The elevator dinged to a stop at the seventh floor, and the doors slid open, revealing a slender, tallish man in a rather natty checked grey suit. He extended his hand, and I shook it briskly as I stepped out of the elevator.
"Hello then, you must be the gentleman who found one of our Eyes?"
"Yes Sir, I'm Nick Casler, one of your drones showed up at my front door about a week ago. You are?"
"J. R. Giles, I run PR for our little company here."
I arched an eyebrow, and couldn't resist. "Indeed.. How's the band?"
Giles blinked for a moment, then grinned slightly. I grinned back, and he shook his head before replying.
"Fine, thank you, though I'm not _that_ Giles, more's the pity. Shall we adjourn to my office?"
I acquiesced, and followed Giles to his office, past a couple of glass-and-chrome-and-hardwood conference rooms with excitingly expensive AV systems prominently displayed. His office door was a dark smooth wood, his name in restrained silver lettering on the wall next to it. The inside was more lawyer than PR hack, wall-to-wall bookshelves covered in leather-bound books, executive chair, leather, one. Executive desk, featureless black, one. Executive picture of family, framed, one.
I frowned. Nothing was out of place in this building, nothing at all.
"So, Mr. Giles. What exactly does your company _do_?"
"Well, it's refreshingly simple. We operate an orbital photography service. At any given moment, at any given place, we can usually arrange to have high quality imagery made available in whatever framerate and resolution our clients desire."
I pondered this a moment, as Giles smiled reassuringly from his side of the desk. "Ok. I can accept that, but topping Google Earth didn't pay for the shiny fake lobby, the shiny fake secretary, the shiny fake elevator.. I could go on sir, but I'd still like to know what you folks actually have going, and why I should return part of that to you, instead of posting the contents of its drive to the 'net."
Mr. Giles' face dropped from it's reassuring smile into an immobile and impassible granite bulwark. He leaned forward slightly and opened his mouth, then froze. A moment passed, during which I somehow kept my expression politely interested, and refrained from either punching him in the face or bailing out the door.
I've never shown any signs of psychic gift, but I swear I could feel a switch click over in his brain, and he sat back in his chair and smiled. I smiled back as he crossed one long leg over the other, and folded his hands over his raised knee.
"I give, Sir, and congratulate you on a well executed, if simple, deduction. We make a few dimes and pennies selling orbital imagery, but the big money is in.. not selling.. orbital imagery."
I frowned, confused and offput by his easy answer. Unsure if I was facing truth or another layer, I leaned forward slightly myself, and left the frown on.
"Not selling, Mr. Giles?"
"Indeed. If you would do me the favor of doffing your hat and ear transmitter, and placing them in this box.."
Giles held a cardboard box over the table, a UPS label still visible on one side. It was my turn to blink, and I fingered one of the buttons on my overcoat as I considered.
"It would be perfectly acceptable for you to keep your 'panic button', Sir, we just need to eliminate your digital image acquisition equipment for a moment, so that all may be made clear... without risking the anger of our clients."
I gave in, my curiousity getting the better of me. The hat went neatly into the box, and before V could talk me out of it, so did the earbud. Giles paused a moment, glancing at the underside of his desk, then nodded.
"Alright. First off, you need to understand something of the environment we exist in." Giles laid his hands upon the featureless surface of his desk and typed something on an invisible keyboard. Immediately, a holographic image formed beside us, the Earth sans clouds and darkness.
"Information wants to be free. This is a tropism of the world we live in, your hacker culture deifies this concept and makes it happen over, and over, and over again." Giles slid one finger forward on his desk, and the holo-globe expanded to fill the floor-to-ceiling space, and further. I was now looking at an incredibly detailled projection of the U.S., as clear and sharp as I could never see it in reality.
"Information wants to be free.. But entrenched organs of government, in their greed, their fear, their millions of tiny threads controlling the lives of their populace... They want information to be controlled." Giles now tapped on his desk, again at no visible control, and bits of the image flipped to squares of blackness.
"So, we dominate the earth-viewing market by providing better, faster, cheaper imagery of this lovely planet. This brings in.. some.. money."
"The exact amount being unimportant." I said with a smile on my face and a magnanimous wave of my hand.
"Yes, precisely." Giles said with a matching smile. Again with a slid of one manicured finger across the desk surface, and the globe flowed outward, sending us hurtling down towards the surface of the Earth, towards the Nevada desert. I grinned wolfishly, and Giles cranked a few more notches onto his own smile as the zoom stopped, wrinkles of Nevada in glorious crystalline clarity at the edges of our vision, which was nearly filled with a single featureless black blotch.
