Collective Mind (13 page)

Pleasant-looking,
identical, nine-story buildings of a residential district flickered past the
window. . The little town looked lovely. It was a Happy Ghetto. Actually these
settlements were called Happy Cities, but Bikie’s name for them was ghettoes.

At
UNICOMA they hadn’t immediately realized that by downloading energy from low
level individuals they would run into the problem of homeless Happies that no
one would look after. Those whose payment wasn’t enough for a long, normal life
in a boarding house or who lost the money they were given proved incapable of
adapting to the outside world. To give the Agency its due, it didn’t just cut
these people adrift. A limit was quickly introduced, specifying a minimal level
of creativity before downloading, and the downloaders were required to get
insurance contracts for life-long support, or at least have a guardian who had
to obtain a license from the Agency. The homeless Happies were gathered
together and housed in specially built residential districts. Of course, these
weren’t holiday resorts by any means, the apartments were small with no frills,
but even so they were quite adequate for the undemanding new residents. In any
event, they didn’t complain. Before moving to Peter’s place, Bikie had lived in
far more modest conditions, even in Monaco. These little towns were built
quickly, on inexpensive land, and dubbed Happy Cities. They had a pretty good
infrastructure: sports grounds, parks and cinemas, even leisure and
entertainment centers. The Agency chose jobs for the Happy residents, often
building some factory nearby. The problem was solved and no more homeless
Happies appeared.

The
settlement and its residents were left behind. “The road to Hell is paved with
good intentions,” Bikie recalled.

“Listen,
Isaac,” said Bikie, surfacing from his reverie. “If we destroy the system, we
have to offer something to replace it. If you think about it seriously, for
most people we’re just ordinary terrorists, and death is too good for us. Wars
and epidemics will start up again; lots of people will lose their chance in
life. There’ll be an economic collapse and chaos like the world has never seen
before.”

“Ah,
but we won’t destroy what has already been achieved. We’ll just slow the world
down a bit and reduce the speed of evolution. I’m not saying that COMA is all
harm and nothing else.”

“There
are so many benefits, I sometimes have doubts myself. Criticizing is one thing,
smashing is a different matter altogether.”

“The
distance between UNICOMA and the other corporations and governments is growing
so frantically fast, we’ll have a dictatorship before you know what’s hit you.

“That’s
just theory, but there’s concrete, positive, practical achievement there
outside the window. How many of these people will end up in the street? Die on
drugs? Wars, starvation, will start again. Sometimes I think we picked the goal
out of anger for being losers, - Bikie looked upset. – What if people finally
created paradise on the earth? Well, they are stupid, they really are. But so
what? As if in the nineteenth century everyone was smart. Veggies have no
creativity, but they can feel joy – they watch movies, fuck, see no evil, obey
the scripture. What if this is just the future that has come too fast? What is
the future you want? What if Coma saved us from nuclear war, terrorist attacks,
that never happened, god knows what else? Lots of folks might not have been
alive by now, but they are! Don’t you tell me that it’s better to be a dead
smart guy than an alive Veggie. As for me, I don’t mind a fuss, I’m following
you, and I’m really interested to reach the goal. But you, where the hell  are
you going? Well, there’s theoretical danger, indeed. This way you can accuse
the creators of the Internet that the terrorists use it to exchange
information, or fuckers store child-porn there. Or the creators of cell-phones
can be blamed that their gismo can de used as detonators. One can find
potential threat in every goddamn invention! Actually speaking, this artificial
intellect that Link invented is the safest possible This machine doesn’t work
without man, doesn’t make any decisions on its own”

“We’ll
find Link and then figure it out.” Isaac was still absorbed in his own thoughts,
and he really did not feel like discussing COMA.

The
train arrived at St. Pancras Station in London.

They
both got out of the carriage with its long, streamlined nose that reminded
Isaac of his mother’s flat iron, while Bikie thought it looked like a
red-and-yellow Japanese dragon.

