Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "I sort of suspected it would be password protected," Josh informed her when she tried to open the policeman's computer. Martee seemed surprised at the idea. After a bit of probing she painted a picture of her home world very much like a century ago in America. A culture where the doors of homes were left unlocked and ground cars sat outside, with the authorization codes scribbled on the dash beside the key pad in case the owner forgot. It sounded pretty nice to two men who felt they needed an elaborate net of sensors, to tell them of any intruders within a thousand meters of their homes.

  "Well that's not necessarily such a big problem," Josh assured her. "We can program your computer to do a brute force crack, or with a little bit of luck and some direction from you, I bet I can crack it tonight."

  Martee was skeptical.

  "Give me a chance," Josh asked. He had Roger bring a legal pad and some pencils. "Let's do this correctly from the start. Write down your alphabet and numbers and the closest English sound you know after each symbol."

  The list was thirty symbols long and after a little discussion was divided into consonants and vowels. Then Josh did something odd. He wrote across the top of a separate sheet: bilabial – labiodental – dental – alveolar – postalveolar – retroflex – pharyngeal – glottal – palatal – velar – and uvular.

  Martee was looking from the sheet to her computer confused. "The only word there I have in my computer is dental. Are those English words, or some other language?"

  "Oh, they are English all right. Just not common terms most people know. This is a chart that shows all the sounds the human vocal apparatus can make as speech. We don't count rude things you can do squeezing your arm pit. Once I have it drawn, we will convert your language to common symbols, that can be used to write English words too, or any language for that matter. It will be much less confusing than approximations." He continued down the side of the page writing, - plosive – nasal – trill – frictive – tap or flap – approximant and lateral appoximant.

  "Does English use all these sounds," Martee wondered.

  "Oh my goodness, no. English doesn't properly use any uvular, retroflex, or pharyngeal sounds. I expect there will be some your language skips too."

  "Can you say something for me with a sound English wouldn't use?"

  "Certainly" – Josh rattled off a rhythmic string, that seemed like each word was emphatic and one word he cut in two like he had suppressed a hiccup in the middle. "Did you hear the interrupt?" he asked her.

  "Oh yes. We don't do that in our language either. What was that you said?" she asked.

  "Oh it would translate something like – "Girl, little, I will see you in the moon of the green leaves, when it is warm." That is Lahkota, a beautiful language of this continent."

  Roger looked over his shoulder, but forced himself not to interrupt. He had never asked what Josh did for the military as a contractor's man. If he knew such an obscure language, Roger had to wonder how many others he knew. There must be more to Josh than just an electronic techie.

  Under a line he drew another chart that said vowels, but this was much simpler and said, front – back, on one side and closed – open, along the other edge. Then he started filling it in. By this time Martee was copying the material into her computer as fast as he was writing it down. She had to create new fonts as she went along.

  "I don't think we have anything like this," Martee admitted. "Is this something new? It seems very advanced."

  "No, these are IPA symbols – The International Phonetic Association. It was established in Paris in 1886. Hardly new at all," he said smiling.

  "Now, let's talk about what people use for passwords. Do you have your own computer password protected?" he started.

  A half hour later the computers were set aside while they ate. Josh suddenly asked, "Do you people use acronyms?"

  "That's not in my dictionary either," Martee replied.

  "Do you abbreviate? Do you use just the first letter or sound of each word as a new word, to name the organization or thing? For example we have the National Security Agency, but people just say the NSA…"

  "Or No Such Agency," Roger quipped.

  "People do but it is considered crude. It's like saying tune instead of tuune," Martee sounded out, the second much softer and very nasal. "It marks you as a low level company man, who didn't rate well enough to have much schooling wasted on him."

  "The same as ain't or irregardless," Rog butted in again.

  Josh spun a neat ball of linguini on his fork and then chewed it thoughtfully, looking off into infinity.

  "What is the name of the agency that employs these policemen?"

  "It would translate as the Association of Propriety," Martee explained. "The 'Brushna tran Akitobba," she translated back. They both looked at the screen hoping for a voice recognition response but it was stuck on password request still.

  "Bru – Ta – Aut," Josh said carefully. The screen changed into a sort of flow chart showing the contents as Martee's had.

  "There, now I can enjoy my dinner," Josh announced.

  * * *

  Roger cleaned up from dinner to allow Josh and Martee time to talk out all her issues and the desire to take Earth culture back to her worlds.

  To Roger's dismay Josh was quickly speaking simple phrases in Todu – Martee's language. She assured them with regional accents, it was understood in all the worlds that had starships visit. Rog was determined to catch up, or at least to learn enough they didn't start talking around him.

  The computer was interesting if not immediately useful. There were organizational charts that showed the position of various people inside the agency. However nothing they could understand, showed which ones actually came down to the Earth and which studied it from afar. There was a rough number given, that a crew of two hundred supported some thirty agents, usually on the planet itself. But so far there were no addresses of safe houses, or native contacts.

