Idoru by William Gibson Read Free Book Online

feeling that at least the potential was there).
    It was the other kind that Kathy wanted, directing the attentions of Laney and as many as thirty other researchers to the more private aspects of the lives of those who were deliberately and at least moderately famous.
    Alison Shires wasn't famous at all, but the man Laney had confirmed she was having an affair with was famous enough.
    And then something began to come clear to Laney.
    Alison Shires knew , somehow, that he was there, watching. As though she felt him gazing down, into the pool of data that reflected her life, its surface made of all the bits that were the daily record of her life as it registered on the digital fabric of the world.
    Laney watched a nodal point begin to form over the reflection of Alison Shires.
    She was going to kill herself.

6. DESH
    Chia had programmed her Music Master to have an affinity for bridges. He appeared in her virtual Venice whenever she crossed one at moderate speed: a slender young man with pale blue eyes and a penchant for long, flowing coats.
    He'd been the subject of a look-and-feel action, in his beta release, when lawyers representing a venerable British singer had protested that the Music Master's designers had scanned in images of their client as a much younger man. This had been settled out of court, and all later versions, including Chia's, were much more carefully generic. (Kelsey had told her that it had mainly had to do with changing one of his eyes, but why only the one?)
    She'd fed him into Venice on her second visit, to keep her company and provide musical variety, and keying his appearances to moments when she crossed bridges had seemed like a good idea. There were lots of bridges in Venice, some of them no more than a little arc of stone steps spanning the narrowest of waterways. There was the Bridge of Sighs, which Chia avoided because she found it sad and creepy, and the Bridge of Fists, which she liked mainly for its name, and so many others. And there was the Rialto, big and humped and fantastically old, where her father said men had invented banking, or a particular kind of banking. (Her father worked for a bank, which was why he had to live in Singapore.)
    She'd slowed her rush through the city now, and was cruising at a walking pace up the stepped incline of the Rialto, the Music Master striding elegantly beside her, his putty-colored trenchcoat flapping in the breeze.
    “DESH,” he said, triggered by her glance, “the Diatonic Elaboration of Static Harmony. Also known as the Major Chord with Descending Bassline. Bach's ‘Air on a G String,’ 1730. Procol Harum's ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale,’ 1967.” If she made eye contact now, she'd hear his samples, directionless and at just the right volume. Then more about DESH, and more samples. She had him here for company, though, and not for a lecture. But lectures were all there was to him, aside from his iconics, which were about being blond and fine-boned and wearing clothes more beautifully than any human ever could. He knew everything there was to know about music, and nothing else at all.
    She didn't know how long she'd been in Venice, this visit. It was still that minute-before-dawn that she liked best, because she kept it that way.
    “Do you know anything about Japanese music?” she asked.
    “What sort, exactly?”
    “What people listen to.”
    “Popular music?”
    “I guess so.”
    He paused, turning, hands in his trouser pockets and the trench-coat swinging to reveal its lining.
    “We could begin with a music called enka ,” he said, “although I doubt you'd like it.” Software agents did that, learned what you liked. “The roots of contemporary Japanese pop came later, with the wholesale creation of something called ‘group sounds.’ That was a copy-cat phenomenon, flagrantly commercial. Extremely watered-down Western pop influences. Very bland and monotonous.”
    “But do they really have singers who don't exist?”
    “The