Glimmering

“Last call, last dance. Closing time. Or nothing, maybe. The Fougas are scheduled to launch at 11:55. The fireworks start at midnight, all that ‘Auld Lang Syne’ shit. We’ll see what happens after that. My advice to you?” He attacked the lacquered box of Kobe beef that had appeared before him. “Finish your dinner. No one ever saved the world on an empty stomach.”

Jack speared a shred of beef speckled with dulse flakes. It tasted like the salmon had earlier, of petroleum and raw spirits. He set his chopsticks in the box and pushed it away, glanced at the entrance where he’d been admitted with Larry Muso. The security giant stood there with a dozen armed, uniformed men who might all have been cloned from the same linebacker. Jack grit his teeth, then poured more champagne.

All around him people ate and laughed. Leonard was listening to the man beside him, some kind of European investor.

“Security encryption devices for virtual private networks and intranets,” he explained as Leonard feigned interest.

Waiters brought green tea sorbet, pickled beets, scallops the size of pencil erasers. Roast pork with green apples, quail stuffed with unborn eggs, smoked domestic elk. Another sorbet, anise-flavored. Finally a flurry of desserts—profiteroles, something puffy and livid pink, like a jellyfish—and coffee, real coffee, greeted with hushed excitement; not even the very rich could find coffee anymore. Jack took a sip of his, trying not to show revulsion. It all tasted bad to him, almost poisonous.

“Well,” announced Leonard. “That wasn’t exactly Trimalchio’s feast, but—”

A soft voice cut him off, amplified from directly overhead.

“My friends—”

Jack turned with everyone else, to see the spare figure at the center of the head table standing, hands clasped against his stomach. His body mic gave the words an eerily hollow timbre. Behind him, bodyguards turned their heads back and forth, tracking something unseen.

“This is a moment I have awaited for a very long time.” Mr. Tatsumi paused, his expression somber. He blinked several times before continuing. “To be here in company with all of you, in such fine surroundings, on such an important day. On what may be the most important day in human history…”

Leonard made a face.

“… In the last eighteen months we have achieved quantum leaps in the areas of resource management and environmental reclamation, as well as breakthroughs in medical research that will affect every single person in this room. That may someday affect everyone on this planet.”

Enthusiastic applause.

“Hear that, Jackie?” said Leonard. “We’ll all be tan and rested in no time.” Leonard’s eyes narrowed as the chairman went on.

“We have made advances in entertainment technology that will change the way we see that world. Most importantly, in a few minutes you will all witness the moment when we move from making world history, to remaking the world itself, when we launch the SUNRA platform.”

Tumultuous clapping and cheers.

“Thank you. Thank you all very much.” Mr. Tatsumi bowed, first to his tablemates, then to the gathered diners. He raised a hand, looked to where the lone technician sat behind his banks of equipment. Jack heard a scatter of Japanese from the CEO’s body mic. In the seats beside him, men and women stared expectantly at the dance floor.

The applause died away. Across the table from Jack, people nodded happily at each other, flushed and well fed. Women reached for handbags, men stretched. Dinner was finished, coffee drunk. Everyone was anxious to leave. Everyone was ready to find the real party. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Jack heard a cresting wave of sound from outside the GFI area, cheers and shrieks and a voice bellowing from a loudspeaker.

“ARE YOU READY? ELEVEN MINUTES AND—”

Jack glanced at Mr. Tatsumi, still standing by himself. The CEO looked small and rather lost, and impatient. A few tentative notes wafted from where the sextet sat very straight in their folding chairs. Around the perimeter of the dining area, the lighttubes flickered from blue to soft lavender. People who had been standing quickly settled back into their seats. The room grew quiet as the strings’ scattered notes resolved into the opening bars of “The Blue Danube.”

At one end of the dance floor a single follow spot appeared. Mr. Tatsumi stared at it, frowning. Jack moved his chair to get a better view, the hairs on his arms prickling. The follow spot bloomed larger, brighter, resolved into a column of blazing white. The column pulsed and trembled: something was taking shape within it. Then the adamant brilliance grew still. Light coursed into the figure at its center, like quicksilver filling a glass. People gasped. Jack heard someone whisper a name.