by Toby Weston
BHJ had relegated such heavy-handed enthusiasm to the history books.
With the larger economic power blocs already customers, the new growth market was small to medium-sized dictatorships. Outreach, BHJ’s latest offering, was stripped down to the minimum, a containerised drop-in appliance packed full of low-power Synthetic Cognition programmed for social engineering. The product featured an installation guide and interface so basic that any nine-year-old child, or semi-literate theocrat’s flunky, could set up an integrated program of social readjustment in an afternoon. Even local details like culturally significant forefathers, social taboos, or the names and predilections of favoured gods, were automatically scraped from the Mesh and internet, leaving the busy despot and his cronies more time to take a personal interest in whichever facet of domination they found most enticing.
Initially, the software had been controlled with just two dials—
Economic
Social
—but its release had been pushed back when early customer testing, under a non-disclosure agreement, had indicated the interface was provocatively blatant in its simplicity. Shaun had agreed. The development lead responsible and his entire team had been immediately reallocated to a basement office in Swansea, while management waited for HR and legal to come back with options on permissible disciplinary measures. Clearly, they would need to be fired, but Shaun was holding out for flogging and corrective detention.
Developers from a games company had been hastily hired to add widgets and gizmos: conversational interfaces; holographic charting; screens vomiting endless streams of techno-babble; and a physical panic lever to be pulled in times of national emergency.
The customer must feel empowered; needed to know that he—male pronoun, because dictatorship was still very much a male-dominated vocation—was the powerful leader in control. The machine must only serve his needs and acquiesce to his demands.
It was obviously all placebo—even the lever didn’t really do anything. The Sages haunting the appliance would notice and correct for abnormal social swings, well before human rulers started panicking and heading for their government safe rooms.
But the ‘idiot buttons’ had successfully appeased the new batch of testers, and the resulting product launch had been a massive success. Yet another feather in Shaun’s cap.
***
Girls and couples strolled along the beach in front of Ben’s table, while robotic turtles clambered out of the Caribbean and pretended to nest on the beach below the veranda. The moon reflected off the faces of waves out to sea; inshore, it backlit the baby breakers wobbling up the sand and collapsing, sending rhythmic, soothing sounds into the moist and salty air.
Sex—that was what this was all about, Ben thought.
“Yes, Mr Baphmet. I understand. But very truly, I am not believing it was intended to offend. You see, the first principle of good design is simplicity…” Girish continued, while Ben’s mind continued to wander. He had forgotten exactly what he had been saying. Against his better judgement, he went with the suggestions that the Sage—his Sage—was prompting in his peripheral vision.
“You have to step it up and become an example to the other juniors,” Ben read out loud. “We need you to show them how to behave professionally. This is very important, err, Girish.” He repeated the words from his private auto-prompt.
“Yes, sir, you are right. And, truly, I did understand the first time,” Girish said with a tiny head wobble.
“So, start acting like somebody with responsibility! Be a fucking leader, okay?”
“Certainly, sir, I will.”
“Off you go then. Piss off. Try harder.” Ben was looking past the nervous programmer’s head, observing two female tourists at another table. They were laughing delightfully. Ben wanted to have sex with them.
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir.” Girish stood and held out his hand. Ben looked at it for a short second, then made a shooing motion, adding an accompanying buzzing noise to emphasise the conversation was now over and that Girish was now intruding on Ben’s personal time.
The junior was not entirely clear why he had just been flown halfway around the world to have this bizarre conversation. If he hadn’t known better—that Ben was a member of the firm’s executive council, the chairman’s son, and a major shareholder—he might have thought this senior leader was more interested in the two Chinese girls at the next table than discussing the establishment of adequate processes and QA gates so as to avoid a repeat of the recent unapproved screens issue.
Girish himself had only been with the company a few months. He was now the only internal employee left on the project, since most of the team had decided to move to Swansea and take up challenges elsewhere in the BHJ family. He had been worried they were going to fire him; there had, after all, been one hell of a stink. But now it looked like he was being promoted instead.
What a funny world, he thought to himself cheerfully as he wandered back to the auto which would take him to the airport, where he would catch a twelve-hour commercial flight back to his cubicle farm.
Once the dweeb was gone, Ben got back to the serious business at hand. He sent drinks over to the two girls. They tittered and hid their faces behind their hands. He was celebrating closing a big deal with the island’s government, so it was reasonable that he should be allowed to mark the occasion by partying just a little. However, despite his flawless logic, he felt a tinge of guilt. Back in London, Deb would be just getting up. Perhaps making herself a cup of tea in her cold studio; coddling the mug like a kitten, padding back to bed—with her perfect bare feet and divine, naked legs—to the warmth of her duvet nest.
