Rapture of the Nerds

execution ground.

And it all feels good to Huw.

As the parade progresses, curious locals emerge from their homes and workplaces as if drawn by some ultrawideband alert, rounded up and herded out to form a malignant rent-a-mob that demonstrates to Huw how important and central to reality he is. They pelt him with rotting fruit and wet cigar stubs with live coals on one end that singe him before bouncing free to the impermeable pavement, affirming his sense of holy closeness with the intensity of their focus on him. Once, they stop so that the doc can roar a speech at the crowd—

“—heretic—vengeance—drugs—sex—wantonness—”

Huw doesn’t pay much attention to the speech. Through his feet he fancies he can feel the scritterscratch of the Hypercolony, gnawing patiently at the yards of stone and polymer between him and the blighted soil. It’s a bad feeling, as if Glory City is a snow globe that has been lifted into the air on the backs of a heptillion ants who are carrying it away, making it sway back and forth. The curlicue towers and the gnarled and crippled crowd rock in hinky rhythm.

The faces on the balconies swim when he looks up. Some of them have horns on their foreheads. He turns away and tries to stare at a fixed point, using the ballerina’s trick of keeping his gaze still to make the world stop its whirling, but his gorge is rising, and his stomach is threatening to empty down his front.

This is not good.

He sits down hard, his armored ass klonking on the pavement, and Sam lumbers toward him. Huw holds out his hand, wanting to be helped to his feet, back to the godhead and the good trip. Just as Sam’s fingertips graze his, a woman wearing a voluminous black gown dashes out of the crowd and grabs him under the armpits, looping a harness around his chest. Where it touches his back, it gloms on hard, hyperglue nanites welding it to the suit’s surface.

“Hold on,” Bonnie breathes in his ear, and he feels like weeping, because he knows he isn’t to be redeemed after all, but tediously rescued and rehabilitated and set free.

“Bitch harlot!” says Doc. “Sodomite! Stop her!” Sam grabs for her past Huw’s shoulder, sideswipes the rounded swell of her bosom—extensively, chastely covered, this being Glory City—and jerks his hand back as though he’d been burned.

The harness around Huw’s chest tightens with rib-bruising force, dragging him backwards. He skitters for a moment before the harness lofts them both into the air, up toward the balconies ringing the curlicue towers. Bonnie, tied off to him by a harness of her own, squints nervously down at the crowd receding below them.

Huw bangs chest-first into the side of one of the towers, Bonnie’s weight knocking the breath out of him. They dangle together, twirling in the breeze like a giant booger as strong hands hoist them bodily up and over a balcony. One last, titanic heave hauls them inside, adding insult to injury in the form of a painful wedgie. Bonnie scrambles over him, unlocks her harness, and shakes out her voluminous petticoats. Huw is still dazed from the flight and gasping for breath. He’s bent over double, trying to breathe perfumed air thick with musky incense.

“You all right?”

Huw forces himself to straighten up and look around. The room is a tribute to excess: the wallpaper is printed with gold and red and black tessellations—obscene diagrams, he realizes, interpenetrating and writhing before his eyes—and the sofa is flocked with crushed purple velvet. The coffee table supports a variety of phallic implements in an assortment of improbable colors, suited to an altogether different kind of inquisition than the one that he’d been headed for.

As for the furniture, it’s inhabited by several persons of indeterminate gender, wearing outfits ranging from scanty to inappropriate for a place of worship—underwear is in fashion, but not much else is.

Bonnie’s face swims into focus before him, her blue fringe brushing his forehead: that and her hands are the only parts of her body he can see. “It’s the gnostic sexual underground,” she says. “There’s always one to be had, if you know how to look. Nobody takes it up the tradesman’s like a man with that old-time religion. No one needs it more, either. These lucky folks just figured out how to square the circle, thanks to the Bishop.”

She gives him a hard shake. “Come on,” she says. “I hit you with enough serotonin reuptake blockers to depress a hyena.” He feels a hard tug at his throat, and she holds up a small blowdart for him to examine. “I know you’re out of the god-box.”

