The Caryatids

VERA FORCED HERSELF to pick at Dr. Radic's elaborate lunch, for the old man had outdone himself in honor of his guests. This done, they hiked on foot to the ruins of Polace, over a narrow trail that Radic's people had taken some pains to clear. Montalban carried his daughter on his shoulders. Karen was in a buoyant mood, bounding along comically and making the child crow with glee.

When they descended from the island's rugged backbone to the northern shore, it was clear why Montalban had been so eager to visit these ruins.

The augment for Polace simulated ancient Roman Palatium. Palatium, an imperial Roman beach resort in the year zero.

The island's beaches had changed a great deal in the passage of twenty-one centuries. This meant a design conflict between strict geolocative accuracy and an augment that everyday viewers might willingly pay to see. That controversy hadn't yet been settled, so much of imperial Roman Palatium appeared to be hovering, uneasily, over the rising Greenhouse waters of the bay.

Ancient Palatium was not ancient yet. Palatium was raw and new, a Roman frontier town. The island village featured sturdy wooden docks, and two wooden Roman galleys with their wooden oars up, and some very authentic-looking sacks of grain. It had one donkey-driven mill, and many careless heaps of scattered amphoras.

The village featured a host of makeshift wooden fishing shacks, and one small but showily elegant upscale limestone palace. Palatium also featured a public bath, a wine bar, a temple, and a brothel.

To Vera's consternation, Roman Palatium had some avatars installed. These ghosts strolled their simulated Roman town, moving in the semi-random, irrational, traumatized way that ghosts roamed the Earth. The imperial Roman avatars were rather sketchily realized: tidy cartoons with olive skin and bowl-like haircuts.

One particularly horrible ghost, some kind of Roman butcher in a stained apron, seemed to have some dim machine awareness of Vera's presence as a viewer within the scene. This ghost kept crowding up in the corners of her spex, with a tourist-friendly look, inviting user interactions that the system did not yet afford.

Vera handed the spex back to Montalban. She was powerfully shaken. "You've turned this dead town into some kind of...dead movie game."

"That's not the way I myself would have phrased it," said Montalban, smiling. "I'd say that we're browsing the historical event heap in search of future opportunities." He stooped suddenly. The tide was out, and he'd alertly spotted a coinlike disk by the toe of his beach sandal. He plucked it up, had a closer look, and tossed it into the bay.

"The Palatium project," he told her, "is a coproduction of the University of Southern California's Advanced Culture Lab and Dr. Radic's scholars in Zagreb. They've done pretty well with this demo, given their limited time and resources. Frankly, those USC kids really worked their hearts out for us." Montalban slid the spex into a velvet-lined case. "If this demo catches on with our stakeholders, we'll be catering to a top-end tourist demographic here."

"But you made it...and it's just a fantasy. It's not real."

Montalban rolled his eyes. "Oh, come now-you built that sensorweb that saturates this whole island! Radic gave me a good look at that construction. That's brutal software. I sure wouldn't call it viewer-friendly."

"The sensorweb saved the life of this island! You're pasting fantasies onto the island."

"We could waste our time discussing 'reality'...Or, we could talk real business!" Montalban sat on the sun-warmed, sloping edge of a broken piece of Polace's tarmac. He scattered salty dust with a handkerchief and offered her a spot. "Vera, I'm here from Hollywood! I'm here to help you!"

Vera sat. She knew from the look on his face that he planned to exploit her now. This was the crux: they had reached the crisis. "So, John, you want to help us? Tell me how you feel about that."

"I need to make the dynamic of this situation clear to you."

Vera posed herself attentively. It felt nice to watch his face, even as he lied to her. He really was remarkably good-looking.

"I have come to this island because, at this moment in the event stream, there's a confluence of interests." Montalban pulled a shiny wad of film from his pocket. He fluffed the film open and set it down before them. It flashed into life before their feet.

A pattern appeared in it: something like a plate of spaghetti.

"What's this?"

"That's a correlation engine running a social-network analysis. Using this has become part of due diligence whenever we're trying to wire together a merger-and-acquisition deal. When a map of the stakeholders is assembled-very commonly-some player pops from the background and turns out to be the sustaining element..." Montalban leaned down, stretched out a finger, and tapped one of the central meat-balls within the spaghetti. "That would be you. Vera Mihajlovic. You are right here."