  Some of the individual reports were more interesting and revealing. One was about a fellow who had come here on an approved research mission and simply handed his computer back to an agent when he was to be picked up and announced he quit and was going native. There was a long thread of discussion back and forth that decided it was legal, but to be discouraged. Then later instructions from home told them that legalities be damned, the man should be picked up and forced to return. By then he had disappeared.

  Another report made clear the excitement of an agent who discovered the use of the NMR for medical diagnostics. Their own medicine had taken a detour around the technology and never invented it. They briefly considered buying one, until they found out how much it massed. Then they contented themselves with a repair manual and a number of scholarly papers about how it worked. It would take a long time to examine all the files. Josh made a start on conversion factors, for all the physical measurements and constants.

  As they read and Martee explained things, they found Earth humans were slightly ahead of the larger human culture in computer technology, but not voice recognition. Way ahead, in sheer availability of computer technology to the commercial market. Earth was ahead in medicine, especially any sort of trauma care and diagnostic technology, but behind in nutrition and pharmacology, including hormonal treatments.

  Martee explained that of course they felt no attraction to her sexually, because she had not exercised her license to have children and so was treated to suppress fertility and choose the implant that would also suppress the subtle pheromones that sent sexual signals.

  "Why would you do that Martee?" From the look on his face Joshua found it disturbing.

  "Josh, I have a job working closely with both men and women. If I don't intend to get in a relationship with any of them. It makes life much less complicated to not have any of them get attached to me and have to turn away their interest. Getting involved with your co-workers always turns out a mess. It's not like I renounced or sold my breeding rights. The implant wears off over about two years, so it isn't
forever."

  "But don't you, you know, miss checking out the guys around you from that perspective?"

  "Dear Josh, just because I don't smell doesn't mean I can't, uh… English is very unsatisfactory for this," she complained. "Just because I don't emit an odor, doesn't mean I can't receive one. That's uninhibited. I just have to remember if I'm attracted to someone, they are not going to have the full, deeply impelled feeling, in return."

  "People still have sex with implants, but they don't get the same obsessive attachment, with the bonding mechanism broken. I can accept a mature love, without someone hovering over me like a teenager. But I still can form all the bonds of friendship that are possible with either sex. I'm very happy to have Roger and you as my friends. I don't think you should minimize the strength of that sort of bond. It is just as strong and perhaps more lasting than the romantic."

  The whole thing put Roger and Josh off, to a degree she couldn't understand. If the government didn't regulate population, any world would be a slum in just a few thousand years. She couldn't see it as repressive.

  The area where Earth seemed entirely too far ahead was in weaponry. When Martee finally understood what nuclear weapons were, it was hard to convince her people had actually gone ahead and built such monstrous things, instead of keeping the knowledge at a theoretical level. Especially on a single world you couldn't flee. Obviously she hadn't understood the news before. Fission technology was uncommon on her worlds.

  Martee knew there were ships and engines of war, found by explorers over much of this arm of the Galaxy. Such information was forbidden in detail to the public and only known to Martee as a Professor of History, in a very general way. The fact that men had at some time made weapons as bad or worse than Earth men, was an abstraction to her. The conclusion every rational authority had reached, was if you built such weapons they would eventually be used. Everyplace they were found to have been developed, they had been used.

  Roger cynically pointed out that just because such information was tightly controlled didn't mean it wasn't preserved at the level of drawings and specs, that could be made into hardware in short order.

  The power source for the starships and even for Martee's computer and the pistol they had recovered, was fascinating. They all agreed Josh should take the power source in their captured electronic weapon apart, as soon as they got the other from Florida. It also had a much smaller version of the high voltage ultracapacitor the pistol used. That was also worth taking apart to reverse-engineer.

  When it came to nanotechnology Martee's people were extremely cautious. A lot of military tech was nano. But even Earth people were already using quantum tunneling nano-gap devices for cooling and waste heat recovery.

  Martee could not explain the technical details to them, but assured them when a non-plane nano-gap got a big enough area it would display some strange properties at a very small gap width. The devices that had self regulating gaps would display feedback when you tried to adjust them with a piezoelectric actuator. That had lead to nano-gap devices that actually generated power from the vacuum, instead of being externally powered. The starship drive was such a device built asymmetrically. It sucked power from the vacuum to one side and the distortion of space had spectacular results.

  All you had to do was build a sheet of semiconductor diamond the size of the kitchen table – flat within the width of an atom and with a pattern of very special dimples on its face. Then suspend it rigidly, from a conforming surface about two nanometers away.

  "That's all," Josh repeated sarcastically.

  "Hey," Roger pointed out. "We can make a granite plate about that size, flat within less than a hundredth of a millimeter. We've got to be halfway there," he said optimistically.

  "How does your ship maneuver, when it lands and moves around at a space port?" Josh wanted to know.

  "The gap in the drive opens up to make it less efficient and the controls turn it on and off for very short periods of time. It might look like it is hovering, but the drive is giving it many little boosts and letting it fall in between." Martee said.

