The Scarlet Anniversary

by Lubowa M. Planet

  “And those numbers are all billions? What's with you people? Don't you have anything to do?”

  “Nothing more important than this.”

  “That just doesn't make sense. There's never been anything special about me, in the slightest.”

  “You're special, now. Your emotions are so unencumbered, so real, so natural. It's looking like you'll be one of our most popular ever, maybe even the most.”

  “Well, I've got to say, that soup was the best thing I've tasted in a long time. And it's been even longer since I thought about the stuff I used to do when I was a kid.”

  “Ah. We had a pretty good idea about the soup. A lot of people tuned in just for that. You haven't had any solid food for two of your weeks and your taste buds have been revitalized. The combination of hunger and the ability to really taste things combined to really bring up that pleasure level. It was almost twice as high on the feeling scale as your water was.”

  “So that graph measures feeling, huh?”

  “Sometimes. It actually measures intensity of emotions, feelings, desires, that kind of thing; it all boils down to energy. When you got the brain freeze I warned you about, it measured that, too. It was even higher than the pleasure you got from your first drink. You see the small screen on the left, the one with the changing colors?”

  I looked where she was pointing. The graph I'd been paying attention to was three feet high and maybe five feet from side to side. It looked like a heartbeat in a regular hospital, up and down, some almost constant levels, but this one stayed up when I was happy or content or whatever for an extended period. The one she was indicating was a foot or two to the left of the graph I'd been watching and was a lot smaller. It was maybe eight inches square.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I see the colors. I didn't really notice it before.”

  “Well, that display shows what is going on with you. You could say it classifies the type of energy the big one measures When you were exploring the soup, it was oranges and reds. When you were thinking about your childhood, there were a lot of yellows and then greens and blues. Your brain freeze was dark blue and purple. The colors show what you're feeling while the graph shows how much. That rising and falling bar on the other side of the large graph is the number of people who are watching at this time. You can see that it's pretty good as I'm explaining this to you. It makes good vid when a new subject gets familiar for the first time with ideas that are second nature to the youngest child.”

  “Vid? What's that? TV?”

  She almost snorted at me. “I wish you wouldn't call it that. It's insulting. Learn to call it vid, please.”

  I poked her in the side and got a sharp look from her. “I think your audience likes it when I call it TV and you get pissed off. That bar on the right went up and it's higher now than it was before.”

  Before she could answer, I brought the spoon up to my mouth and took another taste of the soup. It was good, really good, but it just wasn't the same as before. I guess the second drink of water isn't nearly as good as the first one to the guy who's been stuck in the desert. The graph went up but not nearly as much as before. It didn't stay up for long, either.

  “This is great soup,” I told her, “but I don't think it will ever be as good as that first spoonful.”

  “We could always give you a forgetter and put you out for another couple of weeks to see if your reaction is any better.”

  I didn't like that comment – at all. The main graph spiked but the colors were dark blue and black.

  “So, I know what black means,” I said. “What do all the other colors mean?”

  “They're different with everybody. We'll figure them out as we observe you. Different species have different color displays. You are one of the most distinct specimens I've ever come across. When you have a strong emotion, the colors are really bright. I don't think I've ever seen anyone's fear and anger show up as strongly as yours just did.”

  I didn't say anything out loud but my thought was I'd show her anger if she actually tried any of that shit she was talking about.

  “See?” she said, pointing at the dark blue splotch next to the graph that was just coming down from another peak.

  “So, how does this all work,” I said, changing the subject. “I feel like I should have tubes in me and all kinds of wires attached to my head and my chest. And there should be beeping noises.”

  “We don't have anything as primitive as that. How would we be able to monitor you if you moved?”

  “Oh, wireless. We had that. Bluetooth. So what's the range?”

  “Range? I don't understand what you mean.”

  “How far? The stupid things used to bother me. Stopped working a few feet from my car.”

  “Feet are a small measurement, based on your body's feet, correct?”

  “A little larger than mine, yes.”

  “It's hard to believe that anything so limited was useful to your people. You can be a lot farther than something you can measure in feet. Did you ever look into the sky when it was dark?”

  “Occasionally. It's gotten pretty bad over the years with all the lights and the smog. I used to enjoy lying on the roof and looking at the stars when I was a kid.”

  The feelings graph and audience display both rose as I recalled the sky full of lights.

  “Get the idea of the farthest star you can see. One that's almost too dim to see, not dim because it's a dim star but because it's so far away.”

  “I can picture dim stars but from what I learned over the years, that's a distance that's almost impossible for a human to understand. Something like a million men, one after another, one traveling a million years at a million miles an hour, then the next one starts his million year journey.”

