by E. M. Foner
“Which list was that?” Geoffrey asked Maureen, and then gave Bianca the Seventh a guarded nod as she entered the conference room nursing a cup of coffee.
“A fantasy one, or maybe it’s strictly for barbarian role players because they use Conan in the name. ‘Conan On’, which I guess is another way of saying, ‘Conan Forever.’”
“It’s not that surprising given that Conan is one of the few Human entertainment franchises to find any traction with the advanced species,” Flower said. “I ran all the numbers with the Grenouthian director before we went into the anime business. The barbarian warrior theme is very popular with the Drazens, Hortens, and Frunge.”
“I’ve never heard of Conan On,” Geoffrey said. “It must have started after I was institutionalized.”
“I can show you their branding from the list Flower purchased,” Maureen offered. She tapped and swiped through a few menus on her tab, and then frowned. “Funny. I didn’t notice earlier that the logo has a big A instead of a big O.”
Bianca sprayed the coffee she had been about to swallow all over Geoffrey. “ConAnon?” she croaked. “You sent invitations to the ConAnon contact list?”
Geoffrey began to laugh so hard he started to wheeze and his face turned red, but he waved off Julie’s offer to get him a glass of water.
“I must be missing something,” Yaem said, picking up on Brenda’s look of shock. “It wasn’t a list for fantasy role players?”
“ConAnon is a support group for con addicts, Con Anonymous,” Bianca explained. “You know, as in, ‘Hi. My name is Bianca and I’m a con addict.’”
“Sounds to me like we got lucky,” Flower said. “They must be real experts.”
“They’re real addicts. They would spend their lives participating in discussion panels or dressing up for cosplay if they could. They prefer the world of cons to real life.”
“I’ve heard Humans contrast living on board my ship with this so-called ‘real life’ of yours and I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Take it from an artificial intelligence who’s been around longer than your people have practiced agriculture. Life is life. There’s no real or fake about it.”
“I’m talking about work, family, finances,” Bianca ticked off on her fingers. “Sure, most of the panelists get comped for the registration cost, and some of the real session troopers get free hotel rooms. But it’s only special guests like myself or Geoffrey back in the day who get comped travel plus appearance fees.”
“Session troopers?” Julie asked.
“Professionals who are willing to serve on panels about anything,” Geoffrey told her. “Con panels aren’t workshops, they’re more like talk shows. So even though I was best known as a novelist and a scriptwriter, I sat on panels for everything from the art of megastructure construction to mercenary economics. I’ve even been roped into panels on women’s issues as the token male.”
“You always wrote a good female lead,” Bianca said half grudgingly.
“Comped?” Yaem followed up. “I turned off my implant this morning so I wouldn’t lean on it for vocabulary words, but I don’t know that one.”
“It’s a verb taken from complimentary. Cons typically cover some of the expenses for attendees who participate in the panels and other activities that make the whole thing work. It’s a common term in the entertainment and hospitality industries.”
“So it sounds like I’ve invited humanity’s most rabid con fans to our first outing,” Flower summarized. “You’re worried about their jobs, families, and finances? I can give them jobs, their families are welcome to come with them, and I have a zero-tolerance policy for debt collectors. You just need to figure out a way to channel their enthusiasm—”
“Addiction,” Bianca interrupted.
“—addiction, in useful ways. When life gives you Sheezle bugs, eat your fill.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s Flower’s way of saying that she thinks something is going well,” Julie explained.
“I haven’t been to any cons with a large Human contingent so you’ll have to fill me in on what negative behaviors we need to plan around,” Yaem said. “For example, at Drazen and Horten cons, drunk costuming is often a problem with the youth.”
“If you’re willing to reengineer the concept from the ground up, I’d like to see if we can do something about session hopping,” Geoffrey said. “At the cons I attended on Earth there would always be a group who were never happy with the panel discussion they were attending. Before the moderator even began introducing the speakers, I’d see a few audience members looking at the schedule and second-guessing themselves over whether some other session running at the same time might be more interesting. Five minutes in they’d be slipping out the door. I can’t tell you how aggravating that is if you happen to be the person speaking.”
“And a minute after that, they’re barging into another session,” Bianca concurred. “And then the first thing they do after sitting down is to start studying the schedule again.”
“How very un-Dollnick,” Flower said. “I suppose I could impose martial law, but I know how much you Humans hate being told how to behave. Brenda?”
“You’re asking my legal opinion?”
“Surely there must be some rules for Human conduct at cons. Didn’t you once tell me about some Robert fellow?”
“Robert’s Rules of Order, but they’re generally used for well-organized civic societies, not for social events.”
“Do cons have security?” Julie asked.
“Some of them give T-shirts to volunteers who get a little training, but back on Earth they mainly relied on hotel security or hiring off-duty police,” Geoffrey said.
“It makes more sense to educate all of the attendees to behave properly than to train a subset of them to enforce rules after the fact,” Flower said. “We could make training mandatory.”
“You mean, put everybody through a course in con etiquette?” Bianca asked. “Not a chance.”
