Sims Read Free Page A

with millions of humans out of work.
    The Bush administration, wrapped up in the seemingly endless war on terrorism, failed to pass any regulatory bills. And then came the boom of the mid-oughts, making the nineties look like a pop gun and tightening all thelabor markets. Suddenly sims weren’t such a godless idea after all. In fact, they made good economic sense. They even allowed the US to compete with Asia in the textile markets. The result: A lot of senators and congressmen who previously might have been expected to vote against, came out in support of pro-SimGen legislation.
    Patrick remembered how animal rights activists had cried foul and said the fix was in, but nothing was ever proven, and in those days SimGen hadn’t anywhere near the money to buy off so many legislators.
    Now was a different story, of course. SimGen had been raking in the megabucks for years. As the darling of mutual funds and small investors alike, its market cap value was soaring.
    All of which made Patrick feel like a microminiature David. Because the real heavyweight opposition to organizing the sims would come from the SimGen Goliath. The last thing they’d want was someone unionizing their property.
    What he needed were allies. But who? The religious fundamentalists would be no help; Orthodox Jews, Moslems, and Christian Born Agains had found common ground in their opposition to sims, but they wanted sims abolished, not unionized. The animal rights groups like PETA and Greenpeace were a possibility, but they seemed to be in disarray; they’d tried guerrilla tactics like raiding piecework shops and “liberating” the sim workers; but the sims, unused to freedom, and lost and confused in the big wide world, wound up returning to the shops on their own.
    Patrick could see that he was going to be all alone out there.
    On the other hand, maybe SimGen wouldn’t bother to lift a finger. Maybe they’d know what Patrick knew: that he didn’t have a kitten’s chance in a room full of pit bulls. But what he could do was raise a ruckus and embarrass the hell out of Beacon Ridge, then settle out of court for a nice piece of change. That was what he’d aim for.
    But after that . . . what? What would the Beacon Ridge sims do with their money? Maybe Patrick could convince them to start a practice of tipping the
golfers
. He smiled. Wouldn’t that be a kick.
    He checked his watch: 10:14. Time to meet with his new clients.
    He parked on a side street near the creek that ran through the grounds. Yellow legal pad in hand, he stepped out, found an opening in the high privet hedge, and for some reason thought of his father.
    Mike Sullivan was a retired steamfitter who had been a diehard union man all his life. He’d raised his family within earshot of the Rensselaer rail-yards outside Albany until Patrick was twelve, then moved them to DobbsFerry. Patrick remembered how proud he’d been when his son became the first member of the family to graduate college. But he hadn’t been so crazy about Patrick’s idea of a career in law. He couldn’t afford to send him, so Patrick had paid his own way through Pace Law. If he’d gone on to become a champion of the labor movement, Dad might have bragged about his son the lawyer; but Patrick had shied away from the crusader role, opting to join the lumpen proletariat of the profession in a medium-size firm, and scratch his way up through the ranks.
    Dad had been able to live with that. But would he be able to live with the idea of his son as a labor organizer—of sims?
    Do I really want to do this?
    Patrick knew he should give himself a little more time—maybe a lot more time—to weigh the pros and cons. He had an impulsive nature which he managed to control at the bargaining table, but it had put him in hot spots more than once. Did he want to start this fire?
    Damn right he did. Hell hath no fury like an attorney scorned. Beacon Ridge