Zarthar composed himself with aplomb, smoothing his robes. His next words did not immediately address PJ’s accusation.
“My friends, have you ever considered the problems our world still faces? To the average citizen, it seems we occupy a utopia. And granted, two-thirds of the world—the portion under GDM—deserves that designation. But that still leaves millions of people living in pre-geek darkness. And these seething populations are actively anti-GDM, seeking constantly for ways to undermine and topple what we’ve created. They are ruthless and violent and cunning. All we have to oppose them is our brains and special geek insights.
“I realize that you’ve learned about my plan to create a new generation of ultra-geeks, especially talented individuals who could develop new strategies, new ways of looking at the world that would extend the GDM way of life to those benighted portions of the planet. If you just stop a moment and reflect, you’ll see that this program is a dire necessity, not anything I do out of personal aggrandizement.”
“But why the secrecy?” I said. “Surely you’d find plenty of parents willing to enroll their kids in such a program.”
“KannerMax is still highly experimental. We can’t predict whether those who undergo the treatment will emerge as geniuses or idiots. Results point to the first outcome, with a large percentage of certainty, but still…. If parents were to enroll their young children who can’t decide for themselves, and the lives of these children were ruined, the parents would recriminate themselves endlessly. Better for one man to shoulder that responsibility, I thought.”
PJ and I contemplated this for a while. Zarthar seemed sincere, and his dreams had merit. But there remained one obstacle to our endorsement of his plan.
“Dr. Hornbine—” I began.
“—committed suicide. A self-administered dose of potassium chloride stopped his heart. You can see him inject it here.”
Zarthar activated a monitor, and an obvious spy-ray recording, time-and-date-stamped with the GDM logo, showed Dr. Hornbine alone in his office. He tied off his arm with surgical tubing to raise a vein, picked up a hypodermic—
“No, stop it!” PJ yelled.
Zarthar flicked off the recording. PJ sobbed loudly for a time, and when she had finished, Zarthar spoke.
“After contacting me, your father was so despondent that KannerMax would not work on adults—that he himself would be deprived of its benefits—that he chose not to live in a world where he would soon be Darwinically superseded. And this is another reason for secrecy. So as not to instill a similar mass despondency in the population. Let everyone think that these bright new stars are random mutations. It’s more merciful that way.”
I had come here ready to bring Zarthar down in the media with a public shaming. But now I found myself ready to enlist in his cause. I looked to PJ, who raised her red-rimmed eyes to mine, and saw that she felt the same.
And then I knew that our children would rule the sevagram.
THE OMNIPLUS ULTRA!
Everyone wanted an Omniplus Ultra, and I was not immune to the urge. But of course they were almost impossible to purchase, for love nor money.
Since their debut nine months ago at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, over forty million units had been sold worldwide, exhausting the initial stockpile but barely sating a fraction of consumer demand. Now the Chinese factories that produced the Omniplus Ultra were tooling up as fast as possible to make more, but every desperate retailer could guarantee delivery no sooner than six months in the future. On eBay, each available Omniplus Ultra, with an MSRP of $749.99, was selling for upwards of $5,000.00.
OmninfoPotent Corporation, the enigmatic firm behind the Omniplus Ultra, had instantly leaped to the top of the NASDAQ exchange. Its reclusive founders, Pine Martin and Sheeda Waxwing, had vaulted instantly into the lower ranks of the Forbes 400. Sales of the device were being credited with almost singlehandedly jumpstarting the ailing economy.
The ad campaign for the Omniplus Ultra had already won six Clios. The catchy theme music by the Black Eyed Peas—“O U Kidz”—and the images of average people of every race, age, gender, nationality and creed utilizing their Omniplus Ultras to navigate a plethora of life situations ranging from sweetly comic to upliftingly tragic had generated their own fan clubs, YouTube mashups and punchlines for late-night comedians. Allusions to the Omniplus Ultra, as well as its invocation in metaphors, similes, rants, raves, jeremiads and paeans, filled water cooler conversations, the printed pages of the world’s magazines and newspapers, and blogs and online journals. The first instant book on the Omniplus Ultra—Uberpower!, by Thomas Friedman and Charles Stross—was due out any day.
