by G M Steenrod
Cassie often adjusted her mother's glyphs and the associated image stack to focus the emotional impact. She had even created her own. As Cassie moved the boundaries of what could be done with a glyph, she had also found it necessary to create her own lab, independent of the encounter room.
Cassie walked the muddy trail of her scene. The mud deformed in response to the pressure of her feet. Two moths in courtship play, wings flapping furiously, flew by her and lit up into the tree tops.
She walked to the edge of a large mud puddle and with her calligraphy brush painted a glyph into the air. “Incorporate.” The glyph sank down and into the surface of the mud puddle. It became a shimmer in the reflection of her face. She smiled at it. The glyph would now be seen only during rain events in the scene, and only when a person looked into this mud puddle. It was an unintended design that tickled her.
Samuel trotted up beside her while she worked. She turned to him when she finished.
“If it's not my harshest critic,” she said, scrunching his furry, black cheeks. “Where have you been? A place of mystery and wonder I take it?”
Samuel licked his chops and started trotting down the path. He obeyed the edges for about 30 seconds, and then became bored. He looked back at Cassie. She was momentarily elated. He puffed through his nose, and then darted through the open door of the lab.
“Such a critic!” she shouted after him. Samuel's superior senses were unsatisfied by the screens, but Cassie knew it was also because the scenes couldn't stimulate emotional response from Samuel. Except for anger or perhaps disgust. In Samuel, it also seemed to be an affront to him.
The emotive glyphs helped to hook a human into the scene. Perfect simulacrums of reality didn't have the impact of well-designed scene with emotives. Humans responded to the scenes better, and tended to regard them as being more true to life.
Cassie wondered if it was possible to create a glyph that Samuel would respond to. The image stack was likely, but that would meet with an equally poor reception from Samuel. The key would be to discover a glyph set for dogs. Doggie hieroglyphs? Her mother had to have had a starting point for creating the glyphs. Cassie modified them by feel, but that was off of already functioning glyphs. Hieroglyphs were a common comparison, and were a likely pre-cursor. Cassie was almost certain her mother said something about being inspired by hieroglyphs, but not sourcing from them. Ada might also have encouraged the comparison to throw competitors off of her process. Ada knew how to protect her income streams. It was a quality that Cassie much admired in her mother. Cassie knew that within a week of her releasing this project, her mods would be copied by scene builders everywhere, after having been disseminated through the digital tentacles of the ether. Her mother would have squelched copycats almost immediately.
Cassie glanced around the scene. She had gotten out of the flow she needed to put the glyphs in properly. She sighed impatiently. The place she needed to be was temperamental. If it wasn't there, she couldn't work.
“Alfie, shut it down.”
The screens blinked off. Cassie tossed her calligraphy kit onto the console and walked out the lab door.
***
Cassie found herself strolling along the river. She had gotten there in an almost fugue-like state, blind to the passage of time. Her mind present, but silent. Time had passed swiftly.
The temperature had shifted cold in a sharp change from the earlier day. It would be cool that evening. The night was coming. The last colors of daylight, framing the tree tops, were fading. Cassie walked more swiftly. Curls of fog were rising off of the river. She didn't want to get caught outside without the proper clothing.
There was no risk on the path. She had walked it many times in the evening. Sometimes, when she was “recalibrating” her head, she would walk for miles, before becoming aware of her surroundings. As a result, she had gone for many “evening strolls” and had grown accustomed to the darkness.
She disliked being physically uncomfortable, though. Cassie quickened her pace. Up ahead she knew her favorite spot waited.
She puffed a little harder and made a final determined burst to the rise. The mill loomed across the river. Cassie smiled and looked at the stars emerging overhead. It was a beautiful start to the evening. The fog was thickening over the water. In a short while it would be thick enough to make it difficult to navigate the rest of the way home. Moments like this were important to a scene builder like her, so she dallied. She looked across the river, and watched the fog reach toward the mill. The progress of the fog seemed to draw the Mill from the hard place it held in her world and fade it into memory.
A flicker of light? Cassie caught the smallest glint of light.
“Is there someone there?” she asked aloud to the fog. Cassie scanned the mill. A small flash escaped through one of the mill's ancient windows.
“Someone is having an adventure,” she said, her voice revealing pleasure and envy. She ran her fingers lightly through the curls of her hair.
“Well, time to get back,” she said aloud. A light seemed to emerge in response at one of the mill's windows. It was stronger than the one's before and framed the silhouette of a figure.
Cassie was certain that it was a man, although at that distance, it would have been impossible to tell.
“Good luck to you, brave adventurer.” Cassie gave him a ceremonial bow and turned into the thickening mist.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Futures
Kumar watched the graph scroll across his screen. He had extensive holdings in the future's market in both water and atmosphere. His position, which anticipated a high demand, was proving to be very profitable. A large filtration plant had gone offline for 23 hours, two weeks ago, and the market was driving water higher.
