Repo Virtual by Corey White (read a book .txt) 📗

“Just over three hundred at last count,” Soo-hyun said. “We have a lot of kids from North Korea, orphaned by the work camps. It was either go into the camp as well, or flee south.”

The commune glowed a warm orange with the light of candles and fires. JD stepped over cables that split from solar batteries, but the strobing blue-white of artificial light was rare. The most prevalent sign of electricity came in the form of disparate soundtracks playing over the scene of communal living—K-pop, experimental jazz, and classical music reached JD’s ears in small snatches like a radio flicked rapidly between stations.

“Kali will be giving one of her lectures,” Soo-hyun said, “but she wants to see you as soon as she’s done.”

“Who is this woman?”

“She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met before. She’s smart, grounded, wise …” There was a pause. “She’s beautiful.”

JD shot them a knowing glance and Soo-hyun winced.

“You’ll see what I mean.”

They walked beneath dim, solar-powered lamps leading to the grounds of a repurposed school, abandoned during the flood. Drying clothes hung like limp flags from the windows of classrooms converted into living spaces. People milled in a small courtyard, bathed in the light of cookfires—would-be-homeless, crustpunks, anarchists, and the working poor who couldn’t afford to rent in the city proper. The school’s staff car park had been torn up, vegetables and herbs planted in the wound, while a stricken orchard of fruit trees bloomed on the small football field to the south.

“Come on,” Soo-hyun said.

Bright light spilled from one of the school’s large central buildings, and crowds gathered outside each window, craning to see inside. Soo-hyun gently shoved their way through the throng, dragging JD by the hand. He uttered apologies as he went, occasionally feeling the cold metal nose of the dog drone nudging him forward.

They arrived at a doorway opening onto a long auditorium, filled with hundreds of people, some seated, others cross-legged on the floor, even more standing at the back of the hall. If it was a real theater, and not a converted school space, JD and Soo-hyun would have been standing at the backstage door, watching Kali on a small raised platform, radiant under stage lights. She had too-white skin, and dark, wavy hair that rested on one shoulder. She wore a flowing gray dress, layers of sheer fabric that suggested a naked form swimming somewhere within. Streaming drones flitted through the air ahead of her, catching every angle, every smile she offered the crowd, every word she uttered.

“—take what they will not give us. They do not care about you, or me. We sit outside their system of capital and control. They have no use for us, and even if they did, we are too enlightened to return to their paddocks.”

Her words carried clean over the audience, amplified by speakers embedded in the ceiling and messily wired to a small black audio desk at the rear of the hall, smothering the sounds of commune life outside. Her accent was American–West Coast, JD thought. There was something reassuringly Hollywood about her, a parallel to all the voices that had raised him, emanating from the flat slab on the wall of his childhood bedroom.

“They wish us to be sheep, or cattle, something docile they can harvest for resources. But we are not sheep. We are not cows. We are not even human; we are more than that.”

Kali reached a hand into a pocket in her shifting dress and retrieved a switchblade. The blade extended with a schick, picked up and amplified by the microphones hovering before her.

She dropped her head and stared at the knife. Her audience watched her in silence, the soft buzz of quadcopter rotors the only sound in the entire room. They watched her press her left index finger against the knife’s point until it drew blood. A drop of blood rolled down the blade and fell, splashing onto the top of her bare foot with a quiet splat.

“We are not even human,” she said again. “This blood is not precious.” She flicked her hand out dismissively, but if any blood trailed off her finger, JD couldn’t see it. “This blood is not what makes me special.

“A human is an animal that learned how to subjugate animals, including itself. We are better than that. We are souls begging for release, souls begging to meld in kinship and love with one another. The people out there,” she said, pointing her knife toward the door, toward JD and Soo-hyun, “they hate us because we know we are more than this blood, this meat. They want us to work in their warehouses and factories, and they want us to be meat, but we will not lower ourselves. We are not animals to work for them, we are their equals. And I will make them see that.

“You all trust me, don’t you?”

There was nodding, affirmative murmuring, and even a few cheers from the audience.

“You trust me because I have built our community from nothing, with nothing. I did that to demonstrate that my movement is not about money. I hate money, I despise it. It has twisted a beautiful and creative species and turned us into a ravenous, all-consuming virus.”

More enthusiastic nodding from pockets of the crowd. Kali returned her knife to her pocket, and stuck the tip of her finger into her mouth briefly, sealing the cut with saliva.

“After the Sixth Great Extinction,” she said, “all that will be left are pests, rodents, tardigrades, and trash. Unless, unless we embrace our extinction first. I’m not talking about suicide, I’m talking about removing ourselves before it is too late. We do not need this planet, this blood. We have our immortal souls to carry us forward into eternity.

“You would not believe how close we are to becoming a world of intelligent machines, of true, strong AI. Thinking machines are not something to fear, but rather to embrace, like children. I dream of a world where there is no hunger,