Read Plasma Frequency Magazine: Issue 14 for Free Online Page A

the rest of the races. They can’t kill us, but they can’t let us keep living the same way and remain a hothouse for memetic abominations either. Freeing us, if possible, would be a huge risk. So what do they do? What would you do in their place, Bertrand?”
    “They will help us…Please…”
    “No, Bertrand. They will lie to us. Tell us we can be fixed, we can be reconnected with everyone else. But we won’t be. We’ll be kept happy, oblivious and quarantined. Just like before.”
    Tears roll down his cheeks. “Don’t say that. That’s not true.”
    “It’s funny how the only one who somehow managed to escape this madhouse is now inadvertently helping make sure such a thing never happens again.” She shakes her head slightly, closes all her eyes. “Goodbye,” she says, standing frozen, all marble-like, as if preserved in the amber light of her garden, and Bertrand knows that she's gone forever.
    ~
    “Stop glowering, kiddo, we won.”
    Bertrand's lying on a stack of hay in his hut, hands behind his head. “You came to tell me that? Good, now leave me alone.”
    Dasein scratches his polar fur, not suitable for the nightmarish heat in Bertrand's private-space.
    “I'm sorry for your friend,” says the bear, approaching. “I really am. But things are only going to get better now.”
    “Whoop-de-doo.” He straightens up, leaning on his elbows. “Leave me alone.”
    A bear paw weighing down on Bertrand's shoulder. “Quit blaming yourself. It's not your fault.”
    Bertrand brushes him off.
    Dasein clears his throat. “I came here because I need something,” he says. “You remember the bureaucrats' demands, right? I need your SU powers, Bertrand. I already gave up mine.”
    Bertrand leans back in the hay, turns away from the bear. Mathilde’s last words go through his mind for the hundredth time. Could she be onto something? Her position seems reasonable enough, despite coming from such a fragile and emotional place. Perhaps he should investigate further, raise the question with the other Superusers, look into the evidence, and remove the shackles, at last freeing himself and the citizens—
    “Of course.” Reaching into the City's config to modify his permissions file, relinquishing his powers.
    Then again, he thinks, he’s probably catching the disease himself, mistaking delusional plague-induced blabbering for reason.
    “Thank you,” says Dasein.
    He heads toward the straw door. Just before stepping out he turns and says, “She helped us win, kiddo. People got scared they might be next and went out to vote in droves. She didn't die in vain.”
    ~
    The planks creak under his weight as he walks down the pier with a fishing rod over his shoulder, a bucket of worms in his hand. Morning sun beating down on the azure sea. Seagulls in the distance, somewhere behind the coconut groves.
    Bertrand sits at the edge of the pier, the water's surface tickling his feet. He takes a worm from the bucket, attaches it to the hook. He reels in the fishing line, then flicks the rod over his shoulder toward the endless blue. Ripples in the gilded surface break the symmetry with the sapphire sky.
    Grains of white sand twinkle on the beaches. The sea flattens, a still mirror.
    The sun swings like a pendulum from one end of the heavens to the other, throwing Bertrand’s shadow across the old pier. He barely moves a muscle the entire day. He catches no fish.
    He sits in the evening's pink pastel until the sun's gone, the sky darkens, and the first stars flicker to life like candles.
    He tilts his head back toward the night, his feet out of the cold water, and imagines the grand network of Cities up above. He smiles at the million worlds orbiting a million stars, all within reach, all a mere thought away.
    Everyone else, a mere thought away.
    He gets up, fishing rod over his shoulder, the bucket of worms in his hand, and heads to his hammock to get a good night's sleep under a dome of stars blinking like eyes.
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