Freenet (11 page)

Zen punched out a wheezing exhalation and gasped an inward breath—
opportunity for sacrificial expiation presents a poignant intellectual conundrum—
Holy Kiva! This was too much for him! He buried his forehead in his palms. “I can’t stand all this noise in my head. And all these mysterious vidis playing at random. I think I’m going insane!”

Nancy bent forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m right here, Zen. Everything else is an illusion. Focus on me. We’re almost there. My apartment is just around the corner. Do you like apple? It’s the latest rage.”

Zen lowered his hands to study her pretty smile and sensitive eyes as he struggled to calm himself. “Uh, sure.” He felt too embarrassed to admit any further scarcity of knowledge. What was apple?

Nurse Nancy thrust up her shoulder as she turned. “C’mon.”

Minutes later they entered her home cubicle, what Genoa Blackpoll had dubbed a “double.” The walls were draped with purple tapestries that billowed gently to the vacuum suction of air vents. A standard launch couch hung down from the wall draped with a woven blanket of cross-hatched design, and pink pillows on tethers floated like party balloons. A blast of freshness wafted in his nose, the same scent she carried with her always, but more concentrated here. She imbued this place with her femininity.

“Do you like it?”

The space was crowded with strange, ghostlike images and panoramic vistas from distant lands
—protests against a suspected omnidroid data monopoly continued on the streets of New Jerusalem today—
He blinked away impossibilities as he darted his gaze around the room in search of respite. “Sure.”

“You can probably tell I belong to the Way.” Exuberance shone in her face like a religious ecstasy.

“The way?”

“The Way,” she said. “The natural Way, you know?”

The puzzlement in her eyes indicated that he obviously did not know, but Zen simply shrugged, weary now of being an idiot. “Sure.” He ducked out of the path of a charging man in a spandex exercise outfit.

Nurse Stavos frowned and touched his arm. “It’s okay, Zen. They’re not physical. Don’t get lost in virtuality. Rise above it. You can do this.” She led him gently to the couch and landed him like a beached cavefish. “Have a seat and relax.”

Zen closed his eyes, but a kaleidoscope of drama continued to parade across his eyescreen
—weak version of the first immersion theorem of differential topology is due to the transversality of two-dimensional manifolds intersecting generically in zero-dimensional space
—and he clutched his head and pulled at his hair, his brain a battlefield of noise and strange visions. “I can’t process all this information! Turn it off!”

Nurse Nancy bent close to study him with clinical care. “Don’t give up on me, Zen. You can get through this. Soon it will all be optional, just passing fancies.”

“I can’t tell what’s real. I’ve got to get away.” He flinched as a dark object fell across his field of vision like a meteor. He gazed past her at fleeting images and swung his eyes around the room in search of stability
—bringing the future to life with enough bandwidth for all your peripherals—

Nancy took his hand and warmed it between gentle palms. “Stay with me, honey. We can work it out together. That’s why I’m here. You’ll get the hang of the net once your brain starts to filter out the sidebars. You know what they say: ‘Tune it, tone it, and claim it.’ That’s the beauty of the V-net. Everyone creates their own reality, customized to individual perceptions and internalized assumptions, with advertising tailored to specific desires. You open your own windows and set your own parameters. C’mon, try to concentrate on my face for a minute. I’m all you need for now. Can you see me clearly?”

Her bright blue eyes filled his view and dispelled phantoms from the periphery. Her plump cheeks came into focus, her narrow nose and delicate chin. She pursed painted lips and blew him a dramatic kiss with a noisy smack. “Be here now,” she said. “Smell my neck. I’m trying a new aroma this week—
Fantasius Trinity
. Do you like it?”

Zen poked his nostrils forward and inhaled. “Nice.” He had noticed her enticing fragrance all along, but now it seemed overwhelming, a heavy, flowery musk. All his sensations were heightened, his awareness intensified, his skin tingly like an itch that needed a good scratch, and in his preoccupation with this emergent sensorium, the boisterous background noise seemed to dissipate for a moment into a purr of soft static. “Thanks, I think I’m starting to feel better.”

“Good.” Nancy pressed out a slow and calming sigh. “We’ll continue with this line of therapy.” She pulled out a tray from the wall beside his head and selected a foil-wrapped cube. “Here, try this.” She cracked the seal with a pink fingernail and offered it forward.