“You know, a little training for the panel moderators could go a long way,” Geoffrey mused. “We wouldn’t have to explicitly call it that. Maybe you could offer a free lunch for all the panel moderators before the first evening of the con and include a little educational entertainment.”
“Why are you assuming the con will start in the evening?” the Sharf asked.
“It’s just how most Earth cons operate. I suppose given the travel time everybody will put in before meeting up with Flower at Union Station we can pretty much ignore the standard scheduling.”
“The official start time for the con will be in the morning,” Flower said. “Humans are more attentive in the morning, with the exception of teenagers, and everybody will get a chance to wake up during the mandatory calisthenics before breakfast. I think a banquet for moderators with some stealth training the night before would work best.”
“Who’s going to be in charge of the training?” Julie asked.
“I can write up some skits or suggestions but I don’t want to tire myself out performing the first evening,” Geoffrey said. “Best to get an experienced master of ceremonies, both for the banquet and for the big events, like the masquerade.”
“Morning,” Jorb announced himself. He took the empty seat on Julie’s left and playfully reached around and tapped her right shoulder with the tip of his tentacle to trick her into looking that direction. “I hope there’s a reason for my being here because I took the morning off from getting beat up by teenage girls at the Vergallian finishing school to attend.”
“We’ve got thirty Human days to the con and we’re trying to get the ground rules in place before I start programming,” Yaem said. “You’ll be in charge of the live-action-role-playing track at Union Station, and Razood, when he gets here, will be running a crafting track on making weapons and general smith skills. I’ve been to a few Frunge cons, and their blacksmithing competitions are always a highlight.”
“I’m twenty minutes early for the tim
e Flower gave me so I assume that means I’m not a core team member,” Jorb said. “Should I go out and come back later?”
“We were just talking about having a banquet dinner for the panel moderators so we can give them a little training,” Geoffrey said. “I’ve moderated hundreds of panels so I know all the tricks, but I’d like to find a master of ceremonies who can make my points without offending anybody.”
“How about a pair of MCs who will offend everybody?” the Drazen countered. “That way your moderators will be so distracted that they won’t even realize that you’re telling them they don’t know how to run a panel. I could probably get us G.G.”
“Grynlan and the Grenouthian?” Bianca’s eyes lit up. “They opened the first con of the circuit I was just on. The two of them had the Hortens in the audience changing colors so rapidly that some of the younger ones passed out. G.G. must cost a fortune, though, and I bet that they’re booked years in advance.”
“I went to the Open University on Union Station with them and it’s still their home base,” Jorb said. “If they aren’t traveling it will be a local gig. They got their professional start doing my going away party.”
“Please contact them for me,” Flower said. “And make sure they know that the job comes with all the fresh fruit and vegetables they can eat.”
“Do you really think that will make a difference?” Julie asked.
“It might persuade the Grenouthian.”
“You know, if I could change one thing about all the cons I went to on Earth, it would be the lighting,” Bianca said. “Sometimes I suspect that hotels with convention facilities keep the lighting subdued so the guests don’t notice the carpet stains.”
“It’s particularly bad in the common areas,” Geoffrey agreed. “And the noise from simultaneous events can be very distracting as well.”
“You’ll have no problems with lighting at our con, and I’ll be deploying audio suppression fields to isolate all ongoing activities,” Flower said.
“Including in the merchant areas?” Yaem asked. “I think they may prefer some background noise for a festive atmosphere.”
“I’ll consult with my third officer who is the point of contact for all of the businesses on board. I’m putting Lynx in charge of the merchant activities. She’ll be here any minute.”
“So in addition to handling correspondence for the art show, I’m going to be helping Yaem schedule the sessions?” Julie asked. “How are we supposed to know which ones conflict with each other?”
“Having a lot going on at the same time has always been part of the charm at cons,” Bianca said. “It’s like the difference between ordering one thing for breakfast or going to a buffet. Con attendees like their variety.”
“More often than not, it’s just bad programming,” Geoffrey contradicted her. “I’ve been to cons where they had three different sessions with galactic empire fiction authors all running at once, and later the same day, there were three overlapping panels on alien lovers in SciFi romance.”
“I think I know the con you mean,” Bianca said. “Sixth told me about it. They ran a track for paranormal romance against a track for shifter romance and she was actually scheduled for two panels in the same time slot and had to run between them. I mean, if shifters aren’t paranormal, what is?”
“Can you give me an example of a strong track for Humans that will keep the same people coming back for more?” Yaem asked.
“Filk,” both authors replied simultaneously, and then Geoffrey gestured for Bianca to continue. “Musicians are perfectly happy to spend most of the day playing and composing or just singing along,” she said. “They might skip out for a particular crafting class in the costuming track, or to go to a favorite author’s signing, but you won’t catch them in some session where the panel is dissecting AI in fiction before the Stryx opened Earth.”
“What if we applied Vergallian rules?” Yaem asked, scanning the faces around the table for a reaction. Jorb groaned, Geoffrey opened his mouth and then didn’t speak, and Bianca looked thoughtful.
