Psykogeddon Read Free Page B

cried the Queen. "Faster! Faster!" And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy. The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, "You may rest a little, now."
    Alice looked round her in great surprise. "Why, I do believe we've been under this tree the whole time!everything's just as it was!"
    " Of course it is," said the Queen. "What would you have it?"
    " Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing."
    " A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to go somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"
    " I'd rather not try, please!" said Alice. "I'm quite content to stay here - only I am so hot and thirsty!"
    " I know what you'd like!" the Queen said good-naturedly, taking a little box out of her pocket. "Have a biscuit?"
    - Lewis Carroll
    Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There

Act 1: The Setup
     
    ONE
     
    " Weaklings, fools, and knaves: dullards, fat profiteers, and starving dole-men; the chatterers, the rushers to and fro, the self-doubters and the self-satisfied; with snivelling piety and supercilious unbelief; with empty heads and full bellies; with ossified Tories and rattle-brained Socialists; with limping pettiness and ugliness too mean to hide itself..."
    - Eric Linklater
    Magnus Merriman
     
    "Hey, I'm Danni Consart, and this is Mega-City News! Blip-to-zip when the hand hits the fifteen! First up, for those of you who even care, the Instant Death Alerts.
    "Ultraviolet filter-shields have completely failed over Sectors Three, Eleven and Nineteen. Optimax fatal exposure, two point five seconds - so remember those sunscreens guys!
    "The Law. Justice Department Control tells us that the current officially designated no-go Crime Zones are sectors Four through Seven, Nineteen and Thirty to Thirty-four inclusive - that's you guys, you sorry drokkers, out there by the City Wall! Betcha wouldn't be doing all that crime if you were living somewhere nicer, right?
    "Zero tolerance policy has been declared for all of these Sectors - so don't even think of spitting on the pedway!
    "Across the board, mutagenic compounds in the drinking water are now classified as borderline-terminal. Bottled water only, city-wide, and don't forget to check the seals!
    "Today's unemployment riots have been scheduled for Sectors Seven, Eleven, Nineteen - what the hell, if your sorry ass happens to be in Sector Nineteen, you might as well scrunch down right now and give it a kiss goodbye!
    "Those were this half-hour's Instant Death Alerts.
    "On a lighter note, med-techs say the paracholera pandemic in Sector Nine has almost certainly run its course. The problems with the Sector Nine sewer-and-resyk systems that appear to be the source of the problem are being fixed as we speak. So it looks like all you nobs up there in Shangri La Towers are gonna be able to go back to the high life you think you deserve.
    "That was this quarter-hour's Mega-City News. I'm Danni Consart. We'll be back with the conclusion to Xenomorphic Bondage Slaves XIV right after these important messages."
     
    It was crazy season in the Big Meg, a city-state that skated on the lip of an insanity curve at the best of times. It was the end of summer, the time of the baking heat, when the earth itself absorbed all the heat it ever would and radiated it back.
    Years ago, apparently, these were called the Dog Days. Back in the days when there were dogs. Now the non-existent dog was rabid, and chewing off its own leg.
    The sheer mass of more than a billion citizens, crammed behind the city walls, had overloaded the air-scrubbers to turn the