April 6: And What Goes Around

by Mackey Chandler

  "No, it always comes around to something business sooner or later. That's fine," April allowed.

  "OK, I'll ask him," Jeff agreed.

  "If you are not too tired from traveling would you like to meet us in the public cafeteria in about ten or fifteen minutes?" Jeff offered. "It's on the same corridor as the Inn. Your dinner is our treat and we'll be pleased to speak with you. Our other partner is absent on the moon, but April and I are two thirds owners of our principal enterprises."

  "We... will be able to speak freely in such a public place?" Natsume asked.

  "Likely with security as good as in our private spaces," Jeff assured him.

  "Yes, I'll be there, thank you." Natsume sounded sincere but didn't look convinced.

  When Jeff cut the connection April asked, "What do we buy from him?"

  "The little spy bots," Jeff said, holding up his finger and thumb a scant centimeter apart. He smiled. The gesture wasn't that different from the company's logo.

  * * *

  "I haven't walked through a cafeteria serving line since I was a salary man," Natsume said. It seemed to amuse him. He wasn't shy loading his tray so he must be genuinely hungry.

  "I'm surprised you use that expression," April said. "I thought it was derogatory."

  "Perhaps a little. But then I've escaped it so I can afford to use it that way. That sort of work goes up and down in the public regard depending on the economy. When times are good people feel you have no ambition to be a corporate drone. When times are bad there may be fewer of those jobs, but any employment is held in better regard when it is scarce."

  "And how do you feel things are trending in Japan right now?" April asked.

  "My, you are direct. It's quite complicated," Natsume insisted. "Could you be more specific?"

  "How do you feel Japan will do in the financial crisis we see unfolding the last few days? Do you think Japan will be able to maintain social spending without allowing immigration now that the incentives for having children have been reduced in value by long term inflation? Do you see Herr Hutz in the German Central Bank continuing to buy Japanese debt if Japan slips back into the sort of deficit spending it pursued almost a century ago? And are you going to be able to keep the trade that fell in your lap when China went into civil war if they restabilize?" April asked.

  "I really had no idea how deep an answer you wanted," Natsume said, surprised.

  "April is tasked with economic analysis for our bank," Jeff said. "She may actually be ahead of the game because she is aware how little she knows. She brings few preconceptions to it. The other day she told me that there is no such thing as an economy, that it isn't a discreet entity that can be modeled. Rather it is the sum of billions of irrational and emotional individuals with different customs and cultures that affect each other according to relative economic distance from each other. She felt we aren't close to being able to model economic subsystems such as a national economy of one group of people adequately, much less the world."

  "There is a certain truth to that," Natsume agreed. "I was not aware you had a bank among your ventures. How do you measure relative economic distance? I've not heard the term used."

  "By vector, value and necessity," April said. "You are closer to us by selling directly instead of through distributors. Closer by being in a political system friendly to us, and further away in physical distance which adds significant cost, thus economic distance, to lift items to us at L2. That increased when we had to leave LEO. You are at somewhat of a moderate distance in necessity because there are other sources Jeff tells me. But your items balance out at a point we like between actual cash price and features. As new models come out that balance can push you further away or draw you closer. And there are factors outside the effective control of either of us such as the exchange rates between the currencies we must use."

  "Economic theory seems a very advanced study for someone of your apparent years."

  "Consider the predictive record of the current crop of economists," Jeff said. "How could she do worse? You might beat them with a dart board."

  Natsume just inclined his head to acknowledge he had a point.

  Wanda set the last item they'd been waiting for on April's tray and Jeff led them to the far side of the room away from the knot of people by the coffee pots.

  Natsume looked around and visibly gauged the distance to the other people.

  "Our Head of Security for Home, Jon Davis, is very jealous of his public spaces," April said. "This is one of those locations that any traveler or new person is watched like a hawk. It would be very hard to plant any listening or video devices. Also we know every one of the people sitting over there eating. There is one new person, but you can figure his being with the others as a firm recommendation. The sort of bug you sell us wouldn't last a minute here. We have an understanding with Jon that we don't conduct surveillance in public areas, so he knows there aren't any friendly systems."

  "This is like being back in my childhood village," Natsume said. "You couldn't buy a chicken in the market without everybody knowing what you were having for dinner before you got home. To answer your questions, April. Everything is integrated to some degree on Earth. Of course we can't avoid being caught up in the current market disruption. It will be up to people far above me... I believe your expression is 'above my pay grade' as to whether we make it better or worse with government intervention. That is likely out of my company's hands. I have no idea how much influence they have.

  "I have no idea why the child incentive wasn't maintained and extended. The birth rate has declined in a linear relationship to the value of the payments. It's one of the few programs that by every indication worked. Japanese people are not prudish, but there seems to be a moral stigma attached to being a 'paid for' baby. I know because I'm one of them. I think the Germans will have their own problems pretty soon sufficient that Japanese debt and stocks will still look good to them. As for the Chinese... this is the third time most foreign investors have lost everything they put into China. It seems to happen once a generation. I think eventually even the greediest investor has to notice that sort of a track record," Natsume said.

