by Steve M
When asked why the elaborate system of coercion was necessary, Pleon replied casually, “If it weren’t so, I wouldn’t be your ruler.”
Listening to this testimony was a very young and very impressionable young boy who would rise to become The Final McGee. The testimony made him very angry and he swore he would fix it. When he got his opportunity, the return to the university system was swift, brutal, and so far, final. He personally designed the honesty-testing regime for historians, the licensing process, and the periodic recertification process. He made them responsible for reporting the news. And then he became the first licensed historian. He held the designation for the rest of his life.
Enough of this, back to our story.
A hundred twenty-nine tox later Koven, Thomsa and Larn were sitting in the strategy lecture class. Professor Dre-Foster was connecting the projector to his teaching reader.
“Again, the high score goes to Koven,” said Dre-Foster.
There was a groan among the class. This was the case in the previous three strategy simulations.
“How did you do it?” asked Dre-Foster. He displayed the scores at the front of the class. Koven had the high score of 100 percent. Next was Arbo, with 92 percent. Most of the rest of them were in the 80-90th percentile.
“Lancaster Strategy for the Weak. Geographic entry in a sparsely populated region. Then build upon a well-established base.”
“Well done. Where did you find out about Lancaster?”
“My reader and a misspelled name,” replied Koven. He could not take credit for his accident. That would be criminal for a historian.
“This, my friends, is one of the greatest keys to success,” replied Dre-Foster.
“Accidents?” asked Thomsa.
“No. Curiosity. Koven could have corrected the spelling and gone back to his original intent. But he became curious. And he wins because of it.”
“Koven the Cat,” said Larn.
“Koven the Cat,” repeated Thomsa.
Koven smiled uncomfortably. But historians are uncomfortable most of the time. Did I mention the pay and benefits? They’re great. The suicide rates are over discussed though. They have always been high. It’s in the nature of the work.
CHAPTER SIX
“Try pulling it off by the insignia again,” said Dubitam. The tall, lanky man in the white robe moved his hair from in front of his face.
Allor reached up to the hard metal insignia/controller and pulled on it hard. It worked. The strange suit that covered him from his head to his sandals came off his body in a single motion. It looked like finely ground particles of iron following a magnet. The dark-gray suit held itself in shape hanging from the end of Allor’s arm. He stepped forward and slapped Dubitam in the chest with it. The PPS immediately enclosed around Dubitam in less than one tix.
Dubitam pulled the PPS off him by the insignia and slapped it back on Allor.
“See, I told you,” said a female voice from across the large cave. She walked over to them, stopping to pick up the remedium from the wooden table on her way. First she scanned Dubitam. She smiled when the results were green. Then she scanned Allor. He wasn’t afforded a smile.
“OK. You were right,” replied Dubitam.
“I was playing around with it last night. Got it caught on my robe and pulled the entire thing off by accident,” said the woman with her hair tied back behind her head with small strings of leather. She looked at Dubitam again.
“You have done well,” replied Allor, looking at her from his deepest dark eyes.
“Thank you, my Lord,” she replied.
Allor sighed deeply.
“Is there something wrong, my Lord?” MinKey asked him in her softest voice.
“Nothing. Just not used to being called ‘Lord,’ that’s all,” he replied.
“Would you prefer God Allor?” she asked him.
“No,” he replied with a sad tone.
They were working inside of a large cave. In it was all of the equipment salvaged from the wreckage of the spaceship years ago. For two young boys back then, digging out the wreckage only took months. But figuring out how to use the few items they had figured out took years, and it cost Roan his life. There were shiny metal pieces, small little devices the size of a hand, some pieces charred black from their attempt years ago to use flammable oil to melt the rocks. They were unsuccessful, as are many of the experiments of childhood.
So far, of the 127 items they had salvaged, the number that they have succeeded in making work over the years was very limited. They were as follows:
- A pretty blue stone: it is blue on one side and shiny silver on the other. When the blue side if facing away from the body, everything is normal. But when the shiny silver side is facing away from the body, and the blue side depressed, the wearer and anything in contact with the wearer becomes invisible by projecting an image made from background images. The stone emits a very high-pitched sound noticeable to only a few humans, but many other animals respond with fear and run away.
This is the first bit of alien technology they figured out and got working. “Figured out” is a loose term I use here, as the boys no more understood refractive technology of image capture and broadcast than a cat understands general relativity. But they were able to use it and make it work. And this was significant for them in two ways.
Firstly, it allowed Allor to become an excellent child thief. Secondly, upon discovery of this capability by Tal, Allor’s mother, Allor became, with his mother’s guidance, one of the richest persons on the planet. And definitely the richest child. I am required by law and professional obligation to point out that Tal was raised in an environment of significant poverty.
They have five of these stones recovered from the crash.
- The remedium: you are already familiar with this device. They have two of these and have recently figured out how they work.
