DREAMBOX JUNKIES sample

chapter one

She'd gone right back to the McClinic and rescued her brain; you could do that free of charge under the statutory seven-day clause. At last her head felt hers again. No one could say she hadn't given it a chance. Some people couldn't handle Mindseye implants–that was the all-too-human fact of the matter, and she, Processia Roffey, just happened to be one of those unfortunates. It freaked her out, she couldn't cope, so back out the thing had come after barely a day. It would take a lot, a frucking lot, of getting used to at the best of times, having yourself chipped for incoming thoughtmail. And she'd complained about the shitfilters not doing their job, letting ads parade across her psyche all afternoon. One jingle in particular, the very height of whitebread powersoul retrokitsch, had taken up permanent residence, its smirky lyrics etched upon the inside of her skull. Even now, driving home up the Edgware Road and through Maida Vale, it continued to plague her:

SmarTampax for the twenty-first century gir-hirl ...

Sma-har-Ta-a-a-a-am-pax for inside infor-ma-tion ...

Of course, Mindseye was merely the first stage. Electrotelepathy was as yet in its infancy; you could only receive, like with early TV. The much-vaunted ThoughtNet remained a dream of tomorrow, along with cities on Mars, inoculations against envy, and men you could actually live with.

Her head ached like fruck. And little wonder, with a hole in it. Pain-free Mindseye removal? The analgesics were crap. Her brain, her eyes and her jaw, her back teeth, even–THROB THROB frucking THROB. She couldn't bear to wear her smartspecs, and to have to keep peering at the poky screen of her mobe was to court ocular peril. Serves me right, Sesha thought ruefully. Early adoption's a mug's game. They rush out all this fadgetry and use us as cost-cutting guinea pigs.

Needless to say, this would put her at a grave disadvantage, marketwise, in the event of her moving on from the Institute. If you couldn't wear a Mindseye–your ticket to the brave, brained-up world of the future–bosses, most bosses, soon wouldn't want to know. To quote that famous Bertrand Laurel soundbite: 'Commerce is combat.'

Not that Sesha would have been contemplating a move, ordinarily. She was happy working for Frances, quite content with the sweet deal all PsyTri employees enjoyed. And they weren't about to dismiss her on incap grounds, claiming a Mindseye as sine qua non. Frances wasn't a bloodshark. Frances Rayle valued people.

But Sesha had nevertheless felt the need for one or two career precautions. For the sake of her resume she had gone along the previous evening to the new McClinic in Bayswater, taking advantage of their special introductory limited-period low-cost implantation offer, having first okayed it with her stars.

Well, so much for frucking astrology.

It had started out as an unpleasant rumour, that Frances had been undergoing anti-age telotherapy and had begun to show signs of that dreadful, dreadful side-effect, Angel Syndrome. And now today Ajit, the London chief, had confirmed it: Frances was being treated for AS at her hideaway in Spain. It was incredible bad luck; AS was so rare. And no one, so far, had recovered from it. How could you not worry?

� Richard Raymond

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