Read Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 14 for Free Online

“Nothing will help you. We are a failed narcissistic experiment, but we are narcissistic nonetheless. Nobody will agree to identity changes. Your plan is doomed.”
    “Please...”
    “Go away,” she says, and sound no longer passes through the portal.
    ~
    Preliminary polls show that support for collaboration with the bureaucrats is waning, quickly. Twenty minutes after Dasein's speech a third of the citizens support his plan, another twenty minutes later, a mere quarter.
    Bertrand and Dasein flick thought opinions broadcast to the City’s public forums.
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    Some posts make it seem as if the mere knowledge of the City's history has hastened the arrival of the memetic plague, and people who were normally jovial and optimistic now find themselves in slumps of depression and hopelessness.
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    Even citizens usually in favor of challenging the status quo appear to be against the Injection, doubting the execution, and the actual worth of the idea.
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    In their shared HQ-space, staring at the green-on-blue poll pie-charts and the dwindling percentages, Bertrand brings up Mathilde's narcissism argument to Dasein.
    The bear shakes his head, sentencing the charts and numbers and opinion posts to the data-graveyards with a motion of the hand. “Give our citizens time,” he says. “They'll come around, just give them time.”
    ~
    Three hours before the voting. Children laughing, playing in the orchard on a freshly mowed lawn in the last light of day. Bertrand wonders which parts of the original creator’s neural structure he now shares with them.
    Sitting in her wicker chair, Renate frowns. “Nobody wants change.”
    The bear's fur looks fiery in the golden sunset. “But things are changing whether our citizens want them to or not. Soon, very soon , it'll get worse for everybody.”
    Renate massages her brow. “I know, I know, but try to convince the masses, Dasein. You can't.”
    “Which is why I need your help. The Mathematics Kingdom would be able to turn the tide if you go public with your thoughts. People respect your opinions, and not just because you’re a Superuser. They like you. You might sway someone.”
    She sighs. “This is a delicate matter. Just because they respect me doesn’t mean they’ll listen.”
    The sun sets, taking the bear's flaming aura with it.
    Just as Renate materializes a bowl of sliced apples to offer her guests, a thought arrives from Mathilde to Bertrand. He experiences it, then stares wide-eyed at Dasein and the mathematician. “Gotta go.”
    Out of there and into no man's land, before her portal. It's open this time, but he can't cross it, try as he might an invisible force blocks him. In her garden of light, Mathilde stands very still, looking at the ground, her eyestalks hanging limp like vines.
    “Don't do this,” he says. “Please, don't.”
    He tries his Superuser powers to break through the blockage. Her space remains impenetrable. “You're just sick. Wait it out. Reason out of it. Please.”
    No reaction.
    He sends: <>
    She smiles at the thought. “Don’t you get it, you poor bastard? They couldn’t care less about us.”
    “You don’t believe that,” he says, on the verge of tears. “It’s the disease talking.”
    Only her mouth moves. “Thousands of citizens, poison to