Paul McAuley - Whole Wide World

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California Gold by John Jakes

Synopsis:

Winner of both the Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick Awards, Paul McAuley has

emerged as one of the most thrilling new talents in science fiction, acclaimed for his richly

imagined future worlds as well as for his engrossing stories and vivid, all-too-human

characters. Now he gives us a gripping and unforgettable thriller of the day after tomorrow

— when the world and the Web are one.

London, in the aftermath of the InfoWar. Surveillance cameras on every street corner, their

tireless gaze linked to a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system. Censors zealously

patrolling the Internet. A talented, young woman murdered before the cybernetic gaze of

eager voyeurs.

A policeman sidelined to a backwater computer-crimes unit seizes on the chance to

contribute to this high-profile murder case, but soon finds himself entangled in a web of

high-tech intrigue. Why was Sophie Booth's murder broadcast over the Internet? What is

the link between her brutal killing and London's new surveillance system? Who is the self-

styled Avenger, and why does he communicate only by e-mail?

Whole Wide World is a compelling cyber-conspiracy thriller set in a world where

information is the universal currency, and some people will do anything to be able to

control it…

Paul McAuley worked as a research scientist and lecturer in universities for twenty years

before becoming a full-time writer. His novels have won the Philip K. Dick, Arthur C.

Clarke and John W. Campbell awards. He lives in North London.

PAUL McAULEY

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California Gold by John Jakes

Whole Wide World

Version 1.0

ISBN 0 00 651331 X

For Georgina, encore

I am nothing but must be everything. Karl Marx

PART ONE

The Silver Chair

I was running laps in the local park when my mobile rang. I managed to drop my

headphones around my neck and hook the headset over my ear without breaking stride. I

was hoping it would be Julie, but it was Detective Inspector Pete Reid, T12's duty officer.

He said, 'I need you to make a pick-up.'

'I'm not on call,' I told him, and rang off.

I could just about front up to Pete Reid, a dedicated alcoholic at the end of an

undistinguished career. At least, I could do it over the mobile, which rang again almost at

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California Gold by John Jakes

once, with the insistent warbling of a small and very hungry bird. I let it ring and put on

my headphones (the extended reissue of Elvis Costello's Armed Forces) and kept running.

Sunday, early June. The sky hazy with heat as if bandaged in gauze, the sun burning

through it like the business end of a welder's torch. According to the watch Julie had given

me the previous Christmas, it was thirty-one degrees centigrade. It felt hotter. People in

various states of undress sprawled on browning grass like a horde of refugees from one of

the European microwars. I was aware of the brief snags and thorns of their drowsy

inattention as I ran past.

I'm not a natural runner. I run as self-consciously as an actor in some low-grade drama. I

run to stay in touch with my body; at a certain age, especially after you've been badly hurt,

you become horribly aware of its tendency to sag and sprawl and seize up, of its obdurate

otherness. I run because there's virtue to be wrung from moderate exertion. In the good old

days of cohabitation, I'd come back boiled red and trembling, and after some heroic

hawking in the sink my announcement to Julie that I'd managed six kilometres (a judicious

doubling of the actual distance) would earn me a cold beer or a glass of nicely chilled

Colombian Chardonnay.

I ran past a man rubbing sunscreen into the trembling flanks of his boxer dog. I ran past a

family eating from styrene clamshells. Sweat soaked my T-shirt, gathered at the waistband

of my shorts. My left leg hardly hurt at all. I ran past a kid resting his head between the

speakers of a sound box broadcasting heavy pulses of raga metal to the indifferent world. I

ran past a temporary security checkpoint on the other side of the park railings, where coils

of smartwire and high kerbs of hollow, water-filled plastic blocks choked the road down to

a single lane. Three peace wardens in red tunics, black trousers, and mirrorshades —

pitbulls in Star Trek leisure gear, their paws resting on belts laden with shock sticks,

plasticuffs, extensible batons and canisters of riot glue and pepper spray — scanned the

sparse traffic for IC3s who just might be heading into the City Economic Zone to liberate

building materials.

The mobile was still ringing. I pressed the yes button.

Pete Reid said, 'Where are you?' PoliceNet's quantum encryption made him sound as if he

was shouting through a metal pipe crammed with angry bees.

'Shoreditch Park. Doing laps.'

I ran past a couple of men drinking beer and watching a portable TV shaded by a

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California Gold by John Jakes

cardboard box, like a shrine. The TV said, 'Bandwidth totally secure and safe for all the

family.'

