Holograms paint sex in vivid light. Atop skyscrapers, heartthrobs, either silky smooth or rugged, sell watches, aftershave and cosmetic implants. Pouting supermodels jut from buildings like gargoyles, and aerial drones project hunky gods and curvaceous goddesses into the sky. Sex empowers women, we pretend, while making men drooling dogs. And men are dogs, salivating for bitches in heat. Wherever they look breasts protrude and parted lips offer a silent promise. No wonder they merge with Psychnet porn: their wives cannot live up to the dream we force-feed them.
With fingers wrapped around my car’s steering wheel, knuckles whitening, I merge with Psychnet news that pulses through my psyber neural interface.
“… I repeat, there has been an explosion on Mars. Mission Control has been destroyed. The thousands of pioneers in stasis aboard the starship, New Hope, are now feared lost….”
“… stock markets around the world are in turmoil. The shares of EnviroSol, New Hope’s principal investor, are in free fall. EnviroSol’s CEO, Ramsey McDonald, is about to issue a …”
“… and despite Mission Control’s total isolation from Psychnet, foul play is suspected. Bookmakers have listed the ecoterrorist organisation, Preachers of Chaos, as the odds-on favourite cause of the atrocity….”
Preachers of Chaos? Ecoterrorists? I merge with Psychnet, and data, history, concepts flood in. Patterns emerge. My cognition psyberware processes the information, and instantly I understand. The Preachers of Chaos believe the holograms that beautify our drab world somehow possesses people with an obsession of self, a need to consume, and ultimately, turns them into habitat-destroying ecopaths. The Preachers of Chaos rail against geoengineering, genetic engineering, and especially EnviroSol’s biggest cash cow, the synthetic biological organisms and ecosystems that underpin the global economy.
But why sabotage New Hope? Why leave tens of thousands of pioneers adrift in deep space? How do the Preachers of Chaos gain? Unenlightened, I say to my car’s quantum artificial intelligence, “Rachel QAI, connect me with Ramsey McDonald.”
A moment passes before the large diamond fixed in the car’s dashboard blazes. From the Dream Diamond, rainbow fire rises and forms into the head of EnviroSol’s CEO. Ramsey speaks with a voice made smooth and pleasing by the jewel’s audio.
“Hey, Ruby, where are you? The party has already started, you know. And he … is … here.”
Glancing at the old man’s youthful face, painted effeminate with lipstick, rouge and mascara, I reply, “Party? Hasn’t the party been cancelled? For Christ’s sake, Ramsey, the board needs to meet, now.”
“Of course, the party has not been cancelled. Why would we cancel a flesh feast? And speaking of flesh, mine has arrived, all hard and shiny, fresh from his genesis womb. And guess what? He’s only wearing a sailor’s hat.”
“What? But New Hope is lost. EnviroSol’s stock is in free fall.”
“Darling, don’t bring me down. Tonight is party time. Just put your thoughts on hold, engage auto drive, and be cruised here in comfort. And that’s an executive order.”
“But—”
“Ruby, can’t you see that I’m all a rush inside? Engage auto drive and have Rachel fix you a drink. Chillax.”
I grip the wheel. “How the hell can I relax? How can you? You know what the loss of New Hope means.”
“Am I overworking you again? Stressed, are we? Poor Ruby.” Ramsey lip sulks momentarily, then brightly says, “Anyway, Moby is here, Moby is young, and Moby is most definitely buff. And my newly regenerated hip works better than the alloy ones ever did. No pain at all. So, should be fun-fun-fun!”
“What? Who the hell is Moby?”
“Why, my flesh feast, of course.” Ramsey’s eyes narrow like a satisfied cat. “I’m calling him Moby because he’s big and lean and muscly, and oh, did I mention he’s wearing a sailor’s hat?”
“What?”
“As in sailor’s hat, as in Captain Ahab?”
“Who?”
Ramsey gives a theatrical sigh, before saying, “The youth of today. Sailor’s hat? Captain Ahab? Moby Dick? No? Hmm.”
“The big white whale?”
Ramsey licks his lips. “I do hope so.”
“For Christ’s sake Ramsey, this is no time to pump yourself full of lust. The board has to meet, and not at your bloody party, either.”
