Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "I had such a hard time finding out what that strangely shaped symbol was beside the name. I finally just happened to see a map of Texas and it jumped out at me. The whole thing was very confusing. We don't have brand names or logos. The boards decide what needs manufactured and who has the most appropriate facilities and then there is some give and take among the managers about how much they will be paid to do so and they get the job. The public has no input on any of it."

  "The whole idea of model numbers is strange too. They research what the product should be, as long as it needed. Once they commit to making something they expect it to stay the same for a very long time. So if they need ten or fifteen years to finalize the design, they take it. Once it's in production the design should stay the same for generations, or somebody will be in big trouble. They expect to get the full use of the tooling and development, before somebody is allowed to suggest that a 'new improved model’ is needed, so there is usually an issue date on things, but it can be decades, if not centuries old. I thought I knew what I'd find here, but there was no way to be prepared. I can go and find – what? – a dozen models of pocket calculators?"

  "More like a couple dozen manufacturers and each will have a complete selection of models, that are all just a little different in detail and appearance than the competition," Rog admitted.

  "And everything is like that," she marveled. "Every single item is made to be a pleasing shape, or a nice color, or covered with glorious art. You have no idea how overwhelming this house is to me. The silverware," she held up her fork to illustrate, "it can't just have a straight handle. The handles are embossed with all sorts of pleasing patterns. Do you have any idea how hard it is not to stop and lose track of what I am doing and just stare at the handles? It's hard not to just sit and twitch in overload. I went in the bathroom yesterday and lost myself in the flowers printed on your Kleenex box."

  "I have so much to ask. Why is that dark skinned lady, with the clothing I've never seen anyone wear, on the syrup bottle? Why is there one brand name on your computer, but a different one on the screen you have it attached to, but they work together? I don't think I'll ever run out of questions, but I can't help but feel it would be selfish to just live here and have all my questions answered and enjoy this, knowing all my people at home are living without any of it. They are just so poor and I can't see any reason for it anymore. I thought I'd see more wonders here, but I never understood this is how you people live.

  "You don't go to a museum to see these things, they are just common. I wouldn't have believed it without seeing it. I can tell you, now that I have seen Earth for myself, the scholars that brought these things home had to know the dissatisfaction and unrest they'd be stirring. People like me who maybe don't have the drive to come here, but now when they look at a pair of pants, or a set of dinnerware they know there is better," she assured him.

  "So what would you do to change that?" Roger asked. "You made clear you can't haul enough freight to supply Earth products to them. What advantage just taking a few things to tease people, the same as what got you interested? Could you start making Earth style things and compete with the official products? Would they allow that if you tried?"

  "Of course not, if I tried to get the things I needed to make – say, the computer you bought me today. They would just deny me the materials and equipment to do so, because there is no official need. If they decided it was needed they'd almost certainly say somebody else already has the capacity to make them, so I'm not needed anyway. Just knowing they would sell means nothing to them. As long as they have a similar product it will be protected, until a decades-long study says it needs upgraded.

  "Even if you had the cash to buy what you needed they wouldn't sell it to you?" Roger wondered.

  "Well, maybe they would," Martee said uncertainly. "But how would any one person get that much money? I could save for years and years and never get enough to build a factory."

  "I'm not sure you can do it at home, but we have ways of doing that here. We'll have to look into whether it's legal to offer stock or have partners. But let's just look at what one person can do," Roger suggested.

  "I'm not sure what would be the most effective Earth things, to show people what they are missing," Martee admitted, "but there should be simpler things, that can be copied without needing a huge expensive factory. The jeans had a huge impact, because there are little businesses of people who mend garments and they could get enough supplies to try to copy them. That's the sort of thing I'd take back, something simple enough to copy in your home."

  "Hmmm. Are there people who repair electronic things like your computer?

  "Of course, being repairable is one of the primary goals of the designer in our products. It's considered immoral to have throw away devices, that have to be disassembled to recycle and replaced from scratch. Why?"

  "I'm thinking of a buddy who is a ham – that means a person who loves playing with radios and other electronic things as a hobby. I just bet if he had a catalog of repair parts for your electronics, he could whip up a fairly decent music player from components. Then if people had something to play it on, you could sell Earth music to them. Seems to me information is the ultimate trade good for really long distances. You'd just have the same trouble the music industry does here – how to keep them from giving copies to their friends for free. "

  "At the university our professors gave lectures and there is a lecture fee the speaker gets, as well as a general fee to be a student. Couldn't we play music and just charge a fee to listen, without selling the music?" Martee asked.

  Roger sat mulling objections. People here wouldn't pay to sit through recorded music, they got angry if someone got caught lip-syncing, but it wasn't the same market. A sudden thought struck him.

  "You know, Martee. You can't perform music or videos here for an audience, because everything is copyrighted. The countries all have treaties to accept each others' intellectual property laws. There are a few places still where they have trouble with people copying music or video… or even software," he realized suddenly. "But your governments have no treaties with Earth countries. We could perform anything we want and there is no way they could stop us."

