Sitting in the HR office—which had been transformed into a satellite campaign headquarters—she bashed out a report. But she hesitated to send it. She didn’t want to get the children in trouble. She decided to go see Dr. Seth in person.
Although Dr. Seth was the acting director of UNVRP, he shunned the plush executive suites. She presented herself at his modest office in the Life Support block. He didn’t even have a secretary.
“Coffee, Ms. Goto?”
While Dr. Seth fussed with the coffee-maker, Elfrida stared blankly through the open door to the right of his desk. Staffers monitored surveillance screens and telematics displays. She accepted the cup of coffee Dr. Seth handed her.
“Genuine Idaho beans,” he winked. “Now, how can I help you?”
“Well, I just sent you a report, sir. Basically, there was an altercation on the Rowling Scarp. I’m afraid that it was my fault. Some of the miners were using UNVRP phavatars for campaign activities, and we ran into each other and, uh, had a frank exchange of views. And one of the phavatars fell off the scarp.”
Dr. Seth let out an explosive grunt. His round, almond-brown face was so wrinkled that it was hard to read his expression. But his eyes twinkled. “And what happened to your nose?”
“Oh.” High on painkillers, Elfrida had forgotten that her nose currently resembled a squashed tomato. “Yes, sir. That happened, too. But it was my fault, really.”
“Has the phavatar that, er—fell off the scarp—been recovered?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Elfrida had last seen it lying in a heap at the bottom of the Rowling Scarp. After she talked to Cydney’s rent-a-thugs, they had promised to take their one remaining phavatar and try to recover it.
“Salvage efforts are in progress, but I’m afraid it may be extensively damaged. And I just wanted to make sure you knew, sir, that it was entirely my fault. The children named in my report are too young to know better. They’re too young to be operating phavatars on the surface of Mercury in the first place.”
“Children grow up fast in space, Ms. Goto.”
“Yes, obviously. But it would be unfair to punish them as if they were adults, and that’s why—”
“That’s why you’re nobly attempting to take the blame.” Dr. Seth put on a pair of old-fashioned interface glasses . He leaned back, reading her report. Elfrida stared mindlessly through the connecting door. Several staffers had clustered around a single screen. Others continued to monitor life-support functions on screens cluttered with old-fashioned graphs. All this could be automated, and if Dr. Seth had his way, she thought, it would be.
“I see … I see.” Dr. Seth took off his glasses. “Well, Ms. Goto, I’m afraid there’s no way to avoid some form of disciplinary action. The involvement of UNVRP phavatars puts their operators—and in fact, UNVRP itself—in violation of UN campaign law. Why did you allow it?”
“It wasn’t because Dr. Hasselblatter is my boss, if that’s what you’re thinking, sir. I would’ve let them campaign for anyone—for you!—if you were the one promising to let them stay here! All they want is to stay in their home, the place they were born, the only place they know!”
She glared at the old scientist, challenging him to admit the truth.
“I expect Vlajkovic has told you it’s because they’re purebloods,” he said. “That has nothing to do with it.”
“Riiight,” Elfrida sneered. “Purebloods are people, too, you know! My father is a pureblood.”
“How nice. So am I, as it happens. One hundred percent Jain. It beggars belief that a religious minority can be considered a racial subgroup, but that is how the PLAN sees it. They destroyed New Kolkata in ’62, reducing the total Jain population of the universe by half. Anyway, the personnel requirements of the Phase Five ramp were determined by a straightforward cost/benefit analysis. But your suspicion is widely shared. And if the workforce is evicted, that suspicion will harden; the perception will turn into the truth.”
Elfrida stared at him in confusion. Whose side was he on, anyway?
“Regarding the phavatars,” Dr. Seth said, blatantly changing the subject. “They will all have to be brought into the repair pit soon, anyway. You can tell Vlajkovic that I have the firmware updates he’s been expecting. They are ready to be installed at any time.”
“Was there some issue with the firmware, sir?”
Dr. Seth smiled. “There are always issues with the firmware. Ask any engineer.”
Laughter erupted in the other room. Elfrida and Dr. Seth both peered through the connecting door. Everyone had crowded around a single screen.
