Broyles Rewired

A Novel
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4835-7134-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Total Psychology: the exact science of opinion and behavior molding. The promise of complete economic and political predictability, delivered by the Lifecast, direct-to-cortex. But from an audacious team of scientists, a deterrent arises: Rewiring, a detour in neural pathways to evade the Lifecast and its corporate masters. Outnumbered, a handful of Rewired enclaves survive, scattered amidst the global Wired civilization. And in these rebel strongholds, a mystery unfolds...the Vorn. Strange creatures visible only to a very few. The seers. Now fear and curiosity vie for supremacy as the architects of the Rewired Diaspora stir once again under a cloud of secrecy. Something moves in the darkness. And Harry Seldon, hapless son of a sociopathic war hero, embarks on a quest to find it. Whether he wants to or not.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Broyles, Matthew

Leseproben

VIII.
    Night had fallen on downtown Brooklyn. The massive gun turrets atop Borough Hall glowered darkly as the armored transport passed through the security gates. Through the trees of Columbus Park and over the Wall, Harry caught a glimpse of the fortified Manhattan Bridge, once a vital link between the boroughs. Now its helicopter landing pads bristled with artillery. Harry had given up trying to find a comfortable position in the back of the transport. He and his father were cuffed to steel rings at the base of the bench, and he could neither sit upright nor lie down. His dad had finally passed out after fighting empty air all the way to the vehicle. He sat slumped over his knees, saliva pooling between his feet on the floor. It was only once they’d gotten on the road that it occurred to Harry: Why had there been no stunners? They were common crowd control implements in Brooklyn, and would seem to have made sense against a deranged assailant. It seemed a bit odd, as did the lack of questioning from the soldiers. It was almost as if they were expecting this. As they got closer to downtown, he did work up the nerve to ask one of the troops if there had been any fatalities. The man shook his head dismissively, and a little too casually for Harry’s taste. Still, he was glad that the only casualties were figments of his father’s unhinged mind. At last they arrived at the hulking Brooklyn Defense Force headquarters: a thick, featureless, impregnable rectangle of nuke-defying transmetal. It didn’t even need a sign. Everyone knew exactly what it was and how likely you were to make it out of there if you were so unlucky as to raise the ire of the BDF. Which he, Harry Seldon, and his insane father had just done. It wasn’t as if he had much of a life to leave behind, he thought. Maybe Edwino would lose a few bucks of booze & stim sales. Maybe his unemployment officer would have a little more time on his hands. Maybe his files would move from the “active” cabinet to the other one, and that would be it. Still, he didn’t know what awaited him. People he knew, none of whom had ever been inside, said all kinds of things. Torture, rape, underground labor camps, incineration, who knew? It wasn’t that the BDF was crooked. Not any more than other governments, anyway. It had just adopted a no-tolerance policy towards threats to the very fragile existence of the Republic of Brooklyn. They couldn’t afford to fuck around. An underground entrance with a door six feet thick yawned open, and harsh white light from inside stung his eyes. They pulled into the most immaculately clean, sterile parking garage Harry had ever seen. The vehicle stopped at a set of sliding doors flanked by two solid blocks of 7-foot-tall uniformed flesh & muscle, who promptly swung the vehicle’s door open and stared, dead-eyed, at their new delivery. His father was put on a stretcher between the mooks, and Harry was frog-marched behind, through vaulted halls of gleaming gray transmetal. No bolts, no blemishes, nothing but a solid block carved to order. Humanity might one day perish, Harry thought, but this building would be here long after the sun burnt itself out. Ahead, Harry saw his father’s body disappear into a doorway. Harry’s guards steered him into the next room, where a simple steel table sat betwixt two simple steel chairs. A viewing window into the room where his dad lay was opaqued. He didn’t see any horrible torture implements, but they could well be in some hidden hatch. Or in the room next door. Without a word, the guards removed Harry’s cuffs and sat him down in the chair facing the window. They exited without comment and stationed themselves outside the doorway. It was at this point, waiting for who knew what, that Harry finally began to freak out a little. He managed to control his shaking only through grinding his teeth nearly into powder. This was serious shit, he thought. He was no longer in the known universe of experience. The sound of approaching footsteps made him clench his buttocks painfully and become ecstatically grateful that he did not have anything in his stomach at that moment. When he recognized the face of the man who walked through the door, he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Hello, Harry,” said Councilman James Barrett. His thin mouth wasn’t smiling, but neither did he appear angry. He wore a nondescript gray suit, which matched his silver temples and wireframe glasses. “Dr. Barrett!” said Harry, who could not conceal his amazement. “I can’t believe it’s…I…I didn’t know you were with the BDF!” “I’m not,” Barrett answered, a little grimly. “But Defense does make use of my expertise, as is their right.” He stole a glance at the camera over the table, then looked pointedly at Harry. “I know why you’re here. Or rather, I know why your father is here.” “Of course you do,” Harry replied, grimacing. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he was that far gone. I CERTAINLY didn’t know he was armed…” “You’re not on trial, Harry,” Barrett cut in. “No one was hurt. If they had been, you and your father would be dead now.” Harry nodded, gulping a little. “However,” Barrett continued in his crisp English accent, “We are not remotely out of the woods. It would be one thing if it had just been some random maniac shooting up the Fort Hamilton station. That could be easily handled by shipping the poor bastard off to Manhattan in an autopilot boat and hoping he’s a good shot.” Harry noted Barrett’s nonchalance on this topic and again praised his empty stomach. Barrett circled the table, approaching the opaqued window, then sighed, “But the fact that it’s Lars Seldon makes the whole thing rather more complicated.” Harry kept quiet as the window silently shifted into transparency. In the room beyond, his father was stretched on an operating table, his limbs secured tightly. He was still unconscious. Still facing the window, Barrett spoke. “In the underground vault at the public library there is a 20th century flatscreen archive of President Dwight Eisenhower giving his farewell speech. At the very dawn of the consolidation of state and corporate power—fascism, which the U.S. had ostensibly just fought a war to defeat—the old man saw what was coming.” Harry had heard this speech before, in school. But he wasn’t about to interrupt. “But the newborn beast was already feeling its strength, covering its tracks, creating exciting and fun diversions to make the flatscreen audience’s priorities for them,” Barrett continued. “That President was the last remnant of the old guard, and the new guard would already be part of the system. “It started with Bernays in the 1920s, this science of opinion making. Certainly the idea of controlling public opinion was hardly new. Rulers back to the dawn of civilization tried their hands at it, with varying degrees of success. What no one knew was that it would never completely work as long as it was the product of the state. People are by nature at least a little suspicious of those who govern them. True innovation had to originate in the private sector. By the middle of the scientific age, in the 20th century, advertising and public relations firms were busily coming up with ironclad ways to get it done, in an objective and quantifiable way. “The efforts among political and industrial entities ran concurrently, and fed each other’s growth. By the mid-21st century, when the difference between public and private blurred to near-nil in most of the world’s nations, their efforts could be concentrated, and were. “Their triumphant result was Lifecasting, a natural next step in personal entertainment. In over a century, mass media had still failed to get audiences as close to their entertainment as they really wanted. Lifecasting put you there, via an implant that brought users the world as they wanted to see it.” Harry nodded cautiously. He knew all this, but was curious where Barrett was going with it. “And of course what they wanted to see could be controlled, as can any desire, using the principles of opinion making, the science of psychiatry and neural influence,” Barrett continued, “Get enough people talking about how there’s too much bad news on the Lifecast, suddenly there’s a clamor for censorship. Happy news, little brown puppies, and stories of personal inspiration, and for those who want to feel like rebels, a hefty dollop of pornoviolence, replete with an enticing warning from the Council On Moral Safety and a soundtrack from the latest anarcho band on the corporate payroll. “Of course there were dissenters in the early days,” Barrett went on, removing his handkerchief and polishing his spectacles. “But the dirty hippies had already become such a handy strawman template to pillory those who speak truth to power that they were quickly neutralized. “Dissent, of course, is in theory a conscious phenomenon. But the idea of the mind as an independent entity, separate from the mechanical workings of the body, is an old mystical illusion. Thought is tissue meeting electrical synapse meeting tissue. It is an organic process, and a mind can be made to think certain things just as surely as a nerve can be told by the right dosage of aspirin that there is no toothache. Once understood, the mechanics of the brain are identical to those of the rest of the body, albeit more complex. Total Psychology was the melding of the physical and the ideological, and before it, the human mind as originally evolved could not...