So I had to content myself with studying the advertisements and the gadget-porn reviews.
Those who had experienced the Omniplus Ultra couldn’t say enough about its life-changing capabilities, its potential to shatter all old paradigms across the board and to literally remake the world.
Publishers Weekly: “After five centuries, the printed book has found its worthiest successor in the Omniplus Ultra. The future of reading is safely triumphant.”
The Huffington Post: “Opens new channels for the spread of democracy.”
Boing Boing: “Coolest gadget since the iPhone! The cold-laser picoprojector alone is worth the cost.”
Car and Driver: “Jack the Omniplus Ultra into your dash’s USB port and driving will never be the same!”
Entertainment Weekly: “If you can’t download your favourite show onto your Omniplus Ultra, it’s not worth watching.”
Variety: “First flicks helmed with the Omniplus Ultra to hit bigscreens soon!”
Aerospace & Defence Industry Review: “Guaranteed to be standard equipment for all future warriors.”
Mother Jones: “The Omniplus Ultra is the greenest invention since The Whole Earth Catalogue.”
BusinessWeek: “Every CEO will benefit from having an Omniplus Ultra to hand—and anyone without one will watch competitors eat their lunch.”
Rolling Stone: “Elvis. The Beatles. The Sex Pistols. The Omniplus Ultra. The sequence is complete at last.”
The more such talk I read, the longer I examined pictures of the sleekly tactile Omniplus Ultra, with its customizable sexy skins and ergonomically perfect controls, the more I lusted to own one. Although nothing in my condition had really changed, and although I had enough money, love and security, my life felt incomplete and empty without an Omniplus Ultra.
But there was just no way for me to get my hands on one.
Until I saw my boss’s boss’s boss walk through the warehouse carrying one.
Then and there, I knew what I had to do.
As a low-level employee, I certainly could not jump several levels of management and directly approach my boss’s boss’s boss and ask to fondle and play with his Omniplus Ultra. But I had a scheme.
It took me six frustrating weeks, but at last I managed it. In a series of furtive unauthorized forays into executive territory, I caught the lucky Omniplus Ultra owner in a lavatory break with his prized possession carelessly left behind on his desk.
That’s when I pulled the fire alarm.
While everyone else rushed outside, I darted into the guy’s office, snatched his Omniplus Ultra off the desk, and sank down behind the furniture in the knee well, out of sight.
With trembling hands I sought to shuffle aside the protective wings of the device, utilizing all the instructions I had lovingly memorized, and expose its intimate control and display surfaces to my wanton gaze and lewd touch.
But I was doing something wrong! The expected blossoming failed to happen.
Instead, after some fumbling, the unit split open like a simple styrofoam clamshell container full of leftovers.
The interior gaped utterly vacant, except for a simple piece of printed cardboard.
Dumbfounded, I removed the cardboard and read the message.
Dear Consumer: the Omniplus Ultra is not what you need. You are already everything you thought it could do. Pass this message on as widely as you see fit. Or not. Hopefully yours, Pine Martin and Sheeda Waxwing, for the OmninfoPotent Corporation.
I put the card back inside, resealed the Omniplus Ultra, dropped it with a dull thud on the desk, and joined all my peers outside, waiting to resume our lives.
WIKIWORLD
1. MEET RUSS REYNOLDS
Russ Reynolds, that’s me. You probably remember my name from when I ran the country for three days. Wasn’t that a wild time? I’m sorry I started a trade war with several countries around the globe. I bet you’re all grateful things didn’t ramp up to the shooting stage. I know I am. And the UWA came out ahead in the end, right? No harm, no foul. Thanks for being so understanding and forgiving. I assure you that my motives throughout the whole affair, although somewhat selfish, were not ignoble.
And now that things have quieted down, I figured people would be calm enough to want to listen to the whole story behind those frighteningly exciting events.
So here it is.
2. MR. WIKI BUILDS MY DREAM HOUSE
It all started, really, the day when several wikis where I had simoleans banked got together to build me a house. Not only did I meet my best friend Foolty Fontal that day, but I also hooked up with Cherimoya Espiritu. It’s hard now, a few years later, to say which one of those outrageous personages gave me the wildest ride. But it’s certain that without their aiding and abetting, plotting and encouraging, I would never have become the jimmywhale of the UWA, and done what I did.
The site for my new house was a tiny island about half an acre in extent. This dry land represented all that was left of what used to be Hyannis, Massachusetts, since Cape Cod became an archipelago. Even now, during big storms, the island was frequently overwashed, so I had picked up the title to it for a song, when I got tired of living on my boat, the Gogo Goggins.
Of course the value of coastal land everywhere had plunged steadily in the three decades since the destruction of New Orleans. People just got tired of seeing their homes and business destroyed on a regular basis by super-storms and rising sea levels. Suddenly Nebraska and Montana and the Dakotas looked like beckoning havens of safety, especially with their ameliorated climates, and the population decline experienced for a century by the Great Plains states reversed itself dramatically, lofting the region into a new cultural hotzone. I had heard lately that Fargo had spawned yet another musical movement, something called “cornhüsker dü,” although I hadn’t yet listened to any samples of it off the ubik.
Anyway, this little islet would serve me well, I figured, as both home and base for my job—assuming I could erect a good solid comfortable structure here. Realizing that such a task was beyond my own capabilities, I called in my wikis.
The Dark Galactics. The PEP Boys. The Chindogurus. Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons. The Bishojos. The Glamazons. The Provincetown Pickers. And several more. All of them owed me simoleans for the usual—goods received, or time and expertise invested—and now they’d be eager to balance the accounts.
The day construction was scheduled to start, I anchored the Gogo Goggins on the western side of my island, facing the mainland. The June air was warm on my bare arms, and freighted with delicious salt scents. Gulls swooped low over my boat, expecting the usual handouts. The sun was a golden English muffin in the sky. (Maybe I should have had some breakfast, but I had been too excited to prepare any that morning.) Visibility was great. I could see drowned church spires and dead cell-phone towers closer to the shore. Through this slalom a small fleet of variegated ships sailed, converging on my island.