Twenty Sixty-Four

Chapter 8

They had done it. At last they had done it!

The room they were standing in was long and softly lit. It reminded Bradley of a television studio. The faceboogle was dimmed to a low murmur, The Ronald's words were being cheered by an adoring crowd. The rich blood-orange carpet felt like velvet underfoot. At the far end of the room, O'Neill sat at a table with a green-shaded lamp. The dull surface was bare but the movements of O'Neill's hands hinted at a mass of virtual papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up when the mandroid showed Marsha and Bradley in.

Bradley's heart was thumping so hard he did not trust himself to speak. All his mind could do was inanely repeat: they had done it, at last they had done it. It had been reckless to come here, and sheer stupidity to arrive together. Although they had come by different routes and only met in the stylish foyer of O'Neill's building. Just walking into the place took nerve, a giddy inner struggle against years of learned paranoia. Only on very rare occasions did anyone see inside the homes of Upper Management, or even wandered through the leafy southern tip of the Halifax Peninsula where they lived. Everything was intimidating: the atmosphere of the luxury apartments, the richness and spaciousness, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco, the silent and swift elevators gliding up and down, the white-jacketed mandroids and womandroids scurrying about. Although he had pretext for coming, Bradley was haunted at every step by the fear that a black-uniformed security guard would appear around the corner, demand identification, and kick them out. O'Neill's servant, however, had admitted the two of them without a word. He was a small, dark-haired mandroid in a white jacket, with a diamond-shaped, completely expressionless face too perfect to be human. The passage he led them down was softly carpeted, cream walls and white baseboards, all exquisitely clean. This too was intimidating. Bradley could not remember ever having seen a corridor whose walls were not grimy from human contact.

O'Neill had a virtual slip of paper between his fingers and was studying the empty air intently. His heavy face, bent down so Bradley could see his prominent brows, looked formidable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat without stirring. Then he tapped on his thinkrite and murmured a message in the hybrid jargon of Human Resources:

'Down-size low-hanging fruit for impactful synergy with key business-to-business elements. Necessitate outside-the-box approach toward unsynchronized entities before socializing results with key stakeholders. To maximize learnings, take strong note of the misalignment with corporate values during key restructuring.'

Despite everything, Bradley suppressed a grin at the older man's old-fashioned habit of speaking aloud to his thinkrite. O'Neill glanced up, as if mildly offended, then rose deliberately from his chair and came towards them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official atmosphere from the HRspeak seemed to have fallen away from him, but his expression was grimmer than usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The terror that Bradley already felt was suddenly shot through by a streak of ordinary embarrassment. All of a sudden, it seemed all too possible he had made a very stupid mistake. What evidence had he that O'Neill was any kind of conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single ambiguous remark: beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even fall back on the pretense that he had come to borrow the dictionary, because then Marsha was impossible to explain. As O'Neill passed the faceboogle a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and flicked a wall switch. There was a loud click. The noise stopped.

Marsha uttered a tiny sound, a squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Bradley was too taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.

'You can turn him off!' he said.

'Yes,' O'Neill said, 'I can turn him off. I have that privilege.'

He was opposite them now. His solid form towered over them, and the expression on his face was indecipherable. He was waiting for Bradley to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite believable he was a busy man wondering irritably why he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After killing the faceboogle, the room was dead silent. The seconds marched past, enormous. With difficulty Bradley continued to keep his eyes fixed on O'Neill's. Then suddenly the grim face broke down into what were the beginnings of a smile. With his characteristic gesture O'Neill resettled his AR glasses on his nose.