy took a hike. He got out of Dodge. He left his watch/phone at home and took an elevator to the ground floor and walked off towards Mission Gorge, to the old Mission Trails Regional Park where he'd gone with his mom a few times when it was still free. Since then it had become a pay park, but after the floods it was just closed. They said a bunch of endangered species had to re-inhabit it first. Sandy snuck in, climbed a pile of flood debris and garbage -- including driftwood, hubcaps, server racks and half-dissolved paper -- and started to think.
Twister was almost certainly busted. The narcs made him change his vid message. Zero Enforcement was no more. It couldn't have come at a worse time. He and Twister had been talking about Sandy going to work for Twister, as a bag-man, receiving shipments, since Sandy got fired from his latest gig, a shill at BLT&W, because he thought it was an invitation to hit on the babes in the see-through jerseys, which it turned out it definitely wasn't.
It had startled Sandy to learn that BLT&W employed shills, becasue this meant that one of the guys in his old gang of buddies there probably was a shill.
"Focus," Sandy said to himself, as he looked up and watched swallows orbiting their nests plastered against the brown quartz cliff wall of the gorge. He thought about his problems, and they seemed twofold: in the short term, the cops might be after him. In the medium term, he didn't have a way to make rent.
With both problems in mind, he decided to go to the one place he knew he could jobhunt without it showing up on anybody's computers: his high school job placement office, which still used ruled 5x7 cards.
It was on one of those ruled 5x7 cards that, a short, anonymous bus ride later, Sandy found the company name: sdbiotechday_lee.news, with an address on Torrey Pines Drive in La Jolla, and a note that they were looking for multimedia production experience.
Ninety minutes later he was at their offices, which turned out to be in one of the buildings on the Scripps-Dura campus, listening to this guy from Taiwan or Hong Kong or someplace named Xu, pronounced "shoe," talk to him in an impenetrable accent.
"Impo-dent you got passa-pot, okay?"
"I'm sorry?" Sandy offered politely.
"Passa-pot, you got passa-pot, fedgova-men say okay you trava Brass-ell, gotta have, you got?" And with this Xu waved a cardboard folder that said, "UN MedEth 2040 -- Brasília -- 22-24 Aug 2040" in bright blue letters on a background of grey medical snakes wrapped around staffs crowned with UN globes.
Then Sandy understood that Xu wanted to know if he had a valid passport, and could travel to Brazil, which he did and could because he'd needed it for the International Finance major at state that he'd dropped out of. (He'd even gotten the damned shots for all of the Western Hemisphere plus Japan.) After a little more of this halting conversation Sandy began to get the hang of understanding Xu, and realized he was being hired. He couldn't tell if Xu had seen "Last of the Board Surfers" or just took Sandy's word for it, but somehow the production experience was a non-issue, just the passport seemed to matter. And ability to leave today. Which was starting to put pressure on Sandy to decide if he really thought the cops were looking for him. I mean, he had to get home and pack, and get his passport. But first he had to finish getting his instructions from Xu, who seemed stuck on the point that Sandy was working for sdbiotechday_lee.news and not Scripps-Dura, even though the latter would be paying him. There was only a brief mention of the journalistic requirements: bring back the controversy. The floor fights. Voting results would be posted on the conference Web site, but Sandy was to get the story behind the results. It was assumed he knew how to use a pro vidcap.
By the time Sandy got off the trolley back at Don Diego, holding a FAXed travel itinerary and a nameless SmartCard good for travel, food and lodging, and wearing a beautiful new Panasonic videocap, he'd convinced himself he wasn't a fugitive. After all, he hadn't taken the bag-man job yet with Twister. And Twister's been adamant about not discussing biz on vidphone, at least until the suspicious message appeared, so he didn't think there was anything incriminating on Twister's server.
But he did it quickly anyway. He grabbed his papers, some clothes and grooming items, his SCUBA suit in case he could use it in Brazil, his watch/phone, and a Spanish mempencil from school, to brush up maybe on the plane. He powered off and packed his notebook, and flushed the few remaining drugs he had down the toilet, then left town.
And that's how he found himself crammed into a middle-middle seat in a Boeing 797 superwide on a red-eye flight to he wasn't sure where. The FAX had said Brasília, which he thought must just be Spanish for Brazil. He wondered which city. Twister had told him tales about the wild women of Rio, and showed him a vid of Rio's night life. He remebered that Blade Runner was a gay club, Barbarella had girls, and Riff-Raff had transvestites. Also, the Lido Ziggaraut had the red light district. Or was that at the Rio in Vegas? He made a mental note to do a web search on this stuff, as soon as the heat was off.
Actually, Sandy hadn't even done a Web search on sdbiotechday_lee.news, or Scripps-Dura, or UN MedEth, since he hadn't wanted to show up on any computers. He didn't know (wasn't it amazing what Sandy didn't know?) that last year at UN MedEth 2039 in Calcutta that the correspondent from sdbiotechday_lee.news, along with a few others from the United States, had been kidnapped and later murdered by Shiva Militants who thought they were CIA.
Of course, now that Sandy was on an international flight he was showing up on all kinds of computers. But he still didn't do any Web searches. He watched what was on the plane's TV channels, including coverage of the Jerusalem Olympics currently in progress.
Currently up was U.S.A. team gymnast Viivela Nevski, also known as porn star Vicki Vulva. Anchors for si.sports were talking about the protest from her native Estonia that she was being allowed to compete. Sandy clicked a "XXX" icon on his screen and got the alternative coverage from FlamingPigs.sports, where they were showing some of her sex scenes alongside the Olympic competition. After she got 8.57 on the uneven bars the flaming pigs went on to a retrospective of her career: gold medals at the Kostunica Dome in Belgrade in '36, followed by hosting MTV.vid's Ethical Contortions, then some underground amateur vids that appeared on the Web, then her stints on PlayboyMansion.adult, Playboy.eros, then on Playboy.porn, and now on Vivid.xxx as the rechristened Vicki Vulva.
