Authors: Paul Di Filippo
Wikiworld (5 page)
“Oh, Russ, that’s okay. I never wanted”
The assault came in fast and low. Four armored and be-weaponed guys riding ILVs. Each Individual Lifting Vehicle resembled a skirt-wearing grasshopper. Before either Cherry or I could react, the chuffing ILVs were hovering autonomously at the edge of our deck, and the assailants had jumped off and were approaching us with weapons drawn.
With cool menace one guy said, “Okay, don’t put up a fight and you won’t get hurt.”
I did the only thing I could think of. I yelled for help.
“FooDog! Save us!”
And he did.
SCURF mediates between your senses and the ubik. Normally the SCURF-wearer is in control of course. But when someone breaks down your security and overides your inputs, there’s no predicting what he can feed you.
FooDog sent satellite closeups of recent solar flares to the vision of our would-be-kidnappers, and the latest sludge-metal hit, amped up to eleven, to their ears.
All four went down screaming.
Cherry erased any remnants of resistance with a flurry of kicks and punches, no doubt learned from her bar-brawling brother Dolphin.
When we had finished tieing up our commando friends, and FooDog had shut off the assault on their senses, I said, “Okay, nothing’s worth risking any of us getting hurt. I’m going to surrender now.”
Just as I was getting ready to call somebody in Venezuela, Che Guevara returned. He looked morose.
“All right, you bastard, you win! Let’s talk.”
I smiled as big as I could. “Tell me first, what was the final straw? It was the sex toys, wasn’t it?”
He wouldn’t answer, but I knew I was right.
Free to be You and Me
So that’s the story of how I ran the country for three days. One day of political honeymoon, one day of trade war, and one day to clean up as best we could, before stepping down.
As FooDog predicted, there were minimal personal repercussions from our teasling of the political system. Loopholes were closed, consensus values re-affirmed, and a steady hand held the tiller of the ship of state once again.
We never did learn who sent the commandos against us. I think they were jointly hired by nativist factions in league with the Venezuelans. Both the UWA and the South Americans wanted the war over with fast. But since our assailants never went on trial after their surgery to give them new eyes and eardrums, the secret never came out.
Cherry and I got enough simoleans out of the settlement with the Venezuelans to insure that we’d never have to work for the rest of our lives. But she still goes out with the Oyster Pirates from time to time, and I still can’t resist the call of mongo.
We still live on Sandybump, but the house is bigger now, thanks to a new wing for the kids.
As for FooDog – well, I guess he did have ulterior motives in helping us. We don’t see him much anymore in the flesh, since he relocated to his ideal safe haven.
Running that ganja plantation on the Moon as his personal fiefdom takes pretty much all his time.
Other titles
Our Future in Virtual Worlds
– An essay by
Peter Ludlow
.
Given all of the things that are virtual or at least partially virtual, it is a short step to ask whether things like states can be virtual too. The answer is that of course they can. Not only can they be virtual, but they already are. You don’t want to confuse the United States government with buildings in Washington DC, or with military hardware, or with the politicians and leaders of the government. These are all important agents in the conduct of governmental activities, but the government itself is a virtual entity that is layered on top of the buildings and hardware and politicians.
City-states, empires, and nation states are already virtual, so is there any reason why there couldn’t be governments or states that exist mostly or entirely online? I think that not only can there be such states, but that they exist now in the form of virtual worlds and that people are already moving into worlds where these virtual states are taking form. Even stronger, I think that soon many people will find that their business lives, love lives, social lives, artistic lives, and political lives will be moving online, and the structure and constitution of these virtual states will be crucial.
Black Swan
– A novelette by
Bruce Sterling
“I was seduced by the Sterling story. Not just that it was by Chairman Bruce, but the title itself is an incredible narrative hook. I have a real fascination with unexpected catastrophic large-scale events driven by the interaction of simple principles.” [
Kathryn Cramer
]
“Special mention” for the 2006 Pushcart Prize
Fallout
- A novelette by
Jacob Appel
The acute fear Maggie senses behind his jittery humor surprises her. It is she–not he–who should be traumatized: She was downtown renewing her driver’s license when the Trade Center crumbled; she was among the refugees who streamed aimlessly over the 59th Street Bridge. He was at his Jersey City office watching CNN. But three days into the tragedy, once they’ve checked that all of their friends are alive and she’s switched her radio from news back to Oldies, when she’s thinking that tonight they should try for a baby again, Frank returns from his office lugging three milk crates of books. He smiles with his lips but not his eyes. He says: “I just want to look into some things.” She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He’d read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: “Well, darling, we’re going to be rich.” Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: “We’re all going to die.”