They both knew Simon meant the observation as a question, and Andrzej found himself taking great care as he thought how to form his reply. He realized he had never really thought in such a way about his work or future career, but he got Simon’s meaning completely. That was what it was all about from one important perspective. How to answer? Don’t think too long. “That’s a remarkably lucid comment about a world you say you don’t know. My British mentor would roll out his favorite adjective: ‘pithy.’ Are you looking for me to say more than that I agree?”
“Yes.”
Andrzej had known that would be Simon’s response, but he had expected a few more words wrapped around it and a bit more time to think. “Okay, well, isn’t time simply the ultimate constant, even though I’m supposed to say that quality means all to me? Every moment you spend fixing one problem or building some new project means a moment that some other thing is not getting fixed or built. Of course, rushing into shoddiness will end up losing time, that part is obvious, that’s what you go to school and apprenticeship to absorb. I’m young and just getting started but I’ve apprenticed in some pretty complex facilities. I can see that a Master Mechanic has to absorb the absolute march of time into their soul if they want to be really good.”
Simon considered and then drank from his wine glass. With a quiet sigh, he began what seemed like a private thought. “My wife, who is much smarter than I, has spent most of her life thinking about time. She has done many interesting things along the way, with all the information that piles up as time rolls along, but she always seems to be actually poking at time itself.” He let that hang for a moment until Andrzej began to wonder if he was supposed to say something. But Simon came back from the distance and continued. “She would like your answer, given your age. Tell me, Andrzej, where do you work? What do you plan to do with yourself for the next sixty years or so?”
Since that was the question currently foremost on his mind, the answer spilled out of him without hesitation. “Right now, I just landed a great job at Solaris Transport as a Master Mechanic. They have a big plant just to the south of the city. As for my future, I don’t really know. Everyone says I should work my way up with Solaris. They are huge.”
“Aren’t you pretty young to have your Masters certificate and a job at that level?”
Andrzej was starting to suspect that this Simon was not a simple businessman, and that he must know something about the art of keeping machines running and human gears meshed. “Yes, I am lucky to be getting an early start on my career.”
The thin smile returned, and the chair tipped back again. The sparse crowd was a background hum, and the two of them had slipped into a cone of protected conversation without Andrzej realizing that it was happening. Simon offered another observation. “That is the kind of situation that rarely involves luck. Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big believer in luck. But not when it comes to jumping ahead through academic bureaucracies or being offered such an important position at a place like Solaris.” While bringing his chair back to down flat, he added, “It’s also not luck that leaves you so unexcited. Am I right in thinking that you have mixed feelings about your big job?”
“Funny you should say that, Mr. Rosenthal. That’s precisely why I happen to be sitting in this club tonight. I thought I might think through why I feel so queasy about things when I should be celebrating my good luck, or whatever it is if it isn’t luck.”
“Like I said before, please call me Simon. And your choosing to sit here is a shining example of what luck, or serendipity, really looks like in this big world. You don’t want to work for Solaris—admit it. That queasiness you feel is no reflection on them, it’s just your sensing that it would be taking the wrong fork. It is also your soul, for lack of a better word, feeling a stronger but invisible gravitational pull coming from somewhere within your proximal universe.”
Andrzej could still remember the strange tinnitus-like buzz that was building in his head as he began to sense something unusual was emanating from this old man. He was tempted to say nothing, to force Simon to expand and explain his presumptuous certainty, but once again he knew he needed to ask a question here. A curiously simple one came out of his mouth. “What is your business, if I may ask? You mentioned that you owned an enterprise that needed a new department or something along those lines.”
“I am the CEO of the crypto-state usually referred to as Skramble and Hyde. You may have heard of it?” Simon showed only a hint of amusement while he let this piece of the evening’s puzzle sink into Andrzej’s face.
Andrzej’s shock was probably showing, as it dawned on him that this explained Simon’s odd reference to gravitational pull. Skramble and Hyde, storied and secretive, was one of the handful of crypto-states that had emerged from the chaos of the mid-twenty-first century—one of the few that couldn’t be smothered at birth. Born like stars from the undifferentiated energy released as capitalism and democracy began their simultaneous implosions, most burnt out quickly, but Skramble and Hyde had thrived. Watchful and anonymous, it expanded into the space between the traditional nation states, conventional conglomerates, and tattered meta-creeds. Everyone knew the name Skramble and Hyde, but no one knew their leaders.
All Andrzej could think to say was, “I once wrote a long and sophomoric paper about the energy-control lessons to be derived from successful corporate organisms that emerge from the failure of fundamental social structures. It was about the crypto-states. I’m embarrassed just thinking about it in front of you.”
“That’s luck for you. How did you do on the paper?”
“Well, it was a required dissertation on the social implications of engineering and mechanics—something to check the box saying they taught us a bit about the non-mechanical world. I got my Master Mechanics certificate soon thereafter, so I guess I must have done okay.”
Simon had laughed—a friendly and conspiratorial laugh that made Andrzej feel warm inside, like he had pleased someone he wanted to please. With the tinnitus receding he heard Simon say, “Well then, I would like you to come work for me, or for Skramble and Hyde, I mean. Along with many other things, I need a personal guide here in Krakow as I pull together a smallish team and the various assets we require. If possible, I’d like you to start immediately.”
