In April 2005, Patricia Vasquez reads Brief History of the Death by Abraham Damon Farmer (2135), Chapter One: From December 1993 to May 2005.
According to the Brief History, there will be a catastrophe the following month. Patricia reads that, in the 1980's and early 1990's, the Soviet Union was losing its technological, and therefore also ideological, competition with the US. This contrasts with James Blish's earlier Cities In Flight future history in which, by tightening its security, the US became more like the USSR until there was no difference and the latter absorbed the former in the Spenglerian Fall of the West.
The Brief History states that "...the Agatha experiments..." (p. 102) were an exception to the centralization of Russian computer systems. What were the Agatha experiments? I googled this phrase in inverted commas and all that came up was a reference to Eon by Greg Bear.
I think that the Brief History warrants further study but it is time for me to turn in.
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