Technobabel

"No," Lanier spoke up before anyone else could answer. "I don't think so. A corporate war would be too destructive to risk. The first-tier corporations have resources equal to those of the national superpowers that once existed, which means they need must avoid a war no one could win. If Renraku secures this technology, there won't be anything the other corporations can do about it without risking the total destruction of the Matrix we all rely upon. They would look for other ways to subvert or steal the technology, but they wouldn't go to war to prevent Renraku from rising to the top, not while there were still other options." "The only trouble," Aneki said slowly, "is that the agents we have planted in the otaku communities we know of have been under deep cover for some time. Two are confirmed dead. Their bodies were found by our people. One is alive and in the care of a private clinic in Seattle, but shows signs of permanent brain damage. We are hoping her doctors will be able to provide some additional information. As for the final agent, there has been no word from him for several weeks, but an effort is underway to locate him. We must find him or, failing that, discover the secrets of these otaku some other way if Renraku Computer Systems is to survive."

10

At first, urban tribalism was considered nothing more than another fifteen-minute fad that would fade along with all of the other crazes that came before. But the tribals didn't go away. They proved the adaptability of human nature by finding ways to continue and to survive. They took ancient folkways and techniques and adapted them to life in the urban jungle. They found niches in the city ecology where they could live and hunt and raise their families. They cut themselves off from the rest of the world. They established their own "reservations" in the midst of the chaos of the sprawls, staked out their territory and defended it against all comers. Now there is even a second-generation of primitives, those who have known no life other than that of their tribe. Some of them are forming the basis for the future continuation of their tribes, while others, like youth everywhere, rebel against the ideals of their parents and want to learn more about the society that they have never been allowed to be part of. They are drawn back into the places and ideas that their parents rejected. Some return to their tribes shaken by what they have seen while others find new lives in the outside world and are never heard from again. -from Urban Primitives, by Dr. Niles Wolfe, Ambrosius Publications, Boston, 2049 I am amazed at how easy it is to settle into life with the tribe. I expected it to be more difficult, but I truly feel at home here. Nobody even questions my not remembering them from before; they say I'm a different person now and it's only right I should start a new life with a clean slate. Some even think that forgetting what happened to me before I underwent the Resonance means I am destined to be a truly great shaman, that I really have been reborn in all of the ways that matter, able to look on the world with new eyes. The Netwalkers welcome me into their tribe with open arms and, although I have no blood relations here, I feel like I am part of a family. There are forty-six members of the tribe living in a complex of structures in the Rox-the Roxbury Barrens of Boston. Most of the tribe is made up of people who have dropped out of ordinary society, forced by a variety of circumstances to live in the wilderness of the Rox instead of the clean and protected corporate enclaves of the city. Papa Lo is the tribe's chief. He keeps us together with his leadership and teaches the tribe's children the skills to make the Netwalkers something special among the tribes in the Rox. He shows us the ways of the Matrix, like few other people ever learn them. But now I am learning them all. Dipping into the well of knowledge and information that is the Matrix and drinking deeply, just as in my dream, taking in all of the knowledge I can for my people, our territory, and the world around us. Many of the things I have learned feel very familiar, like relearning things I've known before, exercising old reflexes. Other lessons feel entirely new to me. It's no surprise, since I'm told I knew the paths of the Matrix quite well even before I was initiated. One thing that feels the most familiar and yet the most different is the Matrix itself. I know all of the different structures and pathways of the virtual world like they were written on my soul, like I have known them my entire life, but I see them in an entirely new way now. I need nothing more than a live feed plugged into the chrome jack behind my ear to be co