Huw opens his mouth to say something, and finds himself sobbing. “You took away my god-self,” he says, snotting down his three-day beard and horking back briny mouthfuls of tears and mucus.

Bonnie produces a hankie from up one sleeve of her church-modest gown and wipes his face. “Sha,” she says, stroking his hair. “Sha. Huw, I need you here and now, okay? We’re in a lot of trouble, and I can’t get us out on my lonesome. The god feeling was just head-in-a-jar stuff. You weren’t being God, you were just feeling the feeling of being God. You hate that—it’s how they feel in the cloud, once they’ve uploaded.”

Huw snuffles miserably. “Yeah,” he says.

“Yeah. Baby, I’m sorry, I know it hurts, but it’s how you want to live. If I know one person who’s equipped to cope with the distinction between sensation and simulation, it’s you. Jesus, Huw, other than these maniacs, you’re the only person I know who thinks there is a distinction.”

Huw struggles to his feet and teeters in his ridiculous trousers. Bonnie giggles.

“What are you wearing?” she asks.

Huw manages to crack a fractional smile. “They’re all the rage in the American Outback,” he says. “What’s that you’re wearing?”

“A disguise. Doubles as a biohazard shield.” She swivels her hips, setting kilograms of underskirts swishing. “We’re both a bit overdressed for the occasion; let’s skin off and I’ll introduce you to the Bishop. Go on, you get started.”

Huw begins the laborious unlatching process and gradually shucks the pants. The teapot clatters free, drawing a raised eyebrow from one of the sexually ambiguous catamites twined around a sofa arm. The vibration kicks some erratic connection back into life: Ade’s image glows softly through the deep pile carpet.

The little avatar wrinkles its nose. “Bugger me sideways,” says Ade. “Place looks like an Italian whorehouse, only less charming and hygienic.” He turns and looks Huw up and down. “You look a little more like your usual cheerless self, though, mate. Should I assume that you’ve joined us again in the land of the cognitively unimpaired?”

Huw nods miserably. “I’m back,” he says. “No thanks to you. Those two assholes know you—they do business with you!”

Adrian’s avatar has the good grace to look faintly embarrassed. Bonnie leans past Huw with a creak of whalebone and picks up the teapot. “Did I hear that right?” she asks. “You been selling stuff again?”

“Uh.” Ade looks unrepentant. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What kind of stuff?” Bonnie says, her eyes narrowing.

“Um ... stuff. Mostly harmless.”

“What kind of mostly harmless stuff are we talking about here?” Huw asks, mustering up a faint echo of interest. The blissed-out resistance cadre on the sofa are showing signs of interest too.

“Oh, the usual, sunshine. Telescope lenses, tinfoil hats—okay, Faraday cage helmets—formicide spritzes, tactical nuclear weapons, Bibles, contraceptive implants, tinned spam, that kind of thing.”

“And in return they’re paying you in—,” Huw begins; then Bonnie interrupts him.

“—No, wait. What else are you smuggling, you dogfucker? Don’t try to hide it from me. Those neverglade- living lowlifes were so eager to hand Huw over to the Fallen Congregations that they had to be trying to cover something up. Like, oh, whatever the fuck you were doing with them. What was it, Ade? Resurrection on the installment plan? Banned downloads? Are we going to get that fucking mad crow descending on us?”

“Oh, I say!” someone says behind them, but Bonnie is so worked up, she doesn’t notice. Huw glances over his shoulder and sees one of the miscellaneous perverts standing nearby, a hand clasped over his/her mouth. The perv is fish-belly pale and wears nothing but very complicated underwear. “Did you say—?”

“Just a few small downloads, lass,” Ade says. “Nothing to get worked up about, keep your hair on.”

“Downloads. Shit.” Bonnie breathes deeply. She’s looking pale. “Pusbuckets, that’s all I need,” she says. She puts the teapot down. “Right, we’ll have to take this up later, Huw. Right now we’ve got