He leaned back in his vintage leather chair and looked out across the cityscape displayed on the screens. He made a handsome living managing talent. His wealth, though, needed to be working on making its own return. Otherwise, it was wasted time. It was wasted money.
The port was visible from his office. He was waiting for an arrival. The timer on his screen counted down-- 8:49 seconds.
He peered into the distance. A small dot emerged on the horizon. It grew quickly. A halo of flames became visible around the black dot. A long rhomboid shape replaced the dot, mounted beneath a lift vehicle. The vehicle maneuvered itself, wasp-like, over the landing pad in the port. The whole assembly touched down.
30 seconds earlier than expected.
Large hydraulic screws, attached to the rails on the bottom of the lift vehicle, activated. In unison, 20 of them spun out of their holes, releasing the rhomboid.
With a pulsed burn of its thrusters, the ship lifted back into atmosphere, and headed toward the next bit of cargo waiting for it in orbit.
“5,000 souls ready for the Red Lady,” Kumar said to the room.
Kumar had been born on Earth, and had moved with his father and his 2 wives to Mars at the age of 8. He had arrived in a much smaller transport vehicle that held 250 people. The large transport on the pad was essentially the same transport, replicated sequentially for the greater number.
They were boring, but safe. The transports were reinforced against kinetic impact and radiation. The living quarters were sparse, but each was compartmentalized, and could survive catastrophic failure elsewhere in the transport.
He knew that, at that moment, robots were making their way out onto the platform. They would open the cargo compartment and begin hauling luggage to the way station. The skin of the rhomboid, exposed to space, descent, and rocket wash, needed a few moments to normalize. Then they would walk free.
The graph trembled. Mars's population just grew by 5,000. Everyone had lived through the trip. Through the Ether, people bought and sold their futures position. Each gambled against the other. Kumar stood firm. He had expected the ship to arrive safely, and had gambled that everyone would make it. Even in the modern era, in a time of ubiquitous travel to Mars, passengers were strongly vetted
.
The graph trembled furiously. Up and down. Up and down. It stabilized and then climbed steadily up.
“Graph off.” Kumar didn't need to see it happen. He knew his sell order would hit.
Kumar rubbed his belly in satisfaction. He stretched his sleek musculature back into his chair and enjoyed his victory.
“Sir, your next appointment should arrive shortly.”
Kumar grunted. “Thank you, Geppetto.” Kumar had linked the presences between his office and his residence. With screens, it was unusual for people to meet in person. It was even more unusual on Mars, where most professionals didn't have an office to work out of.
As with any city structure, sections of New Port had high vacancy, and sections were densely populated. Many Earthers assumed that the space was at a premium among the domed cities of Mars. That had been true of the first settlements of Mars, where a small “town” size settlement would cost billions of dollars due to the need to import directly from the surface of Earth. As asteroid mining grew, and orbital factories became fully established, the costs dropped to about twice the cost of building on Earth.
Martian mines, Martian production, and Martian innovation. Kumar and his father had arrived at the cusp of the transition from scientific and industrial communities to actual day to day living communities. As Mars became Mars-centered, the solutions to the problems of living on Mars were no longer Earth solutions applied to Mars, but solutions by Martians for Martians.
A materials scientist, Bradford Tol, had discovered that in the lower gravity of Mars, an overlapping, and precisely arranged matrix of aluminum and silicon dioxide could be created. The resulting sheets could be formed into light, high strength corrugated panels for building domes.
With robots working both mining and production on the Martian surface, the cost for building domes dropped to less than the cost of common roofing on Earth. Even a private individual could build a small domed homestead somewhere on the Martian landscape. Since land was free on Mars, and one could build in non-charter areas without any limitation, more than one homesteading company had been established to help that process for ambitious Earthers. A highly successful establishment used a scene with a retro picture of a domed cabin and a hydroponic field, surrounded by nothing but barren landscape. It very successfully tapped into the pioneering spirit that had lain dormant in the hearts of some humans for generations.
Of course, it was cheaper to live in the cities, and safer. The city didn't suddenly run out oxygen. In a city, a dust storm couldn't imperil your power supply by blowing for 2 weeks to render the solar panels useless. Most importantly, there were health and police services in cities. In a private homestead, there was nothing other than what you brought with you, and no services that you couldn't render by hand or with simple robotics.
Many a “pioneer” found him or herself migrating to the cities within a year of settlement. Some were simply found, mummified in less than stately fashion, within their domiciles during a safety check by a wandering Black Corp ranger. In instances where the next of kin were declared, they would be notified, and the corpse treated according to any insurance policy. In other instances, the domicile was simply recorded and the corpse left entombed.
