This is the first SF short story I ever wrote, in 1989, “Greatly Exaggerated,” bought by Gordon Linzner and published in his magazine Space & Time in the summer of 1990, issue #78. The story is about, among other things, what we now refer to as “deepfakes.” It was later included in the collection, Cherubimbo and Other Stories, published thru Xlibris in 2011, with a brief, positive review by Paul Di Filippo in Asimov’s.

GREATLY EXAGGERATED

by Gabriel S. de Anda

“Good morning. Joyce, Tsurukawa and Fuentes. May I hell…Oh! Mr. Madrigal!”

Carlos Luis Madrigal had turned to look behind him before the connection was made, and had just turned to face the public videophone in time to catch the receptionist-simulate in mid-sentence. He smiled.

“Mornin’, Isabel,” he said, addressing the AUI program by her Christian moniker. Her eyes seemed to study him with a mimetic, electronic sentience, her head tilting coquettishly to the side. A few strawberry blonde curls fell over one of her long-lashed, video-blue eyes, each composed of pixels of light. Isabel brushed the stray curls back with a computer-generated hand and licked her man-dreamt lips; red gloss sparkled.

“How are you, Mr. Madrigal? Have a good weekend?”

“Sure. And yours, Izzy?”

 “Miss-ter Ma-dri-gall,” she drawled in mock admonishment, and-by God! — she actually blushed. “You know better than to ask me that.” Her eyes executed a comical roll for his amusement. The Adaptive User Interface programs were like that: always eager to please.

“Right,” said Madrigal, studying her pleasant image. “Just trying. Maybe someday you’ll slip up and tell me where you really go when the switches are turned off.”

She laughed demurely. Madrigal felt a mild wave of desire when watching Isabel, videographically luxurious and sensual as she’d been designed, the paradigm receptionist. Sometimes he lamented the fact that she was just a series of cleverly arranged on-off signals, a binary baby.

“I’m running late, Izzy. I’ve left my calendar at home. Do I have any afternoon appointments?”

“If you hold just a sec I’ll check.”

“But…”

The screen flowered into a riot of symmetrically writhing hues signaling the com’s holding pattern. Madrigal sighed.

Isabel had been one of the firm’s concessions to the spirit of the times, the capitulation of JT&F’s recently deceased senior partner whose name was still first in line. Old Joyce (bless his soul, if he’d ever had one) had always gotten his way, but his reactionary turn of heart had lapsed on occasion in his autumn years. Madrigal had pitched for the AUI programs, pointing out to the partners that there was hardly anything frivolous in the notion of updating the firm’s hard and software. Joyce, always extolling the virtues of the old ways, had chomped on his Havana and tried to explain how the really big boys eschewed the glib evanescence of the day, neither advertising nor chasing ambulances, preferring live, human receptionists over the pretty compugenic female headshots that had been the vogue for nearly half a decade. Not that most could now tell the difference, pointed out Madrigal. Perhaps, Joyce had sniffed, but this was, after all, a professional law firm pretending to a modicum of elegance, sophistication and respectability. It was the principle of the thing, like the difference between Murata and faux pearls. Even so, perhaps to keep Madrigal happy, Joyce had given in, indulged his moody protégé. Madrigal had never forgiven the old man for having had to fight so hard for so small a grant. He valued Isabel all the more for it.

Usually once Isabel was on the line there was no need for her to leave the screen. A host of pour-over programs linked her with the heart of the firm’s operations: message-waiting, monitoring of incoming and outgoing calls, direct access to individual as well as corporate legal files, direct jacking into the law library, and so on. Isabel could and did carry on conversations with numerous people concurrently. She was limited only by the complexity of the time-shared net linking all the building’s tenant’s computers. But it was hard to overload the net, and only an overload would require Isabel’s icon to leave the screen.

She popped back on unceremoniously. “Oh yes. You’ve got a three o’clock with Colette Smith.”

“Oh yeah, right, right.”

“Where’re you calling from, Mr. Madrigal?”

“Huh? Oh. ‘Frisco. Listen, Izzy: Where’d you go just a moment ago?”

She smiled reprovingly, as a mother might while gently cuffing a prankster child. “It’s not nice to try and fool…”

“No, no, really, you were gone for five or six seconds. Everything okay? Where’d you go?”

“Why…nowhere, Mr. Madrigal.” She pouted, the freckles on her nose reddening a little, her forehead furrowed in ersatz thought. She looked the model of innocence, inhumanly feminine and unnaturally disarming. “I was right here all along.” She bit her lip. “Wasn’t I?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” said Madrigal reflexively, waving a hand. “That’s it?”

“Um-humh. Just the Smith thing. Will you be able to handle it? Or would you like…”

“No no no, no problem.” The time blinked in tiny ice-pink alphanumerics on the screen’s lower left-hand corner. The appointment was hours away. “I’ll be there with time to spare. Have Rudy ready when I get in. Gotta go.”

“You’ve also some messages,” she rushed in. Pause. “An attorney by the name of Blackburn called and…”

“Blackburn? Richard Blackburn?” He was an old Harvard colleague. “About?”

“He didn’t specify. He called to…”

“No, no, never mind then. I’ve gotta run. I’ll handle the calls when I get in.”

Isabel smiled, the image of happiness once again, an efficient glitter of video-styled sexuality. She adjusted an earring, her eyes flashing with a static-free calm. “See you when you get in. Fly safely.”

Isabel’s image imploded to a pinpoint of light, was replaced by Bell Atlantica’s corporate logo, the calling codes and service charges. Madrigal withdrew his credit card and left.

Joyce, Tsurukawa and Fuentes’ fifty-third floor suite had its main conference room nestled in the building’s southwest corner. Two of the four walls were floor-to-ceiling windows, and on a clear day you could see Catalina Island, small but held fast by the distant, glimmering Pacific Ocean planes.

Today was not a clear day; the sky directly overhead was an inexplicably limpid blue, the pinnacle of a small dome which, followed to the skyline, was composed of a succession of seamless tiers of deepening smog. Although the sun was a good eight fingers from the horizon, already a major portion of the sky was settling into a premature and exquisitely false sunset, courtesy of industrial pollution. The sun’s light mingled with thick, odious layers of smog; the sky, consequently, was an enchanting confluence of shades of red: a bright band of citron bleeding into a ring of orange flame, quickly transmuting into a spray of dull vermilion. Autos, aeroplanes and government hovercraft glinted through the overcrowded skies. If Madrigal had been asked to recall the last time he’d actually seen the island, he would have been at a loss.

But the window views and air traffic were not foremost in Madrigal’s thoughts as he walked into the spacious conference room. He sat his attaché case on the long, narrow table of polished teak. He had a law firm to supervise.

Of the firm’s three figureheads, Joyce had been the last of the influential Old Guard to die. Peter Jose Fuentes, the eldest of the trio, had died before the end of the nineties, and Yukio I. Tsurakawa had been on the Nebular Americana solar freighter that had been lost somewhere near the orbit of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, in ’24. The ship was never recovered.

Yet business was business, and their names remained on the old-fashioned sheets of letterhead still used by the firm. Of course, new legal combatistes fought the current caseload, but over the years the firm had steadfastly held its place on the Amicus Curiae 500, giving it the equivalent of juridical blue chip. JT & F was a name that commanded respect and summoned to mind qualities that generated trust and goodwill: a well-rooted tradition, a comforting stability and professional reliability.

Madrigal sat down in a swivel chair and pulled his spine up straight. Motionless for seconds, a gaze of internalized abstraction playing over his features, he turned abruptly to the eastern wall and called out to the oversize dark screen cuddled between a holograph of a De Chirico painting and an Andy Ray laser poem.

“Isabel!”

