[Faction Paradox 02] - Of the City of the Saved by Philip Purser-Hallard

Author:Philip Purser-Hallard [Purser-Hallard, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Doctor Who, Matt Smith, Christopher Eccleston, Lawrence Miles, Time Lords, David Tennant, Faction Paradox, TARDIS
Publisher: Mad Norwegian Press
Published: 2013-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

[Vril, Omphalos!]

50. Compassion III, Teletopia District.

Compassion I obviously wasn’t coming, thought Compassion.

Typical. You couldn’t even trust yourself these days.

She’d set some of the monitors in her reception chamber to follow the output from the ambient cameras dotted about the nearer streets and walkways of Teletopia. She’d chosen them carefully for their strategic vantage-points on various approaches to her apartment. If the obnoxious men with guns came back, she should have sufficient warning.

Compassion III sipped a mug of boiling caffeine solution and considered her options.

The room she sat in was encrusted with receiving equipment for the City’s media, ranging from the obvious (widescreens, speakers) to the esoteric (she had, although she hardly ever used it, a working Noosphere portal). From here she could access material in countless formats, channels and genres, ranging from personals to fullcasts, from the perfectly static to the invasively interactive. Additionally, her fitted earpiece gave her cerebrum direct access to all the signals from the District’s local mediasphere. The receiver was original Anathema tech, centuries old: it was so integral to Compassion’s self-image that it had been reborn with her.

With such diversity of experience available in their well-appointed apartments, many Teletopians no longer left their homes. Their resurrection bodies not requiring exercise (or, for that matter, air) to remain healthy, some had had themselves walled up alive in their reception rooms, from where they happily gorged themselves on the ever-burgeoning cultural product of the City.

They were no burden to anyone, but Compassion only felt really settled when leading a more active lifestyle. It was a family thing.

She flicked her eyes across the walls, from screen to screen, taking in:

A wide view of her apartment building’s polished lobby, empty of people.

A G. B. Shaw play, Life and Afterlife, on the Dead White Males Channel.

Local news: Resident Kane swearing in new appointees to the Academy.

A close-up from the ATM opposite Elsewood Studios, showing an utterly non-sinister customer taking out cash.

A spamcast, quickly filtered out: ‘COMPASSION III! There’s BIG SPHERES to be made – htzzzz...’ Replaced by BardCorp’s long-distance haulage drama, Drivers Alarums.

Music Fabricator Nekni Vass (in concert).

A Woody remake and his girlfriend sharing a bench close by on South Bank: ‘I guess I have this, this ontological angst, you know, about my entire existential status...’

Compassion III herself, reviewing My Wife Was a Transsexual Timeship on a week-old edition of Medias Res.

Two passers-by strolling innocuously down Marshall Way.

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