• Complain

David Edelman - Infoquake

Here you can read online David Edelman - Infoquake full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. genre: Science fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

David Edelman Infoquake

Infoquake: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Infoquake" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

How far should you go to make a profit? Infoquake, the debut novel by David Louis Edelman, takes speculative fiction into alien territory: the corporate boardroom of the far future. Its a stunning trip through the trenches of a technological war fought with product demos, press releases, and sales pitches. Natch is a master of bio/logics, the programming of the human body. Hes clawed and scraped his way to the top of the bio/logics market using little more than his wits. Now his sudden notoriety has brought him to the attention of Margaret Surina, the owner of a mysterious new technology called MultiReal. Only by enlisting Natchs devious mind can Margaret keep MultiReal out of the hands of High Executive Len Borda and his ruthless armies. To fend off the intricate net of enemies closing in around him, Natch and his apprentices must accomplish the impossible. They must understand this strange new technology, run through the product development cycle, and prepare MultiReal for release to the public-all in three days. Meanwhile, hanging over everything is the specter of the infoquake, a lethal burst of energy thats disrupting the bio/logic networks and threatening to send the world crashing back into the Dark Ages. With Infoquake, David Louis Edelman has created a fully detailed world thats both as imaginative as Dune and as real as todays Wall Street Journal.

David Edelman: author's other books


Who wrote Infoquake? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Infoquake — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Infoquake" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

DAVID LOUIS EDELMAN

INFOQUAKE

1. NUMBER ONE ON PRIMO'S

1

Natch was impatient.

He strode around the room with hands clasped behind his back and head bowed forward, like a crazed robot stuck on infinite loop. Around and around, back and forth, from the couch to the door to the window, and then back again.

Behind him, the window was tuned to some frantic cityscape that Jara didn't recognize. Buildings huddled together at crooked angles like the teeth of old men, as tube trains probed the cavities. Singapore, maybe? Sao Paulo? Definitely a terran city, Jara decided. Every few minutes, Natch would look in that direction and inhale deeply, as if trying to draw energy from the thousands of manic pedestrians ensconced within the four corners of the window canvas.

Natch stopped suddenly and wheeled on his apprentice. "Why are you just sitting there?" he cried, punctuating the question with a snap of his fingers.

Jara gestured to the empty spot next to her on the couch. "I'm waiting for Horvil to show up so we can get this over with."

"Where is Horvil?" said Natch. "I told him to be here an hour ago. No, an hour and a half ago. Can't that lazy bastard learn to keep a calendar?" Around and around, back and forth.

Jara regarded her employer in silence. She supposed that Natch would be devilishly handsome to anyone who didn't know he was completely insane. That casually athletic physique, the boyish face that would never know gray, those eyes predictably blue as sapphires: people like Natch just didn't exist on this side of the camera lens. Nor did they spout phrases like trouncing the competition and creating a new paradigm without a trace of irony or self-consciousness.

Natch shook his head. "I can only hope he remembers we've got a product launch tomorrow."

"I don't know why you're so uptight," said Jara. "We do twenty or thirty product launches every year."

"No," hissed Natch. "Not like this one."

Jara let it go. As usual, she had no idea what Natch was talking about. NiteFocus 48 was a routine upgrade that fixed a number of minor coding inconsistencies but introduced no new features. The program had an established track record in the marketplace, built on the well-known optical expertise of the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp. Unless Natch expected them to rework the rules of bio/logic programming overnight-and she wouldn't put that past him-the NiteFocus product launch would be a pretty routine affair.

"Listen," said Jara. "Why don't you let Horvil sleep for another hour? He was up all night tinkering on this thing. He probably just got to bed. Don't forget that out here, it's seven o'clock in the morning." Here was London: a sane place, a city of right angles. The city where both Horvil and Jara lived, and some six thousand kilometers away.

"I don't fucking care," Natch snorted. "I haven't gotten any sleep tonight, and I didn't get any yesterday either."

"Might I remind you that I was up all night working on NiteFocus too."

"I still don't care. Go wake him up."

