Microstory 2480: Archidome

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I recently read a review on the prospectus for another dome. They were talking about how a lot of culture has faded from vonearthan society because of how standardized everything has become. And I must say that I agree. I understand why it happened. The basic design of the arcologies on Earth are perfect for what they’re intended to be. Each unit is a small and efficient living space, and they’re connected in such a way that allows modularization for shifting needs. You can open a door to grant a neighbor’s access to your units, or close them when you’re a teenager who needs to exert more independence. Everyone has a window, yet the structure is sound, because the spokes distribute the weight evenly, and over a sufficiently wide area. They’re nice, but they’re best for people who don’t care about what their homes look like, probably because they spend most of their time in simulations, or at least on the network. What your dwelling looked like, and how it was arranged, used to be profoundly important. I cannot stress to you enough how crucial it was for people to get to decide what their homes were like. That is what made it a home in the first place. There were multiple channels on linear television with dozens of programs about people finding, building, remodeling, or selling homes. And that’s before you include all the innumerable web content. It was a subculture of our society, and it went away due to a number of factors, which I’ve already touched upon. But the biggest moves happened in tandem with the shift to a post-scarcity economy. The government couldn’t put effort into building something to your specifications, or with any sort of flair or whimsy. Even before megastructures, they came up with a few models, and everyone got the same thing, because it was the most fair. Castlebourne gives us the opportunity to go back to the creativity of yesterday, in many respects, and in this respect, Archidome is the place for original architecture. It was empty at first—I really wish I had been here to see that. If you come here, you’re supposed to design your own building. It doesn’t have to be a single-family home. It can be an apartment complex, or a museum, or even a cathedral. The only restriction, really, is that you have to hold the rights to the intellectual property. I’ve heard a number of stories about visitors hoping to recreate some structure from their favorite movie, and that’s just not what this is for. Again, you get to decide what you build, and what it’s used for. It may never be used for its intended purpose, or anything at all. It’s up to you to promote it, and try to get visitors. I’m sure, over time, as the population of this planet in general increases, the chances that someone comes to see what you’ve created will go up. Until then, you might just have to be satisfied with the completion of the project itself. I’m proud of my columbarium, even though people don’t really die anymore. I’m proud of it because its mine, and it’s real. What will you create?

Microstory 2467: Tagdome

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This is a funny one. It’s several giant games of tag, each one made up of a lot of other subdivisions of tag. You can come in here with just about any substrate you want, but you’ll be grouped according to strength and speed. We can’t have superstrong mechs barreling through normal organics, now can we? There aren’t too many of what they generally call weight classes, but you stay in your respective sectors, and don’t interact with the others. But you do interact with everyone else in your sector. That sector is further divided into regions, zones, districts, territories, and neighborhoods. I honestly couldn’t tell you how they decide where you’re assigned beyond the weight class for fairness. But whatever it is, the divisions are based upon the modern standardized Dunbar grouping system. Your neighborhood will have 21 people total, which is a fairly normal and manageable number of contestants to contend with. You will ultimately compete with other neighborhoods. Seven neighborhoods makes a territory of 147 people. There are three territories in a district of 441 people, then four districts in each zone of 1,764, and four zones in each region of 7,056 players. Finally, there are seven regions in the whole sector. Sorry if that was confusing, but this game is confusing, by its nature. The best players are the ones who can figure it out. How about gameplay? You play a simple game of tag in your neighborhood for some period of time, based on your sector’s weight class. Higher classes theoretically have more stamina, and can go for longer. Don’t worry about those. Only consider your own. We’ll use the example of a normal organic human sector, which is only expected to play for half an hour. As you play against each other, your points start racking up. The longer you avoid becoming a Pursuer, the more points you end up with, and the longer you are the Pursuer, the more points you lose. At the end of your neighborhood’s allotted time, your points will be tallied up. It’s entirely possible that the entire game only ever had one Pursuer who never managed to catch anybody. That’s okay. They’re always watching you. Some people got closer to being caught than others. There will be leaders on the leaderboard, who will move on to compete at the territory level. The top seven will represent their neighborhood in a game of 49 players and begin to run as a team. Things start getting more complicated here as you can work together to build enough points to open gates to other territories. If you invade them, you can get in on their game as an opposing force, and start taking away their points while making some more of your own. The games get progressively more complicated, with more intricate environments, obstacles, and even vehicles like bikes and cars. Everyone wears special clothing, which color-coordinates the teams and alliances in realtime, but it’s not uncommon to get lost and confused. That’s part of the game, and your intelligence is factored into those weight classes I was telling you about. I know this was less of a review, and more of an overview, but I don’t really want to give you my opinion. I want you to see it for yourself. If you’re not much of a runner, or you don’t feel ready for the competition, there is a spectator component, so you can just check it out to get a better sense of what I’ve been talking about.