A city dome could be expanded quickly and efficiently. It was avoided, because sprawl was a challenge to infrastructure, and essentials like atmosphere, water, food, waste control and energy. The true challenge of living on Mars was not space, which had been conquered by technology, but the stuff of life. Those minimum resource needs, and the supply chains involved in meeting the needs, were calculated down to the individual human and according to the statistical function known as miscellaneous biomass (pets, rodents, insects, plants, bacteria).
Martian society had been founded on the type of precise accounting needed for the space travel that early Mars relied on for survival. Ultimately, that accounting had led to a speculative futures market that was far more robust than the one on Earth. Even the impact of illegal goods were considered in the futures, known as DI or Dark Influence.
Kumar “owned” his office. He had purchased a lifetime lease shortly after he had outright purchased his domicile. As the popularity of the area increased afterward, the appearance of success he conveyed to potential clients mushroomed. In the early days, when he managed very few clients, he used gray, printed composite furniture. He insisted that his potential talent met him at his office. They were duly impressed by his success and quickly signed onto his management.
The office now sported an inlaid hardwood floor, imported from Earth. The desk was also hardwood, from 1920s middle America. The feature piece was a white marble, Roman bust, with a chipped left ear, of some forgotten patrician. The screens behind the piece usually displayed a Mediterranean view overlooking the ocean.
He had come a long way from the composite furniture. It was an impressive display of growing wealth, as everything had required shipping from Earth in its bulkiest form. The only thing more expensive than bulk shipped items were large animals.
When Avra Sar skyrocketed to musical stardom among the domes of Mars, Sar (the person's chosen pronoun) had imported a giraffe. Kumar had briefly considered a large animal, maybe a buffalo. While he could in a good year afford the buffalo, having to constantly maintain it, and account for its biomass would have been egregious. Sar's giraffe was reported to have caused the futures market to move by itself.
“Sir, Fillmore has arrived,” Geppetto announced.
Kumar moved to a table near his desk and lounged in a large chair facing the door.
“Let him in.”
The door opened and Fillmore entered. It was a large office, with 30 square meters visible. It wasn't Fillmore's first visit, but it never ceased to at least slightly impress him. Kumar was also a strikingly handsome man. He lounged like a potentate of old Earth times. His collared jumpsuit revealed his torso to his waist. He was a sumptuous specimen even without the enhancement of the screens.
“Fillmore, please have a seat,” Kumar said gesturing to a small chair placed directly across from Kumar. At his behest, Fillmore sat. Fillmore was a large man. While the chair was of normal size, it seemed miniaturized in contrast.
“Kumar, it is good to see you. I have your reports.” Kumar gestured quickly to the air and Fillmore fell silent.
“Geppetto, please activate the obfuscator.” There was a brief lull before a constant droning noise emerged in the background. It was the only overt indicator that a highly sophisticated jammer had been activated, and that Geppetto had severed all but one channel to the ether.
Talent management was notorious for theft of information and surveillance. Kumar's obfuscator came under a very expensive performance lease. Not a single project detail had been leaked since he subscribed to the systems, a direct result of Kumar's investment.
Fillmore stretched out a hand to the reclined Kumar, a small rod of data held in his fingers. The data could be transferred directly to Geppetto from Fillmore's personal device, had he stored the info there, of course. Kumar insisted on using encrypted data rods. The rods could not be penetrated using digital snooping methods and were highly encrypted. Kumar owned only three such rods, because of the expense. He gave one out before any assignment requiring a data transfer.
He held the end up to his eye briefly. It projected an image to his retina that indicated that contents were present and that the rod was in good health. He would examine the contents in private later.
“Was there anything out of the ordinary?” Kumar asked.
Fillmore leaned forward in his chair. “We lost a probe at Paring Entertainment. They haven't had any type of counter-surveillance before. It could have been a routine upgrade or they could have suspected something.”
Kumar raised an eyebrow. “That is interesting,” he said.
His opposition getting better at the game was an inconvenience. Kumar's business methods were the product of both his own experience and that of hired intelligence contractors
. Fillmore was one such contractor he had met by happenstance at one of the dark grid scene parlors. Fillmore was skilled but unsophisticated. Kumar had had to coach him on the standards he wanted met, mainly, invisibility. Fillmore was more of a large, blunt tool.
“Up until the probe was burned, the data doesn't show any new business. Seems like an unnecessary expense,” Fillmore said, continuing the briefing.
Kumar would poach a client if the client could generate revenue worth the effort. P.E. had a consistent stable of talent, but nothing that would justify poaching. He also never tried to sabotage a rival's existing business directly. Sabotage generated hard feelings. Prodded enough, his rivals would up their spending on intelligence as well. Profits were quickly lost in such conflicts.
“It could be paranoia,” Kumar responded. “Or a good salesman,” he thought. As a sales professional himself, there was nothing like the possibility of loss to drive sales. The key was to make the buyer feel like the loss was immediate.