Slabscape : Reset Read online

  Louie raised his virtual eyebrows. ‘Why not just send a NAH?’

  Silence descended like a bad smell.

  ‘We will not travel by matter transmitter,’ said Erik with utmost Lincolnesque gravitas.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Louie. ‘I thought you weren’t human, so you can’t have souls, can you?’ The debate among the interns re-started.

  ‘We most certainly do not have souls, thank you,’ said Erik, offended. ‘We are not polluted by such alien manifestations. No, our position on matter transmission is that since no-one can provide proof that the body which steps into the transmitter isn’t destroyed and a new one created at the receiving end, we will not use them.’

  ‘But if the NAH that steps out the receiving end looks exactly the same and has the same memories as the one that steps into the transmitter, what possible difference does it make?’

  ‘Sir, we NAHs are, for all intents and purposes, immortal. We will be sentient and alive for as long as we can regenerate ourselves, which, seeing as we have our own, internal Nole®-powered systems, should be forever, failing catastrophic crisis or a voluntary act of self-termination. As you so rightly say, we do not have souls, so the only thing we have is our existence. Our being is all, and is therefore sacred to us, especially as there is no possibility of any part of us enduring our own physical destruction. When we cease to be, Mr Drago, we truly cease to be.’

  Louie was beginning to lose the plot. ‘Hey, call me Louie!’ he said with a smile.

  ‘We cannot accept the possibility that our existence might be terminated by the matter transmission process and a new, different version of us created at the other end. The NAH walking into the emti would effectively die.’ To Louie’s amazement, Erik was shaking.

  ‘But how would you know it was a different person?’

  ‘How would you know it wasn’t?’

  Louie could tell that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this line of reasoning and wanted to get back to some cold facts.

  ‘How come you’re asking me? Weren’t there a whole load of people who had themselves frozen and turned into holograms?’

  ‘Indeed so, sir. Our final ship’s complement on leaving Earth orbit included 278 cryonically suspended individuals. But, um, unfortunately,’ Erik looked unhappy again, ‘there was a bit of an administrative error about that.’

  ‘Administrative?’

  ‘Yes. You see, you were the only individual to negotiate a deal with one large cash payment in advance.’

  ‘I got a length-of-voyage special offer. The consortium building this tub was going broke and they needed bailing out.’

  ‘Quite so, sir. It transpired that everyone else paid by instalments using something called credit cards.’

  ‘Seems reasonable.’

  ‘Apparently, credit cards were in the habit of expiring, sir.’

  ‘You’re not telling me you terminated all those frozen people from Earth because their credit cards ran out?’

  ‘We didn’t terminate anyone, they lapsed. The terms and conditions of passage stated very clearly it was the client’s responsibility to ensure full payment of all charges. They were all sent letters warning them they were in default.’

  ‘They were frozen.’

  ‘Frozen and invalid, sir.’

  Louie tried to look surprised and outraged on behalf of his fellow Earth travellers, but he just couldn’t do it. After some of the bureaucratic blunders he’d witnessed during his life on Earth, 277 frozen and abandoned bodies was nothing. The fact that they were a select group of Earth’s wealthiest people and had been disconnected for non-payment of a maintenance fee just added a little spice to his day.

  ‘So you need someone who isn’t a NAH or a human to go over there to find out what’s going on. Someone who has no soul.’

  ‘As you say, sir.’

  ‘Bingo!’ said Louie.

  ‘You’ll do it? It doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘Erik, whether I’ll do it or not is going to be the subject of a long and expensive negotiation,’ said Louie brightly. ‘Expensive for you that is.’ Having no soul didn’t bother him in the slightest, although he recalled it used to bother his three ex-wives now and again.

  The room fell quiet again. Sis had informed the council of Louie’s decision. Avatars started disappearing. Within half a minute, the only individuals left in Council were Erik and Louie.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Louie to the empty auditorium. ‘Funny bunch, aren’t they?´ he said to Erik.

  ‘As you say, sir, although funny isn’t a word I frequently use about our interns.’

