”We know you are heading into town with the rifle to deliberately provoke a response. Just a few months ago, Sir, you might have gotten a response. I would not have had this file pulled up before talking to you, and might have reacted as you proceeded to needle me. You’d end up arrested, and it’s possible you could have gotten one of us to hit you a few times. Not me, Sir, but your file shows you tend to be pretty good at getting under our skin, and we have our share of hotheads.
“Frankly, Sir, I’m hoping you will take this info and raise a hell of a stink. I’m not personally scheduled for a layoff this round, but most patrol officers are. I’ve seen the list. Looks like the Happy Valley police will mainly be computer jockeys.
“The thing I want you to be aware of, and be afraid of, Sir, is that I have full access to this recorded call, and I intend to erase it. That’s the truly disturbing thing, not that I can see you. Bluson isn’t my real name. There will be no record of this call. I can do that.
“Since I am being completely honest, we had all of this before Argus, it’s just that now we can change weeks of data-sifting to seconds. No, Sir, what is new and disturbing is that while I can watch you, you can’t, in turn, watch me.
“I’m deeply concerned, Sir, because along with the layoffs, I saw the budget proposal. The plan is to buy sixty more Aeolia hydrogen drones and several thousand quadrotors for this county. The planning commission intends to consolidate them into a single data center. This call center will cover five counties. It’s only a matter of time until police enforcement isn’t even done in the same state you are in. I see Argus call centers in our future, twenty of them could cover the whole country.
“What happens to your ability to talk to a person honestly after they lay ME off? You’d be arguing your point with someone in another state. Someone you cannot see, who can click a button and shoot you.
“This was a courtesy call, Sir. You have now been warned. Enjoy your semi-automatic rifle.” (Click.)
•
Late to the Party
First, the base.
Lana carefully applied the cream to her face, neck and arms. She’d be wearing long pants, so nothing for her legs today.
The base is always where you start. Coats over the pores so it can wick any moisture and oils away from the powder. It also gives it a good connective medium. Default is always white. Makes it easy to tell if you miss a spot. It goes clear when you tap the control to it.
“Honey! Where’s my other jumpsuit?” Jack yelled from the other room.
Lana sighed. Some things never change. “You threw it at the cleaner a week ago. It’s clean and hung in the back, exactly where it’s supposed to be!”
“Ahh, found it!” Lana could hear him struggling into it. “How’s the time?”
“We are doing fine.”
The eyelids need a different applicator, as do the lips.
Lana applied cream from the same container to her eyelids very carefully. She hated when she got too much in her eyes. Harmless, but it made her vision watery, and that always annoyed her. Sometimes, when she was in a hurry, she just used her finger. Same for the lips. Whenever she got some in her mouth it always coated and dried out her tongue, and she couldn’t taste anything until she used the control to remove it. Keep it real thin on the lips and the eyes, she reminded herself.
“Are you sure?” asked Jack.
Lana didn’t stop while she answered, some of the words were a bit mangled while she did her lips.
“Yes, I amph shue. We aren’th gonna tmiss nthing.”
Once everything was coated white, she then got out the dusting powder. She opened the case, pulled out the rosin bag, closed her eyes, and poofed. She liked this company best. Magic Dust, with Intel inside. They had the brightest blues and darkest black.
The dusting never took more than a couple of seconds. Electrostatic attraction between the cream and the dust meant very little powder lost. What didn’t adhere tended to float back to the bag or container. She waved the bag through the air slowly to make sure she got any that was floating free. Hated to waste any.
“Should I call for the car?” yelled Jack.
Lana grunted. “The car isn’t here?” she asked.
“Dave was pretty drunk last night, and said he didn’t know how he had gotten here. I bundled him into our car, and told it to take him home. As far as I know, he’s still in it.”
“Why don’t you just check?” Lana replied.
“OK. Just a sec.”
Lana smiled. She liked Jack, she really did, but he’d forget his own arms if they didn’t have integral homing tags.
Like always, her coloring started out a pale creamy pink. Always reminded her of bubble gum. Perfectly hideous color, she thought to herself. She checked everything. Face, check. Arms, check. Armpits, check. Neck, check. All were coated well.
“It’s on its way, now,” Jack yelled out. “Dave seems to have gotten out of it somewhere in the U-district. I think he went to another bar!”
Lana frowned. “This is his second liver, right?”
“Yep. He’s going to have to break down and buy an augmented model. The doctors are starting to really lecture him about his self-control issues. But he insists on real whiskey, and won’t drink the healthy stuff.”
“Is he going to be there?”
“Yeah, he’ll make it. It’s really all about him and the rest isn’t it? They’re making history tonight.”
She grabbed her control and then the projector inside instantly mapped her face and body, displaying it on the smartmirror right next to her own real reflection. Idly she flicked through dozens of patterns looking for the perfect combo. She eventually chose a blue and gold pattern that made her eyes into butterflies. She selected it from the mirror, then with the control, touched the application end of it to the cream.
