Read Online Pattern Recognition by William Gibson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Gibson
Ads: Link
spongiform encephalopathy as the price of forcing herbivores into an apocalyptically unnatural cannibalism.
Bigend has a way of injecting these questions into conversations that he’s grown tired of. Caltrops thrown down on the conversational highway; you can swerve or you can hit them, blow your tires, hope you’ll keep going on the rims. He’s been doing it through dinner and their predinner drinks, and Cayce assumes he does it because he’s the boss, and perhaps because he really does bore easily. It’s like watching someone restlessly change channels, no more mercy to it than that.
“They won’t think of us,” Cayce says, choosing straight into it. “Any more than we think of the Victorians. I don’t mean the icons, but the ordinary actual living souls.”
“I think they’ll hate us,” says Helena, only her gorgeous eyes visible now above her nightmares of BSE and a spongiform future. She looks, for just that instant, as though she’s still in character as the emotionally conflicted deprogrammer of abductees on Ark/Hive 7’s lone season, Cayce having once watched a single episode in order to see a friend’s actor boyfriend in a walk-on as a morgue attendant.
“Souls,” repeats Bigend, evidently not having heard Helena, his blue eyes widening for Cayce’s benefit. He has less accent of any kind than she can recall having heard before in any speaker of English. It’s unnerving. It makes him sound somehow directionless, like a loudspeaker in a departure lounge, though it has nothing to do with volume. “Souls?”
Cayce looks at him and carefully chews a mouthful of stuffed eggplant.
“Of course,” he says, “we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which ‘now’ was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents’ have insufficient ‘now’ to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.” He smiles, a version of Tom Cruise with too many teeth, and longer, but still very white. “We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.”
Cayce blinks.
“Do we have a past, then?” Stonestreet asks.
“History is a best-guess narrative about what happened and when,” Bigend says, his eyes narrowing. “Who did what to whom. With what. Who won. Who lost. Who mutated. Who became extinct.”
“The future is there,” Cayce hears herself say, “looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.”
“You sound oracular.” White teeth.
“I only know that the one constant in history is change: The past changes. Our version of the past will interest the future to about the extent we’re interested in whatever past the Victorians believed in. It simply won’t seem very relevant.” What she’s actually doing here is channeling Parkaboy from memory, a thread with Filmy and Maurice, arguing over whether or not the footage is intended to convey any particular sense of period, or whether the apparently careful lack of period markers might suggest some attitude, on the maker’s part, to time and history, and if so, what?
Now it’s Bigend’s turn to chew, silently, looking at her very seriously.
* * *
HE drives a maroon Hummer with Belgian plates, wheel on the left. Not the full-on uber-vehicle like a Jeep with glandular problems, but some newer, smaller version that still manages to look no kinder, no gentler. It’s almost as uncomfortable as the bigger ones, though the seats are upholstered with glove-soft skin. What she’d liked, all she’d liked, about the big ones had been
Bigend has a way of injecting these questions into conversations that he’s grown tired of. Caltrops thrown down on the conversational highway; you can swerve or you can hit them, blow your tires, hope you’ll keep going on the rims. He’s been doing it through dinner and their predinner drinks, and Cayce assumes he does it because he’s the boss, and perhaps because he really does bore easily. It’s like watching someone restlessly change channels, no more mercy to it than that.
“They won’t think of us,” Cayce says, choosing straight into it. “Any more than we think of the Victorians. I don’t mean the icons, but the ordinary actual living souls.”
“I think they’ll hate us,” says Helena, only her gorgeous eyes visible now above her nightmares of BSE and a spongiform future. She looks, for just that instant, as though she’s still in character as the emotionally conflicted deprogrammer of abductees on Ark/Hive 7’s lone season, Cayce having once watched a single episode in order to see a friend’s actor boyfriend in a walk-on as a morgue attendant.
“Souls,” repeats Bigend, evidently not having heard Helena, his blue eyes widening for Cayce’s benefit. He has less accent of any kind than she can recall having heard before in any speaker of English. It’s unnerving. It makes him sound somehow directionless, like a loudspeaker in a departure lounge, though it has nothing to do with volume. “Souls?”
Cayce looks at him and carefully chews a mouthful of stuffed eggplant.
“Of course,” he says, “we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which ‘now’ was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents’ have insufficient ‘now’ to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile.” He smiles, a version of Tom Cruise with too many teeth, and longer, but still very white. “We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.”
Cayce blinks.
“Do we have a past, then?” Stonestreet asks.
“History is a best-guess narrative about what happened and when,” Bigend says, his eyes narrowing. “Who did what to whom. With what. Who won. Who lost. Who mutated. Who became extinct.”
“The future is there,” Cayce hears herself say, “looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now.”
“You sound oracular.” White teeth.
“I only know that the one constant in history is change: The past changes. Our version of the past will interest the future to about the extent we’re interested in whatever past the Victorians believed in. It simply won’t seem very relevant.” What she’s actually doing here is channeling Parkaboy from memory, a thread with Filmy and Maurice, arguing over whether or not the footage is intended to convey any particular sense of period, or whether the apparently careful lack of period markers might suggest some attitude, on the maker’s part, to time and history, and if so, what?
Now it’s Bigend’s turn to chew, silently, looking at her very seriously.
* * *
HE drives a maroon Hummer with Belgian plates, wheel on the left. Not the full-on uber-vehicle like a Jeep with glandular problems, but some newer, smaller version that still manages to look no kinder, no gentler. It’s almost as uncomfortable as the bigger ones, though the seats are upholstered with glove-soft skin. What she’d liked, all she’d liked, about the big ones had been
Similar Books
