That's normal. That's brainstem." It had been such a relief to discover that at last, to see aggression and sex sharing the same hardwired pathways through the mammalian brain— to know his secret shame was a legacy millions of years old, ubiquitous for all the denial of civilized minds.
There'd been a time, she'd heard, you could just pick up and go places; none of these whackamole barriers going up and down all the time, like you had to shoot some kind of lottery every time you wanted to cross the street. There'd been a time when you could fight off plagues and parasites yourself, just using your own body systems, without having to buy a fix from some pharm who'd probably tweaked the disease in the first place so you had to buy their crummy genes. According to Vive's pater, there'd even been a time when the police themselves had been under control.
Veracity didn't enter into such things; only resonance did.
Now what we've got here's a system that's so complicated, it makes a tropical rainforest look like a fucking monoculture. Everything gets way too complicated for mere mortals so we set up webs and networks and AIs to keep track of things except they end up exploding into these huge cancers of complexity too—so that only makes the problem worse—and of course now all the underlying infrastructure is breaking down, the weather and the biosphere are all fucked up so not only do we need oodles more energy to keep this huge wobbling gyro from crashing over on its side, but those same factors keep knocking out the systems we put in place to produce all that extra energy, you see what I'm sayin'? You know what apocalypse is? It's a positive feedback loop!"
Now what we've got here's a system that's so complicated, it makes a tropical rainforest look like a fucking monoculture. Everything gets way too complicated for mere mortals so we set up webs and networks and AIs to keep track of things except they end up exploding into these huge cancers of complexity too—so that only makes the problem worse—and of course now all the underlying infrastructure is breaking down, the weather and the biosphere are all fucked up so not only do we need oodles more energy to keep this huge wobbling gyro from crashing over on its side, but those same factors keep knocking out the systems we put in place to produce all that extra energy, you see what I'm sayin'? You know what apocalypse is? It's a positive feedback loop!"
his career had coasted to that comfortable plateau above those who actually did productive work, but safely short of a position where he had to make any vital decisions.
his career had coasted to that comfortable plateau above those who actually did productive work, but safely short of a position where he had to make any vital decisions
But there was no such thing as absolute proof. There was only proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And Lenie Clarke, Lenie Clarke had been there. She knew.
Guilt Trip kept you from making the wrong decision, and Absolution let you live with yourself after making the right one. But you had to at least think you knew what right was, before either of them could kick in. They only reacted to gut feeling.
Technically, of course, it was not an assault. Both aggressors wore uniforms and badges conferring the legal right to beat whomever they chose.
