“But now we are too polite to mention all that! Where are your great deeds, you stifled Stalwarts, you erratic Expressives? Why, we are bringing them to you! The Cirque Fantabulous is proud to present . . . a spectacle in the midst of life . . .

“Unraveling: A Revolution!”

The voice fell silent and the glowtubes lit again, flooding the world with bright light tinged in violet.

With a lurch, Foo started to turn again.

Interlude

Personal Memory Pop Quiz

“Background of Current Events”

brought to you by the automated agents of the Slow-as-Molasses/​​​​​​​​​​​​​Bountiful-Blank Neighborhood Schooling Interdependency

No research agents allowed! Good luck!

1. The worldwide information interdependency we know as “the feed” crystallized out of a variety of other cybernetic systems during the Age of Roads and Doors.

   Discuss the various parts of “the feed,” such as “the visual feed,” “the send,” and “the world-of-ideas.”

2. What can you not find on the feed?
3. Is your apartment feed-opaque? Feed-transparent? Feed-translucent? How about your bedroom? Are you sure? Name three “privacy areas” in Foo that are outside someone’s personal apartments and rate their effectiveness.

4. What is the effect of “general mutual total surveillance” on behavior? In ancient times, there was an entire dramatic literature centered on logically determining “who” had taken certain gruesome actions (such as killing another person’s sole body while unobserved).

   What would you do, if you could “get away with it”?

5. “Critical infrastructure systems” require deep levels of consensus to override. The feed is a “critical infrastructure system.” So are the glowtubes. So are nutrient flow, airflow, and intersomatic communication. Give three examples from history of someone circumventing consensus with an “exploit” to subvert “critical infrastructure systems.”
6. Which would you prefer: an insurrection masquerading as an artwork, or an artwork masquerading as an insurrection?
7. Are you somewhere safe? Do you need anything? Should someone come and get you? What is “safety”?

Thanks for taking the quiz!! The next in-person class session meets Greenday morning, location to be announced.

Chapter 7

7

They tried three elevators that would take them back to Foo, and there were jostling crowds in front of all of them. Only one elevator, the first, even seemed to be working. Its operator—grim-faced, an adjudicator standing at zir elbow—was letting people board almost indiscriminately; still, people were joining the back of the throng far faster than they were departing. There was no getting through that press of bodies. At the second elevator, the operator had vanished. The third elevator was blocked by an even bigger crowd, and there was shouting at the front, but they couldn’t see what it was, because by then there was something wrong with the feed.