“Work. Work. Work.” Ramsey sighs. “Take my advice, Ruby: work hard, party hard, and let your immuno-psyberware cook you up something illegal. It’s the only way to survive times like this.”
“Ramsey, EnviroSol’s stock is crashing. Hell, everybody’s stock is crashing. We’ve lost trillions. And who knows how the news of New Hope’s loss will affect global consumer spending. We’ve got to prepare, not party.”
“Chillax, Ruby. We’ll catch these Preachers of Chaos and throw them to the media mob. We’ll spin it as a crime against humanity, and hang ’em high in The Hague. Markets will bounce back, in time. There’s no need to panic. Just chillax and—”
EnviroSol’s CEO abruptly disappears as the Dream Diamond’s holographic fire morphs into the head of a man dressed in a glowing, indigo robe. The robe’s hood illuminates the man’s chiselled features and synthetic translucent hair. “Are you sitting comfortably?” he says.
Annoyed at the interruption, I ignore the advertisement and say, “Rachel QAI? What’s taking you so long? Get Ramsey back.”
EnviroSol’s quantum artificial intelligence does not respond, and the man’s holographic head persists. Solemnly, he says, “We need to talk, Ruby Wilcox.”
“Rachel QAI, disengage the Dream Diamond, now.”
Again, EnviroSol’s quantum artificial intelligence remains silent. The hooded intruder smiles knowingly. “Sorry, Ruby, but Rachel QAI cannot switch us off. We are here to stay.”
“Who are you? How are you doing this? Look, whatever you are selling, I’ve already got it.”
“Selling?” the man says, raising an eyebrow. “A stable climate and natural biosphere, I suppose. Though, I’m afraid, you’ve missed the Preachers of Chaos’ recent sale.”
Preachers of Chaos? “EnviroSol Emergency! Rachel, engage auto drive and get me out of here.”
“As you wish.” As the car accelerates into a turn, my head thumps the side window. “Sorry, never did pass my test.”
“Rachel! Rachel, please!” EnviroSol’s quantum artificial intelligence still monitors—I can sense her through my psyber neural interface. Why won’t she help? In desperation, I cry, “Take the car, but let me live. Take all my money, but please, don’t hurt me.”
“Money? Hmm.” The ecoterrorist chuckles. “Really? How much?”
“Half a billion.”
“Woo. That much? Surely you can do better?”
“That’s all I can transfer immediately. Please, take the car, and the money. Just don’t hurt me.”
The hooded figure’s lips flatten. Drawn into his radiant emerald eyes, I hear, “Meditate on your first response to danger. Can you buy your way out of it? Is money truly all powerful?” Rainbow fire withdraws into the Dream Diamond, and with it the ecoterrorist.
My car enters dark streets, lit not by holograms but the fire barrels of the necrotic people—the city’s economic outcasts. Their grubby faces glance up as I cruise by, banging on the window. No one helps. No one cares. “Rachel QAI, help me!”
Eventually, the hijacked car halts abruptly. Hands shaking, I look in the driver’s mirror to fix myself in the eye and steady my nerves, and see mascara tears staining a pale face edged by ruby hair. I flinch as the car unlocks and the driver’s door opens.
“Ruby Wilcox, please join the Preachers of Chaos.” London’s stench hits me as the cheerful voice from the hologram says with neither threat nor malice. Stretching out a leg, my high-heeled shoe meets cracked tarmac. Once outside the car, the heat of burning torches oppresses as figures, wearing luminous indigo robes, crowd me. Searching their faces, I spot the man with lucent emerald eyes and translucent hair from the hologram, standing next to a tattooed fat man with titanium boar tusk body piercings. Beyond the mob, I spy a stake jutting from a pyre of tyres, just as my nasal psyberware detects and identifies petrol. The indigo robes rush me.
Dragged screaming across a wasteland, where skeletal vehicles form street-gang fortress walls, I glimpse other genetically enhanced and surgically modified faces. Atop the ramp leading to the pyre, waits a retro-style woman with violet LED eyebrows arching above abnormally large, doleful eyes. Big-eyed girl laughs as others tie me to the stake, then draws closer. Forcing the stump of her handless forearm into my throat, she leans in, and with the ringed forefinger and thumb of her one hand, grips my temples. The ecoterrorist’s huge eyes dilate as the two rings emit an audible hum.