For the third time that week, Jara considered quitting. He always had this condescension, this mania-no, lust-for perfection. How difficult would it be to find a job at another fiefcorp? She had fifteen years in this business, almost three times as much experience as Natch. Certainly PulCorp or Billy Sterno or even Lucas Sentinel would take her on board. Or, dare she think it, the Patel Brothers? But then she considered the three agonizing years she had spent as Natch's apprentice, and the scant eleven months to go before her contract expired. Eleven months to go until I can cash out! I should be able to keep it together that long.

So Jara didn't quit. Instead, she gave her fiefcorp master one last bitter look and cut her multi connection. True to form, Natch had already turned his back on her, probably heading into his office to do more fine-tuning on NiteFocus. You need to watch yourself Jara thought. Natch's brand of insanity just might be contagious.

She slid into nothingness.

* * *

The hollow sensation of a mind devoid of sensory input. Those blessed two and a half seconds of free time after one multi connection ends, but before the next begins. Emptiness, blankness.

Multivoid.

Then consciousness.

Jara was back in London, but not at Horvil's place, as she had expected. Horvil must have refused her multi request, so the system had automatically stopped the feed of sensory information flowing through her neural cortex. She stood now on the red square tile that was her apartment's gateway to the multi network, staring at the walls she had never had time to decorate.

Jara's apartment insulted her with its desolation: a featureless space, a human storage chamber. She resisted the urge to blow off Natch's little summit and go shopping on the Data Sea for wall hangings. Eleven months, eleven months, eleven months, Jara told herself. And then I can cash out and start my own business and it won't matter. In the meantime, I'd better wake up Horvil.

If Horvil wasn't answering her multi requests, he was either asleep or ignoring her. The engineer was not known for being an early riser. In Horvil's parlance, early meant any time before noon, and to a global professional who hopped continents with barely a thought, noon was a slippery concept. Jara gritted her teeth and called up ConfidentialWhisper 66, the program de rigeur for remote conversation. If Horvil wouldn't see her, maybe he would at least talk to her.

The engineer accepted the connection-solid evidence he was, at least, awake.

Jara waited impatiently for an acknowledgement, a response, something. "Well?" she complained. "Are you coming over to Natch's apartment or what?"

Jara heard a number of fake stretching and groaning noises from Horvil's end of the connection. ConfidentialWhisper was strictly a mental communication program, not an oral one. "I could pretend I'm still asleep," said the engineer.

"If I have to be at this idiotic meeting, Horv, then you're not getting out of it."

"Tell me again why he wants to hold a meeting this early in the morning."

"Come on, you know how it works. Apprentice in a fiefcorp, work on the master's time."

"But what's this all about?"

Jara sighed. "I have no idea. Probably another one of his stupid schemes to take over the world. Whatever he's up to, it can't be good."

"Of course it can't be good," said Horvil. "This is Natch we're talking about. I ever tell you about the time in school when Natch tried to form a corporation? Can't you just picture him trying to explain laissez-faire capitalism to a bunch of nine-year-old hive kids-"

"Horvil, I'm waiting."

The engineer sounded unconcerned. "I'm tired. Call Merri. Call Vigal."

"They're not invited."

"Why not? They're part of this company too, aren't they?"

The question had occurred to Jara as well. "Maybe Natch trusts us more than he trusts them."

Horvil chuckled and made a sound like he was spitting out pillow lint. "Right, sure. Maybe he knows we're too cowardly to stand up to him." And before Jara had a chance to respond, the engineer cut the 'Whisper connection, leaving her alone with her empty walls.

How dare he call me a coward! she fumed silently. I'm not afraid of Natch. I'm just practical, that's all. I know I only have to put up with him for eleven more months. She called up her apprenticeship contract for the thousandth time and reread the clause on compensation, hoping as always to catch a glimpse of some previously unknown loophole. But the letters floating before her eyes hadn't changed: Jara would receive nothing except room and board until the end of the four-year term, at which time her shares matured. She blinked hard, and the illusory text on the surface of her retinas vanished.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Infoquake»

Look at similar books to Infoquake. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Infoquake»

Discussion, reviews of the book Infoquake and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.