The Agent
Londonspace, 2062
"Mistress Amanda, are you free? It's time to deal with our backlog of anime submissions to the agency." The sentient slush pile advanced cautiously towards the steely-eyed matron who floated in her hover-armchair by the blazing fireplace in the book-lined study of her well-appointed flat in the East End of London.
It was a drizzly, pissy night in Vector 6 of London Grid and Amanda Jones, literary agent extraordinaire in the brave new field of Rapid Eye Movement 'REM' pulps and bio-anime action serials was in a foul mood. She sat wrapped in her red flannel bathrobe, and nursed a highball as she stared vacantly at the glowing neutron log in the fireplace.
Amanda barely glanced at the drone that shuffled into her study carrying his stash of blinking REM storyboards. She had far more important things on her mind than her weekly editorial conference with an opinionated piece of scrap metal and bioplasm named Archie Winkles. No matter how much she relied on his aberrant eye for discovering freakish new material that sold like hotcakes to the networked Sleepers in Mangaspace.
Her world, once brilliant and successful, was falling apart. What had gone wrong? Worse still, how could she have not seen it coming? Failed to heed the warning signs. Now, it was too late. Someone had set the serpent loose in the garden and it was about to swallow her like a warthog.
Amanda shuddered as the realization struck her again. One moment, she was Queen of the REMs. Darling of the dream entertainment industry. On top of the game. And now . . . Jeezus, it was too hideous to think about!
It had been a long hard climb to reach this point in her career. She wasn't about to chuck it all away on account of this devilish virus that was stalking the talent pool of creatives who supplied M-space with its pay-per-dream content. What the fuck was it anyway? Why couldn't anyone stop it? Isn't that why she paid her dues to the Firewall Guild?
And what were all those crazy rumors that were swirling around all over the place? That the killer was searching for someone--or something--in particular. None of its hits appeared to be random. It had a specific target in mind. A highly effective executioner except for one thing. It didn't seem to know the exact identity or location of its prey.
"A few minutes of your time, that's all I ask," Archie pleaded from the threshold of shadows in the back of the room. "I think I may have found something that will interest you."
"Not now, Archie! Can't you see that I'm preoccupied?" Amanda snapped at the drone whose skinny robotic legs seemed to buckle under the weight of the REM-boards which he carried in his hydraulic arms. He was dressed in the tattered waistcoat of a Victorian footman, and his powdered wig was slightly askew on his chrome skull. He looked puzzled and hurt by her outburst.
Fifteen years of faithful service as agency droid and Archie Winkles couldn't remember the last time he had been maintenanced or had any of his parts replaced. The least she could do was to be civil to him. Fine, if that's how she felt about it. Eventually, she would return to her senses and then she would thank him. Perhaps she would even give him a raise.
Archie was running dangerously low on his supply of pleasure-cells. He had just enough left for a few pints of Nokia lager and a remote romp with Molly Nivens, that buxom drone who worked for one of the rival agencies across town. In the meantime, all he could do was to be patient and wait for his employer to realize that her fate lay in his capable drone hands.
That bitch Glenda Flowers! Amanda fumed as she reconstructed the disastrous events of the evening that had turned her life inside out. How dare she call herself my best friend, then stab me in the back like that! I'll see that she rots in hell!
Glenda Flowers ran her own bio-lit agency out of a swank office in Knightsbridge. For years, it had been the two women's habit to meet for drinks at least once a week to exchange industry gossip, trade snide remarks about their most difficult clients, and to catch up on each other's personal lives. They had a long personal history together.
They went way back to when they were both starting out as freelance trendspotters working for producers who specialized in the mutant genres. Edible Gothic Westerns, tampon editions of Harlequin romances, King James Version of the Bible suppositories, chat-room pills good for a thousand hours of telepathic exchange with total strangers. Even neural patches for masochists who sought the ultimate threshold of pain, learning to love and accept themselves in the true spirit of universal compassion. Novelty items with a twitchy shelf life, that was their stock-in-trade.
