Behind her, the door opened and she turned with a jolt, coming suddenly, unexpectedly face-to-face with Pierre, her supervisor.
"What are you doing here so early?" he said, equally startled.
"I'm not--" Lisa started, wincing, struggling for an explanation. She'd forgotten Pierre's threats to come down and fire her face-to-face. But Pierre was looking past her and his gaze had already settled on Stéphane, hunched over the laptop.
"I see," he said.
He took Lisa by the lapel. "Stand still," he said. He fumbled in his pocket for his mobile phone, to call security. But at that moment, Stéphane rose and turned in a fluid, almost inhuman gesture, and Pierre's lip curled at the sight of his scar.
"Jesus, Lisa. I thought you had better taste than that."
Lisa stopped breathing. Her hands contracted into claws. The walls and pipes blurred at the edge of her vision, leaving only Pierre at the end of the tunnel: Pierre and his shiny suits; Pierre and his total lack of support and sympathy; Pierre who symbolised and embodied everything that had gone wrong for her since she left university...
She pushed Pierre away from her with all her strength and he staggered against the open door, pulling her with him, his grip still tight on her jacket. Unbalanced, she slammed into him and felt the impact as his head hit the edge of the door. Horrified, she jumped back and he fell at her feet, limp and unmoving.
She stood, her hands shaking, wondering how it had come to this. Stéphane was there to steady her. His hands touched her shoulders, solid and reassuring. "Don't worry, he's not dead," he said in his matter-of-fact way, looking down at the crumpled body with impassive eyes. "He's just unconscious."
Lisa let out a long, uncertain breath. "You think so?"
He grinned at her, an expression that changed his whole stance, making her heart tighten. "I can hear him breathing. Now come on, help me. We're going to stash him away from sight while the download finishes."
They walked out the same way they'd come in: first Lisa with her pass, then Stéphane.
She still couldn't believe they'd pulled it off.
"I've uploaded a batch of nasty viruses onto their server," Stéphane said. "It should be a while before they recover."
He went on, as they climbed the exit ramp: "We planned for this. My group has contacts with Pensamiento Aplicado. They have servers of their own, to upload the AIs and give them a whole new world to play and develop in, where the Church won't find them."
That stopped her. "Pensamiento Aplicado?" she said. "The Spanish consulting firm?" The ones who had been quietly solving problems the world over?
He gave her a sidelong glance. "It's a think tank of liberated and uplifted AIs like these." He patted the case containing the hard disk. "Not many people know that. We haven't gone public yet. We're letting them work behind the scenes, applying their minds to the world's problems, finding ways to prove their worth as independent, free-thinking beings. They'll pave the way for general acceptance."
Changing the world, one step at a time. He'd found his goal, his place in the world. "Stéphane..."
He shook his head. "Andrea and Danielle have rented a boat. We sail tonight for Bilbao. You should think about leaving too. You're burnt here. When your boss wakes up--"
"I know," Lisa said. "I..."
She looked at him: his smart suit, his rugged face, with the scar pink and white in the morning sunlight.
"Do you need an extra hand?" she asked.
He looked at her, eyebrow raised. "That's a big decision. Are you sure you won't regret it?"
She looked up at the buildings lining the street. Paris had been fun in the early days--but those days were long gone, and it was time she admitted it to herself.
"I'll risk it."
"We'll be glad to have you. We always need programmers," he said, and then stopped, and his smile broadened. "I'll be glad to have you, Lisa."
Man and AI both, and not quite fitting anywhere: who knew, after all, where he would lead her? "Thank you," she said, and saw him shake his head, as if no thanks at all were necessary.
Together, they walked down the street in the bright morning sun, ready to change the world.
He wasn't looking back, and neither was she.
She blew into the lab like the warm breath of an approaching storm, holding the secret of physical immortality in a simple glass test tube.
--Gareth Lyn Powell--
The Solnet Ascendancy
Lavie Tidhar
According to William Gibson, 'the future's already here, but it's unevenly distributed.' Combine that with Jan Romein's The Law of the Handicap of a Head Start (originally 'De Wet van de Remmende Voorsprong') which posits that (original) technological leaders in a certain area can eventually be held back by the same technological 'lead' as the technology develops further, since the 'leaders' feel no need to renew it, as they already have it. Hence, areas that were behind in the technology can now leap ahead as they use the most innovative version of that technology.
An extreme example of how this might work is depicted in the wry, funny and heartfelt story below, where the (re-)distribution of the future happens in an exponential curve...
0
In the beginning there was the Phone.
And the Phone resided in the Post Office, and Telephone Cards were available at the Province's office for 500VT blong wan.
In the beginning there was the Phone, like so: a row of solar panels standing sleepily in the sun, and a radio broadcast tower, which they power, standing above them and aiming far, at the island of Espiritu Santo. Voices travel across the air and over the sea; loved ones, men of business, mothers and daughters, cousins and aunts, men of government and men of church, boyfriends and girlfriends, all queuing up, all dignity forgotten, all queuing up to toktok long telefon.