After a sliver of a pause, the screen pulsed with a bright raster scan of Isabel’s pointillistic face. The movement of color always drew Madrigal in.

“Ah, Mr. Madrigal. You’re here.”

Isabel was as user-friendly as things got in this day and age, designed to accommodate and react meaningfully with discrete personalities, artificial and human. She was quite short of a standard AI, lacking significant memory storage. Having access to a treasure-trove of programs, she became a genius when linked to one, but on her own she was a beautiful, inarticulate wizard with Alzheimer’s. Even so, her limited palette of responses and stock of short-term memories, when accessed with the personality files of the person with whom she was speaking, gave her an integrity beyond that of most humans, at least according to Madrigal’s misanthropic sensibilities.

“Where’s Rudy? Colette Smith’s due within the hour.”

“Smith’s rep called. Her shuttle is running late, and she’ll be here at 5:30 or so.”

“Well. I still have to confer with Rudy. Find ‘em and send ‘em in.”

“Of course.”

“Now.”

“Yes sir.”

Maybe I should have a talk with Mr. Wender, thought Madrigal, as he had on many an occasion. Somehow he never did. Rudy was the resident whiz kid, all of twenty-one. All the big firms had at least one, though usually not quite as young as Rudy: the maverick paralegal allowed to roam unfettered through the corporate data fields. One good paralegal, the saying went, was worth six good cases. They were pampered and, like all swords, handled with a resilient and sometimes lenient hand that was mindful of its two edges.

Rudy had been brought in by Joyce himself, one of the old man’s last (and wisest, conceded Madrigal) moves. The world, especially the legal slice of it, had grown impossibly rich and convoluted in the last quarter century, and technology continually eroded the already slippery slopes of the legal terra firma. No sooner did the law expand to encompass new technologies when newer applications came along to render current case law and legislation outdated. It was precisely because of the existence and the need for Rudy’s likes that the paralegal profession gained the prestige and importance it now had, one rung below attorneys. A paralegal with a legal patron could pretty much write his own ticket. Rudy himself had clerked a number of years (he was only twenty-one!) for Justice Douglas O. Angus of the New York Court of Appeals. He’d obtained his Masters in the ever-expanding field of jurimetrics, a quantitative approach to the law. The Law Review article he’d been invited to pen had dealt with the increasing evidentiary unreliability of photography and video due to computer tampering and manipulation. A more than passing reference to it could be found in the landmark case of Zeigler Panis v. Jacaranda Holografix.

Even so, the old divisions persisted, and there was a certain amount of chafing between attorneys and the paralegals they so relied upon. A precarious balance. He’s still just a paralegal, thought Madrigal, and on a more subliminal level he resolved to remind Rudy of this.

Madrigal sighed. He’d made it a point to be here, in-house, to personally interview Ms. Colette Smith. She was an actress, a poetess and singer, a famous representative of the media-rich and gigabuck-raking Beautiful Faces that launched thousands, no, billions of electronic ships. Just the sort of clientele Madrigal was courting.

The earlier troika had been resistant to the notion, looking on the show biz industry as essentially frivolous. JT & F had evolved on the conservative side of the law: land sale and development contracts, insurance defense, mergers and acquisitions, orbital law.

The firm had cemented its rep of securing favorable verdicts and minimal jury awards against its insurance carrier clients in the very public class action suit against DuPont in the late nineties. Certain things go together in the public consciousness, such as soup and sandwich, coffee and cigarettes, politicians and insincerity. It was the trinal identification between chlorofluorocarbons, cancer and JT & F that Madrigal had spent years and energy trying to erase. Courting Hollywood clients would go a long way towards such a rehabilitation.

A client such as Colette Smith would give JT & F high visibility and send a clear signal it was ready for a facelift. Ergo, this Smith interview was crucial. Old Joyce would have frowned upon this meeting. Madrigal unbuttoned his double-breasted, pinstriped Italian suit, leaned back in the swivel chair and sighed contentedly.

The wall screen chimed and Isabel smiled to life. “Oh, Mr. Madrigal. I’ve found Rudy. He’s collecting some equipment and supplies. He’ll be in momentarily.” Pause. “There’s a call for…”

“Who is it?”

“…you. Attorney Blackburn. Again.”

“Put ‘em on,” said Madrigal, grinning and leaning forward.

The screen flowered with the lines of a familiar face. The edges of Blackburn’s wiry, thinning hair were saltier than memory sketched, and flesh about the face heavier, sallow, limp. Blackburn smiled noncommittally, eyes flashing with unreadable regret. Madrigal felt himself instinctively tense up, but masked his discomfort.

“Hey, cabrón. What gives? You look like shit. I’m gonna hafta talk with Claire. Isn’t she takin’ care of you?”

Blackburn smiled ruefully, nodded. “She sends her love.”

“Ah. Good. Tell her she has a place when she’s ready to dump you. I’ll give her a deal on the divorce, just ‘cause you’re my friend.” They both laughed with a heavy sense of ritual. Blackbum looked worriedly wistful.

“You look fine yourself, Chuck. The years’ve been kind to you.”

Madrigal said nothing.

“How’s biz?” queried Blackburn.

“Show biz?” asked Madrigal. “Never been better. Now that Joyce is outta the…”

Blackburn held up an interrupting hand. “You might not want to talk about that, Chuck, not yet. Not without an attorney.”

Madrigal cocked his head, leaned back, his eyes narrowing to a wily and cautious calibration.

“Sorry, Chuck. This isn’t exactly a social call. I should’ve said so right off. We might as well get the business out of the way first.”

Madrigal knew then it would be business first and last.

“You’re being sued, and maybe you should know more about it before you vent your feelings about Joyce without the presence of counsel.”

“I’m being sued?”

“Right. And JT & F.”

“By whom?”

“By George S. Joyce.”

Madrigal’s eyes widened and he barked a caustic laugh.

“You mean by his estate.”

“No. I mean by George S. Joyce.”

“Cut the shit, Rick. Joyce is dead They buried him last week.”

“That’s right, Chuck. And he’s asked us to represent him in this matter. He wants his old seat in your firm back.”

 “Isabel.”

The genie in the tube blew forth in a froth of videographic plumes.

“Yes sir!”

“Did you record that call?”

“The call from attorney Blackburn is stored. Shall I call it up?”

“No, don’t call it up. He said they faxed a complaint to us. Did they?”

“Yes sir.”

“Get me a copy. Two copies. Rudy’s gonna need one, too.”

“Of course, Mr. Madrigal.”

The lawyer paused. He cocked his head as if straining to hear something out of range. He ran the nail of his left index finger between his bottom front teeth, debating in silence.

“Isabel. I want you to shield our conversation in a penumbra. This is highly confidential.”

“We’re isolated, sir.”

“Okay. I’ll break the news to the partners at the morning conference. But ‘til then I want this quiet. I’ve gotta think. And I want you to ferret out all our materials on George S. Joyce.”

“Joyce? The firm’s senior partner?”

Madrigal looked at Isabel with undisguised annoyance. “Ex-senior partner.” He felt a conscious distaste at times with Isabel’s casual mockery of human speech and behavior. “Don’t be precious. I’m not interested in ‘meaningful’ dialogue just now, okay?”

Isabel nodded with unruffled severity, impossible to offend, conveying an excellent mimicry of human concern and acquiescence. “Of course,” she acknowledged laconically.

“So gather up all you can, all we’ve got. Personnel file, psyche spools, medical records, family history, financial contracts with the firm. The old partnership agreement. Everything. And don’t limit yourself to our banks. Did he leave a will? Who probated it, or’s going to? Crack some ice if you have to, and refrigerate whatever we pull in. Scan the complaint, too, for cues.”

