Free Cosmos Incorporated by Maurice G. Dantec

in this world, which seems frozen in a sort of post-technical stasis, it is as if progress has reached its limit, as if it has buckled under the socially programmed repetition of its prodromes and has become monumentally inefficient. Yes, he realizes that the only real scientific progress here is the work of mafia organizations, or corporations of killers like the one to which he belongs.
    It is incredibly pathetic, almost tragic. The sensation is one of absolute disaster and terrible beauty all at once.
    The morning after the cortical computer finishes downloading the complete catalogue of neuroprograms into his brain, a list of them appears in transparent suspension in the corner of his field of vision, only a few seconds after he awakes. He now knows, definitively, what he is: a living condensation of this black science, this science of assassins, this science of what remains of humanity.
    He does not know the cause of the instruction program’s blockages, but he has the feeling that this black science, dark as it may be, contains a point of light. He cannot explain the feeling, but if this point of light is not him, it is
in
him that it shines weakly.
             
    For twenty-four hours, the entire third day, he remains connected to the NeuroNet console in his room. He had located an intelligent agent with the help of the nanocomputer, residing somewhere in the anodyne peripheral memory of the Metanetwork. It is a neuroencrypted software agent; after a long and careful series of verification procedures, it is activated in the digital world of the NeuroNet and can appear within Plotkin’s field of vision while remaining invisible to outside eyes. It is a state-of-the-art neurodigital projection; its World is the binary virtual world of the Metanetwork, which has become the regulator of the real World as well.
    Its name is
el señor Metatron.
    In just a few seconds, it gathers for Plotkin the equivalent of an encyclopedia on Grand Junction; the Municipal Consortium; Cosmos, Inc., the managing firm of the cosmodrome; the Enterprise aeroport facilities; and the local history, geography, law, politics, and media. Who hated whom and why; who dealt with whom and why; who was fucking whom—and who was letting themselves be fucked by whom—and why.
    El señor Metatron can take an infinite number of forms. It says it was designed for Plotkin years before, by a
yakuza
firm in the Republic of California. It says that Plotkin uses it for every mission. It says he told it everything, before his cortical surgery in Siberia. Plotkin sees in it an opportunity to find out more about his past; the neurodigital agent should have the memories of his previous missions.
    But el señor Metatron, who has chosen this time to appear in the form of a pure gold flame with a dancing blue-violet base and every shade of red and orange flickering in its ephemeral body, tells him that since it is a projection of his own mind, he cannot hope for too much in that area.
    Plotkin tells himself that he cannot stay in his room any longer. He must act. He must begin to spy on this world.
    He begins to take an interest in the life of the hotel.

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CATEGORY-FOUR ENCOUNTER
    The Hotel Laika is typical of Grand Junction’s capsule hotels. These residential buildings were introduced at the beginning of the century in Japan, taking their inspiration from the modules under construction for the International Space Station. From the beginning, a mysterious affinity existed between the boxes men built for themselves on Earth and the ones they sent into space. They allowed people to reside cheaply in seminomadic tribes formed of millions of middle managers commuting within the conurbation each day. The astronomical rents in Tokyo and the rest of Japan’s megalopolises provided capsule hotels with the opportunity to expand across the entire archipelago. Later on, the introduction of nanocomposite materials, then Recyclo™ multiuse particleboard resulted in the