Year Zero

by Rob Reid

  “Why, those of the primitive society. Vital as the Indigenous Arts Doctrine is to us, it would be immoral for us to impose it on outsiders.”

  “And they’d probably just ignore our Entreaties anyway,” the deep, gravelly voice added sulkily.

  “So to be more specific, Mr. Speaker,” I said. “If I were to take one of your Collective Patrimony songs and copyright it in Washington, American laws would apply to that song within the boundaries of the United States. And then those copyrights would be protected elsewhere on Earth by way of the Berne Convention.”

  “I’m not entirely familiar with your laws, but that sounds correct.”

  “He’s got it right, Your Illustriousness,” Judy said, giving me a baffled look. “He definitely knows his way around the Berne Convention.”

  “So if that Collective Patrimony song were then copied illegally on Earth,” I continued, “American penalties would apply to any human violators, and those penalties would be due to the registered owners on Earth.”

  “That is correct,” the Speaker confirmed.

  “Okay. Now let’s suppose that I create an American-based company that is jointly owned by each and every Refined League citizen. And then let’s say I register the copyright of a Collective Patrimony song to that company in the U.S.” I paused briefly to let this notion sink in. “Then, let’s say some guy living in New York pirates a copy of that song. The financial penalty for his copyright violation will theoretically be due to the citizens of the Refined League—each and every one of whom would be entitled to a tiny, coequal sliver of it, right?”

  “Why yes, that’s true,” the Speaker said.

  “So in theory, if I registered a bunch of your songs to you on Earth … and if the people of Earth then made as many pirated copies of your songs as you’ve made of our songs—our respective debts should cancel out, yes?”

  “That is theoretically true,” the Speaker said slowly. “But by your own laws, only the person who uploads, or makes an illegal copy is liable for any fines on it. This of course is fair, and logical. But from the standpoint of canceling our debt, it’s problematic—because each and every non–North Korean on Earth is technically owed vast sums of money, by way of the wealth that’s due to record labels, musicians, and other music rights-holders being redistributed by taxes.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “So in order to reverse the universe’s debt, it isn’t enough to simply make lots of illicit copies on Earth. Instead, each and every non–North Korean has to personally make lots of illicit copies.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Thank you for clarifying all of that, Mr. Speaker.” I paused briefly to indicate that I was shifting gears. Then, “Mr. Speaker, are you familiar with something called a ‘junk joke’?”

  The Speaker chortled. “Why of course, and I’m most fond of them. They’re the jokes that medical technicians insert into their work when they update the genetic code of a species. Have you heard the one about the Octarian Weevil who uploaded its ganglions to both instantiations of the OverNet?”

  Boy had I. Frampton had practically asphyxiated when Carly told him this doozy. And I already had this crowd eating out of my hand. Was I about to save the world … and launch an intergalactic stand-up career? “Do you mean the Octarian Weevil who wanted to have—second thoughts?” I asked.

  Utter silence.

  “You need to work rather hard on your delivery,” the Speaker said gently. “But yes, that’s the junk joke I was referring to. Anyway, how is all of this related to our debt?”

  “Well, as you may know, we humans store complete copies of our genomes in each and every cell of our bodies.”

  “I didn’t actually know that, but that’s a very common evolutionary strategy, so I’m not surprised.”

  “And the human body has up to a hundred trillion cells in it, each of which divides many times in its lifetime. And each division of every cell creates an entirely new copy of the person’s entire genetic code.”

  “Why … yes, that’s not surprising,” the Speaker said, with a hint of comprehension starting to creep into his voice.

  “And there’s approximately half a gigabyte’s worth of junk DNA in each and every one of those cells. That’s enough data to carry over eight hours of music at high fidelity, and up to fifty hours at low fidelity. And that’s just using human technology—I’m sure you guys can do much better.”

  “So—so what are you proposing?” the Speaker asked excitedly.

