Any life. Laura wondered if he was there, somewhere.
After unpacking, she did her own exploring. There was a computer terminal on the desk in the large sitting room, and on the wall hung one of Gray's sleek flat-screen televisions. She paid particular attention to the screen. They had begun appearing everywhere just two years before. After great fanfare, the giant American electronics companies had won the approval of the Federal Communications Commission to begin high-def TV broadcasting. No sooner had the first of those sets appeared on the market than the maverick Gray had begun offering his own system. The giants had cried foul. Winners of the multibillion-dollar competition to replace the old NTSC standard with the new high-def one, they petitioned the government for protection and, at first, received it. Washington barred Gray from doing business in the United States. Gray went right about his business, however, launching satellites, commissioning programming, and selling equipment in Canada, Europe, and the Far East.
"Gray market" sets began appearing in the United States, but Gray's satellite signal could be pirated from his broadcasts to Canada only in the northern tier of states. Still, people quit buying the FCC-approved televisions as article after article extolled the superiority of Gray's product and predicted the monumental failure of Gray competitors. Lawsuits were filed, government investigations were launched, and finally the consortium of companies that had won FCC approval offered Gray a joint venture. Gray had declined the offer.
Under intense public pressure from consumers, the FCC relented and approved the sales of Gray's system in the United States. The pent-up demand was unleashed like a dam breaking, and Gray's production and sales soared as his competitors and would-be partners filed for bankruptcy.
The icing on the consumers' cake came when Gray's system opened up access to the Web. The result was a merger of telephone, television, and computer technologies for users who spent a few extra dollars for the installation of digital lines into their home. Gray's system was the ultimate in interactivity. A small [garbled] the bottom of every, television became a broadcast studio unto itself.
"Channel surfing" and "cruising the Web" became indistinguishable pastimes. With the punch of a button on the remote control, users could switch from C-SPAN to the Internet or back. On the Web one could find everything from slick infomercials to a kid in his parents' media room doing his best imitation of "Wayne's World" — all with full-motion video and stereo sound.
At first there were doomsday predictions about purveyors of pornography running rampant, but a funny thing happened on the road to riches from sleaze. The pornographers were put out of business by amateurs who offered their smut for free. Laura had purchased the full system but never explored its capabilities until one Saturday she read an article in Newsweek. It had said the Net came alive late at night, so she tuned in before going to bed. She had stayed up until four — utterly amazed and totally disgusted.
It seemed that all efforts by the censors had been defeated by technologically more adept teenagers. By using something called "anonymous servers," underground broadcasts popped up randomly and were untraceable. In the freedom that such anonymity provided, the darker alleyways of the information superhighway flourished.
The Newsweek article had been Laura's guide. When she found the newsgroups what she saw to her amazement was live and uncensored pornography broadcast straight from homes around the world. A boy and girl with Halloween masks having sex on a sofa in front of the television. An off-camera voice giving a running commentary, as pages were turned through a men's magazine. Laura even watched a tape of a high school girl's showers shot through a small hole in the wall.
She had heard stories of men becoming so obsessed with such things that they stopped leaving their homes altogether. There were sensational accounts from divorce trials. Professional articles about new subcategories of obsessive-compulsive disorders. Laura shook her head.
All from just a television set.
Laura ran her hand down the fine grain of the screen's black matte finish. It was liquid plasma LCD, and there were no bulky projectors or related equipment. Just a one-meter-square antenna that hung, in Laura's apartment, on the wall of her hall closet and was tuned "electronically," whatever that meant. And there weren't even any wires connecting the two. Laura hadn't yet figured that one out.
The screen beneath Laura's fingertips was only an inch thick and mounted flush on the wall like a painting. It was in almost the same proportions as a movie screen — wider than it was high. It allowed, she'd read on the first page of the thick manual before she lost interest, for a more panoramic view that movie directors loved.
And the picture quality… She'd never seen one of the sets made by the competitors whom Gray had forced out of business, but Gray's sets were reported to be incomparably better. Their resolution was like that of a thirty-five-millimeter photograph. Once consumers saw it and heard the digital surround sound and the huge subwoofers that were buried inside and boomed directly through the grill of the screen, the old NTSC sets were obsolete.
Everybody suddenly had to have one despite their hefty price tag.
The best [garbled] twenty-foot screens with fifteen-speaker surround sound — were over fifty thousand dollars. People went crazy. High-def television systems were quickly becoming the third major consumer loan after home and auto. Everyone bought and bought. Even Laura, who didn't like television, had spent almost ten thousand dollars she didn't have one Saturday afternoon on a trip to the store to buy a scarf for her secretary. It was a lot of money, but fit over ten years it was only a couple of hundred bucks a month.
All it had taken was a demonstration in the mall. She'd just been passing when she saw over the heads of the crowd one of the screens.
Everyone within sight of the screen had been transfixed.
Laura had stood in line for forty-five minutes to buy it, staring at the startlingly clear and bright images the entire time. Credit was instantaneous. The set was installed the same day by men in clean blue coveralls who were right on time and were gone in half an hour with everything in perfect working order. Gray made it all so easy.
That night, Laura had friends over to watch. There was a demo program you could run from a menu that appeared in the setup routine.
It was of a roller-coaster ride at an amusement park. First the sky — a deep blue with puffy clouds of incredible detail. You could stand close to the screen just as she was now — you could even press your nose to it, as the gradually more inebriated Jonathan had done and still not see jagged lines or fuzzy edges. And then, there was the awful pause at the top of the roller-coaster's ascent [garbled], plunge with clattering wheels and whistling wind and screaming passengers. It was only when they watched the demonstration a second time that Laura realized the screaming she heard was not from the soundtrack but from the audience.
There was a knock at the door, bringing Laura back to the present. She went over and grasped the solid brass of the levered handle. It had to be Gray. She could feel his presence through the thick, dark-stained wood. Her heart raced as she pulled the door open.
A man in a waistcoat stood before her. He was carrying a silver tray. An envelope lay in the tray's center.
It was an invitation. "Mr. Joseph Gray requests the pleasure of your company at dinner at eight o'clock this evening. Attire is casual."
8
At eight, Laura followed the servant down the opulent circular stairway. She wore her one dress — a simple, sleeveless smock that was belted at the waist and a pair of blue pumps. A deep, calming breath was necessary to soothe her jittery nerves, and Laura grew annoyed that something as trivial as inappropriate dress should put her so on edge.