meaning and poetry in one squiggle of tissue.
Until, finally, it appeared in a slightly but significantly modified form: broken in two, pierced, in a brief corporate animation, by the chemical shape of DR33M3R.
One can imagine it, the shape of the SL prion, reflected in the eyes of the sales staff, breaking open like a pinata, dollar signs spilling out and heaping on the ground beneath it.
Those dollars were almost not scooped up. When word got out that there was a cure for SLP, an immunization, a salve that would bring the dead back to life, the labs where the drug was being perfected, the office where the packaging was being focus-grouped, the factories that were being geared for production, were all stormed.
Bloodshed was minimized. The military and police having had nearly a year of experience by then with quelling the madness of crowds. The traditional fire hoses, Tasers, tear gas, beanbag guns, and riot batons augmented with DARPA favorites such as microwave emitters, nausea-inducing lights, and focused-volume sound projectors that literally rattled metal fillings out of teeth.
The labs and offices and factories withstood the onslaught. And the story clarified. There was no cure, no panacea. Only relief. For the suffering millions upon millions, some relief.
A chance to dream. No more than that. A chemical plug to fit shorted sockets of the brain, a patch to allow the sleepless to sleep and to dream. An ease to suffering, but death just as assured at the end. With no other relief at hand, nothing short of a bullet, arms were outstretched, palms cupped. Dreams of sleep.
Dreams of Dreamer.
A chemical needle to knit the raveled sleeve of care.
Only, not enough.
Not enough Dreamer to go around. Not enough to bring rest to every mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, uncle, aunt, cousin, friend. A taste for sleep, a craving for it the world over, and only one curb for the general appetite.
So yes, the dollars rained down. A year or two earlier and it would have been raining Euro and yuan. But the initial SLP hysteria had put paid to the European Union and the might of that combined economy. Once Italy had been quarantined as the suspected ground zero of the disease, it had taken less than a month for all the countries of the union to seal their borders. Trade and travel faltered, xenophobia and nationalism flourished, and pounds, lira, francs, deutschmarks, and various other quaint relics were soon being dug out from beneath rocks in the gardens and put back into circulation. As for China, the world had seen the relative quality of the dragon's infrastructure when the earth shook in 2008. Tens of millions of sleepless leaving the workforce, burdening the health-care system, combined with the effective end of economic globalization and the contraction of markets clamoring for inexpensive goods, hexed the Chinese Miracle. The engine of their economy shuddered, lurched, and crashed to the ground, soon to be followed by the thrown-together factories of manufacturing cities like Shenzhen, as the inhabitants returned to the countryside, fleeing the plague, leaving the buildings and roads to deteriorate and begin crumbling in scant months. When the great droughts struck and wiped out the rice crops, it was an almost unnecessary grace note to the collapse.
The Yankee dollar ruled again.
The combined weight of the subprime fiasco, collapsed investment and commercial banking, credit freeze, and the GDP-sucking military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran had certainly wounded the beast, but once the United States declared de facto bankruptcy by refusing to pay its international creditors, it roared back to life.
The roads and bridges were crumbling, the waterways drying and clogging, the forests burning, the last-ditch conversion to national health was a Byzantine horror for the millions and millions forced into its clutches, power failed with great regularity, gasoline was nigh unto a luxury item, and one
Until, finally, it appeared in a slightly but significantly modified form: broken in two, pierced, in a brief corporate animation, by the chemical shape of DR33M3R.
One can imagine it, the shape of the SL prion, reflected in the eyes of the sales staff, breaking open like a pinata, dollar signs spilling out and heaping on the ground beneath it.
Those dollars were almost not scooped up. When word got out that there was a cure for SLP, an immunization, a salve that would bring the dead back to life, the labs where the drug was being perfected, the office where the packaging was being focus-grouped, the factories that were being geared for production, were all stormed.
Bloodshed was minimized. The military and police having had nearly a year of experience by then with quelling the madness of crowds. The traditional fire hoses, Tasers, tear gas, beanbag guns, and riot batons augmented with DARPA favorites such as microwave emitters, nausea-inducing lights, and focused-volume sound projectors that literally rattled metal fillings out of teeth.
The labs and offices and factories withstood the onslaught. And the story clarified. There was no cure, no panacea. Only relief. For the suffering millions upon millions, some relief.
A chance to dream. No more than that. A chemical plug to fit shorted sockets of the brain, a patch to allow the sleepless to sleep and to dream. An ease to suffering, but death just as assured at the end. With no other relief at hand, nothing short of a bullet, arms were outstretched, palms cupped. Dreams of sleep.
Dreams of Dreamer.
A chemical needle to knit the raveled sleeve of care.
Only, not enough.
Not enough Dreamer to go around. Not enough to bring rest to every mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, uncle, aunt, cousin, friend. A taste for sleep, a craving for it the world over, and only one curb for the general appetite.
So yes, the dollars rained down. A year or two earlier and it would have been raining Euro and yuan. But the initial SLP hysteria had put paid to the European Union and the might of that combined economy. Once Italy had been quarantined as the suspected ground zero of the disease, it had taken less than a month for all the countries of the union to seal their borders. Trade and travel faltered, xenophobia and nationalism flourished, and pounds, lira, francs, deutschmarks, and various other quaint relics were soon being dug out from beneath rocks in the gardens and put back into circulation. As for China, the world had seen the relative quality of the dragon's infrastructure when the earth shook in 2008. Tens of millions of sleepless leaving the workforce, burdening the health-care system, combined with the effective end of economic globalization and the contraction of markets clamoring for inexpensive goods, hexed the Chinese Miracle. The engine of their economy shuddered, lurched, and crashed to the ground, soon to be followed by the thrown-together factories of manufacturing cities like Shenzhen, as the inhabitants returned to the countryside, fleeing the plague, leaving the buildings and roads to deteriorate and begin crumbling in scant months. When the great droughts struck and wiped out the rice crops, it was an almost unnecessary grace note to the collapse.
The Yankee dollar ruled again.
The combined weight of the subprime fiasco, collapsed investment and commercial banking, credit freeze, and the GDP-sucking military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran had certainly wounded the beast, but once the United States declared de facto bankruptcy by refusing to pay its international creditors, it roared back to life.
The roads and bridges were crumbling, the waterways drying and clogging, the forests burning, the last-ditch conversion to national health was a Byzantine horror for the millions and millions forced into its clutches, power failed with great regularity, gasoline was nigh unto a luxury item, and one
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