Adrift in the Noösphere. Damien Broderick
of fashion. I stepped down from the tram onto the traffic island, surveyed the citizens wandering along the street, young and old and in between, and despite myself burst out laughing anyway. It was like some kind of cosplay epidemic had overtaken downtown, maybe the whole continent. For a moment the attire had baffled me. It was baggy in the wrong places and tight everywhere else. Looked horribly uncomfortable, but that seems to be the rule with fashion in a lot of decades.
“Bobby, this is crazy!” Moira was laughing in my inner ear. “They’re all wearing their pants over their heads!”
It wasn’t just those on the tram. Most of the men in 2073 Melbourne central district, I realized with another snort of amusement, were wearing business suit trousers or blue jeans on top, arms through the rolled-up legs, sparkly shaven heads shoved through the open flies. A few women with their hair up in luxurious folds wore the same, although many preferred skirts, hanging down over their arms like something a nun would have worn back when I was a kid, in the days before nuns dressed like social workers.
“And check out the leggings,” I muttered under my breath.
Everyone had their legs through the knitted arms of merrily patterned sweaters, cinched at the waist by the inverted trouser belts. Something modestly blocked the neck holes. I saw after a moment that baseball caps were sewn into the necks, brims forward for the men, up or down depending on age, and backward for women, like tails. I could tell by the sniggers and glances that passers-by all despised my own absurd and out-of-date garb.
“Wow, fashion statement,” Moira said.
“You think this is silly, check your wiki for eighteenth century toffs. Those stupid wigs. Those silk stockings. Gak.” A woman gave me a sharp glance. Man in ridiculous clothes talking to himself in broad daylight, cell phones a thing of the past. “Hey, I’d better shut up and get it done.”
I crossed to the Library at Little Lonsdale Street, settling my pack more comfortably. It was heavy on my shoulders. Item by item, we’ve worked out the optimal contents for the pack: obvious things, like food for several days, a sealed course of Cipro plus a box of heavy duty acetaminophen, two rolls of toilet paper (you’d be amazed and depressed how often that turns out to be a life saver), a code-locked wallet of cards and coins from several eras, although hardly ever the ones you need right now, but still, a googlefone that doesn’t work beyond 2019 because they keep “upgrading” the “service” and then it stops, a Swiss Army knife of course, a set of lockpicks, a comb, a false beard and a cut-throat razor (useful for shaving and cutting throats, if it ever comes to that), and a holographic wiki I picked up in 2099 containing yottabytes of data on everything anyone will ever have learned about anything but with an index I still haven’t mastered. One of these days. And that wiki might not even exist if I botched this job.
I paused on the Library steps, under the bold banners proudly announcing next week’s unprecedented exhibition of the original Second Mars Expedition logs. No need to look again at a map of the floor plans, we’d got all those from water-stained future records and I’d memorized everything that seemed relevant. I rummaged, found my bottle of aluminum thermite powder and an upregulated ceramic cigarette lighter, put them carefully in separate pockets. The Optix woven into my hair was recording everything in its field of view, date-stamped for later archiving. If I got out of this alive and in one piece. At least Moira would have it backed up.
§
I left the backpack at the counter, where it was stored for me in a locked cabinet, but nobody patted me down to find the pocketed neuronic whip and my other handy tools or insisted that I pass through a scanner. That had been several decades earlier, when people were more angstish about everything. Still, I was sweating slightly. They’d removed most of the paper books from the library, except for displays of volumes set up as objets d’art, and the great circular reading room with its groaning wheeled chairs and hooded green lamps was full of chatter. People leaned across long tables toward each other, disputing like students in a yeshiva, displays flickering with information and gossip. Immersive learning, they’d called it back here in the 2070s—not a bad way of finding your way around the dataverse, and a damned sight more sensible than the droning memorization I’d had to put up with as a kid.
I found a librarian eventually and asked to speak to the Director of Collections. She looked at me with extreme distrust but put a call through and finally sent me across to an audience with Dr. Paulo Vermeer, who regarded me with similar sentiment. I tried not to stare at the Bessel function graphs dancing on his naked skull.
“Doctor, thank you for seeing me. I’m hoping that I might have the privilege of viewing the Second Mars Expedition logs in the vaults here, before they go on public display next week.”
“And you are?”
“Professor Albert M. Chop,” I told him, “Areologist,” and presented a very sincere Fijian passport card with my holographic likeness rising from its embossed surface, a University of the South Pacific faculty ID, and a driver’s license dated 2068. He gave them a perfunctory glance.
“You’re young for such a post.”
“It’s a new discipline, of course.” I wanted to tell him that I was older than he, just the lucky beneficiary of longevity plasmids from the end of the century. Instead, I watched as he regarded me with bland mockery.
“Whatever is that costume, Mr. Chop, and why are you wearing it in these hallowed halls?”
“It’s my habit,” I said, and tried to look humble but scholarly. Moira was sniggering again in my ear; I tried to ignore her and keep a straight face.
“Your what?”
“My religious garb, sir. Those of my faith, of a suitably elevated rank, are enjoined by the sacred—”
“What faith is that?” Perhaps it occurred to him that I might be affronted at an implied slur on my beliefs, and could bring him and the library up on charges. “Naturally we honor all forms of worship, but I have to admit that until now—”
“I am a Chronosophist,” I said, and reached into my pocket. “Here, I have a fascinating display unit that will bring you enlightenment, Dr. Vermeer. Why, if you will set aside just one hour of your time—”
He gave a civilized, barely visible shudder. “No need for that, my good fellow. Very well, come along with me. But don’t think—” and he sent me an arch look—“you can make a habit of it.” I raised one eyebrow, something I’d trained myself to do as a kid when I was a big fan of Commander Spock. That was before real starflight, of course. As Vermeer slid out from behind his desk on a prosthesis, I saw that he’d lost both his legs, presumably in the Venezuelan conflict. Nothing I could do about that, alas. But I had larger fish to fry than a simple limited if brutal armed drone conflict. I followed him to a lift and we rose one floor. He let me into a humidity-controlled sealed room, and directed a functionary to open a vault. The Mars documents remained inside their triple-layer packaging. Even so, the Director drew on a pair of long transparent gloves, fitting them snugly under the turn-ups of his trousers, and wrapped his nose and eyes in a white surgical mask. He handed me a medical kit. “Put these on. We can’t risk damaging precious heirlooms with our breath and bodily aerosols.”
I was already fitted out with antiviral plugs deep inside my nostrils, but I put on mask and gloves and watched in terror as he slid open the containers and placed them carefully on the table. I reached cautiously for the documents, and the Director blocked my hand.
“Strictly hands-off, Professor! Look but do not touch.”
The functionary, a bored fellow some inches shorter and stouter than I, waited with his eyes out of focus, probably watching some Flix drivel. I took the neuronic whip out of my pocket and buzzed the Director to sleep. His head fell forward and hit the table. The functionary gave his boss an astonished look, but by that time I was beside him and cold-cocked him with the whip’s butt. I kicked out of my KT-26 joggers, dragged off his clothes, struggled into them over my own, got my feet stuck in the arms of his numbered Demons football team sweater-trousers. I shoved, had them in place, tugged the shoes back on—I needed something