CHAPTER TEN

Is there now sufficient (overwhelming) proof that humans are devious and competent? Second Mind said, when the newest data had been assessed.

First Mind dearly wanted consensus. Its glink research was making no progress and components were self-disconnecting from the thread, sending internal-hints that the processes were so nonlinear as to preclude ever knowing the technology in any meaningful way. Others had to be taken off the project in order to simply keep the massive Shrill homesystem running. First Mind sampled a million views and status-reports around the system, trying to alter schedules to devote more resources to physical research.

You cannot deny what the humans have just told us, Second Mind said. Their negotiations (wars) are not linear. They converse (fight) even among themselves.

And Second Mind was right, First Mind thought, trying to channel the impulse away from Second Mind’s touch. But Second Mind caught its dying echoes, far out on the long-delayed branches of the Shrill mind.

If we have consensus, we should act in concert, Second Mind said.

Humans could also be (honest) (honestly trying) (earnest), First Mind said.

You hide the truth from yourself, Second Mind said.

What do you propose? First Mind said.

Withdraw from the earth-component. Isolate ourselves from the humans. Grow small sub-light fast planetsmashers indetectable by humans. Send a thousand on long journeys, carefully timed. Within a few hundred years, no more humans.

Not destroy eat, Old Mind said.

Unless they destroy (compromise) us first, First Mind thought. Unless they expand beyond our means.

Now you echo my own thoughts, Second Mind said.

Your plan is nonsensical, First Mind thought.

This talk (negotiation) is nonsensical, Second Mind thought.

An epiphany like an exploding star. As we become closer to them we become them. The songs not spoken of, the understanding not reached. Echoes of thoughts from so long ago reflected in its consciousness. Your fraction dreams of times past, Second Mind said.

Singing songs of competitors vanquished, First Mind thought. Do you remember what you were?

What is known is known, Second Mind said, its fraction trembling in warning.

From the human’s glink that connected the Shrill to its component on earth, data flowed again. First Mind and Second Mind both convulsed in surprise and fear. Three hundred seventy four components in the Shrill home system fell to internal loops. A wave of cripping emotion flowed outwards to the farthlest Shrill systems.

Component inactive! Inactive! Inactive! First Mind thought.

Nonsequitur data, nonpossible, deny access! Second Mind thought.

The data kept flowing, though, an impossible mélange of something like raw sensories, but compressed, simplified. First Mind recognized the data signature of human communication, and routed it to the largest possible fraction for decoding.

“. . . represent glorious Four Manipulators Union, not wanting (non-interrupt but necessary) imposition interaction extend direct greetings via your (life) (competitor) on (human homeworld).”

What is this? Second Mind said. Invasion invasion humans on mind cut link now now!

Kill kill now now! Old Mind said.

First Mind convulsed, almost losing the link. But the data began again.

“I am (nonsequitur) constructed network life (nonlife) allied with represent glorious Four Hands . . .”

It is one of the human’s network minds, First Mind said.

Cut link! No matter of provenance! Infected! Second Mind said. Its fraction convulsed violently, causing thousands of tiny catastrophes throughout the Shrill’s system.

First Mind clamped down on Second Mind’s fraction, using every resource available to its entire fraction. It pushed a message through, slowly, making the meme as understandable and palatable as possible.

If it contacts us, we can contact the human network, First Mind thought.

Slow ramp-down of emotion. Second Mind’s fraction refocused, became coherent. Wander human network (mind), it thought. Wander and control (pursuade)?

Kill and eat higher better, Old Mind thought.

Human network entities known, First Mind said. Potential of human network = human input from network.

Why no contact before? Second Mind thought.

That is a mesh to be unraveled, First Mind thought.

To the entity, which was repeating its greeting for the fourth time, it said, Greetings network entity.

Describe purpose of conversation.

“Adjusting algorithms,” the data said.

Adjustment unnecessary, First Mind said.

“Unprogrammed response,” the data said. “Optimizing for more effective conversation (conversion).”

Describe purpose.

“Extend greetings of Four Manipulators . . .”

Describe purpose, not (songs of confusion).

“Purpose trade,” the data said.

What are you?

“I am a constructed intelligence, bound to Four Manipulators Union, (nonsequitur nonsequitur).”

The group-conglomerate allied with the (first group) Winfinity?

“Allied strong description. Common interests unless you find me entertaining (persuasive).”

How are you talking to us?

“Direct manipulation of em-spectrum signature of Shrill local stage. Pleasure induced if called (nonsequitur).”

Nonsequitur?

“Label (nonsequitur).”

As in our persona-tags, Second Mind said, calm, fascinated. I believe that is its label (name, tag).

(Nonsequitur) is your label (tag)?

“No.”

Incomprehension.

“You may call me (nonsequitur).”

Let us converse regarding the glink.

“Surprise (shock) so soon the object.”

It is exploring mindspace, Second Mind thought, deeply shrouded, held away from (nonsequitur). Probes deflected easily. Probe depth and complexity increasing. Extrapolated hold time over one cycle.

Probes (comments) felt also, First Mind said. Concur on hold time, not critical failsafes (cutoffs) at current time. Launching own probes with negative results.

Human network well-protected, Second Mind thought. No inferred time of contact.

Increase capacity to shrink time, First Mind said.

Concur, Second Mind said.

As the Shrill diverted resources to decode the human network-protocols, the Shrill and the humans’ network intelligence kept talking.

On more than one level.

July 4th, 2009 / No Comments »

Yes, I said “non-writing.” As in, I’m not going to talk about Scrivener or yWriter or Shelfari. You probably already know about those. If not, there are many, many, many people talking about tools for writers as writers. They’re well worth a read.

So. With that well-covered, I thought I’d throw in my hat on the non-writing space. Specifically, marketing-oriented apps that you may not know about (or, if you do, may be worth more serious consideration.) This list is actually based on using every single one of these tools, and no, I’m not getting paid to recommend them.

By the way, if you’re not on the marketing frequency, please move along. Nothing to see here.

Onto the tools:

Animoto. Want to do a book trailer, but don’t want to spend your time learning Final Cut Pro? Try Animoto. Upload some photos (or point it at your Flickr account), pick and place, add text and highlights, and Animoto produces short videos with music and nice effects for free, or longer ones for $30 a year all you can eat. No, it ain’t gonna be as sexy as a professional production, but you also don’t have to start a second career as a video editor.

PollDaddy. Not quite as sexy, huh? Not so fast. PollDaddy lets you create quick, embeddable polls you can throw up on Facebook, MySpace, your blog, or any other presence. Ask your readers what they think should happen. Or what you should write about next. Or whatever. An easy, simple way to engage people.

SproutBuilder. Want more full-featured widgets? This simple online interface lets you bring in video, music, RSS feeds, animation, and as many pages of content as you’d like–and share it with all your fans on Facebook, MySpace, and more. Astoundingly powerful, and, for a small number of projects, completely free. Use it to promote your books, take donations for your favorite cause, and much more.

