“Okay,” I swallowed my misgivings. “Then what?”

  “After increase comes entrainment.” The images changed to those of people using computers to navigate the World Wide Web. “This is the easy part. Simply test and implement the colors, frequencies, and architectures that generate the highest response rate. This could be measured in click-through, purchases, or whatever the desired goal. It’s no different from direct-mail testing.”

  “Maximize user response,” I said, trying to make “entrainment” sound more like a simple sales technique. “Okay, then what?”

  “We reward and, hopefully, accelerate the desired responses with secondary reinforcement.” The sounds of happy bells accompanied Greco’s description, and the images on the wall showed people smiling; an Asian couple finding extra credits in their online bank account; an old man opening an attachment on an e-mail message and finding a picture of a naked woman. “We’ve found sex and violence to be the most compelling secondary reinforcements, but we’re trying to steer these people toward more consumer-loyal inducements such as rebates, air miles, and point systems. Keep it all directed back toward more spending, or more interaction with the program.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw an image of a giant robot with a McDonalds logo for a head. The Prime Network Enforcement Vehicle from my dream! I spun around in my chair, but it was only a little girl opening a bag of McDonalds fries, and pulling out a plastic coin stamped 5 Points!

  “After that, the program is on its own,” he said. “It simply evolves based on user interaction.”

  Greco got up and the lights in the room rose with him.

  “Evolves toward what?” I asked.

  “What do you mean? You think of evolution as being goal oriented?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “And what’s the goal?”

  “I don’t know. I like to think we’re striving toward a better means of survival or consciousness. Or maybe some ethical truth.”

  “You might want to check your science on that,” Greco said, leading me out of the room. “I think they’ve figured out that consciousness is a by-product of evolution. Not its goal.”

  “But you said the Synapticom algorithm evolves. In what direction? What does it want? Higher number of purchases? What metric does it use?”

  “Oh. We don’t use metrics like that anymore. The only metric the algorithm is still programmed to measure is user interest. It’s more of an entertainment paradigm. We measure the level of engagement with the program itself. It modifies its behavior for each user according to the consistency and duration of their interaction.”

  “Like a puppy dog,” I said.

  “In the case of consumers, maybe,” Greco said, looking out over the work floor. “But not in all situations. Here, for example, we think of it more like a coach.”

  “Here?” I asked. “You mean you’re using it here? On yourselves? At Synapticom?”

  “Sure we are,” said Greco. “It’s the easiest way to test the program’s effectiveness. And since it creates a competitive advantage in terms of employee loyalty and worker efficiency, we’d be foolish not to use it.”

  I watched the greenshirts at their workstations. They were absolutely fixed on their screens and had smiles on their faces. They typed furiously but effortlessly. There were no family pictures on their desks, no trinkets, plants, or stuffed animals. Nothing to distract them from building and selling their programs.

  “You use it on yourselves to make yourselves work harder?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little weird?”

  “Only if you subscribe to ancient Marxist oppositions between labor and management. Here, labor is management. We all want the same thing.”

  “That’s a great theory, Greco . . .”

  “It’s not theory, Jamie,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder as if to heal me. “Let’s see if your disc is ready.”

  He led me around the bend toward a cluster of three young programmers—two men and one woman, dressed in identical green shirts and ties.

  “Hello, Mr. Vahanian!” the trio said in unison.

  “Hello!” he responded in singsong. “How’s it coming?”

  “Almost done—” said one.

  “—compiling the algorithm—” chimed in another.

  “—with the customized protocol,” the girl finished.

  “Terrific!” Greco cheered. They acted as if they were all components of the same well-oiled machine. I was repulsed and intrigued.

  “What’s it like working here?” I asked the young woman. I figured she was the most likely to evince some emotional honesty. 96

  “You need to ask?” she said, smiling.

  “Couldn’t be happier,” said one of the boys.

  “Here’s the disc!” said the third, ejecting a freshly burned CD from his console and slipping into a black plastic sleeve. “We had a great time testing it.”

  I noticed the boy’s head phasing out of focus for a moment. It became almost transparent, then faded back in as a smiling, black bull. Was this a side effect of the program?

  No. I wasn’t going to let myself see this. Not here. I stared into the bull’s eyes and pinched my own thigh through a pants pocket, as if to wake myself from a dream. The animal head went fuzzy as the boy’s human cranium slowly faded back up—a faint image at first, until it regained its normal opacity. The boy was handing the disk to Greco, who handed it in turn to me.

  “Here you go,” Greco said. “It’s self-installing, and should automatically adapt to the coding on your site. Just give it a couple of minutes.”

  “What do I tell our engineers? They’re going to want to know how it works. I mean, how do we prepare the site? Where do we put in the hooks?”

  “It self-installs,” the girl said.

  “And adapts to your configuration,” continued one of the boys.

  “Using a polymorphic virus,” said the last.

  “Just pop it in like a video-game cartridge,” Greco capped it off. Then they laughed together.

  “Well, thanks.”

  “Thank you,” they sang in unison, returning their attention to the workstations.

