Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [153]
“One of your West Coast associates, Dagny Winsome, has stolen something from me. The knowledge of a trapdoor in the operating system of proteopape. She’s already begun screwing around with various sheets of my personal protean paper, and if she continues on in this manner, she’ll inspire widespread absolute distrust of this medium. That would spell the end of our I2 infrastructure, impacting your own artistic activities significantly. So I’m hoping that as her friends, you folks will have some insight into where Dagny might be hiding, and also be motivated to help me reach her and convince her to stop.”
A blonde fellow whose face and hands were entirely covered in horrific-looking scarlet welts and blisters, which apparently pained him not a whit, said, “You’re the brainster, why don’t you just lock her out?”
Bash vented a frustrated sigh. “Don’t you think that was the very first thing I tried? But she’s beaten me to it, changed all my old access codes. She’s got the only key to the trapdoor now. But if I could only get in, I could make proteopape safe forever by closing the trapdoor for good. But I need to find Dagny first.”
Cricket spoke up. “Roger, tell Bash what you know about Dagny’s departure.”
The jaundiced ephebe said, “I drove her to the airport a day ago. She said she was heading back to LA.”
“Did you actually see her board her flight?” asked Bash.
“No….”
“Well, I think she’s still in the Greater Boston Metropolitan region. The time lag between coasts is negligible for most communications. Even international calls ricochet off the GlobeSpeak relays practically instantaneously.” Bash was referring to the fleet of thousands of high-flying drone planes—laden with comm gear and perennially refueled in midair — which encircled the planet, providing long-distance links faster than satellites ever could. “But she wouldn’t want to risk even millisecond delays if she was trying to pull off certain real-time pranks. Plus, I figure she’ll want to finally pop out of hiding to lord it over me in person, once she’s finished humiliating me.”
The toothy Indicia Diddums spoke. “That raishes a good point. This looksh like a purely pershonal feud between you two. You’re the richesht plug in the world, Applebrook. Why don’t you just hire some private muschle to nail her assh?”
“I don’t want word of this snafu to spread any further than absolutely necessary. I spent a long time vacillating before I even decided to tell you guys.”
Lester Schill stroked his long beard meditatively before speaking. “What’s in this for us? Just a continuation of the status quo? Where’s our profit?”
Bash saw red. He got to his feet, nearly upsetting his chair.
“Profit? What kind of motive for saving the world is that? Was I thinking of profit when I first created proteopape? No! Sure, I’m richer than God now, but that’s not why I did it. Money is useless after a certain point. I can’t even spend a fraction of one percent of my fortune, it grows so fast. And you, Schill, damn it, are probably in the same position, even if your wealth is several orders of magnitude less than mine. Money is not at the root of this! Proteopape means freedom of information, and the equitable distribution of computing power! Don’t any of you remember what life was like before proteopape? Huge electricity-gobbling server farms? Cell-phone towers blighting the landscape? Miles of fiber optics cluttering the sewers and the seas and the streets? Endless upgrades of hardware rendered almost instantly obsolescent? Big government databases versus individual privacy? Proteopape did away with all that! Now the server farms are in your pockets and on cereal boxes, in the trash in your wastebasket and signage all around. Now the individual can go head-to-head with any corporation or governmental agency. And I won’t just stand helplessly by and let some dingbat artist with a