by E. M. Foner
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the show, but I’ll ask for it on-demand if there’s such a thing on board.”
“Flower can get anything for a price, though from what Bill tells me, I’m not sure the money always ends up in the right pockets,” Julie said.
“Are you from the generation that thinks there’s no difference between anime and cartoons?” Zick asked the old author.
“Anime was big on Earth long before I was born, and the definition has changed radically in the last century,” Geoffrey told the scriptwriter. “If it makes you feel any better, I might have watched your show twice a day the last year, but I wouldn’t have noticed because I was heavily sedated in a locked ward.”
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“In addition to writing, Zick also created the artwork for Slomo, our Verlock Ninja char,” Julie said.
“I’d like to see that one in action,” Geoffrey said with a chuckle as they exited into the terminal. “Never had much of a gift for humor myself, though I did write one anime series under my own name and ghost-wrote quite a few episodes for others. Starting with good characters is half the battle.”
“What’s the other half?”
“Conflict. It doesn’t require a lot of imagination, really. It can be an alien invasion, killer artificial intelligence, a child born with a special birthmark destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy and overthrow the kingdom. It’s all just a backdrop for the characters to do their thing.”
“Where are you going?” Julie asked as the elderly man turned down a corridor before customs. “Oh, right. I’ll wait here.”
“I don’t need the bathroom,” Geoffrey told her. “I’m skirting the customs line. I’ve been to cons at Horten spaceports and those little flashing lights in the deck of this corridor mean that it’s the bypass straight to the hotel. Just don’t try exiting to the street or security will be all over you. They do everything with cameras and facial recognition.”
“I should run back and tell the others,” Zick said, and jogged off to catch the group of gamers.
“I guess you really do know what you’re doing,” Julie said, and then realized it made it sound like she had doubted him. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Geoffrey said. “I look my age, but after a decade of institutional living, I’m not in any hurry to move into the independent living cooperative with all the other oldsters. I paid my dues on the con circuit in my thirties and forties. That was back before Earth’s space elevators were completed and getting up to orbit cost an arm and a leg if you were footing the bill yourself.”
“Who else would have paid for it?”
“Around ninety-nine percent of people emigrating from Earth signed labor contracts before leaving. The aliens provided transportation, usually in their own ships. I got lucky when my military SciFi series began to do well with mercenaries because all of them are employed by aliens and my name got out there. When a Horten con producer invited me to do a circuit as their Guest Human author, I jumped on it.”
They stopped at a registration table, and Geoffrey announced, “We’re here from Flower. She arranged for passes.”
“I don’t think they understand English,” Julie muttered as the Horten stared off into space.
“She’s checking her heads-up display and I wasn’t speaking English,” Geoffrey said. “That’s a pretty good implant you’ve got if it renders my pidgin Horten into fluent English.”
The Horten’s skin turned light brown, and she rummaged through a box before coming up with two laminated passes that already had holographic likenesses of the visitors standing out in relief.
“Cool,” Julie said. “I’ve never had a hologram of myself. Do we get to keep them?”
“She wants to know if we get to keep the passes,” Geoffrey translated.
“Of course,” the Horten woman replied. “Do you think we would reuse them after they’ve been contaminated by aliens?”
Zick returned with the group of gamers and the rest of the MultiCon team in tow. The Horten found passes for Brenda and Maureen without a problem, but Zick’s badge seemed to have been misplaced.
“That’s alright,” Zick said. “I’ll buy a day pass for the competition with all of these guys. What do they cost?”
“Ten creds to enter, twenty creds to participate in a prize tournament.”
Zick was the only one who bought a ten-cred pass, and Julie could tell that it had taken him an effort of will to refrain from entering the competition.
Flower must have informed Yaem that they had landed, because the Sharf was waiting just inside the doors, and motioned for the other members of the MultiCon team to huddle up with him.
“We lucked out with this con because they have two tracks for game creators and one includes novel adaptations,” Yaem told them as he handed out disposable tabs with con programs. “Brenda, I know you and Maureen are already scheduled to meet with the legal team, but I’ve been chatting up administrative types since I arrived, and I took the liberty of listing a few managers I think you should talk to. Maureen, I’ve gathered all of the official marketing materials from the con, but as you walk around, you’ll see that the hotel’s active displays have all been bought out to upsell attendees into pay-per-play events, including tournaments and a cosplay ball with cash prizes for best costumes. Zick, Flower wants you to take the game physics track with an eye to adding something similar for designers at our con. All of you make sure you grab whatever swag is on offer, whether or not you have a personal interest. We’ll sort it all out when we get back.”
“What about me and Geoffrey?” Julie asked.
“Flower wants you both in the novels-to-games track, but they only run a session in every other time slot, so you’ll have plenty of time to relax or check out the merchandise and art. I’m on headhunting duty for the rest of our stay, but let’s meet up for lunch in the food court at twelve-hundred hours, UHT.”
“Headhunting duty?” Zick asked.
