by G M Steenrod
“You should be able to restructure the tool as you define the project better. Once you have a better idea of the parameters, you should be able double the rate.” It was a gut estimate by Trago, but his gut was filled with statistics, math, and instinct.
Cassie's face eased.
“Let me work with your mother on creating a secure draw from the Ether. I may even be able to subtly prioritize resources from the Great for you to make it more consistent.”
Ada raised an eyebrow.
“I'll let you dig deep into her code then, Auntie. Who knows what secrets you can probe free from it,” Cassie jibed.
“Cassie,” it was a comically stern tone from Trago. Comic, because her jibe was both literally and figuratively true.
“Well, look at what I missed out on over the years,” Ada referred to the dynamic among the 3 of them, and the intervening years since her death.
“Mom, that is very flame. Maybe you shouldn't joke about being dead.” Simulacrum weren’t permitted to allow a dead individual to pass as living. Ada's specific routines had made the fact a point of regular conversation. Overtime, it had helped to deepen Cassie's acceptance of her death, and desensitize her to the topic.
“You certainly are her, aren't you, Ada?” said Trago. There was an admiration in his voice, partly from the love he had for the living Ada, and partly for the work.
“As close as I can be, lover,” Ada responded.
Cassie rolled her eyes and waved herself off the screen.
Would there be any difference between her relationship with Kumar and a relationship between Ada and Trago? Certainly the Ada simulacrum was a better quality human than many organic humans Cassie had known. The simulacrum probably didn't have the depth of creativity that the organic Ada did, but most organic humans didn't either.
Cassie didn't feel like having an internal philosophical discourse, but it had been brewing for a long time. Her work on the new glyph had brought those questions to the forefront. She realized she couldn't advance the project without contemplating the depth of the human experience. Her new, dark glyph had been successful with Samuel partly because it had a broad enough selection of visual experience that he interpreted the threat as being real. The symbol of the new glyph was also important to trigger cross-species. It was a great step, but it was equivalent to her hiding a puppet in the woods. If Samuel were to spot such a puppet, he would see it as being real and react to defend her. Was that enough?
The puppet was a deception. The spider had been a deception. Her mother, the Ada simulacrum, was a deception.
What she craved was a completeness of experience. A puppet was shallow. Her mother was a simulacrum that Cassie never believed was actually physically present. Despite that, it was also very easy for Cassie to believe that there was a real person behind that screen image, perhaps at an Oz-like terminal.
In contrast, the spider seemed like it was really present even when she had known it was not real. Granted, she had fallen asleep while working on it. Cassie suspected that the glyph had activated some form of subconscious trigger that had thrown her into a dream-like state…but the spider continued to be a threat even after waking. There was also Samuel's vicious defense, which was the best confirmation.
Even while clearly, logically, unreal, the spider seemed present. That's what she wanted. She wanted the new glyphs to make things present.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Real
Kumar had 3 rapid-fire successes with venues. Leera and the band was happy. The credits were flowing, and the pressure was off. Kumar's absolute confidence in their success had moved the band along when there was a lot of doubt whether they would make it on Earth.
Leera was happy she persuaded the others to accept Kumar's management. It was a good decision.
Kumar had celebrated their success with a large handlebar mustache. It framed his face with precision. His facial and body hair was normally sparse. He had to use a follicle stimulating cream to grow the mustache. While common on Earth and inexpensive, on Mars, it had a large waste processing tax associated with it that made it a luxurious indulgence. The cream left a large hormonal residue in waste water that required a complex catalyzing system to fully breakdown. The cost of doing so was fully recovered through the tax. The mustache came out as a glorious specimen of bygone decades, and Kumar was thoroughly pleased with his purchase.
Numbers scrolled up on the screen before him. He gestured at them, sliding them about. As a promoter, he was in an envious position. Leera's last two shows had sold out. There were people that had missed out on seeing the concerts. He had unmet demand. That meant spirited ticket bidding. Bidding had increased the ticket price by 30% so far. He stroked his mustache. The key was to increase capacity to increase sales volume, but to keep up the demand to keep up the bid price. It was a balancing act.
Kumar directed the numbers into software that projected likely need for capacity and likely bid price. Even at very conservative settings, the software predicted no downward price pressure in the bidding at up to a 20% increase in seat numbers. With a few more gestures, he slid the numbers around on the screen. If he reduced the seating capacity, the bid didn't rise.
The safe course was highly profitable. Kumar knew the model before him was based on general, historic data on consumers of performance entertainment, augmented by the data he had gathered from the Earth performances legitimately. Fillmore had secretly gathered more specific consumer data on Earth as well, at some risk of getting caught and penalized. Kumar's model could predict buying behavior with about 68% confidence with all the information.
