Infoquake

by David Louis Edelman

  Once the initial fascination of the city wore off, Natch's experiences in the hive began to infect everything he saw. The belligerent street vendor shouting down his customer's haggling ... the timid woman walking two steps behind her companion like a housepet ... the down-and-out businessman being pressed out of his apartment by white-robed Council officers ... every interaction he saw was a substantiation of the eternal struggle between the Pushers and the Pushed.

  Natch found a quiet corner in a public square and sat facing the wall. A viewscreen above him repeatedly screeched a popular footwear slogan every ten seconds. No matter where you go, there will be bullies and victims, Natch told himself. Which do you want to be?

  Back at the hive, the proctors made a poor show of mobilizing to find Natch. The boy had been gone for most of the afternoon, and yet the headmaster had only just managed to circulate his name and description to the local L-PRACG security forces. Serr Vigal, for his part, was absorbed in solving the riddle of how Natch had made it through hive security. All simply gaped with astonishment when the boy appeared back in the hive that evening, seemingly out of nowhere. On his return, he had managed to elude their security apparatus as effortlessly as he had on his departure.

  That was a nice trick you pulled, said the neural programmer with a hint of pride. And then, mindful of the proctors' angry stares: Is there anything you'd like to talk to us about?

  Natch frowned, shook his head, and vanished into his room without a word.

  The next day, a tangible change had come over the boy. He met the taunts and jeers of his hivemates with a cruel smile that made them uneasy. And then his enemies began to suffer from a series of unfortunate accidents.

  One boy who had constantly maligned Natch for his good looks found himself tripping down a long flight of stairs. A girl who liked to capsize Natch's lunch tray found herself locked in a spare pantry for an entire evening. And so on.

  Each humiliation was carefully crafted to reach maximum exposure among the hive children. Natch instinctively knew that the punish ments he imposed should be both brutal and disproportionate to their crimes. This new brand of psychological warfare terrified the other children, who had not yet learned the art of subtlety, who still expressed their emotions with curled fists and running feet. Eventually, even the dullest child in the hive saw a pattern: if you bother Natch, you will pay for it.

  Natch got his wish. The other children left him alone. He had learned another valuable lesson: Perception is everything.

  Natch quickly outgrew his hive. Even the absent-minded Serr Vigal could see that, although it took an eye-opening conversation with the proctor Petaar for him to recognize it.

  Children like Natch need something to focus on, she said. You'd better make sure he's pointed in the right direction, or he'll focus on the wrong things.

  Vigal furrowed his brow. A man who spent his day working with the quadratics of neural science had little time for binary terms like "right" and "wrong". This new hive you suggest-they'll give him something to focus on?

  Petaar nodded knowingly. And then some. Natch will get ten years of study-hard study and then a one-year initiation.

  Initiation? The hives still do that?

  This one does.

  The neural programmer scrolled bewilderedly through page upon page of starchy marketing material. The tuition seems rather large ... and I'm afraid my Vault account is rather small at the moment ...

  Which is why he can apply for a Prime Committee scholarship.

  Days later, after an awkward farewell sermon from Petaar (and an even more awkward farewell embrace), Natch was shepherded off to the Proud Eagle hive in Cape Town. The Proud Eagle had a reputation for doing things differently. Unlike most other hives, they had no ges tation and birthing facilities, no counseling staff, and no social programs of any kind. Children came to the Proud Eagle because they had stretched beyond the boundaries of the traditional hive system and needed a challenge. The proctors delivered it to them in the form of ten-hour classes, six days a week. This left very little time for idleness, boredom or mischief.

  Natch did not miss the infantile games and simplistic moral lessons that had taken up his time at the old hive. Initiation lurked somewhere in his future, but he would deal with that challenge when it came. He took to his new surroundings like a fish to water and spent the next several years gulping down knowledge.

  The history proctors taught him about the thinking machines that had nearly decimated humanity during the great Autonomous Revolt, about the dark times that followed, and about the golden age of scientific reawakening that Sheldon Surina's discipline of bio/logics had brought into being. They taught him about the evaporation and consolidation of the ancient nation-states, the rise of the L-PRACGs, the establishment of the Prime Committee and the Council, the neverending quarrel between governmentalism and libertarianism.

  The ethics proctors taught him about the early religions, how their influence waned after the dawn of the Reawakening, and how the violent fanaticism of Jesus Joshua Smith drove most of their remaining adherents into seclusion in the Pharisee Territories. They taught him about the Surinas' philosophy of spiritual enlightenment through technology, and about the creeds that had sprung up during the modern era to preach community and responsibility. They taught him the tenets of Creed Objectivv, Creed Elan, Creed Thassel, Creed Dao, and many others.

  The data proctors taught him about Henry Osterman and the Osterman Company for Human Re-Engineering (OCHRE), about the microscopic machines carrying Osterman's name that swarmed through his blood and tissue. They taught him how to summon data agents with a thought, how to run bio/logic programs that interacted with the machines and supplemented his body's natural abilities. They introduced him to the vast corpus of human knowledge available on the Data Sea. They explained to him how Prengal Surina's Universal Law of Physics allowed scientists to turn grains of sand, droplets of water, and molecules of air into quantum computers of almost limitless strength.

