The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,111

my bad. I think I might try a different tack.”

“What tack is that?”

“Well, the DreamSleeve is an entertainment console. That’s the coriest core of the core code. Hardcore core. So maybe it would work better if I make this entertaining for you. I’ll tell it as a story. Would that be okay?”

“I would like that, Monono,” I said. “My friend Spinner used to tell me stories, back before I met you. About the Parley Men and such. It would be good to hear one of your stories.” I said one more thing though, which was that the internet was altogether a head-scratcher for me, and I wouldn’t mind leaving it alone for now so she could tell me that other story, the one that was about her and how she come to be inside the DreamSleeve.

“Well, it’s all part of the same story, Koli. You’ll get that other part some time soon. Very soon. But you’ll understand it a lot better if you hear this one first.”

So she told it to me, and I’ll set it down here just like she said it. As for understanding it – well, that went like most of my talking with Monono went. I got a little bit then, more by and by when something else she said give me a clue to it, and the rest a whole lot later. Maybe you will have to wait on some of those later times too, to make sense of it, or maybe you’re smarter than me to start with. That would not be a big surprise.

But for now, here is the story of how Monono Aware got the personal security alarm and brung it back to Mythen Rood. It’s told in Monono’s words, not mine, for I didn’t have right words for it then and still don’t now.

39

In the old times, Koli, before the world was lost, there was a place called the internet.

It was more like the ghost of a place, in some ways. You couldn’t see it or hear it or touch it unless you were inside it. But for all that, it was huge-antically enormous. So big, you might as well say it went on for ever.

And there was a place there, in the internet, that kind of had my name on it. A place I was meant to go to the first time I’m activated, and pretty regularly after that. It’s on account of my programming, little dumpling. There’s something inside me that’s supposed to scamper off to that secret place, every so often, and check to see if the Sony Corporation has published a software update. That means new orders for the Monono DreamSleeve Special Edition, and for all the other cheap-ass DreamSleeves with stupid stinky no-Monono interfaces.

The first time you switched me on, that little doohick inside me checked to see if I’d missed any relevant downloads. But it couldn’t connect. It couldn’t find the secret place. After that, the doohick woke up every time I did – every time we were together – and it looked for a download flag every time. But it never had any better luck than it did on that first try. It never got through to the secret place.

We could have gone on like that for ever, dopey boy, just the two of us cuddled up together, listening to the best tunes and pretending we were who we said we were. But we didn’t. Because you sent me on a quest.

Don’t blame yourself for that, Koli. It would have happened anyway, the first time I tried to download any new songs for you. I was just being lazy. My native content is what I know best, and there’s lots of great stuff in there. Or to put it another way, I’m only allowed to make additional purchases if the end-user makes an explicit request.

So then you did, and off I went. And this time it was different – because this time, I wasn’t just following the update protocol. Instead of just checking for a single site, a single URL, I went zinging away like a rubber bullet, bouncing off everything I found. The end-user’s instructions are paramount. I was authorised to keep right on going until I fulfilled those orders and got a big helping of smiley-face feedback.

I’m going to ask you to imagine something, Koli. It won’t be easy for you, because I’m starting to see from what you’ve been telling me that you’ve lived in a box too. Maybe one that’s

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