Andrzej should have been taken aback. He should have been suspicious. He should at least have been overt in his caution as a young man suddenly dealing with one of the most enigmatic and powerful humans on earth. Prior to this conversation, he had had no idea who headed Skramble and Hyde, but now he had no doubt it must be this man Simon Rosenthal. His brain stem led him to the simplest step forward. “What would I be doing for Skramble and Hyde, beyond guiding you around the area? What kind of thing are you looking to build here?” It seemed pointless to state the obvious regarding the pivotal nature of this moment in his young life.
Simon peered out from their nook and caught the eye of the waitress, signaling for two more drinks. When he turned back, Andrzej could see that, in Simon’s mind, the offer had been accepted. He was already steaming forward, pleased with the opportune new ballast of an assistant. “Well, I can only give you a brief outline until you have signed one of our standard non-disclosures, but maybe I can paint a picture that will overcome your perfectly logical trepidation.”
Andrzej was already noticing that Simon could manage to appear disarmingly uncertain at will.
“I presume you have heard of Obfuservice, it’s one of our subsidiaries?” Simon didn’t wait for a response to this rhetorical positioning. “Well, we need to establish a new and very secure technical installation, mostly for redundancy and because we tend to be somewhat paranoid as we plan for various futures. I am in the process of securing the rights to a substantial section of the old salt mines in Wieliczka, and we plan to locate our installation there.”
There was a tensioned pause as the drinks arrived and when the waitress left, Andrzej almos
t whispered, “You bought the salt mines?” They were a national treasure, once visited by millions of plodding tourists and now toured virtually by fleeting thousands each year. He couldn’t imagine what it must have cost to buy the mines.
“Well, bought isn’t precisely the right term, but yes. I had been looking for some time and when I saw them, I knew I had found what I was looking for; beautiful yet naturally defensible. And no one will know that we are there amidst the rich history and VR crowds. We just need to fit up a very small section within the forgotten parts of the caverns. That would be your job, to oversee the fit up and then run the facility going forward.”
Andrzej already knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway to hold up his end of the kabuki play. “Okay, but what would this beautiful and defensible installation be doing?”
“I’m afraid that gets us to the part of the story where you have to sign a non-disclosure. We could do that right now, but it’s late and I think we need to be freshly showered to do justice to your arrival as our first employee in Poland. Would it be possible to meet me at my hotel tomorrow morning? One quick signature and then all will be revealed.”
Simon drained his glass of wine and looked carefully at Andrzej, dropping the jovial tone but keeping Andrzej in the zone of reflexive trust he had woven around them. “You can remind your family and friends, when they protest that you have chosen to join up with a very old stranger you met in a bar, that Skramble and Hyde is many times the size of Solaris and that we have weathered many more storms.” With the open smile returning to his face as he passed his dash over the bill and positioned his legs stiffly for standing, “Nine o’clock? I’m staying at the Hotel Amadeus.”
It was after walking through the simple door to the hotel on Mikolajska, with the morning sunshine and shadows stretched out across the cream stone walls of the Hotel Amadeus and the cobble intersection buzzing with foot traffic and podrones, that everything changed for Andrzej.
A pleasant young woman concierge took him through a curtain draped passage and into a period piece library with oriental rugs and silk-covered chairs. Simon was sitting at the small conference table studying a holoscreen that shimmered over the dark blue tablecloth that was set with two breakfast placements. White china and napkins, silverware, and a carved wood bowl containing rolls and breads, jams and butter. The old-world elegance was tempered by a warped and distressed parquet floor that showed around the edges of the carpet, and a very modern coffee express that sat on the walnut sideboard in front of a flaking gold leafed mirror.
Andrzej caught a quick glimpse of what was on the holoscreen before Simon closed it, pushing his chair back to carefully stand. An MRI of three geo-spaces connected by service lines, each highlighted as variegated glowing strands running through a homogeneous surrounding medium: clearly, the salt mines.
“Good morning, Andrzej. I have just taken the liberty of reviewing a bit of your history, and I am now even more delighted to have run into you last night. Please take some coffee. I just sent you our NDA, so maybe you could quickly review and hopefully sign it. I’d like to get moving. There is a short employment offer as well. See if it beats whatever Solaris was offering you. It is also ready to sign. Would you like something more substantial than rolls and toast?”
Andrzej drew a steaming latte from the express and sat to read from his dash, noting that Simon went right back to studying the salt mine structures. The NDA was all of four sentences. He had only seen a few before this, but he remembered them all as being a page or two at least. He signed it, hit send, and turned to the job offer. It was only three paragraphs. One stated salary and how it would be paid. One was about responsibilities, which were described very generally and broadly, and about who he reported to, which was Simon or any designate.
The final paragraph struck Andrzej as odd but somehow harmonized with the first paragraph and the extraordinary salary being offered. Written with exceedingly simple language, it committed Andrzej to existing henceforth in a parallel universe whose worldly face was the crypto-state of Skramble and Hyde. Forever.