Kumar had chosen a deep purple jumpsuit for today. It was somewhat conservative, covering his torso completely, with small circular cutouts along the outside of his legs. Around his neck he wore a necklace of 2 inch globes. Each was a spherical screen that would randomly adopt the image of one of the planets in the solar system. Between each sphere, there was a tuft of fur from the grow tanks. Cultivated leather and fur had been developed on Mars to eliminate the needs of animal husbandry in the limited biospheres of the domes. It had caught on on Earth as well, but as part of a populist morality that had emerged during the Troubles rather than a need.
Kumar had an impulse to push the ticket sales harder than the conservative path would suggest. He trusted his impulses, but he knew that his ambition could be fueled by a pent up need for a physical work out and partly by unsatisfied sexual appetite. He had been working non-stop to ride the wave of successes that had been coming his way, and hadn't had time for fulfilling either need. It was a conscious sacrifice. Now, though, it was resulting in him not trusting himself.
He'd chosen his outfit because he knew he could workout in it in his office. The cut and cloth was designed for activity. Even his necklace would grip the fabric's surface and not move around.
“Geppetto, drop the rope please,” Said Kumar. A small hatch opened in the ceiling and a cord spun downward. Kumar walked over to it and kicked lightly at a floor tile. It popped open. He grabbed a set of handles attached to a pair of cords and wrapped them around his right forearm. With a jump he mounted the ceiling cord, and scrambled up a few meters. Delicately, precisely, he inverted himself on the rope and hooked his feet into a pair of hoops mounted into the ceiling. He let go of the ceiling cord and dangled from the ceiling, upside down. It looked very much like he was standing on his office ceiling.
Kumar did a sit up, slowly and steadily curling his abdominal muscles, then his hip flexors. He would finish with his torso almost flat on his legs. After ten, he unwrapped the handles from his forearm, and held one in each hand. He pressed his hands to his chest.
“Geppetto, give me 50% please.”
The floor cords grew taught in response. Kumar grunted slightly as the resistance pulled on him. The lighter Mars gravity meant some form of active resistance had to be used to make exercise more fruitful. He started his sit ups again. This time he completed 50. Sweat had started to lightly bead on his f
orehead but had not yet reached the point of dripping to the floor.
“Geppetto, 100% please.”
The cords grew more taught. Kumar dug the handles into his chest to prevent his arms from being pulled away. The handles and the cords dug into him. Most rigs used a harness for resistance, but Kumar liked to do some arm work inverted as well.
He groaned and pulled himself up and toward his legs. “One,” he said. The real count had begun now.
It continued. He pushed through 50, steadily grinding the numbers. The sweat dripped off his head and spattered down on the floor.
His face had become fixed with determination, and red from the inversion. It was 100 today. He compressed. Fire was starting to burn up through his abdominals, and back. His count climbed slowly. The last ten he met with a scream, and his torso shuddered under the effort to compress.
Scream. “99.” Scream. “100.”
“Geppetto, slack!” The cords to the handles loosened and he dropped them with a clatter to the floor below. Kumar grimaced and reached out for the climbing rope. The resistance had been at the point of failure for him. He struggled to pull himself up enough on the rope to safely unhook his feet. He did so, and deftly slid down the rope to the floor.
He checked himself mirrored in the screens. The image was admirable, his body was fully pumped and sweat ran down his face to his collar and absorbed by invisibly by the jumpsuit. He seemed to embody both masculinity and grace.
“Now, that is an excellent result, Kumar. Good work!”
He turned to the performance figures still up on a screen. With a gesture, he selected the conservative, high confidence pathway. “That's enough money for the risk,” he said to himself.
The growing monetary flow was great, but it wasn't worth possibly losing reputation to make a few credits more. Timing was everything when it came to risk.
“Geppetto, I think it's time for a celebration!” He looked at the time on his wristband. There was enough time to get there, but not enough time to change. He would have to walk hurriedly as it was. He didn't want to miss the beginning of the event.
Kumar ran his fingers through his dark hair, and checked his appearance once again in the screen. He'd prefer a different outfit to arrive in, but he'd still put on a good show.
Kumar left his office, activating his shutdown procedure with a small circular gesture on his wristband, and headed in the direction of the old center. The dome for the city had been expanded many times since its founding as a patchwork of partial spheres, like the bubbles in a bubble bath. The original city center had been a cluster of administrative, and research buildings, and high priority living quarters. Once the city began to grow, the center became an area of high end commercial and residential buildings, as administrative buildings became more distributed, and moved elsewhere.
The old center was now a place of wealth. A swift walk for a few blocks and he was at an old center residence with a slightly more ornate door than that of the surrounding buildings. The street leading up to the stoop had a faux cobblestone texture, characteristic of old center. Kumar selected one of the orbs of his necklace and held it up to the ID panel. A code transmitted from it to the panel, and the door slid open with the slight hiss of positive pressure from the interior.
