Infoquake by David Louis Edelman Page A

opened doors for her in the past-the name of her hive, the names of
her parents, the name of the fashionista who had designed her ball
gowns. But in this new world, those names had lost their magic.

    And so several years slipped by in slow motion. Down in the realm
of the diss, nothing changed. The same expressionless faces meandered
down the street, day after day, neither angry nor frightened nor scared
nor hurt, but just there: zombies of the eternal now chewing synthetic
meats grown in tanks. The beneficent forces of government sent
bio/logic programming code raining down from the skies, containing
chemical nourishment and protection from disease and hygiene. Black
code sprouted up from the lower realms, programs to stir the sludge of
neural chemicals in their skulls and relieve the boredom.
    Sometimes she had real flesh sex with strangers in trashed-out
buildings. Other times, she and her roommates embarked on errands
of violence against the crumbling city. Bio/logics had made it very difficult to seriously injure someone with a pipe or a rock. But buildings
... buildings followed the natural laws of entropy, and could eventually be beaten down into dust.
    And then one day, the rumors began. Len Borda, the young high
executive of the Defense and Wellness Council, was giving out money
to the bio/logic fiefcorps. It's a massive program of military and intelligence
spending designed to end the Economic Plunge, they said. Jobs will be
returning soon.
    Lora had not hunted for work in nearly two years. She had rarely
even made it around the block in that time. But the rumors stirred
memories of her old life, of the comfortable track that prescribed
career, companionship and motherhood. Lora left the Chicago slums
and tubed to the metropolis of Omaha in search of work.
    Within a few weeks, Lora's search brought her to the attention of
Serr Vigal.

    Vigal had matriculated in one of the great lunar universities and discovered an innate passion for neural programming. He settled in
Omaha the same week that High Executive Borda defied the Prime
Committee and began handing out massive defense subsidies. Vigal
founded a company devoted to the study of the brainstem, and went to
the Defense and Wellness Council for funding. They approved his
request almost without question.
    The young neural programmer decided to incorporate as a
memecorp instead of a fiefcorp. Vigal had to spend much of his time
pleading for public funding from a patchwork of government agencies,
but he felt this was time well spent if his employees were insulated
from the pressures of the marketplace.
    His choice of company structure also allowed him to make unconventional hiring decisions.
    Lora was his first such decision. Vigal could see her qualifications
were slim, yet her scores on the logic quizzes he routinely gave to
applicants were astronomical, far higher than most of his pedigreed
apprentices. Clearly the woman was full of untapped potential, and
Vigal was intrigued. The field of neuroscience had moved far beyond
the basic mechanics of forming neurons and positioning dendrites. If
he was to succeed in this field, Vigal knew he would need creative
thinkers to help decipher the hidden electrical order in the brain. He
hired Lora.
    Unfortunately, Vigal's first controversial decision sparked his first
major conflict. Lora was a quick learner, but the work was difficult and
the rest of the team unforgiving. Mistake piled on top of mistake while
the apprentices were crunching to hit major deadlines. Once the
project was completed, a group of Lora's fellow apprentices approached
Vigal and demanded her dismissal. It's impossible to work under these con ditions, they said. We have friends with much better credentials who are still
out there in the ranks of the disc.

    Vigal refused to terminate her contract, but he had selfish reasons.
    He had fallen in love with her.
    Over the next year, Lora found a place in the