December 1995
"Five hundred thousand eyeballs a day," said Frederic Baby.

"That's a lot," said Veda, writing it down.

"Well, everyone likes naked ladies," said Frederic. "That's why an X-rated search engine is such a good idea."

They smiled at each other. Frederic was always happy to acknowledge that his business had been Veda's brilliant concept.

"We get even more traffic on depressing holidays, like Thanksgiving," he said. "You know, people home alone. We expect a real blowout at Christmas. What's this article for, anyway?"

"It's a new site called 'Herd Mentality,'" Veda told him. "It's supposed to be financial news, but only sexy financial news."
  

'Herd Mentality' was being set up by a cigar company, which hoped that its mix of high finance and lasciviousness would bring Wall Street traders to its site and, consequently, to its cigars. In the last four months, nearly every company selling anything had rushed to create a website. Veda had interviewed with a cologne company setting up a poetry website, and with a car company that was offering gynecological advice in an attempt to target women buyers.

"How do you prioritize the results of the search engine?" she asked. "I mean, which sites come up in which order?"

"Well, I evaluate them," Frederic said. "I look at all the sites, and then I grade them, and I make the best sites come up first."

Veda wrote that down.

"Of course, Pam's site always has to come up as the very first one, no matter what you type in. She checks every day, and if it doesn't come up first she makes me buy her a more expensive dinner."

Veda nodded. This article was turning out fine; it would be just what the cigar company wanted. As a matter of fact, she had suggested it in her job interview.
After a while, she left Frederic and went back towards the Herd office, on Broadway near Wall Street.

It was an old building, but a new office: most of the chairs were still wrapped in warehouse plastic. The telephones didn't work yet. Some functionaries from the cigar company had asked her, with all seriousness, if they needed phones at all given these amazing new technologies. Veda assured them they did.

This was her third day on the job, and she had yet to meet her boss, or a colleague, for that matter. They didn't appear to have been hired yet. She'd spent the first two days of her job setting up her computer.

Someone was sitting at the computer when she got back from seeing Frederic. He playing a game of video dominoes and eating from a bag of cheese curls; orange dust from the cheese curls was coming off on her keys.

Her new colleague turned around and smiled. He was a small, blond, jumpy man.

"Haven't I met you somewhere?" she asked.

"Jellyman," he said. "Jason Jellyman."
  
Jason Jellyman was a man of property now. He had sold Cyberswinger to a mass-market magazine publisher and with the proceeds bought his own apartment near the Flatiron Building, in what was just beginning to be called Silicon Alley. Now Cyberswinger was a glossy magazine, repositioned towards housewives vaguely interested in the Internet. Jason had seen it in the supermarket: on the cover, a model was holding a mouse in one hand and a spatula in the other.

But it was boring sitting around the apartment all day. Besides, his ability to hear the best gossip - he was now an honored guest on the high-tech party circuit - had unfortunately coincided with no longer having a place to spread it. Home alone, it was burning a hole inside of him. The 'Herd' job seemed a chance to at last be a real reporter, to break the big stories.

His colleagues, among them this intimidating girl with sharp eyebrows, would have to learn to appreciate that.

"I wasn't stealing any of your story ideas, you know," Jason told her. He rolled back from the desk in his wheeled chair. "I have plenty of my own."

"We're not launching for another two months," said Veda. "Aren't your ideas going to get a little old by then?"

"Not ideas like these," Jason said, flashing a grin. "Real hard-hitting stuff. For example, I hear there are a lot of bodies buried at Somogyi Technics."

"All companies have disgruntled employees," said Veda.

"I mean REAL bodies buried," said Jason.
All the phones in the office started to ring. At least they worked, now. Veda picked up the one at her desk, but there was no one at the other end.

"Do you know that new software package at Meunier Microsystems?" Jason said. "The 'Monique?'"

"I've heard of it."

"The president named it after his favorite hooker."

Veda raised her eyebrows. The phone started ringing again.

"Can you back this stuff up?"

"Do I have to?" said Jason. "Isn't that the whole point of the Internet? Freedom of information, isn't it?"

The phone on Veda's desk stopped suddenly, but one across the room began ringing instead.

"You see, the Internet will break all the old rules," Jason was saying. "There will be no more establishment ideas about proof, or lack of proof. "

He followed her across the room.

"It's real freedom; anyone can say anything," he continued. "It's a free marketplace of ideas. Let the market decide what's right or wrong, what's true or false."

Veda picked up the phone. It was Nicky.
 
  

"Undine came home," he said.

"Home?"

"She got fired from her Macy's job, and she came home in the middle of the day, and a friend of mine and I were using her bed. We were right in the middle of something."

"Your friend?"

"I made friends with him last night."

Veda had a sudden image of Undine discovering two men in a hot clinch all over her U.S.-labeled pillows.

"Anyway, she didn't know who I was, and I said I was a friend of yours," Nicky said. "And now she wants you to have all your stuff out of her in an hour or she's calling the police."

"Oh, God," said Veda. "Don't let her do that."

"It's okay," said Nicky. "My friend's a policeman."

"I'm coming home right now," Veda said. It was a good thing her boss hadn't been hired yet.

"I'll meet you outside your apartment," said Nicky.

Library of Congress Copyright TXu 875-975