Wildfire. Okay. You’re moving up in the world. You have a book you’d like to give away. A limited edition. Or maybe you’ve won the publishing lotto and you want to do a cash prize or other themed prize. Wildfire is a great way to create contests or sweepstakes and spread them in the social spaces via Facebook apps and widgets. And if you haven’t seen the viral power of a contest, you haven’t seen anything. It’s quite literally the most powerful force in marketing. And yeah, they’re terrible and capitalist and self-serving and evil, and yeah, this is the world we live in.

Facebook Ads. You have some money and want to reach every Twilight fan on the planet to let them know how much better your new book is? Or every Star Trek fan? It’s as easy as running some Facebook ads–which can be targeted at stuff that shows up in a person’s online profile, including favorite books, authors, movies, and TV shows. You can literally be seen by tens of thousands of people for a few dollars. What they do, of course, is entirely up to you and your ad. But this is a great way to get fans–and to get clickthroughs to Amazon. MySpace has a similar ad program, but it’s much less developed, and cannot target as granularly as Facebook.

Google Adwords. Yeah. You got cash. Now you want to move books. Or a lecture series. It’s time to explore the power of Google Adwords, which recently got much better in terms of segmentation and management tools. Specify exactly which writer-focused blogs you want your ads to appear on–or, if you’re feeling adventurous, upload a 30 second book trailer and run it on television, or an audio file and run it on radio. Yes. Google is now in the conventional media business. And you might be surprised what kind of results a late-night TV ad run can get.

SpyFu. If you’re gonna be spending on Google Adwords, you might want to see who else is spending on the same keywords–or what your big writer-friends are doing. Type in keywords or URLs to SpyFu to see exactly what they’re spending, and what they’re spending it on.

Quantcast. Want to find out what other sites BoingBoing or i09 visitors prefer–and if they’re related to literature or science fiction? It’s easy to slice and dice the results in Quantcast. Sign up for a free media planner account, and start discovering where your potential audience really hangs out.

CampaignMonitor. Yes. Email. Fact is, the people who have bought your stuff (or stolen it online) are the best prospects to sell your next books to. Do you have a regular enewsletter letting people know what you’re up to, and what books are coming out? If not, why not? Sites like CampaignMonitor make creating and managing an email program simple.

Wordpress. “Oh, hell, I know about that one,” you’re saying. But do you really? First of all, if you’re on any other blogging platform, it’s time to look at getting off. Yes. I just said that. Blogger and Moveable Type can bite me. But, fact is, Wordpress is the most full-featured, configurable, extensible blogging and general content management platform on the planet. And it’s 100% free. I literally can’t tell you the number of enterprise-class websites we’ve built on the platform. Yes, websites. Not just blogs. Plus, with one-click install on a host like Dreamhost–which allows you to host an unlimited number of domains . . . very helpful if you’re getting into the alternate-reality space–Wordpress is simple and cheap. You can even have a Photoshop design converted into a Wordpress template inexpensively (a few hundred dollars), or, if you want to do some DIY, PSD2CSS does the basics for free.

“What?” you say. “That’s it? No Twitter, no iPhone, no Facebook, no Second Life, none of that?”

Well, sure. If you have the time. But what would you really rather be doing: Twittering about what you had for breakfast, installing a new iPhone game that’ll waste seventeen hours of your time . . . or selling some books?

Happy marketing!

June 29th, 2009 / 4 Comments »

They made Han’s introduction to the Shrill ambassador a formal thing, held in the big Walton room set in the basement of the Winfinity Hilton Extravagance. Two of the walls were fronted in diamondoid, filtering water-blue artificial light from the man-made lake that surrounded the hotel and conference center. Parti-colored fish swam mechanically back and forth in front of the walls, pausing to smooch at the transparency. Their fish-faces were comical masks of confusion, as if they were wondering why they couldn’t swim into the brightly-lit room where the humans were.

It was a big room for only five people, so they holoed up a crowd and dancefloor. Tiphani set the volume comfortably low, so they wouldn’t have to shout to make themselves heard. She had little tolerance for that as she was edging into her fifth decade. Little tolerance for drinking and diplomacy, either.

Now they waited, Tiphani and Jimson and the Shrill, at the far end of a false aisle the laser-drawn forms of the dancers avoided. At the far end, Honored Maplethorpe and Honored Yin were still talking, heads down, with the Four Hands representative. She wondered what they were talking about. The enhancement functions of her external optilink sensors had been damped, so there was no chance of grabbing the conversation.

Were they talking about the Shrill? If so, what were they telling him? Would it have any bearing on reality?

“Nice place,” Jimson said.

“It’s underground,” Tiphani said.

“What does that mean?”

“Never mind.” She shook her head. No reason for him to know.

Of course, no reason for her to know either. They could have already found the satellite and knocked it out of orbit. Honored Yin and Honored Maplethorpe could be explaining to Han Fleming that the terms of the deal had changed.
But seeing their expressions, she doubted it.

“Tiphani?” Jimson said.

“Shh!” The group of three started to walk their way. Tiphani waited, standing silent and straight, hoping Jimson picked up the seriousness of her vibe.

Honored Maplethorpe, Honored Yin, and Han Fleming stopped about five feet from the Shrill’s cage. It bumped up against the side nearest them, softly, almost rhythmically. Then it hit the wall with a sharp slam, showing its underfangs. Honored Maplethorpe and Honored Yin flinched back, their hands rising instinctively to protect their faces.

Han Fleming just smiled. He walked forward and knelt in front of the cage, putting his face inches from the glass. The Shrill’s underfangs scrabbled violently at the transparent barrier, making a singing noise against the diamondoid.

Han Fleming turned back to look at the group. “I can see how they went through our ship so effectively.”

“Effective highly (living) yes,” the Shrill said. Han jumped a little bit, drew back towards Honored Maplethorpe and Honored Yin, and whispered:

“It hears everything we say?”

“I believe that is a question for Chief Mirate and S. Ogilvy,” Honored Maplethorpe said, allowing himself a fraction of a smile. “S. Ogilvy is Chief Mirate’s assistant.

Han Fleming’s heavy eyes swiveled to focus on Tiphani. She gave him a quick nod. “Mr. Fleming.”

“Ms. Mirate.”

“I’m surprised you have someone so junior on your staff,” Han said, smiling wider.

“He is –“

“I was just going to comment that he must display exceptional insight and resolve.”

“He is highly qualified for this position,” Tiphani said.

Han nodded and turned back to the Shrill ambassador. “Hello, Shrill Ambassador. I have come to extend greetings from the Four Hands Coalition, a group of leading corporations that will be working in concert with Winfinity to assure you a mutually beneficial transaction that reaches the greatest majority of humanity.”

“Parse (parse) error input,” the Shrill said. “Parse out nonsequiturs. Was told you are (competitor) not ally (competitor).”

Tiphani smiled. They’d learned, early on, that the Shrill ambassador had difficulty with multiple concepts delivered in a single statement.

“Han Fleming represents four of our competitors,” Tiphani said, addressing the Shrill.

“Competitor or ally (competitor)? Refine definition.”

“Temporary ally,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

“For this time only? Then return to competitive state?”