After
they went up in the lift, their eyes were met by a huge, bright dome of glass
and iron set on walls of red brick with archways and plastered columns.
Beautiful, raw neo-Gothic architecture.

“Bikie,
did you know that this place has the longest champagne bar in Europe?”

“I
don’t know what you’re hinting at, girlie. Let’s just have a coffee from the
machine.”

The
machine poured them coffee in cups that had a new stag printed on them: “2.
soluble plastic”: in two years there wouldn’t be a trace left of those plastic
cups. They each bought a sandwich from the next vending machine.

Everything
sold at the station was handled by vending machines, people were hardly
involved at all. There were still waiters working at the champagne bar, but
that was basically a concession to tradition, the place could have managed
without them.

The
friends sat down under a sculpture called “Meeting Point”. Passengers walking
by stared curiously at the nine meter high sculpture of an embracing young
couple, frozen in cast metal. “A good sign,” Isaac remarked. Not far away was
another sculpture, a bit smaller: a respectable-looking man gazing up so
intently at the dome that he had to hold on to his hat to stop it from falling
off. It was Sir John Betjeman, a poet who adored railways and had been
feverishly active in the middle of the last century in the campaign against
dismantling the platform of this station, and in return had his likeness
admiring the lofty dome forever. “Look at him, an example of a man who grabbed
tight hold of the past in good time. Yet another good sign.”

From
the station they went straight to the University campus, which was a
forty-minute drive from London. The University was now named after Jeremy Link.
The genial Hindu taxi driver asked if this was their first time in London.

“Yes,
we’ve come to repair our karma,” Bikie informed him

The
Indian gave a broad smile and said that you didn’t repair karma, you restored
it.

“My
name’s Rashid. Would you like me to explain what karma is and how it influences
a person’s life?”

Bikie
nodded. Rather than travel in silence, he could listen to something
interesting, and not just from a journalist, but from a real Hindu.

Isaac
didn’t listen; he was again caught up in his thoughts about Vicky.

Along
the way they passed several abandoned universities and a couple of
demonstrations by unemployed lecturers.

“Thanks
Rashid, that was interesting.” Unlike Isaac, Bikie had spent the entire journey
discussing and arguing about his karma with the driver. “When we go back, I’ll
call you and you can pick us up. Did you get that, Isaac? If you spat in
someone’s face in a past life, you risk catching your own gob of spit in this
one!”

“What?”
Isaac had missed the conversation and he didn’t understand a thing.

“Look
at you! What a blockhead with leaky karma you are! You’ve got two holes, in
your left ear and your right one. It all flew in one and out the other. You
missed everything!” Bikie explained disappointedly. “All that interesting stuff
you were just told and you didn’t pick up a thing.”

“Sorry,
I wasn’t in the mood for listening. And I do know what karma is.”

“In
your case that’s as much use as a straw hat against a meteor shower,” Bikie
replied acidly. “I’m not going to repeat it all. Listen to me next time, and
I’ll swap your karmic sombrero for a decent anti-tank helmet!

“It’s
a deal,” Isaac said with a smile. “But can I have an anti-Bikie helmet?”

“There
you go. You’ve just made another hole in it!” Bikie exclaimed indignantly.
“What you’ve got isn’t karma, it’s a colander. And your head hasn’t got
cerebral convolutions in it, just spaghetti.”

“I
hope it’s Italian, at least.”

“Yeah,
Italian, hard-shell noodle.”

Isaac
and Bikie walked up to the library building. They wanted to look inside – it
must be really beautiful! It was centuries old and the collection of books had
to be huge. All universities unofficially competed with each other to have the
best library. Another depository of the ideas and thoughts of great people,
only not computerized. If COMA could have found a way to augment its capacity
not by using people, but the books they had written, what immense power that
would have been! Though there was nothing good about artificial intelligence
either. All the films on that subject inevitably ended with a computer
declaring war against mankind.