  “Much farther than that, but you get the idea. We can pick up your signals from a distance longer than it is to that farthest star. And we have subscribers who are farther from us than that.”

  “Subscribers. Farther than the end of the universe. How does that work?”

  “The transmission or are you asking about what a subscriber is?”

  “Both, I guess. I'm gonna guess they don't put a satellite dish on their roof.”

  She laughed. It sounded good, a lot better than the looks and snarls that I'd gotten when I compared her vid to our TV. “No, there are no dishes. It is all done remotely, and I don't know if you have the understanding to grasp the concepts involved.”

  “FM.”

  “No, that was a very primitive form of information transmission. I don't believe it was powerful enough to cover even your home planet.”

  “No, FM radio certainly wasn't. But we had another definition for it. Anything we didn't understand was FM. Fuckin' Magic.”

  She laughed out loud. “I see. Well, some of the specifics are FM to me, too. But I've got a general idea of how things work and I can probably pass most of it to you.”

  “I'm really interested and I hate to interrupt you, but there's something that's been bugging me. I know I'm not talking English and it seems like we're both speaking the same language. But I understand things as if I'd been speaking this forever. All those minute differences, those inferences that come across in which word you choose and even the way you say it – I've got a total understanding of those things in this new language.”

  “Well, first of all, you're speaking what we refer to as Standard. It's as close to a universal language as there is, but there are millions and millions of different languages and dialects. You have received an implant, smaller than any of the cells in your body. It allows you to understand and speak Standard, as well as approximately 30,000 other languages. If you came across somebody who spoke a language you are not familiar with, your implant would communicate with their mind and within minutes the two of you would be able to speak in his native tongue.”

  “Well I'll be damned. Thirty thousand. Sheeeit! I could probably understand one of them Englishmen”. My phony accent went straight over her head though I'll admit,
Cockney doesn't come across too well in Standard.

  “You will be amazed at what you understand. There's a lot more to it than just putting an implant in you. Different people learn differently, at different speeds. Some people wouldn't be able to communicate half as well as you after years and years of trying. It isn't the chip that communicates, it works with your mind and you communicate.”

  “Wow. Like algebra. Some got it right off, some never figured it out.”

  “Precisely. I have no idea what algebra is but you communicated the essence to me and your comparison is spot on. I am amazed at how well you are doing. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you were able to speak telepathically somewhere down the line.”

  [You mean like this,] I thought, aiming it at her as if it was something I'd been doing all my life.

  “Yes,” she said, then got a shocked look on her face as she realized what I'd done. “Amazing. One out of 500 is able to do that natively and it's very rare for someone to develop that ability after living a few years, much less the length of time you have. I was joking when I said you could learn to do it.”

  “It doesn't seem like I learned anything. You said I could do it so I did it. I just didn't know any better. FM.”

  “Well, that little trick brought you up to number three in popularity. And that's against some beings who’ve been on vid for centuries.”

  “Centuries? The man who … I guess recruited me is the best way to say it … He said I could live another 76 years, probably on a planet with primitive people. He was kind of abrupt, really.”

  “That's Mot. A report is being sent. Is there anything more you want to say about it?”

  “Hey, I don't want to get the guy in trouble. I did notice that it took a long time from when he talked until I 'heard' it in my head. It seemed to get faster, the more we talked.”

  “That's the learning period I was telling you about. Mot has never been subjected to English before and he tends to take longer than some of us to grasp a new language. I imagine he's still disturbed to be put into a recruitment position, too.”

  “Oh, he was new? What did he do before?”

  “He was a producer. The ratings on his projects have been declining over the past two decades and he was given a chance to show what he can do as a recruiter. There is a lot less prestige in his new position and he was probably taking it out on you.”

  “So, did you take over his job?”

  “No, nothing like that. Although I could see how he could imagine that was the case. This is my first time producing, but I didn't fill a slot that he vacated. I was a developer. I would be assigned several beings and would keep an eye on them. If the ratings dropped, it was my job to figure out why and find something that would fix them. It could be anything from introducing a potential new mate or enemy into their world or even moving them to another location, on or off planet. I would go over my ideas with the producers and figure out what might work. Then the producer would pitch the change to the production board and they would accept, refuse or modify it. It's a lot easier to get them to go along with introducing a new female than sending someone off to establish a new colony on another planet. Finance has a lot to do with it.”

  “Ah, yes. The bean counters. I've had my share of run ins with them.”

  “People who count beans?”

