PLEASE NOTE: The following material is intended for mature readers only.
A Note on Language
It is inevitable, in a work of speculative fiction, that futuristic technologies, technical terms, and even everyday slang appear in the course of the narrative. Accordingly, a Glossary of Terms and Slang has been provided below. For the convenience of the reader, the first time each of these neologisms appears in the story, it will be marked in boldface, signaling that a definition is available in the Glossary. Additionally, on occasion a non-English language will be used in the dialogue among characters. While no direct translations have been provided, never fear. The reader will be able, quite readily, to discern the meaning of these utterances within the context of the story.
Chapter 1
The Elevator to Outer Space
Announced by that amusing, hermetic, farting sound, Bleached Wheat steps, smiling to himself, from between the sliding doors of the double airlock. He’s always relieved to disembark a shuttle—cramped and vile things. Their stale air gives him headaches. As he’d ordered, the Executive Platform is deserted, as he likes it for this kind of thing. On the wall to his right is the big white star inside a thin red circle against the deep blue background. In fact, the whole interior of the ExecPlat is deep blue—walls, deck, ceiling. People like color, he muses, dynamic color. It helps them enjoy their workspace. He places a kiss on the fingertips of his right hand and plants it with a brisk slap in the center of the star. Then, with anticipation in his step, he makes his way across the forty meters of polished blue floor to the curved bank of observation windows.
“Top80,” he speaks aloud as he goes.
From everywhere, an agreeable, faintly militaristic tune begins to play. Just right, he thinks. Motivating. With one hand, he sweeps the lank, blond forelock from his eyes. With his other, he brings his gold watchwrist up to eye level. Time to catch Vieworld. Another thin smile stretches over his bluish lips. As the talkheads on that program constantly blurt out: “Time To Know!” Yes, indeed. People need to know the Know. But how sweet it is to be the Know.
He stops a few meters short of the windows to concentrate on the little flatscreen of his watch. Nothing newsbig running at the moment—as he’d ordered—just the drone. Happy financial indicators. Sentimental tales of miraculous good fortune or heinous crime. The usual brainslow fare. Satisfied, he buries his hands in his pockets and slowly takes the last few steps toward the windows. The panes extend floor-to-ceiling, thick and convex, all but invisible. He places his toes right at their edge before allowing his eyes to focus on what’s outside. When he does, the base of his scrotum tingles deliciously. Far, far below is Big Blue—the Earth. Their earth. Mostly theirs, anyway. Soon it will be his. All his. His contented exhalation, escaping out his long, thin nose, fogs the nanoglass in front of him. But enough of the selfoblige. Time to get down to biz. And the biz for today? Starting World War 4. Or will this one be 5? He has a hard time keeping track. He’s not much for recent history—any history really. No matter. Let someone else hang a number on it. All wars are the same now. He wins.
He swivels his head toward the east and narrows his eyes. It takes some moments, but finally there it is: a glint of nearly black light along the immense brim of the planet—their Glassea. Speaking aloud again and in a calm, normal voice—for something like this it’s always better not to risk miscommunication with furtive whispers—Bleached Wheat delivers a series of words he has contrived and only he knows: “Six slashback thirty slashback fifty-four legislate basal.”
**********
At Ghawar Firebase, on the Glassea, CorpTrooper Enron stands his guard post, just minding his own biz. He’s been stationed at this base for almost a year, and he’s coming up soon on rotating out. It’s been pretty easy Indian Country, as Indian Country goes. No ragheads coming at him. (They’ve all been long-since democratized dead.) Just long stretches of guard to stand every day. Nothing much to it. He does have to wear his nukesuit 24/7/365, though, because of the perpetual ambient radiation. That’s the shit. Word is that trooping here for one year cuts three to five off your lifespan. That’s yanked. Still, when Enron thinks about it, it’s not like he’s going to miss much those three to five extra years of trooping. Trooping’s the pure shit and that’s the plain fact. Once the yankers corvée your butt, game over.
Suddenly, Enron cocks his head. Only he didn’t do it. They did. They’re patching through him, using him as a relay, likely using his eyes, too, so that they can see firsthand what he’s about to see. CorpTroops learn early to get used to being patched—that is, to have their bodies put through certain simple involuntary motions: snapping to attention, swiveling their heads in surveillance, even pirouetting around like a fruitcake so Command can catch a 360 view. It can happen any time, too. While tubing a feed. While squatting on the blowpot. Hell, you might even be yanking a throb sweetpuss. They don’t care when they puppet troopers around. Well, Enron thinks, enjoy the show, you miserable yankers. Nothing here to see but big stretches of zero. The Glassea is a brute and flat place. A dull sheen rises off all horizons. It’s like being on a silver platter.