  "Thank you, I'll think on all that," April promised.

  "Our industry is fortunate. More than I realized when I picked this career track. We do well in good times and even better in bad times. It's like making war materials without the need to rationalize away any responsibility for the death and destruction your products create," Natsume said. "But even with business being good we noticed Singh Industries orders are on an uptrend."

  "How significant to your company?" April asked.

  Natsume twitched at her bluntness, but to his credit didn't object. "You are our twenty seventh customer in order size this last fiscal year. But the first off Earth, and we see more growth here than below. We wondered how you could be using them in the sealed and restricted environment of a habitat. But we have a program that tries to identify our units in the 'wild' so to speak. Imagine our surprise when we found units on Earth we could trace to your lots. A few dead units, some self destructed at the end of their service life. However some objected so strenuously to being sampled that they destroyed our collection units."

  "Oh, you ran into some of our enhanced bugs," Jeff said, unsurprised.

  "Enhanced?" Natsume exclaimed. "That's what you call the murderous little killing machines?"

  "Well, there seemed to be some... competition for sites," Jeff said in a huge understatement. "There are only so many entrances and places to hide. Not only did we find there was already a machine from somebody else in a lot of cracks and crevices, but at a certain point if the target has so many bugs infesting it that the dead ones are turning up in the floor sweeping and inside equipment every time it is serviced it rouses the building occupants to wage war on all of them."

  "Ah, you do understand then" Natsume said relieved. "I was struggling for a way to politely bring that to your attention. I brought a video for you to see. T
his is on the roof of a facility which relays USNA space traffic data. There was a problem with the air conditioning unit and a maintenance worker went up to work on it. He propped the access door to the stairs open with his tool box and was getting a screwdriver out of it. Watch." He turned his pad to them.

  The fellow had on a blue jumpsuit with a name tag and a utility belt. He took the screwdriver and headed for the nearest big square air conditioning unit. When he was only three or four steps away a couple shiny dots, sunlight flashing off their tiny wings, zipped through the air behind him converging on the door. Two turned into a dozen in a heartbeat and several spun away wings locked and dead to fall to the rooftop. By the time he took another step there were fifty and he stopped and turned because there was a pop – pop – pop and tiny flashes of light. Each little flash left a puff of grey smoke.

  He rushed back towards the open doorway to close it, but there was a thick cloud of tiny motes like a bee swarm and a fusillade of flashes like a fireworks barrage. He threw his arms up to protect his face and stumbled backwards falling. The wrecked fliers were a half-circle rug of debris in front of the contested doorway, then a multi-rotor drone as big as a serving platter swooped in and cut a swath through the cloud, scattering dead spy bots in every direction.

  Right behind it was another drone almost as large, which overtook and crashed into the first from behind. They both crashed tangled together, parts and pieces flying, and the fuel from one was a flaming smear across the roof. The other was electric, but it's batteries shorted in a flash that was eye searing.

  As quickly as it started it was over. The mechanic sat up and pulled a phone from his belt. The camera feed continued until two firemen and other security rushed from the open doorway, feet crunching on a carpet of tiny dead machines. The electrical fire was almost out anyway, but they doused it with some sort of fog that finished it off.

  "Well, that wasn't subtle," Jeff admitted.

  "Were either of those big drones yours?" Natsume asked.

  "No, we use a sort of carrier for a group of bots to get them to an isolated objective. But it isn't an old fashioned drone with rotors like those. It looks more like a puffy stadium seat that the bots latch on and push. It isn't powered itself," Jeff said, demonstrating the size with his hands.

  "What is the advantage then?" Natsume asked curious.

  "Well it is a lifting shape made of a very thin plastic film inflated with hydrogen and about ninety eight percent of the inside surface coated with graphene monomolecular film to limit leakage. It lets the bots make headway on about twenty percent of the power they need for their normal free flight mode. When they get near their objective the bots all drop off together and the hydrogen is ignited. The plastic film has an accelerant incorporated and doesn't leave much of the bag after burning. Just a few tiny soft plastic balls covered with soot. "

  "The bag has negative buoyancy to support the bots?"

  "No, well... it has about two grams negative buoyancy before the bots are docked. Not enough to support even one. But it requires only about two meters a second forward motion to generate enough lift to stay level."

  "You have a design group for things like this?" Natsume asked.

  Jeff looked amused. "April here suggested floating them in on balloons from upwind. I knew winds can be hard to predict, so I just refined it to let it steer toward the target. It won't run upwind against any sort of a serious breeze, but it will cut sideways across the wind flow to line up on the objective. We can anticipate the general wind direction unless they start classifying weather reports. It took about four hours one afternoon to design and we had a company that makes advertising novelties die cut them for us. We do the final seal and install the inflation device.

  Jeff looked at Natsume with sudden suspicion... "Are you here to ask us to back off? Because those little exploding bots were not ours either. Ours lock on and physically restrain the others from flying, or the new ones will zap the enemy bots with a discharging capacitor. I admit I have a tiny shaped charge designed using a binary propellant. And one that squirts a quick hardening adhesive that immobilizes the opposition. But we haven't deployed those yet. We didn't create that spectacle on the rooftop."