"So, we then turn around and make.. exclusive availability.. for some of our imagery available to certain clients." Tap-tap went the finger on the desk, and I sat in awed silence, considering the panopoly of runways and lakebed that composed the Groom Lake testing facility. I glanced down at Giles, and he had leaned back in his chair again, smiling and confident.
I turned back to the projection, noting the concealed hangars, the visible hangars, the long straight runways and gleams of chainlink. Mr. Giles left the image up for a moment, before a tap on his desk zoomed the Earth out to a single point, which winked out as the lights that I hadn't noticed going out, slid back to full intensity.
Giles reached down behind his desk and came back up with my hat and earbud in his hands. He offered them across the desk, and I rose to accept them. As I settled the earbud into place under the hat, he walked around the desk and to the door.
"I believe we're done here, then?"
"Indeed. Thank you for the.. Illuminating.. experience." I smirked my way out the door and headed back towards the elevator, Giles striding along behind me. He followed me down to the lobby, and tapped my shoulder as I turned to head for the front doors.
"Need to get you some compensation for your trouble." He said, with a small smile, as he lead me to the cheery young receptionist. "Derek, see that Mr. Casler here gets, mmm, a Level Three Whole Earth pack, and a level Six pack for Alaska, would you please? He'll need our shipping information and FedEx account, too, he has a package for us?"
I nodded my agreement to Mr. Giles, and he shook my hand again and strode back across the lobby, raising one hand in an ironic salute as the elevator doors closed him away. I recieved a small folder of discs from Derek, as well as a business card with a FedEx number on the back. I made my farewells there as well, and escaped back to my car. As V wove her way outside of the city under her own control, I pondered the events of the day.
"We just punctured the first sacrificial layer of a concealed conspiracy that could very well be everything the Illuminatus traditionally are, bounced off the second layer, and were stone cold outfoxed by a guy who looked like the fucking librarian Watcher from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, V." I bitched, rubbing my eyes to soothe away the incipient tension headache. "I think it's time to call it a day and go home."
"Yeah, I think you're right on the last bit, boss. But why do you say that there was more there than what I saw, I mean, aside from the obvious?"
"When we get back, ask Hermes about superstitions and the thirteenth floor. That building didn't have a 23rd floor..."
V fell silent as we got out to Bothell and shot off from a handy parking lot, into the silent night. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
"Hello then, you must be the gentleman who found one of our Eyes?"
"Yes Sir, I'm Nick Casler, one of your drones showed up at my front door about a week ago. You are?"
"J. R. Giles, I run PR for our little company here."
I arched an eyebrow, and couldn't resist. "Indeed.. How's the band?"
Giles blinked for a moment, then grinned slightly. I grinned back, and he shook his head before replying.
"Fine, thank you, though I'm not _that_ Giles, more's the pity. Shall we adjourn to my office?"
I acquiesced, and followed Giles to his office, past a couple of glass-and-chrome-and-hardwood conference rooms with excitingly expensive AV systems prominently displayed. His office door was a dark smooth wood, his name in restrained silver lettering on the wall next to it. The inside was more lawyer than PR hack, wall-to-wall bookshelves covered in leather-bound books, executive chair, leather, one. Executive desk, featureless black, one. Executive picture of family, framed, one.
I frowned. Nothing was out of place in this building, nothing at all.
"So, Mr. Giles. What exactly does your company _do_?"
"Well, it's refreshingly simple. We operate an orbital photography service. At any given moment, at any given place, we can usually arrange to have high quality imagery made available in whatever framerate and resolution our clients desire."
I pondered this a moment, as Giles smiled reassuringly from his side of the desk. "Ok. I can accept that, but topping Google Earth didn't pay for the shiny fake lobby, the shiny fake secretary, the shiny fake elevator.. I could go on sir, but I'd still like to know what you folks actually have going, and why I should return part of that to you, instead of posting the contents of its drive to the 'net."
Mr. Giles' face dropped from it's reassuring smile into an immobile and impassible granite bulwark. He leaned forward slightly and opened his mouth, then froze. A moment passed, during which I somehow kept my expression politely interested, and refrained from either punching him in the face or bailing out the door.
I've never shown any signs of psychic gift, but I swear I could feel a switch click over in his brain, and he sat back in his chair and smiled. I smiled back as he crossed one long leg over the other, and folded his hands over his raised knee.
"I give, Sir, and congratulate you on a well executed, if simple, deduction. We make a few dimes and pennies selling orbital imagery, but the big money is in.. not selling.. orbital imagery."