“Christ!”
An electromagnetic pulse blinds with a cascade of retinal flashes as it kills my psyberware. The noise of the sledgehammers and laser cutters assaulting my car becomes distant. The petrol’s benzene sweetness fades. Then big-eyed girl releases her EMP grip as the man from the hologram preaches to his congregation in austere tones.
“Contamination; Habitat destruction; Avarice; Overharvesting; Synthbio organisms: the five pillars of the global economy. CHAOS has murdered millions of species, acidified the ocean, and tipped Earth towards accelerated warming. We are here to judge whether the defendant, through promoting unfettered economic growth, is responsible. Ruby Wilcox is charged with ecocide. Do you find her guilty, or not guilty?”
“Burn her,” the congregation intones darkly.
“But did Ruby Wilcox hook kids on consumerism? Did she grow them fat on a diet of advertising and junk food, then peddle pills to shrink them thin? What of the miracles, born in quantum test tubes, she sold the infirm, the old? Did Ruby engineer our lives to fit product life cycles?”
“Burn her—burn her.”
“Did Ruby blanket our oceans with algal blooms or create the Amazon Desert? Did she melt the methane clathrates, the permafrost, the ice sheets, and nudge global warming over tipping point after tipping point? And did she then charge the earth to save Earth with doomed geoengineering solutions?”
“Burn her—burn her—burn her.”
“The world burns and EnviroSol profits. Cluster bombs rain on resource-rich lands, littering dead soil with limbs. The crippled scavenge toxic-tech dumps for last season’s prosthetic fashion and get biospliced as their corporate-backed warlord demands. Child soldiers fight until EMP-bombs turn living metal into dead metal—shrapnel buried deep. And ecocidal corporations, like EnviroSol, profit during each phase of this life cycle of human misery.”
“Burn them all!”
“Brothers, sisters, will you damn Ruby Wilcox for the world’s spiralling misfortune? What do you say? Do we raise a knife against her as she raised an economic knife against us all? Should Ruby Wilcox suffer the fire?”
The obese man with a tattooed face and titanium bore tusks approaches, bearing a flaming torch. His eyes bulge as he gives a fat-Buddha grin, and the mob cries, “Burn her!”
“… I repeat, there has been an explosion on Mars. Mission Control has been destroyed. The thousands of pioneers in stasis aboard the starship, New Hope, are now feared lost….”
“… stock markets around the world are in turmoil. The shares of EnviroSol, New Hope’s principal investor, are in free fall. EnviroSol’s CEO, Ramsey McDonald, is about to issue a …”
“… and despite Mission Control’s total isolation from Psychnet, foul play is suspected. Bookmakers have listed the ecoterrorist organisation, Preachers of Chaos, as the odds-on favourite cause of the atrocity….”
Preachers of Chaos? Ecoterrorists? I merge with Psychnet, and data, history, concepts flood in. Patterns emerge. My cognition psyberware processes the information, and instantly I understand. The Preachers of Chaos believe the holograms that beautify our drab world somehow possesses people with an obsession of self, a need to consume, and ultimately, turns them into habitat-destroying ecopaths. The Preachers of Chaos rail against geoengineering, genetic engineering, and especially EnviroSol’s biggest cash cow, the synthetic biological organisms and ecosystems that underpin the global economy.
But why sabotage New Hope? Why leave tens of thousands of pioneers adrift in deep space? How do the Preachers of Chaos gain? Unenlightened, I say to my car’s quantum artificial intelligence, “Rachel QAI, connect me with Ramsey McDonald.”
A moment passes before the large diamond fixed in the car’s dashboard blazes. From the Dream Diamond, rainbow fire rises and forms into the head of EnviroSol’s CEO. Ramsey speaks with a voice made smooth and pleasing by the jewel’s audio.
“Hey, Ruby, where are you? The party has already started, you know. And he … is … here.”
Glancing at the old man’s youthful face, painted effeminate with lipstick, rouge and mascara, I reply, “Party? Hasn’t the party been cancelled? For Christ’s sake, Ramsey, the board needs to meet, now.”