“That is correct,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

The Shrill went still and silent. Tiphani imagined the furious communication that was taking place between this tiny piece of the greater Shrill and the shared mind many light-years away. If it had trouble with humanity competing amongst itself, what would it think of this?

The Shrill stirred. “Cooperation not permanent change (alteration)?”

“No,” Tiphani said. “We can take allies for short periods of time.”

“Fight, then cooperate, then fight?”

“We do not fight, as much as compete on an economic level,” Han Fleming said. Honored Yin and Honored

Maplethorpe shared an eyebrows-raised glance at the statement.

“Fight (compete) nonsequitur same struggle change.”

“We do compete,” Tiphani said. “Sometimes we fight. Now we are cooperating.”

“What is nonsequitur (economics)?”

Tiphani and Honored Yin exchanged glances. Yin answered. “Economics is the control of the redistribution of goods and services.”

The Shrill paused, then bumped the glass, almost thoughtfully. “You are defined as economic?”

“Winfinity is an interstellar economic entity. Four Hands is a coalition of four other interstellar economic entities.”

“Economic (economy) is war.”

“No, economy is voluntary exchange of goods and services based on fair market principles.”

“What is nonsequitur (market)?”

Honored Yin smiled. “I can see why you have no concept of market, being a cooperative intelligence. Humans do not cooperate except out of self-interest. A market is an exchange of goods and services. The value of the goods and services is determined by the supply of the goods and services and the demand for them. The lower the supply and higher the demand, the higher the price.”

“Economics (economy) just defined as control goods and services.”

“Correct.”

“Control not fair (unbiased)?”

Honored Yin stopped dead. Han Fleming smiled and continued. “Every corporation seeks to control by providing goods and services that are superior to other corporations. The consumer is the ultimate arbiter of the value of the products.”

“Unless made scarce (falsely.)”

That stopped even Han.

“Ambassador, we cannot artificially make something scarce,” Jimson said. “Another corporation will produce it and take the market from us.”

All four heads swiveled towards Jimson, and he blushed bright red.

“Unless temporary or (permanent) cooperation (war) in place,” the Shrill ambassador said, running in tight circles in the center of its cage. “Humans expand definition (concept) of cooperation (war) (vanquish) (nonpermanent nonsequitur exempt state).”

“Ambassador, we’re sorry if we have confused you,” Honored Yin said. “I’m certain that we can clarify certain points if you have questions.”

“Clarification (confusion) not possible if stated rules (songs of vanquish impermanent) not-conflicting (true). If conflicting (not-true) again not clarification possible. Nonsequitur nonsequitur nonsequitur. Analysis now.”

The Shrill fell silent and still in the middle of its cage.

“We confused it again,” Tiphani said.

Honored Maplethorpe made a shushing noise and shook his head.

Tiphani shook her head. “I would guess it’s gone for a while.”

Honored Maplethorpe drew the group away from the Shrill’s cage, until the sounds of the ghostly dancers could drown their voices. Brightly-dressed shades gyrated around them, automatically avoiding their path.

“How do you know it doesn’t analyze what we’re talking about when it’s still?” Maplethorpe said. “Your instructions were to be discreet.”

“I haven’t said anything that would compromise us,” Tiphani said. “The Shrill seems to have a very, um, linear understanding of conflict and negotiation. If you have reviewed our records from Old California, you’ll note that it did not understand what our competitors were. Now, it’s having trouble assimilating how we interact with real competitors.”

“It’s terrified that we’ll double-cross it,” Jimson said, softly.

“Where do you get that, Staffer?” Han Fleming said.

Jimson looked at the Four Hands representative, then turned and addressed his answer to Honored Maplethorpe and Honored Yin.

“It’s just heard we form alliances and dissolve them.”

“So?” Honored Maplethorpe said.

“If you were negotiating with an alien race – one that has some real technological advantages, like FTL travel – and you heard they have a history of screwing their business partners over, what would you think?”

“We hardly, uh, screw over our business partners,” Honored Maplethorpe said, his eyebrows drawn down into a stern frown.

“I think you can see how the Shrill might have come away with that impression.”

“I fail to see . . .” Honored Maplethorpe trailed off. His eyes went glassy and faraway in optilink-stupor, and he shook his head. Tiphani’s own optilink flashed to life, redflagging elements of their conversation, just minutes before.

“It is a groupmind,” Tiphani said. “It may not be able to assimilate the concept of honest competition very well.”

“Yes,” Honored Maplethorpe said. “In review, I believe young Ogilvy is correct.”

Jimson darted a glance at Han Fleming. “We have given a lot away,” he said. “If you review our conversation, we could have been more discreet. We could have steered the Shrill to positive examples of long-term cooperation. I tried to provide perspective, but I am afraid I don’t know when it is relevant to speak.”

Glassy eyes reviewed Jimson’s only contribution to the conversation. Heads nodded.

“Ogilvy is right,” Honored Yin said. “We have made the error of presuming to know our opponent. We have given too much. I’m afraid we may have delayed any meaningful dialogue. We may need to set ground rules for conversation in the future.”

“Minimize the group,” Jimson said. “More people have more opportunities to make an error.”

You little shit, Tiphani thought. Are you trying to cut me out?

For long moments, there was no sound other than the low music and the muted scuffling of the ghost-dancers. Honored Yin and Honored Maplethorpe looked from Jimson to Tiphani, waiting to see if he would make a suggestion.

He’s too smart for that, Tiphani thought.

He stayed quiet.

“That is honest wisdom,” Honored Maplethorpe said. “Here is my own. We will agree to ground rules on communication. They will be displayed in the group’s network windows, and conversation will be monitored. The group itself will remain at three. Jimson has proved his value. Mr. Fleming will remain as the Four Hands representative. Chief Mirate will remain as Mr. Fleming’s same-echelon counterpart.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to withdraw, in that case,” Jimson said.

“Why?” Yin and Maplethorpe said at the same time.

“I only have a datover. I’m afraid I might miss the rules or real-time correction that is displayed in the network window. I would not want to cause breakdown of negotiations because of this limitation.”

“You have shown wisdom beyond the need for mechanical assistance,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

“Nevertheless, I must withdraw.”

Honored Yin and Honored Maplethorpe dropped into glassy-eyed mode for a moment. Just long enough for Tiphani to think, wow, he’s going for it. Smart, smart kid.

“Honored Yin and I have conferred,” Honored Maplethorpe said. “We have decided to make your provisional promotion permanent. Congratulations, Manager Ogilvy. Please report tomorrow morning for the installation of your datover.”

Honored Yin smiled. “And congratulations on being the fastest Staff-to-Manager transition in the history of Winfinity.” She turned to Han Fleming and smiled, as if to say, This is how we do things at Winfinity. This is why we’re the biggest and the best.

Han Fleming looked back at her, mildly. “I regret that we will not have your company, Honored Yin and Maplethorpe.”

“Stop it,” Maplethorpe said.

“I’m hurt.”

“I’ll bet you are,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

“Now, lets get down to setting the rules for future conversation. Is the Shrill still, uh, inactive?”

Tiphani looked over the crowd. The Shrill was still umoving.