- Personal protective suit (the PPS): again, you are already somewhat familiar with the device. They have five of them. But the state of them all those years ago was dreadful. The centrifugal forces were so strong that the occupants were what may best be described as being forcibly strained through the personal protective suit. The PPS retained a horrific odor for a long time. And they still do, but it’s faint now. Still, in the right breeze and at the right temperatures the smell of the five crew members floods their noses like a bad memory.
Except for the smell, PPSs are very hygienic and self-cleaning.
- Personal transport device (PTD): select the coordinates where you want to go from the maps offered in the holographic display. Then the gold bubble forms around you and you are taken there. This has been working for the last 628 revs. They have five of them and they are a very sore subject with Allor. For the 7,284 revs, it was nothing more than his personal puke machine. The start of the journey was so fast and the flight speed so fast (Mach 11) that he always arrived at his destination covered in his own vomit. It was only after the next device became useful that methods improved.
- The reader: the electronic repository of all human knowledge. It is updated every twenty minutes and is all held in a rather neat and convenient appliance that fits in all of the major pocket sizes. Regrettably, in the hands of the humans on Earth 7, this may be the most dangerous book in existence. Here we are again, back to Estimated Body Count. Oh dear.
The reader stared back at them for thousands of revs before Roan accidentally pushed a search icon. He then pressed what to him was gibberish. And an unrecognizable message would appear and come from the machine and also in spoken word form. And they would always respond with some sort of curse or rude remark to it about how stupid it was. They did this a few times a week for years. It became a game to them. Say rude things to “The Useless,” as they named it. Eat shit, Useless. Underpants on your head, Useless.
But there is a human word that almost means hope, it is eventually. And eventually Allor pressed the right sequence and the machine responded, “You appear to be having a
problem with my language. Would you like some assistance?”
One “yes please” later and the education began. It was difficult. They gave up for revs, sometimes they would get so frustrated. But thirst for knowledge is the most addictive drug known to humans. It is the driver of the best of us. We learn, we strive, we improve, we pass it on. And our knowledge always remains incomplete. That is the art of it. We all die as unfinished work.
But with time they finally learned enough to work a few of the items.
Oh, there is one more they have figured out. They think it is a weapon, but it is not. It is actually a deep-space propulsion system that is strictly forbidden from use within solar systems. It has an adjustable flow rate that they have misinterpreted as a range-calibration unit. And I will admit that it sort of works that way, if you are using a deep-space propulsion system on a planet and burning huge circles into the earth. This was also the cause of Roan’s death. At one of the early tests, which resulted in an unexpected detonation, Roan was sure he was standing back far enough. Turns out 25,000 maatars was the correct answer. This weapon is what they call “The Apostle.”
Blaster: a particle-decomposition weapon. They have five of them. They call them “Dust Makers.” They are not very good with them but keep practicing. They discovered how to use them years ago, in the first month. But they suddenly stopped working. It was 5,174 revs before they knew how to charge them up again. This particular blaster Ruhla 3712 has a rather gruesome history. It will not only turn you into constituent dust particles with a blast, but it is also designed to work like a medium-length curved sword made of particle beams.
This was a result of the work of Professor Optus Roanall in the Psychology Department that did a study on methods of killing. Let me remind you that killing is illegal, mostly. Anyway, he discovered that winners enjoyed their victory more if they ran their opponents through with a sword at the end as opposed to watching them perish in the distance from a blast from their gun. Yes, winners prefer something much more close and personal. So the Ruhla 3712 can be made into a light sword. Allor has been practicing using the light sword while invisible.
It changes a man’s perspective when they realize that they can kill anyone they wish successfully. Most just note it and go forward that quarter of a degree different from before, slightly more confident. But with some, the degrees are significant, as is the effect. This is how histories change.
“I solved it last night,” said Dubitam “with the help of MinKey,” he was quick to add.
“No, I only checked his work,” she replied.
“That’s important. You’re the smartest of all of us,” said Allor with a smile.
“Thank you, Lord, for saying such kind things.”
“Well, you are. You took three hundred revs to learn the language of the book. We took much longer,” replied Allor.
“You started young, Lord. An older mind knows to make the pieces fit into the puzzle,” she replied.
“OK, we will disagree about this, then,” Allor said with a laugh. Then a moment later MinKey started laughing too. Eventually Dubitam joined in. Disagreeing with a god. To them it seemed funny. But they were often illogical.
From wooden shelves Dubitam removed three small, thin gold rings. He stopped at the table and looked at his tick sheet.
“What are you doing?” Allor asked him.
“Checking the count,” Dubitam replied.
“What is it?” Allor asked.
“A bit depressing. Three hundred and fourteen tries after reading the instructions,” replied Dubitam.
He held out a gold ring for MinKey. When it touched her wrist, it tightened to fit it. Then Dubitam put one on Allor, then finally himself.
“Still,” Dubitam added, “let’s go from failure to success.” He lifted the thin gold bracelet to his mouth and said, “Instantiate comms all.”
Then the small gold bracelets did something they had never done before, they changed into thin round red bracelets.
“Nearby devices,” said Dubitam.
“Two devices nearby. Would you like to name them in your directory?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Device One, please give it a name now,” and the red ring turned to blue on MinKey’s wrist.
