New Mode

.CHAPTER(TWO) - Part 2/2

When it was over they pried themselves from their seats and filed into the alleyway behind the theater. The afternoon sunlight felt nauseating compared to the brilliance of the theater's ultra-resolution holographics. Ian's feet seemed to stick to the cement as they worked their way through the maze of cooling ducts and loosely rigged—

Ian blinked several times and saw he was seated in a rundown, self-service diner. One by one aspects of his surroundings seemed to blink into existence. A reddish-brown hand atop the flecked, chrome counter. Ciprian's hand. Plate of fries sat in a pool of congealing grease between their elbows. Prepared foods crawling past on a shuddering conveyor belt.

Ian had defragged enough not to panic about having been in the theater's alleyway only a moment ago. Short-term memory lapses were a side effect of the shows.

"Will you help or not?" Ciprian asked. Even as the diner was still solidifying around him Ian knew what Ciprian meant. It was not the first time he had asked.

"If nothing matters, why should I?" Ian snatched up one of the lukewarm fries and chewed it with disgust. "If what you say is true, what difference does it make?"

"I told you, we're taught to mistake patterns as meaning," Ciprian said, "because patterns can be used to control us, make us behave certain ways." From the beads of sweat trickling down Ciprian's temple Ian could tell he had popped some stimulant. Likely an analog high. Digital stims had a nasty reputation for burning out one's augmentation, and the procedure to replace a Direct Processor Interfacing implant, while relatively routine, was something Ian knew neither of them could currently afford. "Take defragging, as you said it uses patterns to induce a specific, known response. So those who control the patterns control our responses, our impulses. Why do you think we're all told we want the same things? Fast car. Bigger muscle grafts. More money."

"Human nature," Ian said, shrugging.

"Maybe, or is it because if we all see the same things, are told we want them, suddenly those things seem valuable to us. It's an industry, pattern making. Producing demand. Inducing behavior. Maybe the only industry. And only by tearing down every last one of its factories can we be free from its control. Only anarchy sets us free from outside influences, free to see reality for what it is, to realize there's no meaning to any of it. That's why we're trained not to like chaos, why no one ever dies for it."

"And you want to be the first?" Ian rolled his eyes. "The first person to die for anarchy?"

"If need be." For someone who usually treated sarcasm like their first language, none showed in Ciprian's face. Ian shook his head. Somewhere along the line the idea of suicide had become as meaningful as martyrdom to Ciprian, martyrdom as meaningless as suicide.

What confused Ian most though was not Ciprian's apparent argument, which was very plainly fucked beyond any doubt, but how Ciprian was going about his insane plan in as sane a process as possible. To ensure any last act or manifesto would be 'correctly' interpreted, Ciprian had even visited three separate psychologists for full evaluations. None of them had found anything clinically wrong with him.

"You realize how you sound?" Ian said, trying his best not to let Ciprian hear how he felt. It had been Ian's evaluations which had diagnosed him as manic—not Ciprian's. No respectable traditional employer would touch him now. Not so with Ciprian, Ciprian had somehow found a way to purport insane thoughts while at the same time remaining fundamentally sane. Ian could not make any sense of it. In the end he had decided perhaps that's all sanity was, not making sense of what couldn't be made sense of.

"Think of it like this." Ciprian's speech had devolved into strings of unbroken syllables. "I didn't choose to begin living, why should I blindly continue doing something I never chose to start doing in the first place? If some sort of god exists then its very act of creating us also robbed us of free will. When did I choose to become me?"