  The business proctors taught him the basics of bio/logic programming. They showed him the holographic method of programming, which had long ago supplanted language-based systems of logic. They discussed the difference between market-driven fiefcorps and publicly funded memecorps. They put a set of bio/logic programming bars in his hands and set him loose in MindSpace to demonstrate how to visualize and manipulate logical processes.

  Given the grueling program of study, most of the children couldn't wait for long weekends and vacations to be with their families. But Natch had only Serr Vigal to go home to, and Vigal had never acted like family. The neural programmer treated him like a colleague instead of an adopted son. When they were not simply ignoring one another, they were having cordial conversations about current events. These conversations usually turned into Socratic discussions, with Vigal feeding him question after question as if skepticism were a form of dietary fiber.

  I wish I knew something about children, Vigal would chuckle absentmindedly from time to time. But Natch was grateful he didn't. He looked forward to spending weekends alone at the hive, when all of the children were gone and Vigal was shuttling around the globe fundraising.

  For a few years, the Proud Eagle seemed like paradise to Natch. He tore into his assignments with gusto and asked for more, afraid to take this opportunity for granted because he knew it would not last forever.

  The families started arriving at noon the day before initiation, and continued streaming into the Proud Eagle until long past sundown. From a corner, Natch watched his hivemates go off for private chats with fathers and mothers and uncles and cousins to hear one last bit of wisdom they could take with them to initiation. He conjured up a picture of Lora, the mother he had never met, and wondered what kind of advice she would be giving him right now.

  Natch felt a hand on his shoulder. He whirled around expectantly, but it was only Horvil. Horvil, the most anxiety-prone child in the hive, not to mention the sloppiest and the largest. Horvil, Natch's only fr
iend. "So do you think it's gonna be painful?" he said.

  Before Natch had a chance to respond, an older boy stepped in. He was ruggedly handsome and knew it, with a face that could have been the Platonic Form of symmetry. "Of course it's going to be painful," teased Brone as he advanced on Horvil. "What's initiation without pain? What's life without pain?" He called up a static electricity program and tapped the other two boys on the side. Horvil yelped and scooted out of the way, but Natch quickly activated a grounding program to deflect the charge.

  "I really hope it's not too painful," whimpered Horvil to himself. He turned on Analgesic 232.5 to soothe his aching side. "I don't think I'll be able to stand a lot of pain." Brone and Natch stared at one another icily for a few moments without speaking.

  Horvil and Brone's families arrived shortly thereafter, leaving Natch alone in the corner with his thoughts. Horvil disappeared into a gaggle of aunts and cousins who seemed determined to wedge their advice into him with a crowbar if necessary. Brone walked off with two picture-perfect parents, looking less like their progeny than a model from the same factory. He gave Natch one last evil grin before vanishing. "Horvil's not the only one who's going to feel pain," Brone fired off at him over Confidential Whisper.

  Everyone knew what to expect from initiation, but the ramifications only seemed to multiply the closer the time came. The students would be separated by sex and put in the wilderness for a year, where the OCHREs in their bloodstreams would be deactivated. The bio/logic programs that regulated their heartbeats, kept their calendars, and maximized the storage space in their brains would be cut off. They would look at words without being able to instantly glean their meanings from the Data Sea. They would snuffle and sneeze and bruise and forget things. And the worst horror of all, they would wake up in the middle of the night with actual shit oozing through their intestines....

  "Human beings are only subroutines of humanity," said a voice.

  Natch must have drifted off, because he hadn't noticed the middleaged man approaching him. The man's sand-colored robe was decidedly unfashionable (and poorly tailored at that), but his face was friendly: the non-specific goodwill of the perpetual cloud dweller. His almond-shaped eyes betrayed a hint of the Orient. Natch smiled politely at the multi projection of Serr Vigal.

  "Sheldon Surina said that," Vigal continued gently.

  "What did he mean?"

  "Well, if you believe your proctors, Surina meant that everyone should experience the struggle of humanity from darkness to light. They think that Surina would have wanted you to see what life was like before the Reawakening. Make you appreciate the modern world more."

  "And what do you think?"

  The man stared off into the distance and tugged at his peppery goatee. "I don't know. I think maybe Sheldon Surina just wanted everyone to keep an open mind and be nice to each other."

  Natch tried to refrain from rolling his eyes. It was typical of the advice he received from Serr Vigal: pleasant, inoffensive, and mostly useless. "I thought you couldn't come," he said. "I thought you were speaking at a conference."

  Vigal frowned. "Yes, that's right. But I convinced one of my apprentices to cover for me. At least, I think she said she would cover for me...." Vigal's eyes searched the ground as if he might find answers woven into the Aztec patterns on the carpet. Finally, he gave a self-deprecating shrug. "Well, there's nothing I can do about it now." Natch noticed the neural programmer's baffled expression and stifled a smile. It was impossible to get mad at Serr Vigal. He might be hopelessly out of touch, but at least he had a sense of humor about it.