A few more clicks and Sandy was watching her latest vid, The Splits, using the 3D display in a mode that showed no images on a side view, to avoid embarassment if the flight attendant came by or one of his fellow passengers woke up.
Before he knew it the plane was on the ground scooting along the taxiway of who knows what airport, and the flight attendant was welcoming them to Brasília in Spanish that made no sense to him.
This unsettled him enough to select on the toolbar the local information icon, and language English, and that's when he first becan to piece together that Brasília was a city, the capital city of Brazil, and that Portugese was the official language of Brazil.
"In 1883," a narrator was droning, "Italian Saint Dom Bosco, founder of the Salesian Order, had his prophetic dream, that a new civilization would arise between parallels 15 and 20 and that its capital would be built between parallels 15 and 16, on the edge of an artificial lake..." On the screen were white columns flanking blue stained glass of some old "mid-century modern" building. On the toolbar was a medical symbol, which Sandy clicked.
"So-called Pubic Plague is now known to be carried by pubic lice, also known as crabs, scientific name Phthirius pubis, a six-legged louse which may invade the pubic hair region and infest it with their eggs." On screen were ugly wiggling grey lice, magnified. "These lice can also infest eyebrows and other hair, but they are drawn to the pubic region. Pubic lice infestation, or crabs, is considered a sexually-transmitted disease..."
Sandy clicked the "Back" button.
"...built at the headwaters of the Tocantins, Paraná, São Francisco and Corumbá rivers..." and Sandy saw his first aerial shot of Brasília, its corny utopian towers and huge expanses of green lawns, "Some say the city is shaped like an angel in plan," a map shown of the city's layout, wide boulevard "wings" sweeping upward above the great artifical lake. "At the center is the old National Congress building, comprising a dome and saucer atop a huge concrete platform, and flanked by the central twin towers, once administrative offices, now the Crowne Plaza Hotel and Convention Center." And here was the famous helicopter shot, with the abstract shapes of the dome and bowl. It looked like a giant white pea sat inside the bowl as if it were a giant spoon. "Today, the Amazon Biodiversity Monument sits atop the bowl, a symbol of Brazil's commitment to saving the genetic heritage of the Amazon rain forest." Sandy heard another passenger coughing loudly.
Again the flight attendant cut in, speaking more in incomprehensible Portugese, before repeating in Spanish and English, "Local time is 11:15 AM. Current weather, 32 degrees Celcius, 89 degrees Fahrenheit, partly cloudy with a continued chance of thundershowers."
After inexplicable delays in deplaning, customs, immigration (including giving blood samples), luggage retreival and catching a shuttle bus belching alchohol fumes, Sandy found himself in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel presenting his FAX and SmartCard and being told that, though it was now nearly the nominal check-in time, 2 PM, his room would not be ready until 5:00 PM. When he began to complain the desk clerk told him stiffly, "We offer the best service possible, sir, Embratur classifies this hotel as five star quality," whatever that meant.
So he went into the lobby bar, "Chez Willy," it said above the entryway, in fake banana letters that a monkey was climbing. Olympic Soccer in the Jerusalem Rockdome was on the big screen TV. The trouble with TVs in bars was you couldn't click on them. He faced the other way. A balding man in mirrored sunglasses sat in the corner, watching the games. Nearby a table full of waiters from the hotel were arguing heatedly in Portugese. As Sandy sat down the man in the corner waved at him, then stood and hustled over to Sandy's table, sticking out his hand.
"Bill Cartwheel, Pfiezer-Morris," he said, unmistakably a Gringo, "Mind if I join you? I saw you on the plane from San Diego; are you here for the UN MedEth conference?"
Sandy thought he talked like he clenched a cigarette holder in his teeth, though none was there. "Sure, have a seat," he replied. A cocktail waitress who looked like she was wearing only a large purple and brown scarf and a hatful of fruit came over with two large palm fronds with drink menus microjet color printed on each of them. "Uh, I haven't changed my money yet, do you take this?" Sandy asked her, waving his SmartCard.
"I can put it on your room tab, don't worry," she assured him.
After she left, Cartwheel leaned over conspiratorially and said, "whatever you do, don't change your money. The exchange rate on that card of yours is constantly dropping with the inflation rate of the Real. Get them to itemize everything on your bill at the time you buy it, and make them pre-quote your room nights, don't let them raise prices on you. Then pay it all when you check out, at that exchange rate. It'll piss 'em off, but it's legal, and fair if you ask me."
Just then the table full of waiters began laughing uproarously, and pointing at the TV. "What's so funny?" Sandy wondered.
"Oh, you didn't see it," Carwheel explained, "they showed that nympho Vicky you-know doing the parallel bars, and the letters 'BBC' appeared underneath. In the Portugese slang they speak here that means boca, boceta, cu, oral, anal, vaginal, a woman who takes it in all three holes, as Miss Vicky has proven to."
And this proved to break the ice for Sandy. Soon Cartwheel was his new expatriate buddy, advising him on every facet of the conference.
His new pal even found a way to get him his room sooner. "Bribe them with US dollars, they don't lose their value, they must snatch them up here," he explained. "They'll get you in."
Sandy protested that he didn't have much cash, only the SmartCard, but the next thing he knew he was buying the man's drinks on his room tab and getting a few $20 holos from Cartwheel in return. And he went right over and used the cash to "motivate" the desk clerk, and sure enough in ten mintues he was being taken up an ancient cable elevator to his room by a bellman who pushed a cart with Sandy's baggage.