I frowned, confused and offput by his easy answer. Unsure if I was facing truth or another layer, I leaned forward slightly myself, and left the frown on.
"Not selling, Mr. Giles?"
"Indeed. If you would do me the favor of doffing your hat and ear transmitter, and placing them in this box.."
Giles held a cardboard box over the table, a UPS label still visible on one side. It was my turn to blink, and I fingered one of the buttons on my overcoat as I considered.
"It would be perfectly acceptable for you to keep your 'panic button', Sir, we just need to eliminate your digital image acquisition equipment for a moment, so that all may be made clear... without risking the anger of our clients."
I gave in, my curiousity getting the better of me. The hat went neatly into the box, and before V could talk me out of it, so did the earbud. Giles paused a moment, glancing at the underside of his desk, then nodded.
"Alright. First off, you need to understand something of the environment we exist in." Giles laid his hands upon the featureless surface of his desk and typed something on an invisible keyboard. Immediately, a holographic image formed beside us, the Earth sans clouds and darkness.
"Information wants to be free. This is a tropism of the world we live in, your hacker culture deifies this concept and makes it happen over, and over, and over again." Giles slid one finger forward on his desk, and the holo-globe expanded to fill the floor-to-ceiling space, and further. I was now looking at an incredibly detailled projection of the U.S., as clear and sharp as I could never see it in reality.
"Information wants to be free.. But entrenched organs of government, in their greed, their fear, their millions of tiny threads controlling the lives of their populace... They want information to be controlled." Giles now tapped on his desk, again at no visible control, and bits of the image flipped to squares of blackness.
"So, we dominate the earth-viewing market by providing better, faster, cheaper imagery of this lovely planet. This brings in.. some.. money."
"The exact amount being unimportant." I said with a smile on my face and a magnanimous wave of my hand.
"Yes, precisely." Giles said with a matching smile. Again with a slid of one manicured finger across the desk surface, and the globe flowed outward, sending us hurtling down towards the surface of the Earth, towards the Nevada desert. I grinned wolfishly, and Giles cranked a few more notches onto his own smile as the zoom stopped, wrinkles of Nevada in glorious crystalline clarity at the edges of our vision, which was nearly filled with a single featureless black blotch.
"So, we then turn around and make.. exclusive availability.. for some of our imagery available to certain clients." Tap-tap went the finger on the desk, and I sat in awed silence, considering the panopoly of runways and lakebed that composed the Groom Lake testing facility. I glanced down at Giles, and he had leaned back in his chair again, smiling and confident.
I turned back to the projection, noting the concealed hangars, the visible hangars, the long straight runways and gleams of chainlink. Mr. Giles left the image up for a moment, before a tap on his desk zoomed the Earth out to a single point, which winked out as the lights that I hadn't noticed going out, slid back to full intensity.
Giles reached down behind his desk and came back up with my hat and earbud in his hands. He offered them across the desk, and I rose to accept them. As I settled the earbud into place under the hat, he walked around the desk and to the door.
"I believe we're done here, then?"
"Indeed. Thank you for the.. Illuminating.. experience." I smirked my way out the door and headed back towards the elevator, Giles striding along behind me. He followed me down to the lobby, and tapped my shoulder as I turned to head for the front doors.
"Need to get you some compensation for your trouble." He said, with a small smile, as he lead me to the cheery young receptionist. "Derek, see that Mr. Casler here gets, mmm, a Level Three Whole Earth pack, and a level Six pack for Alaska, would you please? He'll need our shipping information and FedEx account, too, he has a package for us?"
I nodded my agreement to Mr. Giles, and he shook my hand again and strode back across the lobby, raising one hand in an ironic salute as the elevator doors closed him away. I recieved a small folder of discs from Derek, as well as a business card with a FedEx number on the back. I made my farewells there as well, and escaped back to my car. As V wove her way outside of the city under her own control, I pondered the events of the day.
"We just punctured the first sacrificial layer of a concealed conspiracy that could very well be everything the Illuminatus traditionally are, bounced off the second layer, and were stone cold outfoxed by a guy who looked like the fucking librarian Watcher from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, V." I bitched, rubbing my eyes to soothe away the incipient tension headache. "I think it's time to call it a day and go home."
"Yeah, I think you're right on the last bit, boss. But why do you say that there was more there than what I saw, I mean, aside from the obvious?"
"When we get back, ask Hermes about superstitions and the thirteenth floor. That building didn't have a 23rd floor..."
V fell silent as we got out to Bothell and shot off from a handy parking lot, into the silent night. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979