I myself did not know anyone who actually owned an Omniplus Ultra, and I was dying to see and handle one. But even forty million units, distributed across seven billion people, meant that there was only one Omniplus Ultra for every 175 citizens. Of course, the gadgets were not seeded evenly around the planet, but concentrated in the hands of relatively wealthy and elite consumers and early adopters: circles I did not really travel in, given my job in a Staples warehouse, and a set of friends whose familiarity with the latest products of Silicon Valley generally extended no further than their TV remotes.
So I had to content myself with studying the advertisements and the gadget-porn reviews.
Those who had experienced the Omniplus Ultra couldn’t say enough about its life-changing capabilities, its potential to shatter all old paradigms across the board and to literally remake the world.
Publishers Weekly: “After five centuries, the printed book has found its worthiest successor in the Omniplus Ultra. The future of reading is safely triumphant.”
The Huffington Post: “Opens new channels for the spread of democracy.”
Boing Boing: “Coolest gadget since the iPhone! The cold-laser picoprojector alone is worth the cost.”
Car and Driver: “Jack the Omniplus Ultra into your dash’s USB port and driving will never be the same!”
Entertainment Weekly: “If you can’t download your favourite show onto your Omniplus Ultra, it’s not worth watching.”
Variety: “First flicks helmed with the Omniplus Ultra to hit bigscreens soon!”
Aerospace & Defence Industry Review: “Guaranteed to be standard equipment for all future warriors.”
Mother Jones: “The Omniplus Ultra is the greenest invention since The Whole Earth Catalogue.”
BusinessWeek: “Every CEO will benefit from having an Omniplus Ultra to hand—and anyone without one will watch competitors eat their lunch.”
Rolling Stone: “Elvis. The Beatles. The Sex Pistols. The Omniplus Ultra. The sequence is complete at last.”
The more such talk I read, the longer I examined pictures of the sleekly tactile Omniplus Ultra, with its customizable sexy skins and ergonomically perfect controls, the more I lusted to own one. Although nothing in my condition had really changed, and although I had enough money, love and security, my life felt incomplete and empty without an Omniplus Ultra.
But there was just no way for me to get my hands on one.
Until I saw my boss’s boss’s boss walk through the warehouse carrying one.
Then and there, I knew what I had to do.
As a low-level employee, I certainly could not jump several levels of management and directly approach my boss’s boss’s boss and ask to fondle and play with his Omniplus Ultra. But I had a scheme.
It took me six frustrating weeks, but at last I managed it. In a series of furtive unauthorized forays into executive territory, I caught the lucky Omniplus Ultra owner in a lavatory break with his prized possession carelessly left behind on his desk.
That’s when I pulled the fire alarm.
While everyone else rushed outside, I darted into the guy’s office, snatched his Omniplus Ultra off the desk, and sank down behind the furniture in the knee well, out of sight.
With trembling hands I sought to shuffle aside the protective wings of the device, utilizing all the instr
uctions I had lovingly memorized, and expose its intimate control and display surfaces to my wanton gaze and lewd touch.
But I was doing something wrong! The expected blossoming failed to happen.
Instead, after some fumbling, the unit split open like a simple styrofoam clamshell container full of leftovers.
The interior gaped utterly vacant, except for a simple piece of printed cardboard.
Dumbfounded, I removed the cardboard and read the message.
Dear Consumer: the Omniplus Ultra is not what you need. You are already everything you thought it could do. Pass this message on as widely as you see fit. Or not. Hopefully yours, Pine Martin and Sheeda Waxwing, for the OmninfoPotent Corporation.
I put the card back inside, resealed the Omniplus Ultra, dropped it with a dull thud on the desk, and joined all my peers outside, waiting to resume our lives.