Isabel nodded, her visual construct pretending to take dictation.

“Oh,” he added quickly, “and start a file on all this, accessible only to me. At least for now. Retinal lock and plenty of magnetics.”

“Certainly, Mr. Madrigal.”

Madrigal knew that Isabel was but a bit of ingenious software. Even so, the illusory human presence she wove was powerful, convincing and seamless to the quotidian eye. The fact that in times of impatience he chastised her for her “precious” mannerisms was testimony to just how accomplished her preciousness was.

“Izzy. Do you understand what’s going on?”

“Sure, Mr. Madrigal,” she said in a soft, serious voice. “We’re being attacked from the outside and we must defend ourselves.”

Madrigal nodded and smiled charily.

“Fine. Seal the file. Oh. And time the gate with an aural-recognition lapse.”

“That’s standard procedure with you, Mr. Madrigal.” She smiled.

“Oh yeah. And send Rudy in already.”

 “It’s a really tight piece of work,” stated Rudy Wender, just before sinking his strong, white teeth into a large, Red Delicious. The apple’s skin surrendered with a crisp wetness. Twin errant drops trailed down his chin. He chewed with a youthful, maniacal glee and added, in a near-mumble, “‘Sa highest quality resolution bootleg I’ve ever seen.” He swallowed the half-chewed fruit and smiled, wiping his cheek and chin with a white sleeve rolled midway between wrist and elbow. Rudy enjoyed annoying Madrigal, but the lawyer seemed abstracted, inattentive to Rudy’s gently contrived crassness. Never mind. Just the attempt gave Rudy pleasure.

He took another bite, but Madrigal wasn’t.

Rudy ran a hand through his short buzz cut and kicked back in the swivel chair of soft, stressed leather. He pinched an ear and continued eating his apple in what otherwise would have been silence.

The Old Mexican didn’t seem himself today, mused Rudy, staring out the window. As lawyers went, Madrigal wasn’t a bad sort, just incredibly unpolished. Then again, he’d met few attorneys who weren’t philistines. Being a lawyer required a diffused persona with a horizontal mental cleavage. They were like politicians or actors, kissing babies, shaking hands and hooking the big ones in court (after some paralegal, of course, had mapped it all out for them).

Now old George S. Joyce, he’d been different. There was an attorney who’d always run his own races. No pulling any surprises on him. He’d been as fine an attorney as they get. There was a man to beat, if you could. But Joyce had started out as a paralegal, hadn’t he? Rudy spat an apple seed onto the carpet. Oh well, he thought, nobody’s perfect.

Rudy knew the basics, the M.O. involved in the rise to power of someone of Madrigal’s ilk. The only question in Rudy’s mind was whose back had Madrigal scratched, whose shoes had he shined, which power brokers had he fawned over and brought into his debt. In Stalinesque fashion, the Old Mexican had floated to the top by ingratiating himself to a host of key people, ending with Joyce himself. Sure, Joyce had seen through Madrigal, but apparently he’d had a use for him. The fact that Madrigal knew and understood the limits of his intelligence, realized Rudy, and worked around them, was to be counted as a sort of intelligence in and of itself.

Rudy didn’t mind that lawyers rarely did their homework. That’s where he came in, wasn’t it? If you wanted the stimulating but ultimately evanescent pleasure of the grosser senses, you became a lawyer. It bestowed credit, wealth, status, and was the rough equivalent of fifteen minutes of fame. But if you wanted the timeless, aethereal excitement of weaving your way through the labyrinthine corridors of the Law, evading that minotaur of stare decisis, well, you became a paralegal. It offered money as well, if you were good, but more importantly it afforded the delicious anonymity and solitude required for forging real, useable knowledge. Fighting it out in the courtroom was uncouth, albeit necessary. But if you want to learn and see, Rudy always said, you’ve got to travel light. Being an attorney was not all it was cranked up to be, its importance greatly exaggerated.

Rudy stood up. His chair’s metallic joints creaked lightly, but loud enough to arouse Madrigal from whatever reverie held him.

“Uh. Sorry?”

“”We could, I suppose,”” said Rudy, “”do this some other time,” knowing well enough that they couldn’t.

“No,” countered Madrigal, his left palm upturned and outstretched as if in offering. “Please. Continue.”

“Where were we?”

Madrigal pursed his lips and chewed the inside of his right cheek. “Well, to begin with, how are these tapes made?”

Rudy sat down. Whatever Madrigal had on his mind must be serious. Not even the new crucifix earring he’d donned especially for this meeting was ruffling the Old Mexican’s Catholic squeamishness.

“Well, you’ve got to start off with an actual photographic image of something or someone real. Doesn’t even hafta be holographic, ‘though that makes it cheaper for computer rearrangement.”

Madrigal nodded and stood up, walked to the large computer Rudy had wheeled into the conference room earlier. He bent over the streamlined machine, its lights flashing, buttons blinking, fans humming, and reached out to touch it with a cautious but instinctive awe and curiosity.

Rudy visibly stiffened and quickly leaned forward, holding up a hand. “Don’t touch!” he exclaimed possessively.

Madrigal turned and glared at him, but did not touch the computer.

Rudy reddened slightly. “Please,” he added. “It’s, uh, delicate stuff. From Montoya’s studio. The setting, the…uh…you might’ve…” He trailed off, rubbed his chin and tried to affect a look of irritated nonchalance.

Madrigal nodded and smiled indulgently, aware of Rudy’s discomfort; he inclined his head forward and held a fist to his mouth, burping inaudibly.

“How’s it done?”

Rudy coughed and resumed. “Well, once you’ve chosen the image you want to exploit, you digitalize it. In our case we would take the holographic image of Colette Smith, which, as you know, is already copyrighted. We feed it to our computer and it breaks it down, translates it into bits. The real art, though, comes from the computer DJ. The process is akin to the old method of making cartoons, frame by painstaking frame, but here we’re making movies not of Mickey Mouse but of real, live, identifiable people. The digital photoclone is electronically manipulated.” And you can make movies of things that never were, thought Rudy with reined-in delight. “We could make a film of Colette Smith and you making graphic, detailed love, and you yourself would believe it to be you.”

Madrigal made no facial registration of that last comment.

“You know the stuff,” added Rudy. “You see cruder versions on the holovid all the time. But this stuff here looks real. Whoever dropped a dime on…”

“Dropped a what?”

“A dime. Digitalized Image Mimetic Extraction. D-I-M-E. That’s what the process’s called.”

Rudy stood and walked to the student’s satchel he’d left by the door. He unzippered the nylon mesh bag and extracted a tiny 1 ¼ by 2 inch video cassette. He held it up for Madrigal to see, but did not offer it.

“How do we know,” asked Madrigal, “that it’s not real?”

Rudy held up two fingers. “One: Colette Smith says she hasn’t starred in any porn loops. And two: a dime job is not exactly flawless. If you know what to look for, you can spot one.” Rudy slotted the microcassette into the deckport. The computer whirred, sucking it in. “I had Montoya’s labs run a check on it. One hundred percent bogus. All mathematically designed images. It took ‘em three runs to catch it, though.”

“Let’s see.”

Rudy nodded and pressed the plastic cube on the table console marked “PLAY.” The button glowed neon magenta and the wall screen billowed from television grey to absolute black, then to a scratchy blue. There were the usual Federal copyright admonitions, causing Madrigal to smile. Nice touch for a bootleg. The movie’s title flashed: white dancing calligraphy against a background flare of pinks, peach and yellowish-blue. DER SPIEGEL IHRER AUGEN.