  "Is that what you use at home for things like airplanes?" Rog asked.

  "Goodness no, starship drives are too expensive to make. For local transport there are aircars, that heat air and blow it down to take off and planes with wings just like I see you using here."

  "I'd like you to explain how much things cost," Josh asked her. "I want to build a picture of your economy and the things that you don't buy directly like company housing. I can assign a value to those things, by what portion of your compensation they represent. We really have to have some idea how things work in order to make a business plan."

  "Perhaps you should find that fellow who quit and went native," Martee suggested. "I noticed he was an economist."

  "Oh really?" Josh said with raised eyebrows. "That slipped by me."

  When supper was no longer heavy with them and it was getting late, Rog brought dessert and coffee back to the table. That forced them to put the computers to the side and talk.

  "I think your idea of showing movies and recorded music is wonderful," Josh told them. "I'd combine it with a toned down version of Martee's desire to run an Earth type restaurant. That's too ambitious. I’ve known families who ran a restaurant and you have to practically live there to really control it and make it a success, but I think we could do a coffee house just fine. We can carry a lot of freeze dried coffee and add just enough real bean coffee for each brew to fill out the flavor. Purists would be horrified, but our audience will be unsophisticated about such things for a while."

  "So you're not thinking in terms of an auditorium?' Roger asked him.

  "No it should be small, intimate and expensive," Josh assured him. "In fact we should charge all the market will bear. Martee, do you have public computer nets, like our internet?"

  "Yes, but understand we don't have a lot of the things you assume. There is one joint news outlet all the companies use to make public announcements and it is very plain compared to yours. You don't have the wonderful colors and graphics, pretty much text and pictures only. Video is usually a separate feed, not used casually on the data net."

  "Do people have personal sites?" Josh wondered.

  "On the main worlds, yes. On some of the less settled worlds they may only have a net in the big towns. On some worlds that would be one town. We may not have the art you people do, but we have photography. In fact it is almost like we are trying to make up for not being able to draw, by using a camera instead. But now that I've seen Earth photography I realize how bad our photography is too. The equipment is fine, but people take pictures of their relatives with the top of their head cut off, or their eyes closed, or landscapes with ugly buildings in front of the view. But still people post pictures of their vacations and children. People are not that much different in many ways, wherever you go."

  "I had an uncle who did photos like that," Josh remembered smiling. "But if they have a net I'm sure I can promote and probably sell our entertainment online. I bet I can get around the limitations to jazz it up a bit." Then he got a really serious expression.

  "Martee, Roger. I understand what you are trying to do and it sounds like all of us will benefit, if this secrecy and isolation of Earth ends. I can see why you want to do it, but there is a lot of risk. I want to be right up front with you. If I put myself at risk to help you with this, I expect something personal out of it. Can you understand that?"

  "I just figured if we did this, there was no way we wouldn't all end up filthy rich, on top of everything else as a bonus," Roger informed him, but then he realized they hadn't told Josh yet about the diamonds.

  "I can see where you'd want that, now that I see how business works on this world. It seems fair to expect a reward," Martee allowed. "I'm not sure what I can guarantee though. I don't think I can say we promise you will have…What's a number that is still a lot of money Roger?"

  "Twenty million is a nice number," Roger informed her
. "Most people could live out the rest of their life in middle-class comfort on that."

  "OK, then let's put it this way," Josh elaborated. "I'd like to hear you intend for us all to end up as well off as we can, without being corrupt or cheating others. I don't want to hurt people or start a war, but I don't just want to do it for the principle, or as a cause – a revolution. In fact to make sure I have some sort of reward I'd like to request one thing right now." He looked between their faces. They didn't seem upset at this; they were just waiting for him to go on.

  "When we can get detailed information exactly how the starship drive works, theory or even plans, I'd like that as my minimum reward, even if the rest of it falls through. I want to be able to file patents on the technology and be able to pursue it commercially. I'll work hard to get you two whatever you want out of this too, but that one plum I'm requesting you'll allow me and not interfere."

  "Works for me," Roger agreed. "I don't have the technical background you do to pursue it anyway. I'll find plenty other stuff to keep me hopping."

  "Sure," Martee agreed. "I want Earth people to have the star drive, but how they get it isn't that critical. They'll have to pay for it one way or another, just like anything else. Why not pay you? As long as you help us with everything else and don't just get stuck on this one thing and ignore our needs – fine."

  "Thank you," Josh said looking relieved. "It means a lot to me."

  "But that's relatively long-range planning," Roger pointed out. "We need some things right now. We need bullet proof ID for Martee, a driver's license, a history that will stand up to a computer check. Maybe even a passport. We need to have a place we can assemble all our supplies we will take off planet and ideally it should be able to serve as a hanger for Martee's space ship too, someplace not in a small gossipy town like Sitra Falls."

  "Do you have funds to cover all that?" Josh asked him. "I think we'd run through my money in a couple weeks, even if I sold my place."