by Paul Anlee
“Was? What are you doing now?”
“The exact opposite, as directed by Alum. I’m helping the Cybrids comply with our capricious policy.”
“Whoa! How do you figure our policy’s capricious?”
“When the colonies began, Cybrids were trusted partners of society. Now we treat them with suspicion and fear, a one-hundred and eighty degree turn in only a few months. Capricious.”
“I don’t know, man. I might agree more with Alum on this one. Even before the Cybrids, a lot of the best jobs on Earth were being lost to automation.”
“Admittedly, our society was struggling with its riches.”
“Yeah, well, only a few of us got to enjoy that struggle. Most of us never got close to the wealth.”
“Granted, fair distribution was always a problem.”
“Yeah.” Rumi stared into the distance a while, remembering tough times on Earth. He shook himself out of his reverie. “Actually, it’s riches I want to ask you about.”
Strang was surprised by the change in topic. “What can I do for you?”
“You’re in the Administration, aren’t you?”
“More like middle management in this Administration.”
“Still, you know how they think up there.”
“I wish that were true. What’s your concern? I mean, in particular?”
“I want to expand. Open a few more cafes.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Yeah, on Earth, no problem. But here, man, I don’t know.” Rumi pressed his lips together and looked away.
“Why do you say that? You’re one of the most capable entrepreneurs Ecuador has ever produced.”
“Thanks, but expansion needs capital. Where do I get that?”
“Isn’t the bank usually the best source for such funds?”
“Not right now. They’re not making any business loans.”
“I see. What about friends? Family?”
“No, man. I can’t get anyone to bite. People are nervous right now. Nobody knows what’s going to happen over the next few months. Everyone’s hoarding whatever little they have.”
“I see your problem. But surely this won’t last forever.”
“You tell me, man.”
“Ah, yes. We’re back to my valuable inside knowledge.”
“Do you have any idea when they’ll let the bank start lending again? Or is capitalism dead in the asteroid belt?”
Jared took another sip and reviewed what little he knew of Alum’s economic policy. “How much do you know about economics and finance?” he asked.
“You know my degree is in engineering, right?”
“No, I didn’t know that. I presumed you were a self-taught entrepreneur. Or maybe a business certificate.”
“Well, in Ecuador, when you have an engineering degree, you open a business, any business. Sometimes two or three. That’s always worked for me, so I did the same here. Actually, they assigned the café to me when I got here. Not everyone can do this, you know.”
“I’m afraid I’ve underestimated you, my friend. My apologies.”
“No worries, man.”
“Okay, let me see. I’m sure Alum and the Governing Council is well aware of the mess that irresponsible government combined with corporate debt made of Earth’s economy. Nevertheless, growth requires equity or debt and, right now, we have neither. We do want to grow. Actually, we need to grow.”
“There’ll be a lot of room to expand,” Rumi agreed.
“The problem is, both the previous Administration and the current one are fashioned along militaristic lines rather than capitalistic ones. Making the transition will be difficult.”
“I don’t know, man. I’m not sure you can equate the Church’s hierarchy to a military chain of command.”
“No? Think about it. In many ways, they’re remarkably similar. Especially evangelical churches like the YTG. Perhaps the hierarchy within the Church is even shallower than a standard military one. There aren’t many levels between Alum and his followers.
“At any rate, the Governing Council is trying to help with setting up our financial system, as are the many middle managers left over from Project Vesta. But governments are built on bureaucratic structure, and bureaucracies tend to be slow and cautious.”
Rumi frowned. “So, these guys don’t want a whole bunch of little guys like me running around, frantically starting new businesses?”
Jared burst out laughing at the image. “No, nothing like that. They’re okay with small businesses. They just don’t trust the ‘high finance’ types, so they’re moving slowly to set up the basic lending and investing vehicles. Despite its excesses, capitalism does work in many ways. I don’t think anyone is looking to abandon it.”
“I wouldn’t want to see the colonies become communist. We saw a lot of that in South America. Every other election, some country would elect a communist or socialist. It would start out fine, but they always screwed things up real bad before long. Then they’d have to vote in some businessman-turned-politician to clean up the mess.”
“I don’t think there’s any danger of communism taking over. But we are in a unique position in human history. Our banking and financial system, indeed, the entire basis for our money and our economies, was destroyed with the planet. So here we are in a new environment—”
“—an artificial environment.”
“Yes, here we are in an environment of our own making. Providing our biosphere continues to function as well as it has these past four years, there’s no limit to our growth.”
“We’ve only got the three colony asteroids so far. Eight habitat tunnels.”
“True, but our Cybrid friends are rapidly building more.”
“I’m not sure I like that our future’s in their hands.”
“They’ve been more than cooperative. One might go so far as to say they’ve been eager partners.”
“What do we have to hold over them? What do they need from us?”
“We’ve provided recharging stations along with repair services when needed, plus human contact and purpose. Remember, their psychological make-up is entirely human. They see themselves as tireless workers for our survival, all of our survival, for Cybrids and humans alike.”