Zen took the cube and sniffed—something fruity, somewhat acidic. He began to peel back the foil covering. “What is it?”

“Apple.” Nurse Nancy smiled with expectancy. “The natural Way promotes bodily health and homeopathic balance. We embrace physical and social systems in defiance of ubiquitous digital life. That’s our creed. And taste is the most transcendent of all natural senses.”

Zen popped the food in his mouth and tested it with his tongue—cool and mushy, tart and tangy. “Wow!”

Nancy thrust her palms out like an excited youngster. “I know, right?”

Zen bobbed his head as he chewed. “That’s very unusual.”

“Try to be mindful of the experience of taste. Focus your attention with me, okay?” She poked through her tray and selected another morsel, cracked the seal. “This one is good, and very expensive. Tangerine.”

“That’s a citrus,” Zen said.

Nancy nodded. “It grows on trees. Have you ever seen a tree?”

“Yeah, sure,” Zen said as he sampled the new taste, thankful finally for the opportunity to show some expertise. “They have hard trunks, leafy branches. Trees are awesome.”

Nancy studied him happily.
::You are such a muscular hunk.::

Zen frowned as he saw a clear image of himself in the mirror of her mind’s eye. His brown skin and bulky shoulders seemed foreign in this place.

Nancy ducked her gaze to her tray as though caught in an impropriety. “Sorry, that wasn’t very professional. I know you must fight gravity all the time. I have great respect for your native culture.”

“No, that’s fine.” Zen waved an arm in dismissal. “I’m thankful for your help. You’re an exhilarating woman. What else do you have?”

“Oh, I have everything,” she said as she peered through her collection. “The indulgence of taste brings us back to our true animal nature. Humans are creatures of flesh, wonderful miracles of biological complexity. We’re not just data on the wings of light. We have a natural heritage of sensuality.”

Zen tasted cubes of curried chicken and smoked salmon alternated by raspberry candies and mango fruit, with Nurse Nancy hovering weightless above his lap, feeding him ceremonially by hand and telling stories of gastronomical delight. Finally he held up a halt sign to show his limit.

“Well, I have been talking your earbug off, and you’re so shy. Tell me something about food on Bali. What’s the best-kept secret of culinary delight? What do you serve to impress the ladies?”

Zen thought for a moment. “Well, you take the skin off a chicken, and cook it separately with oil and spices—terrion, tamil, and ginseng, whatever you have in supply. Then you drape it back over the roasted carcass when you serve. It’s like a flavoured parchment.”

Nancy scrunched up her nose with incredulity. “Really? Skin soaked in animal fat?”

“Yeah, natural grease and fat. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac.”

“Wow, that’s peculiar. I love it! Tell me about religion on Bali. I’ve heard wondrous things. Is it true that cults arose from stranded colonists eating hallucinogenic mushrooms in the deep caves?”

“Uh, no, that would be a variant sect for sure. Bali is a big planet with lots of different outposts, but all denominations serve the desert god Kiva.”

“Do they still use mushrooms as a sacrament?”

“Some shamans do, I suppose, on rare occasions. The fungus is generally smoked among the darker segments of society—not officially recognized. Kiva is not a god of ceremonies and performance. He lives in the hearts of his people and brings seasons of refreshment.”

“That just blows my mind. I love it. Do you cavort around fires burning free oxygen?”

Zen chuckled. “Most people have geothermal power nowadays, but we still have campfires during winter festivals when it’s cold at night. Children sit in a circle around the flames and sing songs of lore. The adults stay up and party till dawn with dancing and music.”

“Oh, my God, you’re everything we dream about in the Way!” Nancy eyes were wide beacons of awe. “You tower upright on dry land with open sky above your head, the king of all creatures. Have you ever caught a live animal and killed it for food?”

“I have,” Zen said, “but it’s not as nice as you imagine.”

“Amazing,” Nancy Stavos gushed. “Try this one last thing for dessert.” She selected a dark bean from her tray and crushed it between her teeth. She bent forward as she chewed and placed her lips on his in a slurpy kiss. Her tongue probed in his mouth and swirled a wondrous taste inside him, a pungent mix like peppermint and cinnamon, acrid and insistent on his tastebuds. Her perverse sensuality overwhelmed Zen like a tidal wave of eroticism, and time seemed to stretch as she lingered with shocking intimacy, swirling a minty blessing on his palate. Finally she released him and smacked her lips with relish.