Then came the Psi-Revolution of '52 that ushered in more changes than reality had room for, Amanda speculated as she nursed her highball. It was as if ten, twenty, thirty dimensions had suddenly thrown open their portals to an uncomprehending public all at once.
It was all too much, happening as it did soon after that terrible Earthquake which devastated the entire city of Kobe in Nippon. Damn Metroplex had been erased right off the Grid. Just like that! Nowhere to be found. How do you manage to lose an entire city? It's not like misplacing your back-up DNA tablets in your purse, is it?
One moment, people were going about their affairs in Omnispace, the successor to Old Cyberspace, occasionally touching down in the meat world whenever it suited their needs. The next moment, the entire landscape had changed. The rules, the paradigms, the protocols for commuting between the realms. Everything had been altered. The world would never be the same again.
The meta-technologies had finally triumphed over common sense. That was how Amanda viewed those cataclysmic events despite the incredible success that came her way after Omnispace had been upgraded. She had a conservative streak that fueled her innate radicalism. That's what made her a good agent, she supposed. She could always tell crap from crappola.
"Have you heard the news, Mandy?" Amanda could still vividly recall that fateful morning ten years ago when Glenda called her with barely contained excitement. "They've finally done it!"
"Who's done what?" Amanda answered sleepily as she lay cocooned in the sensorium of her Mitsubishi hammock. Those were the early days when she was still breaking in Archie as an apprentice. She had just decided that droid love was not for her. She would keep him just to do the accounts, then maybe train him to be an editorial assistant if he showed any aptitude for it.
"Why, then you haven't heard!" Glenda exclaimed breathlessly. "It's the Synchronicity Labs! They've just issued a press release from their headquarters in Salt Lake City announcing their latest breakthrough!"
Amanda's head suddenly cleared. "They're the leading manufacturers of neural connects in the remote-viewing market, aren't they? What have they done now?"
She heard Glenda's voice cackle gleefully on the other end of the line. "They've standardized their product line to accommodate every possible type of brainwave on the planet."
"I thought they'd done that already," Amanda replied harshly. "I mean, isn't that what they're all about? Universal glossolalia deconstructed to the lowest common denominator of psycho babble units? Reverse-engineered B.S.? They're fucking solipsists, that's what they are!" Amanda snarled.
It was one of her pet peeves. Amanda hated the idea that the Oneness paradigm was based on a schizophrenic algorithm. It made the masses of global consumers that much more difficult to reach.
"No, no, you still don't get it!" Glenda protested. "They've gone beyond that! What's happened is they can now neurolink brainwaves across the entire spectrum of consciousness-not just human but every animal and plant species on earth! Soon it's going to be possible to communicate with all energy forms including minerals and subatomic particles! It's a brand-new ball game, Mandy! Inter-energy field networking! Don't you realize what that means?"
We soon found out, didn't we, Glenda? Amanda thought as she bobbed up and down in her comfortable hover-chair above the polished hardwood floor in her study. After collective dreams were privatized in '54 and the Dream Industry was born? When the bodycentric media became a thing of the past?
How far have we come in the past ten years? Amanda did some quick calculations. Roughly, three hundred million REM downloads of dream-soaps and bio-anime serials per night in each and every time zone around the world. And a new breed of sensitives who produce the material that we sell to the insatiable syndicates of M-space. Three and a half billion subscribers not including newborn infants and, of course, all those captive fetuses . . . Let's see, a five hundred billion-dollar market.
Today, The Amanda Jones Bio-Anime Literary Agency represented some of the biggest dream-tellers in the business. Amanda had discovered her niche. She soon developed a reputation for being able to spot the hottest talent in this exciting new medium.
That was then. This was now. Amanda's brow darkened as her thoughts brought her back to her current predicament. As far as she was concerned, her meeting with Glenda this evening had sounded the death-knell on their friendship.
