Noir Page 43
“‘TOAW’?” That puzzled November. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“His big secret,” said McNihil disgustedly. “And his little joke. It’s the kind of thing that these high-level corporate minds think is funny. It’s connecting hilarious, all right.” He nodded toward Harrisch. “You want to tell her what it stands for? Or should I?”
“Be my guest.” Harrisch left his own hand at his throat. “Why should I care?”
“It’s what came after DynaZauber’s TIAC project,” said McNihil. “You know that one?”
November nodded. “Heard something about it.”
“They got this fixation at DZ. Schoolyard humor.” McNihil shook his head. “TIAC stood for ‘turd in a can.’ It was DZ’s notion-at least back then-of their ultimate consumer strategy. A general principle, to just make sure that the customers get the least amount of goods or services for their money. Max out the packaging and you can forget about the actual contents. But it wasn’t enough.” He’d glanced over at November beside him, then turned his gaze back to Harrisch. “Was it? There’s always room for improvement; their kind of ‘improvement,’ at any rate. Thus, we go from TIAC to TOAW. The T stands for the same thing-you guys down at DZ must’ve thought all that was hilarious, huh?”
Harrisch shrugged. “Anything that gets the point across is good communication. Short and sweet.”
“Short, maybe; sweet, I’m not so sure about. Since the whole thing stands for ‘turd on a wire.’” McNihil gave a tilt of the head toward November. “Maybe a little poetic reference there as well; these aren’t totally uncultured people, you know-”
Suddenly, the whole building seemed to turn onto a pitched angle. Catching herself against the asp-head’s shoulder, November saw Harrisch being thrown onto one side, sliding across the roof’s crumbling sheets of tar paper; the exec managed to dig his fingers in, stopping himself just short of one of the broken gaps, as the echoes of the wave that had slapped the building rumbled away.
“Maybe,” said November, “we should talk about all this at some other time. And place.”
“Call the jet-” Harrisch pushed himself into a sitting position at the gap’s edge. “You’ve got the phone. The number’s already punched in, just do it-” He sounded as though he was verging on hysteria. “This thing’s going to go any minute-”
“Oh, I think we’ve got time.” McNihil pushed November away from himself. “There’s always time for the important things. And this won’t take long, anyway. It’s really pretty simple.”
“We’ll all be dead before you finish talking.”
“Maybe.” McNihil reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fistful of weighty black metal. “But let’s see if I can hold your attention, anyway.” He aimed the tannhäuser at Harrisch’s forehead.
“You are nuts.” Harrisch gaped at the weapon extended toward him. “You really are.”
“No…” McNihil shook his head. “Maybe just overly given to classicism. This is the way my old friend Turbiner would’ve done it in one of his books. Having long conversations at gunpoint is such a perfect noir thing.”
“You connecting idiot-”
McNihil ignored his last comment. “The good folks at DynaZauber had a great idea, you see.” The asp-head spoke calmly, despite the sounds coming up from the street level and the ongoing collapse of the End Zone Hotel. “It’s not enough-it doesn’t achieve ultimate profits-to sell people shit in a shiny can. Metaphorically speaking; shit being all those products that get sold in the cheap-’n’-nastiverse. Because even shit costs something to produce, and the can-the advertising and all the rest of the pretty package-that doesn’t come free. If DynaZauber’s going to achieve the perfect ratio between price and product-which, of course, is one hundred percent to nothing-they needed to come up with something even more of a scam-job than their previous TIAC program.”
“Hey.” That seemed to piss Harrisch off, enough to cut through the panic enveloping him. Smart-ass sonuvabitch, he thought. “It’s a competitive business environment we live in, pal. You can’t stay still and just hope to survive.”
“Survival’s another issue,” said McNihil sourly. “We’ll get to that.” McNihil glanced over at November. “So when our friend here, and the others like him at DynaZauber, put together the next level, when they created TOAW, they went to the best business model they could think of. Which, of course, was pushing addictive drugs, licit and illicit.”
“How’s that an improvement?” November frowned. “For them, I mean. Drugs cost, just like any other consumer product. Believe me, I’d know.” For the moment, she let her earlier concern, about the building collapsing underneath them, fade to the background. “And not just for the end user,” she said. “The manufacturer and the distributor have to shell out something. You never get down to absolute zero.”
“You do, if you’re DynaZauber. And you’ve got smart people like this one running the show.” McNihil gestured toward the exec still sitting on the rooftop. “Or at least that’s what you can shoot for. A lot of the research that went into the TOAW project goes back to before the turn of the century. DynaZauber bought it out and has been working on it for years.”
“If we hadn’t,” said Harrisch stiffly, “one of our competitors would’ve.”
“What research?” November’s impatience manifested itself. “What’re you talking about?”
“I can just about cite you chapter and verse.” Legs braced against the hotel’s motion, McNihil looked down at Harrisch. “The mesolimbic dopamine system, right? That’s where the action is. That’s where TOAW gets rolling, isn’t it?”
