Hallucinating Read Online Free PDF

clear of the aliens; but where can you run when gravity binds you to a planet and anyway the orbital highways are secretly, subtley laced with alien threads?
    And he thinks, is this real, or am I hallucinating?
    Kappa says, "I find this alien scale hard to believe. Auton isn't composed by people, it's just remixed. I think it's composed by deep computers."
    Nulight replies, "What's the commonest remark people make about auton?"
    "That it's out of tune."
    "Exactly! The human mind isn't meant to receive it."
    Kappa looks away.
    Then Einstein3 asks them, "What are you dudes going to do next?"
    Nulight replies, "We gotta find ourselves a mighty hacker to see if there's anything official on the aliens. NASA must know something, the Whitehouse, the FBI, maybe the Chinese or the Japanese. Anyone who makes me feel bad, basically. But we need somebody who understands our way of thinking."
    "I might know somebody," Kappa says, "somebody back in England. Cambridge, in fact."
    Nulight nods. "Yeah? Well, okay, we'll run with that for now."
    "And then?" Einstein3 asks.
    Nulight stands up. "We'll be in touch, man. You're valuable. We'll stick together."
    "Yes, we will."
    Nulight takes Kappa's hand and they stroll off down the beach. Out of earshot he tells Kappa, "I kinda did and didn't like him. Sorta mental case. We'll take what we want, then dump him. What say?"
    "I think Chantal was here before us."
    "Why?"
    "Obviously Marcia sent Chantal over to Einstein3 in an attempt to get her off this alien craze. But Einstein3 has the facts. He's convincing. "
    Nulight's head is too tight for logistical details. Wisps of virtualsmooth riffs surge through his mind. "Music, man, why music? Why that Berlin club?"
    Kappa says, "Do you mean, why is music the vehicle of the invasion?"
    "Yeah."
    Slowly, Kappa says, "Music is deep. Everybody in the whole world is wired for music. This is no amateur invasion, this is aliens putting together a massive plan. You were right. They don't want us to notice them, they want to act subtle, because the last thing they want is resistance."
    Nulight laughs. "We'll resist them all right."
    "But how?"
    Now Nulight sighs. "If they're gonna attack with music, maybe we'll defend with music. I dunno. But we'll do something."
    ...Strawberry Fayre, late as usual...
    Nulight and Kappa stroll through a sunlit Cambridge. It is noon, Saturday, no clouds in the sky, the distant rumble of cars and lorries audible, though there are none within a kilometre. They amble across Parker's Piece, through tree-lined Parkside, into Parker Street then Emmanuel Road, then across to the edge of Midsummer Common.
    Before they get there they hear the warble of auton music, as local computers running off solar generators remix parasitic snippets plucked from the melodic surface of the semi-autonomous music in Berlin. The detuned strains are underpinned by the thunk-thunk of the bass drum, popular from the eighties through to the thirties, now returned as if part of the human experience: the trance.
    Then they turn a corner and there it is, all bright and flag waving and wonderful, full of zippies, tech-heads, smoothers, and all the rest of this island's fabulous array of sub-cultures. The Strawberry Fayre, better late than never.
    Hundreds of stalls cover the grass. The place is swarming with people holding paper cups of warm lager, cold tea, exotic fruit drinks, semi-acid, decaf. It seems to Nulight that every person is different to every other, despite the defined sub-cultures that are apparent, as if here all aspects of the drive to individuality, to freedom, can be expressed. This is the ultimate friendly place where nobody judges anyone else. It is a madness of fun.
    Here they will find this major hacker that Kappa knows, this Master Sengel, he who allegedly cracked the Westminster Code and brought down the Tory Alliance, who convinced the Indian Government that they had no water, who spirited sixty billion pounds to hospitals in Scotland