Amanda had a premonition that something was terribly wrong the moment she stepped inside the Bistro Attaturk, the trendy watering hole in Soho that was frequented by Mangaspace types. The place was bustling with REM producers, bio-lit agents, telemorphic account execs, psi-marketing VPs, and all manner of industry riffraff.
Glenda was already seated at her favorite table in a corner of the oak-paneled room, her second gin-and-tonic in her hand. She waved brightly when she saw Amanda.
Heads turned as Amanda's formidable figure cut an electric swathe through the crowd. She wore her trademark power-agent's suit, neon blue furs draped across her shoulders, Mexican bandoleers that criss-crossed her ample bosoms, and a pair of hobnailed miner's boots that spat out green jets of flame from her heels.
So far so good. Amanda was accustomed to being recognized by her peers. She was a major player in the industry after all. Then something inside her froze when she heard an ominous whisper that struck her like a knife between her shoulder blades.
"That's Amanda Jones, she just signed a sixteen-figure deal for Mojo Park to run a serial in M-space. The poor guy dropped dead from that weird virus last night right in the middle of his third episode. Can you believe it? What rotten luck."
Mojo Park!!! Dead??? Amanda's knees almost buckled when she heard that remark. The color drained out of her face. She felt dizzy. It couldn't be true. Why, she had just talked to Mojo yesterday! The six-foot-two brawny lumberjack turned REM-animator had been in the pink of health. Brimming with ideas for his brand-new series, "Trees of Heaven," a saga about a family of homesteaders who had settled on one of Jupiter's outer-rings. Little House on the Prairie set in Outer Space!
Christ, Miles Milford at the M-Space Syndicate was ecstatic about it! It was a mega-huge deal, the biggest contract that Amanda had ever negotiated in her entire career.
Mojo Park ??? Surely, she would have heard something about it by now if it were true. No, it was just a rumor. It had to be. Bunch of poky jealous bastards, Amanda thought to herself as she reached Glenda's table on somewhat unsteady feet. Trust them to spread their filthy lies, that's all they're good for.
"Hello there, Mandy," Glenda looked a little pie-eyed as she beckoned Amanda to sit down with her heavily ringed hand. Her blond pageboy hair was plastered across her damp brow. She must be on her fourth G & T by now, Amanda decided. Not her second.
"I've ordered you a couple of double scotches," Glenda's words came out slurred. "I figured you might need them. Terrible news about Mojo. It's all over town. It's that killer virus again. The Ministry of Entertainment Forensics has issued an all-points advisory. Our best writers are dropping like flies. What are we going to do?"
She added in a hushed tone. "I've heard that there may be a connection between what's crashing our anime fly boys and that recent wave of assassinations in Imperial Nippon which the 'bloids have been reporting. Someone's taking out their warlords. Not that they don't deserve it, the bloody fascists. They want to replay World War II, but they're determined to be on the winning side this time."
"That sounds a bit far-fetched," Amanda smiled feebly. "I mean, really, Glenda . . . Those killings and this virus are somehow related? I find it hard to believe."
"Who knows?" Glenda shrugged. "That's the latest buzz." She raised an eyebrow. "There's more. Apparently, this unknown assassin has been designated the official poster-child by the Asian Resistance. Those are the partisans who're trying to liberate East Asia from Imperial Nippon's occupation forces. He's their favorite freedom-fighter."
She paused before continuing. "They've given him a rather dashing name, 'The Hanging Butoh.'"
Amanda looked perplexed. "What does that mean?"
"I think it means the 'Dancer of Death' or something like that," Glenda sniffled. "'Butoh' is a weird Nipponese dance form from the last century. Steeped in darkness. That's how the assassin has been described, by the way, as a Butoh dancer."
"Oh, really?"
"Yes, from the reports of his sightings that have been leaked to the underground by sympathizers inside the Imperial ranks. He's quite a hunk apparently. Every woman's dream. Bald, skinny, naked, with a pasty white pallor. Some kind of a hit-man dancer with sexy mean moves."