They stop Enron’s head so he’s staring at what he’s guarding—BigRig19. That must be what they want to observe. The mother of all petroxtraction towers. Pumps up megabarrels per minute. He’s maybe a demi-klick away. That makes for a good full-length shot of it. He feels his head go through some fine adjustments. They must be framing it pretty against the sky and the horizon. Then he feels the hair standing on his nape.
“Shit no,” Enron murmurs.
His voice is hollow and sounds far away inside his mask and hood. The fierce twitch of the relay patch seizes its way up his spine. Troopers all but taste the trigger order when it surges through them. There’s the routine three-second delay. Then the dull detonation. BigRig19 goes up in a spectacular ball of fire. And, big surprise, Enron’s got a ringside seat. They’ve positioned his eyeballs at just the perfect camera angle. Yanking fuckmothers, he barely has time to think. The moment before the shockwave smacks him flat, he slaps hard, with the palm of his glove, the side of his right thigh, just above the knee. It might kill him, but why not bang into his veins every drop of morphine and epinephrine his nukesuit medpack carries?
**********
On his ExecPlat at the very top of the Space Elevator, in serene geosynch orbit 36,000km above the surface of the earth, Bleached Wheat is pleased with the images of BigRig19 blowing up. Quite pleased. They’re utterly dramatic. You’re standing right there. The shockwave rushes straight at you. These will vidfeed well. Very well indeed. He speaks aloud again, evenly and clearly. “Telcast primal.” Then he waits for it. It shouldn’t take long. He has time to rebury his hands in his pockets. To rock back and forth on his heels, still perched thrillingly at the edge of the observation windows. To start to whistle ironically.
Bleached Wheat hears his subceos scrambling through the airlock behind him. Wells, Fargo, Yupcap, Java. The Four Jackasses of the Apocalypse. He can picture Fargo in particular practically clawing to pry open the sliding doors. That one’s the most strak hooya of the bunch. Fargo seems to think he’s next in line, even though Wells, who is also old-school, technically holds the higher bossman position. Both of these senior subceos have been extremely useful to Bleached Wheat—but they’ve also just about run their course. The times, well, they are a’changin’—always—and one must always change with them. Bleached Wheat’s two junior subceos, Yupcap and Java, are idiots, of course. But trainable idiots. Young-buck pliable, as Bleached Wheat always makes sure his junior subceos are. This time, however, Java is also a risk. Something new. He’s semi-dark. Not blood-in-the-face. Such a thing is unheard of at CorpHQ. But that’s why Bleached Wheat is ice. Why he’s crux risktaker number one. Doublego ballsy, like a sharebroker on bluemeth. Bleached Wheat doesn’t just run the show—he is the show. Lean like a rock climber. Crat to the core. But also averagejoe. A jobcreator you could have a beer with. His goatee spreads into a sandy fringe running along his razor jawline. His signature hair is stark flax without a dash of gray. And his eyes. Those eyes. Was there ever a more famous pair of irises in TexArc? Around the globe? Pure fox. Zero glassy. Glacial in hue. Eyes that reach down your throat.
His hardest and fastest rule with subceos is they never speak unless spoken to. Bleached Wheat knows that, by now, his four stooges are standing in a row behind him, each just twitching to be the one who gets to report the breakingnews to the big bossman. Fargo is likely one foot forward over the others. Ah, how well Bleached Wheat remembers the sycophancy of his own subceo days. That’s why it’s so important to crush each and every one of their little dreams.
“I’m well aware,” he says, bizlike and without turning around. “Toddle on back to the shuttle now. Wait for me there. We’ll be on our way soon.”
When they’re gone and his ExecPlat is back to being perfectly still, Bleached Wheat enjoys the wonderfully modulated Top80 tunes for a few minutes. Then he directs his gaze downward, between his feet, down along the colossal white shaft of the Space Elevator. Many years ago, after much debate, CorpHQ decided to anchor their first one in the Atlantic instead of the Pacific. These structures have to be along the equator, of course, and in the Atlantic that means in the path of frequent superstorms. But it was determined that the strategic advantage of erecting their first Elevator within such immediate strike range of their foremost enemy would outweigh the enormous expense and elaborate nuisance of veering the gigantic floating base platforms frequently out of harm’s way. A choice decision, as it’s turned out. Suppression of that enemy remains constant. A second Elevator will be going up soon, this one in the calmer mid-Pacific, to keep a wary eye on China. And recent advances in nanotube tech have made the current Elevator practically incorruptible. It’s much better able, now, to withstand not only the maneuvering of its base, but its entire skeleton continually being snapped taut by the centripetal force of the earth’s rotation. Without a doubt, the Elevator to Outer Space is their doublego monopolization miracle. Staging platforms at multiple levels is like having a dozen operational space stations in orbit at once. Military and commercial fleets stay ever aloft. No more expensive shuttle launches. Their Elevator is the pride of TexArc. It put them over the top. That’s why they guard it 24/7/365 with the best of the best of ArcSea, ArcAir, and ArcSpace. The overhead is a capitalserve nightmare but worth every DollArc. That’s why Bleached Wheat’s next move is so balls out.