“What are Vergallian rules?” Julie asked.
“Some of the biggest Vergallian drama cons feature over a hundred tracks. They’ve been making dramas for at least a million years, and there are probably fans out there for every show that made it through a hundred seasons.”
“A hundred seasons as in a hundred years?”
“Vergallian years, but, yes. It’s a funny culture,” the Sharf continued. “Most of the planets in their Empire of a Hundred Worlds enforce tech bans, but they usually allow entertainment systems, though I’ve heard that some queens put strict limitations on how much children can watch. And when I went to a Vergallian con maybe fifty years back when I happened to be visiting a Fleet world, the thing that struck me was the tracked passes.”
“The con management kept tabs on everybody?” Julie asked.
“Probably, but what I meant is that attendees registered for a particular drama track and the pass was coded for it. I was signed up for ‘Fleet Scout’, a drama about interstellar exploring that must be in its ten-thousandth season by now. I’m not a big drama fan,” Yaem added, “but I used to play a game based on the show so I thought I’d check it out. The first session I attended was all about the psychology of solo-scouts. I was ready to fall asleep after ten minutes, so I slipped out and tried to go into the screening across the corridor. My conference badge almost choked me.”
“I had that happen once myself,” Bianca said ruefully. “The Vergallians program them so you can only enter rooms in your track.”
“And they choke you otherwise?” the lawyer asked. “I don’t like the potential for liability.”
“Actually, you choke yourself,” the Sharf said, rubbing his neck with the memory. “The Vergallians simply run a filtering field at the door of every meeting room and it’s set to pass everything except a badge that’s not coded for the track. It’s rather like finding yourself pulled up by a leash.”
“The Vergallians can get away with something like that but I doubt we can,” Maureen said. “Besides, I’m not sure that restricting attendees to a single track is fair if that’s not what they’re used to.”
“How about a single room per session?” Jorb suggested. “Lots of magical effects we use in LARPing have a cool-down period so you can’t spam some awesome spell over and over again to win every battle. Flower could program smart badges so that after you enter a room and sit down, it changes color, and it’s only good for that one room until the next session.”
“What if somebody goes in the wrong room by mistake?” Julie objected.
“Don’t badges guide you to the correct room?” Flower asked.
“Not at any con I’ve ever been to,” Yaem said, and the two authors nodded in agreement.
“But that would be a simple add-on, and it would allow us to make last-minute room changes based on demand,” the ship’s AI said. “In fact, if I make smart badges out of miniature display panels, we can integrate the schedule, and then attendees can choose where they’re going and I can make sure they get there. Of course, I’ll have to hand off control to the station librarian if any of them go to Union Station for the LARPing studios.”
“Won’t badges like that be too expensive?” Brenda asked.
“Wait a second,” Geoffrey said. “Could you make the badges so that the visitors can enter their own names, Flower? That would save a tremendous amount of time spent waiting in the registration line.”
“You mean the preregistered attendees could just swipe their personal ID to prove they paid and then take a blank badge?” Bianca asked. “That would also make it easier to deal with guests paying at the door because we wouldn’t have to print badges for them.”
“You see?” Flower said over Julie’s implant. “Everything is developing according to plan and we’re going to have the best con ever.”
Nine
“Flower expects you to turn this whole area into a market in less than four w
eeks?” the captain asked his wife. “It must be the same size as the amusement park and the bazaar combined.”
“You’re looking at the empty end of the deck. Our offices for the con are back that way, then the theatres, and then empty residential cabins. Flower has bots working around the clock to reconfigure the Dollnick sleeping nests as beds.”
Woojin shielded his eyes from the bright lights glaring off of polished metal surfaces. “So everything from this ring of spokes forward is going to be filled with folding tables for merchandise vendors?”
“There’s the art show too, though Julie is in charge of that,” Lynx said. “We have to decide whether it’s better to separate art from merchandise all around the deck’s circumference or to have a sharp division between the two.”
“If you’re asking my opinion, I would prefer to see a clear boundary between art and commerce,” Woojin said. “I just hope Flower isn’t putting too much of a load on Julie with managing the art show.”
“You know what it’s like working with Flower. Sometimes I suspect that the only reason she gets us involved in these projects is to have somebody to tell what to do.”
“Go ahead, talk about me as if I’m not here,” the Dollnick AI said over their implants. “And I’ll have you know I keep a close eye on Julie’s digestive activity to make sure she isn’t stressed. Infrared imaging works as well for troubleshooting Humans as it does for spotting electromechanical problems before they develop.”
“Do you really expect enough merchandise vendors and artists to fill the whole circumference of the deck, or are you planning to leave a big bare section?” Woojin asked.
“Once we have the final numbers for how many merchants and artists are showing up and how many tables and vertical pegboards they’ll need, I’ll turn whatever’s left over to the Bitters to set up a gaming space,” Flower said. “If there’s not enough room, we’ll just break gaming into multiple locations. I’m told that out of all the con participants the gamers will be the least mobile, since once they start playing, they don’t move for hours on end.”