Infoquake (12 page)

Natch was not oblivious to the dangers of the city, but he had
already learned to discount fear as an unreliable emotion. Omaha
seemed like a zoo to him; everywhere he turned, there were tantalizing
new sights arrayed for his amusement. Buildings expanded and collapsed like breathing animals, often causing entire city blocks to shift
a few meters this way and that. Tube trains criss-crossed the city like
veins. And the streets were filled with millions of people holding silent
conversations with acquaintances thousands of kilometers away.

Natch spent hours trying to figure out which of the pedestrians
were real and which were multi projections. The proctors had taught
the children about multi, of course; some of the proctors multied to the
hive themselves from as far away as Luna. But children under eight
were not allowed to project on the network, and thus they had very
little first-hand knowledge of the subject. So Natch spent hours pivoting 360 degrees in the crowd, looking for people on the periphery of
his vision who seemed fuzzy and indistinct until he focused on them.
Then he would run up and toss a pebble. Those that the pebble
bounced off were real (and sometimes irritated); those that the pebble
passed through were multi projections. Natch discovered to his astonishment that he could not tell the difference at all.

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
friend. "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.