The Beam: Season One (34 page)

“Five minutes, Mr. Ryan.”

“Did I not lock that fucking door?”
Isaac yelled. The fact that the page had nearly caught him in a symbolic dick-measuring contest with his own reflection made a furious blush creep up under the collar of Isaac’s starched white dress shirt.
 

“Well, it’s a privacy lock, sir, but because it’s Beam and because there’s always a clock ticking, we need to have access to…”
 

“GET THE FUCK OUT!”
 

The page retreated, and Isaac found himself almost glad he’d intruded. Yelling at the kid had further bolstered his feeling of cruel badassery. He wasn’t just going to deliver a kick-ass speech to that crowd out there; he was going to fuck every one of those people up the ass with a cock made of plutonium while smoking six cigars, and when it was over, they’d all look up, wide-eyed, awed by whatever immense and awesome shit Isaac Motherfucking Ryan had just laid on them.

On impulse, Isaac spun to face the mirror, turned the verbal interface back on, and said, “Canvas, have my reflection insult me.”
 

He was unsure whether the mirror would be able to comply, but immediately he saw his reflection meet his eyes and say, “You’re ugly.”
 

 
“RESPECT THE COCK!”
Isaac screamed. He plowed his carbon-nanotube-reinforced fist into his wiseass reflection, his shoulder seeming to dislocate as the Beam glass in the mirror detonated.

The moment of adrenaline lasted for six or seven seconds, and then his fist began to bleed and his entire arm started to ache. He wanted to feel stupid, but it was better to feel powerful and badass. So he wrapped a towel around his fist to keep the blood off of his suit and went to the bathroom. On the way, Isaac used his good hand to fish a small pen-like device from his briefcase and pressed it to his wrist. Immediately, the high-end scavenger nanos began tuning down sensory nerves in his arm while conducting emergency repairs. By the time he had removed the glass from his knuckles and washed away the blood, his lacerated skin was mostly knitted. The adrenaline remained. Isaac balled his hands into fists, not feeling whatever had gone wrong in his shoulder thanks to the anesthetic. His badass nanos would repair his badass shoulder while he delivered his badass speech.
 

The page didn’t return. Instead, he chirped Isaac from the overhead speakers. Isaac took one final look into the mirror’s remaining shards and marched through the door and onto the stage. He
owned
this stage. Isaac looked out at the people in the hall waiting to hear him, knowing he
owned
them too. There were Beam cameras everywhere, and he owned every motherfucker watching, too.
 

Isaac didn’t need Nicolai. He had written every word of the new speech himself. Once onstage, he delivered it with his chest out, chin high — the esteemed Czar of Internal Satisfaction, the perfect, immutable, unshakable symbol of the strength of the Directorate party. He told them that Shift was less than a month away and urged everyone listening to stand up from their everyday ruts and
really
consider what that meant. It was easy to see Shift in the same way you’d see the election of an official who’d been in office for decades and would never be ousted, but Shift wasn’t like that at all. Shift wasn’t like voting, because Shift was about
you
and no one else. It was said that a person couldn’t choose his or her own destiny, but Shift was a chance to do that exactly.
At Shift, you’ll choose to be Directorate or Enterprise,
he announced to the crowd.
It will define not only what you receive (or, in the case of Enterprise, what you DON’T receive) for six years, but also who you
are. Do you want to be one more body in the Enterprise gutter, always fighting for your life but never being part of a team that always has your back? Do you want to spend the next six years living in fear of dying in the street while your children starve because you chose selfishness over security?
 

Isaac told the crowd about the new Beam-based currency that Enterprise was trying to push. Every person in Enterprise was another vote for Enterprise in the senate, and a predominantly Enterprise senate would ratify “beem” currency for sure.
 

“And who do you think will earn the most beem?” Isaac asked his audience. “Will it be the Directorate, who do the jobs we’ve been assigned for the greater good? Will beem be given out equally, as it is in the Directorate? Or will beem instead subvert our system, and turn the entire network into a marketplace? Who will benefit when the entire Beam begins to side with one party over the other? Will it be you? Or will it be those who control The Beam and would never design a system that wasn’t to
their
benefit, as greedy, cutthroat capitalists?”
 

