Cthonia 1

The first seconds of the new year were born in perfect silence. At least, that’s how it seemed to Primo Foglet.  His bedside nano-clock made no noise whatsoever as it casually, suddenly, soundlessly, announced the arrival.  His neighbours, every one of them hooked almost permanently into their virtual reality machines, didn’t seem to notice a thing. 

Primo recalled his mother’s stories of New Years Eve parties – thousands of revellers filling the streets, laughing, dancing, singing. It sounded so chaotic, he had thought at the time.  But here, in Sydney Australia at 12.01 am on the first of January 2045, there were no fireworks over the harbour; there was no singing; there were no streamers or drunken congo lines in the street.  Just – silence.

Still, Primo could not sleep. Sleep had been a major problem, in fact, for two weeks and 3 days now - ever since the moment he had seen her.

Even when compared with other Transits, Primo was seriously high-tech.  He had the usual nanotech brain data storage enhancements, together with parabolic hearing, solar protected skin and some synthetic internal organs.  But his most advanced enhancement by far was the prototype in vivo fiber-optic communications spinal cord known as the SC5. It had cost the Ministry of Transhumanity the equivalent of 60 years of Primo’s salary to install and was, although still being tested, already considered one of the greatest technological achievements in history.  While every Transit was, of course, linked directly into the world wide web (now called the Noosphere or just "the Noos") via wireless three dimensional computer chips implanted at birth into the base of the skull, only a select few could boast the ability to process and distribute the information they received throughout their body at the speed of light.  

 In fact, on the rare occasions when he came across another Transit similarly equipped, Primo could participate in a form of telepathy, independently of the Noosphere, known as “techlepathy”. 

Primo got up slowly and looked out his one-hundred-and-thirty-third floor window.  To the east, the Pacific Ocean stretched out as a vast blanket, dark and foreboding under the waning moon.  To the west, in the near distance, shining and proud, was the Ministry that had been his life and virtually his home for the past 9 years.  In the absence of sleep, and in the absence of a woman to hold him, Primo observed wryly, there was only work.  He showered, dressed, closed his eyes, navigated mentally to the airtaxi website and double-blinked on “immediate departure required”.