Noviko was done. As soon as she got back to her hab, she locked the bulkhead manually from the inside and put in her formal relocation request. She downed a palmful of anti-anxiety pills, an unreasonable amount of St. John’s wort, and a whole fun-sized bottle of tequila reposado she had flash-poured from the agri-carrier’s distillation pipes. She plugged into her hab’s wetware configuration node and set every single personal social setting she could find to PRIVATE. She sent her husband and son a message stating she would be arriving in Okinawa soon, that she was retiring, and that they would be cashing in her clout to live a life of comfort and obscurity.

No longer did she see DMs unless she went specifically looking for them. No longer was SynCon scrolling across her mind. A tech would be by that very evening to shut down her psychopunk wetware interface. It was time for her to give it all up. It was time to ‘go baseliner’ as people called it; to minimize implants and cybernetics as much as reasonably possible. Many baseliners interacted with the world using nothing but external tools, such as tablets, the timeless convenience of a pocket computer, or even goggles with interface gloves.

Her letter of resignation simply read:

Wenyue, and Whomever Else It May Concern:

Effective immediately, I quit the Union of Psychopunks. Do not respond to this.

I am done.

Goodbye,

Noviko Tanaka-LaCroix

By four o’clock in the afternoon, she was three shots of tequila into the good life and soaking in her closet sauna’s tub. In that nice, giant bucket of hot water, lavender bubbles, and soothing spa music, she unwound enough to weep.

Her catharsis was interrupted by a buzz at the hab’s bulkhead. Her UI identified the visitor as the technician she’d called hours earlier. He was a smart-looking young man with a large tablet under his armpit and a GYOTA ballcap on.

“Give me five minutes please,” she said into the intercom in her sauna closet.

“No worries,” replied the young man, who leaned against the wall and poked at his tablet. Noviko steadied her nerves, took a slug from the glass of wine near her bath, and got out to wipe off suds, bundle up her hair, throw on a fleece robe, and slip into her slippers. She walked to the mud room and unsealed the door after verifying the young man’s identity remotely.

“Hi, I’m Ken,” he had the warmest, handsomest smile. Noviko offered him her hand with a small, drunken smile of her own. He ignored it and simply bowed.

“Thank you for coming so promptly,” she said to Ken. “I apologize for the mess.”

Ken looked around at the tidy hab as he slipped covers onto his boots. “Doesn’t look like a mess to me, Mrs. Tanaka-LaCroix.”

“I mean me,” she said.

“Oh. Um… you look fine?”

There was an awkward pause. Noviko cleared her throat and went to sit down on the couch. “I’d be comfortable here,” she said, “if that works for you?”

“Couch is fine, sure.” He sat down next to her and booted up some software on his tablet. “So, I understand you’re downgrading today. GYOTA is sorry to hear that but understands that all cyberware is opt-in by nature. How long have you had your current cyberware suite?”

“My mother exercised her parental imperative and installed it when I was born. She was insistent that I be a psychopunk and have an early start on acclimating to the equipment.”

“So, you grew with your system? That’s valuable.”

“I am good at what I do,” she fiddled with her hands in her lap. “What I used to do.”

“You understand that downgrading from a fully-acclimated system that’s been growing with you since you were born is… people just don’t do that. You’d be throwing away something you might never get back.”

“I don’t know how connected you are to the goings-on of Syndicate lately,” she said, “but my circumstances lately have been nothing short of extenuating.”

“I don’t really keep up on things, no. More of a work hard, go home and play with my friends kind of guy.”

She eyed his tablet as he pulled a cable from the top. “Are you a baseliner?” She asked.

“Almost. I have some communications implants just to make my life easier.”

“And you aren’t worried about having all of…” she gestured in a circular fashion toward existence itself. “… all of this connected to your brain?”

“I run a neural firewall, same as everyone else. Same as you.”

“It’s not intrusion I’m concerned about,” she poured herself another shot. “It’s coercion.”

“Um…”

“You want one?”

“No thanks, I don’t drink.”

He was almost perfect.

Noviko pounded the shot and puffed a sigh. “Let’s just get this done.”

“Need you to give me a series of biometric signatures before I can touch your systems.”

Noviko glanced at the tablet as the young man swiped a contract onto screen. But before that, she saw an open inbox. The subject line of one message in particular read: THE UNERRING WISDOM OF IMMORTAL SAGE LANDEI SAWEIQI – NEWSLETTER 5012

“What in the world was that…?” Noviko pointed at the screen.

“Huh?”

“What is ‘the unerring wisdom of Landei Saweiqi’? I have to know.”

