seems to find the crazy things the crazy people leave on the Link, and feels it’s his duty to direct me towards them.
So he’s had me checking out cats the size of horses which even a rudimentary grasp of the principles of photo manipulation should have told him was faked.
I searched for the name he’d given me on Linkepedia and found that Ms Grabowitz was an actress in some new Link Opera.
Probably had a new role coming up and the ghost thing Perry seemed so interested in was just some promotional viral to get the world talking about her.
I didn’t even bother to follow Perry’s link to the photos.
interlogue
File: 224/09/12fin
Source: LinkData\LinkDiary\Live\Peter_Vincent\Personal
This is hard, this next entry.
I’m trying to get everything in the right order, to make sure that the thing I’m committing to permanent memory is indeed the event that occurred and not some altered, corrupted version of the truth.
This next bit, though, has been altered, and I’m not just talking about the way the diary crashes at a crucial part of the proceedings.
There are things missing, I feel it intuitively, but I have no way of filling in the gaps, of physically remembering the event so that I can reconstruct it from memory.
That’s the thing about the Link, you see, the thing that we never thought about or acknowledged, or even suspected: We have stopped remembering things. We trust the Link to remember them for us.
The problem is we shouldn’t have trusted the Link to remember things the way they happened. Details can be changed, and memories edited.
History itself can be rewritten. You only need to change a word here, an event there. Even things like emphasis and importance can be up- or down-graded to make history say what they want it to say. To make it read how they want it to read.
My memories are no different. I remember things because I put them on the Link. That’s what we all do.
But I can no longer be sure that what’s stored there is the truth.
-10-
File: 113/44/00fgj/Continued
Source: LinkData\LinkDiary\Peter_Vincent\Personal
At the doors of the Science Council my father gave me a tired-looking smile, told me to find a seat in the chamber, and disappeared into the crowd milling around the foyer. I stood there for a few seconds feeling abandoned, then shrugged myself out of it.
I made my way down a couple of white corridors and then through an arch that led into the Council’s main chamber.
My father once told me that the chamber was modelled after a natural cave formation that had been discovered somewhere in South America. Now, walking into it I was struck by the weirdness of its design. It had a ceiling that stretched high over the heads of the assembled people, with sculpted stalactites dangling down. Some of the ‘stalactites’ were two metres long, and made of some material that made them look as if they were natural formations, made over many thousands of years.
Except for the fact that they were hanging from the ceiling of a room in a modern building.
Still, it sort of took your breath away just being in the room and I realised that – as a percentage – very few people got the opportunity to see it for themselves.
I looked around for Perry, but couldn’t see him, so I flashed him an enquiry and he replied with an image of the inside of the chamber, then an image of his seat number: Row F, Seat 23.
I made my way towards him.
Seating was in tiered concentric semicircles, facing a central hub, and I found Perry easily.
‘Looking sharp,’ Perry greeted.
I nodded at his suit, a dark-plum-coloured Nehru affair with a cravat that changed colour every twenty-or-soseconds. It might have been a suit I’d seen him wear a couple of times before, but the chromatic cravat was something new and, I had to admit, a pretty neat touch.
‘Not looking so bad yourself,’ I told him, taking the seat next to him. ‘What have I missed?’
Perry rolled his
So he’s had me checking out cats the size of horses which even a rudimentary grasp of the principles of photo manipulation should have told him was faked.
I searched for the name he’d given me on Linkepedia and found that Ms Grabowitz was an actress in some new Link Opera.
Probably had a new role coming up and the ghost thing Perry seemed so interested in was just some promotional viral to get the world talking about her.
I didn’t even bother to follow Perry’s link to the photos.
interlogue
File: 224/09/12fin
Source: LinkData\LinkDiary\Live\Peter_Vincent\Personal
This is hard, this next entry.
I’m trying to get everything in the right order, to make sure that the thing I’m committing to permanent memory is indeed the event that occurred and not some altered, corrupted version of the truth.
This next bit, though, has been altered, and I’m not just talking about the way the diary crashes at a crucial part of the proceedings.
There are things missing, I feel it intuitively, but I have no way of filling in the gaps, of physically remembering the event so that I can reconstruct it from memory.
That’s the thing about the Link, you see, the thing that we never thought about or acknowledged, or even suspected: We have stopped remembering things. We trust the Link to remember them for us.
The problem is we shouldn’t have trusted the Link to remember things the way they happened. Details can be changed, and memories edited.
History itself can be rewritten. You only need to change a word here, an event there. Even things like emphasis and importance can be up- or down-graded to make history say what they want it to say. To make it read how they want it to read.
My memories are no different. I remember things because I put them on the Link. That’s what we all do.
But I can no longer be sure that what’s stored there is the truth.
-10-
File: 113/44/00fgj/Continued
Source: LinkData\LinkDiary\Peter_Vincent\Personal
At the doors of the Science Council my father gave me a tired-looking smile, told me to find a seat in the chamber, and disappeared into the crowd milling around the foyer. I stood there for a few seconds feeling abandoned, then shrugged myself out of it.
I made my way down a couple of white corridors and then through an arch that led into the Council’s main chamber.
My father once told me that the chamber was modelled after a natural cave formation that had been discovered somewhere in South America. Now, walking into it I was struck by the weirdness of its design. It had a ceiling that stretched high over the heads of the assembled people, with sculpted stalactites dangling down. Some of the ‘stalactites’ were two metres long, and made of some material that made them look as if they were natural formations, made over many thousands of years.
Except for the fact that they were hanging from the ceiling of a room in a modern building.
Still, it sort of took your breath away just being in the room and I realised that – as a percentage – very few people got the opportunity to see it for themselves.
I looked around for Perry, but couldn’t see him, so I flashed him an enquiry and he replied with an image of the inside of the chamber, then an image of his seat number: Row F, Seat 23.
I made my way towards him.
Seating was in tiered concentric semicircles, facing a central hub, and I found Perry easily.
‘Looking sharp,’ Perry greeted.
I nodded at his suit, a dark-plum-coloured Nehru affair with a cravat that changed colour every twenty-or-soseconds. It might have been a suit I’d seen him wear a couple of times before, but the chromatic cravat was something new and, I had to admit, a pretty neat touch.
‘Not looking so bad yourself,’ I told him, taking the seat next to him. ‘What have I missed?’
Perry rolled his
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