Lucy van der Wald

“The Neon God is too big to fall now; too intricately interwoven with our technology, with our minds, to be ripped out from humanity. We let Him in, Miss Aurora. We allowed Him to occupy the Dark behind our sentient eyes. He is us now, and we are Him.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“We created Him, yes. The Neon God is our mess. Our digital hive-mind. Our A.I.,’ said Aurora, watching the man absent-mindedly gape at the ceiling. ‘We built Him to manage our finances, our logistics, our armies, our wealth distribution…. and… and He went crazy.

'Because we filled Him with crappy commercials and stopped maintaining His morals. He’s only like this because of us, all of us. It’s His Algorithm – the one you wrote, the one you keep feeding to Him – we need to watch out for. That’s the Neon God’s soul. That’s His Justice.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“Hiki Komori stirred Aurora away from the orgy and handed her a clean napkin.

‘Sorry about them. It’s the Rhapsody. To them, the real world is something akin to a cardboard reality.’

‘Why do it at all?’ she pouted, trying to wipe her shoe with the napkin. ‘Why take the damn drug?’

‘To escape their mortality, naturally. The great curtain call frightens them, so they avoid the applause. More so, they perform badly, spitting their lines out in spite. They are embittered and hungry and will no doubt eat your child.

'Yes, the soul of humanity will end in two days. But we’ve buried its body fifty decades before, wouldn’t you think? Come, Miss Aurora,’ he beckoned, ‘the lair of the Dragon runs deeper still.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars

“They traversed the lounge, side-stepping the occasional onanist and paying no heed to the slack-jawed, giggling addicts. A few feet away, a young woman had put her tattooed posterior on display. Aurora noticed her tattoos were dynamic, changing like a slideshow each time her bottom was slapped.”
― Louise Blackwick, 5 Stars