“Oh!” The young man’s awkward restraint turned to a broad, sincere smile. “He was one of the great bodhisattvas of the 20th century! There’s even old passive video footage of him from as far back as the 1990’s. Sometimes, when I’ve had a really rough day, I visit the Taoist shrine on the sanctuary deck and commune with his spirit. He always makes me feel like I can get through anything, you know?”

Noviko felt a spreading empathy for this sweet young man. She smiled for his smile and felt in tune with his joy. She pursued that feeling, for once again, her mother’s voice echoed in her mind:

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It is better to borrow joy than give away misery.

Fat, fresh tears rolled down Noviko’s cheeks. The young man’s face returned to awkwardness. Noviko wiped her face on her sleeve and laughed despite herself. “I think maybe I should sober up before I go turning my whole life even more upside-down than it already is.”

“That’s… well I wasn’t going to say anything, you’re a grown woman. But yeah. Probably better to talk these kinds of decisions over with your family and friends. Maybe see your spiritual advisor or therapist or whatever.”

“Yes,” she placed a hand on his arm and smiled through her tears. “Thank you. I hope my son grows up to be as kind and earnest as you are.”

He wilted under her touch. “Please don’t touch me,” his voice was tight, pained. “I really don’t like being touched by people.”

She pulled her hand back. “Sorry.”

He rose and bowed. “Good night. Good luck with, um… whatever.”

“Good night.”

And then he left, and she sank into the couch, heaved a few humiliated sobs, closed her eyes, and passed out within around one minute and thirty seconds. She did not have dreams.

The moment she woke up, she had a sense of purpose. She brushed her hair and put on her robes, affixed her bronze torc to her neck, and applied a modest layer of foundation to her face with her foundation gun. Her digital house spirit cooked her eggy rice with seaweed flakes and sesame for breakfast, and she was sure to give its screen a thank-you smooch before departing her hab to seek the wisdom she needed to endure.

She stepped onto the elevator at the end of the hab hall. It rose one level and opened. Dozens of ZON sailors in uniform stepped on. Among them was Neon Vox, wearing her usual civvies. She nodded to Noviko but said nothing. Noviko graced her with a smile. Vox kept her eyes ahead and gave Noviko space. Noviko appreciated this respect of boundaries.

Vox had a new left arm. It was a matte-black GYOTA ferro limb, the kind that used titanium bones, silk sinews, and magnetized ferrofluid for hydraulic power to simulate musculature. The joint where it met her shoulder was still puffy and raw, but it seemed to be accimlating to her body exceedingly well for how recently the surgery must have been.

The next floor dinged and sailors stepped out, more stepped on. Noviko spoke to Vox just as the latter was about to exit. “Walk with me?”

Vox looked over her shoulder at Noviko and seemed to consider it. “I’m expected somewhere. You need something?”

“A quick question, then.”

“Shoot.”

“Where were you born?”

Vox laughed gently. “When it was still a place… America.”

“What was that like?”

Vox had a faraway look in her old green eyes. “Beautiful. Our culture argued and fought so much, we forgot how much we loved each other – forgot how good we had it. It was a lot like Syndicate, in fact. Optimism, openness, secularity, a spirit of forgiveness and fair play… half of ZON’s founding corporations can trace their lineage back to America.”

“Do you miss it? The old ancient times?”

“Of course. But this is the future we all fought for. It’d be silly to bitch about it now, right? Could be worse.” Vox looked up as the elevator dinged.

“Is this your floor?”

“Yeah. See you around?”

“See you around.”

Vox thanked a sailor that’d held the door for her and ducked through.

The sanctuary deck was next. This deck relied on strings of soft, warm lights hanging between temple fronts and wooden carvings. There were standing stones wrapped in thick moss, Zen gardens guarded by monks with wooden rakes, gongs the size of tractor tires, pagan priestesses in blue woad half-masks lining up their chickens for the day’s readings, and even greasepainted Moto Tribe shamans far, far away from their Bleaklands home to share the wisdom of the Holy Diesel V12 with any converts among Syndicate’s population (these shamans were kindly asked to keep their guitar-shredding call to prayer at a respectable decibel-level and were unfortunately not allowed to utilize the sacrament of the flamethrower in enclosed spaces like the sanctuary deck).

Noviko sought out the Taoist shrine. It was a simple recession into the wall with a series of booths. There were readers next to each booth that scanned biometrics and accepted donations of liq. Noviko held her palm over the reader and made a modest donation. As she entered the booth, there was a pillow on the floor for kneeling. She knelt down. Before her were a series of holographic projectors inlaid into the wall.

The temple keeper’s voice spoke to her implants: “Hi?”

“Hi,” she replied.

“What do you want?”

