Kudos

by Conor Kostick

handy.

  Eternal: Here you are.

  Eternal was still making the adjustments to the kudos chart when Glitter arrived.

  ‘Great party Eternal, you are soaring up the rankings. Have you seen? Top five hundred now and still climbing. You could be top ten by the end if it works out well.’

  ‘I see you are number one these days,’ observed Angel dryly.

  ‘Well. Yes.’ Glitter smiled modestly. ‘I’ve been one step ahead of the crowd all the way. I must say though, I wish I’d thought of this party. Your rate of accumulation is faster than anyone else right now. Mind you it will drop to zero when this is over, whereas I think I’ve got the mechanisms right to keep it coming my way for a while.’

  ‘Ah mechanisms. That’s what we wanted to talk to you about.’ Eternal came and stood beside Angel, then gave a nod towards the card on the table.

  ‘Yes?’ Glitter’s expression was wary.

  ‘This escort service, the slots. They are mechanisms to get kudos? How does it work?’

  ‘The slots offer a jackpot of a million kudos, which is very tempting and encourages avatars to play. But have set the machines to pay out so rarely, that for each million I give out, I get one million, two-hundred thousand in. With the escorts, it’s more simple. They give me ten percent of what they are given.’

  ‘And the escorts are offering erotic pleasure to people for kudos?’ Eternal found it hard to hide the dismay in his voice.

  ‘Why not? They want kudos; your party people want to enjoy themselves. Everyone is happy.’

  This caused Angel to shake her head. ‘I’m not sure I would be happy if I was attempting to be intimate with someone who was keeping an eye on the time and had no real interest in me.’

  ‘Exactly Angel.’ EV nodded.

  With a roll of her eyes and a sigh, Glitter took a chair and sat in front of them. ‘Look. People are getting smart about kudos. They don’t give it away like they did at first; you have to squeeze it out of them. In fact really, you should have asked everyone coming on the ship to give you at least ten, because I bet half of them won’t give you anything.’

  ‘Why should I care?’

  ‘Because soon you’ll need kudos for everything. You want to hear music? You’ll need to give kudos for it. You want to watch a great cast? Kudos. You want new limbs? Kudos. And if you make music, or casts, or body parts, you’ll be asking for kudos. That’s the way the Metaverse is going and if you don’t keep up, you’ll miss out.’

  There was something so deeply unpalatable about this vision that Eternal felt constricted, like the deep black water all around them was pressing down on his avatar.

  ‘How strange,’ Angel’s voice was soft, almost musing, but it was a tone that Eternal recognised and he looked at her hopefully, ‘that people will no longer conduct their affairs directly, face to face, so to speak. Instead, all our dealings will be measured in kudos. A barrier between us all.’

  ‘Not a barrier. What kudos does is make manifest the previously hidden relationship between things. It was always there, you know, a sense of relative worth. Now everyone can see the measure openly. If I want a pair of Mellow’s eyes, for example, I can decide if they are worth an hour in the Squealadrome, a copy of Sol’s star-surfing cast, or whatever. It is the kudos chart that reveals the equivalence of such things.’

  ‘And my love for Eternal,’ Angel stood beside him and her fingers gently played with his tousled glowing hair, ‘how much kudos is that worth?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  The two women glared at each other and matters might have become quite tense but for a welcome interruption from an old friend, Yellow Silk.

  Yellow: EV, can you come to deck 84 please?

  Eternal: Certainly.

  He teleported down, using the tag that Yellow had offered him, rather than a pad. Out of politeness he sent tags to Angel and Glitter; they arrived a moment later.

  A group of avatars of various forms were gathered at the entrance to Rapture’s Palace of Dreams.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘She wants five kudos from everyone who enters.’ Yellow had taken the form of a small sprite and her wings were buzzing with irritation.

  In answer to Eternal’s glance, Rapture shrugged and folded her arms. ‘Well, why not. It is only five kudos.’

  ‘Not everyone here is on the kudos chart,’ pointed out Yellow tartly.

  ‘Well, get it from someone who is.’

  Both of them turned to Eternal, who looked slowly about the group, then to Angel and Glitter.

  ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Porting to the bridge, Eternal leaned over a microphone and pressed the broadcast button.