  "I wish we could go back and open a restaurant," Martee said wistfully. Roger just blinked, very surprised and trying not to show what a shock this 'we' business was. "I'd love to see the look on my friends' faces if I served them this," she said, lifting the last bite of enchilada on her fork. "But there is no way you could carry enough spices and supplies to cook with for very long. Even if I could get the corn and rice and beans locally, it would take too much room for the other things. I might sneak back into my world once or twice, but eventually they are going to catch me if I kept coming back and forth for supplies."

  "I think you'd be surprised at how much work is involved in a good restaurant. The few people I've known who do it well, usually end up working fourteen-hour days to make it work. If you aren't there making sure everything is right, the hired help won't fuss about the details like the owner will. Maybe set your goal a little lower. Like a bake shop, or just a coffee house. Do they have those on…. What do they call your world, anyway?"

  "My world they call Trishal," she said with an emphasis on the first syllable. "It has lots of people like Earth, so there is enough traffic around my world they watch it with radar and give directions to the ship computer which way to fly, to the city you want. When the rental company sees my ship is returned and the fee is behind for the rental, they will send somebody out to pick it up. I could fly it somewhere on manual after landing and hide it, but I'd need a friend with a big garage, or a barn to hide it and I don't know anyone like that. I'm a city girl."

  "Something is bothering me," Rog said. "Doesn't it cost a lot to fill up whatever kind of fuel this ship uses? So if you didn't have funds to cover the rental, how do you pay for that? In fact don't you need to fuel up here, to get home?"

  "No, the ship has a couple small batteries
in it, to run the instruments and computer, even if the main power is down. But the propulsion doesn't take energy, it creates energy. The harder you push and the more mass you move, the more energy you have to get rid of after and that is why they can't make bigger ships. There is no way anyone has perfected yet to get rid of the huge surge of power. The first really huge one they tried to fly just melted. My people aren't very good at risk taking. Once something like that happens they tend to leave it alone. It's a good thing the first ship they attempted was little. We still might not be using them, if the first one had failed."

  "So, what if you went to another world, not your home? What if you went somewhere else just to make money for right now? Someplace you can go in and out, without a traffic control and worry about going back home when you could pay off your rental? If you showed up with the cash in hand to pay your due bill, would the rental company have any problem with you?"

  "No I don't think so. I'll look at my contract, but I think it will just be a late fee. There are worlds like that, which only have a few hundred million people and don't get much traffic. The rental is very expensive though, more every thirty-two days than I make in our year." Martee told him.

  "That's OK," Roger assured her, getting up and starting to clear the table. "I think we can make a lot of money."

  Chapter 9

  Roger looked at Martee, rocking in the chair, gripping the arms and holding her eyes closed. He could barely hear a murmur of what she was listening to with headphones on. She hadn't shown any sign of hearing him get up and use the bathroom. It was almost three AM and she had been sitting there about six hours now.

  Showing Martee how to use the computer had been a breeze. His net access was through an unmanned drone vehicle that loitered round and round in a circle at about twenty-seven kilometers altitude, the solar cells painted on its top surface driving a huge flexible prop that had an improbably steep pitch. Its miniaturized electronics pod served a good-size chunk of the state. It was an incredibly light and delicate shape of carbon fiber and buckyfoam, the whole thing weighing less than a modern bicycle.

  It was much faster than a satellite link on the upside – and cheaper, too, when bundled with his phone service. Her computer hooked into his router now could share the access, but she still did not have access to his computer or files. It would have been easy to allow himself access to her machine, but he wouldn't have felt right about that. When she became more proficient with Earth systems later, she would figure it out and might have feel badly about it too.

  It would be too easy to be bossy and try to get her to go to bed. He remembered very well nights as a child he had snuck a radio and earphones to bed and listened late, or a flashlight to read a book that was too good not to finish under a blanket tent. If she was tired and crabby a few days from lack of sleep that was her business. Sooner or later she would figure out there are only so many hours in a day and you have to sleep. Until then he understood her obsession with the vast libraries of music online. Everything she listened to she saved and he hadn't even shown her how to burn a disk yet.

  Better she learn enough about music to decide how she wanted to organize it first. The variety had overwhelmed her again and she had skipped from blues, to rock, to classical. He found jazz moving, but Martee had surprised him by breaking down and crying over Beethoven. It affected her so deeply she insisted on hearing another of his compositions, before forcing herself to move on. Rog pulled his door almost shut, eased back under the covers and drifted off easily.

  In the morning he made enough noise in the kitchen to wake her up. He didn't want to upset her by making her get up, but he didn't want to sit around until noon waiting on her either, so he made noise hoping she wouldn't see he was doing it on purpose. The rattle and clang of setting the table and making breakfast was still going on, when she staggered into the bathroom to shower. Dressed and sitting at the table she looked better than he had expected. Other than a little squint she looked like she could function.

