The Girl from Monday

Judge:
You are sentenced to two years hard labor - teaching high school.

[first lines]

Jack:
It's such a long way down, it's strange. The word becomes - flesh? The body remains... what? She had traveled light years to get here. And in the vaporous fields of her home star no one had bodies, or names, or identity. A living thought or feeling, stretching out in all directions. Not measured but desired, elegant. But here, in the flesh, the revolution had come.

Jack:
There was a dictatorship of the consumer now. What most people wanted most of the time, and were willing to pay for, was good. Whatever defied the logic of the market was bad. Automatic world. Disposable income was the chief revolutionary virtue. Everyone had what they wanted, always. As long as they did their part and threw themselves, body and soul, towards the aim of economic supremacy.

Jack:
Acts of love, charity, and eroticism for their own sake were soon seen as perverse self-indulgences. Inhumane, uncivilized, barbaric.

Cecile:
People have to *want* to have heart surgery, whether they need it or not.

Cecile:
The feeling is the whole approach could be more, well, sexy. Much more provocative.

Jack:
The children's wear account...

Abercrombie:
Kids and not just children Jack, they're consumers.

Adjuster:
[after much typing and beeps] I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this Mr. Bell, but with such a narrow band of sexual activity, even with your position with the agency, your consumer potential is figured to be *very* low. Which of course means an increase in your premium.

Jack:
It was a culture of desire. You had to want in order to be wanted. And you had to be wanted in order to survive.

Jack:
What do you call yourself?

The Girl From Monday:
Nobody.

Jack:
Because of the high incidence of handgun-related violence in school, only convicts were assigned teaching positions.

Judge:
It is the prerogative of this court to find you guilty of engaging in sexual activity that robs the resolution of its right to personal value. Generating no income for the common cause, which is the autonomy of the individual. Gross impedance of human potential for progress, a blow against a thriving economy, an inconsiderate perverse insistence of one's own selflessness. You are sentencing to two years hard labor - teaching high school. Next.

Jack:
Although everything imaginable was on the web, certain texts had disappeared. Though interactivity and equal access to information were the cornerstone of the revolution's rhetoric, no one seemed to notice, or at least feel, the loss of expression officially deemed malcontent, antisocial, and sinful. I knew. I was the architect of the agency's demographics and target marketing programs. The people were our targets, and we listened to their language, we monitored their dreams, we took note of every choice they made in cyberspace, we studied their buying motives and propensities, then created messages that perfectly reflected their existing emotional states. No one could hide. Triple M could recognize any citizen as soon as they turned on their computer. The web would dynamically reconfigure itself to suite an individual. Something you could hold in your hand, read on your own, think about in private - this was considered elitist, immoral, and bad for business.

Principal:
You know as well as I do these tests are meant to screen out the smart kids, and keep the rest as dumb as possible.

Jack:
It's how it starts - getting involved, with people, caring about them, mutual dependency - that kind of thing. Love, eventually there's no escape.

The Girl From Monday:
We're afraid he's addicted.

Cecile:
To what?

The Girl From Monday:
To being human.

[last lines]

Jack:
I'll never know if she made it. But I hope... and I try... to resist. Even me, whom no one needs pity, even I can see this... now. What humans do - trying.