"What an amazing story," Amanda marveled. "I'm not sure what to make of it."
"He uses a rope to get around. Hence, the 'hanging' part of his appellation. Unless there's more to it than that." Glenda giggled drunkenly.
She leaned across the table and whispered conspiratorially to Amanda. "Word has it, the Hanging Butoh hides out in some uncharted vector of M-space called the 'Z-Zone.' That's why the Nipponese authorities can't get their hands on him unless he steps out onto the boardwalk. Ever heard of the Z-Zone, Mandy?"
Amanda shook her head, her mind still reeling from the news of Mojo Park's untimely demise. "It doesn't ring a bell, I'm afraid. Where is it supposed to be?"
"No one knows," Glenda answered. "It's not listed in any of the archived dimensions. Technically speaking, the Z-Zone doesn't even exist. But we know it's there--somewhere."
Glenda looked up as the waiter arrived with his tray bearing Amanda's two scotches. Before he had a chance to set the glasses on the table, Glenda downed the rest of her gin-and-tonic and blurted out the real news she'd been withholding from Amanda. No wonder the bitch was soused. She was taking over Amanda's slot in Mangaspace, the one that had been contracted to her client Jake Hill and his "Tao" Smith adventure serial.
"It's not like I'm stealing your spot or anything," Glenda bristled defensively as Amanda gave her a look of stunned disbelief. First, Mojo Park. Now this . . . What was the world coming to? What manner of blight had her in its evil sights?
"Jake Hill is a burnout, you know that, Mandy," Glenda said defensively as she twisted her cocktail-napkin into an unrecognizable shape. "He hasn't produced any new material in months, and the syndicate is tired of waiting for him to deliver. So I'm bringing them my boy, Petey Callaghan. They're going to run his 'Mute Newt' kiddy serial on a trial basis. What the hell, as long as he's still alive, right?"
Glenda patted Amanda's hand solicitously. "I'm sorry to break the news to you this way and at a time like this. But I want you to know that it's nothing personal, Mandy. Business is business."
Jake Hill . . . Amanda Jones recoiled in her hover-chair as Archie the drone observed the look of distress on his mistress' face. Glenda was right about the bastard, she glowered. Although that didn't excuse her treachery.
Jake Hill had turned into a recluse. Been reduced to a state of morbid silence in his bio-manga studio in San Francisco. He hadn't been returning any of her calls. And she was tired of making excuses to the syndicate manager who had lost all patience with her one-time boy wonder.
"How long can we keep running "'Tao' Smith" on auto-plot before the Sleepers catch on?" Miles Milford had complained bitterly. "I'm warning you, Mandy! Do something! The head office is on my case! His numbers are way down, in case you haven't noticed!"
What the fuck was Jake up to? Amanda bit her lip as she stared into the fire. He had to be up to something. He couldn't have just fizzled out. That wasn't his style.
The man was brilliant. He had broken all kinds of creative new ground with his cutting-edge REM 'toons over the years. Had added to the palette of the anime lexicon in so many ways. Synaesthetic pathos. Autistic pink passion. C'est la vie yellow paranoia. Jake had tapped into a multidimensional database of emoticons that became his trademark. That's what made his stories come to life in the Sleepers' dreams. What kept them hungry for more of his tales. Soon other anime artists were imitating his techniques and applying them to their own narratives.
Amanda tried to puzzle Jake out. Figure out what makes him tick. Maybe I can bring him back on top again. Salvage his reputation. And mine . . . .
Jake Hill was a legend in the industry. Everyone claimed to have met him before 2054 when the Psi-Revolution was in full swing. But no one had the real scoop on him before that. He was a mystery man. Like his character "Tao" Smith, Jake seemed to have fallen into the comic strip of the world by accident. It was as if someone had dreamed up the dreamer. And now the dream was over.
