Madre de Dios
This may sound strange, but I think a city is stalking me. Of course I’d heard of Curitiba before this week, but lately it’s coming up in conversation almost daily. Sarah and Daniel told me they’re getting married there, which is odd. I guess it’s because his father lives there, is a city man, and he’s paying for it. The next day at school my advisor was talking about a volunteer project to redevelop poor urban areas. I asked where the project was. Of course: it’s in a Curitiba slum. Then, it turns out Paulo is going there next month for some coffee trading business.
(Note: Paulo and I have been seeing each other for a few weeks now. He’s smart, and kind. I think my earlier assumptions about his business and his motivations were wrong. He says his relationships with the Centrados Brazilians will work to our advantage, instead of the other way around like it always does. I have my doubts, but he seems confident. I want to trust him. I guess we’ll see where things go. I do like him.)
It’s silly, but I wonder if it’s connected to this dream I keep having. In the dream, I am in a city—Curitiba, maybe? It is a muggy night, and I’m stepping down into an open air market on a cobbled street. The streetlamps are old-fashioned, and in the haze all the hawkers and tourists and the commotion is monochrome, cast in amber. I’m pushing through the throng, trying to get somewhere. I’m not sure where at first, but I spot a flapping bird outlined atop a streetsign ahead and I realize that I need to get to that bird. I make my way to the streetlamp just as the bird takes off down an alley. I run after it, into the dark wet. It smells like a city. The alley opens into a plaza, and at the other end of the plaza is a brightly-lit office complex. Behind the complex a hill is covered with pines. The bottom of the hill is tree-textured, stark white in the glare of arc lamps, and the top of the hill disappears in the clouds. My bird is nowhere to be seen.
I don’t know what the bird is all about.
When I was growing up, I would visit my half-sister in Lima. The last I saw her was five years ago, when dad died. She refused to come all the way out to Noche Triste, but agreed to meet in Cuzco. I told her we’re not Luddites, Mia. You won’t be off the grid. I think the reference was lost on her. Anyway, so the last time I was in a city at all was then, in Cuzco, when she visited. And the last time I was in a real city was many years before that.
I think Curitiba is calling to me. I have to admit I’m intimidated. And a little annoyed. These mountains are home and my little town is comfortable and I am happy. What use do I have for a netling city?
Zeitgeist
It took 20 years for the world noosphere to be committed to an etherdeep repository. Once the transfer was started, it was considered bad form to stop it, even as technology raced ahead and the cost of ether prying dropped so much that even a few of the world’s wealthiest individuals were said to have personal teleportation devices. Farcasters, as they were being called—apparently a nod to a late 20th century science fiction author.
The second download took 41.98 seconds.
The initial policy was to commit a complete diff every week, of every netlined mind and its property, but it quickly became clear that the cost of comparing two versions of the human mind outweighed the cost of just dumping a new copy every week. There were too many organic variations to learn, and hundreds of millions of new minds coming online every week, and only so many AIs to do the work.
The exact time of the weekly commit was never published, and you weren’t supposed to feel anything when the cursor reached you. But I have, from time to time. I can tell. Sometimes I lose my train of thought. Sometimes I feel, for no reason, suddenly elated, or frightened, or cold. Sometimes I find myself thinking about a place I’ve never been, or people I don’t know: a green and stone temple at sunset, a smiling girl in a yellow flightsuit, a delicate painting of a dragon in red and black hanging on a white wall.
They’re not my memories.