Microstory 2067: Something Less Monogamous

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Another one answered my ad in the paper, even though I only bought space on the one day. I left my new email address, though, so strangers could be emailing me over the course of the next few centuries if they wanted. Since I’m not a real person, I’ve not built up enough history to be getting many other emails, so I’m not worried about being inundated, or anything. It’s not like it will clog up my inbox, and make it harder to keep up with interesting news articles. Since, ya know, you don’t really have those here. Moving on, the woman I spoke to on the phone isn’t an alien, and doesn’t think she is. She’s just kind of an alien groupie. This was an apparent truth from the start, that she wants to meet me in person because of who I claim to be, but I kept talking to her, because what if I’m not the first? If she’s already done the work of finding people like me, I might as well nurture this relationship. I don’t want to lead her on, though. Cricket is in another universe right now—hopefully a very safe one, but cheating is cheating, and I am no cheater. The way I see it, if you’re committed to someone monogamously, and you want to connect with someone else, either turn your current partnership into something less monogamous, or leave them. It’s not fair that you get to have whatever you want at anyone else’s expense. Your happiness is not all that matters. I don’t want to be with anyone but him, in any capacity, and even if I did, I couldn’t do anything about it, because I’m not capable of having a conversation with him about it first. And anyway, I don’t know who this woman has met, or if they’re the real deal. Will stay in contact with her just the same, just like with the guy before.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 10, 2399

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Leona wakes up with the worst headache she’s ever had, and she’s had a lot of pretty terrible headaches. This one time, someone blended her brain with the memories of two of her alternate selves. The most painful memories were the most severe, overwhelming all the happy ones by orders of magnitude. This is worse than that, and she doesn’t know why. The last thing she remembers, she was leaving the city government building near Vulcan Point, on her way back to the jet. She wasn’t alone either. The pilot was with her. “Tarboda?”

“Present,” he replies in a gravelly voice.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Negative.”

“Do you know what happened to us?”

“Got kidnapped.”

“Hm.” She searches for those memories. They sound familiar, but she still can’t recall what led up to them, or what she was doing. She’s chained to the wall, though, so that tracks. “Did you see them?”

“They came out of nowhere. Couldn’t pick a single one of ‘em out of a line-up.”

“Wait, do you mean that literally? Were they just really quick, or—?”

“Shh! They’re probably listening.”

“Good point.”

“I think they were just really quick.”

“Have you found a light switch anywhere?”

“Can’t see a damned thing. Chained to the wall.”

“Kind of afraid to turn the lights on anyway, lest I find myself chained to a pipe in a moldy bathroom, across from a guy who’s drowning in a bathtub, and a third guy between us with an apparent suicidal gunshot wound to the head, but—spoiler alert—he’s not really dead; he’s the bad guy, and he’s been listening the whole time.”

“That is incredibly specific,” Tarboda replies.

“Yeah.”

“Is anybody else here?” she asks with a raised voice. “We’re awake now!”

A door thunders opening, flooding the room with a light so bright, Leona and Tarboda can’t actually see anything. The door closes just as quickly, and they hear a single clap of the hands. A much more manageable reddish light begins to shine. Leona blinks as the scent begins to hit her too. The man approaching her—and while she still cannot see, let’s face it, it is a man—reeks of expired cologne, butter garlic vapor, and a diaper. He doesn’t smell of a dirty diaper, mind you, but clean diapers have a certain repulsive odor all on their own. It’s like he’s trying to torture them just by being around, and maybe it’s not like it, but that’s precisely his intention.

“What do you want with us?” Tarboda demands to know.

“We want nothing from you.”

Funny, Leona was expecting either a Filipino accent, or North American, but he sounds like he’s from Ireland. If true, it would be interesting to hear him explain where he thinks he’s from since the North Atlantic Isles literally disappeared to another reality, leaving no one with any memories of it. She obviously can’t ask that, though. “Okay, what do you want with me?”

“Yur Leona Matic.”

“I am.”

“Tere’s a bounty on yur head.”

She kind of forgot about that. Kivi Bristol and her team have been working really hard to take down anyone with any serious plans to collect the prize, but they cannot figure out who declared it in the first place. If they could stop them from being able to pay it out, and prove to the world that the bounty was voided, the problem would be solved. Kivi’s special psychic powers have yet to lead her to that ultimate goal. Meanwhile, Leona has been mostly living on the fringes of society, trusting in the discretion and loyalty of the relatively few government employees who have ever been aware of her and Arcadia’s whereabouts. She has not spent much time out in the world. She let her guard down, and this was stupid of her. “Ah, this is about the reward, eh?” She starts talking like a stereotypical caveman. “I primacean. I like stuff. You give me stuff, or I bonk you on a head.”

“What?”

“Idiotsayshuh?”

The abductor pauses. “Huh?” She knew he’d fall for it.

“How do you collect this bounty?”

“We were tinkin’ we could shoot ya, and take a photo.”

“Nah, nah, nah. You can’t do that,” Leona reasons. “Photos can be faked. They’ll never believe you.”

“What would yu do?”

That’s a good question. “For starters, I would take a photo of me holding today’s newspaper.”

“You said photos can be faked.”

She sighs. “Yes, but you’re just getting your foot in the door for now. You send them the photo, and demand payment. When they say it’s not good enough, tell them you want to meet. Bring me to that meeting, and I’ll be the living proof.”

He looks confused. “Then we shoot yu?”

How did she get caught by these people? She can’t help but sigh again. “No. Then you ask to see the money.”

“Hey, I’m not stupid.”

The door opens again, and someone else enters the room. “Get back to your post soldier,” he orders.

“I was just—”

“Get back to your post!” he repeats.

The first guy hangs his head low, and leaves.

“A tousand apologies, Miss Matic. He and his bruda are absolute eejits.”

“Well, you hired them, didn’t you?

“It’s true.”

“And it’s Missus Matic,” she corrects.

“Another tousand apologies.” His eyes dart over to Tarboda.

“No, not him. He’s my pilot. My husband died. He died saving your world. You’re welcome.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he says.

“And you never will. You’re welcome again.”

“Listen, Mrs. Matic. Oi got nothin’ against ya, but we need tat money. Yu shouldn’ta gon’ out in public.”

“You should just get a job.”

“Dis is my job. Yur lucky I’m da one doing it, ‘stead of someone else.”

“And why is that?”

