Third part of Bandwidth, cyberpunk flash fiction yeah |
Big Bit Train of Thought A few days after the concert, my realtime obligations out of the way in reference updates and Q&A's logifying previous entries to the megatext that is history, I'm due an estate holiday. I prepare some clothes and books and other accoutrements and click my 'port booth to RAN/HOL – Holiday of Randomness. I tie the rustic laces on my walking boots and dive in; step out just shy of the ticket desk. The central porting crystals have dropped me off in time to miss the crowds – standard reuting. Of course, in this age of the microdozer, tickets are unnecessary and its doubtful anyone would kick up much if anyone were somehow to lose their tickets but its all part of the mysticism and wit of the holiday process. I can already feel the heat when before I step out of the ticket office, having exchanged pleasantries with the hottie clerk – all parcel with the process. I'm still unprepared for the sheer bake when I exit onto the platform though. The complementary hatstand allows me to select something of size and groove to keep the midday heat out of my eyes; mine to keep, all parcel again. I could board the big-ass, faux-antique repro-ness of the steamer to get a good seat or whatev, but who gives a flying? Our brains may be pretty well evolved but the flesh still needs to regress to some sun-worshipping state, so what the hey? Let 'em have a field. While I'm basking, I notice other passengers beginning to arrive; some couples, some loners like myself. Quite a job to arrive in unison on a random holiday with only one 'port per household so we don't bother much these days but love springs and wallows eternal in the newlyweds and the ancient alike. All it takes is a little hacking and a kindly neighbour's 'port; who wouldn't be kind enough to offer the delicacy of the thirty-sec twin 'port if they were asked? Some of us are a little less glee, more held back than the others; nevertheless, we all exchange polite, exited nods and graces as we begin to board. ~* *~ On the train, the seats are just the right mix twix lush, plush and rugged; coloured squares being the travel conducive pattern on the material. The station is sparse; all signs and fittings unnecessary, a luxury for those who work enough and play hard. The platforms look like hewn basalt slabs but yr guess is as good whether they're real or nano-assembled. We're all sitting comfortable as I tip my hat in hello to the surrounding, smiling somebodies sharing the spacious seating cabin while the heavy, carbon induced slug begins to chug; taking its own sweet f.t. to get moving. We travel in these quaint hollow logs for a couple days worth of beach or rock-gazing in India or Oz just for the sheer sake of it; if for no other reason than to remind us we're complex, needy lumps squeezing through a tube everytime we're destroyed and recreated in nanoporting. The fuel providing these slick and slimy pistons could have been assembled from a few hundred cats or a few thousand reader's digests for all we know…the mind does boggle sometimes at the sheer gawping amount of slender decay we can assemble from even a piece of cheese worth of matter, let alone that crazy nanofodder they called landfill. 'Least it'll emit less gasses and noxious junk that way… Anyhow, here we are. Watching these chips roll in like crazy earthen river boats in the mellow distance tide; waiting for nothing but taking in all info, the big bit trip; remembering who and what we are. Complex matters. Until its destroyed and replaced miles out of orbit or whatev. No-one even cares anymo, maybe just the museum botherers. I myself couldn't give a flying, all this seems pretty normal to my race memory in all it's complexities. I do enjoy these little exposures to the world as it would be, though. If there were no nanoes, we'd probably still be stuck in lumpy limbo every so often; all so 'A' can become 'B'. Commuting, that's what Gramps would have called it. So much info lost when there's nothing to gain from keeping it. Shame, really. ~* *~ Count To Zero Hull 25th & 29th January 2007 Currently listening : A Pagan Day By Psychic TV Release date: By 22 April, 1994 |