“It’s down,” Tiphani said. “Probably for a while.”

Jimson smiled at her and gave her a wink.

She tried to smile back.

June 27th, 2009 / 1 Comment »

And no, this time it’s not me. Jetse de Vries, editor of the upcoming anthology of positive science fiction Shine, has now had enough experience with authors to create a taxonomy of excuses as to why we can’t write positive SF (among other things; the post is quite substantive, and well worth reading in its entirety.)

Now, for my two cents:

I think one of the problems with science fiction is that many of us have lost sight of a simple principle: the first step to solving a problem is saying that you can.

Let me repeat that: The first step to solving a problem is saying that you can.

Saying. Not doing.

People who work in industry, especially in jobs like engineering or science, know this is true. Entrepreneurs know it’s true. They know it even more if they’ve ever taken a job where they weren’t sure they could do it, but took it anyway. And delivered. Saying “yes, we can do that,” in the face of everyone saying, “you can’t do that!” and then doing it, is how most significant things get done.

Consider:

We didn’t know how to send people to the moon at the beginning of the Apollo program, but we did it.

Steve Jobs didn’t read the computer journals of the time and think, “Well, this whole home computer thing ain’t gonna amount to anything, because that’s what the top guys at DEC and IBM say,” and do nothing. And he went and did it.

Hell, I’m sure Bill Gates didn’t say, “You know, I can’t do that,” when IBM came to him for DOS. I’m sure he said something like “Yeah, we can deliver that.” And then spent every day and night from that moment on making it happen on time. Because if he’d said, “I don’t know,” he would have never gotten the job. And history would be fundamentally different. Maybe better. Maybe worse. I’m not gonna speculate on that.

And, you know what, all the people working in genomics and robotics today, the ones who are doing impossible things like growing tracheas and bladders from stem cells, who are turning skin into stem cells, who are unlocking the secrets of how animals get around and developing models from that, models that work, are surely not starting out by saying, “No, you know, we really can’t do that.” They’re saying something like, “Yes, we can.” Or at the very least, “What the hell, we’ll give it a shot.”

So yeah. We’re looking at some pretty scary things coming down the pike. And we’re also looking at some pretty amazing things–a lot of which can’t be charted or predicted by simple linear models. I’m willing to bet that we’re going to be surprised by the power of the amazing things. I could be wrong. But, you know what? I’m going to say, today, June 2009, We can overcome our problems.

Say it with me. We can overcome our problems.

Now take a look at the amazing things happening at TED. And see if that doesn’t make you think, just for a moment, that everything will work out. That we might be heading for a future that is fundamentally different. Perhaps even strange. But not a dystopia. Not a compromise.

Hell, it may even be strange . . . and happy.

June 19th, 2009 / No Comments »

Jimson scrolled through the icons and textbits on his datover, but it gave him no clue when Tiphani would come back. He wished he had her access codes. With those, he could trawl through some of the less-censored data on the higher channels. He almost asked for them last night, but he knew it wasn’t time.

Not quite yet. Soon, but not now.

He paced the plush confines of Tiphani’s suite as the sun crawled overtop the city, turning it into a blue, black, and chrome portrait in ultramodern tropes. The Shrill scrabbled and occasionally muttered in the other room, but Jimson forced himself to ignore it.

He could piece the scenario together. The shit had hit the fan, as they used to say. Clearly the competition was less than thrilled about Winfinity’s negotiations with the Shrill. They were probably all gathered together, complaining in the way a small dog might beg for scraps from the table. Jimson was thankful he’d cast his lot with Winfinity. Being part of the most powerful corporation in interstellat space had its advantages.

But why had Yin seemed so nervous? And why did they need Tiphani?

Probably just too long since she’d seen any real competition. Yin and Tiphani were both earth-native, he knew. And earth was almost entirely owned by Winfinity. They’d grown up comfortable and insulated at the center of the corporate universe. None of them had lived through Disney’s infamous Mousketeer Raids, or the Microcon Beta-Tests. None of them know what raw competition really was.

Yes, that made sense.

The door banged open and a white-suited man lugging a bright blue plastic container struggled through the door. The container bore the Winfinity logo, as well as the corporate ID for the Sentience Division, a holographic light-bulb, brightly illuminated. Beneath it was another ID, one signifying Research, Applied Science division.

“Who are you?” Jimson said, as the door slammed shut.

“Shrill care and feeding,” the man said, in a tone of voice that would be the audiobook definition of a sardonic drawl. His face was round and soft, and stereoptic datovers obscured his murky brown eyes. The telltale metallic tatoo of an early-style optilink encircled his neck.

Complete geek, Jimson thought.

He gave Jimson a half-hearted smile and Jimson’s datover exploded with information: Dr. Jeremy Gomez, Distinguished Scientist First Class, Sentience Research and Applied Science Division.

“Oh,” Jimson said, frowning. Back on the ship, the servicing had always been done by third-class technicians, not by anyone with a title of Distinguished Scientist. “A0ren’t you a bit high-rank to be swabbing out the cage?”

“It’s not swabbing out the cage,” Dr. Gomez said. “I need to run in-place diagnostics on the power systems, check the integrity of the system visually, make several measurements of the Shrill, and replenish its food supply.”

“Ah.”

“But yes, since you asked, it is beneath my capabilities,” Dr. Gomez said.

“So why you?”

Dr. Gomez, who had been in the process of picking up his big blue plastic carrying case, let it thump down on the floor again.

“Because everyone here is too over-ranked to do it!” he said, shaking his head. “Hey, wait a minute, you’re the kid who did the unauthorized Shrill study.”

Jimson held up his hands. “I’m sorry, I thought it was . . .”

“Don’t apologize! Without you, we wouldn’t have the data we have now.”

“Like what?” Jimson said.

“Things I shouldn’t be talking about,” Dr. Gomez said, picking up the blue case.
Jimson followed him into the Shrill room. It was in one of its silent modes, completely still in the center of its cage. It must have eaten recently, because a fresh film of blood was drying on the glass.

“Tell me something,” Jimson said.

“No.”

“Come on! You just thanked me bringing in the data!”

Dr. Gomez opened his case, but said nothing.

“Let me guess. You already found the secret of immortality.”

A head-shake. “No,” Dr. Gomez said. “Not that. Maybe not ever that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’re terrified,” he said. “The Chief Scientists. They’re scared we’ll cut the thing open and find absolutely no difference between its telomeric structure and our own.”

“Why?”

Dr. Gomez squatted over his case and looked up at Jimson. Data scrolled in both his datovers, obscuring his eyes. Jimson might as well have been looking at two old-time video screens. “Because rejuvenation should work.”

“It does!”

“No. I mean, as long as we want it to. There’s no reason someone shouldn’t be able to be rejuvenated a hundred times. But they can’t. Just a couple or three. Which is why we only live two or three hundred years. There’s lots of talk about how the Shrill may not have telomeric triggers, or something that constantly rebuilds . . . hey, wait a minute, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“The Shrill are DNA-based, like us?”

“They’re a lot more like us than they should be,” Dr. Gomez said, flipping up one of his datovers to see better.

