Infoquake by David Louis Edelman Page B

from the Defense and Wellness Council, she had prived
herself to the world and slunk straight off to bed like a wounded
animal. Now she discovered she had slept for fourteen hours straight,
a Horvilesque achievement.
    Anxious for something familiar, Jara fell back into the morning
routine she had been forced to abandon by Natch's crazy plan. The routine went like this: Sit up and project the news feeds on top of the plaid
blanket. Tune one viewscreen to the morning commentary by Sen Sivv
Sor. Tune the other to the editorial by his rival, John Ridglee. Order a
steaming cup of nitro from the building. Fetch nitro from the access
panel at the left side of the bed. Activate Doze-B-Gone 91.
    A few minutes of peaceful routine were enough to convince Jara
she was okay. Enough to convince her that a small niche had been
carved out for her somewhere in this hardscrabble mountain called the
bio/logics industry. Almost enough to convince her she would survive
another eleven months.
    Insanity, insanity.
    The chatter about yesterday's "black code attack" had already
slowed to a trickle. Everyone who had claimed financial losses in the
panic had quietly recanted during the early morning hours. Representatives of the assorted Pharisee tribes were tripping all over themselves
to declare they had nothing to do with the hoax. Talk on the Data Sea
had shifted focus from the attack itself to the Council's behavior
during the crisis. Why did Len Borda send an underling to face the
crowd at Melbourne instead of appearing himself? How did the
Council plan on pursuing the offending parties? Other drudges were bemoaning the fact that vast swaths of the public had been deceived
by such a simple stunt. Technology had kept the world so secure for so
long. Had society become slothful and complacent?

    The speculation merely elicited a yawn from Jara. She moved past
the mundane news about TubeCo's financial woes and deaths in the
orbital colonies, waved away the parochial gossip from her L-PRACG
and the solicitations from programming supply companies. The news
feed on her blanket shifted in the blink of an eye to the bio/logic
industry reports.
    The lead headline:
PATEL BROTHERS UNSEATED BY RIVAL FIEFCORP
    Natch Personal Programming Takes #1 on Primo's

    Jara let loose a tidal wave of messages on her boss. She stood on the red
square in her hallway sending multi requests and ConfidentialWhis-
pers by the dozens, enough to cause a major headache. Anyone but a
trusted associate would have automatically been cut off by the Data Sea
by now. Still, Natch could have prived himself to her communiques
with the barest thought. What are you waiting for, Natch? Jara asked.
What are you afraid of?
    Finally, one of her multi requests got through. Jara took a deep
breath and activated the connection. Multivoid whispered its sweet
promises of oblivion for a scant few seconds and then abandoned her in
Natch's foyer. A viewscreen right in front of her face broadcast one of
the early nudes of Baghalerix.
    Voices drifted into her ears before the connection was stable
enough for her to process them.
    "Ratings? Who really cares about ratings?" came the first voice,
cool and butter-smooth and almost certainly enhanced with bio/logics. Natch.

    "Well, you do, from what I've heard," replied the second. Jara stood
for a moment, trying to remember where she had heard that scratchy
growl. A male voice, at least twice Natch's age. And then suddenly she
placed it: the drudge Sen Sivv Sor.
    So the feeding frenzy has begun, thought Jara bitterly. Everybody wants
to talk to the new number one on Primo's.
    She wondered when her fiefcorp master was planning to bring her
in to the conversation. Or did he just plan to keep her dangling at
arm's length? She studied the ballooning belly of the woman on the
viewscreen and tried to decide if her boss had chosen this particular
painting to send a message.
    "Of course it doesn't hurt to have high