WIKIWORLD
1. MEET RUSS REYNOLDS
Russ Reynolds, that’s me. You probably remember my name from when I ran the country for three days. Wasn’t that a wild time? I’m sorry I started a trade war with several countries around the globe. I bet you’re all grateful things didn’t ramp up to the shooting stage. I know I am. And the UWA came out ahead in the end, right? No harm, no foul. Thanks for being so understanding and forgiving. I assure you that my motives throughout the whole affair, although somewhat selfish, were not ignoble.
And now that things have quieted down, I figured people would be calm enough to want to listen to the whole story behind those frighteningly exciting events.
So here it is.
2. MR. WIKI BUILDS MY DREAM HOUSE
It all started, really, the day when several wikis where I had simoleans banked got together to build me a house. Not only did I meet my best friend Foolty Fontal that day, but I also hooked up with Cherimoya Espiritu. It’s hard now, a few years later, to say which one of those outrageous personages gave me the wildest ride. But it’s certain that without their aiding and abetting, plotting and encouraging, I would never have become the jimmywhale of the UWA, and done what I did.
The site for my new house was a tiny island about half an acre in extent. This dry land represented all that was left of what used to be Hyannis, Massachusetts, since Cape Cod became an archipelago. Even now, during big storms, the island was frequently overwashed, so I had picked up the title to it for a song, when I got tired of living on my boat, the Gogo Goggins.
Of course the value of coastal land everywhere had plunged steadily in the three decades since the destruction of New Orleans. People just got tired of seeing their homes and business destroyed on a regular basis by super-storms and rising sea levels. Suddenly Nebraska and Montana and the Dakotas looked like beckoning havens of safety, especially with their ameliorated climates, and the population decline experienced for a century by the Great Plains states reversed itself dramatically, lofting the region into a new cultural hotzone. I had heard lately that Fargo had spawned yet another musical movement, something called “cornhüsker dü,” although I hadn’t yet listened to any samples of it off the ubik.
Anyway, this little islet would serve me well, I figured, as both home and base for my job—assuming I could erect a good solid comfortable structure here. Realizing that such a task was beyond my own capabilities, I called in my wikis.
The Dark Galactics. The PEP Boys. The Chindogurus. Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons. The Bishojos. The Glamazons. The Provincetown Pickers. And several more. All of them owed me simoleans for the usual—goods received, or time and expertise invested—and now they’d be eager to balance the accounts.
The day construction was scheduled to start, I anchored the Gogo Goggins on the western side of my island, facing the mainland. The June air was warm on my bare arms, and freighted with delicious salt scents. Gulls swooped low over my boat, expecting the usual handouts. The sun was a golden English muffin in the sky. (Maybe I should have had some breakfast, but I had been too excited to prepare any that morning.) Visibility was great. I could see drowned church spires and dead cell-phone towers closer to the shore. Through this slalom a small fleet of variegated ships sailed, converging on my island.
The shadow of one of the high unmanned aerostats that maintained the ubik passed over me, the same moment I used that medium to call up IDs on the fleet. In my vision, translucent tags overlaid each ship, labelling their owners, crew and contents. I was able to call up realtime magnified images of the ships as well, shot from the aerostats and tiny random entomopter cams. I saw every kind of vessel imaginable: sleek catamarans, old lobster boats, inflatables, decommissioned Coast Guard cutters— And all of them carrying my friends—some of whom I had met face to face, some of whom I hadn’t—coming to help build my house.
I hopped out of my boat onto dry land. My island was covered with salt-tolerant scrub plants and the occasional beach rose. No trees to clear. Construction could begin immediately.
As I awaited my friends, I got several prompts displayed across my left eye, notifying me of four or five immediate ubik developments in areas of interest to me. I had the threshold of my attention-filter set fairly high, so I knew I should attend to whatever had made it over that hurdle. For speed’s sake, I kept the messages text-only, suppressing the full audiovideo presentations.