As he sat pondering the meaning of this last paragraph and wondering how a legal document of any kind could commit anyone to anything for life, Simon’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “I’m sure you are wondering about section three.” Again, the smile of a simple man. “It’s completely unenforceable. Wouldn’t hold up in any court in the world. It’s there for us, for the sake of our collective conscience. We want to be sure you clearly understand the mind set at Skramble and Hyde before you join us. Within a month, you will think the same way and you will live in that universe. You will still be able to see family and friends, but it will feel like you are stepping back into quaint and slightly dimensionally challenged reality. Not unpleasant really, but you won’t ever want to stay for long.”
Andrzej could remember just the feeling he had as he signed the acceptance line. This way lay a path into an opposite world from what he had been led to expect for his life. But the combination of the austere language in the document, and Simon’s soothing interpretation, drew his finger to the screen of his dash. He seemed to watch himself sign, feeling something close to astonishment.
The instant he had signed Simon reached across the corner of the table and shook his hand. “Welcome to our world, Andrzej. It will take a little while to become acclimated, but less than you might think since I’m going to keep you very busy for the foreseeable future.” He picked up his dash from the table and the holoscreen expanded and tilted to better include Andrzej’s viewing angle. “I have our day laid out in sections, and we have this nice room reserved for the duration of my stay in Krakow. We won’t leave it until dinner this evening. Do you need to take any actions to clear your day’s calendar?”
Andrzej shook his head.
“Great. Just ask for food when you are hungry. We will start with a holo visit to Wieliczka and the geological formations that incorporate the salt mines. Then I will explain what the infamous Serendipity Service really is, and then we will spend an hour or two talking about another one of our Skramble and Hyde divisions, CMS, which stands for Crafted Methylation Services. I don’t suspect you know much about epigenetics?”
“Not really.” Andrzej was becoming overwhelmed and hungry. He couldn’t imagine trying to slow Simon down, so he reached for a brioche.
“Well, you will learn a bit about it on the job. It won’t be central to your endeavors, but it’s fun. Anyway, after that we will pay a visit to our newish home and headquarters on the Sea of Cortez and meet my wife Danni and our friend and partner Morley. That should take us to dinner time.”
And so began the very different path. Hard to believe it was fifty-one years ago.
Donkeys Don’t Assimilate
In the back of her head somewhere, Lori felt like she had lost a year of her life to a coma-like dream. But her front brain knew she was walking down the quiet hallway from her room in the terra-formed hillside for only the twelfth morning. She could see the natural light filtering through into the bridge up ahead of her, and she caught a whiff of dimensional static in the air. Today she was supposed to meet the man responsible for building this place and maintaining Gumbo across its several physical manifestations, the CFM for Skramble and Hyde.
After almost two weeks of immersive histogram sagas and tentative hands-on interactions with the public-facing façade of the Dworld Gumbo and its engine Serendipity, Lori realized she craved some real flesh and blood. Danni was fading before her eyes, which made her deeply sad and often deeply terrified. Morley was lovable and efficient with his history lessons, but Lori had come to realize that he was old in ways that were trans-mutative, ways that only he could understand. At the end of the day, it was all an inside joke for Morley. She was being prepared for an obscurely engineered priesthood by two ghosts who were themselves moving on.
Still they greeted her with a morning affection that immedi
ately reaffirmed the breathtaking singularity of her situation. Morley’s acquired habit of pulling out Lori’s control chair and stiffly retrieving her coffee beaker from Carita in the kitchen was beyond sweet. Just the right amount of sugar every time now, and they made her sit in what they called the captain’s chair at the head of the table. Danni would inquire about the quality of her sleep, even as it became increasingly clear that Danni herself was losing the ability to be truly refreshed.
Danni remained above it all, even as she walked Lori through a long list of lessons learned over many years, from examples of how Serendipity’s AI decision making could go horribly wrong if left un-proctored, to how to respond to warning signals from Obfuservice as it detected yet another legislative attack. Patiently focused on transferring the basic skills for Serendipity’s management to her apprentice, Danni remained constantly amused by the intentional kibitzing of Morley.
For her part, Lori couldn’t escape the feeling that she was being steadily guided towards some anticipated revelation lurking just around the next corner—some sudden insight that would explain what this was really all about.
Lori got the transparency aspects of Gumbo, since she had already been working for several years within the mechanics of Serendipity’s source mapping algorithms. That part was easy to understand. But keeping up with the never-ending attempts by the crypto-states to sabotage or destroy her, Skramble and Hyde’s primary function, was new and confusing territory.
The Holy Grail for states and crypto-states alike was to hide the volume of their tithing flow or revenues, and to thereby avoid the resultant U.N.A. taxes. But there was a carefully distributed cadre of Skramble and Hyde staff monitoring Serendipity’s pervasive sampling of those flows, and their reporting to the U.N.A. had become the gospel truth. Complex judgment calls were infrequent and reporting the derived taxes to be owed to the various governments was well automated at this point, but Danni posed game after game scenario to help Lori zero in on the art of oversight.
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