  ‘Is Sis still here?’

  A glowing white ball, the size of a fist, appeared at Louie's eye level. It pulsated as it spoke. ‘Yes, I am always present, but you may direct your remarks to this object if it makes you feel more comfortable.’ Sis had switched from Marilyn to a neutral, almost-but-not-quite female voice.

  ‘Should I assume that this adoption of an identity for Sis means we are not being recorded?’ asked Louie.

  ‘This will all be recorded as data and be accessible on a need-to-know basis for interns and NAHs only,’ said the ball. ‘There is no need to record visual documentation of our negotiations since the only way we are actually communicating is via interpreted data stream. What are your demands?’

  Very direct, thought Louie. This should be fun.

  ‘More than you have,’ he said.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well first off, tell me why the hell I should bother doing this in the first place? What have I got to gain from it?’

  ‘I understand from your profile that there is no point in trying to appeal to your humanitarian or altruistic sides. So I am able to offer you virtually unlimited access to all Slab facilities and as much credit as you could ever need.’

  ‘What? I’m a hologram. What possible use would your facilities be to me? And anyway, I have more than enough of whatever currency you spend here. I have access codes to accounts that were laid down into your data core in index-linked, inflation-proofed assets before you were a floating scaffolding in space.’

  ‘First, Louie, you will be surprised how far holographic technology has advanced since your day. Most entertainment onSlab has some element of stim-connected enhancement which could be directly fed into your systems. Data streams are still data streams and you would be able to interface with them, assuming a certain amount of admittedly expensive programming. And second, if you check your accounts you will find that there is nothing in them.’

  ‘WHAT? You scheming, lying sons of b . . . ’

  ‘No, not us Louie,’ said Erik. ‘Your third wife successfully sued you for desertion after you went into cryonic suspension. She cleaned out your accounts. You are effectively broke.’

  ‘That bitch!’ said Louie, trying to think of something fast. He’d been outmanoeuvred at a crucial point in a negotiation. He hated it when that happened. He was sure they were lying, but he also knew he couldn’t prove it. If they said his accounts were empty, he knew damn well that was what the data showed now, even if it hadn’t said that before they’d started negotiating.

  ‘In order for you to do the task we need you to do, we have designed some augmentations to your original programming which will give you complete autonomy and the ability to move around and interact onSlab,’ said Sis. We do, of course, need your permission to alter your programming before they can be implemented, but as an act of good faith we are ready to install those systems now, if you wish.’

  ‘I can have control over where I go and when?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Sis. ‘You have already been given Temporary Sentient Being status, so you will have the same freedom as any SlabCitizen but you must of course adhere to Slab protocol and social conformities.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, sure,’ said Louie. He had never come across a rule he couldn’t get around if he needed to.

  ‘You are warned, however, that if you try to inform anyone of the privile
ged information you have received here, or may receive if you do carry out the proposed task, your communication facilities will be disrupted immediately.’

  ‘My output conduits are sealed,’ said Louie.

  ‘Yes, they would be,’ said Sis. ‘You agree?’

  ‘Yes, I agree – just do it, will you?’

  Louie instantly felt upgraded. He knew, without being told, that he could manipulate local objects via a projected gravity field emanating from his vDek. He decided to test it out and did a small tour of his immediate surroundings, finding it easy to manoeuvre merely by concentrating on where he wanted to go. He spent a few minutes zooming up and down, getting a feel for it. Erik watched with disinterest. After a few moments a thought occurred to Louie.

  ‘Why don’t you just send a camera? Why do you need me to go?’

  ‘Because we have no way of getting the data back safely. We could try to emti a vDek over there and have it record, then send an emti transmitter to get it back, but we can’t operate it from here, it would be out of our range the moment it arrives. It has to be activated to transmit at that end. We can’t set it to auto transmit because we have no idea what’s in there. We could receive something back that could destroy us.’

  ‘Like a bomb?’

  ‘Well, we could handle anything as crude as an explosive device, of course, but it’s the something-we-haven’t-thought-ofs that cause the real problem,’ said Erik. ‘Something worse than we can imagine.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little paranoid?’