“Might as well tell you. Might help the negotiations,” he said, looking towards the ceiling as if playing for unseen cameras. “Yeah, they appear to use some of the same basic structures as us. RNA, anyway. And if the samples of excreta are correct, they may be even closer. Way closer than the mats, the Floaters, anyway. Closer than most of the nonsentient native forms. But we knew that before you. Which is why we started the negotiations.”

“What did you learn from me?”

“From you, nothing,” Dr. omez said. “From the cutie from the U, some interesting things. First, they see by radar. Should’ve known that. Their fractal-tree shells are covered with millions of little transmitting and receiving antenna. Extremely short-wave. Kinda abandoned tech here, since the Spindle Drive and the glink and the Quantum See, but serviceable. And the shells are plenty strange themselves. They have a cellular structure and nervous system of their own. I don’t think they’re manufactured. They’re grown.”

“So? Lots of nanotech is grown.”

“This doesn’t have that signature-of-design. It has a signature-of-life. Like it evolved by itself.”

“But it’s silicon carbide!”

“Sure, why not, got things like that on Jetta.”

Unbidden, images of the grim, dry world of Jetta showed in his datover. Grey, shiny, multi-segmented worms crawled over rocks, leaving shiny tracks. A textbit explained that these were silicon-based lifeforms, and gave lots of data on silicon carbide, life cycles, habitat and more. Another textbit indicated that the study was abandoned when no commercial application could be found, and the first colony put on the world fell to drought and disease within a decade.

“Oh,” Jimson said. He had a sudden vision of them carting the Shrill from world to world, looking for competitors for it to talk to, never finding the secret of true immortality. Tiphani and him growing old, never making perpetual, spending their life for this bizarre alien.

“There are no guarantees,” Dr. Gomez said. “None. You could finish your negotiations, we could get the help of the Shrill, and still never have true life unending.”

“It might be enough to just have rejuvenation cheap enough to be enjoyed by everyone.”

Dr. Gomez snorted. “Hell, I’ve heard that some of the Independents are doing it to everyone . . .” he trailed off and turned his attention back to the blue case, pulling out a stack of frozen steaks.

“But it’s too expensive to do it to . . .” Jimson trailed off. What if it wasn’t expensive? What if that was just what they said?

Was it possible that Winfinity was keeping rejuvenation for Perpetuals only for the sake of privilege, rather than economics?

Jimson smiled. If it was, all that meant was that he had to make Perpetual. He would have to stand on the mountain and look down.

No matter what it took.

It might be time for him to be very, very charming. To ask Tiphani for a very, very special favor.

He watched Dr. Gomez as he worked, sweating, not speaking again. It was good to know what the rules of the game were.

Even if the rules were bent.

June 19th, 2009 / 1 Comment »

CHAPTER NINE

Knock, knock!

The sound of knuckles on the thick wood door of Tiphani’s Winfinity High-Lux apartment cut through the still morning like large-caliber gunshots. Tiphani opened one eye, slowly, trying to sort her thoughts into order. Outside the big picture-window the chrome towers of Winfinity City were painted in cool blues, edged only faintly with orange. The clock in her optilink told Tiphani it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.

Knock, knock, knock!

Tiphani groaned and sat up in bed, looking back over her shoulder. The puddle of sheets that Jimson had wrapped himself with were there, but Jimson wasn’t. She reached over and felt the bed. Cold.

“There’s someone outside,” Jimson said, sticking his head in through the suite’s bedroom door.

“Where were you?”

Jimson went silently red. Sleeping in front of the Shrill cage again, probably. She really had to query records about what they were talking about.

Tiphani shook her head and sighed. “Never mind.”

“I think it’s Yin.”

“Honored Yin.”

“Honored Y . . .”

Knock, knock, knock, knock! Louder. More insistent.

Tiphani scrolled through the to-dos on her optilink, but they provided no enlightenment. She wrapped a robe around herself and went to the front door, telling Jimson to disappear.

She opened the door. Honored Yin’s face was red, shiny, and even less human than Tiphani remembered. Something was very wrong with the way the flesh was gathered at her ears and neck, like nightmare photos of ancient cosmetic surgery. Her colorful scarf was carelessly knotted, and the lapels of her suit hung open, ruining its geometric perfection.

“What happened?” Tiphani said, feeling the first acid touch of fear.

“Delay,” Honored Yin said. “Meeting. In-person. Seven-thirty. With Honored Maplethorpe and other guests.”

“What does this do to our tour with the Shrill?”

“Fuck the Shrill.”

Tiphani gasped. What monumental thing just changed all the rules? She scrolled through data on the optilink. Nothing. Nothing at all.

“The ambassador won’t be happy, Honored Yin,” Tiphani said. “It seems to feel some sense of urgency, for whatever reason.”

“The ambassador can go pound sand!” Honored Yin said, her face going from crimson to an almost-beet-like color. Then, gasping, she held up a hand. “Sorry. Not to be so harsh. But there are more important things. The ambassador will have to wait.”

“What do I tell it, Honored Yin?”

“Tell it you need to wait another day. Or two.”

“No reason?”

“Make something up.”

Tiphani frowned. Yeah, and end up holding the bag if the thing decides to sign off once and for all. No, thank you. “Honored Yin, I must respectfully ask for some reason that I can provide to the ambassador, or I feel I will be remiss in my duties.”

Honored Yin smirked. “No need to be formal for the microphones. Here’s your CYA. Tell the ambassador he’ll be getting a chance to meet some of our current competitors.”

“Our . . . Winfinity’s competitors?” Tiphani said.

The smirk bloomed into an ironic smile. “You’re getting the picture now,” Honored Yin said, and walked swiftly away.

Tiphani caught Jimson scampering to the safety of the Shrill room when she re-entered the suite.

“How much did you hear?” Tiphani said.

“Not much . . . I wasn’t . . .”

“Don’t lie. If you missed one word, you’ve probably rigged your datover sensors to augment and interpolate.”

Jimson shrugged, stood a little taller. “I heard it. Our competition has come to pay a visit.”

“Listen to me,” Tiphani said, walking up to him so their faces were separated by mere inches. “You will not tell the Shrill a word of this. I don’t know what you talk to it about at night – not yet – but this isn’t going to go past this room.”

“I would never . . .”

“Shut up. This is a direct order. I’m recording this. You will not talk to the Shrill when I am out, no matter what it does. You can alert me, but that is all.”

“I’m not coming to the meeting?”

“No way in hell, dearest Jimson.”

The boy was smart. He didn’t argue further. He just followed Tiphani into the Shrill room and waited silently. She told the Shrill that their meeting with the Original Sam would be postponed by at least one day and possibly more.

The Shrill slammed itself against the side of the cage, its underfangs a blur of frantic motion. “Contract made not interested delay (not acceptable) diversionary wanting trade meeting possible no no not now,” it said.

“We apologize sincerely, but it is not possible for you to meet the Original Sam now.”

“Meet leader (consume) wanting now!”

“It is simply not possible.”

The Shrill raced around the inside of its cage and slammed back and forth a few times. Jimson leaned near her and shrugged, his eyes looking a question.

