‘Idiot.’ Mahmoud thought, but continued in a conciliatory fashion. “If there is one thing I am sure about, it's that no one on Earth has any idea where we are. If you were thinking we might get some assistance from someone in authority, you had better think again.”
“We were hoping you would be able to give us some clarity now you have joined the local government,” someone else ventured.
“I don’t know much more than you,” Mahmoud had to admit. “I know we are on a planet called Skid, and we are a long way from home. How we got here and why we are here is beyond me. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer out of anyone.”
This wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear, but Zarif realised that because of the time he'd spent at The Farm, he knew more about the situation than anyone, including Mahmoud, and he wasn’t about to let on. He was only half-listening to the conversation anyway: he was trying to catch the eye of Mahmoud’s daughter. He wanted to encourage her to walk further down the street with him, so they could talk alone while her father played the big shot.
Zarif knew they had come through a gateway from Earth – he had been one of the first newSkidians through. He also knew there would be no return trip to earth any time soon, and like everyone else he had a vague notion of why they had been uploaded to Skid. They had been uploaded to re-populate the planet
He was more interested in Mahmoud’s daughter, but he couldn’t catch the eye of Alfrida long enough to give him enough confidence to ask her to go for a walk with him. He knew he should simply ask, while another voice told him that it might not be a good plan. Outright rejection was highly likely, so he stayed rooted to the spot, and did nothing.
“You’re in government.” One of the men pointed out the obvious to Mahmoud. “What do you think we should do?”
“You could join me in the senate. I am the sole newSkidian representative in the government. The rest are all indoSkidians, whose primary aim is to maintain the status quo.”
This seemed like a good idea and his audience nodded in agreement. Even Zarif, still attempting to get Alfrida’s attention, thought it was a great notion.
“What about the rights of women in this society? Are they represented?” his wife asked, catching Mahmoud off guard. He couldn’t remember the last time she had been this assertive in any conversation, private or public.
“IndoSkidian women are represented in the government,” he began hesitantly. Apart from this, he didn’t have anything more to say on the subject. He hadn’t given the status of women in this new society any real thought. He naturally imagined they would maintain the same space, the same status in society they had back home: to be seen but not heard. Mahmoud knew deep down that times were changing: his own family were becoming rebellious. Nothing would ever be the same again in his relationship with his wife and children, whether they remained on Skid or not.
“Life is going to be different for us here. We are going to have to work out how to live on this planet with people who are from completely distinct cultures and beliefs.” Mahmoud almost admitted defeat before he had begun. “We are going to have to learn to live with the indoSkidians, who have no faith, and other people with different religions. We’re all going to have to work out how to live together,” he repeated. “We’re going to have to accept this, just as the other groups are going to have to accept us, our faith and culture.”
“What do you mean by this?” demanded a neighbour of Mahmoud. “There can be no compromise where our beliefs are concerned.”
“Well, for example, there might not be enough women of marriageable age for our young men to marry. Some men may have to look outside of our religion for their partners. We may struggle to find places of worship, and we may never know if our food is prepared according to our beliefs.”
“What do we do about these things?”
“I’m not sure we can do much at all. We must adapt to this new world, while keeping our faith alive as best we can. I am sure other indoSkidians are thinking along the same lines and asking how we can all live together.” Mahmoud wasn’t sure he entirely bought into what he was saying but he couldn’t prevent these ideas welling up from deep inside him and demanding to be publicised.
“Join me in the senate to help ensure our voice is heard, along with everyone else.”
Twenty-Two
Wisneski was subdued and not very talkative in the early part of their trip, so Janice continued an intermittent discussion with Bert to see if it could answer some of the questions she had. She was also naturally voluble and Wisneski wasn’t. He looked happy enough, but his long silences made her a little ill at ease. However, she wasn’t so uncomfortable that she wanted him to let her out.
He’s very different to most of the other people I’ve met on Skid, no matter where they come from.
Wisneski is the nearest thing to Bruce’s second in command there is, Bert replied, which wasn't really an answer.
Who is Bruce really? What makes him so special?
He is the first offworlder. Well, technically he isn’t. To cut a long story short, there were others, but they didn’t survive the transition after the first contact with our exploration teams.
This was a heavily sanitised version of events. The first exploration team Bert was describing was a group of Skidians planning rebellion, one ultimately short-lived and fatal for them. All the other offworlders gathered on this mission, except for Bruce and Sue, had suffered medical misadventures before they even landed on Skid.
Can you explain in plain language what you mean?
He was brought here to find a way to stave off the great catastrophe that all but wiped out the entire indoSkidian population a few of your years ago. He didn’t succeed, but he showed how this could be achieved. The leadership of the time didn’t support him, which led to the catastrophic population implosion you see here today. Sometime later, he also saved what remained of the Skid civilisation from an invasion by Celcions. This is why he is held in such high esteem by all surviving indoSkidians, Bert explained.
