Symbiography Read Online Free PDF

switched the hologram back on and turned up the volume. The Nomad was gasping and bug-eyed when the fat man in the shining robe reappeared on the other side of the table. “Why be my enemy?” smiled the cherubic pink Lord, extending his open palms in a gesture of friendship. “This food is for you.”
    Buick stared, fear-struck and open-mouthed.
    “Can’t you speak?” the Dreamer asked. “What’s your name?”
    On the bank of displays, a dozen mouths soundlessly formed a single word.
    “Well, you do understand something, don’t you? Speak a little louder. I’m not going to hurt you.”
    The Nomad’s hand groped for his face and throat. His mouth opened and closed, fighting for air like a stranded fish. Teeth bared in a snarl of final defiance, he hurled his cutlass at the smiling figure of the Lord and pitched headlong onto the elegant table, dragging a torrent of silver and crystal after him in his fall to the floor. Par Sondak’s smile remained unchanged. He gave some orders and switched off the hologram.
    Fresh from the laundry, sanitized and fumigated, the Nomad’s garments and weapons were displayed on a table in the main hall of the Dreamer’s house. Par Sondak examined each item with care. He fingered the unfamiliar roughness of hand-woven fabric and toyed with the primitive spring-wound ratchets in the firing mechanism of the heavy wheel lock musket. In a sudden moment of boyish enthusiasm, he shouldered the awkward weapon, pressing his cheek against the brass-studded stock.
    The Nomad’s belongings fascinated the Dreamer. He was puzzled by the red numerals sewn to the coarse shirt, but he recognized the metal-and-ceramic medallions hanging on the leather belt as products of the Late Industrial Age. One showed a clipper ship under full sail; others portrayed faces: the head of an Indian, a bearded Spanish conquistador, the Roman god, Mercury, with his winged, soup-bowl helmet; the simplest, a plain white oval, had the word Ford across the center in the fluid strokes of the ancient script.
    The contents of the snakeskin pouch were equally mysterious. Aside from a few steel ball-bearings and a magnet, the Dreamer could identify none of the other relics and he asked the computer to run a source check with the micro-mode archive in the City. In less than a minute, the picture-wall switched on and a photo-collage appeared; an instant mural display of the objects spilled across the glass table.
    “These items,” said the computer, “are products of the Late Industrial Age, more than a century before the founding of the Utopian Era. Most of them are machine parts and the pictures are from manufacturer’s catalogues which survive from that period. The first, shown on the far left, was a device known as a ‘spark plug,’ which provided the ignition in the fossil-fuel, internal-combustion engines of a wheeled ground vehicle called an ‘automobile.’”
    “Cars,” Par Sondak said, turning the sparkplug over in his hand.
    “What was that, sir?”
    “In the vernacular they were called ‘cars.’“
    “I didn’t know you had an interest in that Age, sir.”
    “Oh, I’ve read the literature.”
    “Would you be interested in seeing some film on the subject? The archives have a number of old advertisements preserved. They’re only two-dimensional, but they provide an approximation of how these vehicles … these ‘cars,’ must have looked in operation on the ancient highways.”
    “Go ahead,” said Sondak, settling into a contour-chair.
    The picture-wall blinked and the photo-mural was replaced by a view down an empty two-lane road, a band of asphalt slicing the verdant landscape. A red-and-white automobile, bright with chromium trim, speeds smoothly through the rushing green.
See the U.S.A.,
    In your Chevrolet,
    America keeps asking you to call… .
    For the first time in months, Par Sondak missed the sunset. No one bothered to program new instructions for the kitchen and supper was served as