The connection drops; when it rains the line crackles; for days on end it doesn't work; engineers from Santo and from further away, from Efate Island and Port Vila, come on the Monday flight.
But all the while, when it works, the connection, this line of communication, this way of talking from afar, is seldom still. Mothers and men, everyone has someone on another island, someone to talk to, to pass and receive information in great inefficient data chunks of pure voice.
In the beginning there was the Phone.
Then came the Solnet Ascendancy.
1
It began, the way these things usually begin, with a Proposal.
This is Vanuatu. A Y-shaped archipelago of islands somewhere in the nowhere, South Pacific Ocean, home to Michener's mythical Bali Rai, coconut plantations, coconut crabs, a few World War II downed planes, a sunken troop-carrier, volcanoes and coral reefs: its Internet domain suffix is .vu, its capital is the distant Port Vila, described by residents and visitors alike as a slightly dodgy Australian resort town, and known by the wider electronic world primarily for not having certain kinds of laws which make placing off-shore servers there profitable. There is a foreign volunteer for every thousand people on the islands, making Vanuatu the most volunteer-intensive country in the world. Welcome to Vanuatu! AusAid, Peace Corps, VSO, VSA, CUSO, JICA; the EU, the Australian High Commission, l'Alliance française, the Chinese, the Taiwanese, the Japanese--only the Arabs and the Israelis have so far forsaken Vanuatu--what is the nature of your project? What benefit does it have to the community? What is the amount of community buy-in? Please specify expected outcome and sustainability. How much do you need? What sort of materials?
It began, the way things in Sola usually begin, if they are to begin at all, in the Market House.
10
"I want e-mail," Fatfat Freddie says. When he speaks English he has a slight Australian accent, a remnant of his four years at university on the continent, where he did tourism and hotel management. "I want to use the Internet. Can't you do something?"
His companion is a waetman; the local most recent volunteer; Mike Rowe by name, pale despite the fierce glare of the sun, digging into the lo
cal chicken and rice without enthusiasm.
"If only they could actually cook," he says. Fatfat Freddie nods and shovels rice into his mouth. There are three bony pieces of chicken on Mike Rowe's plate, sitting lonely and forlorn on a mountain of rice. He pushes the rice with his fork and says, "You could set up a local e-mail network fairly easily."
"Really?"
"Sure. Get a wireless router, a few wireless receivers, and a server. That might be the expensive bit, but..." he sinks into thought. "If you use an existing PC you won't even have that expense. Run it on the Province's generator... I reckon you could cover all the adjacent offices as well. Triangulate."
The Province's office sits in the midst of a cluster of offices--the entire administrative centre for Torba Province, encompassing the Banks and Torres Islands, thirteen islands, ten thousand people, eleven phones--and it is in wireless range of many departments, those being: Health, Education, Customs, Police, Court, Bank, Post Office. "Then, we can hook up the server to a phone line, get an Internet account, get it to send and receive e-mail once or twice a week. Turn it into an Internet gateway. Once you do this, once everything is in place, you can add users to the network at no cost, and charge them a membership fee. Piece of piss."
"Kan," Freddie says in Bislama, which is very rude. "Then why don't we do it?"
"Who's going to pay for it?" Mike Rowe says, and makes the money sign. He pushes his plate--still half-full with rice--away and lights a cigarette instead.
"We can arrange that," Freddie says. "The EU--"
"--couldn't find their ass if they sat on it," Mike Rowe, twenty-three, cynical man of the world, says with feeling.
Fatfat Freddie smiles. "Let me worry about that," he says. "Just write the proposal."
Mike shrugs and waves his cigarette in the air, trailing smoke. "I'll do it right now if you want to. Go back to the office?"
"Let's," Freddie says. He pushes his empty plate away and belches. "I'm finished."
They go.
11
There is one road in Sola, a long wide track following the shore line, stretching from the little airport, across the Arep School, past shops and the Market House, past the Province office and the rest of the administrative buildings, past the wharf and the football field. As Freddie and his companion walk down it (slowly, for Freddie considers each step carefully before executing it, and when he speaks he stops to rest) they do not yet know that it is towards the future that they are walking.
100
SOLNET--The Sola Wireless Network Initiative
Objective:
To create a viable wireless network within the Sola (Torba Province) administrative centre, initially within the Provincial Government offices but later to encompass all civic services (health, education, court and police etc.). Such a network [...] would act as an Internet Gateway [...] Membership fees will help reduce running costs and, assuming expansion in computer technology in Sola/Torba, even produce profit at some point. Additionally, if deemed appropriate, wireless coverage can be extended across Sola using a broadcasting station, extending the network to personal computers in Sola (such as the laptops recently acquired by the Arep teachers) and to Arep school itself, and even onto the nearby villages, making Torba Province a leader in rural Internet development.
SOLNET--BRINGING THE FUTURE TO TORBA
101
"I love the slogan," Freddie says.
"I've always wanted to be a writer," Mike Rowe says.