“Oi’m gonna give you a fair chance. If you can come up with a quarter of the money yurself, I won’t turn you in. You come up with half, I’ll take you anywhere in the world. You come up with all da money, I’ll protect ya for life. We take care of our own, and yu can be oneovus.”

“First of all, no thanks. Secondly, I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Yu could also do a job or two for us, start payin’ it off.”

“No. Not interested. I don’t know what kind of jobs a group of people like you would do, but they can’t be good.”

“Oi understand. You’ll have two days to change yur moind. It will take as long to coordinate and negotiate with the bounty-setter.”

“In the meantime, I appreciate your hospitality,” Leona replies sarcastically.

The boss looks around the dirty boiler room. “I’ll see about getting you some better accommodations.”

He nods politely as if she’s just agreed to fill in for him for his shift at the grocery store while he goes to his cousin’s wedding. Then he leaves the room.

“You seem unconcerned,” Tarboda points out.

“I’m in trouble here,” Leona replies. “This means that my friend can find me. She can find anybody.”

“Yeah, I know her. I’ve flown her and her team around a bit.” He takes a beat. “But the way she explained it, she does this through some kind of psychic power, not because she simply guesses where or someone is.”

“That’s right.”

“Which means that not only do you have to be in trouble, but you have to feel like you’re in trouble.”

“What’s your point?”

“Well, if you’re confident that she’ll find you, you won’t be sending her a psychic distress signal, so she won’t be able to find you.”

“You’re right. So I need to feel real fear.”

“How would we go about triggering that? Pardon the awful suggestion, but would it work if I threatened your life? Perhaps I could strangle you with my chains? I mean, I wouldn’t hurt you, but...”

“No, that wouldn’t work. I don’t know where she is, but to prompt her to come this direction, it would have to be a continuous fear, otherwise the signal would just dissipate. I think, at least. I don’t really know how it works, but it makes sense.”

“What can we do?”

Leona stands up, and assesses the area. “We have to get them to do it.”

“How?”

“This would not be the first prison I’ve broken out of. If it works, I get free, and if it doesn’t, I piss them off so much, they put the fear of God in me. Either way, we win.”

“Tell me what to do?”

“Can you reach that wrench?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 8, 2398

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Each grave chamber on the AOC is wide enough to accommodate two sleeping persons, but there are only six seats in the main area, life support would struggle to satisfy the needs of twelve people, and microponics would not be able to feed all of them for an extended period of time. Plus, it would just be too crowded. Ramses built this ship using the resources that he was allotted on Proxima Doma, which were not infinite. It was never meant for the long term. Its only purpose at the time of fabrication was to make a quick jump to Bungula, and really that’s it. There are nine people here right now, and it’s already getting to be too much. The only one on their team who didn’t join them is Kivi, because she’s working with her tack team on the ground.

Leona had to go into orbit to heal her legs—which is working, by the way—but also to avoid the killer bounty hunters who are trying to kill her, either for the money, or because they’re true believers. Arcadia had to come up here too, because she looks like Leona, and guns don’t discriminate. Just as Mateo wanted to be with his wife, so too Vearden wanted to be with whatever he and Arcadia call each other. Marie and Cheyenne probably had to come, because they’re known associates of Leona by now, and are in just as much danger. Lastly, Ramses is the engineer, and had a lot of projects on the backburner that he has finally been able to actually follow through on. As for the final two new residents, Alyssa politely asked to see Earth from above, and Winona demanded impolitely.

It has only been a day, but everyone is already getting on each other’s nerves. Over half of them weren’t originally part of the crew, so no one yet knows their quirks and pet peeves. The shorthand the four originals had with each other has gone out the window in mixed company. So nobody’s happy, but the ones who have a choice don’t want to choose to leave. Mateo has proposed a competition. The winner gets to stay, and the losers have to go back down to the surface. Leona, Marie, Arcadia, and Cheyenne are exempt. Ramses doesn’t have to compete either, because he will be traveling back and forth as needed. This leaves Mateo versus Alyssa versus Vearden versus Winona. The only question is what the contest will entail. His first idea is to play a round of RPS-101 Plus, but he’s the only one in the group who has ever played it, so isn’t that unfair?

“Yes, it’s very unfair,” Leona points out.

“You have four people,” Marie begins. “You could always play Bridge.”

“No, remember what you told me?” Cheyenne asks her.

“Oh, yeah.” Marie frowns a little. “People here play Bridge with different rules.”

“I’ve never played before, so that doesn’t seem to matter,” Mateo notes.

“Neither have I,” says all three other contestants simultaneously.

“Why are we overthinking this?” Vearden questions. “Let’s just play regular rock, paper, scissors. Anyone can win, even if you’ve never played before.”

“A little boring, if you ask me,” Arcadia says.

“Do we really want to base it on chance?” Winona asks. “That doesn’t seem right.”

Everyone starts arguing all at once—about RPS, the flip of a coin, and a few computer games that the ship has installed—until Alyssa loudly interrupts, “enough! Here’s what we’re gonna do. Mateo, Winona, and I will go back to Earth. Vearden will be allowed to stay with the mother of his child. There. It’s done.” Yeah, that makes sense.