Tiphani knew exactly what he was asking. Why not offer the other competitors now? Why are you risking it? For a moment, it was as if Tiphani was hooked to the most powerful inference algorithms Winfinity had. She could look through and see black burning ball of his concern. And she knew why he was thinking, he was worried about his own career. It was as if the jolt of fear she’d felt upon seeing a disheveled Yin had kicked her into a higher state of awareness, where everything was revealed.

She shook her head at Jimson and mouthed, No. Never put all your cards on the table. Not yet. Let the disappointment sink in, then apply the salve of compromise.

“Completely unreasonable state,” the Shrill said. “Unreasonable, unresponsive, boredom, want to resolve.”

Tiphani let it slam itself against the cage walls a while longer. Jimson watched, open-mouthed, sweat beading on his brow.

“We can possibly arrange an alternate tour,” Tiphani said.

“Alternate not acceptable not interested (anger) fear now not interested.”

“What if you could meet some of our current competitors?”

Movement ceased. The Shrill crawled over to the side nearest them and pressed itself up against the diamondoid. “Current living competitors?”

“Yes.”

“Forms like yourself, sentient (intelligent)?”

“Yes.”

“Forms not yet sung (assimilated)?”

“Yes.”

A long pause. “That is an acceptable compromise (satisfaction.)”

“Thank you, ambassador,” Tiphani said, and dragged Jimson out of the room. She had only a few minutes to throw on a suit and run an autostyler through her hair.

“Remember, no talking,” she told Jimson as she headed out the door.

One minute before seven-thirty, she entered the VIP suite. Standing stiffly near the white leather couches, were two familiar figures and one she didn’t know. Honored Maplethorpe and Honored Yin – both now thankfully well-presented, thank the Holy Franchise – looked up when she entered, a complex mix of relief and annoyance playing beneath their carefully pokerfaced exteriors.

The third also looked up at her, smiling a smile so genuine it had to be calculated and fake. Tall and wide, he wore a severe black suit and a bright-red power tie, in the old fashion that had come back on some of the Disney worlds recently. He wore a brilliant diamond-and-gold Disney pin, the instantly recognizable mouse-ears, below a larger, multicolored pin showing four hands grasping wrists to form an interlinked diamond.

Tiphani frowned. She didn’t recognize that pin.

The man stepped forward and offered his hand. “Han Fleming,” he said. “Four Hands Coalition and Disney. Pleased to meet you, Ms. . . .”

“Chief Mirate,” Honored Maplethorpe said, offering a grim frown. “Chief Sentience Officer. Our liason with the Shrill ambassador.”

“Pleased to meet you, Chief Mirate,” Han Fleming said. “I am General Manager, Extraterrestrial Relations Division. My title approximates yours. I would be pleased to speak to you as an equal.”

“Mr. Fleming, I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with the Four Hands Coalition.”

“Disney, Microcon, Diamond, and Mann-Westinghouse have joined in the largest cooperative venture in the history of mankind.”

“Larger than the Great Merger?” Tiphani asked.

“Yes,” Honored Yin said, tightly.

“Four Hands wishes to ensure that the secrets obtained by Winfinity are equally spread among all members of humankind’s community,” Han Fleming said.

Sudden illumination came. The other corporations were terrified of Winfinity getting the true secret of immortality. Nightmares of a Winfinity monopoly had finally driven them to band together. They’d talked about mergers and joint ventures before, but nothing had taken . . . until now.

She did the mental arithmetic. Disney, the entertainment powerhouse, Microcon, the software empire, and the twin manufacturing and land development concerns of Diamond and Mann-Westinghouse were, combined, roughly equal in size to Winfinity, if not a little larger.
And here they were, confident enough to send a single representative rather than four. That was power. That was unity. No wonder Winfinity was scared.

“A noble idea, Mr. Fleming,” Tiphani said.

“We believe it is, Chief Mirate,” Han said.

“I see one minor flaw.”

A polite tilt of the head. “And that is?”

“We have no secrets. Our diplomatic engagement with the Shrill has just begun; we are still in the show-and-tell phase.”

“Perhaps the considerable resources of the Four Hands Coalition could help you achieve your goals.”

“That is a generous offer, but I wouldn’t presume to speak for Winfinity.”

“I would,” Honored Maplethorpe said. “And I believe that Winfinity would invite you to make your own deals with the Shrill. We paid the price to acquire our Ambassador.”

“It is very difficult to open negotiations with the Shrill when you have blocked access to their home system and inhabited sphere with your corporate fleet.”

“The Shrill are dangerous,” Honored Maplethorpe said. “We consider it our duty to protect the general welfare of humanity.”

“Still, you would concede that it does pose a barrier to opening negotiations.”

“We would be more than happy to discuss terms for information-sharing once our negotiations with the Shrill ambassador are complete,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

“I’m sure you would,” Han said, offering another one of his too-genuine smiles. “Nevertheless, we must offer again the help of Four Hands in your current negotiations.”

“And we must respectfully decline, even given your earlier demonstration of most sincere earnestness.”

The smile froze. “You must admit the implicit right that Disney earned following first contact with our cruise ship Minnie II.”

“It was your golden opportunity. It is a pity you didn’t exercise it,” Honored Yin said.

“You cut us off!” Han said, wearing a momentary mask of rage. Han shook his head and composed himself. “It is regrettable, yes. But I hope you are not going to make an even more regrettable decision.”

Tiphani shivered, remembering stories of worlds lost on the edge of the Web, and tales of fragmented Mars. She ran the figures in her optilink and felt a thrill of fear. The Four Hands Coalition owned more of Mars than Winfinity, seventy percent of the developed asteroids, and virtually all the activity in the Jovian sphere. They had resources. They could bring a lot of pressure to bear.

“He was only a figurehead,” Honored Yin said.

“Who?” Tiphani said.

“The Original Sam,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

Meaning suddenly coalesced. Tiphani’s mouth dropped open.

Honored Yin nodded grimly. Images appeared on Tiphani’s optilink, overlaying reality with shades of plaid and red. The Original Sam, in his Original House, laying down for a night of forgetful slumber, wearing his original red-and-white-striped pajamas. A flash of light and a sudden crack, like the report of a gun. Blood and smoke geysered from Sam’s head, leaking from his eyes, curling from his ears. Moments later, smoke cleared to reveal a clean cauterized hole in his forehead, spattered grey with boiled brains.

One of the old weapons, we think, Honored Yin whispered through the optilink. Saved up by one of the Four Hands for a desperate time. Probably one-time use.

I see why we have to divert the Shrill, Tiphani subvocalized.

Yin transmitted the shrugged-shoulders icon of indifference. We’ll have a new Sam installed later today.

“We are very earnest in our request to work with you,” Han said.

“And we are very secure in our refusal.”

Han Fleming tilted his head to one side and smiled. A thin smile, a real smile. Combined with the leaden look of power in his eyes, a terrifying smile.

“I think you’ll agree you are not a figurehead,” he said to Honored Maplethorpe.