Instantly, her arms neck and most of her face turned the exact same shade of deep purple-blue. She blinked and the butterfly around her eyes fluttered. Very lifelike she thought. This particular butterfly was her own. She was certain no one else had mapped it.
She idly wondered if it was one from a natural species, or something engineered and released. So many species had been reintroduced now. All you needed was a little DNA, and Voila!
She had seen this one the other day, fluttering in the roof garden, and had recorded it. From there she used her control to map it into her makeup file. There was an app she had found a long time ago that had a HUGE database of movements, integrated to allow for makeup effects. The one she had used for her eyes was called “Flutterfly.” It would be a hit.
Lana asked Jack, “Didn’t Dave also get the trip implant? The one that sends random signals to your cortex so you hallucinate?”
“Yeah, he tried that, but had it removed. Said it was too safe for him.”
“I think he’s really trying to fry his brain beyond repair.”
“Huh, maybe. Have you ever seen Dave sober?”
“Nope. He’s living the stereotype. A real party animal.”
“Me neither.”
Lana thought for a moment about how her makeup worked. How the control, and the mirror, and the dust all communicated due to the tiny chips inside. How the powder had the ability to change its index of refraction, allowing it to become whatever color you wanted. And how each mote of dust, embedded as it was in the cream, could be assigned its own number, allowing the controller to map locations with precision. And command every single mote as an individual pixel. The Intel ones could glow too, emitting their own light. It didn’t matter that much to Lana how it worked. It simply worked.
Jack came into the bathroom and looked at Lana. “Nice. That’s the butterfly from the garden you were playing with isn’t it?”
Lana smiled. “You noticed!”
“Yeah, we were watching from the kitchen. Dave was talking about it t
oo. He said something about wishing he was the butterfly. But he was pretty wasted.”
Lana used the control on the embedded chips in her jumpsuit, and again her mirror displayed a second image, showing her entire body this time. She found a pattern to match her makeup, and applied it to her fabric. Her clothing now looked a bit like tall grass, the stalks swaying in the wind. Her own body was mapped onto her jumpsuit, painting her own curves. It looked like she was naked and blue, with the stalks of brilliant green grass carefully keeping certain parts modestly hidden. She smiled as she saw that Jack was mesmerized by the effect.
Lana checked herself in the mirror again, body paint and jumpsuit working perfectly together. Clothing and makeup enhancing her natural looks. She liked what she saw.
“Do you think they’ll let Dave on the stage?” Lana wondered aloud.
“Probably not. It’ll likely be that doctor doing all the talking. The one that found out about the colony and made them release them all. He’s the one that said it’s slavery to keep them there, treating them like lab animals. He’ll probably bore us all on the ethics of what is and is not OK to create. Dave would have never known about the world if it wasn’t for the doctor.
“This is a big day for Dave. It’s not everyday that an entire people are declared legally sentient,” Jack finished.
Lana looked Jack over. He had set his jumpsuit to Black Tie. She approved. Most of the time he just had advertisements playing ads of his favorite drugs and alcoholic beverages. Even though it wasn’t a real tuxedo, like the wealthy had, it certainly made him look dashing.
“Besides” Jack said, “There are plenty of Nean’s who can give a good speech.”
“Don’t call them that. It’s offensive.”
“Would you prefer I call them ‘Cavemen’?”
Lana slapped Jack teasingly.
“Don’t even call them ‘Neanderthals.’ Call them ‘Reintroduced people.’”
“—Car’s here!”
As they walked through the garden, Lana saw a butterfly madly fluttering, trapped in a spiderweb.
“Oh look!” she said. “It’s the same as the one I mapped!”
Jack looked at it closely. “Wow, look at it squirm.”
They both watched it for a while.
“We’re late,” Lana said.
“Let’s go.”
•
After the Presentation
“Any questions?”
A man in the third row raised his hand, and Susan called on him. An assistant quickly hustled over and handed him a microphone.
The man stood, took his baseball cap off and scratched his balding head. The tan line showed he rarely took the cap off, and the deep color difference showed he spent a lot of time outside. Susan looked over the hall, more people were wearing baseball caps than were not. A few cowboy hats as well. But not many.
“What is it—”
—SQUEEEE!
A feedback squeal caused the microphone to painfully assault the ears of the entire Grange Hall while the same assistant quickly adjusted the controls to the speakers that lined the thin wooden walls. The man in the cap waited patiently, then spoke again when the assistant gave the thumbs up.
“What is it called again?”
“Glyptotherium Texanum,” Susan answered. “A type of Glyptodont once native to the entire southwest. Mostly Texas, Arizona, and Florida.”
“And you have some of these things?”
It was hot and stuffy in the hall, no air conditioning. Why bother? It rarely got used more than an hour or two in any given week. But the hall was full today, over a hundred people adding their body heat to the April Texas mugginess. Folding metal chairs had to be requested from the church down the street, so the front six rows were of one brand, and the back six were a different style. Every window was open and the breeze that occasionally blew through was very welcome.