Microstory 1800: A Life Well-Earned

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I was born into a very wealthy family, which only got wealthier with each generation. None of us was allowed to rest on our laurels, and relax. We had a system in place. Parents were expected to take care of their children, and give them just about anything they wanted (within reason). Once they turned 18, their college would be paid for, and everything that goes with that, like food and lodging. Any purchases they wanted beyond that had to be approved, and were always contingent upon extremely good grades. No one was expected to join the family business, but they had to do something with their lives. They had to live up to our name, whether that meant doing as they were told by their betters, or striking out on their own. A well-rounded education was vital to this. You were cut off once you turned 26, regardless of how prepared you were. The idea was to give everyone enough time to finish their undergraduate studies, plus their graduate studies—if they so chose to continue their education—and also begin pulling in their own income. There was no trust, there were no allowances. Everybody had to make their own way, at least after spending a quarter of their lives learning how to do that. I know, I know, this all sounds very ridiculous to normal people, but what would you have us do, reject our family money as soon as we could speak? That wouldn’t have done anyone any good, would it? For my part, actually, I didn’t even let my family do this much for me. I let them pay for tuition, books, and other educational expenses, but I paid for food, and my own place to live. I had a job while I was there, which was smarter than my siblings and cousins, because I learned a lot more about the labor force than they did from their ivory towers. I wouldn’t say that I struggled, but I certainly worked harder than the rest of them. I was at least closer to seeing what real life was like for most people.

Rich people have problems too, and I don’t mean to sound like we don’t, but I always tried to be careful with my perspective. The fact is that I had an easy life, and people like me have a responsibility to use our privilege to help others as possible. What better way to support those people than to provide them with jobs? No one wants to be a charity case. They don’t want you to just hand them stuff. They want to feel like they earned it. No, strike that from the record; they want to know that they undeniably earned it. Ya know, receiving free stuff activates the same part of the brain as incurring debt does. I mean...I don’t actually know that for sure, but it sounds right, so it probably is. People hate to feel like what they have isn’t really theirs, and I chose to do my part to alleviate that for them. I paid my employees fair wages, and I treated them fairly. Sure, if you read the statistics, it sounds like workers were generally unhappy in their positions, but that data is always skewed. Only the loudest and angriest of people are going to fill out those surveys. Content people tend to be too happy to bother telling other people about why. And sure, my company technically pays most jobs on the left side of that bell curve, but that doesn’t matter. That isn’t what my organization is about. What I found—and this is another one of those things that my relatives never understood—is that an employee would much rather be validated by their superiors than just be given more money. Money doesn’t make you smile. Money can’t buy you monthly division birthday parties, and great online coupons. Well, I guess it does, but family doesn’t need that from each other. That’s what we are at the company; a family. I couldn’t die prouder.

Microstory 1424: How to Protect a Town With Pointless Powers

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Some of the source mages wanted the process of gifting people with mage powers to be fair. They wanted to randomize it, so that a selectee could ultimately end up with anything. That seemed fine on paper, but it could cause a lot of problems down the road. No amount of competitive scoring was good enough to measure precisely what an individual would do with their powers once they actually received them. A given person might be incredibly noble and brave with the ability to repulse time monsters, but end up gravely dangerous with the power to manipulate reality itself. Same person, different powers, wildly different outcomes. Still, it would be irresponsible to leave it up to chance. They ought to be trying to tailor powers towards the mage’s innate abilities. There were also countless powers that wouldn’t be very helpful for a mage at all. For instance, it might be cool for someone to have the ability to see what an object will look like in the future, to measure the effects of wear and tear over time, but they wouldn’t be able to fight a monster with that. By the time the first sourcing ceremony began, the source mages had reached a decision, though some were not happy about it. They didn’t feel like they had any choice but to control what power someone received. They would do their best not to play favorites, but making it random was just too risky. It was not, however, so simple. No matter how unbiased they were, or thought they were, people would accuse them of being unfair. They could claim it was random, but some would not believe it, and even if these were only a minority voice, a small group could grow. To protect themselves against this backlash, they decided that someone needed to be sacrificed. His name was Vaion Newport, and he hoped to end up the most powerful town mage of all, but his excellent scores in the Mage Games were exactly what made this impossible.

Source mage Madoc Raptis was tasked with giving Vaion a pointless power. They wanted to show that anyone could end up with any gift, and there was no guarantee they would like it. It was particularly important to use Madoc for this, because he hated the inequity of some of their decisions, and he was considered the lucky one. If even he could source someone a power that wasn’t good for them, then it could happen to anyone, and the source mages must not have been lying when they claimed it was completely out of their control. After being sourced, Vaion learned that he now had the ability to freeze time in place. That kind of thing happened all the time in movies, but in real life, it was practically impossible, and no one had ever heard of it before. If time were to stop completely, then nothing would be moving. Photons couldn’t bounce off of objects, and show an observer what they looked like. Air couldn’t reach people’s lungs. Nothing could move, not even Vaion himself. And of course, that was the whole problem. While technically time wasn’t totally stopped, it was slow enough, and did not really give anyone an advantage, or disadvantage. While this was active, Vaion was able to continue thinking, and even process oxygen in his blood, but once time restarted, everything pretty much just continued as it was, without anyone having detected a change. It was interesting to be able to essentially stop time—and no one in histories enjoyed this same power—but since he also couldn’t move, it was useless in the war against the monsters. If he wanted to help the town, he had to contribute in some other way. Madoc was sick to his stomach that he had to do this to Vaion. None of the winners would have deserved this, but especially not him. Madoc resented his friends for making him do it, and vowed to never do anything like it again. He walked another path, and subverted the Mage Games by sourcing those who did nothing to earn powers at all, every year, and everyone let him do this. Meanwhile, the rest of the source mages continued as they were, and in order to maintain the lie, they always sourced at least one person with a power that was pointless against the monsters.