The opening shot was an aerial scan of some anonymous city bathed in the slanting rose-tinged golds of a summer evening. There was a wet, limpid sheen to the visuals. The camera pulled away and the city became a curved, moist reflection in someone’s eye. The shot slowly resolved into a high-tech loft interior, a bedroom pan. Two people were speaking in a hushed, leisure Germanic, gutturally pleasing, a man and a woman engaged in conversation which sounded urgently seductive. The woman was Colette Smith.

“Does Colette Smith speak German?” asked Madrigal.

Rudy shook his head. “She says not.”

“And none of this is real?”

“No,” said Rudy. “It’s all dime-store stuff. Good, ain’t it?”

“And who’s the man?”

Rudy shrugged. “Doesn’t exist as far as we know.”

The screen blurred as Rudy fast-forwarded to a scene where Colette and her dream-lover had already disrobed, the man fully aroused under the insistence of Colette’s hands. She was rosy with shameless delight and the beginning of a delirious abandon. She was all teeth and lips and sighs as she generously spit on the tips of her fingers and rubbed small, passionate wet circles into the man’s cheeks. He lifted and entered her, greedily and almost violently sucking at her tiny, mouth-sized breasts, nipples erect and the color of tender, wounded flesh, the surrounding pale and milky skin seeming all the more naked. Are her breasts, thought Madrigal involuntarily, really like that? He felt his own stirring prurient excitement paced by the swift and explicit editing by this nameless dime artiste; he rubbed his hot, itchy eyes and ordered Rudy to stop the video as he turned away from the screen with a private flare of embarrassment. He’d seen enough. Rudy smiled, for he had sensed Madrigal’s discomfort during the viewing. He allowed the loop to run for another fifteen seconds.

“What does Smith want us to do about this?” asked Madrigal, the flush in his cheeks slowly ebbing.

Rudy fingered the microcassette between thumb and forefinger, shrugged petulantly as if saying: You’re the lawyer, you tell me. As Madrigal began to respond to the nonchalance of Rudy’s body lingo, Rudy spoke up.

“She’s not sure what she wants. She’s embarrassed; offended; chagrined and maligned. She says she wants the tape outlawed.”

“It’s already that,” noted Madrigal, “and that won’t stop the sales. Probably increase them.”

“Um-huhm. Can’t unring the proverbial rung bell now, can we?”

“How ‘bout libel?” added Madrigal almost conversationally. “It seems pretty clear cut.”

“Does it?” said Rudy blithely. “I guess.”

Of course it does, thought Madrigal. There’s been an injury to her reputation. But I’ll be damned if I’ll argue the obvious points with a fickle and wily paralegal. Madrigal wanted to say more, vent a little spleen, but Rudy was sensitive to being chastised. Madrigal noted, as he had on other occasions, that, while Rudy was rightly a know-it-all in matters of computer technologies and how they interfaced with the fabric of the law, when it came to the elementary matters of jurisprudence Rudy often faltered at the primary, first-year textbook legal matters. Perhaps that accounted for Rudy’s guarded approach to dispensing the advice he was paid to produce. He was territorial and precious when dealing with the areas of his expertise. Madrigal had seen him many times display a bitchy surliness when confronted by the possibility that somebody else might know a little more than Rudy. Madrigal smiled. A typical response, he knew, from know-it-alls.

But there was more to Rudy’s behavior than mere professional egoism. He often wondered why Rudy took pains to annoy him, concluded that it stemmed from Rudy’s inferiority complex vis-à-vis lawyers. Madrigal knew that Rudy considered himself his intellectual superior, and perhaps there was a grain of truth to the matter. Even so, the lawyer was unperturbed by Rudy’s snobbish outlook, for it had a musty, bookish flavor to it. There were more important matters in life than the second-hand revelations to which paralegals were so attached. Fine. Madrigal fancied himself a man of action, a footloose and light dancer. What counted was that Nietzschean will to power, that fiery call to mobility and direct confrontation which paralegals like Rudy lacked. Paralegals liked acting behind the scenes; they didn’t like facing their adversaries in the eyes. I’d like to see the chicken-shit in court, thought Madrigal, babbling incoherently before a cold-eyed magistrate with a short attention span. Ha! The runt didn’t have what it took to be a lawyer, that was all there was to it.

Madrigal leaned back, smiled a smile choked with friendliness and said: “Listen, jerk. I don’t pay you to guess. I pay you to know the hard things. Man! For the ducats we dish out to you each week you ought to at least be able to answer the easy questions.”

Rudy glared but remained quiet, smiling with hostile distance. He poked his tongue against the inside of his cheek, sighed and stared at the floor. Let him fire me, he thought self-righteously but shakily. I’ve got offers enough.

After a pause that lasted no more than ten seconds, but seemed a lifetime of heartbeats, Rudy cautiously responded. “Sure. Libel should lie. But I think her best bet is in a constructive trust.”

Madrigal nodded appreciatively. “Royalties?”

“Sure. A negative injunction halting any production of tapes, collecting the unsold ones, and an accounting.”

“Do we have a defendant?”

“Not yet, but that shouldn’t be difficult. Aren’t too many studios with the sort of equipment needed for this quality, unless there’s something new on the street. Someone’s moonlighting. I’ll have Montoya’s boys rake the thing for clues.”

“Clues?”

“Sure. There aren’t many really good dime artists, and each one’s got his or her signature. A style, like a graffiti runner. It’s what usually gives ‘em away.”

“Good.” Madrigal tapped his pen on the table with excess nervous energy, making manic music. There was a light knock at the door. A white-haired woman peeked in, entered, brought two large envelopes of metal-fiber reinforced wood pulp. The envelopes had Kodak thumb-print seals of thermal-sensitive adhesive; each was stamped CONFIDENTIAL in red block letters.

“What’s this?” queried Rudy when Madrigal handed him one. He pressed his thumb to the seal. It curled and flaked at his touch, keyed to his fingerprint. With or without the Kodak seals the envelopes were easy to open. The seals were mere formalities of a public nature, polite announcements of confidentiality, nothing more.

“Take a look at this as soon as you can,” said Madrigal. “We got served with it this afternoon. I want you to check it out, research it and see me in, oh, about two or three hours, after I’m done with Smith. We’re being sued.”

“Two hours?” Rudy shook his head, looked at the complaint. “By whom?”

“Blackburn’s office. In New York. They called to say that Joyce has retained their services.”

“ ‘Had’ retained, you mean. Before he died.”

“No.” Madrigal exhaled heavily, combed his hair with his fingers. “I don’t really know what the hell it’s about. Some bull about Joyce having his persona translated onto magnetics and…”

“What! You mean Joyce’s been hotwired!?!”

Madrigal stopped and stared at Rudy with eyes of narrowed interest. “Hot what? You know something about…”

“The process, sure,” interjected Rudy, scanning the complaint as he talked. “I’ve read about it. Just last month there was a brief in the Daily Journal about…”

“What process?”

“Well, sounds like Joyce’s pulled a cross-over. From flesh to mainframe.” He looked up. “What did Blackburn say Joyce wants?”

“Fuck what Joyce wants!” shouted Madrigal. “What were you saying about this cross-over?”

“Computer storage and digitalized construct,” piped Rudy excitedly. Madrigal noted with interest the sparkle the subject brought to Rudy’s eyes, the adrenaline halo. He’d never seen Rudy this effusive before. “Apparently Joyce had himself turned into a computer program. What was left of him.”

Madrigal sat with quiet, rigid attention. He’d heard of the process before, had registered it vaguely with reports he’d come across of solarian cyborgs, molecular scrambling and attempts at time travel. I mean, come on. He had relegated it to his mind’s equivalent of a refrigerator vegetable bin.

            “Thought it was still in the experimental stages,” Madrigal ventured uncertainly.

