Back in his office, Jack poured himself a glass of scotch. Today was a good day; he wasn't drinking it straight from the bottle. He swirled it around and stared at it, deep in thought.
Item: People have not had any real privacy for at least fifty years. There aren't all that many Infomancers, but there are enough and the Infomancers can use their their ripple pools and their little rainclouds to figure out who is doing what to whom anywhere in Londinium or on the planet for that matter, if they put their minds to it.
Jack took another drink from his glass.
Item: For the most part, the Infomancers don't care who is doing what to whom. They could care less about assignations and assassinations, unless either (a) it interfered with their business, or (b) there was some money or personal gain in it for them somehow.
Corollary: If you have enough juice, either money or political power, or preferably both, you can make sure that if you're the "whom" in that above situation, you can make sure an Infomancer will keep track of who is doing what to you.
Item: Jack's clients sometimes ran afoul of people of the above type. In either the white market or the black, capitalists were capitalists, and were ruthless whether they dealt in natural gas or drugs. Both had money and power to burn, and if they had had scruples in the first place, they wouldn't have gotten either money or power.
Slurp.
Issue: It was likely that David Eddington was involved with people who were of that type. He was a fairly high-level cog in a very important financial institution, and was last seen in the company of a high-level cog in a very important criminal institution. Both stripes of suit were going to be watching after not just David Eddington, but looking for people asking questions about David Eddington.
Solution: By forcefully completely severing his ties with Lucy Eddington, returning her payment, and leaving her dissolved in tears, Jack had likely removed himself from David Eddington's informational halo. Jack was no longer a who doing any sort of what to anyone associated with David's whom. Mitsunori had confirmed that he was outside of David's halo.
Item: Jack was now somewhat free to make discreet inquiries into the whereabouts of David Eddington without the little ripples of information he generated in his wake entering into to the pools of any Infomancers keeping an eye on David. Unless Jack actually contacted David or Lucy, and unless the snoops were actually focusing their attention on Jack and his bottle of Scotch (gulp), Jack probably wouldn't show up in David's halo for some time.
Question: Should Jack try and find out what had happened to David, or play it safe and stay away?
Jack poured himself another drink.
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3 comments:
It's long, it's wordy. I'm not sure if it's any good. It gets some ideas across, but it might be just beating them down as well. Any thoughts?
I do really like the format, and the repeating wordplay - what, whom, etc. It maybe could be tightened up a little bit to make the aforementioned word play flow a little better and remain clear and easy to read.
As far as plot - i don't really get why it would be safe NOW for him to look into David's disappearance, when it wasn't before. David is still important, no? Maybe I'm a victim of the lack of clarity I mentioned above.
I fiddled the last "Item" paragraph to try and be more clear about why Jack can look for David: the Infomancers are looking at David's (and probably Lucy's) halo, and unless Jack contacts David or Lucy, he's unlikely to enter their halos until he makes a real breakthrough.
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