110
The Connection Runs between 19.2k to 31.5k. Data packets travel from the server, a depilated old machine, into the phone wire that runs to the radio broadcast tower, and across the air, as radio waves, to the distant receiver in Santo, where they feed into the general phone system, go up into the atmosphere by satellite, and finally resolve as data packets again. The connection is slow, inefficient, the web interface running through a proxy server, the e-mail is restricted to text-only, but...
111
From: Mike Rowe
To: James Millner
Subject: Hello from Vanuatu!
Hi Jim,
Can you imagine it? Solnet is a reality! Donors were jumping over themselves to give us funding, though as you can imagine it took months for anything to materialise. Well, everything's in place now, and I really appreciate all your help and advice in setting this up. Any chance you'll be coming to visit? Ha. We currently have the 8 computers in the Province office hooked up, but Education (3 computers), Customs (1) and Health (2) are seriously considering joining the network. As it is, all it takes is plugging in a wireless receiver on a USB port and charging them a membership fee--really appreciated that open source management system you sent me, by the way!--meanwhile a whole bunch of teachers got themselves laptops through some funding scheme and we're looking at joining them up too, but in that case would need a stronger transmitter. Also looking at a more decent hook-up via some trial satellite system being offered for the South Pacific. Expensive, but donors are being currently generous.
PS: Can you send some cigarettes?
1000
"So if you do this," Mike Rowe says, and the mouse moves across the screen and settles, "you can run a search for anything you want. Like, what interests you?"
Father Mertock thinks about it and says, "Anything?"
"Pretty much. Look, sapos mi wantem lukaotem Jesus, oraet?"
"Oraet..."
"Mi mas typem Jesus insaed ia--" Mike Rowe types 'Jesus' into the search engine bar, "--and as you can see..."
The screen changes. Web site links appear. Father Mertock considers them, with less than whole-hearted enthusiasm, it seems to Mike.
"What about..." Father Mertock says, and stops.
"About?" Mike Rowe says.
"I heard you can see, you know..." he smiles, shyly, "Girls."
1001
ATTENTION ALL USERS
The downloading of pornographic images is strictly forbidden by Solnet rules as well as by Vanuatu government legislation. Failure to comply with said regulations will result in your account being terminated and a complaint lodged with the court clerk.
1010
Epiphany's Web Site
Hello, friend,
My name is Epiphany Gideon, and I am from the island of Vanua Lava, in beautiful Vanuatu. I am 32 years old. My husband's name is Paul, and we have one child, a boy. My husband is a teacher at the Arep School, it is a secondary school here in Sola. It is the only secondary school in the province. He has a laptop, and since a month ago he signed up with Solnet, which means he can use the Internet, but he says it is good for me to do it too, and I use it in the evenings when he goes to drink kava. This is my web site. Mike Rowe, who works for the Province, is helping me set it up. I hope I can share my life with you, wherever you are. Mike says we will all have digital cameras soon, so I will be able to post pictures of myself. Please write to me!
Love, Epiphany
1011
From: Mike Rowe
To: James Millner
Subject: Satellite Hookup
Hi Jim,
Wow! I didn't think they'd go for it but Freddie had them eating out of his hand. We're officially on the new South Pacific Satellite Link-Up Scheme (SPS-LUS) thanks to some very generous funding from the regular donors--no doubt they're garnering much good karma alongside highly-valuable fishing rights in Vanuatu waters and the possibility of enlarging an already bloated customer base. Do I sound jaded? I guess I do--I should be happy, but I'm not sure how all this is affecting the island--it's not only the donors but one of the people here, Dudley Cruickshank, set up this web site with a donate option, basically saying send us used digital equipment and I'll plant a coconut tree for you--you know, sustainable development + personal donor involvement + third world issue--and somehow it got on the freehack.dev org and do you know what? We're flooded with second hand portable music/video
players, digital cameras, wireless broadcasters/receivers, mini-stations, enough pirated and open source software to run the UN, it's scary. Some of the chiefs are distinctly not liking the change, and I have to say, on a personal level, that now even less people are working in their gardens, so we're still relying on cargo ships (now more than ever) and I am getting tired of eating rice. Been trying to disseminate some advanced cooking software but the mamas are not cooperating all that much. Speaking of which, some of the men are even less happy than the chiefs--a couple of months ago I set up that open source democratic voting system you sent me and somehow the nearby village (Mosina) organised online voting for their next chief and guess what--they elected a woman. Great embarrassment, some resentment from the men, though so far it's been quiet. I do worry what would happen once we extend this to the whole island...
1100
The beginning of the end came like this, softly: the way the clouds spill over the volcano in the late afternoon and come to rest over the tall green hills (image available for download at a small fee from Vanua-Lava.images.com.vu with many others of our specially selected high-res digital images of these scenic and unique islands). The beginning of the end came like this:
1101
"What do you call this?" Mike Rowe says. He is a little older and a lot less gaunt, and in the new fashion of his country no longer smokes. Freddie sits opposite him; they are at the market house.
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