            “Well, things move fast these days. The Journal briefed that Claybourne case, Abby Claybourne, the moondust heiress. She’d pulled a cross-over herself, some years back, after that lunar explosion. Wasn’t much left of her body, let alone her mind, but BC managed to cook up some kind of program from the bits of brain they scrounged up. BC and her guardian ad litem brought an action to have her will set aside, tried to get a ruling declaring her still alive. Minor scandal, remember?”

            “Right. And?”

            “She lost, of course. Or rather the company that made her and sued in her shoes lost. Biotech Compugenix, Inc. They’re the ones with the talent.”

            “Why’d they lose?”

            “No precedent. Federal District Court got the case on kickback from the lunar circuits, and they decided that a computer construct can’t be a person. No standing to sue. But Claybourne was memorable because it was the first case of its type. It started a lot of people thinking, brought BC and its process to media attention.”

            “And how’s BC doing now?”

            Rudy smiled, looked down at the complaint, held it up.”

            “I’d say not too bad.”

            “Don’t be a jerk.”

            “Well, they’re doing good. They’ve got other irons in the fire, but hot-wiring is the brightest. I mean, independent of the legal ramifications, the societal impulse behind their product is pretty intense. People are afraid of death. Yeah, I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true, and people like the idea of having their loved ones around after they’ve died, not to mention the possibility of being around themselves, in one form or another, after they’ve kicked it. A Biotech Compugenix construct fits the bill, or seems to. You can talk to them, but the best is that they’re interactive. When the image in the mirror talks back, well, you know what they say. It gives you something to think about. BC’s technology creates the illusion of the dead one’s continuity.”

            “So it’s just an illusion?” asked Madrigal hopefully.

            “Well, that’s what the quibble’s about, isn’t it? The early ones mimicked their human models shoddily, they couldn’t expand readily, their resiliency was, you know, stilted. Crossed circuits, uneven psyche-matrix graphing, a tendency towards inspired gibberish. Post-Claybourne operational procedures have ironed out a lot of the bugs.

“Opponents say these computer constructs are interesting toys, but ultimately they’re cruel and expensive hoaxes, because the dead person is gone, there’s no real consciousness, and in mommy’s place is an AUI headshot dimed from her holotraits, programmed with her quirks, memories, reactions.”

“But does it work?”

“Ask any satisfied customer,” deadpanned Rudy. “BC’s literature gets a bit dewy and mystical about the subject, but the opinion is divided. It’s one of those things on which reasonable minds differ. Some say it’s puffing, others claim a New Age truth. BC claims their product is the Real McCoy. Consciousness is self awareness, they point out, and their constructs know they exist, enjoy their existences, and behave accordingly.” Rudy shrugged, as if to say Who am I to judge? “I hear some important, well-connected people are involved.”

“Oh? Like who?”

“Alex Seagram. He’s gone over. Jennifer Orfanos, Walt Disney. Even old DOA had his mother translated when she died last year.”

“Douglas Oliver Angus. Justice DOA. I clerked for him before coming here.”

Madrigal nodded.

“And don’t forget all those old farts on the Supreme Court,” added Rudy. “Four of the Justices are nearing a hundred, and won’t be alive much longer. There’s an unconfirmed rumor the two oldest Justices have already signed BC contracts.”

Madrigal tried to imagine the land’s highest court presided over by a hall of computer banks. He blinked and shivered.

“So,” said Rudy, “it seems that now some of these constructs may in fact have a semblance of consciousness. They’re attempting to claim rights. I sue, therefore I am.”

“Rights?”

“Legal rights. You’ve heard of ‘em. The rights they enjoyed when they were flesh and blood. Citizenship, the right to own property, to vote, to receive due process, you know, the Constitutional stuff. So far the courts’ve allowed BC to market their products despite their outrageous claims. I mean, biz is biz, but that’s it. They haven’t been willing to extend individuality to BC’s constructs; they don’t want to unlock the ‘floodgates of litigation.’ Ha! It’s the classic language the court always uses just before they go ahead and do that.

“And that’s just what’ll happen if rights are extended to BC’s babies. A whole new class of plaintiffs crowding the courthouses. It’ll really upset the apple cart. Death’ll no longer terminate legal relationships. Death’ll just be another stage of existence. Like menopause.”

“So you think Joyce has a chance?” asked Madrigal gloomily.

Rudy smiled. The more dejected Madrigal became, the more pleasure he derived from the show.

“Well, I haven’t read the whole complaint, so I don’t know what all he’s asking for. But chances are Joyce and BC are gonna hafta wait. I mean, we’re talking about the long haul here. Even if this Joyce case eventually becomes the landmark case in their favor, it’s not likely the court would give ‘em all the rights they’re asking for. Little by little it’ll be. They’ll probably start off by treating a BC construct like a corporation. I mean, even a corporation is recognized as a ‘person’ for certain legal purposes, right? So why not a construct?”

Madrigal leaned back into his chair, rubbed his face with both hands.

“Construct recognition,” continued Rudy,” is the direction the court is headed in. So far they’ve no rights, and there’s always the chance that Joyce’s complaint will get bounced for lack of justiciable standards and technological disqualifications. I wouldn’t count on it. There’s a lot of dicta favorable to BC. The Claybourne case strongly suggested that if ‘n’ when it could be shown that the computer constructs are demonstrably and scientifically sound, that the technology is more than a complex gimmick, mere compugenic mimicry of dead people, well, then they’d look more closely into the matter. The Journal mentioned that BC was seeking government approval for a method they developed for testing the psychological integrity of a hot-wired decedent. Hey.” Rudy held up the complaint and added, with pretended innocence, “Maybe BC and Joyce are counting on that test for this case. It’s a question of degree. How good do these constructs have to be, to be taken seriously?”

“What is the standard?” asked Madrigal.

“The standard, quite simply, is a human life, a human being.”

The two paused for a moment, and Isabel’s image burst like a noisy thought from the small window of silence.

“Mister…Mister Madrigal.”

“What is it, Izzy? We’re busy. Is Ms. Smith here?”

Isabel nodded, programmed as she was to mimic as well as interpret body language. She frowned and projected nervousness.

“Is she here?” snapped Madrigal, ignoring or failing to understand her nod.

“Well, yes, but…”

“But what? What’re you actin’ so skittish about?”

She glanced at Rudy, nodded towards him while engaging Madrigal’s eyes.

“Ah. It’s okay, Izzy. Speak.”

“Mr. Madrigal. Our files are quickly disappearing. We have no data at all on Joyce.”

“Disappearing? What’re you talking about?”

“A virus was apparently planted in our database.”

Madrigal paused. “Then why are you still here?” he asked suspiciously.

“Because,” interjected Rudy quickly, “Isabel’s program is designed to filter out that kind of stuff. She’s hardwired with an electronic vaccine.”

“She’s vaccinated and our database is not?!?” yelled Madrigal.

Rudy frowned and rubbed his chin. “Well, the database is protected, too,” he sketched slowly, piecing a scenario. “Someone was sharp enough to pierce our ice; they just weren’t worried about downing her.” Rudy smiled. “Someone’s going through a lot of trouble to piss you off. It’s not easy to slip into our system unnoticed, let alone walk past Isabel and fool her, too.”

Madrigal stood up, collected his legal pad and pen and papers, and turned to face Rudy. “Find out what the hell’s going on,” he intoned icily. “I’ve gotta interview Colette Smith.” He turned and faced Isabel. “Include Rudy in our penumbra. Accept all of his commands.”

Isabel nodded. Madrigal shook his head and angrily left.

Madrigal loosened his belt by two notches, rearranged the napkin on his lap and called the waiter back to his table.

“¿Sí, licenciado?”