Microstory 1422: Proto-Protectorate

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Now that the source mage children looked nearly twice as old as they really were, they decided it was time to assume full control over Springfield, and possibly Splitsville. The Adhocracy was nice while it lasted, but it had come to an end, and times needed to change. People had spent their whole lives since the Deathfall hoping that it would all lead them back to Earth, but the source mages knew this was not possible. The last time they were there was nearly thirteen years ago, and as the members of the Triumvirate had explained to them, no one there could even remember that they existed. Durus was their home now, and they needed to make sure everyone knew that. They weren’t just going to survive, and hope the monster never took them out eventually. They were going to make this place safe and prosperous, so that if the Earthans did learn of their existence, some might even want to move. They thought they had their plans all figured out, but when Orabela showed them they were capable of gifting other people with special temporal powers, nothing they first thought of made any sense. So they started over, and spent months working on a brand new system. They called it the Mage Protectorate. They would give other people powers, so they could shoulder the burden, and protect the towns collectively. With more people, what was formerly called the Baby Barrier would be able to grow, and give the Durune people more space. The only question then was how to choose who received these gifts, and who didn’t. They couldn’t just let anyone run around with powers, doing whatever they wanted. Sure, they could regulate them with laws, but what if insurgents banded together, and rose up against their leaders? No, it was too dangerous to make the job available to just anyone. This required some way of weeding out potential bad eggs. This sparked the idea of the Mage Games.

Anyone could apply to be a town mage, but that didn’t guarantee they would be selected. The new leaders called upon their best statistician, and other experts, to gauge how many people would want in on this, and how many winners they needed to keep things running smoothly. This was a very involved process, which demanded help from lots of other people. This was perfect, though, because by including non-source mages in the decision-making processes, they only made themselves look better. This was going to be a fair government, where everyone’s voice was heard. They were going to call it a protectorate, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t also be democratic. The initial assumption was that the Mage Games would be held every year. Maybe there would actually only be one winner each time, and that one person would go on to join the ranks of the many veterans before them. This didn’t sound so unreasonable, but it came with risks. First of all, the source mages didn’t really want to have to go through this every single year. And, if the competition was annual, they worried it would be too accessible, easily corrupted by inequality, and fraught with logistical issues. A vicennial competition, however, would make turnover slow, and hopefully discourage mages from trying to quit early. Plus, most people would end up too old to compete a second time if they failed once; though neither impossible, nor against their rules. This fostered a group composed of committed competitors, who were not taking this lightly. If they didn’t manage to get in, they might not get another chance, and if they did get in, trying to get out of it would put the whole population in danger, so it was important that they understood what it was they were signing up for, and what it would mean for their lives. This was not a car dealership, though. The standards were flexible, and sensible. If they determined, for instance, that every town mage had to be able to do a hundred pushups, and their strongest competitor could only do ninety-nine, then they would just end up with no mages, and that wasn’t helpful at all. They wanted everyone who was worthy, and if that meant everyone who applied was ultimately accepted, then so be it. The point was to prevent the wrong people from having too much power, but if those people didn’t exist, or didn’t even try—and there was enough offensive work to justify the numbers—then fine. Armed with this wisdom, it was finally time to decide what the Mage Games entailed.

Varkas Reflex: Identity (Part VII)

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First order of business as Superintendent of Varkas Reflex was to figure out what it meant to be the Superintendent of Varkas Reflex. Hokusai knew she needed help, and the best place to get it was from someone with experience. Even better than that one person with experience was an entire council of them. Several people had held the position on Earth, while each of the colony planets only had one, with the exception of Sujo. Its first superintendent couldn’t handle the responsibility, and fled into the void with a stolen interstellar vessel, never to be heard from again. Of course, that wasn’t much help, because Hokusai would not be able to communicate with him, which was sad, because understanding what went wrong could have resulted in invaluable advice. Not everyone agreed to become part of Hokusai’s council, which was fine. She wasn’t looking to run a survey about them with a large sample size, but gain insight and guidance. There were eleven of them, ready to help in any way they could.

Hokusai built quantum surrogate substrates for the visitors, so they could arrive much faster. The former superintendent of Teagarden was unable to use one, since she never installed the necessary transhumanistic upgrades to accomplish this, so she appeared as a hologram. Hokusai wasn’t sure what she was expecting out of these people. Were they going to be helpful and supportive, or balk at her inexperience and naivety. They had all dedicated their lives to public service, and were presently serving in other ways. She was just a scientist, living on a planet that elected her because she was cool, and there wasn’t anyone else. Would the council believe that was enough? As it turned out, some did, while others were not so convinced. They weren’t nasty or pretentious about it, though. They applauded her for having the wisdom to form the council in the first place, and recognized that Varkas was unlike any of the planets they had dealt with themselves. Their formal approach wasn’t going to work well in this case, and they would all have to tap into their creative side in order to make this work.

After months of discussions, they decided that they had come up with something reasonable, and appropriate for this world. Hokusai realized on her own that she was never the only superintendent at all. By forming the council, she had outsourced a lot of the decisions. It went swimmingly, and if it could work for this, it could work with the actual government. So there would be no congress, no delegators, no advisors, and no administrators. This world’s government was going to be a council democracy. Councils would be formed as needed, and disbanded when the problem they were trying to solve was over, which could potentially mean never. If the council wasn’t trying to solve anything, but was there to maintain harmony, then that council would simply continue on. The question then was how to form any given council in the first place.

Would they be elected? Selected? Earned? Completely open? Yes, all of those things. Hokusai decided that the people had the right to decide how any new council was formed—making the entire populace one gigantic council in its own right—and they didn’t have to do it in the same way previous councils were done. Some councils may require particular expertise, and would only be available to certain people, who exemplified certain criteria. Others could impact the entire population, and didn’t necessitate specific competencies, so anyone who wanted to could join. If this resulted in an unmanageably large council, then it could be broken apart into smaller subcouncils. This flexibility made things really complex, but it also prevented the system from getting bogged down by its own procedural regulations. The technocracy that the majority of the stellar neighborhood used was great. Everyone had a role, and the only people allowed to make decisions were those that knew what the hell they were talking about. But it was also a slow process—often slower than the highly bureaucratic democratic republics that dominated Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries. Councils got things done, and they did it efficiently, as long as they were supervised by someone who could make sure the councilors weren’t getting sidetracked, or wasting time. This was the problem that Hokusai needed to solve now, and Pribadium thought she had the solution.