Harrisch stared in amazement at McNihil. “Where did you…”
“It’s all connected,” continued McNihil. “From the specialized structures in the human orbital frontal cortex, up near the top, to the amygdala, that little almond-shaped bit in the center. And further, to the nucleus accumbens-that’s one so small, it doesn’t even show up in positron-emission tomography scans, does it?”
“No…” The words produced a deep fascination in Harrisch. “That’s what the old researchers used a long time ago. But we’ve got better methods now…”
“I bet you do.” McNihil gave a disgusted shake of the head. “Who says mankind doesn’t progress? Every day brings us whole new methods of connecting people over.”
“Wait a minute,” said November. “What’s all this brain stuff got to do with anything?”
“And the ventral tegmental area…” Harrisch spoke with a woozy dreaminess. “Don’t forget that. That’s the most important part…”
“He’s right about that,” McNihil said to her. “This is all deep-level addiction research. Like I said, it goes back a long way before DZ ever got hold of it. But those silly-ass scientists back then, they didn’t know what they had. They thought they might find some deep biochemical cure for addiction. And where’s the money in that? You want to go for the long-term profits, the ultimate merchandise-the turd on the wire-you want to see about enhancing addiction. Making it perfect, a thing in itself, completely separate from any substance, any production or distribution cost.”
Just from hearing the asp-head talk about it, a radiant joy seemed to burst inside Harrisch’s heart; his face suffused with sudden rapture. “And that’s what we did. We found it. The final product.” The waves of the gelatinous sex-ocean below sang along, a heavenly chorus fallen out of the skies. “All profit and no cost, not to us, at any rate. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
“They found the neural engine,” said McNihil. His voice sounded flat and emotionless. “That drives addiction. That chemicals-pharmaceuticals, white powders, whatever-are just crude hammers to evoke. Like banging on the rear bumper of a car with a fifty-pound sledge, to get it to move. How much more efficient, when you think about it, to find the key to the car’s ignition-the key to the brain-and get in and switch it on, and just drive it down the highway until the wheels fall off. Or until the money’s all gone.”
“That’s what the DZ labs found. What they’d been looking for.” McNihil turned his face toward November. “The way to separate the dopamine flow down the axons from any physical source. A technology of regulation; the hand on the valve, the key in the ignition. So that all DynaZauber would have to do would be send out the right signals, on whatever wavelength they chose, and the customers would respond. Turn the valve one way-send the shutoff signal-and the axons between the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens start to narrow, constrict the dopamine flow from one neuron to the next, even close down completely. The result being the classic symptoms of drug-addicted systemic collapse, the crash of the individual neurosystem below normal operating levels. And the resultant urge, the overwhelming drive to reestablish homeostasis, to pay any price just to feel back to normal again.”
November gave a slow nod; enlightenment was beginning to come. “Been there,” she said. “Done that.” Threw up on my shoes-
“Everybody has. It’s the basic algebra of need.” With his thumb, McNihil pointed to Harrisch. “But what he and his bunch found was a way of reducing their side of the equation-what they’d have to supply-down to zero, and still having their customers’ numbers crunch out the same. They tried it before, with the whole push to get people on the telecommunications wire, have them value bits of information as much or more than the atoms of the real world, have them pay to be mesmerized by the pretty colored lights on their computer screens. That would’ve taken the suppliers’ costs down to zero as well. Only that equation didn’t work out; eventually, the boredom factor sets in with the customers, and their interest in the colored lights drifts down to zero as well. What DynaZauber finally put together was TOAW, the perfect equation.”
“You have to admit-it’s a cool thing.” Harrisch drew his legs up, resting his folded arms on his knees. Watching him, November figured that back at the boardroom, and in the DZ executive lunchroom, he and the rest of his bunch must’ve been fascinated by discussing the philosophical fine points of this TOAW project. “It’s really the refutation through economics of established physics principles. The laws of thermodynamics, all that stuff, they no longer apply. We’ve transcended reality-we’ve found a way of generating something from nothing. TOAW is not just a new stage in human evolution, it’s a transformation of the universe itself. It’s what the wired-up telecommunication theorists were trying to achieve, but could never pull off. Well, we did it.” Harrisch raised his chin defiantly. “And proud of it.”
“I don’t get it,” said November. “How’s it supposed to work?”
“It’s a replicating system.” McNihil continued his flat recitation of the facts. “Operates on basic viral-contagion lines. Plus some more brain-research material that DynaZauber bought up. More stuff before the turn of the century: the way people think can produce actual physiological changes in the structures of the brain. In this case, one of them is the orbital frontal cortex.” McNihil tapped the side of his head with a finger. “It’s right over the rear of the eye socket; it basically functions as the error-detection circuit for the rest of the brain. I already knew about it, because it’s part of what was changed inside my own head, so the way I wanted to see the world wouldn’t get automatically rejected by the rest of my mental processes. But what TOAW does is hook that up to things way inside the human brain, the caudate nucleus and the cingulate gyrus structures. Those are a couple of your basic fear and anxiety circuits. TOAW sets up a feedback loop among those brain structures, which gets stronger every time the brain takes in and processes information.”
