glass. When he could breathe again, he said, “Pardon?”
“Take me to bed.”
He flashed back to a month ago, the two of them in a fort they’d made with the kids, and the kiss they’d shared. He’d realized at that moment that something had shifted in both of them. They had reawakened to the possibilities of a shared life. But the weeks since hadn’t afforded them time to explore those feelings.
“Nat . . .” He stared at her, wanting very much to take her up on the offer. It wasn’t just solace or desire, it was a longing for Natalie personally. She was as strong and sexy a woman as he’d ever known, and though they had made love a thousand times, it had been years, and the notion of that combination of experience and novelty rode his system like a drug hit.
But this was the mother of his children, not someone to trifle with. Not casual comfort. Besides, there was Shannon. They’d only been together a handful of times, but they’d also saved each other’s lives, brought down a president, and fought side by side to stop a war. Their relationship hadn’t been conventional, and there’d been no time to discuss whether they were exclusive, or even where they were going, but still—
“Nick, stop.” She set down her glass and leaned in, hand on chin, other arm crossed at the elbow, her eyes bright and deep, hair falling tousled down one shoulder, smelling of red wine and cold air. “I’m not suggesting we get remarried. But you’re about to go off on your own again, chasing the most dangerous man in the world, and I hate it, but I get it, and I know you’re doing it for us. So before you do . . .” She stared at him for a moment that stretched electric.
Then she rose and gave a husky laugh.
“Before you do, come to the bedroom and fuck me.”
DO YOU KNOW WHO YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE?
The DAR does. They’ve got a list of every abnorm in these Disunited States. Ask for it, though, and they say things like, “disclosing said information is not in the interests of public safety,” because it could “jeopardize the well-being, both commercially and personally, of American citizens.”
Igor, bring out the Debullshitization Device. Yes, good, my freaky little friend. Punch it in, let’s see the translation.
What? Are you sure, you rancid cripple?
Huh. Igor says that translates to, “We care more about not panty-twisting the twists than about the lives of your children.”
Luckily, there are still a few heroes-not-zeros in our drugs-not-hugs world, and more than one of them are members of our little hacker community.
And so, hot from the DAR systems, lifted like a goth girl’s skirt on free razor blade night, is a list of 1,073,904 abnorms—and their addresses. You’re welcome.
You better be grateful, bitches, because this looks to be the swan song. The Governot is already huffing and puffing to blow our house down. Payback’s on you—make a little chaos for kOS, will you?
So take it. No seriously, take it. Download it, share it, spread it around like corporate PAC money.
Here’s the whole list .
Here it is by state .
By city .
By zip code , you lazy twat.
This act of civil disobedience brought to you by the merry pranksters and puckish rogues of Konstant kOS. All rights raped.
CHAPTER 10
The room was the size of a large planetarium, only instead of stars, holographic data floated in the air, charts and graphs and video and three-dimensional topographies and scrolling news tickers, a dizzying array of information glowing against subterranean darkness. To the average person—to Cooper—it made little sense. There was just too much of it, too many unrelated notions overlaid against each other.
But to Erik Epstein, who absorbed data the way others took in a feedcast, it held all the secrets of the world. The abnorm had made his billions by finding patterns in the stock market, eventually forcing the global financial markets to shut down and reinvent themselves.
“Yesterday,”
“Take me to bed.”
He flashed back to a month ago, the two of them in a fort they’d made with the kids, and the kiss they’d shared. He’d realized at that moment that something had shifted in both of them. They had reawakened to the possibilities of a shared life. But the weeks since hadn’t afforded them time to explore those feelings.
“Nat . . .” He stared at her, wanting very much to take her up on the offer. It wasn’t just solace or desire, it was a longing for Natalie personally. She was as strong and sexy a woman as he’d ever known, and though they had made love a thousand times, it had been years, and the notion of that combination of experience and novelty rode his system like a drug hit.
But this was the mother of his children, not someone to trifle with. Not casual comfort. Besides, there was Shannon. They’d only been together a handful of times, but they’d also saved each other’s lives, brought down a president, and fought side by side to stop a war. Their relationship hadn’t been conventional, and there’d been no time to discuss whether they were exclusive, or even where they were going, but still—
“Nick, stop.” She set down her glass and leaned in, hand on chin, other arm crossed at the elbow, her eyes bright and deep, hair falling tousled down one shoulder, smelling of red wine and cold air. “I’m not suggesting we get remarried. But you’re about to go off on your own again, chasing the most dangerous man in the world, and I hate it, but I get it, and I know you’re doing it for us. So before you do . . .” She stared at him for a moment that stretched electric.
Then she rose and gave a husky laugh.
“Before you do, come to the bedroom and fuck me.”
DO YOU KNOW WHO YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE?
The DAR does. They’ve got a list of every abnorm in these Disunited States. Ask for it, though, and they say things like, “disclosing said information is not in the interests of public safety,” because it could “jeopardize the well-being, both commercially and personally, of American citizens.”
Igor, bring out the Debullshitization Device. Yes, good, my freaky little friend. Punch it in, let’s see the translation.
What? Are you sure, you rancid cripple?
Huh. Igor says that translates to, “We care more about not panty-twisting the twists than about the lives of your children.”
Luckily, there are still a few heroes-not-zeros in our drugs-not-hugs world, and more than one of them are members of our little hacker community.
And so, hot from the DAR systems, lifted like a goth girl’s skirt on free razor blade night, is a list of 1,073,904 abnorms—and their addresses. You’re welcome.
You better be grateful, bitches, because this looks to be the swan song. The Governot is already huffing and puffing to blow our house down. Payback’s on you—make a little chaos for kOS, will you?
So take it. No seriously, take it. Download it, share it, spread it around like corporate PAC money.
Here’s the whole list .
Here it is by state .
By city .
By zip code , you lazy twat.
This act of civil disobedience brought to you by the merry pranksters and puckish rogues of Konstant kOS. All rights raped.
CHAPTER 10
The room was the size of a large planetarium, only instead of stars, holographic data floated in the air, charts and graphs and video and three-dimensional topographies and scrolling news tickers, a dizzying array of information glowing against subterranean darkness. To the average person—to Cooper—it made little sense. There was just too much of it, too many unrelated notions overlaid against each other.
But to Erik Epstein, who absorbed data the way others took in a feedcast, it held all the secrets of the world. The abnorm had made his billions by finding patterns in the stock market, eventually forcing the global financial markets to shut down and reinvent themselves.
“Yesterday,”
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