A CLOUDY FUTURE.

• Author: Rivenbark, Robert
• Position: FRONTIER HORIZONS

"From a bank of Hong Kong At servers, a female voice with the reassuring cadences of the North Am Midwest delivered propaganda and holographic imagery to all Class II through IV professionals 24/7."

AS THE 7 AM. BULLET rounded a curve in the elevated track, Blaise glimpsed the Santa Monica coastline, where a 200-meter dike barely held back the Pacific. Everything he had worked for was here. He was the best virtual reality programmer at Mythoplex. He had a brilliant future ahead of him but, despite these reassurances, the urge to see his city drowned lingered at the edge of his mind like the laughter of a lunatic god.

The bullet jetted over a sleek, hatchet-shaped bridge. He glimpsed the abandoned 1-405 freeway, long given up to tumbleweed, then a blur of blonde foothills where the towering Mythoplex logo, which had long since replaced the Hollywood sign, glittered against a pristine sky. Then came Mulholland Drive's ridges and North Hollywood's terraced canyons, crammed with live/work/play pods offering upscale condos at staggering prices. He'd never want one of those bloated monuments to vanity. Even if Cherry and his daughter Mei had survived, Blaise aspired to the simple life of a workaholic VR storyteller. Surely his grief over their deaths would dissipate with time.

His mind drifted back to the possibility of a flood. Although the Cloud Monitor never mentioned it, he knew from covert server searches that the Pacific sea wall, which stretched from Tijuana to Vancouver, had failed at its extremities. The Baja peninsula, much of Mexico and southern Arizona, British Columbia, and Alaska had long since vanished beneath the insistence of engulfing tides that made the antediluvian age a distant rumor, but he was not supposed to remember that. So, he raised the volume of his neurofeed to distract himself.

Neurofeed played relentlessly in his head like a schizophrenic monologue. You could try to ignore it; you could lower the volume or even switch it off for short periods, but it was life's inescapable soundtrack and sightscape, and the Cloud Monitor considered any lapse of attention outside working hours unpatriotic and punishable by death. From a bank of Hong Kong Al servers, a female voice with the reassuring cadences of the North Am Midwest delivered propaganda and holographic imagery to all Class II through IV professionals 24/7. "Cloud life is full life, Cloud life is full light," was her signature sign-on for exuberant reports about the everrising standard of living, the latest victories against the Caliphate, and sultry intros to titillating VR series. Blaise ground his teeth at the Monitor's saccharine cadences. He had written her monologues before his promotion to Class EI games planner, and he knew she was bleating pure fiction, but he...