“Until it’s unbreakable.” Listening to the asp-head, Harrisch couldn’t refrain from boasting. “That’s the beauty of it. Or part of the beauty, at least.”
“Yeah, it’s connecting lovely, all right. Especially when it’s hooked up to the other loop, the one running through the axons from the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens. Because then you don’t just have a valve, you’ve got a stranglehold on the human brain and how it works-and what it wants. The classic junkie neural engine, driving all behavior, minus the necessity of actually having to shovel the drugs into the system. Because with TOAW, all that’s needed is a signal, a pretty colored light, a bit-and you get a response in the infected human neural system that’s stronger than what anything in physical reality could have produced. The axons narrow or shut off, the caudate nucleus and the cingulate gyrus structures fire up and go into a feedback spiral, and you just have to have a slot in the corporation’s front door for the customers to shove their money into-they’ll do anything to get the countersignal, the counterbit sent out, to get those axons loosened up again, to get the fear dogs inside their heads to let go for even just a little while. Until the signal is sent out once more, setting off the process all over again.”
“Oh, it’s better than that,” said Harrisch smugly; the discussion also appeared to have drained his fear away, for the time being. This place could fall out from beneath him, thought November, like some massive practical joke, and he wouldn’t care. Not now. “TOAW’s got it all,” continued Harrisch. “The feedback loop it sets up inside the head contains its own signal-generating ability, which doesn’t require any further input from us. The infected brain produces its own signals and countersignals; it’s the translation into reality of all those Foucauldian theories of self-surveillance. The brain watches itself and administers its own stimuli and rewards, with DynaZauber as the beneficiary. And really-let’s face it-money is just a crude bookkeeping device in a system like this. Money is for people who have options, and the whole point of TOAW is to eliminate options. It’s the height of mercantile capitalism: you chain your customers to their lathes and running-shoe assembly lines, and you throw the key to the padlock down the black hole you’ve put inside their heads. So who needs even the concept of money? All you really need is enough of an uninfected elite at the executive level to rake off the profits, and the whole thing runs itself.” Harrisch unfolded his arms, spreading his hands apart. “What could be more beautiful than that?”
Another wave hit the building at street level; a far corner of the rooftop disappeared with a rumbling crash, bricks and structural beams tearing loose to fall down the hotel’s flank. “Maybe I better make that call,” said November, looking nervously over her shoulder at the increasing damage. “This isn’t looking so good-”
“Never looked better,” said McNihil. “To me, that is. This is one of those classic situations, right out of the old movies inside my eyes. It’s what you’re always supposed to get at the end: a nice long explanation of everybody’s crimes.”
“I’m sure that’d be fine, but I don’t think we have time for that.” November glanced around the rooftop, or what was left of it. “You know?”
“There’s always time.” The asp-head’s voice sounded eerily confident. “Plenty of it. Once you get to a certain state. Nothing but time, you might say.”
“Excuse me, but… I’m beginning to agree with her.” Harrisch pointed to November. His face appeared gray and anxious, as though the pleasant high that came with recounting TOAW’s details had started to fade. “This is an untenable situation, in my opinion.�
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“Really?” The look in McNihil’s eyes was further evidence that whatever had happened to him out here had been enough to take him over the edge. “I’m enjoying it.”
“You shouldn’t be,” said Harrisch. “Since you lost. It’s all over; you might as well admit that. We’ve got a vision, and it’s not just limited to DynaZauber; it’s all of us.” The exec’s voice heightened to a fervent pitch. “What was it Orwell said would be the future? A vision of a human face, and a boot stamping on it forever. He was wrong, of course. The future is a bloodied human mouth, with a cock shoved down its throat, the perfect connection forever and ever, world without end. Amen, asshole. And you helped make it all come true. Like I said before, you were connected over before you began.” Harrisch’s thin smile looked even uglier and more woundlike. “You realize that, don’t you? So it shouldn’t surprise you too much, if I’ve decided that your usefulness to us is at an end.” Harrisch suddenly reached inside his jacket, to the other side from where he’d kept the cell phone. His hand came out with a darker and heavier device. He aimed the weapon, a snub-nosed parsifal, straight at McNihil. “Consider yourself unemployed.”
The shots leapt out of the gun, one after another, a tight pattern in the center of McNihil’s chest. The first knocked McNihil off his feet; he landed hard on one shoulder, the hole the bullet had torn in his shirt and chest exposed. A few yards away, the tannhäuser skidded to a stop, knocked from McNihil’s outflung hand. Harrisch continued to fire until his own gun was empty. The repeated impact of the bullets, in a tight pattern around the first one, shoved McNihil back against an aluminum ventilation duct.
When there was silence again, the noise of the weapon fading into the smoke-heavy air, Harrisch lowered the empty weapon in his grasp; he stared, aghast and amazed, at the figure across from him-who was still alive. Slowly, McNihil stood up.