He spots the HighClimber sliding up the column, right on schedule. The cargocar is six metric tons on its own, hoisting a payload of twelve more, all goosed upward by free-electron lasers beaming onto photocells. Magnificent capitalserve, he thinks: low-energy working in conjunction with low-gravity. Bleached Wheat decides to trigger this explosive charge before the cargocar climbs too close. There’s no real danger to the Elevator. Drynano Selfassemble Support runs up and down the shaft. The column will soon enough repair itself. But he doesn’t want to put the HighClimber—or its payload—at risk. The vid from this angle will be show-stopping enough. It should be Dmega primetime, as a matter of fact.
Bleached Wheat listens for a few more moments to the talkhead uproar coming over his watchwrist—that gratifying soprano of fevernews. “BigRig19!” they bellow. “Our Glassea attacked!” they outrage. He smiles as he spreads his feet slightly more apart to establish a solid base. He arches his eyebrows to remind himself not to blink. He’ll use his personal ipatch (separable, of course) to record this next atrocity.
“Three one five,” he says deliberately. Then he stills his head.
One hundred meters below him, a generous explosion erupts soundlessly outward from the side of the glossy white shaft. Bleached Wheat feels the tremor through his feet. Instantly, the Top80 tunes stop, replaced by the baritone and gut-rumbling rhythmic pulse of the breach alarm. Three Terds on routine maintenance in their bubbly EVAsuits float not far below the ExecPlat. Naturally enough, before descending on their tethers to investigate the blast breach, they hesitate.
“Come on, boys,” Bleached Wheat whispers impatiently to himself. “Don’t go thinking on me now.”
He’s on a tight schedule. The last thing he needs is Gaters worrying about their personal safety. “Too cozy makes you too cautious” is a biz mantra he likes to say. Yet, dutifully, by-and-by and one-by-one, the three glide down watchfully to inspect the rupture. Actually, their caution creates a good bit of dramatic tension. The moment they’re assembled at the blast hole, like sitting ducks, Bleached Wheat triggers a second blast to flare out. This one causes three small—but quite spectacular and very unmistakable—purple puffs to appear stark, even beautiful, against the pure white backdrop of the cloud cover thousands of meters below. Paf! Paf! Paf! Three little wisps the approximate color of bruised flesh. Bleached Wheat then blinks and says, “Telcast subsidiary.”
Has Vieworld ever incited more collective agog?
<<Wherever you go, there we are!>>
<<More ‘you-decide’ breakingnews!>>
<<A second staggering Terror Attack!>>
<<Coming just minutes after the first!>>
<<Well-coordinated assaults on our Freedom!>>
<<First death on our Glassea!>>
<<Now death in our sky!>>
<<Horrifying vidfeed up to the second!>>
<<More Heroes making the ultimate sacrifice!>>
<<Boosting today’s gruesome deadcount to seventy-six!>>
The vid now plays the initial Elevator blast, slightly slowed to exaggerate the crisp visual detail. The images stream without aud. The silence of space makes the scene uncanny. The huge, luminous, inspirational shaft of the Elevator—then its despicable wounding.
<<What cowards are behind this atrocity to Progress?!>>
Next the three maintenance Terds drift down into frame—and are almost immediately blown sideways out of it. Paf! Paf! Paf!
<<Which roguestate now is jealous of us enough to kill?!>>
For sheer spectacle, the Simulacrum can’t be beat. Bleached Wheat shakes his head in admiration of the consummate Reconstruction professionalism on display. They let the mild imagesense sink in before rolling out the talkheads to advocate blame. Then, while those pundits shout, they rerun each targetstrike at least four or five times, in increasing slowdown. The technique is tried-and-true, sure to stim jingofrenzy, particularly in the lowstatus. He’d contemplated ordering an all4s showing, but then thought better of it. Never open with a crescendo. Let passion build. But he did void the upright—the Shopdrop—for the entire breakingnews flash. That’s an unprecedented disrupt of profit. He’ll draw Crat flak for that move. Yet he needed to punctuate somehow the enormity of these events. The singular and unmatched threat of this enemy. He needed to focus hearts. Extraordinary measures called for by, according to his agenda, extraordinary times.