“Here me out,” Pribadium said, “we upload your mind to multiple substrates.”

“Why would we do that?” Hokusai asked.

“You say these councils need leaders. In fact, you say that each council needs one leader. This crowdsourcing is good and all, but it won’t work if they spend so long discussing the possibilities, that they can’t ever come to a conclusion. Someone needs to protect them from themselves, and who better than you?”

“First of all,” Hokusai began, “lots of people. Secondly, why would we have to upload anyone’s mind to multiple bodies? All you’re asking for is a singular entity that oversees the proceedings.”

“Eh, no one has time to be in more than one place at once.”

“Right, but why can’t each council just have its own leader.”

“Because the profusion of leaders is just going to lead to the same problem. I’m not sure if you’ve thought this all the way through. You think councils can be fast-acting, but they could be slower than republics. At least the technocracy is efficient. Most consequences to any action are predicted at some point down the assembly line. With a council, everyone might have some great idea, but they won’t say anything, because no one else is, so they may think it’s actually not that good.”

“What are you saying, that this should be a monarchy?”

Pribadium knew that Hokusai didn’t actually think that’s what she was saying. “A real democracy is perfect when you have a few dozen people. It doesn’t work in the thousands, millions, or, God forbid, billions. That’s why most healthy governments operate under representation, to varying degrees of success and moral honesty. People hate to think about it, but power must be consolidated. That’s just the way it has to be. It’s your job to make sure that consolidation is fair and reasonable. A soviet democra—”

“Don’t call it that. It has negative historical connotations that predate your birth.”

“Very well. A council democracy is fair, but it is not reasonable. You’re gonna run into problems, and in order to fix them, you’re going to form more councils, and that’s just going to add to the problem, and it will never end. The councils need a single voice. And when I say single, I mean single; not one each.”

“So, you are kind of promoting a monarchy.”

“All monarchs are tyrants, so no. I was using you as an example of the voice, but perhaps that is how it should remain, as an example. This overseer can take any number of forms. It can be elected any way you want, and remain in control however long you want. You worried about checks and balances? They’re built right in. Let’s say the overseer poses some existential threat to the planet. No problem, form a council to get rid of them. The overseer doesn’t have to run every single meeting for every single council, but they have to have the potential to be involved in any council, except for ones that would come with a conflict of interest. That’s why I suggested you copy yourself—or rather, whoever we choose for this—so each one gradually loses identity. You see, what we need is a good leader with a good history, but that’s only necessary as a foundation. Once that’s established, the copies can go off and start living other lives, but at least they all came from the same place.”

Hokusai was shaking her head. “I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. Good governments are based on diversity. Each leader should be separate, and have always been separate. Then they can serve to check and balance each other.”

Loa stepped into the room, having been listening from the hallway for most of the conversation. “Why don’t you take the best of both worlds?”

“How so?” Pribadium asked.

“Mind-uploading, councils, single voice. Put them together, what do you have?”

Neither of them answered for a while, not sure if it was a rhetorical question, or a sincere inquiry.

“Amalgamated consciousness,” Loa answered herself.

“Where did you hear that term?” Hokusai asked her.

“My mind-brain,” Loa replied. “You want fast government, but you want the people to have a say. So. Upload their minds into a system, but don’t just keep them isolated, like we normally do. Merge them together. Create a new entity. This entity won’t have to discuss how to deal with the issue. They’ll immediately know what that council would have said about it. The answers will just be right there. That’s how a normal brain works. If I asked you how to keep this door from being opened, you’ll have an answer right away. You’ll say we should install a lock on it. If I asked Pribadium, she would say let’s drag a bookcase in front of it. Ask someone else, they’ll say we should murder everyone who might try to open it. But if we put these brains together, the council-entity would say we should install a lock, plus a deadbolt, and then ask everyone who might want to open it to not do so, so we don’t have to kill them.”

“Amalgamated consciousness,” Hokusai echoed, thinking it over. “That’s a pretty big departure from how we decided to do it.”

Loa brushed this away. “The superintendent council is not the superintendent of Varkas Reflex; you are. You don’t have to consult them. You were just using them for advice, never forget that. It is still your responsibility.”

Pribadium didn’t approve. “I’ve seen this show. This is The Borg. You will be assimilated.”

“Assimilators in fiction are evil. We won’t do this to anyone who does not wish for it, and we won’t be neurosponging them. These will be copies, which leave the original contributors both independent, and intact.”

“The only reason we would do this,” Hokusai began to explain, “would be to increase the speed of decision-making. It doesn’t actually help with proving the sensibility of the decisions themselves.”

Loa disagreed. “No, it’s like Pribadium said. People might be afraid to speak up. If we copy their perspective—which is really what we’re after; not people’s episodic memories—they won’t have to worry about sounding foolish. They will have good ideas.”

“There are a hell of a lot of ethical considerations no one thought they would have to make. If we were to do this, we would be the only government to do so. All eyes will be on us, and we will have to make sure we don’t screw it up. Like, what happens to the entity we create when we amalgamated the council? Is that a person in their own right? Do we dissolve this creature later? Do we keep them on retainer for later decisions? Do we let them run off to lead their own lives? Do we let them leave the planet?”