The first development concerned an adjustment to the local property-tax rates. “Glamourous Glynnis” had just amended the current rate structure to penalize any residence over 15,000 square feet that failed to feed power back to the grid. Sixty-five other people had endorsed the change. I added my own vote to theirs, and tacked on a clause to exempt group homes.
Next came a modification to the rules of the non-virtual marketplace back on the mainland, where I sold many of my salvaged goods in person. “Jinglehorse” wanted to extend the hours of operation on holidays. Competitively speaking, I’d feel compelled to be there if the booths were open extra. And since I liked my downtime, I voted no.
Items three and four involved decriminalizing a newly designed recreational drug named “arp,” and increasing our region’s fresh water exports. I didn’t know enough about arp, so I got a search going for documents on the drug. I’d try to go through them tonight, and vote tomorrow. And even though I felt bad for the drought-sufferers down South, I didn’t want to encourage continued habitation in a zone plainly unsuited for its current population densities, so I voted no.
The last item concerned a Wikitustional Amendment. National stuff. This new clause had been in play for six months now without getting at least provisionally locked down, approaching a record length of revision time. The Amendment mandated regular wiki participation as a prerequisite for full enfranchisement in the UWA. “Uncle Sham” had just stuck in a clause exempting people older than sixty-five. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that, so I pushed the matter back in the queue.
By the time I had attended to these issues, the first of my visitors had arrived, a small vessel named The Smiling Dictator, and bearing a lone man. The craft crunched onto the beach, and the guy jumped out.
“Hey, Russ! Nice day for a house-raising.”
Jack Cortez—“Cortez the Queller” in the ubik—resembled a racing greyhound in slimness and coiled energy. He wore a fisherman’s vest over bare chest, a pair of denim cutoffs bleached white, and boat shoes. His SCURF showed as a dark green eagle across a swath of his chest.
“Ahimsa, Jack! I really appreciate you showing up.”
“No problem. The Church still owes you for retrieving that Madonna. But you gotta do some work nonetheless! Come on and give me a hand.”
I went over to the Dictator and helped Jack wrestle some foam-encased objects big as coffee-table-tops out of the boat. When we had the half-dozen objects stacked on land, he flaked off some of the protective foam and revealed the corner of a window frame.
“Six smart windows. Variable opacity, self-cleaning, rated to withstand Category Four storms. Fully spimed, natch. One of our co-religionists is a contractor, and these were
left over from a recent job.”
“Pluricious!”
By then, the rest of the boats had arrived. A perfect storm of unloading and greeting swept over my little domain. Crates and girders and pre-formed pilings and lumber and shingles and equipment accumulated in heaps, while bottled drinks made the rounds, to fortify and replenish. The wiki known as the Shewookies had brought not materials nor power tools but food. They began to set up a veritable banquet on folding tables, in anticipation of snacking and lunching.
A guy I didn’t recognize came up to me, hand extended. His SCURF formed orange tiger stripes on his cheeks and down his jaws. Before I could bring up his tag, he introduced himself.
“Hi, Russ. Bob Graubauskas—‘Grabass’ to you. Jimmywhale for the Sunflower Slowdrags. So, you got any solid preferences for your house?”
“No, not really. Just so long as it’s strong and spacious and not too ugly.”
“Can do.”
Grabass began to issue silent orders to his wiki, a ubik stream he cued me in on. But then a big woman wearing overalls intervened.
“Margalit Bayless, with the Mollicutes. ‘Large Marge.’ You truly gonna let the Slowdrags design this structure all by themselves?”
“Well, no…”
“That’s good. Because my people have some neat ideas too—”
I left Large Marge and Grabass noisily debating the merits of their various plans while I snagged an egg-salad sandwich and a coffee. By the time I had swallowed the last bite, both the Mollicutes and the Sunflower Slowdrags had begun construction. The only thing was, the two teams were starting at opposite ends of a staked-off area and working toward the common middle. And their initial scaffolding and foundations looked utterly incompatible. And some of the other wikis seemed ready to add wings to the nascent building regardless of either main team.
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