Slabscape : Reset Page 16

  ‘They’re all still empty, of course,’ said Twopoint. ‘This whole winter level isn’t open yet.’ The other four started laughing.

  ‘Yeah, we’re slightly behind schedule, mate,’ said Mate. ‘Like fifteen cycles behind schedule!’ Everyone fell about laughing except Dielle, who was confused.

  Geoff looked at him and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve had a few bugs!’

  Mate choked, spraying Thal with a mouthful of BeaverBrew.

  ‘This whole variable-climate, moving sun idea has been nothing but a bloody gap right from the start,’ said Geoff.

  ‘Twilight deprivation my arse!’ said Mate. ‘It still won’t look any different from anything you can sume on your home screens even when we do crack it.’

  ‘But the sunrises and sunsets will be fabulous,’ said Thal, whose broccoli-weave jacket was already dry. ‘And the onshore breezes and season simulations are going to make the beach property worth a fortune.’

  ‘S’all right for you, echo-boy, you’ve had it easy,’ said Geoff.

  Thal knee-jerked: ‘Moving mountains isn’t as easy as it looks, you know.’

  Dielle remembered that he had a few questions he wanted to ask and thought this a good moment to interrupt. Fencer suggested they all ‘go down a rating and just get mildly Scottish instead’. Within minutes Dielle was able to ask a question without giggling.

  ‘Guys, I need a friend or two who can help me out with some things. I keep coming across stuff that doesn’t make any sense and it’s making me feel like I’m in a weirdly diced-up dream. Now I’ve even fallen off a bloody mountain. I’m worried I’m going to wake up and find I’m still in re-fam or worse.’

  ‘Whadya wanna know?’ asked Thal, whose comedic talents had improved with every drink. He was a cruelly accurate mimic. ‘Sis can tell you just about everything you want to know, you know?’

  ‘That’s the problem. I don’t know what I want to know.’

  ‘Ah well, that’s Fence’s department then,’ said Geoff. ‘He’s an accredited question askerer. Going to make intern one day, huh?’

  Fencer was modest. ‘Well, I don’t know if I’ll ever join the contiguation, but I can’t deny I’d give it a go if it was an option.’

  ‘Do a damn sight better job of it than the current crop of wind-farmers they’ve got running things,’ said Geoff.

  ‘So, what areas do you need help with?’ asked Fencer.

  ‘Well, women for a start,’ said Dielle.

  ‘Oh fuck! Let’s go back to Rat 5s,’ said Thal.

  Fencer gave Dielle a serious, I’m listening look. ‘What particularly about women?’ he asked.

  ‘Well I’ve only just found out about this whole female advanced evolution thing for a start. What’s that all about?’

  ‘Statistical blocks!’ said Thal, seeking, and getting, affirmative nods from the other three.

  ‘No, I’m afraid it’s not,’ said Fencer. ‘Look at it this way: Since the dawn of man, when humans started congregating in social groups, males have traditionally mated with younger females. They used all sorts of excuses of course; healthier breeders, fitter for the job . . . ’

  ‘Nicer tits,’ said Twopoint. He’d gone back onto the Rat 5 already.

  ‘But in fact,’ continued Fencer, ‘it’s always been the women who selected who they would conceive with. They had the control over who put what where and when. And they were deliberately breeding young. After a few tens of thousands of years, the pattern had been entrenched. The daughters of young mothers became young mothers themselves breeding with older men. In every hundred years or so there would be an extra generation of women, in every thousand years, ten more generations of the female line and so on. And this has been going on for over five million years. The male-only holandric traits, which are inherited from the Y chromosome, are roughly five thousand generations behind, so the uniquely male characteristics and parts of the brain are less evolved. This was a perfect result for the women. After all, they didn’t actually want to go and run about in bushes all day trying to spear something to eat, fight wars, or spend all day in dusty chambers arguing about rights and government. They wanted to stay at home and play with the kids.’

  ‘And bitch about the way the food was caught, the wars were fought, or the way the country was run’ interrupted Twopoint.