The room seemed huge, occupying a good portion of a floor in one of the twin towers. Three different doorways from the hallway lead into the same large room. Floor to ceiling windows showed a spectacular view of the city: monuments, goverment buildings, expanses of green lawn, wide parkways and the artificial lake in the distance.
After giving the bellman his remaining twenty and watching him depart, Sandy picked up ther remote and flipped on the room TV. It was on the channel the maid left it on, and the first thing to apear was a soap opera, Torre de Babel, with a woman in a tight black satin evening gown and opera gloves shouting angrily in Portugese, and a Globo-TV.portugese logo on the lower right corner.
He clicked the channel. Another soap opera appeared, Xica Da Silva, with a Telemundo.portugese logo on the lower right corner. He selected Spanish from the toolbar to see if he could follow it. Now the logo said Telemundo.español. An old woman in a brown shawl and dress was saying "Xica doesn't know if her child will have brown eyes or blue," and a black woman in a white powdered wig was brandishing a machine gun, shouting, "I will see, but you will never know!" It didn't make sense. He switched to English. "With my motorcycle army I will rule Brazil!" It still didn't make any sense.
He clicked the channel again. It was the Hotel Services screen. He scrolled down, and clicked Interactive Games. Something called "Strip Whodunit" caught his eye. It looked to be a vulgar variation of the old board game Clue, changed just enough to avoid copyright problems.
Sandy found himself becoming a bit horned out by Miss Magenta, Lady Chartreuse and Little Mauve. He paused the game. In the bathroom he found some hand cream -- too sticky -- and shampoo -- too soapy. He tried mixing them. Perfect. He grabbed a hand towel and headed back to the bedroom, unpausing the game as he unzipped his pants.
Soon he was on his way to the Boudior with Miss Magenta and the Candlelabra. Images of Vicky Vulva and her boca, boceta, cu flashed through his head. His pelvis uncotrollably thrust as the orgasm became inevitable, and he heard a card-key in the door lock of his room, startling him as he sprayed his semen across the bedspread, backing away as a priest pushed the heavy door open and seeing the fiasco, quickly retreated apologetically. Imediately a bellman burst in, laughed, and also left.
Sandy turned bright magenta himself as he clicked the TV off and arranged himself. In a moment he heard a tapping on his door, and he answered it reluctantly. The bellman stood in the foreground with the priest behind, and politely said, "My greatest apology sir for interrupting you, but there has been a mistake. These rooms were not properly configured. If you will excuse me," and with that he went to a panel on the wall and pressed his id card against a panel causing hidden room dividers to spring out of what had looked like brown paneled columns. In a moment the large room was divided into three smaller rooms. The center room was now the one where Sandy stood just inside the door, astonished. It lacked a bed and TV console, both now being next door. He was still speechless when the bellman bustled out and back in with Sandy's lugagge, which had been left on the bed.
"In a moment we will bring up a bed and TV for you, sir," the bellman explained, and quickly departed. Sandy felt his ears burning as he watched out the now smaller windows as a blue-gray storm front approached the city. A few drops of rain flecked the panes. Sandy decided he needed to bug out for a while. On the way out he passed two more bellmen pushing his entertainment console and bed on supercasters.
Back in the Chez Willy bar, Cartwheel was still drinking the last of the whatever-they-weres, umbrella drinks, that Sandy had procured.
"Jimmy, I mean Sandy, cub reporter, whatever," he said cheerily, "my attitude is sufficiently adjusted. Let's go register for the conference."
Twenty minutes later, waiting in a crush of people in a wide corridor of the old National Congress building, Sandy was wishing he had some drugs. He couldn't believe the inefficiency. They were typing the badges for each attendee. No computers, no palms, no scanners, no wands, no microjet printers, just some pre-printed UN MedEth 2040 cards and a few manual typewriters. Sandy had never seen one in person, only in old detective movies. He wished he'd taken a shower back in the room. He couldn't believe how humid it was getting. Cartwheel distracted him a bit with some stories about how Brasília was built, how it had all been a terrible mistake, a symbol of failed central planning, and had been the start of Brazil's money problems, and how few of the government officials had wanted to move from the coast to the interior when it was finished.
"Are we far from the ocean?" Sandy asked.
Cartwheel rolled his eyes. "Only about a thousand kilometers." Sandy was reminded of how Twister looked when he said, "Buy a clue, Sandy."
>>> PRESS DELEGATE OBSERVER {& French}
Eventually they got their registrations. Each attendee was handed a a drab olive and khaki camouflage backpack with the UN MedEth logo on it in white and light blue. Inside Sandy found two palms, a Q and a Dell-Cisco. "What do I do with these?" he asked his new buddy.
"Don't ask," was the reply, "I can't believe this bullshit. I'll take you to the Infra Office later and get you booted."
Sandy shrugged.
"Come on, we're missing the keynote," his buddy urged, and they hot-footed down the corridor to the main assembly, and easily found seats in the half-full hall. A woman who looked to be from India was finishing a speech at the lecturn, in heavily accented English. "Too bad she isn't speaking some other language, then we could hear a translation," Cartwheel whispered. Sandy almost forgot to hit the RECORD button on his vidcap. He opened up the new Q he'd been given (he liked Q better than Dell-Cisco since they were a San Diego company and his mom had worked there for a while), and found there was a web site pre-loaded with the preliminary conference schedule. It said this speaker was Belur Shilabalika, Associate Professor of Biology, Ballygaunge Science College, University of Calcutta, and also chair of last year's conference.
