He raised his brows. “Laura, Doris and I have been separated for two months now. If we were still together I’d have brought her with me.” He stared at the television. “Turn it off,” he said suddenly. “I can only handle one crisis at a time.”
“But—”
“Fuck it, it’s gesellschaft stuff. Out of our hands.”
She turned it off. Suddenly she could feel the Net’s absence like a chunk taken out of her brain.
“Calm down,” he said. “Do some deep breathing. Cigarettes are bad for us anyway.”
“I didn’t know about Doris. Sorry.”
“It’s the demotion,” he said. “Things were fine as long as I was CEO, but she couldn’t take the Retreat. I mean, she knew it was coming, that it’s customary, but …”
She looked at his denim overalls. They were worn at the knees. “I think they take this demotion ritual a little too far … what do they have you do, mostly?”
“Oh, I’m in the old folks home. Change sheets—reminisce—pitch a little hay sometimes. Not so bad. Kind of gives you the long view.”
“That’s a very correct attitude, Charlie.”
“I mean it,” he said. “This Bomb crisis has people totally obsessed right now, but the long-term view’s still there, if you can back off enough to look at it. Grenada and Singapore … they had wild ideas, reckless, but if we’re smart, and very careful, we might use that kind of radical potential sensibly. There’s a world of hurt to be put right first … maybe a lot more if these bastards bomb us … but someday …”
“Someday what?” Laura said.
“I don’t really know what to call it.… Some kind of genuine, basic improvement in the human condition.”
“It could do with some,” Laura said. She smiled at him. She liked the sound of it. She liked him, for having brought up the long term, in the very middle of hell breaking loose. The very best time for it, really. “I like it,” she said. “Sounds like interesting work. We could talk about it together. Network a little.”
“I’d like that. When I’m back in the swing of things,” he said. He looked embarrassed. “I don’t mind being out of it a while. I didn’t handle it well. The power.… You should know that, Laura. Better than anyone.”
“You did very well—everyone says so. You’re not responsible for what happened to me. I went into it with my eyes open.”
“Jesus, it’s really good of you to say that.” He looked at the floor.
“I dreaded this meeting.… I mean, you were nice enough the few times we’ve met, but I didn’t know how you’d take it.”
“Well, it’s our work! It’s what we do, what we are.”
“You really believe in that, don’t you? The community.”
“I have to. It’s all I have left.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.” He smiled. “Can’t be such a bad thing. I mean, we’re both in it. Here we are. Solidarity, Laura.”
“Solidarity.” They clicked glasses and drank the last Drambuie.
“It’s good,” he said. He looked around. “Nice place.”
“Yeah … they keep the journos out.… Got a nice balcony, too. You like heights?”
“Yeah, what is this, fortieth floor? I can never tell these big Atlanta digs apart.” He stood up. “I could use some air.”
“Okay.” She walked toward the balcony; the double doors flung themselves open. They stood on the balcony looking down to the distant street.
“Impressive,” he said. Across the street they could see another high-rise, floor after floor, curtains open here and there, glow of television news. The balcony was open above them and they could hear it muttering out. The tone rising.
“It’s good to be here,” he said. “I’ll remember this moment. Where I was, what I was doing. Hell, everyone will. Years from now. For the rest of our lives.”
“I think you’re right. I know you are.”
“It’s either gonna be the absolute worst, or the final end of something.”
“Yeah … I should have brought the sake bottle.” She leaned on the railing. “You wouldn’t blame me, Charlie, would you? If it was the worst? Because I did have a part in it. I did it.”
“Never even occurred to me.”
“I mean, I’m only one person, but I did what one person can do.”
“Can’t ask for more than that.”
There was a bestial scream from upstairs. Joy, rage, pain, hard to tell. “That was it,” he said.
People were pouring into the streets. They were jumping out of vans. Running headlong. Running for one another. Distant leaping bits of anonymity: the crowd.
Horns were honking. People were embracing each other. Strangers, kissing. A mob flinging itself into its own arms. Windows began flying open across the street.
“They got ’em,” he said.
Laura looked down at the crowd. “Everybody’s so happy,” she said.
He had the sense not to say anything. He just held out his hand.
About the Author
Bruce Sterling is an American author and one of the founders of the cyberpunk science fiction movement. He began writing in the 1970s; his first novel, Involution Ocean, about a whaling ship in an ocean of dust, is a science fictional pastiche of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. His other works, including his series of stories and a novel, Schismatrix, set in the Shaper/Mechanist universe, often deal with computer-based technologies and genetic engineering. His five short story collections and ten novels have earned several honors: a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, a Hayakawa’s SF Magazine Reader’s Award, and an Arthur C. Clarke Award. Sterling has also worked as a critic and journalist, writing for Metropolis, Artforum, Icon, MIT Technology Review, Time, and Newsweek, as well as Interzone, Science Fiction Eye, Cheap Truth, and Cool Tools. He edits Beyond the Beyond, a blog hosted by Wired.
Sterling is also involved in the technology and design community. In 2003 his web-only art piece, Embrace the Decay, was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and became the most-visited piece in the museum’s digital gallery. He has taught classes in design at the Gerrit Reitveld Academie in Amsterdam, Centro in Mexico City, Fabrica in Treviso, Italy, and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Sterling lives in Austin, Texas; Belgrade, Serbia; and Turin, Italy.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 by Bruce Sterling
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8651-9
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY BRUCE STERLING
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
Islands in the Net Page 45