  "Not at all. We want to pursue a partnership arrangement where you provide designs for arming our bots against others bots, and we in turn provide more advanced models coming to market to you at a favorable price," Natsume proposed.

  "Make sure we are not obligated to provide designs for attacking people directly," April said.

  "Oh no! In fact we wouldn't want to be associated with you if you have such a program," Natsume objected. "That would violate Japanese law quite clearly."

  "Only in my mind," Jeff assured him. "But it would be so easy somebody is going to do it. I hope you realize that. I'd be surprised if a government or two don't have custom designs sitting assembled but unused for assassination. But once they are used it will be hard to cover up."

  "We don't do bio-warfare either," April said, firmly.

  "We are in agreement on that. I don't think either of us wants the back-lash of horror such use would create. There would be no justifying it, regardless of the legalities," Natsume said.

  "With one exception," April surprised him by saying.

  "What would that be?" Natsume asked, warily.

  "We are looking to when a small drone," April showed a softball size with her hands, "could follow you around and loiter above and behind you for hours acting as a bodyguard. If such a device was strictly protective in nature and not the aggressor I believe people would accept it."

  "I don't think we have a power source small enough to do that yet. And I doubt it will be available for some years," Natsume predicted.

  "Oh, we already have the power source. That's not the problem," Jeff told him. "We can't make it quiet enough that it isn't irritating to have following you around. It's just loud enough to make you raise your voice when you are trying to have a normal conversation with someone."

  "The miserable thing sounds like a cheap hair dryer!" April said plainly.

  "Indeed. That just makes me want to enlist you more. May I show you an example of what we'd be supplying you if you decide to partner with us?" Natsume asked. He pulled a small plastic vial from his pocket.

  This time it was Jeff that looked around the room uncertain. "Do you have firm control of them?"

  "They are fail-safed many ways," Natsume assured him. He unfolded a paper napkin and poured the contents of the vial in the middle. It looked like a pile of pills, or the orzo pasta Heather's mom put in soup. They laid there and didn't do anything until he put the vial away. Then they saw he was moving his eyes to invoke some programming on his spex.

  The pile stirred as if the table were vibrating and the pieces got fuzzy, extending little stubs too tiny to see without a magnifier. Likely wings, perhaps legs or landing struts depending on your usage.

  "Do they fly?" April asked Natsume.

  "Yes, they don't walk well at all. Give me a moment to do it so they don't go every which way." After a bit they started to align themselves in a circle from the center out. When they lifted they were all orbiting a center point like a little hurricane with an eye. There were in a single layer disk of about a dozen tracks and the bots in one track were staggered from the tracks next to it. They maintained fairly good discipline for separation, staying four or five millimeters from the machine ahead and behind. The whole thing turned clockwise looking down on it, and rippled slightly as it made adjustments. The was a barely audible noise like a long sigh.

  "Can they maintain orientation in zero G?" April wondered, recalling her conversation with Jeff.

  "I'm... not sure. That's an interesting question."

  "It might be a minor market for you, not worth the investment," April admitted.

  "After we became aware of your efforts to add accessories, enhance the bots as you say, we tried doing the same ourselves. Other players are of course doing the same thing, but our
bots simply did not survive as well as yours. We already had a twenty man team committed and looked at the potential expense to improve them sufficiently. It makes more sense to ally with you if you are interested. I have a document from our legal department if you wish to examine it and give us a decision," Natsume said.

  "That may be a problem. We do business much differently up here. We don't have a court system with lawyers. Any contract dispute would have to be taken before the entire Assembly and they have only agreed to hear two so far. They sent a couple others away and basically told them to grow up or set a duel. How many pages are in your proposal?" Jeff asked.

  "I'm not sure," Natsume said, looking distressed. He turned his pad back to him and searched. "Four hundred and thirty two pages."

  "Do you really think I am going to waste a day of my life reading a bunch of legalese?" Jeff asked. "If it has that many pages I can already tell you what it says: We don't want to be responsible for anything but you are. It will be phrased to mean anything you want it to mean. If we don't agree we will both have to pay thousands of billable hours to lawyers, to put it before a judge who doesn't really understand our business, and will render a bad decision that probably won't make either of us happy."

  "No executive would read it. He'd refer it to his legal department for approval," Natsume said.

  "We don't have a legal department. We don't regard business partners as disposable here like on Earth. If you have a problem with having your space ship built you work it out with your contractor or the other half dozen folks in that business will be afraid to take a job from you. Works the other way too. If you get a reputation for being a hard guy with your customers it takes an astonishingly short time for you not to have any customers."

  "That simply wouldn't work on Earth. The legal system is adversarial and it follows that contracts and adjudication when they fail have to be prepared for the reality of that," Natsume said.

  "Or to put it another way you have to assume the other guy is going to screw you every chance he gets, and his lawyers will encourage it because that's why they are paid and exist," Jeff said. "No, put what you want in a single page contract, two pages at most, and simply mean what you say. If we are at odds later it should be so simple it is obvious who is not meeting their obligations. Put it in plain English not formal legal terms."