“I come seeking communion with the great bodhisattvas of the past.”

“You’re wordy. Make a specific request.”

“Before I do, may I ask about the communion records of others open to the public?”

“Who?”

“Neon Vox.”

“Ha. Her favorites are…”

The holo-projectors displayed the three-dimensional image of a greying man with bushy eyebrows and a gentle smile. He wore a red sweater.

“August and Generous Bodhisattva Mike Rogers.”

Then it showed an image of a joyful fellow with curly, messy hair and a big brown beard.

“Bodhisattva Jim Henson, Heavenly Craftsman and Guardian of the Arts.”

Then there was a square-faced, fat fellow with a scraggly beard, and a rascal’s smile.

“Bodhisattva Jack Black, Caller of Heavenly Thunder and Keeper of the Secret Song.”

Lastly, an image of a poorly-rendered, polygonal dog with floppy ears sitting on a cloud.

“The Dog of Wisdom, Immortal Sage Within Heaven.”

Noviko had never heard of any of these figures or names, but the mere sight of them evoked a profound sense of peace and gentleness within her heart. These were kind men and a silly dog avatar dispensing proverbs. They were not at all what she associated with the hard edges of Neon Vox.

“Do you follow the Tao?” The keeper asked.

“I try.”

“Then you fail.”

“I was raised to lift praise to the Soldered Sun and pray for the great encapsulation of the stars so that all humanity may one day live free from ignorance and hardship.”

“You follow the striving doctrine of GYOTA. It is an engineer’s philosophy. It is fine.”

“It’s just what I grew up with. I’m not sure I believe it anymore.”

“You came here for something specific. What is it?”

“I seek the wisdom of Landei Saweiqi.”

“I will summon him for you, aspiring macho maniac.”

“… aspiring what?”

It was too late. The holo-projectors hummed back to life and conjured the image of a man with a jaw like the edge of a toolbox. He wore mirrored aviators, a bright pink cowboy hat, had a beard so coarse and scraggly it looked more like a warthog’s than a man’s, and was built as broad and hulking as a silverback gorilla. He sat before her in lotus posture, with a hand on his thigh, hunched over and staring.

“Dig it,” he said, in a voice that was so absurdly intense it rammed straight through parody and horse-shoed right back into absolute sincerity. “You’re at the top of the mountain, little lady. Ask me now your questions three, yeah?”

The sheer ridiculousness of the man delighted her. She couldn’t help but laugh a little and he laughed right along with her, as good-natured as could be. “Um… what is my obligation to this world? Do I belong here? And, would it be alright if I just… quit?”

“Obligation? Lemme tell you something right now – nature don’t do obligations. Does a turtle have an obligation to the snake? Does the deer have an obligation to the tiger? No ma’am! Nature’s got a whole lotta different things all pulling and pushing, but not one of them doesn’t belong, dig it? That includes you and me and John Q. Public. And I’m gonna tell you something else right now – nobody likes a quitter! People like the cream of the crop, but people like stinky cheese too. The question you gotta ask is this: do you care if people like you? If the answer’s yes then, ohhhh yeah, you better climb that mountain little lady and if the answer’s no, that’s fine too, you just nest on up and rest on up and chop that wood and carry that water, you dig it?”

“I think… I think I do dig it.”

“Destiny waits for no man or woman or everything in-between, little lady, you gotta knooow when it’s ringing. Now tell old Landei Saweiqi what you want!”

“I want… I want to see the world from the top of the mountain.”

“That’s what I’m talking about! That’s what’s in your heart then you get on out there and soar with the eagles, slither with the snakes, and swim with the squids!”

Her smile died. “… why squids?”

Immortal Sage Landei Saweiqi responded in flashing colors with a big smile:

“Because your mind has the secret. Because you are the hope of peace.”

TRANSLATION ERROR

“Come to the depths. Save us. Save us. Save us.”

The SOS flashes went on several more times before the image of the immortal sage flickered, then shorted out. The holo-projector sparked and caught fire. Noviko coughed from the sudden rush of smoke in the tiny booth. She ran out of the temple into the deck’s main floor. She did circular breathing, sharpened her senses, and adjusted her posture to test the subtleties of reality. Everything felt real, which in this situation, was more disturbing than the possibility of continued hallucinations.

Fire drones rushed into the temple to extinguish the flames and repair the projector.

Out of curiosity, she peeled open her overloaded inbox with its 400,345 unread messages. She checked the most recent one and saw it was lines of gibberish in an unregistered font. She then checked her call history and saw she’d been targeted by a call from a registration number that was at least a dozen digits too long to be anyone’s.

Someone, or something connected to Syndicate’s MetaNet, was trying to reach her mind.