“I’ll be trying to poach some of the con specialists handling events if I can find any who aren’t on long-term contracts—or who are willing to do a runner,” Yaem added as an afterthought. “If any of you meet a panelist or moderator who you think is a good fit for our con, don’t hesitate to throw out a hook and see if they bite. Flower always has room for more, and she said something about not having enough Hortens on board for a balanced still shot to use in advertising.”
The group broke up, and Geoffrey confidently led Julie into the crowded main venue, where game vendors were hawking their wares with immersive demonstration rigs. The noise was controlled with some kind of audio suppression technology, and the floor was overlaid with a veritable rainbow of different colored strips that appeared to be indestructible.
“What’s with all the colored tape?” Julie asked.
“It’s to put conference attendees on their tracks,” the old author explained. “See the red stripe at the bottom of the screen on the disposable tabs Yaem gave us? I’m following the red stripe, which will bring us to—over there,” he concluded, pointing.
“The Ortha Room?”
“He’s probably an ambassador on one of the Stryx stations. Horten hotels are big on naming rooms after their diplomats. I think it has to do with ambassadors being public figures, so they can’t make legal claims if their names end up associated with some distasteful event.”
“Seems kind of weird.”
Geoffrey shrugged. “When you’ve visited enough alien worlds, you come to realize that half of what they do is an attempt to differentiate themselves from all of the other tunnel network members so nobody can accuse them of copying. The Dollnicks run a big chain of convention centers on Stryx stations and their venues are all named after astronomical phenomena, like galaxies, nebulae, or meteors. The Drazens name their venues after different types of food and the Verlocks use famous scientists.”
“Oh, look. There are little red lights in a line on the ceilin
g as well.”
“At my age, it’s better to keep an eye on my feet.”
The doors to the Ortha room were closed, and a display panel on the wall adjacent showed rapidly changing Horten characters.
Geoffrey frowned. “Well, we got here too late for the panel discussion, but they’ll unlock the doors for the question and answer period any time now. We can slip in as soon as somebody leaves.”
Julie looked at the program on the disposable tab. “Shape-Shifting Characters in LARPing. I’ve heard Jorb talk about LARPing on Union Station but I didn’t really understand his explanations.”
“Live Action Role Playing. It used to be popular at fantasy cons when I was young, people dressing up and fighting battles with foam swords and axes. The main weakness was in casting magic since humans aren’t magical, but Flower was telling me that there’s a professional LARPing league on the tunnel network now. The Stryx create the immersive holographic environment in real-time, including magic.”
“Wow. That would be—”
One of the doors slid open and a young woman slipped out. Julie darted forward and got her hand far enough into the proximity detection field to keep the door from closing, and Geoffrey entered after her.
“…and of course, dragon shifters have been done by so many species that including them in games is seen as a sign of desperation,” a pinkish Horten man at the front of the room was saying.
“Are there any other questions?” the heavily made-up moderator asked.
“Why is she wearing so much make-up?” Julie whispered to Geoffrey.
“To mask her emotions,” he whispered back. “You can read Hortens like a book by their skin color, so covering up is a common tactic for public speakers.” Geoffrey squinted at the name displays in front of the panel members, swore under his breath, and looked down at the program for details. “I don’t believe it.”
“I have a question for the Guest Human author,” a Horten in the audience asked after being acknowledged by the moderator. “I’ve been assigned to design a game that includes bear shifters, and I want to know if I need to account for their change in mass in our physics engine. When the Humans in your books shift into bears, does their weight increase in proportion to their size?”
A woman who appeared to be in her mid-fifties fiddled with the external translation device she wore around her neck before replying. “Thank you for the question. The main focus in my shifter series is on romance and pack politics, so I don’t really get into the physics. But the strength of the shifted characters implies that they have actually become bears, and depending on the type, mature bears on my world would weigh anywhere from two to five times as much as a real hunk.”
“Hunk of what?” the Horten followed up.
“Hmm, I think my translation device failed to choose the right word for you in context,” the author said. “A hunk is a physically attractive male, preferably of the well-muscled variety.”
“Ah, like on the book covers.”
“Exactly.”
The next question was about a Horten superhero, and Julie took the opportunity to ask her companion, “Do you know that woman?”
“Bianca D’Arc,” Geoffrey said. “The Seventh.”
“Really? I know her too, I mean, I know her work. I read all of her Jaguar series while I was traveling.”
“All three-hundred-plus books?”
“Well, all the recent ones, beginning around two-sixty something, when they start a blood feud with the panther shifters. Are the D’Arcs royalty?”
“What makes you think that?”
“The Seventh. Doesn’t that make her like a queen or something?”
“Bianca is a line author. That’s what we call writers who pass on a pen name. There must be a dozen line authors working today who date back to the twentieth century, some with thousands of books to their names.”
“How about another question for our Guest Human,” the moderator suggested. “She’s traveled a long way to be here.”
“I don’t understand the whole vampire thing,” a game designer spoke up. “Sometimes they seem to be shifters, other times they’re more like undead Humans who don’t rot the way that zombies do. How do I model something like that?”
