Schismatrix Plus

by Bruce Sterling

“That’s where the aliens will come from,” the Rep informed him.

The others went quickly, with a click, a rustle, and the whisper of calloused skin against stone.

But the issues are still with us, friends. Community and anarchy. Politics pulls things together; technology blows them apart.

“I have a wife.” “Monogamy? How quaint.” She smiled sympathetically.

The world was kept intact by the fantastic predilection of the human mind for boredom.

“Roads,” Lindsay said. He explained about low-friction surfaces for ground travel in gravity.

Below them, the sea absorbed the shock, as it did all things.

His walls were striped to provide a vertical referent, and he had enough space to affect such luxuries as “couches,” “tables,” “chairs,” and other forms of gravity-oriented furniture.

There’s an old saying, Hans, that you should never enter a discreet with someone crazier than you are. And it’s good advice.