“Hmph.”
“But you’re right, we need them more than they need us, and that is not a sustainable position. Economics is all about supply and demand. We humans will need to supply something they demand in return for the services they contribute, or we’ll be in trouble.”
Rumi grinned, a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. “We could just get rid of them and take their jobs for ourselves.”
Jared rose to the bait. “What an appalling idea! Apart from the fact humans are notoriously poorly adapted to working in space without gravity, it would advocate for killing over a hundred-twenty million sentient beings. And for what? Just to create new job opportunities?”
“For our own security.” The twinkle was still there.
“Ah, yes, that. We spent the last few decades on Earth in a constant state of concern about our security. And what good did that do?”
Rumi held up his hands, palms forward, fingers splayed. “Okay, okay, I get it, man! We need to find a way to live with the Cybrids. But we also need to give the human colonists some work. And by work, I mean their own businesses. And businesses need capital.”
“And that means banks and loans; stocks and stock brokers. Yes, I know. I suspect the first order of business will be establishing a basis for currency.”
“Why not just print some dollars? Or e-print some more e-dollars? That’s what we’re using now.”
“But how many e-dollars should we create? What is the basis of our economy? Especially when we have no foreign countries with which to trade. Or should we treat each asteroid colony as a separate country?”
“Uhh…I’m not sure that would be such a good idea.”
“Nor am I. Nonetheless, there are important questions tha
t need to be dealt with before we can move into a truly free, capitalist, market-based system.”
“So you’re saying I should just be patient? Man, I don’t know. I hate to see an opportunity like this go to waste. If I wait too long, someone else’ll take all the best spots.”
Jared took a generous swallow from his cappuccino. “You needn’t worry. The market for your excellent brew will be here for a long time. Everything will be decided in good time, systems will be put in place, and we will find our way back to business as usual.”
He downed the last few drops of coffee, and prayed what he’d said would come true.
10
Darya didn’t dare take her eyes off the two Securitors hovering high above. She suspected they had orders to detain, possibly to kill, anyone who attempted to leave the recharging station. After a few hours,
Darya’s Partial returned and reintegrated, informing her that the required code had been uploaded into Timothy’s concepta. As soon as Timothy finished integrating the new knowledge, they could make their move.
If only it were that simple! Her escape plan had no more than a fifty-fifty chance of success but she couldn’t come up with anything better. So long as our personas remain intact, our trueselves can be replaced.
Timothy pinged Darya. His system was updated and ready to go.
Using the control virus she’d inserted into all 18,457 bodies recharging in the crater, Darya sent out the first signal.
Inside the crater, twenty Cybrid bodies detached from their docking bays and drifted upward.
They go up so slowly, they look like helium balloons. She was struck by an ancient memory—a child in some park letting go of a string and shouting with glee as his bright red globe ascended into the heavens.
One of the Securitors moved in to investigate the ascending Cybrids. They didn’t respond to anything except automatic ID pings.
The Securitor’s manipulators snaked out and latched onto the nearest Cybrid, then moved onto the next, and the next, until it had similarly collected all twenty.
Hopefully, it thinks there’s just been some kind of docking malfunction.
Darya released a wave of thirty more Cybrids from their recharging bays.
The second Securitor left its station and rushed into the crater to respond. It neared a free-floating Cybrid and demanded it return to its dock. When the Cybrid didn’t respond, the Security blasted it with an energy beam. The Cybrid blew apart; its molten fragments cooled rapidly into slag and continued to drift.
The Securitor watched for a few seconds to see if any of the remaining free-floating Cybrids would react. Their shells, free of any occupying consciousness, floated placidly upward. The Securitor fired another half dozen energy beams, and another half dozen Cybrid trueself bodies were blasted to pieces.
Darya cringed with each loss. She hoped the inworlds would hold their personas safely until she could find new bodies for them. With Trillian’s involvement, it’s hard to say. But their permadeaths will be on his hands, not mine.
Before the Securitor could target any more of them, she released the fifty docked Cybrids surrounding Timothy and herself.
The first Securitor freed the twenty it had corralled and blasted them. Before it had finished, two hundred more Cybrids began drifting up from the depths of the crater. A few seconds later, another thousand rose, and then two thousand more.
The second Securitor raced into the crowd of rising Cybrids. It opened an infinitely deep, black gash in its side. The creature’s lightning fast manipulators wrangled and scooped up Cybrids and stuffed them into the gaping maw—a microverse holding cell from which it could retrieve them later in Alum’s presence.
Darya released five thousand more Cybrids, and triggered a hundred of them to transmit a signal to scatter. Fifty meters above the asteroid surface, the Cybrids’ matter-antimatter MAM drives kicked into maximum power. Cybrids rocketed away on random vectors, pursued by energy blasts from the Securitors below. There were too many for the Securitors to handle; most of the Cybrids were going to escape their guards.