There was applause, and then a bearded man in khaki shorts took to the stage, and an unseen voice introduced him as Dr. Brian Pollen, PhD in Ethics, Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at Stanford Medical School, Palo Alto, California. Unenthusiastic applause. "Thank you, though I have been sent to the conference by the government of the United States," a lone boo was heard, "I also represent a global organization, the Millenium Clock Foundation." The hall got quieter. Dr. Pollen explained that the Milenium Clocks, one on each continent, chimed once every 10,000 years, to remind humankind to take the long view of ecological responsibility and sustainability. He went on to propose that the name of the conference be officially changed to UN MedEth 02040, with a leading zero in the year. This would make them Y10K ready, and remind them all to take the long view during the conference.
The unseen voice announced that the measure passed. "How's that happen?" asked Sandy, "we didn't even vote."
"Criminy, they're using the palms already. This is even more bullshit than I thought."
"What?"
"The palms we got in our backpacks. They use them to tally votes on resolutions. We have to get booted or we can't vote. Come on," and Cartwheel took the lead towards the Infra Office.
On the way out of the hall Sandy saw the next speaker was the priest who'd entered his room at the inoppourtune time, now taking the stage and introducing a motion. It was long and complex, but it centered around a resolution for the conference to agree that its final report would contain a number of resolutions, supporting continued funding of the Amazon Biodiversity Monument, that mammal testing and fetal farms be condemned, that the right of all people to recieve medical aid be affirmed, and so on.
They were in the line for the Infra Office for more thn an hour. It turned out that either the Q or the Dell-Cisco could run most of the conference software, but only the Dell-Cisco allowed "instant messaging" between conference delegates and so that's what everybody was using. They were strongly encouraged to drop their Qs in a bin to be donated to UNICEF. Even nearly clueless Sandy thought he smelled a scam here -- both sets of palms had been donated by their respective corporations in the first place, clearly in the hopes that the delegates would like them and take them back to their home countries and show them off.
The only high point of the experience was meeting Dr. David Warbler, a neurology researcher from Syracuse, New York, who was wearing a set of eyephones and holding a wireless joystick, totally engrossed in something. When Sandy asked about them, if it was a VR game, Dr. Dave (as everyone called him) said, "No, it's telepresence. I've got a radio-controlled miniature ultralight flying around outside this building, and this is the vid it's sending back. Wanna see?" and he offered Sandy the eyephones. Sandy remembered his vidcap and stopped recording, then replaced it with the eyephones. It was practically the coolest thing he'd ever seen. Full 3D, floating over the twin towers. He didn't want to stop.
After getting their Dell-Ciscos fully rigged, Snady said, "Hey, Dr. Dave, can I instant message you now?"
"Oh, no, that system isn't secure. Call my watch/phone. Encrypt. Here's a key," and Dr. Dave handed him a mempencil. "It's 128 Tera, it should last you a while, but don't re-use it."
It turned out Sandy didn't know how to plug a mempencil into a watch phone, so he followed Dr. Dave up to his room to learn how, telling Cartwheel he'd catch him later. The room was in the other tower, and seemed somehow to be more like a normal hotel room. The windows were smaller, with sashes, and there was more dark paneling, and a wet bar. Plus, the room looked out to the south, unlike Sandy's, and so looked down on the saucer and bowl, and the Amazon Biodiversity Monument. On one wall was a liquid crystal display of a picture in a frame, with a brass caption, "Paisagem de Ouro Preto, Alberto de Veiga Guignard (1896-1962)." The painting showed an impressionistic landscape of a quaint, hilly rural village, all browns and purples.
"Wow," said Sandy. "I like your room better."
Dr. Dave clicked the remote, and picture changed to a reclining naked Brazilian woman, with purple and brown hills behind her, and the caption, "Chácara do Céu, Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (1897-1976)."
"Here, check this out," said Dr. Dave, sitting at a mahogany desk and pointing the desk lamp at the mempencil. He used a thin whisker-like tool to click something in a tiny hole near the pencil's tip. What looked like the "lead" the slipped out, a tiny grey cylinder less than an inch long. "This is the real memory," he explained, "It's so small, you might lose it, so they put it in a bigger package for palms and notebooks to use. You know, watch/phones, palms, pens, eyephones, notebooks, servers, today they're all almost exactly alike, except for input and outputs, exactly the same processors and buses. It's cheaper to make them that way, and they can run faster." He used the same whisker on Sandy's watch/phone, opening a secret panel Sandy didn't even know was there, and sliding the "lead" into an empty hole.
"Let me show something else cool," Dr. Dave said. He opened a thermos on the bar and pulled out a small eyedrop bootle.
"What is it?" asked Sandy with trepidation. "I hope you read up on the drug laws here before you came."
"This isn't a drug, it's a nutrient," Dr. Dave countered, "adrenaline precusrsor. In the metabolic pathways by which your body turns food to adrenaline, this is the second to last step. It's perfectly safe. Wanna try?"
"Sure said Sandy, always the party boy, and he stuck out his tongue to receive a few drops of the frigid fluid.
"Now check this out," said Dr. Dave, and he stood stock still for a monent, silently, until "booga-booga!" he lunged at Sandy with his arms outstretched.
His body metabolized the precursor into adrenailine, and Sandy was suddenly wired to the gills. "Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed as he leapt to his feet.
"Do pushups!" shouted Dr. Dave as he dropped some onto his own tongue, and then joined Sandy on the shag carpet, pumping them out.
Suddenly Dr. Dave was back on his feet, and out the door. "Come on!" he shouted, "Lets's see if we can catch it!"
"Catch what?" shouted Sandy back, in hot pursuit.
"It's a surprise," Dr. Dave whispered as they entered the stairwell. A sign said "ALARM WILL SOUND" but it didn't. Down six flights they raced, then out into another hotel hallway, where they just saw the flash of something silver rounding a corner ahead of them.
"Yes! I knew we could see it!" Dr. Dave was ecstatic.
"See what!?" demanded Sandy, angry now.
