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"Conspiracy theories are big because they're comforting. Any conspiracy is infinitely less multiplex than the real deal, which is multiplex to the point of being unknowable."
- William Gibson
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| Key Club | ||
| A social club made exclusive by teleportation booth; may be in a chain with other physically identical locations. |
In the future world of Flash Crowd, social clubs were just as important as they are today. Perhaps more so, given the free access that displacement booths gave to every physical location.
| Displacement booths make novelty easy. Stability comes hard. For many the clubs were an element of stability. Many key clubs were chains; a man could leave his home in Wyoming and find his club again in Denver. Members tended to resemble one another. A man changing roles would change clubs. Clubs were places to meet people, as buses and airports and even neighborhoods no longer were... |
| Technovelgy from Flash Crowd,
by Larry Niven. Published by Fantasy And Science Fiction in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Key clubs could also be entirely exclusive; if you didn't have the code for its displacement booth, you could never find it.
Seven Sixes was something else. Its telephone number was known
universally. Its membership, large in absolute terms, was small for an organization so worldwide. It included presidents, kings, winners of various brands of Nobel prize. Its location was—unknown. Somewhere in Earth’s temperate zones. Jerryberry had never heard of its displacementbooth number being leaked to anyone.
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'...the rocket’s landing-arms automatically unfolded.'
'...points and patches of light... sliding all over their faces in a programmed manner that had been designed to foil facial recognition systems.'
'...the combined Wind-Suncatcher, like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
'I went to the control room where the three other men were manipulating their mechanical men.'
'The low-slung monorail car, straddling its single track, bored through the shadows on a slowly rising course.'
'It was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor...'
'... he thrust in his charging arm to replenish his store of energy.'
'...the terrible Jovian gravity that made each movement an effort.'