  ‘Louie,’ said Erik, ‘we are over one hundred and fifty-six light-years and three hundred and thirty of your Earth years away from help of any kind and we have encountered an object whose mere existence has terrifying implications for all of us. It is impossible to be too paranoid at this point.’

  Louie always enjoyed a fight, but only the ones he thought he could win.

  ‘So I go, have a look around, wait for you to send over a transmitter which I have to activate personally . . . ’

  ‘With a highly secret code,’ interrupted Sis.

  ‘OK, with a secret code. Then I come back, report what I saw and I get the freedom of Slab and as much money as I’ll ever need?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘What else could you possibly want?’ said Erik

  Louie was just warming up. ‘Well, I can think of three things straight away. First I want some form of always-on data interaction with Sis. Then I want a permanent, non-revocable seat on the council.’

  ‘What?’ said Erik. ‘We’ve barely been able to persuade the interns to give you sentient status. They’ll never agree to let you into council. It’s impossible!’

  Louie looked him straight in the eyes: ‘Nothing’s impossible, Erik.’

  ‘What is your third demand?’ asked Sis.

  ‘I want a SlabWide league of basketball teams set up and I get to be head coach for a team I handpick.’

  Erik shook his head slowly. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No, of course that’s not it,’ said Louie. ‘How the hell would I know what I might want? I’ve only been here a few hours.’

  ‘We will need time to set up the emti relays and make sure they are secure,’ said Sis without emotion. ‘We also need time to try to persuade council to accede to your demands. Until we can proceed you will have a voice interface available to you for communication with me. This meeting is adjourned.’

  The council chamber vanished. Thousands of tonnes of water crash-flooded the space it left behind, leaving Louie and Erik swirling and disoriented.

  Erik deftly righted himself. ‘I hate it when she does that,’ he said. ‘You must have really pissed her off.’

  Louie followed Erik as he swam toward the surface. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘SlabCouncil meets in a non-static temporary space,’ said Erik without moving his lips. ‘This particular one seems to have been convened in the Slab water reserves. Therefore we are at the rear end of Slab in the hydroponics, environmental control, manufacturing and recycling section. Just her little joke, you know.’

  ‘Sis has a sense of humour?’

  ‘That is the subject of a long-standing debate.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Erik, breaking surface. ‘There’s a recreational port a couple of kilometres from here.’ He eased into an efficient backstroke. ‘Follow me and we can talk on the way.’

  sixteen

  Everyone was sitting around laughing except Dielle. He was propped up against a wall and wasn’t in a laughing mood. He considered himself lucky to be alive. It’s not everyone who falls off a three-kilometre-high mountain and lives to suffer the embarrassment of having people turn around every thirty seconds to look at him and laugh themselves silly. A looped recording of the local avalanche which had knocked him off the mountain showed him flapping his arms in mid-air in terrified desperation before the impact anticipators turned the Crunchfoam rigid, snapping him to attention. If Dielle hadn’t closed his eyes, certain he was going to plummet feet-first into the ground three thousand metres below, he would have seen the arms of the safety nets shoot out from the cliff-face, arresting his fall 2.7 metres below the ledge. The image zoomed into his face as his eyes opened wide and darted about in disbelief.

  They especially liked that bit.

  ‘Yes, really fucking hilarious,’ said Dielle. ‘Can’t one of you bastards at least feed me another drink? How long before this stuff goes limp again?’

  ‘Could be any minute,’ said Fencer, trying hard to suppress a smile. ‘It’s still experimental. Hey, do you think you could have a word with your agent? The resort want to use the footage to promote how safe the place is. She’s apparently holding out for a sum that would mean we’ll have to turn round and go back for more cash.’

  ‘Good!’ said Dielle {[message to :: Kiki Tiger@pundechan Media: Under no circumstances is the recording of me falling off that mountain to be made public – please acknowledge]}

  [[••]]

  Dielle crumpled.