He’d being travelling too much. His new sales and loyalty role had him trotting the globe, mending fences and ambassadoring the shit out of the banana republics—who were, anyway, queuing up to buy Outreach, BHJ’s bargain basement oppression as a service offering. It was lonely and dull. After weeks of being wined, dined and seduced by slimy government ghouls, he was desperate for something approaching genuine companionship. Unfortunately, Ben’s emotional synaesthesia left him with a very simplified social toolkit—and, to paraphrase a popular expression, ‘if a cock is your only tool, every problem looks like a pussy’.
He never paid for sex; as heir to an oligarch, he really didn’t have to. People offered it, anyway. Admittedly, there was often an implicit expectation of unspecified future favours. However, since spending more time with Deb, this was beginning to feel like paying for it, anyway—or, worse, stealing, because he rarely had any intention of holding up his end of any putative bargain. Lately, though, he’d been playing around with the still perplexing concept of fidelity and so had ended up having a lot of virtual sex—and gynoid sex, which was basically the same thing, but with more parts to rinse off afterwards.
As the two young women flashed their lashes and played coy, he continued to feel more uncomfortable than aroused; but, like a passenger riding pillion on his libido, he was powerless to change course. The one with pink hair looked a bit alt. He hoped she wasn’t Kin. Kids like that would soon be rounded up and ushered into concrete cells, deep underground, set safely back from Waladli’s tourist beaches and all-inclusive resorts. Shivering in fear beneath harsh lights, she wouldn’t know it had been Ben who had enabled her reprogramming; even so, he was conscious of a stink surrounding him, like sour piss on a hot day.
“Oh fuck,” he said suddenly. He saw a waiter showing Shaun and his two clean-cut assistants towards his table. Big man Shaun had flown over to give Ben a pat on his little head for closing the Waladli deal. They would both be flying onward tomorrow for a company offsite in the run-up to the congratulatory shindig that BHJ had arranged for a bunch of its new island customers. The timing was deliberate—an attempt to take some of the news away from Niato’s upcoming peace conference/festival celebrating the oceans’ and all the world’s island nations.
Shaun and his entourage passed the confused Girish heading the other way. Shaun s
topped. He—or, more likely, a Sage virtually squatting in his mind—had recognised the newly promoted young developer. Shaun shook his hand. They talked for a few minutes. Shaun was probably telling him what a great job he was doing and how, as a valued part of the BHJ family, he had great things in store…
“Good evening, Ben,” Shaun said, once he had finished blowing empty dreams up the second-rate developer.
“Shaun,” Ben grunted back.
“I’m glad I had a chance to chat with young Girish. Misguided, but very talented.” Shaun cast his eyes around distractedly, refusing to look directly at Ben.
“Really?” replied Ben. “That’s your analysis, is it? Very talented? The kid’s a muppet!”
“The Sages...”
“MUP-PET.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see. May I?” Shaun waved at an empty seat.
“Sure.”
BHJ had made their newest Sage versions available to management, and Shaun had embraced the program. Ben suspected that Shaun’s passive personality, ripened through years of light-hearted bullying, was the ideal chariot for the empty efficiency of a Synthetic Cognition rider. Ben’s ego demanded ownership of his successes, whereas Shaun was happy to reap the rewards from acting out the Sage’s dispassionate recommendations. He had always been smart, but sadly utterly incapable of original thought. Now, as little more than an organic puppet for the Sage’s arm up his arse, Shaun had been able to reach the next level. This obviously infuriated Ben, who had known the little shit since school and had trouble dealing with the new, successful, assertive Shaun Twefford.
“The Xepplin for St Michael leaves at ten-thirty tomorrow morning,” Shaun said.
“Yep.”
“Did you want to review our keynote now?”
“First, Shaun, can I ask your hybrid cybernetic opinion on something?” asked Ben.
Shaun bristled. “I suppose so.”
“Hypothetically, which one of those two do you think I should go for? Pretty face but small tits, or don’t look at the mantelpiece while stoking the fire?”
“Come on, Ben. This is serious; we are meeting the Waladli minister tomorrow!”
“I know, that’s why I am asking your advice, Pinocchio! Shoot. Let’s see what the puppeteer says. I think they’ve assigned you a faulty model. It fucked up with that assessment of Girish, there. He’s a fucking nobody, not management material at all. You just flew him around the world for nothing. I don’t trust the advice you are being given. Let’s check out your oids on something that I happen to be an expert on.”
Shaun sighed. “When you say ‘go for’, do you mean as potential life partner or casual recreational encounter?”
“What the FUCK do you think?”
“Okay, okay… In that case, Bruce suggests the one on your left, with the Iron Arsehole T-shirt and pink hair. She’s called Ling, by the way.”
“Seriously? Bruce? Did you choose that name? But cool, spot on, she’s the one. It could have been luck. This is multiple choice, after all, but we’ll give Brucey the benefit of the doubt. And that means you get to have missey-big-tits! I bet you’re happy about that, right? You always liked a big pair. Remember that orange slut in Punt?”
Shaun looked away.
“In fact, now I come to think of it,” Ben continued, “that was your suggestion, not the Sage, right? You played me!” Ben punched Shaun playfully on the arm… slightly too hard. “You rascal!”