Bleached Wheat looks up finally from his watchwrist. As he knew he must be, he’s surrounded now by Netsmen—at least a dozen of them. It’s as though these crack troops materialized out of thin air. Two burly fellows closest to him press their hard exoshoulders against him roughly, squeezing him slightly on either side. He doesn’t mind. He so admires their smart military bearing. All these men are at hyper. Their misters up and ready. All of them facing the interior of the platform, as though expecting immediate attack. Inevitably with these Netsmen comes the anxious presence of his subceos. Once more, he senses them behind him, quavering with concern. This time he’s in the mood to get on with things quickly.
“Yes?” he asks no one in particular.
“Sir!”
It’s Fargo. His word is a desperate plea. He’s subceo boss of Security after all and, quite understandably, is going mindfuck. Their Elevator has been terrorstruck. Officially, that’s on him.
“So what’s our plan?” Bleached Wheat asks, again to no one in particular.
Fargo’s voice is despairing: “We should be back to the shuttle and away by now!”
“Should we really?”
“Sir!”
Fargo has become such a federal pain in the ass.
Still gazing out the observation windows, Bleached Wheat watches the HighClimber complete its emergency stop right in the nick of time—just before hitting the breach in the Elevator shaft and derailing. That’s good capitalserve, anyway. “No outlay necessary more than the minimum to get the job done” is another one of his favorite biz mantras. He grins at himself in the thick nanoglass. Today’s task has gone well, he reflects. Quite well. He looks east, scanning the curve of the earth on a northerly lie, to where he estimates EVe would be. He widens his eyes and whispers his jeer, not in the least concerned that the two Netsmen can hear him.
“Take that, you old bitch.” His voice is a hiss. “You and your poncy wine. Your stink-ass cheese. Your yanksucking public ownership of alienable productive assets.”
Corpfeud versus Marksoc. It’s high noon for these two worldviews. High time they come to blows.
“This world just ain’t big enough for the both of us,” Bleach Wheat adds with a smirk.
That’s the TexArc way.
“Backward and Upward!” Bleached Wheat shouts and turns on his heels.
All, to a company man, repeat, “Backward and Upward!” and follow him doublequick to the airlock.
END OF CHAPTER 1
Glossary of Terms and Slang
all4s: TexArc term referring to all four viewscreens of the ipatch; see also “Simulacrum.”
ArcAir: TexArc air forces; see also “Airman.”
ArcSea: TexArc naval forces.
ArcSpace: TexArc space forces; see also “GLASS.”
aud: “audio.”
averagejoe: TexArc slang for an everyday person; a regular guy; see also “commonsense joe.”
biz: “business”; TexArc term for any money-making venture.
bossman: TexArc slang for anyone higher up the corporate ladder than yourself; see also “ceo.”
brainslow: TexArc slang for foolish, stupid, or mentally impaired; considered the natural state of Servs, non-whites, and women.
capitalserve: TexArc term meaning to conserve or to save money.
Corpfeud: “corporate feudalism”; the current political-economic formation of TexArc predicated on a neo-manorial system of giant, more or less self-sufficient centers of population operating within a larger, corporate-wide free market and consumer-driven paradigm; see also “capitalgreed,” “mammonism,” “meg,” and “smithprofitism.”
CorpHQ: “Corporate HeadQuarters”; the TexArc corporate seat of power; see also “Waco Great Pyramid.”
CorpTroop(s)/CorpTrooper(s): “corporate troop(s)/trooper(s)”; TexArc term for infantry soldier; see also “ArcGround” and “Groundsman.”
Crat: TexArc term for the ruling corporate class; see also “corpexec.”
deadcount: TexArc term for death toll.
democratize (to): TexArc term for the overwhelming military conquest of an enemy, domestic or foreign; to squash, control, subdue, kill; see also “urbicide” and “urbpass.”
Dmega: “double mega”; TexArc slang for really, really big or important.
doublego: TexArc slang for performing a task with extreme urgency.
drone (the): TexArc slang for the never-ending talk streaming over Vieworld.
EVe: formerly the EU or European Union; a socialistic commonwealth of erstwhile nation states extending currently from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains; during process of consolidation the “U” was changed to the Latinate “V” and the “e” then became understood; originating from the old Scandinavian social-economic model of the early 21st century; see also “alterity” and “Marksoc.”