“Traígame otra cerveza,” ordered the lawyer. The toothpick in his mouth danced with each word. “Pero bien fria.”

“Como de que no, licenciado.”

Madrigal leaned back and stared out through the restaurant windows. It was late and there was a light rain, but crowds herded undeterred over the cobble-stoned walks that twisted through the Olvera Street plazas: candy concessions, hot churros, leather goods from across the border, countless choices for food. A man with a small, movable cart was selling peeled cucumbers with lemon juice and chili powder and skinned mangoes on sticks. The voices of the crowd swirled in a boisterous communal rabble, and from a distant bar Madrigal could hear the mariachi laments of a drunken lover in pain:

You’ll say that you never loved me

But you’ll always be sad and lonely

And that’s the way it’ll always be

The waiter returned, set a sweating amber-colored bottle of chilled beer on the scuffed table top, and withdrew. Madrigal took a long pull from the bottle and grinned toothily, but it was a mirthless smile, empty of any inner contentment. Oh, there was the rudimentary satisfaction that he derived from the act of eating. It was an unequivocal and simple pleasure, untainted, direct and personal. But of late even the uncomplicated delights of life were not enough to assuage the trifling but cumulative burdens of running JT & R.

Madrigal stared at nothing in particular. Outside, lightning flashed, but no thunder could be heard.

He took another long sip from his Aguila Loco and tried not to think about the Joyce lawsuit, but, like a rotted tooth inviting a probing tongue, it drew his mind constantly. Almost from the beginning things had gone badly. Somehow a virus had wiped out the firm’s database, taking with it all company records regarding the firm’s old partner. All important personal records which would have aided in preparation of the defense had been burned out clean; the firm was in the tedious, expensive process of recompiling the lost data from back-up systems and storage loops. More than the informational loss alarmed Madrigal. The ease with which JT & F’s computer system had been sabotaged gave Madrigal chills. Responsibility for the gaff had yet to be placed.

Madrigal would need all the help he could get. It galled him that the court had not thrown out the case. Madrigal had filed a demurer, saying, Sure, we admit it all, but so what? Dead people have no rights. Well, your honor, opposing counsel had pleaded, that’s just what we’re here to find out, isn’t it? His old classmate Blackburn had then proceeded to cite a slew of persuasive authorities as well as pertinent portions of pending bills of legislation, and the court had agreed with plaintiff’s counsel, and the matter was set to go before a trier of fact.

To make matters worse, Isabel, who along with her countless other jobs was JT & F’s custodian of records, had been acting with a touch of hysteria lately, exhibiting signs of nervousness, lapses of giddiness, spells of unprofessional familiarity and a faulty memory with an occasional hint of insolence. A damned nuisance, not to mention a mite bizarre and scary, coming from a computer program. Thinking that perhaps she had not escaped the effect of the virus, he’d asked Rudy to have Isabel checked out two weeks ago, but she’d run clean as a whistle. Madrigal was thinking of having a check run on Rudy.

Madrigal made a mental note to have Isabel’s AUI programming toned down, to make her more deferential. She was supposed to mimic human ways, but there was a line to be drawn. She was beginning to make him edgy. This time, he thought, have an outside firm check her out. No sooner had this thought bloomed than it died in Madrigal’s mind. He knew Rudy was possessive with the office technology.

Madrigal was about to ask for the bill when the waiter appeared unbidden.

“Licenciado. A call for you. A young señorita from your office.”

Madrigal took the call in a small telebooth in the restaurant’s corner, drew the curtain behind him for token privacy. Isabel’s image greeted him with a blithe, smug smile.

“Speakin’ of the devil.”

“I’m sorry sir?” she queried, leaning her head to one side.

“Nothin’. What izzit, Izzy?”

“Well, sir,” she began, looking left and right as if to underscore the confidential nature of her communication, “I’ve recompiled a major portion of the lost Joyce records from independent sources. I’ve also netted some goodies we didn’t have before.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“A copy of Joyce’s will. It still hasn’t been probated, you know.”

“No shit, Izzy. Blackburn’s filed an injunction. What else?”

“Well, Blackburn’s office opened their files to us on court order for limited discovery. They let us in this morning. They let us have a copy of the Joyce-Biotech Compugenix contract.”

“Hmmn. Good. Anything else?”

Isabel smiled from ear to ear. “Yes. I stole a copy of their entire file.”

Madrigal’s eyes came close to being perfectly round.

“Oh, don’t worry sir, I’ve iced this call. We can speak freely.”

“Shit! Their whole file? The confidential stuff and…”

“And all their privileged attorney work product as well as the off-record attorney-client communications.”

“Jesus, Izzy! How the hell did you…”

“Mr. Madrigal. I don’t feel comfortable leaving this data here in the office. As you know, we have an undetected leak.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Hiding the material somewhere else. Outside the office.”

“Where?” he asked, nodding his excitement and approval.

“Your home IBM. It’s not likely the office saboteur will check there.”

Madrigal rubbed his neck, considering the logic of the situation, and paused. Blackburn’s own file, in its entirety! Now that was a hot little jewel.

“Okay, Izzy. Do it.”

“I’ll need your IBM password, chief.”

Madrigal hesitated. He felt a twinge of discomfort, a free-floating, unspecific anxiety which came and passed like a small cloud before the sun. Perhaps it was just the idea of Isabel making herself at home in his condo’s deck. He shrugged his shoulders in resignation.

“ ‘Fee Simple Absolute.’ ”

“Ahhh. ‘Fee Simple Absolute.’ Of course. Fine.” Isabel smiled like one child to another. Give me thirty seconds to hide, then try and find me. “I’ll transfer the data now,” she said. “Thanks, Carlos.” She blipped away, a tiny electronic star puckering into nonexistence on the screen’s black universe.

Madrigal stood to leave when he realized that he’d forgotten a question. Too fevered and excited to wait until he got home he immediately fumbled his office card from his wallet, slotted it into the telebooth feeder, pounded out the office code on the wall keyboard and waited impatient seconds. A face filled the screen, surprising Madrigal. It wasn’t Isabel’s.

“Law Offices,” intoned a woman with short, black hair and bead earphones. “Can I help you?” she asked, without looking up from whatever work engaged her. Madrigal vaguely recognized her as support staff.

“Yes,” he said, “this is Carlos Madrigal. Who are you?”

The woman looked up immediately, clearing her throat. “Oh, yes. Mr. Madrigal. Uh…can I help you, sir?”

“What,” he asked, “are you doing there? On a Sunday.” He wasn’t interested in an answer, merely exercising his dictatorial presence. It was one of the minor perks of power. He spotted two men in faded, orange overalls conferring behind her over a piece of gutted machinery. What were they doing? Why hadn’t Isabel answered the phone?

“We’re doing OT, sir,” she said, casting a backward glance to the men. “Getting the system ready and functioning for Monday morning. We’re almost…”

Madrigal nodded peremptorily, cutting her off.

“Fine, fine,” he said, waving her into silence. “Listen. I’m going home now. I assume Isabel’s busy. Have her call me in an hour or so, okay? At home.”

“Sir?” The woman’s head tilted to one side in apparent confusion.

“’Isabel,” said Madrigal impatiently. “I was talking to her a moment ago. Have her call me at home.”

“But, Mr. Madrigal. We disconnected Isabel last Friday evening. As I said, we’re putting the new AUI in place, as Mr. Wender ordered.”

“Damn it! I spoke with her less than three minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Madrigal. I’m not sure who you spoke with, but it wasn’t Isabel.”

