The computer’s voxax circuit came to life and told him. Among the other items on his list was a meeting with the director to discuss his testimony before the Senate Committee on Electronic Communication. Apparently the political pressure from CyberNation was on the rise again, and some of their promises were being examined. A totally secure net/web connection was one of those promises, and the committee wanted to know if that was possible.
CyberNation. Michaels wasn’t sure how he felt about them. More a political movement than a web site, CyberNation was trying to get the world powers to recognize them as an actual country, a nation without cities, a nation without borders, a nation that existed only in the virtual world of the net. But a nation with real power nonetheless.
And that was the scary part. It seemed that a lot people didn’t know whether to laugh at them or join them. Could such a thing really work? Could a country exist without roads, without buildings, without farms and rivers and lakes? Could a country exist without really existing? If it could, what did that say about the nature of countries… or of citizenship… or of life itself?
To an extent, Michaels could appreciate their vision. These days in particular, in the age of the Internet, an era of ever-increasing globalization and the constant movement of people, information, and ideas, the dream of a truly borderless country held a certain kind of appeal. Not that it would fly, of course. Not yet. Not today.
The chances of any major country granting CyberNation’s patrons the status of nationals and exempting them from taxes was about as good as flying to the moon by jumping off a tall building and flapping your arms. It made no logical sense that if you lived in, say, Dubuque, Iowa, you could use the roads and infrastructure of the city, state, and country, but be exempt from paying anything for the privileges. Of course, you’d have to give up social security and welfare, but if you could afford to join CyberNation and pay their fees, you were better off than most anyhow. And their claim that megacorps and even nation-states were going to pay that freight for the rights to reach billions with their advertising was such a vaporous castle in the air that even psychotics wouldn’t try to live there.
CyberNation said it would offer all information to all its “residents,” for free. Music, vids, books, medical formulas, whatever. It was a chaos engine looking for a place to have a train wreck, and anybody who believed it would work was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Still, they had money, and they were willing to spend it. And enough money could, if used correctly, translate into power. Otherwise, would a senate committee be calling the head of Net Force to the hill for a little chat? Not likely.
Michaels hated this part of his job. The glad-handing he had to do, the whole political game. It was necessary, he knew that, and the director could deal with a lot of it and more power to her, but now and then it fell to him. Politicians did things for reasons not connected to logic or science, but because they were trying to please voters back home; being re-elected was always in the rearview mirror for professional politicos, and some of them wouldn’t go to the bathroom without taking a poll to find out if it was okay to unzip.
He sighed. It was always something. He wished he could just take the day off, go home, and be with his wife and baby son. Sitting in a rocking chair with a sleeping baby on your lap was a lot closer to paradise than listening to the director caution him on anger management against the likely possibility some fat cat senator from Bug Dick, Arkansas, asked you a question that would insult the intelligence of a retarded moron…
A long-legged, blue-eyed blonde in her early twenties, hair down to the middle of her back, and wearing just enough to be legal for network television smiled, showing perfect teeth. She inhaled, and breasts too perfect to be real nearly broke free of their translucent gauze microbikini top.
“I’m in CyberNation. Why don’t you join me?”
She moistened her ruby lips with her tongue, then drew one finger down her cleavage, down her belly, and to the hem of her bikini panties.
A phone number and e-mail address appeared in the air next to her as she inhaled again.
Jasmine Chance touched a button on the remote, and the hologram froze. She looked at Roberto. “What do you think?”
“I wouldn’t kick her out of bed.”
Chance laughed. “You wouldn’t kick a crippled blind pig out of bed if it was dark enough so you didn’t have to look at it. I meant as an ad. We’re running it on the TV nets, movie house commercials, and the big servers and comware.”
He shrugged.
She said, “Yes, it goes straight for the groin, nothing subtle. If we could get away with it, we’d have her say, ‘Join CyberNation, you can date me, and I do housecalls.’ ”
“Yeah? You have her number?”
“No, but I’ve got your number. She isn’t even real, Roberto, she’s a computer construct.”
“Too bad.”
“It’s end-justifying-the-means,” she said. “They join, they’ll get more than their money’s worth, in the long run. But we need bodies. If we have enough members, we can start to get things done.”
“I thought the exercise with the computers was getting things done.”
“Yes, but our fork has four prongs. We do ads, we do politics, we rascal computers, and if push comes to shove, we hit hardware with hardware. We have to come at this from every angle we can think of.”
He shrugged again. “You the boss.”
“No, I represent the bosses. I’m just the hand.”
“What does that make me?”
“A finger.”
“Ah. Which one?”
She showed him.
He laughed. “Want me to show you what I can reach with that finger?”
“Go for it.”
When he finally got home, Michaels was tired, but looking forward to seeing Toni and the baby.
She met him at the door. Before he could ask, she said, “He’s asleep. I just got him down. Wake him up, and you die.”
He chuckled.
“Let me go turn the baby monitor on and I’ll be right back.”
When she left, he opened his briefcase and removed the gift-wrapped present he’d hidden there. He had spent some time looking for it. It wasn’t their wedding anniversary, but the anniversary of the day they had first kissed, sitting in that old Mazda MX-5 he had bought to restore, somewhere in Virginia. It had taken a while to find what he wanted, and it had cost five times what it had sold for new, only a decade back. He’d stashed it at the office for a couple of months after he’d gotten it. He hadn’t wanted to wait, he’d wanted to give it to Toni the first day it arrived, but he’d held off. She was gonna be surprised, he was sure of it.
When she came back from Little Alex’s room, he had set the blue foil-wrapped box casually on the end table.
“Chinese food’ll be here in about ten minutes. Hot and spicy chicken, purse shrimp, chow mein, dried, sauteed string beans.”
“Sounds good. How’s the boy been today?”
“An angel.”
“But of course.”
“Better enjoy it while we can. We — what’s this?”
“That. Oh, you mean that package there? Got me.”
“What did you do, Alex?”
“Me? I didn’t do anything. I never saw that before.”
She grinned and picked up the package. Shook it.
“What’s it for?”
“You’ve forgotten what today’s date is?”
“January 15th, isn’t it?”