  "Are you going to show me how to use the pistol today?" Martee asked.

  "Well I was, but I'm not sure it's such a good idea with a sleep deprived student. Maybe we should wait a few days until you get this music mania out of your system, before you handle weapons. I don't think I'd want to teach you to drive today either."

  "Umm, driving," she said, taking a big gulp of coffee. "I didn't think of that. Don't you have to have some sort of license for that?"

  "Yes and we can't get that without documentation about who you are and where you were born," he explained. "Usually that means a birth certificate."

  "Oh, I have documentation proving who I am, if they took the same electronic verification I have in my computer. I don't think they'd be thrilled to issue a license to Martee of the city of Reese, from the Sinth district of the world of Trishal, born in the year 8,073 of the Three Worlds Treaty."

  "What year is it now?" Rog gently inquired.

  "8,107 – but that's a little longer year and a little shorter day. Not that your day was long enough to suit me yesterday," she said, yawning.

  "Here, try some of this," he said serving her out of the pan. "It’s corn again, maize as the British say. I made a mush of the meal and chilled it in the frig last night. Now that it is set up stiff, I sliced it in thin pieces and fried it in butter, until it browned a bit. Try it with some syrup. I heated that too."

  "I could eat the instruction manual for my computer with enough maple syrup," she vowed. It was great that she was attempting humor in English now.

  "You know, I don't know how we neglected it, but I suddenly realized I haven't given you a chance to try chocolate. People pretty much agree that anything good is even better dipped in chocolate."

  "Is it good enough to make me eat my computer manual?" she asked again, fishing for some praise for making a joke.

  "Martee, if I dip it in chocolate you'll eat your shoe." That got her interest.

  After the breakfast dishes were done, she brought up the gun again.

  "Let's go out on the porch and just do an introduction," he agreed. He took some silhouette targets, with a couple of target stickers on them and they walked over and hung them from the closest trees to the cabin. That put them about fifty meters away and in bright sunlight until later in the day.

  He repeated the safety mantras about a gun always being loaded and what you cover with your muzzle and trigger discipline again.

  "This is quarter inch steel and your gun won't punch a hole through it at this range with the factory bullets." One was the outline of a ram, almost as big as a man's head. On either side he hung a pig shape, slightly smaller. "You will see them move and hear them though. I'll leave these up for now, so you can practice on them later."

  Rog made a detour past the fire pit and took the chair there back to the porch. He had everything laid out on the small table he kept there and dragged it over to the porch rail.

  "I have to zero the sight in," he explained. "It is pointing pretty much the same direction just bolted on, but it could be off this much," he illustrated with his hands, measuring about a half meter. "Put these on and just leave them on," he commanded, handing her a pair of ear covers. "They only stop the noise when it is too loud and might damage your hearing. If you have trouble hearing there is a knob on the right side, that will amplify the outside noise when you turn it."

  Martee put them on and wiggled them around getting them set.

  "Can you understand me OK?" Rog asked.

  "Yes, but I'm going to try the amplifier, OK?

  "Sure, play with it if you want, just pay attention and I'll show you how to do this because you'll want to do it someday."

  He fired into the fire pit, explaining it was only about fifteen meters away so he could see which way it was off from the impact. From there he kept a dialog up and got the pistol sighted in, taking about a dozen shots and as many minutes until he was satisfied and made several of the targets dance and swing on their chains. Martee was quiet,
but attentive.

  "Why don't we take a break and have a cup of coffee?" he suggested. He brought the gun in, but left everything else out on the table. He checked his security program to see nobody was on his property and they finished up the breakfast pot before going back out.

  "I expect with a little practice you will be able to hit what you intend to hit, but that is not the most important thing I need to teach you." Rog said.

  "It isn't?" Martee asked, surprised. He had her attention again.

  "No the most important thing is you don't shoot something – or someone – you don't intend to."

  She just sat and didn't volunteer any thoughts.

  "That especially means me and it by no means excludes you."

  "OK," she agreed. "Tell me some ways that could happen."

  "Say - you are carrying the pistol and slip and fall. You might be going down the stairs here. In the winter we get snow here. Have you ever seen snow?" he asked her.

  "I've seen pictures, never the real thing," she admitted.

  "It's slick and when you step on it, it compresses and then you are standing on ice. It covers the shape of what it's piled on so you aren't sure what you are really stepping on under it. The grass out there is almost as slick, when it is just wet from rain."

  "The kitchen floor is slick too when something is spilled on it. You can trip in the dark and fall if some of those cops in the ugly suits show up in the night and we have to fight them, or run from them. When something like that is happening you don't think about every step you take. Your mind is on other things. Make sense to you so far?"

  "Yes but what do I do about it? I may have to run."

  "Yes, but if you don't have your finger in the guard on the trigger, you can't pull it by accident when you go down." He picked up the weapon and demonstrated – laying his finger across the guard instead of inside.