  “Come on,” Greco said. “We better let them get back to work.”

  But they were already so engrossed in their next tasks that nothing we said or did could have distracted them.

  We descended in the elevator back toward the lobby.

  “So you’re happy here?” I asked. I knew we were being recorded, but I thought I’d be able to gauge Greco’s response by his tone of voice.

  “It’ll be hard to leave, yeah.”

  “They’re phasing you out?”

  “There is no ‘they.’ ” Greco chuckled. “I’ve done my part. The graphics protocols have been fully interpolated.”

  “That’s why they moved you to marketing?” I asked as the doors opened.

  “Everyone gets moved to marketing before they’re released back into the general population,” Greco said. “It’s the healthiest way to make the transition, and teaches us new strategies for ongoing advocacy.”

  “You mean you basically sell this program for the rest of your lives?”

  “It’s more like promoting a culture. Like we did with the Macintosh as kids, remember? It feels more like a means of bettering society.”

  “And increasing the value of your options, I imagine.” I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby and tried to remember where that room with the shoes went.

  “Share value is a secondary incentive, sure,” Greco said, pointing me to the left. “But I don’t think you have to cast it in such a cynical light.”

  He was right. Why was I being such a curmudgeon? Greco was just playing the game too, and from a better position than me. He couldn’t lose. How dare I wish that this svelte, confident man be replaced by the fat little Greco I pitied as a kid? Did I really need to condemn him as an android just because he had found a strategy that worked for him? Greco wasn’t really an automaton at all. He had simply grown up.

  We entered the changing room. I sat on a bench and removed my slippers.

  “You know I got Entertainink to buy Jude’s TeslaNet program,” I said.

  “I heard. That’s great.” He looked at me a moment. “I’m in on it, you know.” He raised his eyebrows.

  “You mean they’re cutting you in? For doing some of the code? That’s great!”

  “Yeah. We’re all really happy about it.”

  “For now, anyway.” Strangely, I felt like I could confide in El Greco. It had less to do with our history together than El Greco’s Synapticom-inspired clarity and peace of mind. I wanted a mentor.

  “What do you mean, ‘for now?’ ” Greco asked, sitting down next to me.

  “Nothing.” I couldn’t tell him. “I just think Jude’s going to resent the loss of control.”

  “Control is an illusion, anyway,” Greco said plainly. “I’m sure Jude will see it that way. If he doesn’t already.”

  Maybe he would, I thought as I climbed into the bright green Synapticom helicopter and took off across the Hudson. How weird to depart like this—like I’d been a guest on Fantasy Island. 97 The other six passengers all seemed content too, as if they had just visited a health spa. One of them, a guy in a black suit in the back, had a full bull head but I decided to ignore him and face forward. Just don’t think about it, and it will go away. If I still see bulls in a week, I’ll find a shrink.

  Besides, there was another, more pressing sensation in my chest. It felt like the Reactive Architecture algorithm disc was burning a hole in my breast pocket. I touched it, but it wasn’t hot. Just another trick my mind was playing on me, that’s all. Still, I didn’t know if I wanted to rush home and load it onto my laptop, or simply throw it out the window before it turned the entire world into stock market bulls. Well, if I didn’t implement it, someone else would. Besides, people everywhere were turning into bulls anyway. Like the guy in back. And he seemed happy enough about it.

  9

  Focus Groups

  “H ello?”

  “The people, united, will never be defeated!”

  Alec sounded oh-so-chipper on the phone that next morning. Chipper enough to wake me with a call at 6:15, just to make sure I’d be at the ad agency’s studio on time.

  “You’re in a good mood,” I said sleepily, as I pushed a button on the remote control by my bedside, changing the tint on my plasma windows from black to clear. The sky was still only medium blue.

  “You betcha,” said Alec. “Everything’s going according to plan.”

  “I guess that means you’re ready?”

  “More than ready. See you at ten. You’ve got the address?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I could always look it up, later. “I’ll be there.”

  “Jahwol!”

  I put the phone back under my pillow and debated whether to drag myself out of bed or reset the windows to night mode and get another hour of sleep. My morning hard-on was already in full bloom—a sign that things were right in the world—so I figured I might as well greet the day.

  I padded across the white bedroom carpet to the bathroom, set the shower to “very warm,” and got in.

  I looked down at my full-masted member, its slit of an eye squinting right back up at me, demanding service. Carla was the first sexy image that came to mind, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. The girls at the ranch, maybe? Nah. They probably had diseases, anyway. Still, that Jenna was awfully hot.

  I imagined myself video-conferencing with her. It was a bizarre image, but I went with it. She was in a studio apartment, and I was in my office with the blinds open but my desk obscuring anything below the waist. My sexual fantasies never had computers or networks in them before. Strange. I imagined myself pointing the camera down to my crotch, and watching her as she stared into her monitor. I saw her getting turned on by my image, by my body. It was the first time I had ever masturbated to a fantasy about someone else masturbating to me. I was an object of desire.