“Of course, the party has not been cancelled. Why would we cancel a flesh feast? And speaking of flesh, mine has arrived, all hard and shiny, fresh from his genesis womb. And guess what? He’s only wearing a sailor’s hat.”
“What? But New Hope is lost. EnviroSol’s stock is in free fall.”
“Darling, don’t bring me down. Tonight is party time. Just put your thoughts on hold, engage auto drive, and be cruised here in comfort. And that’s an executive order.”
“But—”
“Ruby, can’t you see that I’m all a rush inside? Engage auto drive and have Rachel fix you a drink. Chillax.”
I grip the wheel. “How the hell can I relax? How can you? You know what the loss of New Hope means.”
“Am I overworking you again? Stressed, are we? Poor Ruby.” Ramsey lip sulks momentarily, then brightly says, “Anyway, Moby is here, Moby is young, and Moby is most definitely buff. And my newly regenerated hip works better than the alloy ones ever did. No pain at all. So, should be fun-fun-fun!”
“What? Who the hell is Moby?”
“Why, my flesh feast, of course.” Ramsey’s eyes narrow like a satisfied cat. “I’m calling him Moby because he’s big and lean and muscly, and oh, did I mention he’s wearing a sailor’s hat?”
“What?”
“As in sailor’s hat, as in Captain Ahab?”
“Who?”
Ramsey gives a theatrical sigh, before saying, “The youth of today. Sailor’s hat? Captain Ahab? Moby Dick? No? Hmm.”
“The big white whale?”
Ramsey licks his lips. “I do hope so.”
“For Christ’s sake Ramsey, this is no time to pump yourself full of lust. The board has to meet, and not at your bloody party, either.”
“Work. Work. Work.” Ramsey sighs. “Take my advice, Ruby: work hard, party hard, and let your immuno-psyberware cook you up something illegal. It’s the only way to survive times like this.”
“Ramsey, EnviroSol’s stock is crashing. Hell, everybody’s stock is crashing. We’ve lost trillions. And who knows how the news of New Hope’s loss will affect global consumer spending. We’ve got to prepare, not party.”
“Chillax, Ruby. We’ll catch these Preachers of Chaos and throw them to the media mob. We’ll spin it as a crime against humanity, and hang ’em high in The Hague. Markets will bounce back, in time. There’s no need to panic. Just chillax and—”
EnviroSol’s CEO abruptly disappears as the Dream Diamond’s holographic fire morphs into the head of a man dressed in a glowing, indigo robe. The robe’s hood illuminates the man’s chiselled features and synthetic translucent hair. “Are you sitting comfortably?” he says.
Annoyed at the interruption, I ignore the advertisement and say, “Rachel QAI? What’s taking you so long? Get Ramsey back.”
EnviroSol’s quantum artificial intelligence does not respond, and the man’s holographic head persists. Solemnly, he says, “We need to talk, Ruby Wilcox.”
“Rachel QAI, disengage the Dream Diamond, now.”
Again, EnviroSol’s quantum artificial intelligence remains silent. The hooded intruder smiles knowingly. “Sorry, Ruby, but Rachel QAI cannot switch us off. We are here to stay.”
“Who are you? How are you doing this? Look, whatever you are selling, I’ve already got it.”
“Selling?” the man says, raising an eyebrow. “A stable climate and natural biosphere, I suppose. Though, I’m afraid, you’ve missed the Preachers of Chaos’ recent sale.”
Preachers of Chaos? “EnviroSol Emergency! Rachel, engage auto drive and get me out of here.”
“As you wish.” As the car accelerates into a turn, my head thumps the side window. “Sorry, never did pass my test.”
“Rachel! Rachel, please!” EnviroSol’s quantum artificial intelligence still monitors—I can sense her through my psyber neural interface. Why won’t she help? In desperation, I cry, “Take the car, but let me live. Take all my money, but please, don’t hurt me.”
“Money? Hmm.” The ecoterrorist chuckles. “Really? How much?”
“Half a billion.”
“Woo. That much? Surely you can do better?”
“That’s all I can transfer immediately. Please, take the car, and the money. Just don’t hurt me.”