  ‘Don’t mind him. He’s just been dumped,’ said Geoff, turning to Twopoint. ‘And by a really wonderful girl too, eh?’

  Twopoint grimaced.

  ‘Is that why they want to talk so much?’ asked Dielle. ‘Because they’re more evolved?’

  ‘Nah, they’re just bloody noisy by nature!’ said Twopoint, reaching for another drink. ‘Can’t stand silence. Think something’s wrong with you if you’re quiet.’

  ‘Something’s wrong with you even when you’re not quiet, mate,’ said Mate.

  ‘So what you’re saying is: Women have manipulated men over hundreds of thousands of years in order to get them to do all the stuff they don’t want to do while they stay at home and evolve faster?’

  ‘Isn’t it dicing obvious?’ asked Twopoint.

  ‘Well, I haven’t met that many yet, but now you come to mention it . . . ’

  ‘There are many complex and subtly interdependent side-effects to this selective evolution,’ said Fencer. ‘Some are beneficial, others questionable. But the idea that the force-accelerated evolution in the predominantly male parts of the brain which they’ve been working on for almost a KiloCyke means we’re all evolving into more feminine, sensitive and caring types really is a load of blocks.’

  ‘Too right!’ said Twopoint. ‘Fucking geneticists.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Dielle. ‘What was all that about a stop-gene thing and human evolution being in their hands?’

  ‘Unfortunately, that is definitely true,’ said Fencer. ‘The bottom line is they accidentally allowed something called a stop-gene to get into the human food chain. They’d originally engineered it into farmed fish to prevent the faster growing, more aggressive ones they needed for higher yields from wiping out the other species. They designed it so the farmed fish couldn’t breed in order to keep the population under control and allow other fish to compete for food resources. Trouble is, this stop gene, once it had jumped the piscatorial barrier, mutated and spread. So now the human race is sterile.’

  ‘What? Everyone? Including the women?’

  ‘Yes, everyone,’ said Fencer. ‘Probably not you of course. This happened after you were put into cryo.’

  They all looked at him for a moment.

  Dielle didn’t want to know what they were thinking. ‘So how does the human race breed?’

  ‘The geneticists handle it all of course. Which is, it has to be said, a much better and safer arrangement. Reduces all the chances for mutations and bad crosses and so on. They even input randomness to simulate the chance possibilities that can produce genius and exceptional talent.’

  ‘Fence, you’re just giving him the party line,’ said Thal. ‘You are definitely angling for intern, aren’t you? Tell him why they can’t just take the stop gene out again. They put it in, they should bloody well take it out.’

  ‘Well, it’s just not as simple as that.’

  ‘You bet!’ said Geoff. ‘It would put them all out of a job, wouldn’t it?’

  [[•]] Sis reminded Dielle that he had to be at the other end of Slab and was running out of time.

  ‘Guys,’ said Dielle, ‘I’ve got to go now, but one last question, OK?’ They all nodded and waited expectantly.

  ‘What do you do when your girlfriend, who you are living with and you love, who’s gorgeous and incredibly horny and a great, well . . . but she’s also your agent, and you keep getting propositions from other really beautiful women who she is negotiating deals with about what royalties they will get from the sumecasts of you fucking them, but the one you really want to fuck is the one she really hates and has already left you two [[Three]] er, three messages
to get in touch with her but you know there is no way your agent, that is your girlfriend, who you love, is going to let you do that?’

  The other five looked at him silently for a while.

  ‘I know, mate!’ said Mate, leaping up. He stood rigidly to attention, looked terrified and flapped his arms. On eye-cue, everyone else copied him.

  ‘Bastards!’ said Dielle and left.

  Once in the tube, Sis told him Kiki had made a divert request for him to meet her at a ground terminal where they’d catch an excalator to the skimmer races. He accepted and asked Sis for more information.