Dr. Seth levered himself out of his chair. “What’s all that LOL-ing about?” he called out.
“Sir … uh, you might want to see this.”
Dr. Seth hobbled through the crowd. Though Earthborn, he had been in space so long that he was severely decrepit. He needed crutches or a mobility chair, Elfrida thought, following on his heels, but was too proud to use them.
The screen everyone had been looking at displayed a vid grabbed from the internet. It showed a bedroom that looked like it should be roped off in a stately home on Earth. It was not on Earth, though. You could tell from the way the people in the bedroom were bouncing around.
People?
Half a dozen people … and as many bots.
Dr. Seth looked away.
Elfrida looked closer. The guy operating the screen tapped one of the wincing, sweating human faces.
“Oh. My. Dog,” Elfrida said.
She hadn’t recognized him instantly, since he was not only naked, but being diddled by what appeared to be a maidbot. But it was unmistakably Dr. Abdullah Hasselblatter.
★
In the year 2288, sex with robots was one of the last taboos. Mainstream society perceived it as disgusting, risky, and above all, sad. It was the resort of freaks who couldn’t get a real person to sleep with them.
In vain did personhood activists protest that they weren’t just fetishists, that they loved their sexbots.
Society sniggered, knowing better. What did sex have to do with love, anyway?
★
All too aware of this context, Dr. Hasselblatter held a press conference that same evening. Elfrida joined the audience. Her unicorn displayed a scroll in the corner of her eye: 650,849,295 … 652,388,101 … This was an estimate of the number of people who had seen the scandalous vid so far.
A standing-room-only crowd filled the lobby of Hotel Mercury, which was a bubble of thick glass sintered to the inner wall of Tolkien Crater. Rarely used these days, the lobby still had the original décor. A giant mural proclaimed, “On this spot, the first human being set foot on Mercury.” This was not quite true; the first explorers had touched down about seven kilometers to the north. But it had suited Hotel Mercury to claim the historical distinction, and now it formed a backdrop for Dr. Hasselblatter’s appearance in front of the whole system, via livestreaming.
Everyone had brought their carpets, and the lobby was hot as well as crowded. Shorter than the locals, Elfrida jumped up and down to try to see. She had no idea how Dr. Hasselblatter was going to wiggle out of what the news feeds were calling ‘Sexbotgate.’
“This isn’t about my hurt feelings,” he declared. “This is about my supporters, my fans and followers, and the people who work for me. The Space Corps performs indispensable services throughout the solar system. Their accomplishments cannot be tarnished by any underhanded political stunt.
“Most of all, this is about my friends and family.”
Two paces behind Dr. Hasselblatter stood his wife, demure in her burka, holding the hand of his small son.
“Why should they be made to suffer for my youthful indiscretions?”
Not bad, Elfrida thought hopefully. The youthful-indiscretion line was the only one possible to take, under the circumstances. Dr. Hasselblatter’s delivery was measured, his voice low and remorseful. Having his family on stage helped, too.
She worked he
r way over to the old Hotel Mercury reception desk and climbed on top of it to see better.
When she had first seen the vid, her instinct had been to shout “Ewwww!” and jump on the internet to post mean comments. But on the other hand, Dr. Hasselblatter’s campaign was now hanging by a thread. She had to root for him to pull this off. Presumably, the audience of UNVRP personnel and dependents were also suffering from conflicted feelings. They applauded loyally, albeit without much enthusiasm.
Least enthusiastic of all was Junior Hasselblatter. He fidgeted, trying to escape his mother’s steely grip on his wrist. Elfrida frowned. If that demon-spawn ruins everything …
She noticed scattered disturbances in the crowd.
The peacekeepers were working their way through the audience. People grumbled, raised their hands. Portable terahertz scanners glowed in the dimness. Dr. Hasselblatter continued to speak, while shooting perturbed glances into the lobby.
“Sorry,” said a blue beret, climbing onto the reception desk. “We’re scanning everybody.”
“Why?”
“Death threats against Dr. H. Some of them have a high credibility rating. Better safe than sorry.”