Isaac felt power surge through him as every word he’d written — that
he’d
written, not Nicolai — crossed his lips with the force of a bludgeon. Nobody could argue with what Isaac was saying. Anyone who chose to become or remain Enterprise after listening to this speech was an uncontested idiot. The next time he spoke, Isaac would repeat the key points from this speech, ramming them home. When Shift came, Directorate would win by a landslide, and inter-party solidarity would be at an all-time high. Enterprise defections would set records.
 

Isaac ended his speech. The room cheered. Then they stood, applauding him in a roar. Isaac thought he saw tears. He had done this.
Isaac
. He wouldn’t have to split credit with Nicolai this time.
 

This was Isaac —
all
Isaac, and no one else.
 

He returned to the green room to find that while he’d been kicking ass, someone had replaced the mirror. It had probably been a bot that had done it, but Isaac preferred to think of a person doing the job instead, quailing at the thought of a man who held such fury and strength. He looked at the mirror, eyed his reflection to see if it would flinch (it was just a reflection now, and didn’t), and then, with a cheek-stretching smile on his face, said, “Canvas, give me Beam top stories.”
 

Isaac’s reflection faded into the front page of The Beam’s news feed. His speech hadn’t been voted to the top, as he’d suspected. Instead, it was number two. Isaac frowned, wondering if his public triumph might take another minute. He wanted to get in there and read his praise, but wanted to see it rank at the top first — a validation that said, for once and for all, that Isaac Fucking Ryan did not need a speechwriter to prove his greatness.

But his speech didn’t rise; instead, the top story hung in place above it, racking up votes faster and faster. He pulled it forward, confused by the headline (“Ryan Proposes Hybrid System”) and felt himself bolstered. He hadn’t proposed any hybrid solution, really, but at least he had grabbed the top spot after all.
 

But when he exploded the story, he realized that the Ryan in question wasn’t Isaac. It was Micah.

Fifteen minutes before Isaac had given his speech, Micah had delivered one of his own while Isaac was in here yelling and breaking mirrors. And Micah, of course, had done it better. He’d managed to answer each of Isaac’s objections — to beem, to Enterprise, to the system in general — in advance.
 

Isaac swore. The Ryan brothers, with their famous rivalry, were news celebrities, so of course most viewers had watched them both. Isaac’s speech, badass though it was, had said nothing new; he’d simply raised complaints… unknowingly
after
the same complaints had been effectively addressed by Micah. Worse: mutual relevancy between the two speeches would be high because so many people would have watched and indexed both of them. So how had The Beam arranged them in a playlist? Why, with Micah’s speech first, of course. Isaac thought he’d conquered, but in reality he’d only made himself look stupid and ill-prepared, redundant and a day late.

“Canvas,” said Isaac, already feeling his mood crumble to dust. “Send in that stupid little page.”
 

The room’s Beam connection must have known which page Isaac meant because a moment later the same kid knocked on the door. Isaac had to tell him to enter twice before he did so, looking nervous.
 

“Yes, Mr. Ryan?” he said.
 

“Did you see my brother’s speech?”
 

The kid looked around the room, helpless.
 

“Tell me the truth. I won’t yell at you.”
 

The page nodded slowly.
 

“What do
you
think about beem? Again, honestly.”
 

“I’m unsure, sir.”
 

Isaac sighed. “Don’t make me have the canvas run a truth assessment.”

The kid furrowed his brow, which was now beaded with sweat.
 

“Well, it just seems like it might be the best of both worlds,” he said. Then, when Isaac didn’t snap his head off, the page continued, seeing the reluctant
Go on
in Isaac’s eyes. “I mean, sir, it’d be great for Enterprise of course, but maybe for Directorate too. Because you could open a virtual business on The Beam and trade in beem. If it was legal tender, you could spend that beem rather than having to use it for virtual upgrades and dumb tokens like you do now.”
 