  Skimmers were multi-winged gliders with frictionless hulls that skimmed the interface. The races were held over dynamic courses which the solo pilots had to navigate using a combination of natural thermals, variable gravity and a considerable amount of luck. Mandatory way-points were marked by mobile beacons which functioned as an active handicapping system by constantly reshaping the course to benefit those at the rear, generating nail-biting finishes and the occasional spectacular collision. Skimmer racing was glamourous, dangerous, colourful and unpredictable, and no race ever lasted for more than five minutes, which fitted perfectly with media company requirements and the attention-span of the typical skimmer fan.

  Each race started with a row of luridly decorated, highly eccentric skimmers being gravmanipulated into a line-abreast formation on the interface. Then, with a stomach-wrenching (for both the pilots and any nearby spectators) pull of a snap-spot triple-gravity well, the unpowered skimmers plummeted toward the slabscape. Skimmerjocks jostled to out-manoeuvre their opponents and trade height for speed before pulling up into dangerously high-gee turns and throwing the super-slippery craft into lower gravity columns in an effort to return to the interface as fast as possible, flip over and repeat the process. To a stationary spectator, it looked as though the skimmers were alternating between falling down and falling up as they flipped between the two sides.

  Gravity wells of varying strengths formed and collapsed spontaneously in random patterns around the course, adding extra tension to the proceedings as some pilots chose to rapidly oscillate along the plane of the interface (threading), waiting for the next big pull while others took flamboyant plunging dives which gained them additional momentum but put them at a greater risk of fizzling, or failing to reach the interface, which usually led to an embarrassing divert to a landing field. Occasionally a skimmer would come to a complete stop exactly on the interface and have nowhere to go until a random breeze altered its fragile equilibrium. That was when people began betting on how long the glider would hang as the pilot tried desperately to nudge the machine by violently bouncing around in his seat. It was a lot of fun.

  The races were only one part of the entertainment. Spectator platforms held landing strips lined by rows of garish carnival rides and near-death experiences. The stands were constructed to house both Uppies and Siders in mirrored arenas which inevitably led to a wide range of practical jokes. The spectator platforms were part of the mobile beacon system that delineated the racecourse so they couldn’t be connected to the tube system. The only way to get to them was via transportation disks from ground stations that were scattered around Mitchell.

  It was at one of these terminals that Dielle met Kiki. He’d wanted to stay angry with her but his mood dissolved the moment she jumped into his arms, smiling and excited.

  ‘Charlie’s given us full access to the presidential box,’ she said. ‘And he’s not coming! I’ve invited a few of my friends I want you to meet. Come on, the first race has already started.’

  She pulled him onto a crowded shuttle disk which silently joined the celestial escalator to the spectator level.

  ‘Who were you with earlier, darling?’ asked Kiki coyly.

  ‘Don’t you know? I got the impression you could watch anything I did?’

  ‘Depends on the privacy settings. Recordings are jointly owned by all the participants. If any one of them vetoes it, or declares privacy, it’s not available. I saw you’d gone somewhere with Fencer Dean Twenty but the moment you arrived everything went into privacy mode.’

  That was news to Dielle. Useful news.

  ‘Oh, just some guys. Friends of Fencer’s. We had a few drinks. It was fun after I was able to move.’

  ‘That was so funny!’ she laughed. ‘Are you still upset about it, darling?’ She stood on tip-toes to kiss his nose. ‘The resort owners are really keen to use it. Really keen.’

  ‘How keen?’ He couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Very keen.’

  ‘Tell them I want my own lodge, full privacy. Forever. Then they can use it.’

  Kiki looked suspicious. ‘Who have you been talking to, dear? That’s a very hard bargain. Did someone suggest that to you?’

  ‘Nope, I just thought of that myself.’ He had too, and surprised himself in the process.

  She nodded, approving. ‘Well, I’ll tell them your conditions. It’s OK if I add something on top for little old me, isn’t it?’

  Dielle looked at her coolly and thought about what he’d learned that afternoon. The roar of the crowd above diverted his attention as a huge, bright yellow skimmer shot up from underneath them, inverted itself, banked around the beacon by the spectator platform above them, then dived down into UpSide.