The hooded figure’s lips flatten. Drawn into his radiant emerald eyes, I hear, “Meditate on your first response to danger. Can you buy your way out of it? Is money truly all powerful?” Rainbow fire withdraws into the Dream Diamond, and with it the ecoterrorist.
My car enters dark streets, lit not by holograms but the fire barrels of the necrotic people—the city’s economic outcasts. Their grubby faces glance up as I cruise by, banging on the window. No one helps. No one cares. “Rachel QAI, help me!”
Eventually, the hijacked car halts abruptly. Hands shaking, I look in the driver’s mirror to fix myself in the eye and steady my nerves, and see mascara tears staining a pale face edged by ruby hair. I flinch as the car unlocks and the driver’s door opens.
“Ruby Wilcox, please join the Preachers of Chaos.” London’s stench hits me as the cheerful voice from the hologram says with neither threat nor malice. Stretching out a leg, my high-heeled shoe meets cracked tarmac. Once outside the car, the heat of burning torches oppresses as figures, wearing luminous indigo robes, crowd me. Searching their faces, I spot the man with lucent emerald eyes and translucent hair from the hologram, standing next to a tattooed fat man with titanium boar tusk body piercings. Beyond the mob, I spy a stake jutting from a pyre of tyres, just as my nasal psyberware detects and identifies petrol. The indigo robes rush me.
Dragged screaming across a wasteland, where skeletal vehicles form street-gang fortress walls, I glimpse other genetically enhanced and surgically modified faces. Atop the ramp leading to the pyre, waits a retro-style woman with violet LED eyebrows arching above abnormally large, doleful eyes. Big-eyed girl laughs as others tie me to the stake, then draws closer. Forcing the stump of her handless forearm into my throat, she leans in, and with the ringed forefinger and thumb of her one hand, grips my temples. The ecoterrorist’s huge eyes dilate as the two rings emit an audible hum.
“Christ!”
An electromagnetic pulse blinds with a cascade of retinal flashes as it kills my psyberware. The noise of the sledgehammers and laser cutters assaulting my car becomes distant. The petrol’s benzene sweetness fades. Then big-eyed girl releases her EMP grip as the man from the hologram preaches to his congregation in austere tones.
“Contamination; Habitat destruction; Avarice; Overharvesting; Synthbio organisms: the five pillars of the global economy. CHAOS has murdered millions of species, acidified the ocean, and tipped Earth towards accelerated warming. We are here to judge whether the defendant, through promoting unfettered economic growth, is responsible. Ruby Wilcox is charged with ecocide. Do you find her guilty, or not guilty?”
“Burn her,” the congregation intones darkly.
“But did Ruby Wilcox hook kids on consumerism? Did she grow them fat on a diet of advertising and junk food, then peddle pills to shrink them thin? What of the miracles, born in quantum test tubes, she sold the infirm, the old? Did Ruby engineer our lives to fit product life cycles?”
“Burn her—burn her.”
“Did Ruby blanket our oceans with algal blooms or create the Amazon Desert? Did she melt the methane clathrates, the permafrost, the ice sheets, and nudge global warming over tipping point after tipping point? And did she then charge the earth to save Earth with doomed geoengineering solutions?”
“Burn her—burn her—burn her.”
“The world burns and EnviroSol profits. Cluster bombs rain on resource-rich lands, littering dead soil with limbs. The crippled scavenge toxic-tech dumps for last season’s prosthetic fashion and get biospliced as their corporate-backed warlord demands. Child soldiers fight until EMP-bombs turn living metal into dead metal—shrapnel buried deep. And ecocidal corporations, like EnviroSol, profit during each phase of this life cycle of human misery.”
“Burn them all!”
“Brothers, sisters, will you damn Ruby Wilcox for the world’s spiralling misfortune? What do you say? Do we raise a knife against her as she raised an economic knife against us all? Should Ruby Wilcox suffer the fire?”
The obese man with a tattooed face and titanium bore tusks approaches, bearing a flaming torch. His eyes bulge as he gives a fat-Buddha grin, and the mob cries, “Burn her!”
Adapted from Quantum Dream Book I
The Moment Between Two Thoughts
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