Gerhard’s Reviews > Neom > Status Update

Crucifixation: A synthetic drug offering a religious-like experience to the user.

Somewhere between Bethlehem and Mecca lay Neom, city of futurity, where fortunes are made and faiths are lost.

“Weird?” he said. “Yes, of course it’s weird. But this is Neom.”

They often broke us open for parts. They seeded monsters into the desert. They called themselves hackers because what they did, often literally, was hack people, usually to bits. Then they’d go for a swim in the sea and drink a beer.

“I am equipped with human behaviour analysis modules,” the robot said. “It was deemed a part of our basic battle toolkit. Might be out of date now, though. Has human nature changed significantly in the past few centuries?’

Homo sapiens had migrated across it from Africa to Europe and gods were born on the peninsula, traders crossed the sands for endless centuries, carrying perfumes and spices and other rare and precious things. Messiahs raised new religions that changed the world. And as Arabia came to the world, the world came to Arabia.

“Look at this one,” he said. He held a small plastic rectangle in his palm. “It’s a Pac-Man.”
“What’s a Pac-Man?” Mariam said.
“It’s on an Atari cartridge,” Mukhtar said, ignoring the question. “I have an auction running in virtual as we speak with three bidders on Mars, two in the Venusian cloud-cities and one warlord on Ganymede all in the running.”

“The poet Basho became a toilet on a spacecraft for two hundred years, it is said. It wanted to understand bodily function.”