Free Band of Gypsys by Gwyneth Jones

Chip, soulfully sotto voce . ‘As they step down from the train…” His friends advised him to shut up.
    “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean anything… Will we step down from the train?’
    ‘Nope,’ said Sage. ‘Too complicated.’
    ‘Time is a helix of semi-precious stages,’ sighed Kevin Verlaine. ‘We’re not even going to be there, but we still keep going back. It’s like Groundhog Day .’
    ‘I wish someone would tell me what we have to do to escape,’ muttered Dora, the middle Babe. ‘Does anyone get the feeling we should have stayed in California?’
    ‘Something would’ve stopped us. We can’t break out of this attractor.’
    Smelly Hugh frowned, working hard. ‘It oughter be July, shouldn’ it?’ It had been a wet and muddy July, in the last year of the United Kingdom’s existence, when the festival that ignited a revolution had gathered by that riverside, and a handful of young Indie hopefuls had stumbled into the maw of history.
    ‘Ah, the slip from July back to May, that’s the tachyon shift, Hugh.’
    ‘You have to watch out for those.’
    ‘It’s an instance of rock-sidereal precession.’
    Hugh joined the Adjuvants’ laughter, pleased that he’d said something funny. He’d been trying for clever , but you could never tell. Funny was good, anyway.
    ‘Of course this is ass-backwards,’ said Rob. ‘Physically we should be in Reading, where the work is, bi-locating back here to have fun. Isn’t that the idea?’
    ‘Hey, I have fun on stage, mister,’ Felice protested. ‘What are you saying ?’
    ‘Figure of speech, I was thinking of grunt work.’
    ‘In principle,’ agreed Ax. ‘When we have b-loc factories, b-loc farm labour. Right now, it’s our flesh they want: and they are not going to get. We are not their indentured labour.’
    Greg Mursal’s financial lawyers had admitted that the charges on the Few’s professional earnings, imposed by the Green Nazi regime, were illegal (Ax and Sage were not so lucky): but nothing further had happened yet. No payouts.
    The Few glanced at each other. Much as they’d like to see their money, they didn’t like the way Ax seemed set on confronting the Second Chamber.
    ‘It’s the way to go with novel tech,’ Ax added, responding to the atmosphere. ‘I might have done this stunt anyway. We make b-loc famous, we won’t need the government to pitch in. Private sector support for industrial applications will follow.’
    The techies grinned at each other, appreciating Ax Preston’s famous bloody-mindedness. They were happy because they were putting on a huge, weird, never-tried-before spectacle with Sage again. The boss had been away too fucking long.
    ‘Except who needs mass b-loc,’ mused Fiorinda, ‘when labour camps are so much more organic. I’m with F’lice. I hate modern drugs.’
    ‘B-loc’s not a drug , Fee,’ corrected Sage, his attention on the the 10 28 closure figures for the superposition. ‘Wash your mouth. Absolutely nothen’ scary, unnatural or invasive goin’ on here.’ Bi-location was a Zen Self spin-off. In the experimental stages it’d needed nasty spinal injections, and heavy neurosteroids. The set-up they were using today was third generation, and Scottish, which was galling, but too bad—
    ‘Don’t listen to him. He loves his altered states,’ crowed Marlon. ‘He lies about it, ’cos he’s an addict, and he can’t help it.’
    This pallid, sarcastic youth, barely recognisable as the teenage form of a sweet little boy called Marlon Williams, wanted to quit school and continue his education (if his estranged parents insisted) in London. He didn’t seem to realise that needling his dad was not the way forward: Sage was amazingly patient with him.
    The caterers arrived. The Few gazed at the giant screen: an oddly Californian feeling, as if the Austerity-living Triumvirate had suddenly decided they needed a private cinema. A buzz like headphone-leak emitted from Smelly Hugh, hair of gold and lips