【暗影狂奔4E Twlight Horizon】深夜放映 P.144

[Cobalt 1号机]

深夜放映

加里·克莱恩熬夜看全息影像，看得太晚了。

大多数夜晚都是如此。他享受着他现在的生活，他确实从建设地平线的过程中找到了乐趣，但归根结底，他真正热爱的还是电影。他热爱灯光渐暗、故事铺展、弦乐激昂、那夸张的情感、戏剧性以及壮观的场面。他喜欢别人花时间给他讲故事，也怀念曾经亲身参与那些故事的日子。

他喜欢那种美好而圆满的结局——又有谁不喜欢呢？——但他也喜欢那些全息影像节目，那些让你受尽折磨的情节，把你抛进绝境，让你被折磨几个小时，最后把你弄得筋疲力尽、耗尽心力。而今晚的节目正是如此。拍摄业余，毫无人物塑造，根本谈不上真正的情节。那只是接连不断地拍摄下人们陷入混乱的场面，设备和车辆对他们失控袭来，灾难与火焰在城市街道上肆虐；更主要的是，拍摄那些毫无防备地遇上猛烈冲击的人们：棍棒挥舞、泰瑟闪光、枪声四起，而这些武器所引发的只有惊慌和恐惧；还有那些被击中头部后露出呆滞、继而瘫软表情的人们，那些紧紧抓住腹部伤口、痛苦不堪的人们，以及那些在世界疯狂运转中目光空洞、毫无生气的行尸走肉。人们在街上踩过这些瘫软的尸体，血迹铺满道路，留下一个个印记。

他认出了一张熟悉的脸，但却想不起那人的名字。那人留着蓝色头发，脸上有着让他看起来像猫头鹰的纹身，身形瘦削得近乎憔悴。他曾出现在洛杉矶的一场抗议中，当时克莱恩试图通过派遣他手下最出色的公关人员之一——名叫凯文·贝尔维尤的人——来安抚民众。尽管贝尔维尤平时总能应付任何任务，但这次却显得力不从心。抗议者们的愤怒比克莱恩以往见过的任何时候都要激烈，而即便借助法师们施展的魔法扩音，贝尔维尤也无法让自己的声音传达到人群中。克莱恩曾考虑让他们施个魔法，把所有人都噤声，但那无异于玩火，只会使局势更加失控，紧张的氛围随时都可能被引爆。于是，他只好在公司内目睹贝尔维尤被完全压垮的全过程，直到那个蓝发、脸上印有猫头鹰图案的家伙冲到贝尔维尤面前大声咆哮、口水四溅时，克莱恩终于放弃了，拉着贝尔维尤撤了进去。

那一刻，他对那位蓝发抗议者的憎恨超过了对世上任何人的憎恨。他的傲慢、无知，以及那种错误发泄的愤怒——这一切都让克莱恩感到无法忍受。

所以，当他看到那位蓝发抗议者躺在拉斯维加斯的一堆尸体中时，他的第一反应是一阵原始的肾上腺素激增，随即脑海中不由自主地浮现出一句话：

“抓住你了，你这个混蛋。我们抓住你了。”

刚一闪过这个念头，他就惊恐地退缩起来——从全息画面中、从自己、从一切中退缩。他知道，就是这样一切才会发生，这也正是共识出错的原因。像他刚才那样的念头，不断被输入到决策算法中，一次又一次。

共识本应是企业的良知，本该帮助他们关注泛人类的福祉，而不仅仅是金钱。它应成为员工们共同的声音，引领这家巨型企业做出正确的决策。但现在，随着拉斯维加斯的屠杀，一个问题也随之而来，这个问题不断在克莱恩的脑海中回响：

当你的人民不渴望善意时，你又该如何行善？

劇透 -   :

...THE LATE SHOW...

Gary Cline stayed up far too late watching trideo.

That was the case most nights. He enjoyed his current life, he truly found pleasure in the process of trying to build Horizon, but still, in the end, what he really loved were movies. He loved the dimming of the lights, the sweep of a story, the swell of strings, the outsized emotions, the drama, and the spectacle. He loved that people were taking the time to tell him a story, and he still missed being part of those stories.

He loved a good, happy ending—who didn’t?—but he also enjoyed those trids that raked you over the coals, that threw you into the mouth of a desperate situation, chewed you up for a few hours, then spat you out, wasted and spent, at the end. And that’s what tonight’s presentation had been. It was amateurishly filmed, it didn’t really have any sense of characterization, and it had no real plot to speak of. It was just shot after shot of people in chaos, of devices and vehicles turning on them, of disaster and fire running rampant through city streets, and, most of all, of people encountering force they weren’t prepared for, of clubs swinging, tasers sparking, and guns firing, and these weapons being met with surprise and fear, the stunned and then limp expressions of people who were caught on the side of the head, the pain of people clutching at stomach wounds, and the complete emptiness of people who lay with blank-eyed stares as the world went insane around them. People stepped over and sometimes on these limp forms in the streets and spread trails of footprints with their blood.

There was one face he recognized, though he couldn’t place the name. The person had blue hair, a face tattoo that made him look like an owl, and a scrawny, almost emaciated body. He had been at one of the protests in Los Angeles, one where Cline had tried to pacify the people by sending down one of his better PR guys, a man named Kevin Bellevue, and while Bellevue normally nailed any assignment he was given, he was overwhelmed by this one. The protestors were angrier than Cline had ever seen them, and Bellevue couldn’t make himself heard, even with all the magical amplification the mages could throw out there. Cline thought about maybe having them cast a spell that would just shut everyone up, but that was playing with fire. It might just make angrier, and then a tense situation could become explosive. So he just watched from inside as Bellevue was completely overwhelmed, right up to the moment where the blue-haired, owlstamped guy was screaming in Bellevue’s face, spittle flying, and Cline gave up and pulled Bellevue back inside.

At that moment, he had hated the blue-haired protestor more than he hated anyone in the world. His arrogance, his lack of understanding, his misdirected rage—Cline found it all to be unbearable.

So when he saw the blue-haired protestor lying among the dead of Las Vegas, his first reaction had been a primal stab of adrenaline, and then the words popped into his head, unbidden.

Got you, you bastard. We got you.

As soon as he had the thought, he recoiled in horror—from the trideo, from himself, from everything. He knew that was how it had happened. That was how the Consensus had gone wrong. Thoughts like the one he had just had, fed into the decision-making algorithm, over and over again.

The Consensus was supposed to be the conscience of the corporation. It was supposed to help them keep metahumanity in mind, not just dollars. It was supposed to be the voice of the employees speaking as one and leading the megacorporation to good decisions. But with the dead of Las Vegas lay a certain question, a question that repeated over and over again in Cline’s head.

How do you do good when good is not what your people want?