Zen gasped and sucked a breath. “What is it?”

“Juva ben,” she said. “It’s a recreational antipsychotic. You’ll need it to sleep the first night. Don’t worry. I’ll help you along. Would you like a drink?”

His tongue tingled with spice, swollen with exotic chemicals, and he swallowed with difficulty. “Do you have honey mead?”

Nancy laughed. “No, nothing fermented. Just allkool, white or dark.”

“White would be fine.”

“Anything to mix? I have cherry, lime, lemon, um . . .” She thumbed through a selection of tiny pouches. “. . . sunrise, pear, margarita . . .”

“Lemon would be great.” His voice sounded far away and foreign, buzzy with a change in atmospheric pressure. “That was weird.”

“I know, right?” She tore open a pouch with her teeth and dumped it into a plastic bottle of clear liquid, shook it like a maraca. “Open up.” She was brushing weight on his thighs now, hovering sideways above him with a prominent red cross bulging out toward his face. She squirted lemon liquor on his tongue, succulent and sweet, and his throat burned pleasantly with alcohol as he swallowed.

“A little sedation will take the edge off the juva ben,” Nancy said. “You had me worried for a while there, but I think you’re over the hump. Stay in this moment. You’re doing great.” She tipped the remaining allkool into her mouth, tossed the empty container in the open drawer, and began to unbutton her uniform. She pulled off thin cellulose and floated her shirt away. No bra, and why bother with no gravity to drag her down? “I’m so glad they chose me to monitor your transition. I really like you.”

A sudden flurry of peripheral images framed his view of her, and a babble of noise erupted in his ear
—two immersions of one manifold are regularly homotopic if and only if they have the same total curvature—proof that any ratio better than a constant can never be achieved by a polynominal time algorithm—

“Don’t go back, Zen. I’m here for you. Focus your attention.” Nancy took his hands and placed his palms against her nipples. Her skin felt warm and soft, but his body seemed to be moving down a vortex at great speed, a flashback of recent momentum in the tunnels, a rush of strange sensation. He felt dizzy and sweaty with exuberance, and his vision seemed to zoom in and out of focus, his depth of perception on a yo-yo string. All he could trust for sure were the luscious globes of flesh in his face. He kneaded them with delicacy.

“That’s good,” Nancy murmured as she wiggled against his thighs. “This is natural reality. Concentrate on the tactile sensation. I know you Bali boys are good with your hands.”

—
elegant body of work sure to manifest in your midbrain—

“You’re pretty good yourself,” he said with a dry slur. His voice seemed to come from great distance, across desert dunes of shifting sands and improbable horizons.

After a few moments of tenderness, Nancy kicked off her sandals and slid out of her pants with gymnastic efficiency, fluid and graceful, poised and comfortable in her weightless world. Her naked body was shorn bare like polished calcite crystal that had never seen the sun, a statue of loveliness from a wet dream far away. She rested her palms on Zen’s shoulders and bent to kiss him again, her mouth rich with juva ben and her teasing tongue delightful. Her lips moved from his mouth to his cheek to his ear and moaned with pleasure as his hands found soft purchase between her legs and began the performance magic he knew so well from home. He fondled the gateway to her soul with a gentle massage, and the sound of her murmurs lingered in a blur of psychedelic sensation, rising and falling like a kite sailing in the wind, up and away, up and away.

“I am so horny,” she said and thrust her hips against his busy fingers. “I think I’m going to climax.” She shuddered with a spasm of quiet release and went limp in his embrace. “Wow, everything they say about Bali boys is true!”

They closed their eyes and drifted together, and the gentle sound of Nancy’s breathing was like a rustling tree branch in the wind on the terraced gardens of Keokapul.

—the multilayer feedforward architecture gives neural networks the potential to be universal approximators among continuous functions on compact subsets of Rn under mild assumptions of activation function—
A kaleidoscope of data began to play in Zen’s mind, a prismatic unfolding of a mechanical flower with leaves like blades of broken glass. He studied the mental image with a strange detachment, passive in blissful observation and finally unafraid of the V-net. It seemed that he could watch without perplexity, and choose where to place his attention among the myriad channels of inquiry. He could see a vast library of information, a mountain of evidence, the complete summary of human collective experience and the final, timeless obliteration of self.