"Hey, chill," said Dr. Dave, dropping to the floor, sitting on the rug, leaning against the corridor wall, "You have to practice anger management. It was a stealth robot I borrowed from DARPA. The military wanted to use robot telepresence to treat wounded soldiers without risking doctors. I keep telling them to just use robot telepresence soldiers. Duh!"
"That was a military robot?" Sandy gasped.
"Uses Hopfield neurons. Almost as fast as sound on the straightaway, silent as a cat, but it has to slow down for stairs. I'm going to let it wander throughout the conference, and reveal its presence during my section of the closing keynotes. Do you think anyone will notice it before then?"
"Can I get some of that stuff from you?"
"Do you have a thermos? It has to be kept really cold. I have it in dry ice."
"No, but I'll find something that will work."
>>> out the loading dock, Dr D tells him the resulution will probably backfire >>>
Back in the lobby bar, thinking a drink might help quiet his nerves, Sandy ran into Cartwheel again.
"They're handing out the proceedings today, there's a huge line so I got you one," Cartwheel handing him a slick, glossy magazine sized document on stiff paper, beautifully printed and bound. "I don't know why they don't just post this stuff and be done with it."
Sandy began to flip through it, reading the abstracts of papers amid total confusion. "Are you going on the night club tour tonight to Super Center Venancio 5000?" he asked, pausing on the social schedule page -- the only thing he could make sense out of. "It says there's visits to Clube do Tango, a local Samba club, and Cutty Sark, a trendy disco."
"Tourist scams," said Cartwheel. "Let me take you out to some real nightclubs later," he offered.
Sandy looked out of a glass curtain-wall window dubiously at the sheets of bluish rain falling out of the grey afternoon sky. His watch/phone rang, playing the melody that accompnied the lyric, "tell the teacher we're surfin', surfin' USA." It was Dr. Dave. "Just wanted to check if the encryption is working," he said, "and to let you know the entire Japanes, Chines and Korean delegations, and most of the Malysians, are up in their rooms barfing. Do you know anything about this?"
"No I hadn't heard," admitted Sandy. "So what?"
"So, why not? You're the reporter. Ever heard of genetically targeted influenza? Snoop around!" And with that Dr. Dave signed off.
"What was that all about?" asked Cartwheel.
"Genetically targeted influenza," Sandy offered. Cartwheel whistled. Sandy provided details. Cartwheel shook his head.
"Every biotech in the world knows how to do this, but none of them ever have. Talk about your medical ethics, here's the greedy global corporations policing themselves -- until now. The question isn't who could have done this, but, who would benefit? It sounds at first like a hate crime against Asians."
Sandy looked at his watch and remembered Dr. Dave's cool hotel room. "Which tower is your room in?" Sandy asked.
"West, same as yours," Cartwheel answered. "Kinda hopping from subject to subject, aren't we?"
"I'm just trying to figure out how they decided who to put where," Sandy explained. "I think the East Tower rooms are much nicer."
"Why don't you find out who made the decision and ask them?"
Why, indeed. So Sandy decided to take the initiative. But first his watch/phone rang again.
"Dude, you want to know something else wierd?" It was Dr. Dave again. "I talked to some of the post-docs from CBSP," he began.
"Who?" Sandy asked.
"CBSP. You know, Centro Brasileiro de Serviços e Pesquisas em Proteínas?"
"What?" Sandy blurted.
"The Brazilian Center for Protein Research and Services," Dr. Dave translated. "It's here at the LBQP at UnB."
"Where?" Sandy pleaded.
"LBQP, Laboratório de Bioquímica e Química de Proteínas, the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Protein Chemistry. It's here in Brasília, at UnB. You know what UnB is, right?"
Sandy gave up. "Why?"
"They're celebrating the 50th year of their lab, over at the campus, and I was invited to drop by. It's a swell party, they've got this great Everclear punch. But I thought you'd like to know they think somebody changed some of their votes on that resolution Father Crespi got passed this afternoon. Eleven of them are voting delegates, and they all voted against it, and it passed 331 to 6. Pretty fishy, huh? You wanna come out here and interview them?"
"Where?" Sandy asked, feeling especially stupid.
"UnB, University of Brasília, I thought you said you knew what it was."
"When?" At last an intelligent question.
"Well, they're all together right now. They'll be back at the conference tomorrow morning, but by then you may not have a scoop."
"I'll take my chances," said Sany, "I got some other things to do this afternoon." Like a shower and a nap, he thought. "Thanks for the tip, though."
As he rang off, Sandy noticed a group of waiters and bellmen sitting at a round table, laughing and pointing at him like they had that morning when Vicki Vulva was on TV. "Cinco contra um," he heard one of them saying. "What's up over there?" he asked Cartwheel.
"They're saying 'five against one' which is slang for, you know, choking the chicken, polishing the knob. Why do you ask?"
"Nothing," Sandy muttered. "I'm gonna take a walk."
"I'll come with you," Cartwheel replied, and a few minutes later they were strolling around on the roof of the Chamber of Deputies looking at the upward and downward facing bowls, and the frost-covered ball of the Amazon Biodiversity Monument. It looked like a giant snow-ball up close. A small cloud of white mist clung to it.
"So, this commemorates the biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest?" Sandy asked, squinting into the sun.
"Sandy, this contains some of the biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest. DNA and proteins from animals, plants and soil bacteria are cryogenically frozen right inside there."
"Why?" asked Sandy.
"So future generations can study them. Though, my employers would love to study them right now, seqence everything and use it for possible new drug designs."
"So, why can't you?"
