Hoohum.
I am a Cake.
I'm covered in pink icing, but it's not what you think.
The little crystal candies embedded in my forearms reflect the light onto the faces that watch me, hungry as they are. Fingers linger over play buttons, caressing, but not pressing. It's not what you think.
The fat man to the left clears his throat. "Um," he says, "don't you think it's time we got started." He has greedy little pig eyes that match the crystals, too close together. He's not asking a question.
The sales routine I've done hundred times before is always difficult to start. Cakes don't have good memory, you wouldn't understand with all your fancy neural connections.
They like the NASDAQ first, some antiquated ritual from a dead world, ultimately pointless. None here will be buying over the counter. But I feed it to them piecemeal from an exposed rib, and they feel like they've still got their hand in.
Beside the fatman sits another fatman. His friends call this one Bob sometimes, but not like they mean it. Bob doesn't run the show, but he's the only one that can stop it. I always play well to Bob, it gets this business finished a great deal quicker.
It's not what you think. I can see you looking through my eyes in judgement. 'Toy boy', and writing this off as one more cheap Day-In-The-Life even while you admire the production values.
You will not earn more money in your entire span than what'll I receive for this half an hour. Unless you're one of the fatman.
A third fatman completes today's small circle of clientele. He's new, and his newness is unsettling. His suite is black and plain, no different from the others, same hairless skull, same tightly restrained appetite. His lips are very red, and I don't understand why he keeps taking out his tongue to lick them when they gleam already.
"Rosenburg," says the first fatman to the new one, "what happened to your wife last weekend?"
"She didn't show?" says the new one, Rosenburg.
"Nope," says the first, "you see her, Bob?"
"Nope," says Bob.
There's tension behind the lazy English, so I bring out my big guns early.
"Ooooh..." Rosenburg captivated by my glossies almost instantly, "I didn't know there was going to be brochures."
I aim to please.
"He aims to please," says Bob, and I preen like I am expected to.
But Bob and the other, a hard case they call 'Mr. Eliminator' in all the broadsheets, aren't so easily distracted, they've seen my brochures before.
"Was she sick?" inquires Mr. Eliminator.
"Couldn't tell you. Haven't seen her since March," replies the new Rosenburg. You can tell it is his turn to be unsettled, he's picking up the vibe. His eyes flick to mine and I can tell what he is thinking. 'Nothing bad can happen, I'm too powerful. And the Cake's here, nothing can happen with a Cake.'
I'm a bad Cake. Rosenburg doesn't even consider that there might be such a thing as a bad Cake, and, to be fair, before I came along there wasn't. They pick out any half-baked cases in manufacturing, quality control had never let through an error.
Life is made up of all the reasons in the world.
"I have to say Bob and I were so... looking forward to her company. Her absence was felt most keenly," drawls out Mr. Eliminator in perfect syllables.
Rosenburg considers this. "I didn't know you were seeing her together," quietly.
Mr. Eliminator doesn't quiet smile. "Bob and I, we share everything, ever since we were boys together."
Bob smiles. "We're partners, don't you know?"
Rosenburg types into the keypad at his chair, a query for a recipe coded in morose shorthand, then jabs a cubby digit at a play button. I replay as programmed.
A respectable list of business dealings Bob and Mr. Eliminator have been on together is relayed in frosted flowers and neon Times New New Roman. Rosenburg scans disparately for a fact to leap out and clue him in. It's a vain search, every transaction is licit. Men so influential would allow no hint of perversion to enter the public Domain, and the Domain is all that's available to the average Cake.
The bimetallic receivers disguised as vague icing sugar constructions on my temple grab from the air a tightly beamed instruction. Time for death or dismemberment.
I'm yet to discover which will provide the greater thrill for the only masters I've ever had after I retired my position with the public good.
"Did you like all the market positions we got you in the Galileo sector?" queries Mr Eliminator.
"Musta made you an absolute bucket," adds Bob.
Rosenburg looks at me again. "The cake..." the protest trails off immediately as several realisations link themselves up in Rosenburg's mind. The behind schedule train of thought dumps a conclusion in his frontal lobe, mother load of despair. I wish I had a frontal lobe.
I'd tried to help earlier, with my unprecedented slice of Cake autonomy. Now, the corruption is too far gone. I can only follow the new coding. Hello world.
"Don't worry about the Law here, Rosenburg. The Cake's ours," says Bob. I nod my head in acknowledgment, but Rosenburg has already worked it out, Mr Eliminator would never have mentioned Galileo otherwise.
"How'd you get a Cake?" Rosenburg skirts all the important issues. "They're impossible to hack."
The answer has always been a source of amusement to Bob. "The powers that be designed an upgrade. They figured empathy would better help a Cake sniff out deception and threats to our stable Economy. "This," pointing at me, "is the beta."
"I don't believe it. He, one of the most important regularity hardware systems in the Economy, had a security flaw?" Rosenburg was understandably disbelieving.
Bob giggled. "Yeah. We bribed him."
"They haven't made a patch yet," adds Mr. Eliminator.
"So we'll use him until they put out a mandatory upgrade, then format and restore him to factory status," says Bob. "No one will ever know."
"Now then, I believe you'd put all your assets are in my daughter's name. Should have sent her round Rosenburg, this could have gone easier."
"I'd never put anything in my wife's name. Come on guys, I was here to buy..."
"You've bought plenty already. You've bought the farm."
I change the public domain with my corrupted code, and Rosenburg watches as the digital display tells him, 'no, this is how it is, see, she owns the lot, you set it up so.'
The two older fatman have had their day and stand up to leave. "So if you see our girl, let her know how rich see is," says Bob.
"The Japanese were truly eccentric. I mean, for christsakes, cakes? And a one stick of RAM? Fuck, my toothbrush has more grunt," mumbles Mr. Eliminator on his wayout.
The Economy installed spyware reverses my code to pre-corruption state. One stick of RAM ain't much, but enough to send a half hour conversation to backup.
I tell Rosenburg to cheer up, I'm one awake cake.