The ante-room revealed was simple, but had small touches that indicated wealth. The walls were not screened. Instead, they were hand-painted with roman-themed murals. Hardwood trim had been used as a baseboard as well. Kumar was impressed--he cataloged the details in his head. Small details could be used to paint insightful pictures. He passed from the ante-room, through a door, into a informal receiving hall. There was an assortment of people waiting there and a table of modest refreshments. Leera's music was on a pleasant audio-only loop in the background. Kumar chuckled to himself. Her popularity on Earth had caused her popularity to rise on Mars as well. The screens in this room displayed an ocean scene--a commission of Cassie's work.
The host, Nadella Ro, waved at Kumar over the small crowd. Nadella's wrist band had notified him of Kumar's arrival. Nadella Ro was a portly gentleman with a smoothly bald head and piercing, dark eyes. He was in his late 60s, and possessed a heavy breath. His bulk was great enough that he would have been continuously uncomfortable had he resided on Earth.
Kumar made his way over to the host. There were some familiar faces in the crowd that he acknowledged with a slight tap on his forehead. The motion was often referred to as a Martian salute, and seemed militarily derived. It had originally come from lifting the sun visor on a space suit helmet so that the occupant could be recognized. For the first decade of settlement, the number of people was small enough where seeing human faces was an important part of staving off depression. As screen technology developed, there was enough other stimulus that the gesture became a matter of politeness.
Two cleaning bots, black hemispheres, were working the floor. They were advanced models, capable of predicting human movement and avoiding getting caught under foot. They hovered near Nadella, as he was a storm of crumbs.
“Hello, sir. It's good to see you today.” Kumar said as he approached Nadella.
“Please, I insist you address me as Nadella.” Kumar had used the polite address that was slowly becoming a formal tense in the language. Nadella was the host, so polite address was required. In the resource scarcity of early Mars, the hosting of a party was a significant and much appreciated sacrifice. Polite treatment of the host emerged as an acknowledgment of that sacrifice. Nadella deflected Kumar's politeness, in large part to deflate the perception of his wealth.
Nadella Ro came from a Baron lineage. He was unlikely to be a Baron himself, in Kumar's estimate, but Nadella needed to avoid the perception of overt wealth. Wealth worship was understood to be one of the primary causes of the time of Troubles. Math and statistical proofs established it clearly. The information had spread through the Ether pre-cursor as political dissatisfaction grew and resulted in the harsh treatment of Baron and Baron behavior—a sharp change from the wealth worship culture. A few unfortunate Barons that had not quickly enough scented the change in the wind saw their revenue streams run dry under the withering power of embargo and protest. It was a consequence that caused a dramatic change in Baron behavior as the sea change of the Troubles solidified.
Nadella's revenue stream came from hosting screen events of the darker variety. They were invitation only, expensive, and much more illegal than any that Kumar had attended before.
“Kumar, would you like any of the tasty bits? We have quite a few pork treats among the selection,” Nadella asked.
Kumar salivated involuntarily. Real pork was rare on Mars. He preferred an empty stomach for these events.
“Thank you, Nadella, but food right before an event can upset my stomach.”
“That's unfortunate!” he responded, clasping Kumar on the shoulder sympathetically. “Well, there should be some after the event as well, if you are in the mood.”
Nadella looked down to his wristband. The number of RSVPs were nearly full. Anyone that was going to be there was there.
“Hello, my friends, it's so good to see you all at tonight's event.” The crowd clapped its approval.
“If you'd make your way to the staging room in the rear, you can prepare there. There are jumpsuits there for your comfort, or you may participate nude if you'd like. No outside items, including wristbands, are permitted beyond staging. Of course, the play area will be monitored for violations, and I have security to make sure the event remains private and safe.”
Nadella continued, “Please leave your payment on the receiving plate if you didn't pay with a credit transfer.” A few participants went to a small end table with a flat black square on it. The texture seemed to be slate-like. One-by-one they dropped a shiny metal coin on the plate. The coin was a coded credit chip. When placed on the plate, it would read the quantity on the chip and match it to a body scan of the person dropping it. The payment was fully anonymous, with the chip's sur
faces even distorting fingerprints. Transactions by credit transfer, while rendered moderately anonymous, could be exposed for law enforcement, and were always taxed. The coins were a loophole in the transaction system made necessary by credit dealings with Earth. The Earth economic negotiators had insisted on preserving credit coins.
Kumar milled with the crowd back through the rear door into the staging room—a plan but pleasant affair with soft lighting. He stripped naked, and placed his possessions into a cubby. Like most of the other participants, he chose to remain nude. He picked up a prop bag—stitched from cotton, a luxury material on Mars. In it was a padded stun baton, and a fluorescent orange dose of premium supps. The baton would not cause serious damage even when swung with full force, but it could provide a disabling charge of electricity. He held it to his inside thigh, near his scrotum, with his left hand and thumbed the trigger. A spark shot from the baton and he squealed involuntarily. Others around him tested their wands on themselves or nervously on one another. He watched carefully. The noobs were always the most fun, and the nervous giggles always revealed who they were.