from the story of o—

eldon

As I said at the beginning of this narratological interlude, I can hardly remember if they did burn her clothes, but of course it is common practice to burn all unclaimed property of deceased persons along with their physical remains. At the same time, and in this case, the retaining of the clothes for some length of time—as exhibits perhaps—may have been valid, thus there are grounds for my mis-remembering. I cannot remember—of course, have no need of remembering since a simple recall of a series of records gives me the information I require and leaves my mind free to engage in more immediately and corporately useful pursuits . . . generally-speaking. I admit that what I now indulge in here is recreational activity, and although some denigrate it as masturbatory in intellectual function, I believe these logs may well find some utility to future social historians, should this hobby continue to attract recreationalists.

Yes, as I was saying, we are all cyborg now, and even ten years ago as I speak, “cyborg” was a term connoting the hyper-human, the motivated persona of the age, an ineluctable condition of existence denoting the dawn of a golden era, as it was. My fascination with this side of our progress is now connected with the fact that O— was to all intents and purposes—indeed, never had been—cyber-augmented at all. Naturally, to effect such a complete appearance of non-augmentation suggested that the exact opposite was true—which is what I set out to discover.

Indeed, I had been instructed to discover it—since there was no record of O— having ever existed at all as a valid ID-entity, the biometrix security unit was particularly interested in tracing her material background. This, it was felt, would lead to the uncovering of another hakterism cell, whose activities threatened our way of life and undermined all our efforts to provide a secure environment for us all to operate in.

And by the way, they did burn her clothes—10 days, 12 hours, and 2 minutes after we finally gained access to her apartment with the aid of Durkheim and a tractor-bot.