  "Come," said the older man, clapping a virtual hand on Natch's shoulder. "Let's take a walk in the garden, and I'll give you the last bit of sentimental nonsense you'll have to endure for the next twelve months."

  The Proud Eagle's garden was the envy of metropolitan Cape Town. Gargantuan sunflowers sat alongside lush poppies and forbidding cacti, all growing in the shadows of redwoods, bonsai and elm. Natch had been training himself for initiation by trying to identify things that would not exist without Sheldon Surina's science of bio/logics, and this improbable congregation of plants was one of them. It was easy to forget that bio/logics dealt not only with the programming of the human body, but with other organic structures as well.

  Serr Vigal kept his silence for several minutes. Natch could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing at attention as his guardian gave him one of those world-weary stares. The boy put his hands in his pockets and did his best to ignore it.

  Natch wondered for the millionth time what kind of relationship Vigal had really had with his mother. Had he loved her? Had they slept together? Would they be bonded companions now if Lora had not been infected by that epidemic in the orbital colonies? It was a pointless exercise. All Natch ever managed to pry out of Vigal was the skeletal structure of a life story. Sometimes Natch suspected the neural programmer was really his father, but Genealogy Sleuth 24.7 concluded that the differences in their DNA made such a relationship unlikely at best.

  "I hear some of your hivemates are starting their own fiefcorps after initiation," said Vigal abruptly.

  Natch nodded. "A few of them."

  "Your friend Brone among them, I suppose."

  A flurry of emotions washed through Natch's mind as he considered the visage of his hated rival. The two had spent most of their childhood warily circling one another like fencers, always testing and probing for weaknesses. Over the past year, Natch's competition with Brone had turned into full-scale war. "Krone is not my friend," he said through gritted teeth.

  Natch's malice passed right over Vigal's head. "What about Horvil?"

  "He doesn't know."

  "And you? After the hive, after initiation, what then?"

  There was a pause. "I've had ... a few meetings."

  Vigal exhaled softly and pretended to study a hanging grapevine. "I see."

  Another period of silence followed. Serr Vigal seemed to be marshaling the courage to say something. Meanwhile, Natch could see through the hothouse windows that the commotion in the hive building was dying down. Families were giving their sons and daughters one last virtual embrace before cutting their multi connections. Natch and his fellows would be on their way to initiation in just eighteen hours.

  "Listen, Natch," said his guardian finally. "I'd like to give you some advice before you head out to initiation. It's just ... I'm not very good at this kind of thing. As you know, raising a child wasn't something I planned. It sort of fell in my lap by accident.... And now, after all this time, I'm not sure how to begin...." Vigal stopped and collected his thoughts, aware he had not exactly gotten off to an auspicious beginning. "Natch, I have tried to give you the education your mother would have wanted you to have. She believed her hive did not adequately prepare her for the world. And now I wonder if the same thing will prove to be the case with you, here at the Proud Eagle."

  "That's ridiculous," snapped Natch, instantly on the defensive. "Everybody knows that this is one of the best hives in the world."

  "And how does one measure that?"

  "Well, the capitalmen seem to think so. Do you know how many programmers from last year's class got funding for their own fiefcorps?"

  "Too many, if you ask me."

  Natch shrugged. He would not be lured into one of these pedantic Vigalish dialogues today. "Things are different now. The economy is exploding, and there's too much opportunity out there to waste time on an apprenticeship. Two years ago-"

  The neural programmer shushed him with a raised hand. His face bore a pained expression. "I hear that nonsense from the drudges every day. I'm surprised that you, of all people, don't know propaganda when you read it. But it's not just you-your hivemates, the proctors, Brone, Horvil-everyone is falling for this drivel." Vigal wrung his hands as if trying to cleanse them of a foul and noxious liquid.

  Natch searched his mental catalog of conversations with the neural programmer, but this outburst of emotion from Vigal was unpre
cedented. Natch never imagined that Vigal had given much thought to his education, much less had any passionate convictions about it.

  "Krone believes he is ready to start his own business," Vigal con tinued firmly. "Let him. He is a vicious person headed for a vacuous career, and he will be sorry he turned down a few extra years of study without the pressures of the marketplace. But you, Natch, you're better than that. You are not ready to run your own company. If you jump into the fiefcorp world too quickly, you will regret it."

  Natch reeled back, stunned, and sat on the edge of a stone planter. He had never received a reprimand from Serr Vigal, and now it stung like a jolt from Brone's static electricity program. "So, what would you have me do?" he spat out bitterly.

  "Natch, I can't have you do anything," said Vigal. Already his concentration was beginning to dissipate, to fade into everyday melancholy. "Once you return from initiation, you'll be old enough to make your own choices. You can subscribe to your own L-PRACGs, pledge to whatever creeds you choose. You can solicit capitalmen for funds and start your own fiefcorp, if you want. But ... if I could wish anything for you, it would be that you would take an apprenticeship somewhere close ... somewhere I can keep an eye on you." His face turned an embarrassed red.

  So that's what this is all about, thought Natch. He hadn't expected a sermon from his legal guardian-in fact, he hadn't expected Vigal to show up today at all. But now that the sermon had become a referendum on his parenting skills, things were starting to make sense.