Inspiration didn’t always arrive on cue. I could meditate, run, even sample every stimulant known—and sometimes the well stayed dry. I’d sit before a blank screen, willing code into being, and nothing would come. Then on other days it poured out of m
サイバーンク・メンタリズム (13)
They asked softly, brushing a lock of hair behind their ear. “What does freedom even mean? Is it the power to choose? To wander unbound? To live without fear or danger? Or is it just a mirage? Even before the collapse, freedom was conditional—a trick
I needed space to think. Even with most people burrowed away in Ultrahigh, the world was still a cage. I went for a walk in nature, though where and when I lived, nothing about that was simple. Past my house, past my car, through the city’s fortified
If there was one thing I knew, it was this: dealing with the devil was a wager you made with your own destruction. They were wired to twist, to double-back, to cut deals with both hands crossed behind their suit jacket. The inevitability of betrayal
I lit another joint, sinking into the couch as conflicting thoughts spun in my head. I took a long, measured drag, then passed it to Satan, my hand trembling slightly, before snatching the bottle of wine and pouring two glasses with a flourish that f
My head was throbbing, vision glued behind a crust of something dried and mean, like the world had welded my eyelids shut. There was a pulse of danger rising, acid in the back of my throat. I tried to shift, just enough to uncork my panic, but I wasn
"Where is all of this leading to, Satan?" I had a couple of drinks and was feeling frustrated. It was time for this act to end. They weren't my friend; they were my enemy, and pretending otherwise wouldn't change that fact.
"What do you mean, Walter?
What happens to the historians when reality turns to fog beneath your fingertips? Where do they find themselves in this new, untethered society? Maybe they could have been useful, a kind of living server for memories, but they got the axe along with
When the urge to disappear, truly disappear, overtook me, I’d lock myself away in my pod at the bottom of the bunker. Virtual world, blink of an eye, I was somewhere else entirely. There, I could run the old rituals, tap in to a synthetic version of
The dangers in my line of work had started to glare at me in ways I could no longer ignore, like the hot red indicator lights blinking through a fog at three a.m., warning of systems on the verge of catastrophe. My focus, not always razor-sharp, had
"Do you think the Singularity could ever exist?” they ask as I sit down at the dinner table, glass of wine in hand.
“Your question assumes it doesn’t,” I reply, taking a sip.
They look surprised. “So are you saying it does?”
“According to the lore am
