Infoquake by David Louis Edelman Page A

would not last forever.

    The families started arriving at noon the day before initiation, and continued streaming into the Proud Eagle until long past sundown. From
a corner, Natch watched his hivemates go off for private chats with
fathers and mothers and uncles and cousins to hear one last bit of
wisdom they could take with them to initiation. He conjured up a picture of Lora, the mother he had never met, and wondered what kind of
advice she would be giving him right now.
    Natch felt a hand on his shoulder. He whirled around expectantly,
but it was only Horvil. Horvil, the most anxiety-prone child in the
hive, not to mention the sloppiest and the largest. Horvil, Natch's only
friend. "So do you think it's gonna be painful?" he said.
    Before Natch had a chance to respond, an older boy stepped in. He
was ruggedly handsome and knew it, with a face that could have been
the Platonic Form of symmetry. "Of course it's going to be painful,"
teased Brone as he advanced on Horvil. "What's initiation without
pain? What's life without pain?" He called up a static electricity program and tapped the other two boys on the side. Horvil yelped and
scooted out of the way, but Natch quickly activated a grounding program to deflect the charge.
    "I really hope it's not too painful," whimpered Horvil to himself.
He turned on Analgesic 232.5 to soothe his aching side. "I don't think
I'll be able to stand a lot of pain." Brone and Natch stared at one
another icily for a few moments without speaking.
    Horvil and Brone's families arrived shortly thereafter, leaving
Natch alone in the corner with his thoughts. Horvil disappeared into
a gaggle of aunts and cousins who seemed determined to wedge their
advice into him with a crowbar if necessary. Brone walked off with two
picture-perfect parents, looking less like their progeny than a model from the same factory. He gave Natch one last evil grin before vanishing. "Horvil's not the only one who's going to feel pain," Brone fired
off at him over Confidential Whisper.

    Everyone knew what to expect from initiation, but the ramifications only seemed to multiply the closer the time came. The students
would be separated by sex and put in the wilderness for a year, where
the OCHREs in their bloodstreams would be deactivated. The
bio/logic programs that regulated their heartbeats, kept their calendars, and maximized the storage space in their brains would be cut off.
They would look at words without being able to instantly glean their
meanings from the Data Sea. They would snuffle and sneeze and bruise
and forget things. And the worst horror of all, they would wake up in
the middle of the night with actual shit oozing through their intestines....
    "Human beings are only subroutines of humanity," said a voice.
    Natch must have drifted off, because he hadn't noticed the middleaged man approaching him. The man's sand-colored robe was decidedly unfashionable (and poorly tailored at that), but his face was
friendly: the non-specific goodwill of the perpetual cloud dweller. His
almond-shaped eyes betrayed a hint of the Orient. Natch smiled
politely at the multi projection of Serr Vigal.
    "Sheldon Surina said that," Vigal continued gently.
    "What did he mean?"
    "Well, if you believe your proctors, Surina meant that everyone
should experience the struggle of humanity from darkness to light.
They think that Surina would have wanted you to see what life was like
before the Reawakening. Make you appreciate the modern world
more."
    "And what do you think?"
    The man stared off into the distance and tugged at his peppery
goatee. "I don't know. I think maybe Sheldon Surina just wanted
everyone to keep an open mind and be nice to each other."

    Natch tried to refrain from rolling his eyes. It was typical of the
advice he received from Serr Vigal: pleasant, inoffensive, and mostly
useless. "I thought you couldn't come," he said. "I thought you were
speaking at a conference."
    Vigal