The rain had been falling for three days, and Thursday's London was as
wet and miserable as it had ever been. Joe hadn't been outside for a
week, hadn't left this windowless room since Sunday, had slept and eaten
and shat in the chaos of the attic. He was happy.
Joe was a researcher, a trawler, nomad beachcomber of his world, our
world, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seven. His last find
had paid for the construction of personal heaven, a five by three by two
metre box to house his mortal remains whilst still they breathed and
twitched. A fine box it was, with waterless Amson, ten-year power
supply, rack of toys. And, to his personal specification, the terminals.
Above his greasy long-black-haired head, the sound of the rain on the
slate roof growled and spat incessently. He was aware of it during the
gaps in the music, when the noise seeped through the headphones,
corrupted the digital silence. He liked that, it pushed his thoughts
towards the nest of dish and wire that squatted out there in the dawn by
the chimney, wolf spider on a dew-glistened leaf, legs so delicately
touching the web, monitoring, listening. It kept the quiet away.
Joe was famous, although whenever he went out he was another aimless
North London walker, more of the masses than himself. Nobody here
would recognise him. He liked that, too: dealing with people was
distasteful, revolting somehow, although when he had to, he sometimes
enjoyed it. That was after the pain of the initial slow games of class and
language and precidence which came of meeting. He had little patience,
these days, for personal protocols, all politeness and suspicion and hiding
and shy revelation. Even the smile and nod of the newsagent was aching
procrastination. He needed the energy of information, raw, fast, always.
Which was why he was famous, and why he sat in his box while the
monsoon rain washed the last dust of the dry summer into the cracked
sewers under the city.
Now, sitting at the terminals, the amphetamine zing of discovery was
burning again. It had been a risk to sink so much of the payment from
the newspaper into the hardware and riskier to commit himself to so
much online time, so many services, such rich premiums for the quality of
the feeds he was tied to. Only conglomerates bought in like this, and
they never fed so catholically. He knew that he had a week at this level
before he had to bring in another find like the last, the biggest of his
life. He had done it in two days. This one was bigger and neater,
altogether more satisfactory. Almost a work of art, most beautiful in the
way it hinted of a thousand more to draw together, waiting for him.
He started the verification program. As it checked the facts snared from
the passing swarms of data, he doodled with the structures he'd seen
almost from the beginning. He traced lines and boxes, here and there
adding a label, cross-referencing to a file. It was quite superb, he wished
he'd thought of it himself. A hundred government agencies feeding a
hoard of migration grants, pushing people around the fading world, paying
the transit companies directly, Somewhere in the knotted arterial bed a
financial cancer had started to grow, hidden and hungry. It was five days
old, would be gone tomorrow if he hadn't found it. Once the shape of it
had shown shadowed through streaming digits of transactions and reports,
he knew it was a short term pull, knew it as the pet of someone big. It
was.
Verified. Soon, he'd done the report, stamped it with a this-minute alarm,
sent it to the newspaper. After that first find, they'd given him a
newsdesk code, and as he sat back he closed his eyes and imagined the
newspaper offices coming alive as they checked and cleared. He pulled
the headphone lead out of the amp, and turned the volume up. Sod the
neighbours.
Five minutes later, the chime of incoming mail, leading by seconds the
buzz of a tagged news story from the wire. The first was short and said
"Thanks. Checks out. Fee as agreed, plus police bonus. More, please. Bob".
He punched the air and shouted. Bob was the editor, personal mail from
him was as good as the money, right now. The news story, tagged by his
name, the companies he'd been chasing and a hundred triggers that he'd
watched for during the hunt, was much as he'd hoped. The leaders had
been arrested, two gentlemen doctors from the American East Coast and
an Estonian minister of culture. And the name himself, a newspaper
owner.
He scowled at some points he'd missed but the paper had caught, made
notes of how they'd drifted by. But already the mail had started,
congratulations from friends, requests from his paper and others for
interviews, police statement supoena. He'd got the last prepared, sent it
off, answered the congrats with "Thanks! More soon, gotta crash :-)", and
declined the interviews. He was turning everything onto automatic when a
last imperious bleep from a terminal announced Offical Business - Urgent.
It was a compulsory migration order, for most of his area. For a moment,
he wondered if he'd annoyed someone, but it checked out. A buffer
reservoir was going to be blasted in a fortnight, sooner if possible,
another hole in the city. Usual reasons: stabilising soil geology,
moderating local effects of new climate, providing needed water storage,
essential for the continued health of the population. He had a choice of
five moves, which wasn't bad; he had to be out in six days, which was. It
wasn't desparate, that last find had cleared him for a month, but he had
to move his den.
He could work from anywhere. Not a problem. Just a temporary
inconvenience. But he resented the speed at which his perfect world had
been torn down so soon after being called into existence. He could maybe
get the lot moved, maybe sell it and get it rebuilt wherever he ended up.
After all, he let the thought buoy him up, he was getting a little rich.
Another thought - wonder if? He set more searches going, and it was. If
he hadn't found that scam, the order would have been days later. So it
was all his fault. He grinned, told the government that he'd love to live
in Finland, went over to the hammock, and crashed into Saturday.
(c) rg