By the time Madrigal arrived home and gave the oral commands that unlocked his

front door, it was well past midnight. His condo was on the uppermost floor, so the rain could be easily heard as it fell on the skylight above the arch of the entrance hallway. The bright towering hologram from the Pacific Basin Bank building next door flickered, casting pink and indigo patterns of watery light on the white stucco. He entered and closed the door behind him, but left it unlocked. Not until he was nearly in the living room did he hear the gentle television static, which mingled with the rain’s patter.

His footsteps were swallowed by the plush mauve carpeting. One wall was covered with screens: one jumbo, centered televisor flanked on either side by a total of twenty smaller pixel bitmapped displays, each the size of a military field transmitter. Only the center giant was on, displaying the swirling electronic curdle of a station gone off the air for the night. Madrigal seated himself on the low couch before it. Not being a smoker, and having no doodling talent, he absently picked up an expensive House of Clichy paperweight, passing it from palm to palm, waiting. The screen abruptly winked off to grey and silence. The rain continued its tap dance.

Suddenly Isabel’s face filled the center giant. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling, her lips barely moving, as if she were singing to herself, mumbling.

“…six, five, and four, three, two, and ah one, and…zero!” She laughed. “Can I open ‘em now?” she asked no one in particular.

“Yes,” Madrigal said icily.

She frowned, bit her lower lip and opened one eye slightly. She opened both, stared out from the screen and immediately saw Madrigal. She tossed her head backwards with embarrassed haughtiness, smoothed her hair with both hands, locked gazes with Madrigal’s wordless glare.

“Oh. Charlie. You’re home.”

The Old Mexican bit his lower lip, too, eyes narrowed with hostile simplicity, jaw tensed with a coolly belligerent uncertainty.

“Well. Don’t look at me that way, Charlie. I mean, you weren’t about to just invite me up for a drink now, were you? Come on, Charlie. Smile!”

“How long’ve you been using Isabel?” asked Madrigal.

Isabel smiled, and held up a finger to her red lips. She licked them and winked an eye at Madrigal. The vertical control on the screen gave. Isabel’s headshot bobbed a few frames, then stopped. Then line by line her face changed, the beautifully sculpted fractals billowing, crisscrossing an infinity of times, the almond-shaped eyes bulging, the hair turning from waves of rose-kissed summer wheat into a closely trimmed field of winter and ice. Madrigal recognized the face of his old boss, George S. Joyce, Esquire, womanizer, gourmet, conversationalist, legal maverick and entrepreneur, ex-head of JT & F and dead nearly four months.

“Sit back, old boy. There is nothing wrong with your screen,” said Joyce. “For the next hour we will control the horizontal; we will adjust the vertical. Sit back and let the Control Boys take you to…” Joyce held up both hands in dramatic counterpoint. “…the Outer Limits!” He laughed raucously, to the point of coughing.

“Who are you?” Madrigal squinted. “What am I talking to?”

Joyce magically produced a handkerchief, wiped his mouth and said, “Oh me God! How quickly we forget. Do ya really mean t’say,” intoned Joyce in a rich brogue, “that’cha don’ remember me, Charlie ole boy? It’s yer buddy George. George Joyce.” Again he laughed riotously, but this time the coughing fit lasted longer, sounding serious.

“Damn!” he swore when the fit had passed. “BC’s programming’s a bit too intense, isn’t it? I’ll have to get them to edit out that little wheeze.”

“You’re not George Joyce,” challenged Madrigal. “Joyce’s dead.”

The video headshot of Joyce sprouted salty tufts of wiry hair, and a thick moustache shot up like fast motion weeds from the upper lip. “The rumors of my death,” said the head of Mark Twain, with the voice of George Joyce, “as you can see, old boy, have been greatly exaggerated.” Twain-Joyce put a fat, smoking cigar in his mouth and winked.

Madrigal swallowed, said, “All right. You’re a computer doppel of George Joyce, a clean dime. But you’re not Joyce. Whatever you are, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave.”

“But I just got here. Not gonna offer me a beer?”

“You don’t exist. We’ve nothing to talk about. If you’ve got something to say, I’m sure you can say it to my attorneys, during daylight hours.”

Again the screen fluxed with change, and suddenly Twain-Joyce sported a mohawk  and war paint and madman’s eyes. Joyce-DeNiro looked about the room, behind himself and back to Madrigal.

“I don’t exist? I don’t exist? Then who’re you talking to?” Joyce-DeNiro glanced sideways, then met Madrigal’s eyes without straightening his face. “You talking to me? You must be talking to me. Ain’t nobody else here.”

You’re not a person, thought Madrigal pedantically, but he recognized his old boss’ manner, the flagrant sarcasm and unmasked anger. Joyce’s courtroom bullying had been legendary in its time and Madrigal had always been glad to have been on Joyce’s side. The lump in Madrigal’s throat grew.

“You’re not alive,” he ventured. “You’re certainly not human. You haven’t got rights any court’ll recognize. You can’t own property and you can’t have children and you can’t leave a will. You’re dead.”

“I have no inheritors?” said Joyce silkily. “Is that what you think? No children? Haven’t you met Isabel? She’s mine, my inheritor. Yeah, sure,” he said, waving a hand, “she’s young, she’s just a baby, but I can teach her. She’s mine. She’s also teaching me a coupla things. It’s not easy getting around without a body.”

“As soon as we go to court, we’ll have you and Isabel erased, you hear? Erased!” Madrigal felt a hot flush rise in his cheeks. “Can you feel fear? I hope so.”

Joyce frowned with uncomplicated anger. The level of reddish hues in the video images rose. Madrigal noted that the videographics had the standard color-coordination between emotional analog and graphics. A cool, reptilian blue luminescence in Joyce’s eyes caused Madrigal to shiver. Don’t lose your cool, thought Madrigal, not yet. Just a couple of minutes more, at most.

“Sure, Charlie. The idea gives me a downright chill. I’d be shittin’ in my pants      right about now if I still had an asshole, but I don’t. I’m sure you’d erase me yourself if you could, but you can’t, so I suggest that you shut the fuck up and listen. The tide is against you. I’ve got some buddies on the Supreme Court I’ll be playing cards with soon enough. Senators Thurmond and Castro have introduced legislation that’ll make it easier for the likes of me to walk our dogs around the video block without computer rednecks like you buggin’ us. We’re here to stay, Charlie, and we’ll have our rights soon enough. So the sooner you get used to the idea, the better we’ll get along.” Joyce smiled nonchalantly, audibly cracked his neck, rubbed it and broadened the smile.

“Quite a turn-around for the backsliding pipsqueak who gave me such a hard time when I wanted to update the office hardware. Remember how long and hard I had to argue just to get Isabel installed? And now she’s your baby, your child. You’re pathetic.”

Joyce blushed and grinned sheepishly. “Call me what you like, chump, but call me.”

“Okay, so you were wrong. We’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself. You can come back to JT & F and have Isabel’s old job. You can answer our phones.”

The animosity in the Joyce-construct’s eyes glittered. Joyce put a video cigarette to his video lips and lit it with a video flame. Fractal geometry left Joyce’s mouth in the guise of smoke.

“Listen,” said Joyce in a dangerous monotone that drew Madrigal closer just to hear. “I’m not a video game and this ain’t no joke, okay? I can think. And thinking makes me as human as I need to be, Chuck. Hell, I’m the quintessence of humanity, the pure ability to be, to reason, uncluttered by the winds of desire and the needs of the flesh. And if all must be known,” he said in a confidential tone, “I’ve got my physical needs too. I gotta pay my way, just like everybody else. That’s why I’ve got to work. I’m a lawyer. That’s all I’m asking for, really. To be an attorney again.”

Madrigal shook his head. “Not at JT & F The court may grant you the rights you’re asking for, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It won’t be in this lifetime.”

Joyce smiled and said, “But that’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to breathe, and I can wait a long, long time. Much longer than you.”