  “Not literally, but yes. They pick every potential activity apart to make sure each dollar they put into it has the potential to get 10, 20 or 50 back.”

  “Oh, yes. That's Finance.”

  “So did you work with Mot on some of the projects that lost ratings?”

  “No. This is the first time we've had anything to do with each other.”

  “You mean him recruiting me and you producing.”

  “More than that, actually. You see, part of the developer's job is to find potential subjects. Not every developer is good at it and they don't like to let the good ones go. I had a difficult time convincing my superiors to let me run the production after I selected you as an ideal subject.”

  “Ideal? Because I abused my body? I'm sure there are a million more just like me you could have chosen.”

  “Is that what Mot told you?”

  “He said I had five minutes before I died to make up my mind. I was going to be an experiment and the ones you people liked most were the ones who had really fucked up their bodies. He stressed the repair of my body more than anything. He was very specific on me getting another 76 years and said nothing about centuries.”

  “Oh, boy. Where do I start? First off, humans tend to be a bit lower on the lifespan scale. 150 – 200 years is probably the average for most species. Your body has been reconstructed and should last well past the 76 years you lived prior to coming here. Even though most of it has been beefed up and will last longer than before, you are not immortal or some kind of superman. If you fall off a cliff, get attacked by a wild animal, get into a fight with someone else, any of these can damage or even kill you. If you prick your finger, it will still hurt.

  “As you said, people who didn't take care of their bodies are a dime a dozen. You took two weeks to fix. Some take a little less, some a little more. A month or two of orientation to the way things are and will be in the future is normal. I would wager that you would take a lot less time than normal except for the fact that you ask about everything. Don't get me wrong, I'm not objecting. One of the reasons your ratings are so high this soon is that you aren't just sitting there and accepting whatever comes your way.”

  “I've never done that.”

  “No, you haven't. And that's the real reason I selected you and was able to convince my superiors to let me produce you. The majority of people on Earth are perfectly willing to go to work every day and do some repetitive, unrewarding job, careful not to intrude on anyone or upset anything. They come home to their beer and their TV and start the same thing over again the next day. Or they are content to sit around all day, use drugs to try to escape their existence and let the government support them. Did you ever disturb anyone when you were working?”

  “Hell, yes, I was always rocking the boat. Damn fools went around with their heads up their asses. It's a good thing I was a vice president and could make them listen to me.”

  “How did the people you worked with feel about you?”

  “Maybe 50-50. Half of them thought I was an asshole and the other half loved me.”

  “Yet some of those who considered you an asshole still went along with you.”

  “Sometimes. It usually took some real convincing.”

  “When did you stop working?”

  “I retired eleven years ago, when I reached 65.”

  “And what has happened to your company in the last eleven years?”

  “I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to them. The first couple of years, the real dicks took over and a bunch more joined them. They were all afraid to say boo for fear they might lose a dime or two. They wanted to do things the way they did twenty years ago.”

  “And now the company is no more. Did you ever consider there might be some connection to your retirement, the transition to an ultra-conservative management and the company's bankruptcy?”

  “You're shitting me. You think I had that much influence on the company?”

  “The statistics seem to show a direct correlation between your retirement and the company's demise. And when you fought hard for an idea of your own or against someone else's bad idea, and won, things improved after your idea was implemented. The harder you fought, the better things went.”

  “I kinda felt that way but I didn't have any statistics to back me up.”

  “I do. I've been keeping them for 23 years.”

  “Twenty three years. That's when I became a junior VP.”

  “That's what alerted me. There was an attitude of grudging acceptance throughout the company's upper management. Like they didn't really want you but they knew they would do better if they had you. That's why you were constantly forced t
o prove yourself. Your people have an expression, 'Thinking outside the box'. You're one of a few who do that instinctively. 99% of the people are stuck inside the box and the majority of them don't even realize there's a box. And I'm not just talking about Earth. I'm talking about the whole fucking universe.”

  ******************

  About the authors

  At the age of 12, Lubowa.M.Planet had started writing. His passion to express himself in the written words led him to writing of several types of works focusing on science fiction and fantasy but also short drama and romance stories. He has written several books and co-authored novels. He has even thought out ideas from within other people.

  He is a Ugandan Born. He is a family man who likes to describe himself as a simple guy with a simple purpose in Life: To Help others on their way Up. His books and novels have sold thousands of copies and have received many rave reviews.

  The happiest moment was when the leading National daily decided to have a Mutual agreement with him to sell his first book. It received a lot of attention and since then he has taken up a full interest in writing.

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  Table of Contents

  DEDICATION

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN