Information Whore

Cornelius Fortune

I.      

           In a bright gleaming chamber with silvery shapes

           gone streaking back and forth; delectable wires,

           loose-fitting, spread out and falling like hair from

           her shoulders: the snake-like overflowing, projecting

           wide-angled images onto her skin;

           (she's a living television screen…)

           grafted circuitry and wide bulbous insect-eyes staring

           at the world of metal and shapes and symbols she was

           immersed in; eyes taped open so that she would

           not sleep—the numbers and equations, statistics and

           cooking instructions playing across them in blurr-time,

           swift and unyielding

          She's plugged into the rageless city, pumping new blood

          into it night and day

          They lay with her and she opens herself to their gentle,

          sometimes cruel prodding

          (They whispered promises to her. . . .)

          "Soon." She heard the voice of the WebSuggestor in her

          mind—everything was in her mind now. She hadn't

          spoken in three years: it wouldn't have done any good

          anyway. The FLX cable had severed her voice box—

          "Soon we will choose another to replace you. You

          are keeping us alive."

          It was a technological whorehouse, where people

          jacked into their deepest, most forbidden fantasies;

          made requests for credit increases; purchased real

          estate; and large commercial conglomerates raged

          war games, with her as mediator. . . .

          The dead were strewn at her naked feet—her

          Predecessors in a pile of recycled waste, packed

          and cryogenically frozen until they found a

          technology that wouldn't wear out the host

          in five years, hoping to curb the onset of the

          mind overflowing with information and madness

          soon . . .  the thankful death; soon, the

          welcome silence;

          when the mind would be still, and she could      

          hear her own heartbeat in her ears, vomiting

          the black liquid that welled up in her breast

          from time to time that she held inside her

          and swallowed, the tube in her stomach

          pumping the bad stuff away

          She wanted to close her eyes, but couldn't. . . .

          Staring up at the strange

          breasts and suspended body, hanging messiah-like;

          a reflection of what and who'd she'd

          become by the age of twenty-five

II.

      As a child, sitting in her class, one day long ago, the October radiance

      of pressed leaves shifting outside the window—over the recitation

      of the Pledge of Congruence— the deafness suddenly came to her, making her

      head hurt and her ears bleed; a piercing whine, spreading through her mind.

      She had, in that horrific moment, developed the potential for

       storing vast amounts of information; a sophisticated network of

       genetically superior neurons that caused her to be different now

       from the other  children.   She would be                                                                                                                                                                     

       given a new identity; she would sustain the city.

                           They took her away. . . .

       A few weeks into her training, a visual message was sent to her; a message

       that must have taken a great effort to send (she was not 

       to receive communications from the outside): It said, "Come home." Her mother's face, red and swollen, large on the screen.

        Her voice small and white in contrast, like cotton swabs dipped in alcohol. She said, "I have a map of the grounds. You can just walk away.

         You can escape and we can be together again, Emma, wouldn't you

         like to be with Mommy? Download the information so that Mommy

         can see you again. Do it now. Download the . . . please, Emma. Hurry . . .”

          Her image vanished and Emma pressed her hand hard against the

          Screen, but it wouldn't download. She cried herself to sleep that night and resolved to plan an escape by morning on her own.

         Rising early and slipping into the transparent gown they provided her, she left out, boldly determined;

        Cold feet slapping the metal tile, turning and returning down repeating corridors, endless and not knowing which was the way

        OUT, and running until her little feet were tired and the soles of them were

         Cut and bleeding and pulsing with red heat.

          They found her lost and wet with tears and snot, exhausted and frustrated in the lower-ducts, afraid and wanting her mommy.

           In her bed again, tucked in by the supervisor, a tall woman

           With soft voice and purple eyes like flowers in rain water, her back framing the doorway as she left out, closing the door  behind her. When the footsteps faded, she threw the covers back, rubbing red eyes that still ran with warm tears—remaining hope— keying in the exit code frantically, but they had locked her in this time; they would not let her go. It said: ACCESS DENIED

      She sent a reply to her mother, but the message came back saying:

UNRECOGNIZED REQUEST

UNRECOGNIZED USER
WOULD YOU LIKE ASSISTANCE?    

          And the large insect eyes . . . sweLLING on the wall, that said (--the Sound coming out without the lips moving—)

"You will one day be me, as I was once you: we are the same: Reciprocal.

I am mother, thy sustainer. Taste the umbilical cord of the rageless city. . . . ”

     And she drove the blue wire through the opening in Emma's skull        

        Yes, it was her destiny.

         She was special and special little girls were sent here

         to grow up and do special big things without questioning it. . . .

“Where did men come, but by the womb of a mother?"

III.

           She flexed her fingers

           And sent a missile attack

           to a far-off village and sentenced

           a man to death for the murder of

           his ex-wife and registered a new

           little girl, whose name was Hilda,

           that stared up at her now, in fear and wonder;

           her head freshly shaven, wincing from

           the sound the wires made;

           not knowing what to do, but to wait . . .

           The supervisor gently pushing her forward.

           "Go on . . ." she said. "It's okay."

            The blue wires whipping the air like a

            cobra's tail, as it made the first incision

             in her head, lifting her from the floor;

             the frail little girl suspended in the air;

             her eyes going back inside her head,

             turning white; then black; then opaque,

             like pools of undisturbed lacquer,

             calling for her mommy, as she lost

             consciousness . . .

             The flooding of her brain with wet information,

              and the first opening of insect-eyes, blinking

              like that of an infant seeing the world for the

              first time:

            In a bright gleaming chamber with silvery shapes

            Gone streaking back and forth in delectable ageless wires

            The welcome silence finally came to her:

            The images slowing their flow over her skin;

            The thankful death, cutting the transmission . . .