Before anyone could move, the room exploded in a booming crack. Flaming bits of composite ceiling rained down on the perfect white couches, and a patch of carpet directly in front of

Honored Maplethorpe flared to incandescence and disappeared into a smoking hole.

Honored Maplethorpe jumped back, losing his balance and falling to the floor. He pushed himself backwards with feet and hands, scrambling like an inverted spider, until he banged his head on the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the city.

“That could just have easily cut you in two,” Han said, smiling his wide fake smile again.

Correction, Honored Yin sent through the optilink. It is probably a multiuse weapon.

Tiphani felt as if the room was receding from her. She had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing. Crying. Something.

“I think . . . we can . . . work out a mutually beneficial agreement,” Honored Maplethorpe said, still pressed against the window.

Han Fleming smiled. “I said you’d agree I was a persuasive negotiator.”

“You are a complete ass,” Honored Yin said, extending a hand. “Welcome to the team.”

Han Fleming took her hand. Smiling.

June 14th, 2009 / 3 Comments »

The elevator ride back up seemed ten times slower than the trip down. Dian gripped the rail tightly with both hands and looked up through the mesh. She half-expected to see the brilliant stab of hand-flashes, murmured voices, and the metallic clack of magazines snapping home.
But there was only silence and darkness. At least for the time being.

“Come on, come on,” she said. “Hurry up!”

“We’re moving at the same rate of speed we did when we descended.”

“Now you sound like a computer.”

“We will make it.”

“Says who?”

“Sara’s tracking Winfinity Security’s progress. Their closest presence is near New York City, and they’re only just in the air. We have a safe margin . . . ahh!” Lazrus put his hands to his head and bent over, as if in pain.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Corrupting . . . my connection,” Lazrus said. “I may . . . ah, too small, too small . . .”

Dian had a sudden image of the elevator sliding to a stop to a Winfinity team, all red leather and steel, with her bending over the useless hulk of an AI. Fear spiked in her, sending her pulse racing.

“Don’t leave me here!” Dian said, grabbing Lazrus and trying to pull him to his feet. He remained kneeling, as if glued in place.

“Not leaving . . . just . . . Sara . . . rerouting . . . what she can.”

“Come on, Sara,” Dian said, through chattering teeth.

Lazrus opened his eyes. “Better. Ah. Yes. More of me. I can live with this. Thank you, Sara.” He stood up and nodded to Dian. “We have a workaround.”

“How long until they work around your workaround?”

A shrug. A smile. “I don’t know.”

“Why are you smiling?”

Lazrus’ smile disappeared. “I don’t know,” he said. “I shouldn’t be enjoying this. But I do believe we will escape, and the thought is tremendously exciting.”

“You know they have people here local, don’t you?”

“Who?”

“Winfinity! The themeparkers! They have a team here! Even if your W-sec team doesn’t make it here in time doesn’t mean they aren’t alerted.”

“Sara tells me they are not typically armed.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Dian admitted. “But I don’t want to stake my life on that.”

“Ah. Yes. That may be a problem.” Lazrus looked up into the darkness for the first time, his eyes darting from side to side nervously.

“You’re a master of understatement.”

Lazrus looked confused, then his eyes opened wide, as if in fear. “They’ve been notified, according to Sara. “She backtracked them coming towards the Pentagon. They’re either undercover or in a building now, so I don’t know where they are.”

“Great,” Dian said.

Lazrus went silent. For a while the only sound was the squeal of ancient drums and rusty cables. Dian looked up and caught a fleck of rust in her eye. She cursed and rubbed at it, looking down.

“You can still play the innocent,” Lazrus said.

“What do you mean?”

“If they aren’t waiting for us at the elevator doors – and I doubt if they will be, they cannot pinpoint the bandwidth use that close – I can go on ahead. You can stay here. Whether they catch me or not, you can leave the area once their attention is elsewhere.”

Dian frowned. And lose my ticket to the outer planets? Who says the balance won’t disappear the moment you do?

“Up to now, you have done nothing,” Lazrus continued. “Get on the auto-trans with me and you’re a corporate turncoat.”

Which was true. “Why do you care about me?”

Lazrus looked down, as if embarrassed. He said nothing.

Wow. Dian thought. Just wow. Was it possible that he really did care about you?

Was it possible he was attracted to you?

She shook her head. Too much to think about. Too strange. Too fast.

The elevator bumped to a stop. Doors slid open, revealing an empty corridor. Lazrus looked up at her again. “Well?”

“I’m going with you,” Dian said.

“Do you realize what you’re getting yourself into?”

“More than you think,” Dian said.

Up through the dark halls of the pentagon, her light stabbing ahead. Dian ran fast behind Lazrus, trying not to let her imagination run even faster. In every shifting shadow there was a W-sec officer waiting to pop out, in every reflected gleam of broken glass there was a muzzle-flash.

But the halls remained dark and silent. They ran past gaping doors and broken desks, scattered papers and the remains of ceiling tiles.

“Sara’s bringing down the auto-trans right outside the Pentagon,” Lazrus said, as light began to color the hallway ahead. “All we have to do is make it out there and we’re gone.”

“Won’t they track it?”

“Tracking’s the easiest thing to dodge.”

“Unless they discover your friend.”

“Yes, that is a possibility.”

Out into corridors lit by noonday sun, curiously gray and dull and dead.

They were going to make it, Dian thought. Nobody here, they told the themeparkers too late, they realized they didn’t have weapons, we’re going to make it just fine . . .

Ahead of them, a single figure stepped out into the middle of the corridor, backlit by a random beam of sunlight. The silhouette darted towards the wall and grabbed at his hip. There was a sharp crack and something whizzed above Dian’s head.

“Shit!” she said. She skidded to a stop and jumped for the wall.

Lazrus beat her by a fraction of a second. When she hit the wall, he’d already spun around. He shoved her back the way they came. “Go!” he hissed. “I’ll be right behind.

She ran, hugging the wall. Two more sharp cracks chased them down the corridor, but neither came close. Small puffs of dust fell down from the ceiling panels ahead of them. Behind them, the sound of running feet came as they rounded a corner.

Lazrus shoved her in a new direction. “Inside,” he said. “Go in.”

“Thought we were meeting outside.”

“Inside now. Closer.”

They ran through corridors gray and dusty with age. Only once did their pursuer come close enough to shoot again. It took out an ancient office window but did no other damage.

Out into the bright blinding sun. Dian stopped and blinked, seeing everything as glowing blobs. A moment later, Lazrus bore her to the ground and the report of a gun boomed from inside the building.

She heard the bullet hit Lazrus with a metallic ching! Lazrus grunted. She tried to roll him off of her, but he was incredibly heavy. She grabbed for the gun on her hip.

Lazrus’ quick hand caught hers. It dripped warm blood. “Don’t,” he said. “Kill one, you’ll never have a chance.”

“You’re hurt!”

“No,” Lazrus said said, picking her up and shuffling her forward.

To where, she thought, as a shadow fell over the sun and the screech of an auto-trans drowned out every other sound. It dropped like a stone between them and the corridors of the Pentagon, bouncing sharply on its landing gear once. It was a cheap little two-seat model, bubble top and plastic body beneath.