  I got myself dressed as my spirit swirled down the drain and a CNBC anchor analyzed the S&P futures from Chicago. Yesterday’s three percent downswing looked like it was going to be matched in the first hour of trading. Normally, people saw dips as buying opportunities. As long as traders could be convinced to borrow more money, they would use their new capital to erase losses within minutes of the opening bell and make a bundle in the process.

  That’s why Birnbaum’s testimony was so devastating. By suggesting a need for government oversight on electronic trading, he was questioning people’s ability to invest for themselves. And without a retail trading market, there was no one to fill in the bottom levels of the securities pyramid. One of the television analysts even suggested that Birnbaum might call for a curb on margin borrowing. The death blow.

  I put on my tie while I watched a clip of reactions from the street. “Why would the government get involved unless there was something very wrong?” a woman standing in front of a department store asked. “I hope this doesn’t start a selling panic,” a businessman added, “I can’t afford a margin call.” A man in a hard hat seemed to take delight in the controversy, saying “it’s about time someone finally pulled the plug.” This was a public relations disaster.

  Who’d have thought that my college pal and I would one day serve as the market’s last, best hope for salvation? With Birnbaum using his position to cast doubt on the online trading system, the Synapticom algorithm was a necessary countermeasure. Even I could see that. An unencumbered market was the most efficient path toward the creation of wealth. There were already more than enough resources for everyone in the world to be happy. Market forces worked together as a self-adjusting dynamical system—the perfect means to distributing capital based on innovation and need. It was the way civilization evolved. 98

  That’s why interventionist naysayers like Keynes weren’t even taught in economics classes anymore. His theories had been disproved by Nobel prize winners. All you have to do is treat the economy like nature, and everything healthy will continue to grow. It’s the organic farming principle. The more pesticides you use, the weaker your plants get.

  I arrived at the DD&D agency (or, more exactly, since the latest merger, WP/DD&D/Whyte-Werner-Whitfield/DSDL Group Limited International) and was met in the lobby by an energetic junior account planner who brought me up to the focus group suites. She opened a door marked OBSERVATION. Inside the long, thin chamber sat Alec with two market researchers, drinking coffee, munching on pastries, and analyzing information on a bank of computer monitors.

  “Glad you could make it, Jamie,” Alec said. “Have a seat.”

  I closed the door behind me and the chamber darkened, revealing three large panes of glass that looked out onto three separate conference rooms.

  “Don’t worry, they can’t see us,” said a middle-aged woman whose headset held her white curly hair in place. “These are two-way mirrors.” She held out her hand. “I’m Martha.”

  Alec flicked a switch on a console and the sound from the room on the left played through a speaker over the window.

  “Not that I’m afraid of trading for myself, mind you,” a young woman was saying. “But I just don’t feel intelligent enough to make intelligent decisions.”

  “She’s lying,” said Martha. “Look at her basal skin response.”

  She pointed to a wavy line on the monitor.

  “Good catch,” said Alec.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  “She’s got electrodes on her fingers,” Alec said. “Everyone in Room A does. See?”

  I put a hand on the glass to shade the glare. Sure enough, each of the volunteers around the table had wires coming from tiny rubber cups attached to the tips of their fingers.

  “Is that really necessary?” I asked.

  “Sure is,” Alec said. “It’s the latest thing.”

  “We found that focus group members tend to see their interviews as an opportunity to voice consumer discontent. Over seventy-five percent of Americans have participated in a consumer research study of one kind or another. They’re jaded.”

  “So you attach them to lie detectors?”

  “Biofeedback monitoring of all kinds, actually,” she answered. “Galvanic skin response, basal variations, even electroencephalogram brain-wave measurements in some cases. It helps us determine emotional trigger points, subconscious activity, and neural inconsistencies.” She pushed a button and spoke into her headset. “Number four is showing signs of prevarication, Tony. Try pursuing along a delta trajectory.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Watch and learn,” Alec said.

  The interviewer in Room A, the man in a headset at the head of the table, got up from his chair and approached the young woman they called Number four.

  “Do you think that your children . . .” he looked at his clipboard, “Bertrand and Serena. Do you think they look up to you?”

  “That’s good, Tony,” the white-haired woman transmitted through her headset. “Her wave functions are equalizing.”

  The young interviewee hesitated, then spoke. “I like to think they do.”

  “And do they watch you when you make your trades at the computer?” he asked.

  “They’ve seen me at the terminal,” she said, trying to picture the scene. “But I don’t think they know quite what I’m doing.”

  “But their impression of you,” he pursued her. “Do you think they see a confident woman?”

  “He’s got her,” Martha said, switching off volume to Room A and simultaneously opening a channel to Room C.

  Through the window on the right, I could make out five men and women sitting in front of a large TV monitor. They were all wearing metal headbands with rubber antennae.

  “Now as you watch this next tape,” an Asian woman standing before them was saying, “I’d like you to listen to the speaker’s words carefully.” She pressed a button on the remote in her hand, and the image of Ezra Birnbaum appeared on the monitor.