Elfrida raised her arms to be scanned. “You’re wrecking the ambience,” she gibed nervously.
“Gotta follow protocol.” Blue berets tended to worship protocol. It saved them from having to do much.
The scanner displayed a graphical representation of Elfrida’s body, minus her clothes. It was an indignity so familiar that she barely experienced it as such.
Not so, however, an orthodox Muslim like Mrs. Hasselblatter.
When the blue berets—taking quite literally the order to scan everybody—plodded up to her, she retreated. Junior howled. Dr. Hasselblatter broke off his remarks. He made a grab for his son. Too late. Junior sprinted into the audience, and Mrs. Hasselblatter sped after him, knocking two peacekeepers flying.
After that everything seemed to happen at once.
Junior was caught and prised from his mother’s arms. The blue berets scanned her. They drew their PEPguns. Half a dozen of them piled on top of Mrs. Hasselblatter. Everyone rushed closer to vid the brawl. From her perch on the reception desk, Elfrida watched the blue berets trying to pull Mrs. Hasselblatter’s burka off. Had they gone mad? They managed to drag the garment over her head, tearing it as they did.
The spectators recoiled.
“Oh, no,” Elfrida moaned.
Mrs. Hasselblatter was stark naked under her burka. She had six breasts, arranged in two rows of three. She also had a penis—with a forked tip—and a long, rat-like tail.
She was neither a woman, nor a Muslim, nor Dr. Hasselblatter’s wife at all. She was not even a human being. She was a sexbot.
★
Dr. Hasselblatter’s reputation imploded at the speed of light. As the new scandal propagated through the solar system, VIPs scrambled to distance themselves from him. President Hsiao expressed ‘profound disappointment.’ Talking heads surmised that Dr. Hasselblatter would lose his position on the President’s Advisory Council. He was expected also to resign as the director of the Space Corps.
As for his campaign for the UNVRP directorship, by the end of the day he was polling at 0.3%, several percentage points behind Mork Rapp.
“I told them she was my nanny,” he said angrily to Elfrida.
Gloom, and the ceaseless chirping of media alerts, filled Dr. Hasselblatter’s suite. His staff were packing their bags. The peacekeepers had taken the sexbot away for testing, to make sure it did not violate anti-AI laws.
“She looks after Junior. That’s her primary utility goal. It’s not illegal to employ a nannybot!”
“Um, I think saying she was your nanny kind of makes it worse,” Elfrida said. “You wouldn’t want that looking after your kid. I mean. You would, I guess, sir. But most people wouldn’t.”
“Most people are plebs.”
Dr. Hasselblatter folded a spare burka into a suitcase. Then he took it out again and threw it at the recycling chute.
“Stop that,” he yelled at Junior, who was giving the campaign staffers a hard time.
“Sir, if I can ask, where did Junior come from?”
“A woman, of course. You can buy them. Like everything else in this solar system.”
Elfrida held onto her anger by her fingernails. “We had a great campaign,” she said. “It’s a shame.”
“Oh, go away, Goto.”
Elfrida left the suite. She spotted Cydney gossiping on the L1 mezzanine, and stopped to speak to her. “I know you were behind this. How did you do it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, so it’s just a coincidence that Angelica Lin now has a lead in the public polls.”
“It’s not my fault Dr. H. turned out to be a raging kinkasaurus! Snerk.”
“He could’ve weathered the original vid. I bet you sent those death threats, so the peacekeepers would scan everyone in the lobby. How did you know Mrs.—it—wasn’t human?”
“Urrr! I didn’t! No one knew it until today!”
“I can’t believe I missed it. I thought I could always tell.”
“Well, you could only ever see her eyes.”
“I must be losing my edge.”
Elfrida glanced over the fake-marble balustrade that bounded the four-storey drop to the farm. You could feel the communal depression from here, as if blasted hopes were a tangible, clammy draught.
“I gotta go, Cyds.” Over her shoulder she added, “Be happy with what you’ve done.”
“I had nothing to do with it!” Cydney bounced after Elfrida and clutched her arm. “The peacekeepers work for UNVRP! They answer to Dr. Seth! He’d have had to approve their orders! He obviously sent them to screw up the press conference, figuring to kick his rival when he was down!”
“If so, it hasn’t done him much good. He’s still trailing in the polls.”
“You can’t blame me! I didn’t do anything wrong! I love you!” Cydney’s big, beautiful green eyes welled up.
“Oh, Cyds,” Elfrida choked. She let Cydney wrap her arms around her. “I just can’t believe everything’s gone so wrong.”
“It’s not the end of the world. I mean, I know it sucks. But as long as we’re together, we’ll figure it out.” Cydney’s arms tightened. “We are together, aren’t we? Still?”
Elfrida nodded jerkily. The smell of Cydney’s Chanel No. 666 perfume, the tickle of her hair, and the warmth of her hug comforted her, familiar in a world that had turned upside-down.
“C’mon, let’s go back to our sandcastle,” Cydney said. “It doesn’t matter about this, I was just grabbing interviews.”
Elfrida wanted to say yes. But she could not afford to hide under the covers, literally or metaphorically. Too much was at stake. “I have to go, Cyds. I’ll catch up with you later.”
★
She found Vlajkovic in the Hobbit Hole. All his friends were there, too. Tablets propped on the tables screened Sexbotgate commentary.
“Hey,” Vlajkovic said. He was staring blearily at some anonymous moralist’s contribution to the debate: bot-porn with Dr. Hasselblatter’s head shopped in. “Welcome to the wake.”
“I guess we did the best we could,” Elfrida said. “It’s out of our control now.”
“No, it’s not.” Vlajkovic pulled her down beside him. He poured her a drink. Even before she tasted it, she knew from the way Vlajkovic smelled that it wasn’t coffee. “We tried your way. Gave Dr. Hasselblatter the benefit of the doubt. Believed he’d keep his promises. Believed in him. That didn’t work out. So now we’re gonna try my way.”
Elfrida froze. They planned to go through with their rebellion! This was her worst fear come true. It would spell the end of the Venus Project, whether they succeeded or failed.
But this time, she had the presence of mind not to react with shocked condemnation. She objected, “The peacekeepers. We saw them in action today. They’re a lot more professi
onal than we thought.”
“Please. They’re good at frisking people. Me, I was happy with what we saw. Even after they realized that Mrs. H. wasn’t human, they still didn’t shoot her! She could’ve been weaponized. Dangerous. And they just sprayed a bunch of signal-blocking foam at her. To me, that says they won’t shoot us, either. It’s gonna be a walkover,” Vlajkovic declared, too loudly.
“Can’t we at least wait until after the election? It’s only another two days!”
“What’s the point, now?”
“But … but what about UNVRP’s surface assets? Even if you succeed in taking over the hab, they’ll take away all the mining equipment, the phavatars, everything. You’ll be broke.” You won’t be able to get the He3 out of the ground.
Vlajkovic’s wolfish grin appeared. “Except, not. Remember, Dr. Seth mentioned some firmware updates? Those are being installed as we speak. Sethie’s a good guy, but he doesn’t know crap about modern robotics. It’ll be done by this time tomorrow.”
“When you say upgraded … do you mean jailbroken?”
“Yes,” he hissed in her ear, smelling like a distillery.
“Oh. Well, then … I guess nothing stands in our way.”
They drank to that. The local potato liquor went straight to Elfrida’s head. Feeling dizzy, she experienced a new sense of resolve.
Nothing stood in the rebels’ way…
… except her.
23 Years Earlier. Callisto
The rest of the company finally turned up. That made 225 Marines on Callisto. Angelica’s platoon had been rattling around in their barracks, using the extra space as a gym. Now, they were hot-bunking. On day three there was a fistfight, and the Space Corps girl got called in to sort things out.
Angelica wasn’t clear on exactly what the Space Corps did. They were do-gooders, she thought. They ran around the solar system rescuing asteroid squatters too dumb to make it on their own, and didn’t they also have a role in that crazy plan to terraform Venus?
Mostly, Space Corps agents operated via telepresence. This one, however, was real. Callisto’s distance from anywhere else made remote operations infeasible.
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 13
