Matrix Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

than during Corvan's childhood.
    As the chopper lifted off, Corvan remembered a recent interview with a famous shrink. She was promoting her latest book and he'd agreed to interview her. As a news story it was pure fluff, but the book was damned good, and he'd come to like her in spite of himself.
    The shrink claimed that the population problem was putting enormous pressure on American culture. She pointed out that for hundreds of years the Japanese had been forced to live in tiny apartments which Americans had considered to be oppressively small. But as the population continued to shoot upward, Americans were growing accustomed to less and less space themselves, and now considered a two-bedroom apartment to be huge.
    The shrink offered this as evidence that Americans were gradually adopting some of the same mechanisms which had allowed various groups of Asians to live together in close proximity for hundreds of years. It involved the ability to see without seeing, to hear without hearing, to be alone in a crowd.
    Looking down through scratched Plexiglas, Corvan decided she was right. People were everywhere, like beetles in a dung heap. They had pushed the Seattle metroplex north to Marysville and south to Tacoma. They had pushed it upward until their buildings touched the sky and downward till the bedrock blocked the way.
    And it wasn't their fault. "Good" medicine, "good" food, "good" transportation, "good" technology, and "good" international relations had led to a "bad" population problem. The result was a quickly deteriorating ecology.
    Oh, the water was still there, as were the forests to the east and west, but these were hanging by a thread, eternally threatened by an excess of everything. Excess people, excess carbon monoxide, excess sewage—the list went on and on. Corvan knew he should feel something, a righteous indignation perhaps, but couldn't muster the energy. The end of the world seems exciting at first, but gets boring after a while.
    As the pilot swung her aircraft into northbound traffic, sunlight flashed off the buildings ahead. Most had mirrored surfaces which converted some of the sunlight to electricity and reflected the rest. And, thanks to the greenhouse effect, there was plenty to reflect.
    Seattle was eight degrees warmer on the average than it had been in the 1990s. The rain the city had once been famous for didn't fall so often anymore. Not in Seattle anyway, although other parts of the world were getting more rain than ever, plus all the problems which went with it.
    But not here. Out in Seattle's wealthier burbs, however, orange trees blossomed, private swimming pools dotted the land, and solar panels winked in the sun.
    Thanks to an atmosphere full of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and halons, the planet was slowly stewing in its own noxious juices. Because of increased warming, average sea level was six feet higher than it had been twenty years before. Most of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific, the Maldives off the west coast of India, and the low-lying keys of the Caribbean were all underwater. One sixth of Bangladesh had disappeared, along with a big chunk of Egypt and important low-lying areas in the United States.
    Galveston, Miami, Myrtle Beach, Ocean City, and Atlantic City had all been evacuated and left to the rising waters.
    In Boston and New York huge seawalls had been erected to keep the ocean out. And everywhere millions of displaced refugees had retreated to higher ground, putting even more pressure on overcrowded cities.
    Corvan smiled. Maybe the Exodus Society was right. Maybe it was time for everyone to leave Earth and ruin some other planet.
    Up ahead, the Nakasaki Business Complex gleamed in the sun and the helicopter started down. The rooftop landing pad quickly grew larger until the runners touched with a gentle thump.
    Corvan gave the pilot a credit card. She slipped it into a reader, the reader made a cellular telephone call to his bank, the bank's computer