Gater: TexArc term for the educated corporate class who live within the walls of the central Gater District of a meg; see also “Crat” and “Terd.”
Glassea (the): “glass sea”; generic TexArc term for Middle East oil fields after the region was democratized by tactical nuclear weapons; the allusion is to the resulting extensive plains of fused sands.
glassy (the): TexArc slang for the sparkling eyes of Servs and CorpTroops caused by the ipatch; also the phenomenon of being extremely mentally distracted by the continual stream of the Simulacrum.
imagesense/imagesensing: TexArc term for bio-implant electrostimulation experience producing in a recipient the physical and emotional state of someone else; see also “emostim,” “fivesensestim,” and “taste.”
ipatch: TexArc term for an ocular bio-implant video reception device implanted in all Servs; works in conjunction with the iband and the ihear; features quadrant viewscreens; see also “all4s,” “downleft,” “downright,” “upleft,” and “upright.”
jingofrenzy: TexArc term for corporate patriotism; especially, that period of fervent pride display immediately following a corpatriotic bio-implant electrostimulation experience; see also “taste.”
legislate (to): TexArc computer term for “to perform” or “to carry out.”
lowstatus: TexArc term for a Serv; the bottom rungs of the corporate classes; see also “upstatus.”
Marksoc: “market socialism”; the current political-economic formation of EVe predicated on public ownership of the means of production; originating from the old Scandinavian social-economic model of the early 21st century; see also “alterity” and “paxrevolution.”
mindfuck: TexArc slang for a shocking thing, event, situation, or idea.
mister: a particularly nasty kind of TexArc firearm that shoots a spray of high-velocity pellets, in effect turning its target into mist.
nano: short for “nanotechnology”; that is, the branch of technology that deals with dimensions and tolerances of less than 100 nanometers, especially the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.
Netsman (-men): Terd(s) serving in ArcNet.
newsbig: TexArc term for important, breaking news.
profit: TexArc term for salary or payment of any kind.
raghead(s): TexArc slang for any opponent of the corporation or anyone living outside corporate borders; all foreigners; highly pejorative.
selfoblige: TexArc term for self-gratification or self-interest; a corporate mantra.
Simulacrum (the): TexArc information-entertainment stream sent out to all corporate citizens over ArcNet; see also “Cultural Construct” and “Vieworld.”
stim: “stimulation” of a virtual making; in particular, emotional responses during a feed or a taste; see also “digiland,” “emostim,” and “fivesensestim.”
strak hooya: TexArc military slang, used particularly by ArcNet and ArcSpace personnel, for an extremely avid or gung-ho serviceman.
stream (to)/streaming: to broadcast image and voice over a communications network; such a transmission itself; see also “feed.”
subceo: TexArc term for the corporate position just below that of the ceo; a top executive administrator to the big boss; see also “ceo,” “Crat,” and “corpexec.”
sweetpuss: “sweet pussy”; TexArc slang for a woman; pejorative; see also “tits’n’ass.”
talkheads: “talking heads”; Vieworld news reporters.
taste: TexArc term for experiencing the physical and emotional state of someone else via bio-implant electrostimulation; often used for important corporate messages to the population or for corpatriotic public excitation; see also “digiland,” “emostim,” “fivesensestim,” “jingofrenzy,” and “stim.”
tech: “technology”; often referring to technical personnel or to technical apparatus; see also “teek,” “Terd,” and “TerdTech.”
Terd(s): “technology nerd”; TexArc slang for a technology/network worker and expert; more generally, TexArc term for the educated, non-Crat corporate class; see also “Gater.”
TexArc: formerly the oil conglomerate “TexArco”; the corporation that accomplished the hostile takeover of the outmoded U.S. republic in the 2030s; currently controls the North American continent from the Arctic Circle to the Panama Canal; predicated wholly on neoliberal economic principles; see also “Corpfeud.”
24/7 or 24/7/365: TexArc slang for around-the-clock; constant.
upright: the top right quadrant viewscreen (wearer’s perspective) of the ipatch; this screen carries the shopping stream Shopdrop.
vid: “video.”
vidfeed: “video feed”; the visual portion of a network stream.
Vieworld: TexArc news network streaming nonstop over the Simulacrum on the ipatch upleft; signature slogans include “Time To Know!”; “Wherever you go, there we are!”; “See the world, be the world!”; see also “Cultural Construct.”
watchwrist: TexArc term for an information-communication device worn on the wrist.
yank (to)/yanking: slang for coitus or for getting fucked over.
yanker: slang for the penis or for someone who fucks you over.