Market Theocracy

Playtime is over and the world collapses into Naptime.

A blink.

Refreshed, Mercy allows the annoying but mandatory fact of reality to intrude.

Her room is so bland in The Real. Four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Clumps of dour grey smartmatter that serve as chairs and beds and a million imaginary toys when enlivened by the commands of the signals she outputs.

Mr. Teach, entirely imaginary, clambers from a sudden hole in the floor, grinning at her from a monkey form. Mercy knows that Mr. Teach always chooses a shape that will enhance and illustrate the lesson. Despite this boring, pragmatic  function, Mercy can’t help but grin at the compact little simian shape. He grins back as the magic hole fills itself.

"Good afternoon, Mercy." He gives a solemn little monkey bow. "did you have a pleasant morning?"

Mercy nods, but pretends annoyance. "Until you came along to spoil it." She glances at him from the corner of her eye. "Can’t we do the lesson in Connection today?"

Mr. Teach shakes his head firmly. "No, dear. Stats show that you are spending far too much time in the Flow. You aren’t getting enough exercise." He climbs up onto a clump of the smartmatter and gestures broadly. "I thought we might take a walk and see the city."

She sighs. Knowing there is little use in arguing — Mr. Teach has override rights to her sensorium, after all — she codes her unisuit to proper hiking attire. She fusses with the color scheme, as little girls are wont to do, but decides quickly enough. The sooner this is over the sooner she can return to play.

They take the lift to street level and walk pleasantly along the broad pedestrian dominated avenue. Above them air traffic hums and flashes noiselessly by.

"Now!" Mr. Teach says, taking a rather un-monkey like interest in the sights and sounds of the human city. His eyes seem happily alive to the people they pass. "Where were we?"

Another sigh, twice as petulant. "The first stage of the Com Revolution was ending." Mercy admitted, grudgingly. "The Overnet…"

"…was becoming established among humanity. The idea of society-as-communication was over and the fact of society-as-communication was becoming increasingly plain." Mr. Teach had his bearings now. "An exciting time, my dear! Dangerous as well."

"Dangerous?" Mercy asked. Despite herself she was becoming interested. Danger was always interesting.

"What was dangerous about it? People just had to adjust the way they thought about things." No matter how hard she tried, Mercy simply couldn’t grasp the idea that learning about something new could be dangerous. It seemed that sometimes she learned a million new things a minute.

Mr. Teach went on. "The old conception of society was that it controlled individuals, Mercy."

She laughed. "That’s silly!"

"Not to your ancestors. They had very little control of their own communication."

"I don’t understand." This was puzzling. "Why didn’t they?"

"Mainly because back then there were people who gained enormous power by keeping people from communicating properly."

"But.."

"By keeping people confused and misinformed and suspicious of each other. By playing on peoples fear of strangers and society itself!"

Mercy considered. "How could you be afraid of society? Society is just….people talking, and sharing, and trading, and…"

"They didn’t realize that then. They didn’t have the things you take for granted. Not even the simplest and most basic things."

"Like what?" Mercy barely realized that she had forgotten about playtime and was entirely wrapped up in her lesson. Mr Teach performed his duties well.

He considered. "Let’s pretend you were lost. What would you do?"

"I’d call Mum. Or my friend Chee."

Mr. Teach shook his head. "Pretend you couldn’t. Pretend there was a sudden outage on output. What would you do?"

Mercy rolled her eyes. "Obviously I’d center."

"Do so."

"But I’m not lost!" Mercy reminded him.

"Humor me."

She sighed. Invisible switches flashed, codes pulsed, systems engaged. Mercy’s mouth spoke the basic keycode of social engagement:

"You are here."

All systems overrode. Her sensorium lit up like a Christmas birthday. The plain walls of the world became spiraling data structures: every door and detail labelled with sighttouch info triggers.

The web of connection became illustrated. Mercy was suddenly aware that she was the center of a vast spiderweb of people, and from each person she was connected to more people. The familiar program in her head pulled public data into a spell of familiarity, and alerted the entire map of mankind that one small girl in New Chicago was unsure of where she was.

A million eyes and minds turned and asked, helpfully:

"Are you allright, hon?"

"Do you need a hand, luv?"

Mercy apologized, and explained about school. There were indulgent smiles and winks as the map faded into non-necessity.

"Your ancestors did not have that, Mercy." Mr. Teach said quietly. "they thought they were on their own, all the time.

Mercy was quiet, sobered. "How did they survive?" she finally wondered.

"They learned better." Mr. Teach said.