  ‘That’s the Speedthrills skimmer!’ shouted Kiki over the noise. ‘Tony Speedthrills! I have all his stims. I’m his biggest fan.’

  ‘Speedthrills?’ said Dielle incredulously. ‘Is that his real name?’

  ‘What do you mean, real name, darling?’ asked Kiki jumping from the shuttle disk moments before it was ingurgitated into the dock and emtied back to the ground station. ‘Come on! We’ll miss it!’ She pushed through the crowd. ‘Yellow vex!’ she shouted to Dielle.

  He followed her to a bank of transvexes – one was flashing yellow. On the other side, a privacy bubble was waiting to transport them to the presidential hospitality suite. Like most presidential facilities, the room spanned the interface and had the standard floor/ceiling duplication of luxurious seats and leisure options. At one end, a continuous viewpane curved from UpSide to SideUp and housed a bank of holo-projectors showing multiple views of the race.

  Whenever Dielle’s eyes focussed on a projected skimmer, animated graphics sprang out in 3D. Sis fed him labels and numerics as he glanced at each one. Every imaginable detail was available to him, from cockpit telemetry, optimal vectoring, aerodynamic options and gravity predictions to the pilot’s heart rate, what he’d had for breakfast and the emotional state of the person he’d eaten it with. One enquiry thread detailed bloodlines going back for generations, another provided instant comparison between sequences of the competitors’ DNA with glowing indicators highlighting statistical superiority. As he waded through the glut of data, his focus fell on a row of coloured cylinders projected onto the floor. They were continually changing in diameter and height and represented the betting odds and amount of money that was being gambled. A series of smaller cylinders trailed off into the distance, illustrating the betting on how the odds were likely to change.

  {[Too much!}]

  [[General prefs for this locale are wide-band. Throttling personal feed to demand only]]

  ‘Do you want a voice-over or just an eye feed?’ Kiki asked.

  ‘What do you use?’

  ‘Voice for personality commentary, Sis for analysis, audio for pit-to-skimmer comms and the holos for facts and telemetry.’

  Dielle wasn’t surprised. There seemed to be no end to the amount of things Kiki could do simultaneously. More evolved, he thought, glumly.

  ‘Just voice for me,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s have Entwistle! He cracks me!’

  A coarse male voice cut in mid-insult. Entwistle was SlabWide famous for his mastery of the scathing put-down and was in full flow. His target was a currently defenceless and momentumless skimmer pilot who, according to Entwistle, would probably have had a more successful racing career as a mollusc
, as long as all the other molluscs were suffering from total paralysis or a particularly debilitating form of molluscan depression. The stream of invective was delivered with such obvious delight and expertise that it was difficult not to feel sorry for the object of his vitriol.

  ‘Any refreshments, sir, madam?’ said a small cupboard hovering behind them.

  ‘Cold beer, Rat 3, tasties,’ said Kiki without taking her eyes off the holos. ‘Come on Tony!’

  The emtiwaiter’s door opened and a gravpad floated out with the drinks and a platter of translucent wafers. Outside, a shiny blue skimmer charged past narrowly avoiding the turn beacon. The crowd roared as Entwistle cranked up the ridicule.

  ‘This is exciting,’ said Dielle. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘Blue one’s leading,’ said Kiki, stuffing her mouth with salt and vinegar dissolves. ‘But Tony’s catching up. Only two laps to go so he’s not going to make it unless that one misses an interface turn, which it very nearly just did.’

  The yellow skimmer zoomed into view in three of the holo-projections, all from different angles. Things didn’t look quite as frantic as before.

  ‘Oh blocks!’ said Kiki, dismayed. ‘He’s stuffed it. He’s undershot a flip.’ She turned away from the screens and stood up. ‘Hello Wendle! When did you arrive?’

  Wendle wore a hand-tailored suit that, despite costing more than the average SlabCitizen made in a cycle, failed to make him look anything but round. Wendle's mass was the subject of a strictly enforced SlabWide non-disclosure agreement which meant that everyone knew he was a 357-kilogram porker and that he was proud of himself. His three fawning female attendants were proud of him too.