Isaac sighed.
 

“No offense, sir,” the page added.
 

Isaac dismissed him, then reopened both of The Beam’s top pages, watching comments filter in on both speeches.
 

He looked at his fist, remembering how bloody it had been and how powerful he had felt, as he watched himself become more and more hated in real time.

Chapter 7

“This isn’t necessary,” said Doc.
 

Alix Kane smiled. “I know.”

The small, white-haired man circled Doc as he was strapped to the Orion, Doc’s head cradled in the black, helmet-like device at its top end. Somewhere past his feet, Nicolai was watching the scene, unable to speak. Doc couldn’t see Kane at all times because he couldn’t move his head, and that was a sort of torture in itself. Kane hadn’t laid a finger on him in real life, but even the real-life experience was already terrible. Doc kept feeling as if, when Kane was out of sight, he’d push a button and Doc wouldn’t be ready, and he’d suddenly find his soul being ripped to pieces without warning.

Doc said, “I’ve told you all I know.”

“I don’t think so.”
 

Doc insisted: “Really, I have.”
 

Kane scratched his chin, thoughtful. “You must understand. This isn’t exactly the scientific method. I don’t come in here with an open mind, ready to discover an unpresupposed truth. I’ve been told in advance that you know something, and I’m here to find out what that something is. This isn’t ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ I’m afraid, Mr. Stahl, that your guilt is assumed.”

“That’s a bullshit way to do things.”

“It assures we’ll get what we want, if it is there to be gotten at all,” Kane said. “Try to see it from our perspective. Even if you really do know nothing, if we torture and kill you, what have we lost? Nothing. But consider the alternative: What if you
do
know something? Well, I can’t give up so easily. The sort of people who authorize something like this aren’t terribly understanding people. As little as you want to be on the Orion, Mr. Stahl, I
really
don’t want to be on it. So to be totally certain, it’s best that you tell me what I think you know, or you die.”
 

“If you’re going to kill me anyway, why should I tell you dick?”
 

In response, Kane pressed a button and Doc found himself in a pit, buried in the dirt and compressed into an impossibly tight ball. Every muscle screamed because the ball wasn’t tidy; his joints had all been bent the wrong way, ripping sinew and tendon and muscle and bone. He couldn’t breathe; his lungs were filled with dirt. His spine was ripped open and exposed and his spinal column at each vertebrae was being slowly impaled by a dull, serrated spike. He felt his eyes pop and run down his cheeks, igniting rockets in his brain. His teeth came out slowly; bones erupted through skin, his jaw hyperextended, then sheered off entirely as every nerve screamed in…
 

It stopped. Doc stared at Kane, panting, his heart racing fast enough to burst through his chest.
 

“To answer your question,” said Kane, “the reason is because if you tell me what I need to hear, we can move on to the part where they kill you rather than having me continue to serve you nightmares. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
 

“I don’t know anything!”
Doc screamed, spittle flying from his lips. “What the hell do you want?
There’s nothing in my head!”
 

“Tell me again how it started,” said Kane.
 

Doc had told Kane the story over and over and over in the time that had passed since Kai had been taken away by the Beamers. He’d come to Xenia. He’d been late, but had been told by the receptionist that he was early. His name hadn’t been taken. They’d simply come in and escorted him into the room with all the high-end goodies. Kane asked why nobody had recognized him — and hence known what he should and shouldn’t see — if he’d been there so often. He asked how Killian could have not realized he wasn’t Greenley, seeing as Killian was a professional and would know his salesmen. He asked why Doc’s Beam ID hadn’t been checked at reception or at the secret door. Doc replied that the receptionist was a temp and it seemed like Greenley was new. As to the rest, Doc suggested Kane put Killian on the Orion — a suggestion Kane seemed to like.
 

“You went to great lengths to protect your memory,” said Kane. “Why would you do that if you hadn’t come to Xenia to collect information you thought someone might later wish to erase?”
 

“Why wouldn’t you have a Gauss chamber if you wanted to be so goddamn sure about erasing memories?” Doc countered.