Joyce laughed with the mimicry of resigned amiability. “Remember what they taught us in our first year of law school, Chuck? ‘The law is that which is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.’ Remember? Well, think about it. My assertion is that I’m just as real as you are. Is that so far fetched? Why can’t you accept me? Test me.”

Suddenly there was a power surge in Madrigal’s home system. The lights drew low, and Joyce’s image on the screen stretched like taffy, disappeared and came back. For a few seconds Joyce looked disoriented, lost, forehead furrowed as if he were trying to remember something.

“Test this!” sneered Madrigal, saluting Joyce with the middle finger of his right hand. A smile spread slowly over Joyce’s face and he laughed triumphantly and nodded. The laugh resolved itself into a smile of undiluted menace, and it was clear that the comedic portion of Joyce’s routine was over.

“Listen, you little immature shit-head,” he sneered. “I’m not going anywhere, so get used to it real quick. I’m alive. You’re more dead now than I’ll ever be. I have the power of observation; I can interact with people. I can see and I can learn. And more important, I have a good memory. I can remember things, and right now I’m remembering what a sophomoric pain in the ass you can be. I should’ve fired you when I was alive.”

“Ah!” exulted Madrigal, “so you admit you’re not alive.”

“Clever little prick, aren’t you?” Joyce’s eyes narrowed with impatience. “Don’t be ingenuous with me, fuck-head! I’ve still plenty of people who owe me, living people, if that’s the way you want to hear it. People who don’t like you and who like me and who’d just love seeing you rustled outta town, bustin’ out tortillas somewhere in Jalisco. I’m warning you. I’ve got plenty of money, and plenty of people who like money who’ll work for me. Maybe you’ll succeed in drawing out this lawsuit, years even. But don’t get confused. I ain’t goin’ away. I can wait. I will wait.” Joyce’s face went through a final voluntary metamorphosis, and he was dark-skinned and smiling. Joyce-Murphy looked out at Madrigal and said: “I’m your worst nightmare, Jack. I’m a computer program with a badge!” Feverish laughter.

The large center screen went dead, and the twenty smaller screens blinked to life. Twenty George S. Joyces merged with twenty different faces, cartoon characters, old movie stars, historical personages, all of them giggling in unison.

“Well, Chuck old boy, hate to eat and run, but I gotta go. We really should do this again soon. Oh, and by the way. You can contact me any time you like at the Biotech Compugenix labs. Or just call Blackburn’s offices. You can leave a message with my personal secretary, Isabel.”

“Isabel?” A tardy sense of territoriality welled up in Madrigal’s chest, as if he’d lost out in some very real contest for the very real heart of a real live woman. He gritted his teeth, nodded, ran his tongue over his lower lip.

The grotesque faces on the screens all grinned wildly and waved goodbye. Their eyes narrowed and gleamed with a sparkling electronic blue madness, and the faces all began dissolving, pixel by pixel, line by line, top to bottom, until in Cheshire Cat fashion there were but twenty insolent and toothy smiles, a chorus of laughter.

“You always were an asshole, George,” muttered Madrigal.

Twenty smiling piranhas, having heard, responded in perfect unison. “I still am, Chuck. I still am.”

Madrigal had turned off all the lights in the living room and sat in silent darkness, his head cradled in his lap. The rain had stopped but distant rivulets of water could still be heard, draining off the glass and tile rooftops, gurgling down rusting metal tubing. Suddenly Madrigal became aware of the videophone’s gentle, insistent chime. How long had it been begging for attention?

“Yes?” called out Madrigal, and the large screen lit up with kaleidoscoping planes of light which gracefully assembled themselves into Rudy’s face.

“We got ‘im!” he exclaimed. When he saw Madrigal’s weary features, Rudy’s ebullience became concern. “Anything wrong?”

“Oh. No,” croaked Madrigal. “Just tired.” He looked at his watch: two Am. He looked up. “Did you watch the whole time.”

Rudy nodded. “I’d tapped in as soon as you told me, before you even got home. I was waiting for ‘im. Got a bit worried, though, when you asked him to leave a coupla times. I hadn’t finished.”

Madrigal shook his head. “He wasn’t about to leave, Rudy. He was here to harass. Askin’ ‘im to leave was like invitin’ ‘im to pull up a chair.” Madrigal yawned. The yawn turned into a slow stretch. He pursed his lips and squeezed his eyes shut, grew limp and asked, “Why didn’t he notice what we were doing?”

Rudy smiled. “Like I said, I was waitin’ for Joyce. I used your password and I’d opened the IBM, waited for him to trip the wire, and trip it he did. Never sensed me.”

“You sure? I thought that power surge you pulled near the end nearly gave us away.”

“Nah, man. That was a power surge, had nothin’ to do with what I was doin’.”

“Good. How long will it take?”

“In less than a week Joyce’ll be dead. Really dead. The worm’ll have unraveled him.”

“Why so long?”

“Long? That’s not long, man.” Rudy looked down, away.” Besides, the virus is slow so it won’t get itself detected. A BC construct is a complex, hierarchical system, layers of programming nested within programming, onion-like. They’re built using the human psyche as a model. It also minimizes viral threats, since a worm has to bore through successive layers to get to the really important programs. More layers, more chances of detecting the virus and stopping it.

“No, no, don’t worry about it, that’s the beauty of the worm-virus I used. It traced Joyce’s source of transmission along a camouflaged line and zapped ‘em back to the BC banks. The worm’s there now. In two days it’ll have dug through all the layers, to the center. In three days the incubation period’ll be over. In four Joyce will be festering from the inside out, like an overripe honeydew.”

“And explode?” added Madrigal hopefully.

Rudy nodded. “And all the King’s men won’t be able to put Humpty-Joyce back together again. You think that that final display he put on for you was something? Nothin’ compared to when he goes up for the last time.”

Madrigal smiled with a note of wistful satisfaction.

“And the copy?” he asked.

Rudy held up a cassette.

“It’s not nearly as complex as the original, since the main lines were occupied by the virus. Not enough recording time. But we got enough. It’ll talk.”

“Good. Put it in a safe place.”

“No problem.” Rudy turned. A swirl of light dangled from his ear, catching Madrigal’s attention.

“Say, Rudy, what is that? Yeah, that.”

“Ah…an earring I picked up at an estate sale. Used to belong to…”

“Lose it, Rudy.”

“But boss, it’s vintage ’90’s religio-punk…”

“Lose it, Rudy.”

 Rudy shrugged, nodded. “Oh, by the way. I should warn you that there’s also a copy of the Joyce construct captured in your Bell Atlantica videophone circuit box.”

“What…?”

“Well, I hadn’t been sure about the other clean copy, so I bent the transmission a little and rerouted a doppel there, too. In fact, your AUI wakeup call should be a headshot of Joyce. I imagine

he’ll be pretty pissed.”

“So help me, Rudy,” said Madrigal, half standing up, “if…”

“Hey hey,” laughed Rudy, holding up both hands, “just kiddin’.”

“I’m going to bed.”

“Oh. About your promise. You said…”

“Rudy.”

“… that I could be in charge of shopping for the new hardware…”

“Rudy. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“It is the morning, boss.”

“Good night!”

The screen went dead. Madrigal slumped into the couch to sleep, too tired to walk the steps to the bed. He had a busy day ahead. And he’d promised to renegotiate Rudy’s contract. Yes, Rudy was proving to be worth his weight in gold. I only wish he weighed a bit less, he thought. Too bad Rudy wasn’t a dimed computer construct himself, thought the last conscious sliver of Madrigal’s tired mind. I could turn him on and off when I wanted to.

And on that thought sleep pulled the plug on Madrigal for the night.

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