Shaun grimaced and rubbed his deltoid. “No, it was the Sage, and you said this was a hypothetical test.”
“Riiiight,” Ben let the syllables draw out. “About that…”
***
The next day, after some basic hygiene and pharmacological damage control in his cabin, Ben made his way up to the executive lounge at the front of the Xepplin.
Unlike old-school designs, the massive 300-metre cigar didn’t sport a gondola dangling below. Instead, the passenger cabins, bars, restaurants and machine modules were tucked away inside its streamlined, rigid superstructure. Between these and the envelope, only thin filaments of high-temperature plasma laced a vacuum void. The skin of the craft was a miracle-multi-sandwich of diamond laminates, graphene aerogels, nano-fibre cabling and thermal super-insulators. A hypersonic helical vortex of superfluid spiralled around the perimeter of the Xepplin’s shell, looping back on itself like a Mobius strip. The colossal inertial force it produced was more than sufficient to keep the vacuum envelope inflated against the crushing grip of external air pressure.
At the same time, magnets in the skin generated complex topologies of fields beyond the Xepplin’s envelope to guide pre-ionised air away from the carbon shell—virtually eliminating friction and allowing it to flex through the air, like a soapy eel between buttery fingers.
The bow lounge featured a restaurant with wrap-around windows. Tables, laid with fine lightweight tablecloths and set with filigree titanium cutlery, were arranged on a raised horseshoe dais lining the windows. Shaun was breakfasting in the curve of the bow with a small group of Waladli officials. Ben stumbled on the step as he ambled over to join them. A waiter hurriedly began adding a new table setting.
“Coffee,” Ben croaked to the waiter. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he managed in a less undead tone. “Have a good night, Shaun?” His voice was regaining some of its customary sneer.
“Yes, thanks, Ben,” replied Shaun. “Glad you could join us. You know Sachi, Pirro and Masclem?”
“Yes, Shaun, I’ve been working with them for the past three weeks.”
Ben’s coffee arrived. He ordered toast. Then he called the waiter back and asked for two poached eggs, black pudding, beans and bacon.
“I am fucking starving!” Ben said, smiling at Shaun and the government officials. “A great big pile of charred meat is exactly what my stomach needs!”
People at nearby tables paused and the waiter looked shocked.
“Err, perhaps a bad choice of words, Ben,” Shaun warned. “Have you seen any news this morning?”
“What? No. What’s wrong with a good old-fashioned breakfast? Atlantis too squeamish to fry up a bit of pork? I’m not trying to offend here. But each to his own, right?”
The waiter reminded Ben, in clipped tones, that the meat of sentient beings was not consumed on Atlantis, nor on the vessels of its national carrier. Shaun was clearly trying to make Ben aware of something, but the waiter’s snarky attitude was just not acceptable. Ben informed him of this in flowery terms. The tone of the conversation quickly degenerated, escalating to the point that a physical altercation looked imminent.
Finally acknowledging Shaun’s head shaking and significant looks, Ben relented and let the red-faced waiter go. “Bloody hell!” he said, grinning at the departing back. “I just wanted a couple of slices of black pudding!”
“Thousands of people are dead, Ben. In London,” Shaun said matter-of-factly.
“What?”
“Burnt to death, Ben. Reports say it was a nuclear bomb.”
“… no, I didn’t catch that. I was having trouble focusing, so I left my Spex back in the cabin. People are dead? In London?”
“The streams are full of pictures. Lots of charred meat,” Masclem explained.
“Oh, shit. Sorry,” Ben said, finally understanding the general sensitivity to his request for mounds of burnt flesh. “Who did it?”
“Pritchard put out a flick saying it’s probably the Thalassocracy,” Pirro said, waving into scope the Atlantean Xepplin and its crew.
“Fuck,” said Ben. “And what does Niato say?”
“Says New Atlantis didn’t do it,” said Sachi, the senior of the three, then shrugged.
“You see, for us this is problematic!” Masclem interjected.
“It really shouldn’t be,” Shaun said, turning away from Ben with a last significant look and focusing on BHJ’s newest customers. Ben got the impression that this was what they had been discussing when he staggered up. “As I was saying, this is almost certainly state aggress
ion. The Thalassocracy provoking us. This is not something for you to worry about.”
“Yet, we do worry. We do not yet know this is indeed the case, Mr Twefford,” Masclem stated.
Of the three, Ben had always found Masclem the hardest to pin down. Sachi was the boss, head of Waladli’s interior development ministry. He showed classic alpha-male behaviours. Pirro was his quant, sharp as a razor. Ben had initially categorised Masclem as a low-status gofer; however, during the time that they had spent negotiating and ‘socialising’, although he had become sure of the others—able to confidently salt his dialogue with his trademarked irreverence and misogynist humour to win chuckles and diffuse conflict—he had learnt nothing from the small, pink eyes of Masclem.
