“Prepare to be annihilated,” Fabian said, and Christoph was not amused.
After several evasive maneuvers and subterfuge, Fabian went for the kill when he crept behind Christoph and shot him in the back with three digital fire balls that dissipated on touch.
Fabian smiled and shouted, “Victory!” and the crowd dispersed.
Christoph softly approached Fabian and whispered in his ear, “You cheated.”
“What? What are you talking about? Christoph, that's the game!” he shouted.
“Right, and you cheated.”
“You can't pull any moves over the system,” Fabian said. “It measures every hit and calculates every shooting angle. And besides, it's only a game,” he tried to play it down.
“After all, you didn't really count on me missing my mark, the shooting champion that I am?” Christoph said.
Fabian froze in his tracks.
The guests were busying themselves with lively tidbits of gossip when he left the room a while later upset, his cheeks flushed with rage and Alaska slinking behind. He walked briskly, planted his feet in the middle of the room and started chatting up one of the guests as if nothing had happened. Christoph secluded himself in an igloo, pacing to and fro, and on the opaque steel surface that covered his blue eyes, looping the moment Fabian shot him in the back. After a while he grew tired, bit his lip and left the place without saying a word to Fabian, who watched him until he was gone.
Minder 1
With many things on the line for Minds and many tasks at hand, the critical Minder 1 conference was underway. In addition to Solly, Christoph, Fabian and Sunshine, the newly appointed Service Orientation and Reputation Booster, the conference was also attended by dozens of developers. They were all gathered at the invitation-only Mindsphere event, which was called to discuss the future of the network.
Christoph and Fabian both agreed that quick success could be the precursor of a free fall, especially when there was no growth plan ready to support a growing membership.
“Dear friends,” Christoph began. He crossed his feet and removed his black gloves to get a better hold on a glass of health whiskey. “I called this closed meeting to discuss where we go from here. The decisions we make tonight will come into effect when we reach a market hold of sixty-nine percent of the world's population.
“This would be a good time to introduce Sunshine. She was among the first ones to connect to our network, and fell in love with it. It goes without saying that the feelings were mutual,” he said and looked at her, making her blush.
Fabian watched the two and felt stiff in the neck.
Christoph continued to lavish his praise on Sunshine. “When we were looking for the ideal person to fill this role, her face was the first thing that came to our mind. She met our toughest criteria.”
And, indeed, Sunshine was a true believer: she did not ask any unnecessary questions that exceeded her job description, and above all else, she was exceptionally punctual. She had presentable good looks, was very expressive and articulate, and on the whole brilliant. Fabian did not want her around, unhappy with the affection she was receiving from Christoph - but as she had everything they were looking for, he had no foundation for objections.
While Christoph spoke at length, Fabian caught the looks Sunshine gave his boss, accompanied by some touching. He started getting red in the face when he realized Christoph might actually be in love with her, and that it might have been Sunshine that occupied his heart and loins all those nights that Fabian could not get a hold of him. It can't be, he told himself, she's too congenial, all smiles, everything that Christoph hates.
“Let's open with some updates from the field: data, graphs, revenues to date, analysis and forecasts. We'll get a grasp of which services are a proven success, and which are less so. We have to improve efficiency.
“The data is overwhelming. In several months we've made an economic and social impact in levels we never anticipated. Banks are banking on us. I'm getting reports about people who are addicted to Minds, people who don't leave their homes or spend time with friends on any other platform. The streets are deserted, and our revenues are staggering. We're taking over a lot of ad space. Everyone wants to advertise on our minds embedding platform. Without exaggerating, I can say that we've already pushed the competition out of the market, and that Minds has a de-facto monopoly on consumers. I would also like to mention that our training sessions are carried out at the highest level. They’re being rated extremely well.”
“The analytics show our embedding campaign succeeding by every measure,” Solly said out of turn.
“Certainly,” Christoph responded. “We're now reporting over a billion users, but exposure is estimated at five billion. Every child knows where his Minds is. And now I'm happy to pass the floor to Solly Grey and his team.”
“We're making incredible progress,” Solly added to what Christoph already said with obvious pride. “Minds will soon take over every active human mind, young and adult. All training sessions were one hundred percent successful and every applicant successfully inducted into the system. The network broke into profit, but we always knew that when we get there we'd have to reorganize.”
Sunshine took the stage after Solly and announced, “The users are quickly adapting to the system's rules. It's true there are still some bugs left in, but they’re being taken care of, and the public is showing patience.”
In a serious tone, Christoph added, “Apart from success, this is the time to discuss the ‘inhibiting factors’ that will stand in our way. I'm talking about the people who join Minds, but have nothing to contribute. We must find a way to harness these entities for our growth. Sunshine, you'll have to show us your magic. Your agents need to contact these users and put them on the right track. You have to find a way for the inefficient to contribute more for the sake of humanity, for the sake of society, for us.”
“And for you,” Fabian interjected.
“Done,” said Sunshine.
Christoph praised her, and Fabian shuddered.
Christoph then called Peter, Head of the Development Team, to break down all the issues that had been raised. The faces of sample users were thoughtmitted to the group. Each person was a world on his own, but there, in the conference, they were only a name, a number, and their online brain rank. The session covered a wide range of people who were deemed inefficient.
“Let’s take this one, for example. Becky Myer,” said Peter, and pointed to a picture of an attractive blond, smiling, hugging a black koala-dog named Dandy. “She was one of The Mentor's victims. Ended up raping her own son. Today, she does social work and helps women who were likewise mentally raped.”
“Ah yes, The Mentor - Don Little, also known as Little Dick,” Sunshine remembered.
“All else aside, she’s not a very efficient consumer,” Peter continued. “She doesn't share, hardly buys anything, doesn't join any events and doesn't add any personal experiences for her social circle to enjoy. She just consumes network resources, and her brain rank is below average at 3.0. There's no shortage of borderline people – that's my term for them – dilly dallying around the average, sometimes with their head above water and other times well below. It's pointless and mostly very bad for our bottom line.”
Christoph gave Sunshine a piercing look and said, “This is where you come in, dear. Make a girl like that soar. We'd hate to see her deleted.”
“Deleted? What do you mean?” Sunshine wondered.
“Eventually, if she and her like don't show any improvement, over time they'll become a burden,” said Christoph. “Every user costs the system five thousand Unis every month. We provide services and require efficient cooperation from our users. That's why I want them to progress, or disappear.”
Solly seemed shocked, and Fabian was also shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“We're not going to kick people out, right?” Solly asked and looked at Christoph as if he was seeing him for the very first time.
The room was silent.
“As the investor, I have to make sure that we turn a profit,” Christoph continued.
Solly was tongue-tied and looked at Fabian, who seemed just as disturbed, as though his mind was off somewhere else.
Peter continued and presented dozens of cases of inefficient users, some perhaps even over generous or efficient at their jobs, but shitty Minds users, for whatever reason.
“Allow me to introduce Kenny Little,” he pointed in the air, and the image of an elderly man appeared in everyone's eyes, “a consumer in his seventies. After retiring from his assorted businesses, he finds himself today utterly inefficient. Yes, he’s the father of Don Little. We have to find a solution for all these old timers who’ve acquired some wealth, but are lagging behind progress. This man uses the network for basic and quite selfish purposes. His brain rank is appallingly low, at 3.4. It's pretty shocking.”
The room nodded in agreement.
“If we look at Kenny little, for example,” Christoph picked up where Peter left off, “he's an elderly man who has nothing to give back to the network, which has been improving his quality of life in his later years. I hate to say it, but our main problem is with the elderly, the ill, the poor and the debilitated.”
“But what do we do with them then? They're a major part of humanity,” Solly interrupted. “They depend on us. All the world's services are now routed through us – payments, food, you name it. We can't leave them drifting!”
“So let's think ahead,” Christoph answered with conviction.
“My father will soon turn seventy-nine,” Fabian suddenly said. “What can we expect from a man his age?”
“May he live long,” Christoph said glibly.
“I'll let him know,” Fabian answered and tried to hide his insult. He promised himself to check his father's brain rank, and to even fake it if necessary. He was worried about him. Even though his family was wealthy, there were no assurances. His mother had already passed away, and his father was actually the person most important to him.
Sunshine was also starting to feel a subtle pressure, and was thinking about her relatives. She did not quite follow through on Christoph's intentions. What would happen to Becky Myer and others like her? What about Kenny and the old people… where would he send them to disappear?
“But there are thousands like them, millions...” she blurted out.
“Exactly,” said Christoph. “And so, Fabian, you’ll be the one responsible for developing an application to manage and improve problem populations. At the moment we have ‘inhibiting factors’ and we have to address this problem. It goes without saying that any relatives you choose to protect will be safe.”
An audible sigh of relief ensued.
At the end of the meeting, Fabian and Christoph were left alone in the Mindsphere, and the tension between them was still acutely felt.
“Listen,” said Christoph. “I also want you to be in charge of developing an application to pick up every thought exchange with certain keywords that pertain to any direct or indirect competition. Monitor anyone who's thinking something that can hurt us, now or in the future. Any threat, either economic or political.”
“But that violates our privacy policy...”
“So let's wait and see what stock our competitors put in privacy policies.”
“What will you do with the information?”
“Keep it. In the meantime, it’s just for us to know. You never know when we might need it.”
***
Sunshine woke with a smile well before sunrise, and prepared to tackle another hard day at work, but not before thoughtmitting Christoph that she liked their Dream Sex from the night before. Being desired by her charismatic boss sent her flying over the moon.