“Yes. We managed to create a set of artificial wombs large enough to incubate twenty of them. And found compatible intestinal bacteria in current Priodontes species in order for them to digest grass, seeds and leaves. We have them in an enclosure in Yuma, Arizona. Six of them have now been bred, raising our total to thirty-four.”
“Well, why the hell did you do that?” someone in the fifth row shouted out.
“Shut up and show some manners, Walter! Wait your turn,” said the man standing with the microphone. He then turned and faced Susan again. “Apologies Ma’am, and while I got the microphone, I’m a bit more interested in how the hell did you do that?”
After the nervous rustle of laughter ended, Susan responded, “It’s pretty impressive really. We have hundreds of partial skeletons, and several bog and tarpit preserved specimens including quite a bit of DNA that we were able to coax back into stem cells. And our great find, we uncovered a preserved female Glyptodon, and we were able to recover over thirty egg masses that we replicated with lab equipment. The offspring were healthy and viable.”
At that, the man sat down, his expression unreadable.
The hall assistant —Is his name David? Susan asked herself. Yes, that’s right. David ran over to the place where the man had been standing, retrieved the microphone quickly, and handed it to Walter who was already standing.
Walter was elderly, and his wrinkles revealed that he spent most of his time in the Texas sun.
“Now it’s my turn,” he said, “and I’m gonna ask again! Why the hell did you do that?”
Susan smiled nervously.
“Glyptodonts used to eat a variety of grasses, bushes, tree nuts, and shrubs native to the Americas, quite a few of which depended on the Glyptodonts to propagate. There are over thirty species of edible nuts and seeds that once thrived across what is now a desert. The Glyptodonts had some unique digestive systems that made them perfect for processing nutrition from these seeds, while passing them eventually so they could grow again in their substantial manure. We want these plants to thrive again.”
Susan continued.
“If you wander over the Texas scrub, you will see a lot of old trees and bushes that are now several hundred years old, but no new ones because they needed to go through a Glyptodont gut before it could make a new plant. It’s doubtful any surviving trees actually followed this path, but the evidence points strongly that they evolved along those lines. Without some sort of megafauna, they will all become extinct.
“The desert we are in right now used to be a lot wetter, and full of plants perfectly adapted to these conditions, but they needed a large grazing animal, bigger than a bison, able to swallow the equivalent of a cantaloupe whole.”
Walter spoke up again.
“So I’m going to be blunt Ma’am. You are asking us not to kill these things if we see them? These giant armadillos the size of cars?”
“Yes, that’s right. We plan to release them into the wild within the year. Within sixty miles of this hall.”
At that the entire hall erupted.
Walter spoke up first.
“Ma’am? I’m just going to say this straight: I’ve got my own shotgun. If something like THAT comes onto my property, it ain’t leavin’.”
Susan had been expecting this.
“I’d like to point out that that would be illegal.”
“And Ma’am? I’d like to point out I’ve got my own backhoe as well. Good luck finding what happened to them.”
Mutterings of agreements began to swell.
Susan sighed.
She said, “I’d also add that these will benefit the land in a large variety of ways. They will naturally deposit manure randomly in the scrublands. They tend to roam a great deal. And will spread across a large part of the land, acting like Johnny Appleseed spreading grasses, trees and vegetation as they wander. These are gentle creatures and not a particular threat to your livestock.”
Walter spoke
again.
“And Ma’am, I’d also add they will ignore electric fences, and push through anything not set in cement and re-bar, eat a raspberry bush like the thorns don’t exist, and have skin thicker than a Rhino!”
At that, the crowd turned and looked at him. Walter pulled out his smartphone.
“Wikipedia! I looked the damn things up during the slideshow,” he said.
The crowd turned back to face Susan.
Susan continued, “They will thrive in the deserts around here turning them into gardens wherever they roam, as long as they can roam a bit. They could travel a hundred miles over the course of a month. Part of the deal I’m asking from you is to let them. Their feet will ignore cattle guards, those metal poles over a pit that a cow won’t walk on, so they will tend to wander in and out of your pastures without needing you to do anything. Adding more of those cattle guards instead of fencing, might be more effective in the long run. You already tag more of your cows with a GPS ear clip, so they won’t wander far off your property.”
Someone else yelled up from the audience.
“Ma’am that ain’t helping your case, that’s still gonna be dozens of fences these meat tanks plough through. What happens when they decide somebody’s flower garden tastes better than these grasses and weeds you hope they will eat instead? Not much chance to shoo off something three times as heavy as a bear and covered in armor, if it decided to eat your cabbages!”
“They tend to be slow, but they do travel long distances and they avoid obstacles. They won’t be pushing down too many fences. Only the ones they don’t notice. Barbed wire and electric fences mainly.”
At that the muttering grew louder.
Another voice from the crowd replied, “Ma’am, three quarters of the fences in Texas are barbed wire or electric.”
Copy Me: & Other Science Fiction Stories Page 6