Darya sent a pulsed signal to Timothy. The two of them detached and drifted upward a few centimeters.
At the same time, she released another five thousand Cybrids. As their drives reached full power and they blasted into space, Darya and Timothy drifted toward the edge of the crater.
The Securitors were too busy chasing thousands of rogues to notice.
As another wave of Cybrids lifted from the surface, Darya slipped over the lip of the crater and into the rock-filled blast zone around it. Keeping low, she headed for the rendezvous location to wait for Timothy, who was only a minute behind.
You made it!—she sent by laser pulse.
Was there ever any doubt?—he replied.
A blinding light cleaved the dark sky in two, saving Darya from having to answer. She looked up in time to witness thousands of Cybrids being vaporized by the planet-busting beams of a squad of Angels.
Angels! There weren’t supposed to be any Angels within a thousand light years of the Deplosion Array project.
She froze.
The presence of Angels implied many things, none of which fed her optimism. It meant Alum was taking the possibility of rebellious actions near the Deplosion array seriously. It meant the thousands of Cybrids she’d set adrift had overwhelmed the Securitors’ ability to keep up, and caused them to call for help.
It also meant the Securitors were free now to investigate the cause of the Cybrid mayhem. That spelled trouble.
If the Securitors put it all together, if they tied the laser signals that first caught their attention to the Cybrids’ inexplicable behavior, they were likely to conclude someone on the asteroid surface was directly responsible.
My plan worked too well; they could be here in minutes. We need to put some distance between us and that recharging station! But where?
The presence of Angels made it too dangerous to leave the surface, and she didn’t know anywhere to hide on the asteroid itself.
Just move—she thought. Move as far away from the crater as we can and gain some time to work out a better plan.
The two Cybrids set out at a slow, steady pace, hugging boulders, hills, and crater rims along the way.
Darya felt a radar pulse wash over her.
“Stop!” she signalled.
Timothy halted.
“Quick, back up 3.6 meters and stop there.”
Timothy reversed course as instructed.
Darya returned to the spot where she’d been when the radar passed over. They waited silently in the shadows.
Another pulse passed over.
The Securitors appear to be doing a quick scan of the area from high above the recharging station, and comparing images a few seconds apart to identify any movement in the surrounding area. With any luck, their scanning resolution won’t be high enough to pick out our perfectly spherical shapes against all the ragged rocks, ridges, and depressions of the planetoid surface. If we’re careful, we ought to be indistinguishable from natural features.
Minutes dragged on without follow-up pings or the sudden arrival of Securitors or Angels.
“I think we can move again,” she sent to Timothy, “We need to keep close to the crater rims, and move across open ground only where there are lots of boulders.”
She wished she’d taken the time years ago to map the surface of the asteroid, but since nobody ever ventured outside the recharging stations on these things, it had always been a low priority. These particular asteroids had all been mined and discarded for anything useful ages ago. Except for support services, there was nothing to see on the rest of the surface. That was one of the reasons this chunk of rock was chosen to host a recharging station.
Darya and Timothy drifted slowly, cautiously, away from the crater where the trueself bodies of Mary, Leisha, and Qiwei were still docked.
The activity behind them grew fainter and fainter, until the signs of commotion dropped from sight. Likewis
e, the radar fishing expedition that had nearly caught them grew increasingly random and sparse. With one final weak pulse, it stopped altogether. The pair stood still, awash in ghostly echoes stemming from doubt and anticipation, unable to flee freely for fear of being trapped by a fresh random pulse.
The paralyzing doubt festered and grew. Had their freedom been worth the horrific cost of their escape? The Angels had blasted thousands of Cybrid bodies into plasma. Millions of her colleagues, many of them friends, were now trapped inside her Alternus simulation.
Or rather, inside Trillian’s sick distortion of my Alternus simulation.
If she and Timothy were to rocket away, the Securitors would detect the trails from their propulsion units would make it easy to detect them against the distant light of stars.
How long can we hide out?—she wondered. If the Securitors made a concerted effort to find them on the surface, there’d be no way to avoid being discovered.
They came to an intersection of two crater rims, and Darya noticed stars twinkling far off to one side. Interesting. Little else besides the presence of surface gasses causes that effect. Aside from the recharging station in the other direction, this should be a dead chunk of rock. So what’s distorting the starlight, and is there some way we can use it? She magnified her view of the region. No melting ice visible. Atmosphere? Out here? Not likely. The backwash of a rocket? If it was from a propulsion unit, there’d be Securitors nearby.
“I need to go check something out. Please move ever so slowly, look for the largest boulder you can find nearby, and hide. Don’t move again until I tell you.”
She focused her main light receptors on the region, and ramped up the magnification to find the source of the gasses.
The stars twinkled in exactly the same place several times over the next few minutes. She couldn’t see anything moving, but couldn’t determine what was making them shimmer. She needed another perspective.
“Stay there. I’m going to move closer.”
