Mansard experienced the unpleasant lurch of reality as he melded with the control software. It was a little too much like baring his innermost being to be strictly comfortable – it was a yielding to something bigger that himself. Each time he melded, he felt the loss of his strict singular identity. The physical leads that ran to the console and the mental channels that were opened to the whole of the complex system made him a component in an open-ended matrix that was part cybernetic and part human. That loss of self was, on its own, akin to a religious experience. Maybe that was why the hierarchy appeared so threatened by DNI. They probably saw it as competition.
What Mansard thought of as his second eyes came on and, with them, the exhilaration that followed the fear. The sheer depth of shared perception was what made jacking in such a source of pure excitement. He had been blind but now could see. The religious parallels always came thick and fast when anyone tried to describe the full depths of the DNI experience. Mansard was very much aware of the fact that, as the director of the whole operation. he occupied a unique position. They were his fantasies that were being projected as an illusion of light and form, and it was his will that directed the coordinated effort. He was the pivotal point around which everything else revolved. I am the cyberking; I can do anything. When anyone asked him how it felt to have that almost otherwordly power at his disposal, he had a stock reply. "From the top, you can see for fucking miles."
In a way, it was the absolute unvarnished truth. That was what the second eyes were really all about. Subjectively to the left and right of his physical vision, they provided an electronic overview of the entire control. "What can I tell you? I'm a visual artist, not a poet. It's like full-color radar – that's the only way that I can describe it." In that, he somewhat underplayed the truth. It might look like color radar, but it felt like playing God. His kingdom, the matrix, was laid out in front of him, a vast glowing landscape tailored to his hands and mind. If he thought it, it was done. The sense of omnipotence was all-consuming. About the only thing that rivaled it was the sense of the infinite. Although the second eyes did not show him anything but the single special-effects matrix, there was a awareness that, beyond the limits of his own universe, others existed. They were out there, glowing, distant things like island nebulae, linked by fiber optics or microwaves as surely as the stars are linked by mass energy and time. It was at that point that he envied the Japanese hardcore DNI ronin who had moved out in that space and freely roamed between the matrices. "One day," he told himself. "One day." In the meantime, even as limited as his circumstances were, he had enough consolations.
"Power!" Mansard broke the quiet in the control booth with a maniacal, mad-scientist laugh. "Let's bring up the power."
There were a number of smiles around the booth. The crew were all regulars and well aware of Mansard's flights of ego. Mansard moved back into the physical world and acknowledged the response with a nod. Then he was back to business.
"Bring the power up slow and be careful of surge. It's my brain in here."
He waited quietly while the crew built power and ran through the preflight. When his eyes had first come on, the image of the matrix had been a pale, ethereal thing, like a city in the dark, seen from a high and distant aircraft. Once power was fed into it, it came to shimmering life. As the dawnglow of first powerup surrounded Charlie Mansard, he realized just how big this job was. He had never handled anything this huge. It had looked manageable on paper and even in the miniaturisations, but now that he was confronted by the full-scale reality, he was not so sure.
"I'm going to need a drink after this sucker."
Jimmy Gadd was inside his head. "You always need a drink."
"Get out of my head, Gadd."
"Just reminding you that you aren't the only one who's jacked in."
Mansard sighed. In some respects he was the only one who was actually jacked in. He was the one in control. Most of the others on the crew who were on DNI would go through the show in a blissful half trance as they ran their functions. As more and more power was fed in, he started to move toward the center of the matrix. The control functions came to him as he moved forward. This was the subjective perception of entering the full interface.
"Damn, this really is big."
He was not even trying to run the Four Horsemen set piece himself. That would be controlled by its own program. Maybe he should have split the unit and used two controllers. He was almost at the center position. It was far too late for second thoughts, and what the hell, anyway. If he could not hack his own show he deserved to die trying.
There was a babble of audio at the periphery of his perception. Proverb's sound crew was syncing in. An alarm tone sounded, and the matrix flashed. That was immediately followed by an override voice.
"Showtime in ten minutes."
FIVE
Carlisle
"Revelations nine!"
The lights on the stage had dimmed to a velvet black. Allen Proverb stood under a single pin spot that beamed straight down. The impression created was that of his being touched by the finger of God.
"Yes, my friends. Revelations nine."
As Proverb's voice resonated through the auditorium, a murmur ran through the crowd. Revelations nine was a Proverb showstopper. For him to use it so early in the show would seem to indicate that he was planning to go for broke. The crowd was excited at the promise of fireworks. Someone in the seats behind Harry Carlisle let out a whoop.
"Good rockin' tonight."
Some of the crowd laughed. Harry Carlisle shook his head in the darkness. It had to be an Elvi.
There was a high sustained note, somewhere between a trumpet and a violin. It seemed to hang in the roof darkness of the Garden. Tiny pinpoints of light danced high in the air.
"And the fifth angel sounded…"
Proverb's voice was as much a force as any other factor in the spectacle. The naturally powerful baritone had been amplified and deepened; it had been enhanced and juiced in every conceivable way until it sounded as if some holy orchestra were buried in the words. When he fell into the rolling rhythm of his Bible reading, during which he tacked a punching aah sound to the ends of many of his words, the effect was even more pronounced. It became a voice ready to part the waters – -Moses with the gift of advanced electronics.
"… and I saw a star fell from heaven unto the earth:…"
The lights vanished, and the note faded. A deep sub-bass rumble seemed to be vibrating the foundations of the building. A deep glow, the color of blood, was crawling across the stage like something alive.
"… and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
The voices became the roar of a hurricane.
"And he opened the bottomless pit!"
It was an illusion, but for an instant, it seemed as if the floor of the Garden had opened up. For a fraction of a second, the crowd felt as if they were falling. There were screams. Carlisle looked around. The show had only just started, and the Garden was already in total chaos. The cops who were supposed to be protecting Proverb were quite helpless. In the darkness, and with all the movement in the crowd, there was no way that they would be able to spot a sniper.
"And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit."