Sufficient numbers of MFYers had made their way back to their former lives to counter the idea that a mass exodus had taken place. This subterfuge was assisted by subliminal messaging on the Martian Reality Show, still the most-watched digital production ever.
By the time the combined world space agencies had managed to utilise the MFY technology to travel to Automedon, the moon, Mars and further afield - a timespan Bruce reckoned was likely to be measured in the tens of decades, if not longer - humanity should be sophisticated and mature enough to learn the truth about the MFY program and the Transcendents.
I thought I had a good plan. the Transcendents declared truculently, then added You could have assisted before now.
Do you want me to help or not? Bruce demanded. He knew all the tricks the Transcendents would employ to make him feel remorseful. The truth was Bruce did feel a little guilty, but only because he had promised Lake he would support him, and he had done fuck all for him. He had ignored Lake’s increasingly desperate pleas for help. Before Bruce did anything else, he’d better pay him a visit.
In breaking news..
The White House has refused to comment on rumours the First Lady has decided to leave the White House permanently and will return to the family home in New York. An unnamed source confirmed recent reports indicating the President and the First Lady not only slept in different rooms, but also that they had led separate lives for many years, and hardly spoke to each other.
It has long been rumoured that the First Lady objected to leaving their home in New York for the inferior accommodation of the White House, and the President had to virtually beg her to accompany him.
Esamae Chump is the President’s third wife and grew up in Russia. She originally came to the United States on a basketball scholarship and later moved into sports broadcasting. Mrs Chump met her future husband at a charity event at the Russian Embassy in Washington in 2002. Questions have been raised over the years about irregularities in her immigration status and her pathway to citizenship, including Chump’s involvement in fast-tracking her application.
Questions have also been raised about her father’s alleged links to Russian intelligence agencies, and the lack of transparency around his sudden accumulation of wealth after retiring from the KGB in the early 2000s. His background is common to many former senior Soviet officials of the period, who retain close links to the ruling regime and have amassed huge fortunes.
This information has become known while investigations continue into alleged Russian interference in the last United States Presidential election. This is a further setback for the President whose approval ratings are the lowest for any sitting President since records began.
Further updates on this breaking story when they come to hand.
Four
Once again, Senator Niur rose ponderously to his feet and began to address his fellow Senators. Lake had initially declined to bestow the title Senator on the representatives, as was the tradition, and this had been a bone of contention for Niur, who was the only Senator left from the old regime. He never tired of reminding everyone in ear-shot how this gave him a degree of authority on all manner of subjects, even though he had just been a very new and junior member of the senate when the famine had hit.
Lake didn't want to call the representatives of this new government Senators, because there were so few Skidians left that they almost didn’t need the senate and all the associated trappings and perks that went along with it. However, he eventually relented, to keep the peace. Privately, he thought the whole idea of a representative government was a con, given an AI ran the planet, and Lake was just a front man without any real power. However, he did think that a natural figurehead was important for Skid and the indoSkidians at this point in their history, so he employed what little influence he had to keep some control over the Senate and stop the likes of Niur getting ideas above his station.
Niur was demanding protections for Skidians, since the number of offworlders arriving on Skid had increased alarmingly. Tens of thousands of them had shown up on the planet in the last few weeks, a small number compared to the hundreds of millions of Skidians who once inhabited the planet, but more than enough to overwhelm the indoSkidian survivors.
Didenud, Niur’s home town had always been one of the smaller Skidian population centres. It was a quiet backwater and its Senators had always displayed a great deal of bitterness towards the rest of Skid. Lake recognised Niur’s inferiority complex. As Bruce would say, Niur was “perfectly balanced: he had a chip on both shoulders”.
Niur maintained the larger cities always received more than their fair share of resources, but this was an allegation without any substance. Resource allocation was applied by the MPU according to population size and density. The only challenge was the tyranny of distance: some things occasionally took a bit longer to arrive if there were disruptions in the logistics supply chain. The further away a city was from the main manufacturing complexes, the bigger the impact, and Didenud was as far from anywhere on the planet as a Skidian could get.
Lake knew exactly what the representative was going to say before he opened his mouth. The Senator was nothing if not predictable. Resentment was still strongly felt from the handful of Skidians in Didenud, a city which could handle an influx of millions of new inhabitants and still have a huge excess of spare capacity.
“The Skidians in my district,” Niur began, “are concerned there was no stakeholder consultation regarding the planned immigration of offworlders to our planet. They fear these offworlders will monopolise resources which rightfully belong to us and commit indiscretions against our traditions and our culturally significant sites.”
Lake would have agreed with the representative in times past, but not now. He knew the real history of his people and would have rather remained ignorant of it. It was far more information than the representative from Didenud could be trusted with.
The Skidians and offworlders were of the same genetic stock: they were all immigrants to this planet and none of them had made it to Skid under their own steam. What every Skidian had learnt, when they emerged from the birthing tanks and began downloading the Skidian knowledge base about the achievements of their ancestors, was the work of the true indigenous Skidians, an entirely foreign species, a race who had harvested Lake's ancestors from the offworld planet.
The hardest thing for Lake to deal with was there was nobody he could talk to about this, certainly not the representative for Didenud, or any of the other Senators. His friends, those who had survived the famine, had made new lives at The Farm. They showed no interest in being involved in any part of the government and provided no support. He felt lonely and increasingly isolated and couldn’t see a way to resolve this problem.
Neither could he abdicate his responsibility. He was stuck with being a ruler in name only for all Skidians, though the newSkidians would be in ignorance of him for some time to come.
Bruce had promised to mentor him. However, Bruce hadn’t contacted him in weeks and Lake felt he had been abandoned.
“My concern is we will be overwhelmed by the massive numbers of offworlders landing on our planet.”
There was some truth in what the Senator was saying, but Lake doubted whether the Skidian had even seen an offworlder. There were no plans to billet any of the first wave of offworlders, - newSkidians, Lake corrected himself - anywhere close to Didenud. But they had all seen the reports of an influx of offworlders occupying houses here in Sietnuoc, and other cities.
Lake wondered why Niur was getting so worked up. The process had been covered in some detail several weeks back, and all indoSkidians had been promised protections which would not be extended to newcomers to Skid.
“I have seen with my own eyes, I have experienced first-hand, offworlders taking over large areas of our cities.”
The representative was being purposely deceitful in order to drum up support from his fellow members, who generally tuned out when the representative from Didenud go
t up to drone on and on and on. Niur may have seen the odd offworlder on his travels, maybe in the streets of Sietnuoc on his way to the senate. But, he wouldn’t otherwise have seen them, let alone interacted with one. Lake wondered whether someone had had a word in his ear or he made up these fantasies all by himself. It wouldn’t have been the first time a Skidian Senator added one and one and came up with an answer greater than two, to suit a narrative he wanted to promote.
Besides, what did Niur expect? Skid needed more people if it was going to grow and prosper. The newSkidians had to live somewhere and there was plenty of space for them on the planet.
Lake recognised the representative was merely scaremongering, whether Niur realised it or not. Niur was fearful of the future, Skidian life was returning to a new normal after the great famine had decimated the population, and he was simply expressing the thoughts and concerns of many indoSkidians who had chosen not to speak their minds. It was also likely he was experiencing some form of post-traumatic stress disorder and so his medication should be reviewed. That might shut him up.
Many of the surviving Skidians were succumbing to stress-related mental health problems. Lake had no idea how to deal with this, except to agree to the MPU’s suggestion of increasing doses of sedatives being dispensed via the food supply. This might not be in their long-term interests because based on recent analysis, once they started taking the medication, no Skidian was able to live without it.
However, whatever they thought was right and proper, whether they were suffering from stress related mental disorder or not, Niur and all the other indoSkidians would have to get over their prejudices. The newSkidians were here to stay.
“Furthermore, I am concerned at the impact the new immigrants will have on our pure bloodline once they force us to interbreed and dilute our superior genetic heritage,” the representative continued, glossing over how until recently, most Skidians had gestated in large breeding vats, their genetic material slapped together by an increasingly flaky AI.
On several occasions, complete batches of indoSkidians, tens of thousands of individuals, had to be recycled because they exhibited some form of physical or mental deformity.
“I would like to know what the Chief Mati proposes to do about...” The representative's words hung in the air as the tall wooden doors to the senate chamber creaked open, revealing two men, who gazed at the vast, almost empty auditorium in awe. The two were clearly offworlders: their clothing and stature gave them away. Besides, no Skidian would dare to interrupt a sitting of the senate.
Increasing numbers of newSkidians had been moving through the streets and exploring the city, for Sietnuoc had been the first stop for many of the newcomers. However, these were the first ones to penetrate this far into the city centre.
“...this. See, what did I tell you?” Niur declared triumphantly, pointing at the men. “These offworlders desecrate our traditional sites with impunity, and I demand action is taken to stop them trampling on our cultural heritage.”
“Hear, hear!”
“Is this a place of prayer?” one of the men asked, before one of the Senators close to the door rose and shooed them out of the room.
Lake rose to his feet to put a stop to Senator Niur’s rambling.
“We will take steps to ensure all resources are fairly allocated and we will also ensure more effort is directed towards coaching the newSkidians in the behaviour which is acceptable in our culture, and that which is not.” Lake thought it was all very well to have all these rules. What his fellow indoSkidians didn’t fully appreciate was they were about to be swamped by waves of newSkidians, and they would be lucky if any trace of their cherished Skidian Way remained after a few years. They were living in a time of change and transformation, and there was nothing they could do about it.
Lake decided to bring proceedings to a close. The last wave of newSkidians would be arriving in the next few days. If the representative for Didenud thought he had problems now, he’d better prepare himself for what was coming down the track towards him.
“Thank you, Senator Niur. I will take your concerns on board.”
“Hear, hear!” Several voices rang out in support.
Niur looked about, realising he had become a little isolated. Some of his fellow senators, who had been sound supporters of his view of the world, had shifted seats while he had been speaking, leaving him feeling somewhat exposed. Unsure of his support, he decided to finish on a high and sat with a happy grunt, feeling that he had made a significant impact to proceedings, with his dignity still intact.
Lake wondered how this new influx of people were going to cope. Bruce had arranged regular trips to Earth for Lake to prepare him for his task, so that he could gain an understanding of the societies the newSkidians came from, and the difficulties these people might have adapting to life on Skid. Once he had travelled around and seen how the offworlders lives, Lake couldn't understand why anyone would rather live on the planet given a choice. He had spent some time with Bruce and Myfair at the place they called ‘home’, the prototype for the Skidian settlement that Bruce called The Farm.
“I don’t understand why you and Leaf - and Bruce, come to that - are content to live here in a low technology environment, in relative isolation,” Lake had remarked to Myfair. “You could live on Skid and you'd never have to get your hands dirty.” And resume your proper role of Chief Mati, Lake didn’t add, relieving me of the burden.
“It’s difficult to explain. I like it here, and I enjoy getting my hands dirty.” Myfair paused. “You have to understand that some of the offworlders live quite well, even by Skidian standards. However, many do not and, given the opportunity, I think many of them would prefer to live on Skid once they have been exposed to it because they feel they have no future on their home planet, and they are exposed to high levels of insecurity and violence. The biggest challenge is going to be overcoming the resentment people will have if they are uploaded against their will,” Myfair had responded thoughtfully. “One thing I have learnt about offworlders is that if you can make them believe it was their idea to do something, then you’ll have fewer problems assimilating them into Skidian society.”
The last batch of new Skidians would be quite different from the initial tranche. Lake had interacted with many of them when he had visited the complex in the barren desert. He quickly recognised that when the more motivated of these new Skidians were let loose they could change the face of Skid forever, and even take control of the MPU, and there was little he or anyone else could do about it.
Lake also believed a sizeable percentage of the newSkidians would land on the planet and quickly integrate with the local community. They wouldn’t demand change if they were given decent housing, full bellies, and somewhere to practise their religion, especially the people in the first wave of uploads (later arrivals were generally thought to be secular in outlook). This is what the early analysis had predicted anyway. Interestingly, religious observance was in rapid decline within the first few weeks of landing.
Religion was a concept he struggled to get his head around, because he had never been exposed to the concept until recently. He couldn’t comprehend how whole systems of governance, ruling people’s everyday lives, could be built around chance encounters with the early Skidian missions to the offworld planet.
It had only been a few weeks since the first uploads, but initial indications supported Lake’s theory. Most of the new arrivals were happily going about their daily lives without asking too many questions. There was a lot be said for strong medication.
However, some, like those who been sent to the moon and Mars, had quite different attitudes. Many of these new Skidians were driven to succeed and possessed skills he couldn’t even begin to grasp. He sensed these people had the capability to infiltrate the MPU’s systems in a way that nobody had been able to since the last of the real Skidians had transcended. The first of these people had congregated in The Farm, the one place sedatives had not been added to the food
supply.
Lake found this a terrifying prospect. If some of these new Skidians hacked into the MPU, he wondered how much control the Transcendents could exercise if the MPU was subordinated.
Stig dug a multi-purpose tool out of his satchel and proceeded to unscrew the back of the Book with the screwdriver attachment. Bill sat so that Stig was shielded from any prying eyes. They were on the farthest bed from the entrance of the vast half-empty accommodation area.
He lay the screws on the bed between them and carefully prised off the back of the device, levering it gently with his fingernail. He laid the cover on the bed and placed the screws on it, before having a good look at the inner workings of the device.
“Hmm,” he said, scratching his head. He had hoped to find the internal workings were standard ARM or AMD architecture, but instead he found something completely different.
“I don’t know what to make of it.” He poked the interior of the device experimentally with his screwdriver.
“It looks like it is just a box. There must be a micro-processor inside,” he added, jabbing at a flat square module sitting in the middle of a sparsely-populated circuit board. “But I’ve never seen anything like this before. I really don't know what this is.”
Stig jabbed the square module again. He flipped the device over and discovered the battery icon indicated that the device was still charging, and the wireless icon was showing a strong signal.
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