“The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.” — Cyril Connolly

“The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post.” — Cyril Connolly

It was Intel’s 300th birthday. The chip maker was planning a little celebration in Silicon Valley which was the heart of it.

There was more news for celebration. The first great wave of ships for the stars had come pre-installed with Intel hardware. The newest iteration of AI chips was performing even better than expected; rave reviews were coming in from all quarters. By the time the ships arrived at the nearest stars, the AIs would reactivate the sleep chambers and bring the passengers out of stasis. Each AI was tailor-made to handle all manner of calculated (and unforeseen) exigencies, and could reason almost as well as an intelligent man could. They put dunces to shame.

Intel decided to hold a parade in San Francisco. Called “Summer of Love Part 2,” the parade would be all about the social changes that had taken place since the first Intel chip had come off the fab lines. And there were plenty of those.

Society over the centuries had evolved. Pedophilia was legal. So was sex with animals, and incest. Everything consensual was legal, even if the participants had limited ability to make decisions. What counted was they were not coerced into anything.

The headliner of the parade was a 10-year-old boy named Ricky and his master, Jarvis Junior. They were scheduled to have live sex in front of the street audience, and beamed on holocast throughout the nation. (By now the nation included Canada and Colombia; the latter taken over when drugs become an overwhelming problem demanding overwhelming measures).

Jarvis Jr. was an oafish thug of a man missing 3 teeth. He was so poor he couldn’t get the teeth regrown in a vat and reimplanted in his mouth. He had met Ricky while fishing in the Colorado River Aqueduct north of San Francisco. While waters raged around him, he and the boy had struck up a conversation — both were on the same intellectual level so it was easy.

Jarvis Jr. was a believer in the Church of the Universal Sun, a sun-worshipping cult out of Sacramento. The Church was against sex with children, but withheld condemnation — no one condemned anyone anymore. It produced “negative vibes” and “bad feelings” and so was socially banned by tacit agreement. Jarvis Jr. took Ricky into the church and fellated him in front of the minister, causing the more open-minded to nod in approval and the others to change their minds. When presented with forceful action, this new age of Man acceded and accepted the inevitable.

One day Jarvis Jr. was walking his dog, Ricky Jr., and Ricky (the boy was on a studded leash and went along meekly enough) when a madman with a high-powered rifle popped up in a window on the street. He was an old-style Christian, an almost vanished breed, and he propped the rifle on the window sill and aimed the weapon.

Did he shoot Jarvis Jr.? Perhaps Ricky?

No, the most he could bring himself to do was wing Ricky Jr. the dog in the leg. It was just a superficial flesh wound but it sent the message:

Some people still disagreed!

the end