Or was it? Amanda frowned as she fiddled with the gyro-stick that controlled the movements of her hover-chair. It was her chief means of transportation through her six-dimensional flat. She was going to check her secret Author Surveillance files that she kept hidden inside the flyspeck piece of dirt on the banister of her fourth matrix. Have to keep an eye on the home-team. Lots of competition out there. Filthy blackmailers, too . . . .
Seeing that his mistress was preparing to embark on one of her journeys, Archie Winkles seized the moment. "Ahem, Mistress Amanda! Before you go--"
He wheezed loudly as he inched forward on the worn-out treads of his house slippers. Time to play the big card, son, the drone thought to himself. Molly Nivens the buxom droid awaits you and your pleasure-cells need refueling.
Amanda cast a withering glance at the pathetic creature that confronted her in his torn lackey's frock coat and his lame-brained white powdered wig. "What the hell do you want? Can't you see that I'm busy? We'll have that editorial meeting some other time. Now, get out of my way!"
But Archie Winkles refused to yield. He wasn't about to let the bitch get away that easily. "We may have a winner here this time," he declared as he held up the latest batch of unsolicited submissions to the agency. "The way I see it, we offer six million free trial downloads to start, then build up to eight million REM clicks, then go straight up from there. Trust me, this story has real potential."
Amanda yanked at the gyro-stick on her chair and floated over to where Archie stood his ground like a cocksure weasel. She circled above him, sorely tempted to land on the drone's head.
"What makes you so sure?" she said finally. Whatever else, Archie had certainly picked his share of winners whose animes shot straight to the top of the Mangaspace charts.
"Unusual premise. Anti-anti-hero. In fact, I've never encountered anything this weird before. And you know, I like it weird."
"Hmmm . . ." Amanda thought out loud. "Tell me more. We need to replace Mojo Park."
"Yes, I know. It's very disappointing news."
"Don't patronize me. Who's this new artist?"
Archie stared down at his feet in silence. He didn't know how to answer her question. The trouble was, there was no name attached to the material. And it hadn't even been technically submitted to the agency. It had just sort of secreted itself out of the pipeline like some sort of a weird fungus.
"Well?" Amanda demanded impatiently. She brought her hover-chair down to the drone's level. She stretched out her hand to the stack of blinking REM-boards which Archie clutched in his arms. Each storyboard was infused with living strands of light composed of neuro-gel cells. These cells contained the vision spores that were the essential ingredient for animating the bio-anime serials that played in Mangaspace.
"Show me what you've got, numskull."
"Here you are." Archie peeled a neuro-gel cell off the back of what appeared to be a document that was mixed up in the slush pile. He handed it to her.
"That's not a storyboard!" Amanda snorted. "What the fuck is that!"
Archie confessed. "I've been a little behind in my filing, mistress. I promise to catch up. It must have gotten caught up in the incoming mail."
Amanda snapped her fingers. "Let's have it."
Reluctantly, Archie gave her the document. Amanda studied it before exclaiming. "Why, it's a royalty statement from the last quarter which we sent to Jake Hill!"
All the sales figures from Jake's current series of "Tao" Smith adventures read like a banquet of zeroes. Nothing on the plate.
"It must have bounced back from his Omnitron box," Archie explained. "As you know, he's not been accepting any mail. This particular cell must have gotten stuck to his last statement somehow."
Suddenly the neuro-gel cell came alive in the moist screen of Amanda's palm. She felt the queasiest feeling she'd had since she learned about the loss of Mojo Park and Glenda's betrayal of their longtime friendship. And that was just this evening.
The face in the gel-cell was unmistakable. A shaved head, the crimson tip of a curlicued tongue protruding from the slit of a diabolical mouth, the naked white body of a dancer inviting her to join him in some unspeakable act. It was the Hanging Butoh she'd heard about from Glenda Flowers. The assassin from the Z-Zone. And he'd bounced into Amanda's hand all the way from Jake Hill's inbox in San Francisco.
Yes, it was high time that she paid a visit to Jake.