  “I’m proposing that your technicians push out an update to the human genome. One that’s loaded up with lots and lots of songs that are part of the Refined League’s Collective Patrimony. I will copyright those songs in the name of a Delaware-based company that is already set up, which we’ll register in the name of the Refined League. As soon as the genetic update goes out, each and every person on Earth will start making trillions and trillions of unauthorized copies of your intellectual property, around the clock. You can then carefully track the number of copies that each person has made against the wealth that they are personally owed by the Refined League, and strip the songs out of their DNA once that wealth is almost entirely depleted. Is that possible?”

  “Well, this is a bit more complicated than a normal genome update, since we’d have to track and manage individuals rather than a planetary system as a whole,” the Speaker said. “But to our technicians—it would be child’s play.”

  The pounding started again, this time at a positively deafening level. The Speaker allowed it to continue for quite a while before silencing it. “This sounds extremely promising,” he continued, once it was quiet again. “But let’s explore the details. You said ‘once that wealth is almost entirely depleted.’ Do you intend for the Refined League to still owe the people of Earth some fraction of the existing debt?”

  “Yes. I would propose that the people of Earth retain roughly ten percent of the universe’s wealth. That seems fair, because we’re giving so much back unilaterally, and because our creative works do in fact bring incalculable joy to every citizen of the Refined League. This means that every Refined individual and organization will retain ninety percent of their current wealth. The ten percent that goes to us will buy each of you an eternity of access to our entire music catalog. Which is an excellent entertainment value.”

  This was welcomed with more explosive pounding.

  “Speaker,” Judy said after it tapered off, “I must say, my hireling’s solution is quite brilliant.” She then turned and gave me a meaningful look, adding, “It’s also … extremely original.” The thundering resumed, and I flushed with the pride of a young Jedi getting a public attaboy from Yoda himself. “He and I will need to do some tweaking to make it completely bulletproof,” Judy continued, once the chamber quieted down. “But none of that should take long. How long will the genetic work take on your side?”

  “It’s already done,” the Speaker said. “I told you it would be child’s play. And we can push out the update to all sectors of your planet quite quickly by taking advantage of the favorable Wrinkle geometry that we have on our world. So once you’ve done your legal work, massive copyright infringements can start taking place in every non–North Korean human body forthwith.”

  “Fantastic,” Judy said. “So we have everything figured out. Provided Paulie keeps his word. Which is a concern. He’s still protected by a metallicam force field, so we won’t have many options if he breaks his promise.”

  “Oh, that won’t be a problem,” the Speaker said. “We’ve been monitoring the situation in the Decapus cavern closely. Apparently a black cat was hiding in the building on Paulie’s side of the force field. Moments after you left, it jumped him, and now has him pinned. The cat seems to be taking orders from the woman you call Manda. And the vacuum cleaner is laughing too hard to do anything about the situation. So, I’m sure that Paulie will keep his word.”

  * * *

  1. The Council used to meet in a suitably dignified space whose every cont
our, measurement, and ratio combined to create a physical embodiment of the elegant equation that mathematically proves the eternal correctness of the Indigenous Arts Doctrine. Then came the Kotter Moment—and some months after it, a wild rumor that the band Black Sabbath was coming to the Guardian Council to issue some odious demand. The Guardians immediately redesigned their digs in hopes of making the band feel more at home, on the slim chance that the rumor was actually true. They have yet to revert to their old quarters because, well, you just never know …

  For the same reason, the Earth’s atmosphere and gravity are perfectly replicated within The Core—as well as at every other Guardian facility (including the entire planet where pluhhhs managed the Townshend Line. This required major engineering, as it used to have twice our gravity, and an atmosphere that, by eerie coincidence, almost perfectly mirrored the chemical composition of Drakkar Noir).

