Resister: Space Funding Crisis II

by Casey Hattrey

  “It’s not all bad surely?” she said. “Do we really need another literary analysis of Shakespeare?”

  “Well, probably not,” admitted Kotlin, “but it’s clearly having an effect on us. Just look at the cinematic universe. Did you know that in the early days of film the vast majority of film used to be unique, stand-alone stories? And the same actors would play different parts in multiple films. But over time money was poured into bigger and bigger projects. Now, there are essentially only three film franchises being produced in the whole universe, each using a massive proportion of the galactic budget. And we only go to see them because of peer pressure and government subsidies. Even if we wanted to make something new, all actors are already tied up in exclusive deals playing a particular character for the rest of their life.”

  “I don’t know - I quite liked Fast and Furious 127.”

  “The original or the reboot?”

  Arianne gave a half snorted laugh.

  “They’re actually technically good films,” continued Kotlin, “but we’re not really experiencing them properly. Just look at that religious historical drama.”

  “Hmm?”

  “The one about the insurgent religion propped up by a fading aristocracy.”

  “Star Wars?” said Arianne.

  “Yes. Everyone in the entire universe knows that Luke is Darth Vader’s son, even before seeing the film.”

  “I actually saw a parody of the film thinking it was the original. Twice.”

  “Exactly - we basically know the whole plot through allusions, parody, homages and spoilers before experiencing the real thing, and when we do it just seems like a parody itself. Even new films just seem to be trying to recreate moments from older works.”

  They turned a corner amongst the winding rows of shelves and found a ramp up to a raised gallery. They ascended and paused at the top.

  “But here things are different,” said Kotlin, gazing out onto the view below. “Down the river it’s still 1979 - they’ll have to wait a whole other year to hear “I am your father,” and they’ll experience it with genuine surprise and collective euphoria.”

  They reached the gallery and looked down onto the library floor. The panorama demanded that they pause a moment to consider it in silence, and Arianne was happy to go with the flow. Inevitably, she heard a ping in her ebrain.

  Small Support Grant G67HS995A - Status: Editorial Assessment

  Well, thought Arianne, at least the wheels of research keep on turning. The thought made her wonder about Cloister.

  “Wait,” said Arianne, “so this applies to research, too? Their university has no access to scientific research published after 1979?”

  “Of course,” said Kotlin.

  “What? But then they’re just wasting time!” complained Arianne.

  “Arianne, come on!” said Kotlin, wearily. “Out there,” she said, waiving at the sky, “most PhD students now spend almost all their time figuring out if someone has already solved the problem they’re trying to address. If they survive to post-doc, they just spend all their time focusing on what’s in front of their noses and never even think beyond the next two weeks.”

  Arianne scrunched her face up involuntarily.

  “Think about it this way,” continued Kotlin, “if someone does some research here on the cloister, and it’s basically the same as what was done before, then great - it’s replicated a result and they get to know for sure that they’re correct in a short time. And if they make a mistake or their sample size is too small or someone tries to fake some results, then they find out, and can discard stuff. But if they do something different to how it was done in the past, and it turns out to be a better answer, then they can really contribute. And either way, they’re actually being trained to be real scientists.”

  Arianne offered a lower lip to Kotlin’s explanation.

  “Huh. So it’s a bit like the slow science movement?” she said.

  “I suppose.”

  “I never hear much from them.”

  “No ...”

  The pair looked away from each other out onto the big central room of the library. There was a revolving door at the front of the building, and there was a man pushing it around. Arianne was surprised to see that he wasn’t getting out, but just pushing the revolving door around and around. Kotlin followed her confused stare and gave a tsk of disapproval.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “That is the Emergentist,” said Kotlin, as if it was obvious.

  “The what?”

  “The Emergentist – you haven’t heard?”

  Arianne shrugged blankly.

  “It’s an odd story, and shows us that there’s a lot we still don’t understand about the human mind.”

  Arianne tried to look interested. As long as she could keep Kotlin talking, there was a chance of convincing her. Kotlin motioned that they should walk back towards the entrance.

  “This guy, Valentino Manoscosta,” said Kotlin, “had been holding down a leading job at the local university here. Then one day, one of his colleagues who studied early computer operating systems fell out of his office windows and into an apple tree ten stories below, breaking his neck.”

  Arianne’s left eye twitched slightly as she walked.

  “Anyway,” continued Kotlin, “that day, Valentino goes into the work as usual. He picks up his coffee, then his mail. Except today he gets a physical letter from CAFCA. He knows it’s a notice of acceptance or rejection for a really big project. He’s already on his fourth attempt, so he opens it up as he’s walking down the hall to his office. The letter is pretty standard, about 4 lines of assessment followed by 100 pages of formalese which tells you whether or not you got the funding. He’s trying to work out what the outcome is from under 8 layers of politeness phrasing, and is so completely absorbed that he accidentally wanders into this colleague’s office. The layout of the room is pretty much the same so he just sits down at the desk, still pouring over the letter.”

  “He finally works out that he didn’t get the funding, and all the pent up pressure suddenly releases, causing him to suffer a massive stroke. It destroys most of his cortex. But instead of keeling over or going on a killing spree or smashing his office to pieces, he just calmly picks up the computer terminal and starts working. He opens his colleague’s email system, which is identical to his own, and reads the first email. It’s a request from a student for more time to work on an essay, but the deadline has passed ten years ago and the student didn’t even turn up to the lectures bla bla bla, so he just replies with a firm ‘no’ and arranges for the student to be thrown into the nearest sun”.

  “Standard practice,” shrugged Arianne.

  “Exactly, any academic would have reacted in the same way. But then the next email comes in: a request from a co-author of the defenestrated colleague to recalibrate some data estimates. Valentino doesn’t know how to do this, but his ebrain detects some of the unfamiliar jargon and offers links to some wikis about the concepts and procedures. After a few minutes of clicking through links, he’s able to do the task and replies.”

  “So this continues until it’s time to go home. He’s opened over a hundred emails, but they’re all so procedural that he answers all of them without noticing he’s in the wrong office doing the wrong job.”

  “The clock chimes. He sees some keys on the desk and just reacts - he picks them up. He wanders down to the ship port and the keys locate a ship. He gets in, and the ship navigates back to his colleague’s apartment. He sees a door, he opens it. He sees a kitchen; he makes a meal. He sees a bed, he sleeps. Somehow, the major decision centers of his brain have shut down, but there’s enough basic processing, enough muscle memory and enough cues in the world that he can function just fine by reacting to the environment.”

  “He becomes the Emergentist: just reacting to what’s in front of him. The next morning he hears an alarm, he gets up. He sees some keys, he picks them up and gets into the ship which takes him bac
k to work. He goes back to his colleague’s office and begins working again.”

  “This continues for 5 years, throughout which he teaches courses by just talking about lecture slides as they appear, he presents papers at conferences by re-wording the call for abstracts.”

  “And nobody noticed?” asked Arianne.

  “Nobody noticed. According to the logs, the window guy was still doing his job, so nobody came looking for him. The Emergentist was missing, but then again he’d just had a grant proposal rejection and so everyone assumed that he’d committed suicide. Finally, somebody noticed that the critically acclaimed book that he’d written was not a post-post-modern exposition on the nature of statistical analysis, but just the phrase “my hands are writing words” repeated over and over again.”

  They had returned to the main concourse of the library. Arianne saw that the Emergentist was still going around the revolving door. She shook her head.

  “So he was fired?”

  Kotlin chuckled gruffly.

  “Huh, no. By that point he had become vice-dean of his university and was single-handedly running the finance department. They couldn’t kick him out.”

  Arianne looked vaguely ill, but was distracted by a sudden phase shift in the revolving door. It had sped up so much that the Emergentist was propelled out of it. He stumbled around, but somehow managed to keep upright and slipped effortlessly into a saunter along the bookshelves.

  Kotlin and Arianne had ended their circuit of the library and so stopped.

  “Are you sure you won’t come with us?” asked Arianne. “I have the feeling we’re onto something big” she said.

  Kotlin shook her head firmly.

  “No,” she said, “it’s more important to finish what I started.”

  Arianne gave her a resigned nod. “Well,” she said, “see you round Kots.” She moved away, and Kotlin turned back to the photocopier. She was surprised to see that the Emergentist was standing in front of it. Kotlin gave a startled harrumph and moved to physically intervene, before remembering where she was. She realized that it was the Emergentist, who was photocopying something. As a page came out of the printer, he picked it up and stared at it. He then looked down, to find he was standing in front of a photocopier, so he put the page in the top feeder. This went through the system, and another copy appeared at the other end. Kotlin’s muscles began to tense as he picked up the new copy, stared at it, then placed it back into the copier. A pale ghost of the original appeared.