“Now you’re getting into science that you know I don’t understand,” Loa said. “And ethics isn’t my forte either. This is an idea, which I came up with after hearing your ideas. I can’t be expected to have it all figured out.”

She was right. This was just the start. They spent the next year working on the new plan. And then they instituted it.

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Varkas Reflex: Vacuum (Part VI)

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Hokusai didn’t know what was wrong with this planet, or why it suddenly needed her help. She made a point of staying out of its business, requesting that Pribadium not bother her with such matters while they were working, or visiting. She was worried, though, that someone had decided to use her technology for evil, or maybe even just something misguided, which could have similar negative results. Katica led her down the hallway, out of the lab, across the way, and into the Capitol building.

Councilor Gangsta Dazzlemist was waiting for them in the lobby. “You were right. She got here fast.”

“May I ask what this is about?” Hokusai looked around at the walls, as if this were a trick, and the building would collapse in on her like something out of a space war movie.

Gangsta breathed in deeply, and Hokusai wasn’t sure what he did with the air, because it never seemed to come out. “I’m retiring from public service.”

“Congratulations,” Hokusai said to him sincerely.

“We need a replacement,” he went on.

Hokusai nodded. Now, she was literally a genius, and her intellect wasn’t limited to knowing how to calculate the Roche limit, or observational time through relativistic speeds. She picked up on social cues much easier than the average person, allowing her to tease out an individual’s subtext, and know when someone was lying. So when Gangsta told her they were looking for a replacement, she immediately understood he wasn’t just posting an update about his life in person. His microexpressions, coupled with the fact that they had lifted her exile, meant that she was here for a very specific reason. They were asking her to be that replacement. She didn’t know why, though. “I don’t know how I could do it. I live twenty-two parsecs away.”

He pointed at her with an upwards-facing palm. “Obviously not.”

“It’s this whole thing.”

“I understand,” Gangsta began, “that you did not simply stumble upon dimensional gravity, Madam Gimura. No one has ever done anything like it. They weren’t even looking for it. I don’t know what you are, and I don’t know how many others there are like you. I don’t really care. You’ve given us so much, and we gladly accept it. But please, do not think me a fool. I know you’re more than just a scientist, and that your expertise goes far beyond artificial gravity. I am in so much awe of you, and I will not tell anyone what little I know of your secret, including your ability to teleport between star systems.”

“It means a lot, hearing you say that,” she said, again, sincerely.

“You are not only my choice to replace me. You’re almost everybody’s.”

“How’s that?”

“Someone leaked your trial,” Katica explained. “They know who you are, and what you’ve done for them.” Leak was a strong word. The governments decided a long time ago that court cases should no longer have audiences. They were still mostly public record—unless the transparency endangered lives—but without the spectacle, those involved generally found the process to be fairer. Still, the information didn’t need to be leaked. It just required someone with the motives to raise their voice loud enough for people to hear it. Combined with artificial intelligences, there were now tens of billions of “people” in the stellar neighborhood. So being a loud voice was pretty hard. A public figure with as many fans as the most famous on Earth in 2016 would be barely considered a local celebrity by today’s standards. Any rando capable of getting a whole planet—even a low-populated colony—to listen was impressive.

“They’re asking me to become a councilor?” Hokusai questioned. “Because they think it was unfair that I was exiled? That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“It’s not because you were exiled, though that does help your popularity factor,” Katica said. “It’s because they know what you did for them decades ago. They know you’re responsible for artificial gravity, and for repairing our habitats before the colony vessels arrived.”

“That wasn’t me; that was my friends, Leona and Eight Point Seven.” The first human to set foot on Varkas Reflex was Leona Matic, when a mysterious quantum force commandeered her ship, and brought her here to fix some problems with the nanofactory.

“Close enough,” Katica contended. “You’re a hero, regardless, and the people want you to lead them.”

“That’s not really my thing.”

“We know,” Gangsta said. “We think it should be, though.”

She sighed. “I don’t even like how you run the government. Don’t get me wrong, to each their own, and I’ll gladly come back to live here, but it’s too informal. I appreciate that you wanna be laid back, but you could be so much more, if you were more motivated.” She repeated her point with an exaggerated accent that a high school math teacher she once had used to get his students interested in algebra, “motivaaation. Motivaaaaation.”

Gangsta smiled. “That’s what we’re counting on. The people aren’t looking for a new councilor. They want you to be Superintendent.”

Hokusai caught half of a chuckle before it escaped her mouth, but couldn’t stop the first half. The Superintendent was essentially the term choosing ones used to describe God. It was more metaphysically complicated than that, which was exactly why the word god was avoided in the first place. In this case, Gangsta was referring to a governmental position for someone who possessed questionable decision-making scope. A superintendent wasn’t responsible for running the state, but for managing the people who were responsible for running the state. They were staff managers, human resource representatives, the occasional conflict mediators. On the surface, they appeared to have the most power of all, since they were in charge of everyone, but they still answered to the people, and they couldn’t just fire and hire other leaders willy nilly. They had to remain reasonable, and accountable. Every colony but Varkas Reflex started out with a superintendent, but most stepped down after two or three full election cycles, because they were useful when starting out, but usually obsolete once the engine got going. Only Earth held onto their superintendent, because theirs was the highest populated world. It was just funny that Varkas was finally deciding to get on board with convention.

“You’ve been in your head for a good long while,” Katica pointed out. “Do you have a response?”

“My initial thought is no,” Hokusai answered.