"It's complicated. The UN resoilution that created this said no single compnya or group of companies can own the data. So where's the economic incentive to pay for the sequencing, not to the mention the freezer bill? It's actually a large drain on the UN budget at thias point, that's why people are trying to kill it, especially the Pubic Plague researchers who really neeed the money, and that's what that resolution by Father Crespi was all about. Personally I think the conference was held here, with all the delegates looking out at this," pointing at the snowball, "just to try and guilt trip them into continuing the fubnding."
Sandy kicked a piece of shaggy white fabric. It seemed heavy. He picked it up.
"What do you think this is?" asked Sandy.
"That's what they insulate it with. Space shuttle heat shield tiles. Bought 'em off of NASA after our president canned the shuttle program in '33 on acount of its effect on the ozone layer."
Sandy found a few more pieces and stuffed them into his backpack. Then he called Dr. Dave on his watch/phone, and arranged to pick up some of that adrenaline precursor later on. He figured he could wrap it in the tiles.
Sandy was starting to feel dog tired but he wanted to at least do something right before he collapsed. So he decided to research the room assignments. Starting at the front desk, he was directed to the office of the group sales and catering manager in the basement. There he met the cateress. "Consuelo Maria Ingleses, Vendas do Grupo," the brass-colored sign on her desk said, "But you can call me Connie," she assured him as she pumped his right hand, clasping it with both of hers. She was short and busty, with thick black hair and dark eyes, and wore a sheer lace blouse over a tight white bra that didn't cover her nipples, and matching black jacket, miniskirt and pumps. Sandy tried to keep his eyes off of her nipples, so he looked at her eyebrows, which were drawn on thickly in brown. Her enthusiasm waned when she realized she probably couldn't sell him anything, he was just a nosy reporter.
"You are not happy with your room? What is your name, please?" She was typing on a keyboard and glancing at a spot on the desk pad that must have a directional monitor.
"Sandy Hull," he answered without thinking.
She typed and frowned. "You are not registered." She looked up at him. "Sandy, S-A-N-D-Y?" He nodded. "Hey, have you been on TV?"
"Huh?" He hadn't expected that.
"You look like Sandy Surfer, that guy in The Last of the Board Surfers. It's a little web vid about people who ride on surf boards, on the ocean? It was very popular in Brazil. It helped our tourism very much. Now we have surf tours of our beaches, and people come from all over the world, especially North America, where so many beaches have closed. Are you going to Rio on this trip? You should try it. I can get you a good deal on a package."
"I am Sandy Surfer," he finally managed to interject. "I made that vid. History.vid called me Sandy Surfer, I'm really Sandy Hull. I didn't know about the surf tours, though. That's cool."
"I knew it!" she exclaimed. She extended her hand, "Nice to meet you, Mister Sandy Surfer." She leanded closer to him, showing more cleavage through the sheer lace blouse, as she gave his hand a squeeze. "Now let's get you a better room." Back at the keyboard, she frowned again. "They're's no Sandy, and the only Hull we have registered is a Jeremiah Hull, room 1138."
"That's me!" Sandy confirmed.
She looked, shocked, then a smike broke over her face. "You are in 1138?" she asked. He nodded, and she started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Sandy demanded.
"The bell captain told me," she managed through giggles, "about your unfortunate, uh, episode, of, you know, gloriosa."
"What?" he said, and immediately regreted it. He didn't know the word, but he knew what it must mean.
"You know, playing with Maria Cinco Dedos?" Sandy redened. "So, you weant another room?" she went on. "How about Rua da Palma número cinco?" She was convulsed with laughter.
"What?" Sandy said again, and again immediately regretted it.
"Number five Palm Road," she managed to sputter through guffaws.
Now he was starting to get mad. "Listen, what I came here to find out was why the three attendees from San Diego were all put in inferior rooms in a different tower."
She frowned suddenly. They are not inferior rooms! They are multipurpose rooms, and much more expensive! And it has nothing to do with San Diego. Whenever we do a conference I always reserve overflow rooms for late registration. There are five people on your floor, only four from San Diego. You all registered late."
"Aha!" Sandy stood. "The front desk says there are plenty of rooms in the East Tower. Why are we in the West Tower, in more expensive rooms?" He was shouting.
"Sit down, Sandy," she implored. "Close the door. Put that vidcap under the sink there." There was a small wet bar behind the door. "Turn on the water. That's better, This is off the record. I'll tell you the truth, I swear by the Saints. I called the cateress at the Crowne Plaza Calcutta, where those terrorists kidnapped those journalists and fed them to crocdiles. All week before the kidnapping the rumors were saying these six journalists were all CIA. They had all registered late, so their names wouldn't be in the advance program, and they were all from USA."
"You think I'm CIA?" Sandy asked incredulously.
"Oh, no, Mister Digitar,"he assured him. "But I wanted to avoid trouble. Keep you separated just in case. Okay? No conspiracy. Just prudence."
He sat and thought about that. He wondewred who the fourth San Diegan was. Father Crespi was from Tijuana, close enough, Cartwheel was from Scripps-Dura in La Jolla, close enough again, and himself made three. After a moment Sandy noticed Connie was giving him a funny look. She stood up and leaned over him. "I never met somebody from TV before, Sandy Surfer. I have an idea. A nasty idea." She leaned closer to him, practically pressing her tits into his face. "How about if you do it for me, estrangular o sabiá,, and I do it for you, medir a temperatura." She reached down and started to slide her skirt up.
Sandy flattened agaiunst the wall, snatched the vidcap from under the sink, unlatched the door and slid into the corridor in one smooth motion. He got lost among the steam pipes and ended up on the loading dock, where several old white clunker bikes leaned against the wall. He gazed out into the twilight rain.
A security guard found him there and escorted him up the freight elevator to his floor, where they emerged through a door he didn't know was there. He reflexively tipped the man with a Chavez, let himself into his room, slid off his shoes and collapsed onto the bed. For a while he felt like he coldn't relax, feeling his pulse pounding in his cheek against the pillow. The he was out like a light.