  Kotlin made a sound like a frustrated steam train. “Great!” she snarled as the Emergentist copied another copy of a copy, “he’s stuck in a loop.”

  She tried to get between him and the copier, but he wouldn’t budge. An idea occurred to Kotlin, and she stealthily sidled around the side of the copier. Just as the new page came out, she whisked it away, hoping to break the loop. The Emergentist looked around blankly for a few seconds. Kotlin chuckled triumphantly. Then the Emergentist reached to the side table where one of Kotlin’s ancient grammar books was sitting. Very calmly, he tore a page out of it and fed it into the copier.

  Kotlin’s face went through eight universal emotions and two wholly novel ones. She snarled at the calm defiler in a guttural, animal cry.

  “Not the grammar!”

  She shoved the Emergentist, who could do nothing but shove back. The two started wresting in the middle of the library.

  “Stop it!” growled Kotlin.

  “Stop it!” mimicked the Emergentist.

  Kotlin slapped at the Emergentist, who gave a knee-jerk reaction which, unfortunately for Kotlin, was a literal knee jerk.

  “Aw! Stop it, or else …”

  “Or else …” replied the Emergentist, calmly deflecting a series of slaps.

  Kotlin flailed wildly. “Or else … I’ll kick you!” she said, “I’ll kick you like …”

  “Like?” echoed the Emergentist, causing Kotlin to inflate like an angry balloon. She was struggling to put words to the anger she felt. She glanced over to Arianne, who seemed to be absorbed in a book with a colorful cover, and shouted without thinking.

  “LIKE SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE!”

  As soon as the words flew out of her mouth, she knew what she would find behind her. She slowly rotated 180 degrees, and indeed there it was. A line of schoolchildren being led through the library by a stern teacher. They all had their mouths open in shock, tears already beginning to form in their innocent eyes. The teacher, shaking with outrage, attempted to cover the ears of one of the children next to her, but it was already too late. Another child had already made it to a panel on the wall that read “In Case of Spoilers, Break Glass”. The child looked back at their teacher, who nodded gravely. Sirens started wailing. The Emergentist bolted to the nearest fire exit.

  Kotlin rotated back to face Arianne and tried to be nonchalant as she asked.

  “Do you, by any chance, have a fast ship in which we can escape this planet where I am now a fugitive criminal?”

  Arianne smiled and put down the book.

  “Don’t feel too bad, Kotlin. Clearly there was some part of your subconscious that wanted to help me.”

  Kotlin’s face nearly drooped off her head.

  “Reading pop psychology are you?” she asked.

  “Nah,” said Arianne, “this one’s about a boy wizard.”

  They managed to jump out of a window just as the armed police unit burst through the doors.

  Chapter 6

  “Welcome aboard the Minimum Publishable Unit.”

  Arianne was addressing her crew aboard a class C transport ship. It was a tiny, shapeless thing designed for speed rather than comfort. The rec room had space for just half a dozen around a dusty cream-colored table the texture of cheap biro lids. Arianne had been unable to convince Holt to sit, but he had de-escalated from attention to leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. Kotlin was typing at an almost comically small laptop, seemingly entirely engrossed in her work, but Arianne knew she would be listening perfectly well.

  “Kotlin, this is Sergeant Holt, formerly of the CAFCA HQ security team.”

  Holt gave a curt nod.

  “Hi Sergeant Holt, it’s nice to meet you.”

  Everybody looked around for the source of the chirpy disembodied voice. Arianne rolled her eyes.

  “Everybody, meet the exbot that our insurance package insisted on installing and whose off switch I have yet to discover.”

  “It’s a real pleasure to be part of this team!”

  “Whatever you do,” said Arianne, “don’t ask -”

  “What’s an exbot?” asked Holt.

  “I’m glad you asked!” said the exbot. Arianne covered her eyes and sighed.

  “When working in a team, communication is an important part of reaching your funding objectives. Sometimes there are gaps in people’s knowledge which makes communication difficult.”

  The bot’s tone was somewhere between evangelical commercial and bedtime story.

  “I’m here to supply answers to any basic questions you have - just ask! Or don’t! I’ll supply helpful definitions and guiding exposition so we can all get along.”

  After a second or so of silence, Arianne came out of hiding.

  “Just ignore it” she said, turning to Kotlin. “Kotlin, what have you got?”