User:Jeremygbyrne/Bestseller fragment

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"Fuck it Daff," said Maddie, and stopped suddenly. "What exactly is this work you're doing?"

Dafedh walked on a few paces, then spun back, momentarily off-guard. "Splitting again, huh?" laughed Maddie, and laughed harder at Dafedh's wide-eyed innocence.

The older woman grinned. "Checking traffic! No, really!" she took a step back towards Maddie across the gravel. "Hold on," she said, and blanked.

"Hi to Ro," shouted Maddie, even though Dafedh had almost certainly left her audio up. "I've got a maxy facebot you should try!" she teased.

A sudden gust of warm breeze slapped her face with a thick whisk of hair, and in the middle distance another pair of the huge, magenta birds lifted from the hemp and squawked off towards the distant line of acacias.

Expression came back into the avatar like a soul returning. "Sorry, Mad," said Dafedh.

"Why?" Maddie frowned, briefly. "An-y-way," she stalled, spitting hair. "Are you really a eumetician or is that just more of Tulley's fantasy?"

"No, he's right, or close. Right now I'm contracting to a UNCPF-sponsored project in Watts, LA, constructing historicism as an intergenerational bridge."

Maddie's finder anticipated flawlessly; 'United Nations Cultural Preservation Fund', 'Black Pride Movements' and 'Community Therapy: Selling Historical Relativism' links appeared in brilliant emerald green against the deepening dusk, a hands-breadth from Dafedh's left ear. Maddie took them in at a glance and winked them away, the titles themselves context enough.

"I think the study's fundamentally flawed, sadly." Dafedh's voice dropped. "Too much Paglia and not enough Runningbear, I'm sure."

Camille Paglia she knew; the finder flashed "William Laurence Runningbear (Chippewa Distributed Polity. Tribal Voice. American Indian Movement.)" in hot sky-blue, and "Running Bear (Real-time Strategy Game; Native American Culture.)" in a softer sapphire beneath.

"Do you remember the Revelations Hoax?"

"I was four. But I've heard enough," said Maddie.

"Nineteen o'clock," said a voice. "Eleven oh-oh Mean," and teatime beckoned. Turning, back towards the sheds half-buried in the softening gloom of distance, she whispered "POV180" and Dafedh was again at her left side. Maddie stooped to snatch up a handful of red gravel, and tossed it piece by piece at the huge, swaying flowers of the crop as they walked. The bees had all but disappeared now, leaving an almost oceanic still to settle on the wide, green land.

"After that, every disaffected teenager in the country—in this country; in the USA—decided to become a freelance memetic engineer—a 'reality hacker'." She snorted, shook her head in amused recollection. "I was still in college—actually in, at a little backwater school called Reed out in Portland—studying primary teaching of all things. Suddenly, post-modernism began to look like prophecy, and The Truth was just one of a million equivalent propositions. I took a post-grad in 'Viral Propaganda'—that's what they were calling it at Reed, at least--and went back to finish a doctorate in zero nine."

Maddie ignored the pause, took the top off a three-meter stalk with a lucky throw. Dafedh was best when you didn't interrupt her too often.

"For my thesis I built a chat agent to push Jane Elliot's 'Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes' meme, and I was offered a contract by your Reconciliation Commission before the end of my last semester. I guess I've been something of a political mercenary since then, working for a dozen ethnic or humanitarian interest groups and a handful of corporates. I was even part of an abortive offensive against US nationals before the Zhuangzivirus hit; the Electronic Industries Association of Korea—or someone working for them—put together a team to pursue some kind of vengeance again the major Western corporates they believed were responsible for engineering the pan-Asian recession of the late '90s. They paid us a huge, non-refundable contract sweetener, which has kept me off the streets for the last decade, but I'm still doing spot-work, keeping up with the theory, stuff like that."

High overhead, satellites danced; looking up, Maddie counted five brilliant flecks. "KO, Daff. Gotta eat, yeah?" She imagined her words, spun into light, flashing up, around, down, to where Dafedh walked alone in her Louisiana morning.

Her friend seemed puzzled, then grinned back. "Oh— yeah. I've just grabbed a beignet and caff myself. You get to tell me what you want to do, next time. Deal?" she said. "Hug," and she was gone. A distant magpie, further than the comsats overhead it seemed, screamed a farewell, as day the hot, dry day slipped off the sides of the sky.

"Ambient trance" said Maddie to her set, and the alien clap-sticks of Morphic Resonance ticked in. She smiled at the synchronicity, her stomach growled and, as the music swelled, became urgent, she picked up her pace to a jog, heading home.