Read Online Infoquake by David Louis Edelman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Louis Edelman
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, High Tech, Corporations
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he had the guts or the
foresight?
She hadn't really intended to quit, she realized now. Despite all the
indignities, Jara couldn't bring herself to hate this cantankerous child.
What she had wanted was the opportunity to deliver some kind of
high-handed sermon about Pyrrhic victories and the value of interpersonal relationships. She wanted him to take her seriously. "People
could have gotten hurt, Natch," Jara said quietly.
"They didn't."
"But they could have."
Natch finally capitulated and flipped off the MindSpace bubble
around his workbench. The holographic donut melted back into the
void. "Jara, everyone who invests in bio/logics knows what's going on.
Things like this happen all the time. Do you think the Patel Brothers
got to the top without getting their hands dirty? Or Len Borda?"
Jara snorted angrily. "Oh, I see, the end justifies the means."
The entrepreneur narrowed his eyes, as if trying to adjust his focus
to a shallower depth of field. "Do you really think number one on Primo's is the end? Then you don't understand anything, Jara. Getting
to number one on Primo's isn't an end at all-it's a means. It's part of
the process ... just a step on the ladder."
"So what is the end? Where do all these means lead to?"
Natch stared out into the nothingness for a moment without
speaking. She saw him for a brief instant unadorned, between masks.
His jaw rocked back and forth, and in his eyes burned a hunger the
likes of which Jara had never seen. That fire could consume her schoolgirl lust, swallow it without a trace. She shivered involuntarily.
"I don't have a clue," said Natch. "But when I find out, I'll let you
know." And with a peremptory wave of his hand, he cut her multi connection.
Jara found herself standing once more on the red square in her
London apartment. It was Wednesday afternoon already. In a few
blessed hours, this entire debacle would be a distant memory. On the
viewscreen, she could hear the crowds milling about in the public
square, restless, impatient, disconsolate.
Jara sank to the floor and cried for a moment, then dragged herself
back to her office. There was work to be done.
Sleep tore at him, shrieked at him, pummeled him without mercy. His
traitorous body was only too happy to succumb, and it took a monumental effort of will for Natch to keep himself awake.
Sheldon Surina, the father of bio/logics, had once defined progress
as "the expansion of choices." Natch wanted the choice to stay awake.
So he switched on PulCorp's U-No-Snooze 93 and let the OCHRE
machines in his body release more adrenaline. Within seconds, he was
awake and alert.
He was on the tube headed north out of Cisco station, through the
great redwood forests that carpeted much of the northwest, and up to
Seattle. Natch had been on this route hundreds of times. The tube
would shuttle back and forth between the two port cities all afternoon,
hauling industrial supplies and a dwindling number of commuters. At
this time of the morning, the passenger car was nearly empty. Besides
Natch, there was an elderly gentleman who appeared to be killing
time; two businesswomen who were probably accompanying their
cargo in the trailing cars; and an Islander tugging uncomfortably at
the steel collar around his neck. Fickle economics, which had once
courted TubeCo with ardor, had moved on to younger and more acrobatic mistresses.
Natch had no business to transact in either Cisco or Seattle. He
came to see the trees. To see the trees and to plot his next move.
Everyone in the fiefcorp knew about his ritual of tubing out to the
redwood forests whenever he had something to mull over. Nobody
understood it, least of all Jara. "You refuse to eat a meal sitting down
because it's a waste of time, but you'll spend three and a half hours
riding a hunk of tin across the continent?" she had once scolded him.
"Why tube all the way out there when you can multi instead?"
"It's not the same as being there in
foresight?
She hadn't really intended to quit, she realized now. Despite all the
indignities, Jara couldn't bring herself to hate this cantankerous child.
What she had wanted was the opportunity to deliver some kind of
high-handed sermon about Pyrrhic victories and the value of interpersonal relationships. She wanted him to take her seriously. "People
could have gotten hurt, Natch," Jara said quietly.
"They didn't."
"But they could have."
Natch finally capitulated and flipped off the MindSpace bubble
around his workbench. The holographic donut melted back into the
void. "Jara, everyone who invests in bio/logics knows what's going on.
Things like this happen all the time. Do you think the Patel Brothers
got to the top without getting their hands dirty? Or Len Borda?"
Jara snorted angrily. "Oh, I see, the end justifies the means."
The entrepreneur narrowed his eyes, as if trying to adjust his focus
to a shallower depth of field. "Do you really think number one on Primo's is the end? Then you don't understand anything, Jara. Getting
to number one on Primo's isn't an end at all-it's a means. It's part of
the process ... just a step on the ladder."
"So what is the end? Where do all these means lead to?"
Natch stared out into the nothingness for a moment without
speaking. She saw him for a brief instant unadorned, between masks.
His jaw rocked back and forth, and in his eyes burned a hunger the
likes of which Jara had never seen. That fire could consume her schoolgirl lust, swallow it without a trace. She shivered involuntarily.
"I don't have a clue," said Natch. "But when I find out, I'll let you
know." And with a peremptory wave of his hand, he cut her multi connection.
Jara found herself standing once more on the red square in her
London apartment. It was Wednesday afternoon already. In a few
blessed hours, this entire debacle would be a distant memory. On the
viewscreen, she could hear the crowds milling about in the public
square, restless, impatient, disconsolate.
Jara sank to the floor and cried for a moment, then dragged herself
back to her office. There was work to be done.
Sleep tore at him, shrieked at him, pummeled him without mercy. His
traitorous body was only too happy to succumb, and it took a monumental effort of will for Natch to keep himself awake.
Sheldon Surina, the father of bio/logics, had once defined progress
as "the expansion of choices." Natch wanted the choice to stay awake.
So he switched on PulCorp's U-No-Snooze 93 and let the OCHRE
machines in his body release more adrenaline. Within seconds, he was
awake and alert.
He was on the tube headed north out of Cisco station, through the
great redwood forests that carpeted much of the northwest, and up to
Seattle. Natch had been on this route hundreds of times. The tube
would shuttle back and forth between the two port cities all afternoon,
hauling industrial supplies and a dwindling number of commuters. At
this time of the morning, the passenger car was nearly empty. Besides
Natch, there was an elderly gentleman who appeared to be killing
time; two businesswomen who were probably accompanying their
cargo in the trailing cars; and an Islander tugging uncomfortably at
the steel collar around his neck. Fickle economics, which had once
courted TubeCo with ardor, had moved on to younger and more acrobatic mistresses.
Natch had no business to transact in either Cisco or Seattle. He
came to see the trees. To see the trees and to plot his next move.
Everyone in the fiefcorp knew about his ritual of tubing out to the
redwood forests whenever he had something to mull over. Nobody
understood it, least of all Jara. "You refuse to eat a meal sitting down
because it's a waste of time, but you'll spend three and a half hours
riding a hunk of tin across the continent?" she had once scolded him.
"Why tube all the way out there when you can multi instead?"
"It's not the same as being there in