Pete Reid said in my ear, 'I see you.'

'Fuck off.'

'I'm in the system, Minimum. White T-shirt, red shorts.'

'Lucky guess.' I shouldn't have resented Pete Reid's use of my nickname, but sue me, I did.

'Watch the birdie,' Pete Reid said.

Tall steel poles were planted at intervals along the park's perimeter, coated in gluey grey

anti-vandal paint and topped with the metal shoeboxes of CCTV cameras and their

underslung spotlights, the cameras linked via RedLine chips to ADESS, the Autonomous

Distributed Expert Surveillance System, which watched all London with omniscient

patience.

One night in March, I'd seen these same cameras track a fox. The hapless animal had

become increasingly frantic as it dashed to and fro, trying to outrun spotlights that fingered

the darkness with unforgiving precision, until at last it could run no more and stood still,

scrawny flanks heaving, eyes blankly reflecting the glare of the overlapping circles of light

that briefly twirled around it before snapping off. That's when I'd become aware of

something new and non-human at play in the world; an intelligence vast and cold and

unsympathetic testing the limits of its ability.

Now, one camera and then another and another turned to follow me as I ran past.

Watching the detective. I gave them the finger.

'A ninety-two per cent recognition factor,' Pete Reid said. 'Even without the caring gesture.'

'For someone who wears elasticated boots because he can't tie a proper knot, you're a very

technical boy all of a sudden.'

'We have search filters and microwave links. We have polygonal forcing routines. We

have eight crucial physiognomy points, too, whatever the fuck they are. There's some kind

of slogan on your T-shirt but I can't quite read it. No doubt something sarcastic. You're a

sarcastic little fucker, Minimum, but I'll let it slide because I need you to do something.'

'Who's running the rig? Someone has to be helping an old-fashioned one-finger typist like

you.'

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California Gold by John Jakes

'I'm with Ross Whitaker,' Pete Reid confessed, 'hacked into the system through his phone.

We're in a squad car in Walthamstow, waiting for the off to go in and seriously hassle this

pinko journalist.'

'Was sitting in the office waiting for the phone to ring too boring for you?'

'I have a weakness for journalists. And I didn't know I was going to get two fucking call-

outs on a Sunday.'

'I hope T12 isn't paying for your time on ADESS.'

'Don't you worry. Ross has a mate in the Bunker.'

'Because Rachel Sweeney will carpet you when she finds out.'

'It's off the books, Minimum. Stop trying to give me a hard time, you aren't built for it.

Now listen, you got your warrant card?'

'This is a favour you're about to ask me, isn't it?'

'Do a lap around the corner,' Pete Reid said, and gave me an address. 'It's a pick-up, that's

all. See the exhibits officer, grab the gear, in and out, bing bang boom, no problem. I'll

send a uniform with a car and an evidence kit.'

'Make that a pretty massive favour,' I said.

'In and out, what's the problem? Get the job done, and I'll have Ross here suck your dick

by remote control.'

That's how it began. I didn't know that it was about a suspicious death. I didn't know it was

about the dead girl in the silver chair. The information was only partial.

The poor young trees the council had put in along the road two years ago, those which

hadn't been snapped off by kids or poisoned by dog piss, were hanging their heads like

ballerinas about to faint. Cars smacked over speed bumps like boats on a choppy sea,

trailing music in their wakes. People sat on the balconies of council flats like spectators at

the Apocalypse. A very fat black woman enthroned on a red velour armchair held a little

electric fan under her chin. The noise of televisions and stereos pounded out of open

windows. I ran past a church, a discount off-licence with the no-nonsense offer of CHEAP

BOOZE painted across its steel-shuttered windows and a burly guard just inside its door,

burnt-out live/work flats carved from an old cinema which had started life as a music hall,

a row of almshouses. There had been hamlets in marshy fields here, once upon a time. A

priory. Country lanes in the drowsy shade of elms and oaks. Then a clutch of theatres,

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摘要：

CaliforniaGoldbyJohnJakesSynopsis:WinnerofboththeArthurC.ClarkeandPhilipK.DickAwards,PaulMcAuleyhasemergedasoneofthemostthrillingnewtalentsinsciencefiction,acclaimedforhisrichlyimaginedfutureworldsaswellasforhisengrossingstoriesandvivid,all-too-humancharacters.Nowhegivesusagrippingandunforgettabl...

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Paul McAuley - Whole Wide World

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