Distress полностью

"Fine, fine!" She seemed happy and excited; the conference was obviously living up to her expectations. "But you don't look at all well."

I laughed. "As a student, did you ever find yourself sitting for an exam where all the questions on the paper, and all the questions you'd stayed up until dawn preparing to answer… had so little in common that they might as well have come from two completely different subjects?"

"Several times. But what's brought on the déjà vu? Is all the mathematics going over your head?"

"Well, yes, but that's not the problem." I glanced around the lobby; no one was likely to overhear us, but I didn't want to add to the rumors about Mosala if I could help it. I said, "You looked like you were in a hurry. Maybe I'll bore you with all my tribulations on the flight back to Phnom Penh."

"In a hurry? No, I was just going out for some air. If you're not busy yourself, you're welcome to join me."

I accepted gratefully. I'd been planning to eat, but I still had no real appetite—and it occurred to me that Lee might have some professional insights into technoliberation which she'd be willing to share.

As we stepped through the doors, though, I could see what she'd really meant by "going out for some air": Mystical Renaissance had decided to show themselves, crowding the street outside the hotel. Banners read: TO EXPLAIN IS TO DESTROY! REVERE THE NUMEN! SAY NO TO TOE! T-shirts displayed Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joseph Campbell, Fritjof Capra, the cult's late founder Gunter Kleiner, event artist Sky Alchemy—and even Einstein, poking his tongue out.

No one was chanting slogans; after Janet Walsh's confrontationist salvo, Mystical Renaissance had opted for a carnival atmosphere, all mime artists and fire-jugglers, palmists and tarot card readers. Tumbling firesticks cast oscillating deep-blue shadows everywhere, giving the street an oceanic cast. Bemused locals threaded their way through this obstacle course with expressions of weary resignation; they hadn't asked to have a circus shoved down their throats. So far as I could see, it was only a few badge-wearing conference members who were availing themselves of the free entertainment, or giving money to the buskers and fortune-tellers.

One of the cultists who'd stolen Albert was singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon," accompanying himself on a keyboard—a common brand, like his T-shirt; both had IR programming ports. I paused in front of him, smiling appreciatively, while I invoked some notepad software I'd written several years before, and quietly typed instructions. As we walked away, his keyboard fell silent—every volume level set to zero—and Einstein sprouted a thought balloon which read: "Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas."

Lee gave me an admonishing look. I said, "Come on! He was begging for it."

Further down the street, a small theatre group were in the middle of a compressed version of The Iceman Cometh, rewritten in contemporary MR vernacular. A woman in a clown costume tore at her hair and declaimed: "I've failed to be psychically attuned! Everyone in my net-clan would have remained closer to the healing numen, if only I'd respected their need to continue to be nourished by their imagination-driven self-narratives!" Images of tears flowed down her cheeks.

I turned to Lee. "Well, I'm convinced. I'm joining up tomorrow. And to think: I used to take the fragile beauty of the sunset and reduce it to ugly technical jargon."

"If you think this is painful, you should hear their five-minute Mahab'harata-as-Jungian-psychobabble." She shuddered. "But the original remains intact, doesn't it? And they have a right to their own… interpretation… as much as anyone." She didn't sound entirely convinced.

I said wearily, "I don't know what these people hoped to gain by coming here. Even if they disrupted the conference, all the research has already taken place; it's all going to be posted on the nets, regardless. And if the whole idea of a TOE offends them so deeply… they can just close their eyes to it, can't they? They've closed their eyes to every other scientific discovery which has failed to meet their stringent spiritual requirements."

Lee shook her head. "It's a matter of territorial defense. You must see that. A TOE effectively claims sovereignty over… the universe, and everyone in it. If a conference of lawyers in New York set themselves up as rulers of the cosmos, wouldn't you be tempted to go and thumb your nose at them, at the very least?"