Read WWW: Wake for Free Online Page B

on, it’ll grab the signals my retina is putting out and transmit them to this little external computer pack I’m supposed to carry around, like, forever; I called it my eyePod, and at least that made Dr. Kuroda laugh. Anyway, the eyePod will reprocess the signals, correcting the errors in encoding, and then beam the corrected version to the implant, which will pass the information back to the optic nerve so it can continue on into that mysterious realm called—cue scary music—The Brain of Calculass!

    Speaking of brains, I’m really enjoying the book I mentioned before: The Origin of Consciousness Yadda Yadda. And from it comes our Word of the Day(tm): Commissurotomy. No, that’s not the wise but ancient leader of the Jellicle tribe from Cats (still my fave musical!). Rather, it’s what they call it when they sever the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain—which, of course, are the two chambers of Jaynes’s bicameral mind...

    Anyway, tomorrow we’ll find out if my own operation worked. Please post some encouraging comments here, folks—give me something to read while I wait for the moment of truth...

    [And seekrit message to BG4: check your email, babe!]

    * * * *

    China’s Paramount Leader and President replaced the ornate, gold-trimmed telephone handset into the cradle on his vast cherry-wood desk. He looked down the long length of his office, at the intricately carved wooden wall panels, beautiful tapestries, and glass display cases. A stick of sweet incense was burning on the sideboard.

    The room was absolutely quiet. Finally, sure now of his decision, he shifted in his red-leather chair and touched the intercom button.

    “Yes, Your Excellency?” said a female voice at once.

    “Bring me the Changcheng Strategy document.”

    There was a moment’s hesitation, then: “Right away.”

    “And have Minister Zhang briefed on the Shanxi situation, then have him come see me.”

    “Yes, Your Excellency.”

    The president got up from his chair and moved to the large side window, its red velvet curtains tied back with gold sashes. The window behind his desk looked out on the Forbidden City, but this one looked over the Southern Sea, one of two small artificial lakes surrounded by immaculately groomed parkland on the grounds of the Zhongnanhai complex. Looking in this direction, one could almost forget that this was downtown Beijing, and that Tiananmen Square was just south of here.

    He cast his mind back to 1989. The government had tried its best then to maintain social order, but rabble rousers outside China had made a difficult situation much worse by inundating the country with faxes of wildly inaccurate news reports, including New York Times articles and transcripts of CNN
    broadcasts.

    The Party recognized that there might someday be a similar circumstance during which protecting its citizens from an onslaught of outsider propaganda would be necessary, and so the Changcheng Strategy had been devised. Going far beyond the Golden Shield Project, which had been in effect for years, Changcheng had never yet been fully implemented, but surely it was called for now. He would address the nation in appropriate terms about the crisis in Shanxi, and he would not allow his words to be immediately gainsaid by outsiders. He could not risk the citizenry responding violently or in a panic.

    The door to his office opened. He turned and saw his secretary—beautiful, young, perfect—walking the long distance toward him holding a thick sheaf of papers bound in black covers. “Here you are, sir. And Minister Zhang is on the phone now with Dr. Quan Li. He will be here shortly.”

    She placed the document on the desk and withdrew. He looked once more at the placid water, then walked back to his desk and sat down. The cover of the document was marked in stark white characters “Eyes Only,” “Restricted,” and
    “If You Are Not Sure You Are