"I want to know how significant you think it is, in terms of previous uploads."
"Since we can only speculate about its position in a hypothetical narrative, how can we judge its relative significance?"
He turns the player off, closes it.
"That's not my question. I'm not asking vis-a-vis segments of a narrative, but in terms of the actual sequential order of uploaded segments."
Cayce isn't used to thinking of the footage in those terms, although she recognizes them. She thinks she knows where Bigend is probably heading with this, but opts to play dumb. "But they clearly aren't in a logical narrative sequence. Either they're uploaded randomly—"
"Or very carefully, intending to provide the illusion of randomness. Regardless, and regardless of everything else, the footage has already been the single most effective piece of guerilla marketing ever. I've been tracking hits on enthusiast sites, and searching for mentions elsewhere. The numbers are amazing. Your friend in Korea—"
"How do you know about that?"
"I've had people look at all the sites. In fact we monitor them on a constant basis. Your contributions are some of the more useful material we've come across. 'CayceP,' when you start to know the players, is obviously you. Your interest in the footage is therefore a matter of public record, and to be interested, in this case, is to be involved to whatever extent in a subculture."
The idea that Bigend, or his employees, have been lurking on F:F:F will take some getting used to. The site had come to feel like a second home, but she'd always known that it was also a fishbowl; it felt like a friend's living room, but it was a sort of text-based broadcast, available in its entirety to anyone who cared to access it.
"Hubertus," carefully, "what exactly is the nature of your interest in this?"
Bigend smiles. He should learn not to do that, she thinks, otherwise he was undeniably good-looking. Or perhaps there were oral surgeons capable of artful downsizing? "Am I a true believer? That is your first question. Because you are one yourself. You care passionately about this thing. It's completely evident in your posts. That is what makes you so valuable. That and your talents, your allergies, your tame pathologies, the things that make you a secret legend in the world of marketing. But am I a believer? My passion is marketing, advertising, media strategy, and when I first discovered the footage, that is what responded in me. I saw attention focused daily on a product that may not even exist. You think that wouldn't get my attention? The most brilliant marketing ploy of this very young century. And new. Somehow entirely new."
She concentrates on bubbles rising through her almost untouched Pils. Trying to remember everything she's ever heard or Googled about Bigend's origins, the rise of Blue Ant: the industrialist father in Brussels, summers in the family's villa at Cannes, the archaic but well-connected British boarding school, Harvard, the foray into independent production in Hollywood, some sort of brief self-finding hiatus in Brazil, the emergence of Blue Ant, first in Europe, then in the UK and New York.
The stuff of lifestyle pieces, many of which she's read. And Margot's experience, which Cayce had shared, secondhand but real time, all this having to dovetail now with the knowledge that Bigend is himself some sort of follower of the footage, for what reason she can only guess. Though she finds that she is starting to guess, and doesn't like it.
She looks up. "You think it's worth a lot of money."
Bigend looks at her with absolute seriousness. "I don't count things in money. I count them in excellence."
And somehow she believes him, though it's no comfort.
"Hubertus, what are you getting at? I'm contracted to Blue Ant to evaluate a logo design. Not to discuss the footage."
"We're being social." And that's an order.
"No we're not. I'm not sure that you ever are."
Bigend smiles, then, a smile she hasn't seen before, less teeth and perhaps more genuine. It is a smile she suspects is meant to indicate that she has made it across at least the first moat of his persona, has become to some extent an insider. That she knows a realer Bigend: lateral-thinking imp of the perverse, thirty-something boy genius, seeker after truth (or at least functionality) in the markets of this young century. This is the Bigend that invariably emerges in the articles, no doubt after he's gotten to the journalist with this smile and his other tools. "I want you to find him." ' ,
Him.
"The maker."
"'Her'? 'Them'?"
"The maker. Whatever you need will be put at your disposal. You will not be working for Blue Ant. We will be partners."
"Why?"
"Because I want to know. Don't you?"
Yes. "Have you considered that if we find 'him,' we might interrupt the process?"
"We don't have to tell her she's been found, do we?"
She starts to speak, then realizes she has no idea what she's about to say.