The
University was beautiful and it had a certain aroma of aristocratic dignity.
Neatly trimmed lawns on all sides, with students on them, discussing something
or other: some sitting there, reading textbooks, some lying on the grass and
fiddling with their laptops. A scene from a fairytale. And lots of attractive
girls.

“I’d
come here as a lecturer,” said Bikie, impressed by two young beauties who had
just walked by.

“And
what would you teach rebellion and rock-n-roll?”

“Libertarianism
and freethinking.”

“This
is a mixed University. You ought to go straight to one with just women to do
your lecturing. Although you’re more interested in the practical classes aren’t
you?”

“Screw
you. If you envy my high-flying fantasy just say so. You’ll never reach such
heights with that spaghetti of yours.”

“Do
I understand right that you won’t take me as a lab assistant in your
department?”

“In
my department I conduct all the lab work in person,” Bikie declared solemnly,
adjusting his jeans lewdly. “But we’ll find a sweet little fat girl for you.”

Isaac’s
bad mood had evaporated. He absorbed the carefree student atmosphere floating
in the air, and tried to listen in to portions of the student’s conversations
in order to recall more clearly the time when he was in college. The chatter on
all sides was in English, but he understood perfectly well what they saying.
After all, English was an international language that had spread everywhere and
conquered entire continents. All thanks to the might of the British Empire that
had subdued such vast territories, implanting its language as it went. The
British colonists and settlers had felt quite at home on a continent discovered
by the Spanish, and in Asia, and in distant Australia. When Isaac looked at how
many universities there were in England, it occurred to him that this country
was an example of how the world had been conquered not simply by military
might, but by education.

The
university was splendid; the only thing making him feel worried was the task
ahead – finding a lead to Professor Link.

“Look,
Bikie, there’s our goal, the professor himself with a bronze head.”

“Enough
with the jokes. We need a cover story; people could ask questions about who we
are and why we’re interested in the professor.”

“That’s
not a problem, Bikie! I’ve already used my hard-shell noodle. The subject of
Link’s disappearance is still an event that intrigues people. We’ll introduce
ourselves as student journalists from the University of Monaco. No one will
bother to check if our student journal ‘The Principality and Science’ actually
exists.”

“OK,
I was going to suggest something like that myself!” Bikie said with a nod, and
then out of the blue he started saying how envious he felt looking at the
students in England. “Just look at that building, and how much land they have
here, the lawns. Football pitches and handball courts – who are they training
here sportsmen or eggheads? And those golf courses we saw on the way here!”

“And
those abandoned universities we saw on the way here,” Isaac retorted.

“That’s
true,” Bikie agreed. “Lots of students have given up studying. They went
chasing after the money that COMA promised them, like sheep which only proves
yet again…”

“…
that what we intend to do is right,” said Isaac, completing the thought.

Isaac
and Bikie spent two days searching for everything connected with Jeremy Link.
They rummaged through University publications and spoke with his colleagues and
former students, even with the cleaning lady of his study which was now a
museum. They also studied the publicly accessible archives, as a result, having
asked about Link to everyone they came across. There was zero new information,
they already knew everything that they were told. Link had disappeared
suddenly, without even completing the course he was teaching.

As
they walked out of the building, a gallery of portraits of great scientists
caught Isaac’s attention. The great men looked down at him: Einstein, Leonardo,
Galileo and right there among them was Professor Link. He had his head inclined
to one side and his expression was sardonic, with the eyes narrowed, a real
person. Not a hint of glamour, even in a portrait he’d been captured just as he
was in real life.

“Bikie,
there ought to be other photos of Link, right? Maybe we’ll find a lead in
them?” Isaac exclaimed in sudden insight.

They
looked through what they had collected again, this time studying the images
carefully. They asked students about their photos. Some had photos of
unofficial events, some boasted that they had “me and Link” selfies. People
were glad to show the two journalists their photos with the great celebrity,
and the pair tried to pick new details.