  EPILOGUE

  THE GREAT DECELERATOR

  Things stayed pretty crazy for several weeks. As soon as Meowhaus and Manda got Paulie to drop the force field, he and Özzÿ were Dislocated to the Guardians’ planet, where they were locked up to await trial. The prosecutor demanded a penalty of “continuously repeated incineration,” which sounded bad (and familiar to Manda, who was raised nominally Catholic). But neither Paulie nor Özzÿ had prior criminal records, which bolstered their pleas for leniency. The prosecutor was also as happy as anyone to get ninety percent of his money back, which wouldn’t have happened if the perps hadn’t tried their very best to destroy the Earth. So after a respectable amount of haggling, the two sides settled on thirty days1 of “Enhanced Domestic Exile” in a plea bargain.

  This particular penalty hadn’t been handed down since the earliest days of Refined history (there’s hardly any crime out there, since Refined beings truly are a bunch of wimpy little Do-Bee’s). It requires that convicts be exiled “beyond the Refined League’s outer boundaries,” and also that they be placed under house arrest. This sounded fine until it was time to send them off, when everyone realized that the Refined League doesn’t actually have outer boundaries anymore, and even if it did, Paulie and Özzÿ didn’t have second homes out there.

  By then, a new force field had been constructed around our planet (under the name of The Bieber Line, I hate to say). So someone suggested that they be exiled to a place that fell within it, since that would put them beyond the Refined League’s boundaries in a manner of speaking, anyway. Of course, the only habitable planet within the Bieber Line was Earth itself, and the convicts didn’t have homes here either. So after lots of debate and costly legal motions, Paulie was exiled to Pugwash’s apartment, and Özzÿ was exiled to mine.

  Özzÿ actually turned out to be a great roommate. Although a nincompoop by Refined standards, he’s a technical genius by ours, and within a week, he had created an amazing home recording studio for Manda’s place, and a spectacular media system for mine. And he can say what he wants about not being a goddamn vacuum cleaner—but for the entire month that he stayed with me, there was never a speck of dirt on the floor.2 For their part, Paulie and Pugwash were at each other’s throats constantly. But it’s now been three months since the term of the exile ended, and Paulie has yet to move out.3 Manda thinks they’re scheming to literally take over the universe. She’s probably right.

  There has meanwhile been lots of work to do. The basic outlines of my proposed solution to the debt crisis held up remarkably well, but there have been tons of loose ends for Judy and me to nail down. For instance—Angola (among others) never signed the Berne Convention. But somehow the country got a few songs onto Refined playlists everywhere. This makes it really complicated to work down the debt that’s owed to its citizens, for a bunch of arcane reasons. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney doesn’t have quite enough cells in his body to discharge the debt that’s owed to him, unless he lives to be 164 or so. And what about the record labels, and the many other companies that own music rights? Much of their windfall goes to their governments via taxes—but how do you offset the vast wealth that remains with them, given that companies don’t have DNA, or cells?

  There are solutions to these, and several other technical legal problems that have cropped up (for instance, Judy easily bullied Angola into playing ball, Refined biotech can see to it that Sir Paul lives to 164 and beyond, and companies are owned by shareholders, so we’ve traced the wealth that’s in corporate hands up through brokerage accounts, mutual funds, and private stock ledgers, in order to take it out of the cells of the people who ultimately own equity in them). But it’s a lot of work for two lawyers4 and a paralegal.5 And much as I’ve lobbied to at least bring Randy onto the case, for now Judy insists that we keep it entirely under wraps.

  Another challenge arose when Earth’s force field collapsed again. This time the Guardians themselves knocked it down when they sent Paulie and Özzÿ through it to serve out their Enhanced Exiles on Earth (duh). Rather than rebuild the damned thing a third time, they just pushed out a Consummately Heartfelt Entreaty to every citizen of the Refined League demanding that they stay the fuck away from Earth—or else. Judy wrote it personally, so you don’t have to worry about flying saucers turning up at the next Bonnaroo.