  ‘Friends, sorry to interrupt your pleasures, but I need to make it totally clear that there is no need to hand over kudos for any of the amusements at this party. All kudos transactions here are entirely voluntary.’

  On his return, Angel gave him a warm smile. Glitter, on the other hand, was shaking her head.

  ‘Bad move EV.’

  ‘Come on.’ Triumphant, Yellow Silk was flying towards the golden doors of the palace.

  ‘Just a moment.’ Rapture turned away and pointed. The entrance folded itself up and disappeared. Slowly, turning her head left and right, Rapture walked through her creation, detaching it from the ship and storing it away in her private inventory.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Eternal.

  ‘Packing up.’

  They all watched, amazed, as the grey iron sheets of the ship’s decks were revealed progressively.

  ‘Hey EV.’ Glitter looked up from a hand-held monitor, giving him an appraising look. ‘I take it back, that was a neat move after all: you are charging up the ratings. People are giving you the kudos they have saved by the entertainment being free.’

  ‘So!’ Rapture turned about. ‘See, it’s not me being childish. I’m refusing to have my work exploited by you Eternal.’

  ‘No,’ answered Angel. ‘You are acting like a hundred-year-old. Take your toys and go home.’

  ‘Oh I will.’

  ‘This is terrible.’ Eternal squatted on a beam of iron that was bare but for the silver rivet heads he had carefully put on for authenticity. ‘This is the worst party ever.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. The kudos chart is spoiling everything.’ Angel sat beside him.

  ‘You’re heading for the top one hundred.’ An admiring whistle accompanied Glitter’s declaration. She was looking at her monitor, although she spared a moment to send a knowing glance in Eternal’s direction.

  There was something in that look that made Eternal angry. At first he directed his gaze full upon Glitter, hoping that she would feel the impact of his scorn. A second later though, the fiery rush of his thoughts slowed. It was easy to imagine a future in which he got to enjoy the enormous gains in kudos he was accumulating from this party.

  There was within him, he knew, a love of being a celebrity and a desire to win the adulation of the crowd. This was not a trait he was proud of and when praised for saving the Metaverse from Hammer or for his parties, EV allowed himself only a moment’s indulgence in the sense of a need fulfilled. Then modesty would take over.

  Now, he was on the verge of being a major cultural figure in the Metaverse, one of the elite who featured on the kudos top one hundred. The chart had become the ultimate measure of society’s approval. It showed the winners and around these new celebrities was a cult of fascination and a desire to emulate them. Instead of being an outsider who disapproved of the kudos chart, Glitter was inviting him to the fast track. And what was really making Eternal angry, was that despite knowing there was something deeply unpleasant about recent developments, the invitation was an appealing one. A sense of guilt was the real fuel for EV’s anger: an awareness of his own attraction to a course of action that he knew was wrong.

  He could not join the new elite. If kudos trading continued, their community would be riven into even deeper factions than
existed during the flares versus drainpipes debates. And much as he harboured a need for the love of the crowd, it was more important to his happiness that he loved who he was.

  A full day earlier than he had planned, Eternal ported up to the bridge and pressed a large red button.

  ‘WARNING. In thirty seconds, this ship will become a no teleport zone and be collapsed by the pressure of the sea around it. If you do not wish to die, please port out now.’

  ‘WARNING. In twenty five seconds, this ship will become a no teleport zone and be collapsed by the pressure of the sea around it.’

  Having backed himself up before joining the ship, Eternal’s plan was to go down with his vessel. To live in that delicious moment as the distant roaring of the racing walls of water grew louder, knowing that it was an unutterably unique instant, one that would not survive in any form, such was an experience to be relished. It was the closest that a resident of the Metaverse could get to mortality and many of them would take the option to stay. But not him, not now. There had been too many important things said and Eternal did not want to lose the knowledge of them.

  Several seconds before the countdown ended, he ported out, missing the triggered explosion that allowed the water to rush in, crushing those who remained into oblivion and a reawakening at their last backup point.

  5. Free From Kudos

  ‘Remember we were like this before.’

  A swing of silver was hung from the points of a crescent moon, allowing Eternal and Angel to sway gently under a star-filled sky. But it was not the fact that he was holding her in his