“Thank you for the question,” Bianca said. “Different authors deal with vampires in their own ways, but in the vampire romance genre, I wouldn’t call vampires shifters at all because the transformation is permanent. There is a parallel tradition in SciFi and horror genres in which some older and more powerful vampires can shift to a different form that’s clearly inhuman, but they’re so gross that we don’t use them in romance, even with glamours.”
“Glamours?”
“A type of enchantment that magic-users can cast on themselves to change their appearance.”
“I’m afraid that another panel discussion is scheduled for this room in the next session and we need to clear out,” the moderator said. “Thank you all for coming, and I hope to see you at the cosplay ball.”
“Stay here and grab Bianca when she leaves,” Geoffrey instructed Julie. “Find out if she’s under contract and offer her a job.”
“Where will you be?” Julie asked.
“Hiding,” the old author said. “I had a falling out with Sixth, and Seventh won’t give you the time of day if she knows I’m involved. If she’s interested, have Yaem close the deal, and I’ll catch up with you at the next session.”
Seven
The students in the prep course clapped politely when the instructor returned the display board stylus to its tray, signifying the end of class. Bill clipped his own stylus to the side of his student tab and noticed that he still hadn’t broken the habit of chewing on the end while he was thinking.
“Don’t rush off,” Flower said in his head. “I have something to show you.”
“Is it going to make me late for my job?” he subvoced back.
A young woman who had been about to ask Bill if he wanted to study with her saw him staring at the ceiling and mumbling to himself. She pretended to see somebody she knew at the back of the room and hurried off.
“Did you think Harry was the one putting money in your account?” Flower asked. “You work for me.”
“But Harry’s my direct manager and he’s counting on my help. He’s pretty old, you know, and you keep giving him new responsibilities.”
“Cooking for the few aliens who use the cafeteria doesn’t take the two of you an hour for most meals, and Harry is having the time of his life working for my packaged foods business. He’s actually been pushing me to get production up to speed with the current backlog of recipes so we can start testing the market for his all-species frozen pizzas. Now, I want you to watch this while keeping in mind how you would make something similar.”
The display board the instructor had left covered with calculations went blank, and then a very solid holographic projection employing a limited color palette filled the entire front of the classroom. A cheerful tune began to play, and then the show’s title, Math For The Masses, zoomed outward so quickly that Bill ducked in his seat.
The regular cast of animated characters featuring adolescent representatives from ten of the oxygen-breathing tunnel network members appeared. They danced in a circle while holding hands, spinning around faster and faster. Then they all let go simultaneously and their bodies went flying outwards. A funny-looking robot floated into the scene and began deriving the formula for angular acceleration while the animated characters scattered on the ground groaned and rubbed their bruises.
“This is the show that beat us out for best script?” Bill asked.
“Yes, it’s very clever,” Flower said. “I suspect Hynt originally got the idea from Let’s Make Friends, but by using animation and an older cast, he can put the characters into dangerous situations to maintain audience interest. The best episode this season explained concepts in probability by having the characters take turns climbing an aluminum ladder in a thunderstorm. The episode
about inelastic collisions also won high ratings.”
“But you have me taking remedial math,” Bill protested. “I don’t know enough about anything yet to be making educational anime.”
“You’re a principal animation actor now and I thought you’d enjoy killing two birds with one stone,” the Dollnick AI said. “With the success of Everyday Superheroes as our demonstration project, I expect Flower Studios to expand fourfold this year, and that’s just the beginning. The future is in entertainment.”
“I thought the future was in technology.”
“Entertainment is the biggest business on the tunnel network—everywhere else military technology rules the roost. It’s the main reason for advanced species to sign the tunnel network treaty and sacrifice some of their sovereignty. Members refer to their savings on military spending as the Stryx Dividend.”
“Razood is in the Frunge reserves,” Bill pointed out. “And I think Jorb said he has to go for training at some point.”
“All of the tunnel network members maintain strong fleets, it’s just a question of how much they have to spend. If you think it’s expensive to build and maintain ships, try replacing battle losses.”
“You know that my ambition is to open a bakery with Julie one day, not to go into the entertainment business.”
“Just because I suggested you spend some time shadowing the Grenouthian director and learning about production doesn’t mean I’m pushing you into the entertainment business. Don’t you think it makes sense to broaden your horizons before you commit yourself to baking cookies for the next five hundred years?”
“It’s more like fifty years for us, Flower, and baking worked out just fine for Harry and Irene,” Bill said stubbornly. “Every time you start a sentence with ‘Don’t you think,’ what I really think is that you’re trying to manipulate me into doing what you want.”
“You know that it takes a lot of money to start a bakery from scratch,” the Dollnick AI said, adding subtle persuasion to her voice. “Harry and Irene got help from their parents on both sides, and they had already been working full-time for some years. Wouldn’t you rather open a nice bakery café than some hole-in-a-corridor with a bread counter?”