  With Earth safely sealed off behind a wall of fiery rhetoric, the big challenge now is to find—and to do something about—the beings who already snuck in. All we know is that nine “trespassers” came to Earth back before the Townshend Line was fully activated in the late seventies. But who (and what) are they? We naturally suspect Perfuffinites, because they can fit in so well among humans. But there are also eleven hundred other Refined species that could blend in to our environment to some degree. Since her Consummately Heartfelt Entreaty went over so well, the Guardians asked Judy if she’d head up the effort to find them—and she agreed. I think it’s brave, and even kind of noble, of her to take this on (some of those guys might be armed, after all). But it embarrasses her when I say this, and she insists that she’s only doing it because she’s power-hungry and greedy.

  There’s of course some truth to that—and there actually is a huge monetary dimension to Judy’s mission. The issue is that while every non–North Korean on Earth is now staggeringly rich (ten percent of the universe’s wealth carved up between us is a buttload of terra, exa, or zettadollars per head—I forget which), none of us can touch our loot until humanity becomes Refined. And we can’t become Refined until our technology starts advancing at a reasonable rate again. So for now, virtually no one on Earth knows a thing about what’s happening between us and the rest of the cosmos. And meanwhile, your money and mine (and, yes, Judy’s, too) is sitting out there in escrow someplace. Judy agreed to hunt down the trespassers in part because she suspected them of causing our technology slowdown. And it turns out that in the case of at least one of them, her instincts were spot-on.

  I learned this not long ago, when I received an urgent email from Judy. It was early in the evening, and her message ordered me to grab Bootsy (her current name for Manda) and go home to await a visitor. I’ve found my first trespasser, her email said. It’s a Perfuffinite—and THIS IS THE BASTARD who’s behind all of our tech problems! The message went on to say that the Guardian Council had issued the guy a Most Heartfelt Entreaty to come to The Core and explain himself. But he had refused, and Judy expected at least a month of bureaucratic handwringing before they got around to Dislocating him. He also wasn’t willing to meet with Judy for now (maybe he was already terrified of her). So after some negotiating, she had persuaded him to sit down for an initial deposition with me.

  Right at seven, he knocked. “Let me get it,” Manda said. “You should be at our desk, looking magisterial.” As Manda headed to the door, I tried to look as magisterial as a guy can, sitting at a plywood desk covered with cheap rosewood veneer.6

  There was silence for at least three seconds after Manda opened the door. Then finally she said, “It’s … you?”

  “In the flesh,” answered a nerdy voice that I didn’t reco
gnize.

  As my visitor entered, I twirled on our squeaky desk chair in a way that I hoped would come off as imperious. A trim, fifty-something guy with brown hair and glasses was standing just inside the doorway. “Bill … Gates?” I asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said. “You’re—an alien?”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re surprised. Hey, nice cat!”

  “Gggggggggh!”

  “Have a seat,” Manda suggested, gesturing grandly at our couch. Bill Gates made himself at home.

  “So,” I said, feigning nonchalance reasonably well. “You said that you’re only Bill Gates ‘in a manner of speaking.’ ”

  “I did. When I came to Earth back in seventy-eight, I tracked down a guy who looked just like me, and kind of replaced him. He was the original Bill Gates. He’d already started Microsoft a few years before that, and it wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “And what did you … do to him?”

  “Several cruel experiments. Then I drained all the fluids from his body, put his brain in a jar, and buried the rest of him under this giant crop circle that I made about forty miles north of London.”

  I gave him a horrified look.

  “Ha—gotcha! Actually, I made friends with him, told him what was going on, and talked him into swapping places with me.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Oh, it was easy. He was a college dropout living in Albuquerque with a crap software company, no girlfriend, and a huge science fiction collection. And I was touring dozens of galaxies, doing this John Denver show that was packin’ ’em in. Hey, didja know that Johnny-D was born in Roswell? Anyway, I clinched the deal by telling him about the chicks.”

  “What chicks?” Manda asked.