In another part of town, Christoph woke in his apartment as if from a nightmare, when he remembered the previous night that degenerated into a depraved thought exchange with Sunshine. He felt no attraction to her, but he was horny and depressed and she was easy pickings. One thoughtmission led to the next, and now he would have to walk on eggshells.
“Good morning, my dear,” Sunshine thoughtmitted, and he covered his face in aversion and did not reply. It was going to be harder than he thought. He had to keep her as an employee, because she was good.
“Good morning, Sunshine,” he finally answered.
“Sleep well?” she inquired.
“Fine,” was all he could come up with.
“Is everything alright?” she thoughtmitted in concern.
“I'm very busy, we have to make progress. I'll get in touch later.”
Sunshine stared at the wall for a long minute. She ran Re-Minds to go back to the night before, and their exchange of thoughts. Her heart pounded and her face burned red, she gripped the pillowcase and moaned. It felt so good, but when the memory ended, she was overtaken by an enormous emptiness – as though she was being pulled into a black hole and no one was there to catch her. She ran the Dream Sex session they had again… how horny he was, wanting her to turn around and touch herself while he pounded her from behind. It was so hard to go back from there to their petty business exchanges. She tried to figure out what it all meant and how to move forward from there.
From her apartment, Sunshine managed the entire operation of smiling holograms in her likeness who served the customers of Minds. The division of labor in the network was clear, and no one overstepped another's role. She liked it like that, knowing exactly what she had to do, no more and no less. Sunshine kept industrious neohelpers who cleaned her apartment around the clock. Her tending owls maintained a steady grooming routine around her. Nothing in her life was frivolous or left up to chance. She very quickly understood that being level-headed and matter-of-fact was the name of the game on Minds, and adjusted to it. She adopted a more serious and somber code of behavior.
“I'll always be the first one to show up,” she told Christoph when they first met, and saw how impressed he was.
“Minds will demand a lot of work from you,” he said, “a lot of thinking, sophistication, and backbone. I expect you to be our humane and representative face to the world.”
“Consider it done,” she smiled.
In the little time she had to herself, she devoured every word written by Robin Nice. “There is only one path: the one that takes you to the top,” was one particular phrase of his she liked to quote. That line flickered before her eyes regularly when she went to bed.
Before coming to Minds, her triumphs in life were small and insignificant. Without a doubt, she was destined for the network just like the network was tailor-made for her. Failure scared her more than anything else. That is why, when Christoph instructed her on training the sunshines – that's what they called the bots – to thoughtmit positive thoughts and encourage users to make purchases, it was clear to her that all methods were legit.
In the beginning, she would be heartbroken by the complicated, glum, sad and desperate messages sent to her by the ‘inhibiting factors’ who could not wrap their heads around it all. But slowly something in her turned cold and incisive, and not just for the purpose of adjusting; people with feelings and stories to tell became tasks to work out. She had to drive these people to the minimum requirement, away from the red line, at the very least to around the three mark, and no excuses. She suppressed sadness, compassion, guilt. She knew she would be a fool to think she could still make it if she gave her emotions free rein. Feelings were the inhibiting factors she could not allow herself to have.
Problematic users called the sunshines ‘Angels of Darkness.’ From time to time, she heard about that nickname being used, but it did not keep her from pressing on.
It took the developers several weeks to come up with an application to identify and deal with the low ranked and borderline. The sunshines sent these users positive thoughts to encourage their spending,
catching them in the shower, at funerals or asleep. When you have direct access to your client's mind, there is really nothing to hold you back. With some people it was like talking to the wall, but Sunshine never let up. She reminded users over and over again what they should do to be more efficient, until most gave up and found themselves spending more Unis than they intended to.
The Inhibiting Factors
In time, Solly started noticing that his role in Minds was shrinking. Time and again he was edged out from the decision making process. It was the same old routine. The network pushed forward to get rid of the ‘inhibiting factors’ and strived for a pure consumerist society.
Solly never imagined that he would also be made an ‘inhibiting factor.’ He was getting his information from Sunshine, who had become more important and vital than ever, receiving additional executive powers all the time. But even she did not know everything.
Christoph and Fabian had the sunshines report everything to them. If certain names came up, and for whatever reason they did not want the real Sunshine to know what had happened to them, the information stopped with them. This happened with most of the high profile figures who were associated with Fabian and Christoph and were taken care of without her knowing.
Every day the sunshines sent a staggering mass of messages to all the ‘inhibiting factors’ around the world. Sunshine's image, spirit and voice regularly drifted in and out of their thoughts, and she was the icon associated with the process, overseeing and making sure everything ran smoothly. With her trademark discipline and drive, she busied herself with other tasks while her likenesses were sending out and processing millions of messages.
***
“Hello, Sunshine. I'm a humble man, I work hard every day from morning to night. I don't earn a lot of Unis, and what I do make I put aside for my children's education. I received a notice saying that I should be spending more, but I can't afford to right now. If I make any more purchases, it’ll be at the expense of my family. What’ll happen if I don't increase my spending?”
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