What’s a Celcion?
Celcions are from Celcious B. They are a very primitive race who invaded Skid in ancient times. After the invasion was repelled, the Skidians enforced a low technology regime on the Celcions as punishment. This meant they are reliant on Skid for their main source of food. There is evidence the Celcions released a virus into the synfood plants, initiating the great catastrophe, leading ultimately to the death of hundreds of millions of indoSkidians. Historically, the Chief Mati of Skid had a deputy from Celcious, and it is believed this Celcion was responsible. The current Mati has just appointed a newSkidian to this position in a change to this tradition. His name is Mahmoud and he is from the same village as your friend Zarif.
There is a government on Skid? Janice let the comment relating to Zarif slide. He was an interesting enough man in some ways, but she didn’t know him well, so he could hardly be considered a friend in the real sense of the word. She did feel sorry for him though. He was clearly out of place at The Farm and she recognised he had a crush on her. It was one of the reasons she had jumped at the chance to accompany Wisneski.
Janice glanced at Wisneski, who she knew even less about. However, she hadn’t hesitated when she saw an opportunity for some adventure, to leave the settlement, and go off exploring the planet. With a running commentary from Bert, sitting there in her mind like an imaginary friend, she was already enjoying the trip.
Does Wisneski have an application, something like you running in his head? She hadn’t wanted to ask Wisneski directly. She had noticed Wisneski didn’t have a Book.
Bert fell silent, its standard response when it couldn’t provide an answer. It was like an electronic sulk.
“How far are we going today?” Janice asked Wisneski.
“Not far,” Wisneski replied. “Bruce reckons the ocean is only a few hours’ drive, but I want to stop and test out all the gear soon before we really get going in case we need to repair or replace any of it. I just wan
t to get far enough away from The Farm to deter anybody coming along and poking their noses in. I don’t plan to head back there any time soon. OK with you?”
“Sure,” Janice replied, “I’m happy. You’re in charge of this little expedition. I’m just here for the ride. It seems to be the most interesting thing happening on the planet right now.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure,” he chuckled, “I reckon we should carry on for another hour or so. That should shake anybody following us off. Then tomorrow we can continue to the coast and decide where to go from there. There’s nothing much else of note between us and the sea.”
“There’s an ocean here?” Janice asked.
“Yep, this planet shares a lot of similarities with Earth. You know how the NASA guys talk about finding Goldilocks planets that have similar characteristics to earth and could support carbon-based lifeforms like ours? Water is one of the key requirements. Right? Well this is one of those planets, though NASA haven’t located this one yet, or any of the others in this system.”
“There are others?”
Wisneski was about to ask, “Where do you think Celcious is?” But he didn’t want to let on that he had been dipping into the conversation she was having with Bert. Janice was considered a bit of a risk, given the subroutine could possibly be subverted and hacked, so Wisneski liked to keep an eye on her interactions with it.
“Yeah, with polar ice caps too.”
“How do you know all this?”
“All this information is on your Book. I have also been lucky enough to have flown around the planet a bit,” he added, hoping he wouldn’t have to explain his direct link with the MPU, and other systems he didn’t quite comprehend.
Janice sensed Wisneski was being a little evasive, but she didn’t mind. There might be things she didn’t need or want to know about Skid, and some things might become clear in the fullness of time. Wisneski was the most interesting man she had met in years, and initially at least seem to be a decent one too, so the trip could be fun in many ways.
“How long are we planning to be away?” Janice had forgotten to ask when she impulsively decided to join him.
“Away?”
“You know, from The Farm. Why is it called The Farm anyway?”
“OK, well, I don’t live there, so I won’t be going directly back. I just drop in there from time to time to see what people are up to. Is that a problem?”
“No, not really.” Janice hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after the trip.
“It’s called The Farm because it is or was a farm. When their synthetic plants failed, Bruce developed it as a model to show the Skidians how to produce organic food.”
“I thought a virus killed them all off?”
“A virus infected the synfood plants,” Wisneski corrected her, “but this shouldn’t have resulted in a complete shutdown of them all. The MPU should have contained the incursion. However, for some reason best known to itself, it shut them down one by one, so just about everyone starved to death. Millions of them. Hundreds of millions of them.”
“Holy fuck. Is there a risk of that happening again?”
“There’s always a risk. It’s all to do with the MPU’s programming: some glitch, some errors crept in over an extended period.”
Is this true?
Yes, Janice’s version of the MPU responded meekly.
How could this happen with an AI charge of everything? Janice was now wondering if she had dodged a real bullet by getting out of the colony settlement on Mars when she did.
It’s a long and complicated story. I don’t know all the details and there are new controls to make sure it doesn’t happen again, Bert added without elaborating. But, part of this story is there were expeditions to Earth to kick start the population from time to time.
You mean to tell me this is not the first time this has happened and…
The indoSkidians are humans, just like you and me. The real Skidians have uploaded people from Earth more than once to replenish the local population.