Sandy dreamed that he was walking across a great green lawn of Brasiliá, when one of the twin towers of the Crowne Plaza toppled over onto him. He lay on the grass, feeling the wet mud against his shoulder blades, pressed down by the concrete of the building.
The sound of a card key in the door lock awakened him. Somebody was coming into his room! He looked up. He heard the door swing open, but he didn't see it move. Huh? Then he realized he was hearing the door to the room next door. These walls must be paper thin, he though.
It was Father Crespi, and that woman biologist from Calcutta, Belur whats-her-name. They were making out as soon as they got inside the room. Soon there was a rustling of clothes, and then the slowly building moans of intercourse. Despite all the pornos he'd seen in his short life, Sandy found it obscenely intimate. And with a priest!
He wanted to leave, but he knew they would hear him, and then they'd know the walls were paper thin, too. He would just shut up and listen, then. The budding journalist in him said to keep this room after all.
But that Belur was quite a screamer! It was embarrasing Sandy, but
arousing him too. Groggily he rooted around in his new bathroom for
more of that shampoo and hand cream. Quietly, under the covers, Sandy
played with
"Tell the teacher we're surfin'" his mind filled in the lyrics as the
watch/phone awakened him. Suddenly he worried, did Father Crespi hear him from next door? Too late now. He hope'd they'd left while he slept. He punched the watch and Xu appeared.
"This Xu," he started, "You missing con-fance, stop jerking off so much,
you missing recep-sha rye now, get to wook!"
Again Sandy worked at the demanding task of understanding Xu.
It came to light that the little RECORD button on the Panasonic vidcap
didn't actually turn on and off the recording -- all vid was sent to a
server somewhere and archived, on supercheap arrays of WORMs, Write Once
Read Many mempencils. All the button diud was mark footage that Sandy
thought was interesting. Oops. He shuddered to think what overt
stupidity was documented permanently on those WORMs.
But all was not negative. Xu liked the stealth robot stuff, and
the leads he was getting on the election being rigged. Shoulda
gone to talk to those grad students at CBSP while they were away
from the conference and drunk on Everclear punch. And they wanted
some of the footage from Dr. Dave's radio-contolled ultralight, too.
And as quickly Xu was gone. Sandy popped open the Dell-Cisco, and sure
it enough it pre-loaded with a web site of the conference schedule too,
but not the prelininary. The current schedule was shown, since the palm
was on-air, indicated by a blinking antenna icon. Funny, the social
schedule wasn't on-line, only in that proceedings he'd gotten. Maybe
different groups did the hard copy and the web stuff. It was now a
little after 7:00 PM and all of the conference sessions were over.
He fished the paper proceedings out of his backback. On the social
schedule was a reception in the Bauxite Room. Then there was that
field trip to the Samba club and the disco.
Begrudgingly Sandy took a shower and put on fresh clothes. He hoped thay
had coffe at the reception.
Sure enough, they did. And some very tasty little pastries. Sandy was
starting to feel okay. He mingled, turned on the charm, asked people their opinions of the first day, and found out that the reolutions passed that afternoon weren't "binding," whatever that meant.
After about an hour of this he'd had enough. Everybody seemed so damned
cheery, but like it was forced. Come to think of it, that was how he
probably looked, too -- it was certainly how he felt. This international
cooperation, world peace and cultural tolerance stuff sure was exhausting.
So when he bumped into Cartwheel, who repeated his offer to show Sandy a better night out than the tour bus offered, Sandy went for it. Xu could pund sand,
and besides, he wasn't here.
The taxi took them through grey twilight rain over miles of parkway, onto a
twisty road through hills, then onto a gravel road that dipped down into a
misty valley. Cartwheel seemed unconcerned, but Sandy peered at the driver's map screen. It showed they were near a light blue line, a river, where it
crossed an orange double line, a parkway. The taxi dipped down again
and pulled under a tall, grey, wet-looking parkway overpass, and a giant yellow neon spiderweb came into view, supported by what looked like a rambling complex of corrigated tin shacks. Yellow neon outlined black letters that read:
"La Viúva Negra" -- a Portugese phrase he didn't know.
Negra was black in Spanish. The black
something. From under the shadows of the overpass a large, writhing robot
spider began to lower onto the neon web, its thorax and body black and
reflective as shined shoes. He realized Spanish viuda was widow.
Was "The Black Widow" the name of this... whatever it was? The gravel
parking lot was crammed with haphazardly parked cars, semis, a few limos,
bathed in yellow light. Shadows crisscrossed everything as the giant spider
began to rise again on unseen cable.
After Sandy paid with his SmartCard the taxi deposited them under a tattered,
soggy awning, where Cartwheel negotiated with a lanky doorman in colonial
dress: muddy white stockings, brown jacket, powdered white wig and purple
tricorner hat.
Next was a little round curtained ante-room, where they were scanned with
something, and Sandy had to give up his watch/phone, vidcap, and Smartcard.
Cartwheel surrendered his shades. Sandy was a litle apprehensive about
surrendering the SmartCard, but Cartwheel reminded him it would only work
with Sandy's thumbprint.
Inside it was very dark, but Sandy could make out three stages wrapped around
a floor of round tables and chairs. The center stage was lit, with a
shagadelic-lettered sign saying "HIPPIE DISCO," a mirrored ball, a black
light, and a nude dancer wearing only day-glow yellow webbing all over her
torso and a matching day-glow yellow wig and platform boots. It looked like
something out of Twister's living room.
Cartwheel lead him to a table, Sandy only stumbling once in the darkness his
eyes had not adjusted to yet, got him into a chair, and plopped down
across from him.
"This is a strip club," Sandy concluded, loudly over the diso music.
"So it appears," Cartwheel replied.
>>> tall blonde man with one black shoe
>>>. "I'll be back in a few," >>>
>>> girls: Xica (Yellow, Afro, white), Gabrielle (Blue, red), Ticia (Red, black), Chrissy (Purple, blonde), Suzi (White, black), Emerald (Green, Platinum)
>>> Xica Da Silva - Xica was taken away from her mother as a young girl and
forced to become a slave to a charismatic government delegate (played
by Victor Wagner) of the Portuguese king. That set up an illicit,
interracial romance between slave and master. Eventually Xica used
her feminine wiles and smoldering good looks to win her freedom and
become a major player in Brazilian politics. Eventually she become
a legend to Brazil's slave population.
>>> Reanimated Reggae, Thai Techno
>>> Zona Rosa Dome, Puerto Nuevo, Native American Casino Brothels, Rio Vegas
>>> mirror in hall up to champaigne room
At the top of the stairs, Cartwheel led Sandy througha doorway padded around the frame with shag carpeting, into a small, windowless room paneled in cheap walnut vineer (sp?).
read up on medeth 2039 -- crocs, voting records, Jap & Chi against as well as Germ, US
>>> spent the night on Dr. D's couch
>>> breakfast: Modernism, Post-Modernism, Post-Post-Modernism: Haitian philosopher Zom B*Jamm's "Blast Babylon" (book & CD) deconstructs deconstructivism, "ripped" it and "blasted" it.
>>> leaking roof of national congress building
>>> set up for murder
Now it was important for Sandy to marshall all of the clues he had, and to
do something smart. For the second time in two days he thought the cops
might be looking for him. And he'd been pretty much right the first time.
It had been good to get a reality check. It made him more inclined to
trust his hunches. Now his hunch was the Brazilian cops were looking
for him. They might be coming up the elevator now. They probably had
helicopters, IR scopes, dogs. From watching Fugitive shows he knew
that the search area increases with the square of time a fugitive has been
on the ground. When an hour has passed, a man can have hid anywhere in,
say, a ten square mile area. In two hours it becomes 40 square miles, in
three hours it becomes 90 square miles. So, the most vulnerable time for
him was RIGHT NOW, when they would focus all of their resources nearby.
Sandy needed an immediate hiding place that was safe from helicopters, IR
and dogs. It was time to stop thinking and act.
He took the adrenaline precursor in its white fuzzy package out of the fridge,
and coerced a drop onto his tongue. Boom! He had already been scared, now
he was panicky. He pulled on his wetsuit and SCUBA gear, put his mask on
his head and hung his flippers around his neck, slid the adrenaline
precursor and its insulating package into a self-zipping baggie and
clipped it to his belt, smashed his watch/phone until the display went
dark and strapped it back on his wrist, and fled his room down the
stairwell to the basement loading dock where he'd seen the white
bikes. By the graces it was deserted. Hopping on a bike he sped
out of the cargo door into the drank and rain.
He rode due south, down the parkway that formed the "spine" of the angel,
past the old Palácia do Alvorada, the presidentail residence,
and the old Federal Supreme Court building,
though he could barely see them. He followed the parkway mostly by feel,
until the road split at the edge of Lago Paranoá,
left and right up bottom the edges of the angel's "wings," but Sandy
just kept going straight, slowing as he began to
slog accross muddy lawn, until he reached the thin cement rim of the
artificial lake. Dismounting, he hefted the bike and hurled it as far as
he could out into the algae-clogged water. He watched it sink slowly below
the dark surface. Hopefully the force of the driving rain would cover his
tracks, and blur the hole in the algae. Donning mask and flippers, Sandy
dove into the dark.
Now his problem was to calm down. His heart was racing. He was breathing
in gasps, which was not so good for a diver. And he wanted to minimize
bubbles.
Sandy tried to imagine where he was. From the maps he remembered the lake,
Lago Paranoá, was a blobby thing that sort of wrapped around
the angels wings from below. What did the name mean anyway? It sounded
like "lake of paranoia." Wow, that was sort of like what he was doing
now -- soaking in a lake of paranoia.
>>>
plot
back to Spider, no help, by night into slum
adrenal precusror saves OD
garimpo = gold seeking
hyperinflation
UnReal = eCurrency (auction via Zardoz rings)
in barge to bullet train, caught by pheromone detectors, Rio jail, Gloria Trevi
sang the blues and released on MP7
Tiradentes Palace ("tooth puller") (was jail)
Republica Federativa do Brasil
torture outlawed 1997, slavery 1888
L.A.M.B. = Loose Affiliation of Millionaires and Billionaires,
= off-the-shelf, stand-alone, self-financing, covert operations capacity
created by William Casey after he faked his own death >>> hid in FEMA, became UN contractors
junk: zip disks, hit clips, 2D monitors, memory sticks, CDs of Windows software
El Campamento de Espranza (The City of Hope) 2001 Madrid <- Sintel Telecomm bought by Mastec, Miami
solar-powered airplanes for cell antennas
Free City
"A terrifying preview of a collectivist future." -- Arthur Schlesinger
Niemeyer
Jaime Lerner and Curitiba
Novacap, inflation
monument to candangos built city, lived in favelas
Dom Pedro Dome 2022
Dancer Dungeon Hippie Disco Bedroom
____ Xica Y: Sugar Foxxy
____ Flame B: Sensimilla Gabrielle
____ Ticia R: Magenta Mona
____ Nurse Nan P: Violet Chrissy
____ Madame Dragon W: Sailor Uranus Suzi
____ Sweet Dreams [Annie Lennoz] G: Emerald Kat
Last update Tue 07-Nov-02000.