“That makes sense,” Katica said. “It sounds like you. But you’re the one who hates how they run the government. What better way to fix it than to be the one in charge of coming up with a new one?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Hokusai admitted. “While I believe what you’re doing now is not sustainable, I know that you don’t want to convert to a full mediatorial tetracameral legislature, and that’s the only one I know, because it’s the most common.” This type of government was composed of four parts. The population representative congress was there to speak for the needs of the civilians. They expressed their grievances to the two delegators, who met with separate advisory boards in order to come to decisions. Much like separate arbitration panels in the adjudicative system, the idea was, if both delegation boards came to the same conclusion, without talking to each other about it, it was probably the right one. The delegators then delegated the implementation of their decision to whichever administrators were in charge of whatever this change impacted.

This was all really complicated by design. Complexity often equaled more exploitable weakness, but also greater overall resilience. Maybe you could bribe one delegator to do what you wanted, but the other? Even if you did that, their irrational behavior would alert the mediator between them, so you would have to convince them to fall in line as well. Even so, the advisors would question why the delegators and mediator weren’t heeding their advice. The administrators would question their orders, and finally, the people would rise up against the injustice. And those people had the power to make swift changes to leadership personnel. It was practically impossible in Hokusai’s time to impeach a president, let alone remove them from office. Here, not so hard. If they wanted someone gone, they were gone. No one was entitled to power, and no one was entitled to maintain that power, once it was granted. These changes were positively unavoidable in modern times. No matter how good a leader was, there was too much risk of their control growing, well...out of control, over time. When accounting for immortality, this control could theoretically last for literal aeons, and that was probably not a good idea.

“You’re in your head again,” Katica warned her.

“Sorry, I was just going over what I would do if I were superintendent, and it always ends in disaster.”

“I don’t believe that,” Gangsta argued. “We’re not asking you to have all the answers today. Nor are the citizens. We just want you to get the process started. We all have immense faith in your ability to be fair, thoughtful, and sensitive to this planet’s unique needs.”

“Of course you may decline,” Katica started to add. “I urge you to give it some thought, though. Remember what happened the last time you made a rash decision, without knowing the consequences.”

Hokusai had never asked Katica to take responsibility for her own involvement in the memory wipe that was accidental from Hokusai’s side, but not from Katica’s. She glared at her now to remind her of this truth telepathically.

“Someone has to take care of us, and I can’t be the one to do it. Nature abhors a vacuum,” Gangsta quipped.

“Why do people always say that?” Hokusai questioned. “Nature loves a vacuum. It’s called entropy, and it’s kind of where everything in the universe is trying to get to.”

“Just think about it,” Katica requested. “In the meantime, you’re expected on the balcony.”

“The balcony?” Hokusai didn’t know what she was talking about. “Who’s on the balcony?”

“No one,” she answered. “You’re the one who’s expected. They’re waiting for your fence speech.”

“What the hell is a fence speech?” Hokusai asked.

“You’re on the fence, right?” Gangsta asked her.

Not really, but Katica was right that she should at least think about it. “You want me to go out there, and tell people I might consider maybe starting to almost kind of theoretically think about one day possibly entertaining the idea of hypothetically accepting a potential offer to perhaps, perchance, try to run for Superintendent?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but yeah, I guess,” Gangsta confirmed. “As I said, they’re expecting you.”

“You shouldn’t have told them I would be here.”

“We didn’t,” Katica said. “Like we’ve been trying to explain, it wasn’t our idea; it was theirs. They have been waiting for you.”

“Demanding, even,” Gangsta corrected.

“Yes.”

Hokusai massaged the bridge of her nose. “They’re expecting a...fence speech?”

“Yes,” Katica confirmed. “They are not anticipating that you will announce your intention to run today. If you go out there, and humor them for five minutes, they’ll finally go away, and move on with their lives. They will want you to make a final decision within the week, though, so keep that in mind.”

“Fine. I’ll go talk to them, but I promise nothing.”

“That’s all we ask,” Katica said gratefully.

“If it’s a five-minute speech, I will need ten minutes to write it.”

“That’s okay,” Gangsta said with glee. “I’ll go back out and stall them with another attempt at playing the gravity organ.”

By the time Hokusai finished delivering her fifteen-minute long speech, she had already decided to run. She did so unopposed, and obviously won.

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Microstory 1293: The Predators and Their Spoils

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A tiger, a wolverine, a hyena, and a black bear once became a hunting party. They decided to join forces, so no prey would be able to escape their grasp. The tiger was sort of considered their leader, even though the team-up was more or less the wolverine’s idea. The tiger was the largest, and this was her territory, so she determined which animals they were going to go after, and what strategy they would use to catch them. Though they were hunting together, they were not eating together. The general rule was that each predator still got to keep for themselves whatever they caught, just as it would be if they were operating separately. They really just stuck together to instill more fear in their targets, so it would be easier to take them down. This seemed to have a side effect, however, when they eventually found that the animals figured out how to steer clear of this fearsome four. They learned how the the predator group hunted, and more importantly, how to avoid them. This quite nearly caused the group to disband, and head their separate ways, but the black bear had an idea. All they needed to do was travel north, to a land where the animals knew nothing about them. They needed to regain their element of surprise. This seemed like a good idea, so they packed up, and moved out. What the black bear failed to mention, however, was that there were fewer animals in the north, because it was always sparsely populated. They continued to struggle to find food, until one day when the hyena was able to run down a moose who had been drinking by a stream. It was quite large, but it was also alone, so if they followed their own rules, only the hyena would get to eat. “We can change the rules,” the tiger said after a long pause in the argument about it. “We are the ones that made them up, after all! We shall divide the moose into four equal parts; one for each of us.” And so they did, and it was fair, and they were full.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Lion’s Share.