  ‘It’s worn off then,’ said Fencer cheerfully. ‘Good. Come and sit over here, I’ll introduce you to everyone.’

  [[•]]

  {[Deliver]}

  [[‘Darling! You were fabulous! I haven’t laughed so much in cykes! I won’t do any deal before speaking to you – don’t worry! See you around six? Love!’]]

  You won’t do any bloody deals at all, he thought grumpily. At least I didn’t shit myself. Then he remembered the colonic emties. Maybe he had – how would he know?

  They were on a wooden deck overlooking a spectacular Alpine scene, drinking steaming cups of mulled wine. It was freezing cold outside but the localised temperature was mild. He took off the body suit and threw it onto a pile of clothes on the nearest table. The lodge wasn’t staffed yet, so everything was supplied via the kTables. He ordered another drink and sat down. Fencer introduced everyone, which wasn’t strictly necessary as Dielle had had plenty of time to ask Sis who they all were while he was doing his plank impersonation against the wall. Three of the guys were involved in environmental design and the fourth, who went by the name of Gentricycle Thalmus-Orang, did something interesting with mountain acoustics, but Dielle had had enough of mountains and had enquired no further.

  Fencer pointed at each man in turn: ‘Geoff, Mate, Twopoint and Thal.’ They all raised their cups as Dielle collected his from the kTable. ‘The First!’

  Twopoint laughed again: ‘And hopefully not the last eh? That’s a good one!’

  Dielle was puzzled. ‘Why does everyone think that’s so funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Because when we say The First, we are toasting to that most excellent citizen Cecil Shallock I,’ explained Mate. ‘He was a man of true discernment and a significant contributor to the well-being of the human race, the onSlab human race that is, mate.’

  ‘He was the Earth-bound specialist who was ultimately responsible for making sure every gen
e known to man had been included in our gene-banks before we left Earth,’ added Fencer. ‘It was his signature on the manifest. And it was also his idea to leave off the gene for spinach after being sworn to it by his three children.’

  ‘Projectile vomiting apparently,’ said Geoff, doing a reasonable mime.

  ‘Yeah, so we have him to thank for never having to eat spinach – and seeing how his name is a bit of a mouthful, especially when you’ve had a few . . . ’

  ‘Could have been worse; could have been his second daughter,’ said Twopoint.

  ‘Yeah,’ continued Fencer. ‘So instead of saying his full name, we just say The First!’

  ‘And I’m the first person to say something like hopefully not the last?’ said Dielle incredulously.

  ‘You have the copyright, mate,’ said Mate. ‘So you must be.’

  ‘That’s pretty weak,’ said Dielle.

  ‘But hopefully not the last doesn’t make any sense when you know it’s about Cecil Shall . . . ’ Geoff trailed off. ‘But you’re right, it’s lame. Hey! Let’s ramp up the regular and get ratted! Rat 5s all round!’

  They spent the next hour or so getting very drunk on Regular 5 alcohol of all styles and flavours. All five of them considered it their personal right, duty and obligation to introduce Dielle to as many alcoholic concoctions as they could remember, and several they couldn’t. Dielle was very, very, very happy to have met such wonderful guys and was absolutely sure that there couldn’t be a more wonderful bunch of guys in the whole universe. He told them so. Several times.

  He remembered Fencer saying they were going to keep this lodge a secret and he wanted to know more. Like many private residences, the lodge had its own privacy shield, a differentially permeable force-field that kept heat in and prying eyes out. It was transparent from within, but opaque white from the outside, and for a small fee Sis would set the tube address to private. It was a popular option in this part of the mountains. Twopoint, however, was a software landscape designer and knew how to circumvent the privacy protection. After much cajoling and group threats, he did something through his eye that turned off the privacy fields. Dielle hadn’t realised until that moment, but the interface also had a privacy field running. Previously, when he looked up all he had seen was blue sky. Now, with the fields off, he could see the mountains and alpine terrain of UpSideDown hanging high above them and dozens of lodges scattered around the mountains and snow-capped hills below.