“Bruce’s theory, and it’s a good one I reckon, is.. um.. you’re not religious, are you?” Wisneski asked, seemingly out of context.
“I went to Sunday School a few times when I was little. Does that count? I only go to church for weddings or funerals these days,” she added hastily, when she caught Wisneski’s frown.
“OK, well, Bruce reckons repeated expeditions by, and the exposure of people to, the real Skidians and their technology led to advances in human civilisation and are the source of many of our creation myths. You know, God sending men with magical powers to earth, the concept of magical kingdoms, and paradise for the true believers when they die, winged spirit beings appearing from the sky flying about and performing miracles, the subject matter of Ancient Alien programs on the History channel. All the work of the Skidians, and their interactions with humans down through the ages.”
“Sounds a bit far-fetched to me and it doesn’t explain why the Skidians need us. Are we now in a zoo or are we subjects for a laboratory experiment?”
“No, nothing like that. The real Skidians have transcended, they’re high-tech spirits or ghosts inhabiting a version of our cloud software storage systems. None of us understand how it really works, but that's the closest analogy. They call themselves Transcendents,” Wisneski explained. “And by the way, I don’t think Bruce’s theory is any less fantastic than people creating a religion out of what is essentially a work of fiction.”
“I hope nobody turns the servers off then,” Janice laughed in disbelief.
“The Transcendents seem to be fully in control of their destiny and left the MPU behind to manage the planet’s infrastructure. We think what might have happened is that they fired up the MPU without a lot of testing because they were impatient to transcend, and the MPU turned out to be a bit buggier than they anticipated. To make matters worse, its self-diagnosis and repair functions failed over time. We reckon something along those lines transpired.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they need all of us.”
“From what we can gather, implausible as it sounds, when they transcended they decided they needed a backup plan. Sounds like they weren’t one hundred percent confident it was going to work, or they decided that if their new existence was threatened they wanted frameworks, vessels to download into, bodies superior to those they left behind.”
“So why us? Why not just store their own bodies?”
“We don’t know all the answers. The Transcendents reckon their original bodies were destroyed in the process of transcending and they liked the look of ours as replacements.”
“Sounds like complete bollocks to me. You’d think any technologically advanced society able to transcend, whatever it means in practice, would be able to clone decent bodies to supply their backup requirements. They can already create pretty decent androids,” she added, remembering the lookalikes on Mars and the moon. “Much easier than importing a population marching to the beat of their own drum.”
“It makes no sense to us either. We keep telling them the same thing each time they ask for more bodies to be uploaded.”
“Who’s us?”
“Bruce of course, myself, Trev’s brother, and his girlfriend Shelly Shaw. Trev and Sue would like to think they’re part of the inner circle, but they’re a bit flaky and unreliable, so we keep them out of the loop most of the time. Then there’s General Smith, who along with support from Dick and Shelly basically rides shotgun on President Chump.
“I don’t believe you. Well, not the last bit anyhow. You can’t tell me you’re directing policy, running the American government. C’mon, be serious.”
Wisneski shrugged his shoulders. “Do you really think an ignorant, bigoted, philandering hypocrite with a track record of lying, and multiple business failures behind him, could get to where he is today on his own merits?”
“But isn’t he a billionaire, a successful businessman?”
“Most of his fortu
ne was inherited and he’s managed to lose more than he made. It’s not common knowledge, but his more successful ventures were managed by his second and third wives respectively, and they were both in the pay of the Russian government.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Turns out the Russians had a long-term plan to get Chump to run for office to cause as much disruption as he could in the process. Him being elected President must have been like hitting the jackpot for them. They never imagined in their wildest dreams the man would get elected to the Senate, let alone become President. I’m sure in his most lucid moments even he is surprised how far he got. The Russians have been pulling his strings for years.”
“How dare they?”
“Well we can’t complain too much when someone is successful in doing to us what we have been trying to do to them. Honestly do you think we haven’t been influencing other nation’s elections for our own benefit for decades? The Russians just thought they had been more successful this time.”
“How do you know all this?”
“When he was still a senator on the Presidential nomination campaign trail and I was on secondment to the office of the Presidential Science Advisor, he tried to muscle into the mission we were running to get a person of interest to help us divert Automedon from its collision course with Earth. You remember how close it came? We had to lock him up for a few hours and while this was going on the General confiscated his mobile and rang a few interesting numbers. The man was totally compromised.”
“So why did you let him become President?”
“Basically, because we knew we could control him and the opposition candidate was just as flaky. Well, not quite. At least he wasn’t being manipulated by a foreign government.”
“So, you’re really blackmailing him. No wonder he’s making some many unpopular decisions.”
“He’s not difficult to manipulate, and we’re employing subtle subversion techniques on other politicians and governments to get them to toe the line.”
The Colonists Page 46