“MinKey,” said Dubitam.
“Saved as MinKey,” came the reply.
“Device Two, please give it a name now,” and the red ring on Allor’s wrist turned blue.
“Lord God Allor, Of the Cult of Allor, Healer of the Sick, Giver to the Poor, the most…”
“That’s enough,” replied Allor emphatically. He cursed his mother.
“Saved as That’s Enough,” came the reply.
“Please, Dubi. Try to remember what I told you about all this god stuff. It’s just for in front of my mother and at court. When we’re alone, I really don’t want to hear it from you. Or you either,” Allor said, looking at MinKey.
“I’ll try to remember,” Dubitam said with an almost hurt look on his face.
“I can be your king, but I won’t ever be your god,” he said.
MinKey smiled at this.
“MinKey, if you go over in that corner over there, and sir, if you will remain where you are, I’ll go over to that corner way over there. I’ll bring the reader to check the instructions.”
MinKey walked over to a corner and Dubitam picked up the reader and sprinted to the furthest corner.
Some messages are significant to planetary evolution. “One small step for man…” blah, blah, blah; “You’re standing in my light, boy”; “Open up, I’ve got the weed.” You have no doubt heard most of these, some maybe even more than once.
For Earth 7, the most significant message ever sent began, “Wow, I should trim my nose hair.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tanit was waiting for Koven at the portal. When his bubble popped, she stepped forward to greet him. In public she gave him a polite hug and kiss on the cheek.
“How was my lover today?” she asked him.
“It was good. I learned how to bounce someone in a PPS bubble,” he replied.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it as he walked alongside her towards the stairs to exit the station.
Bubble stations were only a recent development. Before them, it was complete and utter chaos. Traffic fatalities were over three in every billion journeys. Bubble stations eliminated traffic fatalities, sort of. Once you leave the bubble station, any fatality is your own damned fault and can’t be blamed on anyone else or a generic condition like traffic. Blame it on traffic? Really? That would be silly, like declaring war on a noun.
“I’m going to cook dinner,” she said to him as she looked at her slightly handsome but mostly average man with the most incredible job in the galaxy. Did I mention the benefits? One is a huge payout on the death of an agent. It’s basically an agent’s pay for the next 150 years, payable to spouse or any beneficiary named.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he replied to her.
“Why? Because you want to ravage me and make me do dirty things for you?” she asked.
“No. Because cooking is not one of your strongest skills,” he replied.
Oh my, remember I warned you about this. Asking a historian a question is often a bad idea. For this reason, Tanit has never asked Koven if he loves her. Sometimes the question is more dangerous than the answer.
“A question never asked is never answered”
—The Final McGee.
They walked along in silence for a while.
Despite dating for 716 revs and despite spending one entire day with each other every ten days, and seeing each other several other times during that time, if at all possible, as long as he wasn’t out on a mission, and despite still seeing him that one day every ten, even when he was out on a mission, despite all of that, Tanit and Koven had never had sex. Not R Sex, the real kind.
VR Sex doesn’t really count. Yes, sure, there is touching and sensation from the plasmatrons that refl
ect your partner’s motions in the virtual world. There are even orgasms, as many as you are capable. But it is still just VR Sex, not R Sex. Tab A in Slot B does not happen. Tab A is wrapped in plasmatron material as Slot B is filled with it. And it is all done remotely. And in the 716 revs they have been dating, Koven and Tanit have had VR Sex 826 times. The average among the rest of the population is 17 times of VR Sex before R Sex.
But despite the means and the median, Tanit and Koven have never once been to IKEA.
Finally Tanit spoke again as they rounded the last corner to her apartment. She had an apartment above a store off the far edges of the campus. It wasn’t palatial, but it was adequate and clean. She worked to make it seem warm and friendly. Not like Koven’s place. All steel and glass and cold and formal.
“I want you,” she said.
“I want you,” he replied.
They rushed up the stairs to her apartment door. Three flights went by quickly. For an agent it is nothing. For Tanit it was a bit more, and she was out of breath when they got to her floor. She had been getting in shape lately, having spent eleven revs determined not to succumb to the health regime of an agent or an agent’s wife. But then she split a pair of pants at work one day. She had to keep her lab coat on all the way home.
When they got inside, the first thing Tanit did was to fling her shoes off her feet like prisoners breaking free. The shoes flew at a low trajectory until hitting the sofa across the room. Koven walked behind her and picked them up. He carried them into the bedroom and put them in the shoe sling.
“You don’t like for me to do that, do you?” she asked.
“No,” he replied.
“Then why don’t you make me stop?” she said with a husky voice and a dirty smile.
You probably have figured this out already, but Tanit hadn’t yet. Historians are incapable of role-playing. It is by definition a lie and therefore illegal. So while Tanit wanted Koven to throw her down on the bed or even better tie her up and ravage her, pretending to be a strong and threatening stranger, Koven was capable of none of it, except maybe the ravaging part. And he was scared of that part more than any other.