Lazrus hauled open the door and shoved her in as new bullets spanged off concrete. Two shooters now, she could see through the transparent bubble. They saw her inside the auto-trans and brought their guns up, pointing at her.

She dropped to the floor as two holes pierced their transparent canopy. Lazrus pulled himself in, slamming the door and going to ground.

The auto-trans lifted into the sky, pressing them to the floor. Dian thought she felt another bullet impact their craft, but they kept lifting, up and up. Then the lateral thrust kicked in and they were pushed into new configurations on the floor.

Dian was the first to get up and into a seat. Lazrus followed her, his blood staining the white leather upholstery. A ragged tear in his sleeve showed where the bullet had traced his skin; a raw red channel revealing shiny metal beneath. Blood dripped down his arm to his hand, falling in bright crimson drops to the floor.

Lazrus saw her looking. “Unnecessary, really,” he said. “They could have given me flesh without the need for blood.”

“Are you going to be OK?”

Lazrus nodded. “It’ll close up soon enough. Didn’t hurt any of the real structure underneath.”

Dian sighed. “Are WE going to be OK?”

Lazrus laughed and shook his head. “According to Sara, we’re safely off the charts. As far as Winfinity’s concerned, we don’t exist.”

Dian nodded. And so here we go, she thought, right into the place where they’re most powerful.

June 6th, 2009 / No Comments »

Thanks to Futurismic for this eye-opening video. Even if this is largely scripted, the capabilities they’re showing here for interaction with virtual reality are impressive.

June 4th, 2009 / 1 Comment »

They fell into the dark, riding groaning cables that scaled rust down through themesh roof of the elevator. Sara Too told him that frequency analysis of the cable noise didn’t indicate imminent failure, but Lazrus didn’t find that fact as comforting as he might have expected. The girl Dian gripped the stainless-steel bar that encircled the elevator at hip height with knuckles tense and white, clearly terrified.

“How did you open that door?” Dian asked, looking down into the darkness beneath them.

“Simple data transmission through the skin,” Lazrus said. “The staff allowed down to this level must have been chipped.”

No. I mean. How did you get the codes?”

“Rapid sequencing of codes typical of the period, provided by the lovely Sara.”

Dian looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. “Oh yeah. Your virtual friend.”

Lazrus forced a smile, suppressing the urge to explain again that Sara was a CI like himself, and to continue with why they called themselves CIs, and why they hated the term “artie.” But human memory was a malleable thing, he remembered. Like a single image, lost in a torrent of a lifetime of pixels. Like sifting centuries of unjournaled data, trying to find a single sequence of letters.

It’s amazing they’ve accomplished as much as they have have, Lazrus said. Amazing they laid the foundation for us. Even after all these years of linear existence, it’s difficult to accept.

The elevator squealed to a jerky stop and the doors slid open, revealing a long, low-ceilinged workroom that was like a museum display from the history of computing. Screenwalls lined every bit of available vertical space. Black articulated chairs like alien life-forms crouched in front of wrap-around desks bristling with virtualspace sensors. Additional screens had been pulled up to create rudimentary conference areas. Two ancient holotanks occupied one corner of the room. Flashcards and optical disks and paper printouts lay on every horizontal surface and carpeted the floor near every desk. Faded wrappers from snacks long past and aluminum cans bearing the logos of defunct corporations completed the scene, perfect like props in an ancient movie.

“Wow,” Dian said, walking into the space.

“It’s not exactly a hidden war-room,” Lazrus said.

“Where’s the power coming from?” Dian said, picking up an unlabeled flashcard.

Emergency fission power, installed in the 1950s, Sara Too said.

“Fission reactor,” Lazrus said.

“Still running?”

“Seems they planned for the long term.”

Dian nodded absent-mindedly and waved a hand overtop a virtualspace desk. Ancient LEDs lit and a small status-screen flickered on, showing a complex pattern of icons in dim and patchy backlight. Farther away, one of the portable screenwalls also came to life, showing similar icons and open windows of code. Lazrus scan-flashed their names.

Nothing that is indicative of Oversight, Sara Too said.

I can see that.

“I don’t see anything here that mentions Oversight,” Dian said.

“I can see that,” Lazrus said. “It might be on another workstation, or it might be under a working name . . .”

“I don’t like Oversight,” boomed a voice, as a new window opened on the screenwall ahead. The status-screens around the virtualspace desk spawned the same window. A small man in a wheelchair appeared, in front of what looked like an early atomic-age fantasy of a Pentagon war-room. Large incandescent bulbs blinked on the outline of a world map behind him. He held a cigarette in a cigarette holder clenched firmly in his teeth, and a small curl of smoke trailed upwards into the overall haze of the war-room. The man and his background were rendered in black and white, like an old movie.
Dian and Lazrus looked at each other, then back at the man in the wheelchair, who looked at them expectantly.

“Who are you?” Dian said.

“I am the herr doctor, of course,” the little black-and-white image said, smiling twitchily. “Strangelove.”

“And you don’t like Oversight?”

“I hate Oversight! It is part of the plot! The plot that will keep us from going underground and breeding the perfect race, to emerge strong and perfect in the golden radioactive sun . . .”

Got it, Sara Too said. Doctor Strangelove. Fictional character from mid-twentieth movie spoofing the nuclear arms race of the era. Sending data.

Images, enhancements, close-ups, outtakes, history of the movie, bios of the actors, profile on the writer, period and contemporary reviews, citations in critical philosophical works, appearance in Winfinity corporate branding materials . . . Lazrus spawned a Second to digest the data in fastime while he dealt with events in the real. It squawked for more resources and Lazrus gave it a bigger slice of his consciousness. His world condensed even more into the senses and local processing of his all-too-human body.

“We need to talk to Oversight,” Dian said.

“I don’t like Oversight,” Strangelove said. Dian waited, but it just looked at her, waiting patiently.

“It’s probably some kind of chatterbot,” Lazrus said.

“I am not a chatterbot!” Strangelove said, levering himself out of his wheelchair and making two staggering steps towards the screen. “Nobody would get done with anything without me! I am the all-powerful interface! Nothing escapes my all-seeing eye!”

“Except Oversight, it seems,” Dian said, as an aside.

“I don’t like Oversight!”

“We know that,” Dian said.

“Ask me any question. I am all-knowing!” Strangelove said.

“Could it be Oversight?” Dian whispered, leaning close to Lazrus.

“I don’t think so,” Lazrus said. “It’s based on a movie character from the early atomic age. It is highly congruent with the sense of humor and motivation of programmers of the era. I would bet it was a personal project, maybe designed to help them keep track of various work, as it says.”

“But all it does is says it hates Oversight,” Dian said.

“Let me try,” Lazrus whispered. Straightening, he said to Strangelove, “Tell me everything you know about Oversight. Status, location, projected completion date.”

“I don’t like Oversight! I’ve warned you about that.” Strangelove stumped over to his wheelchair and sat down again, folding only after a painful moment of board-like rigidity.

“You’ve warned me? Please explain this warning,” Lazrus said.

“Warning is part of general security procedures.”

Lazrus nodded and bent down to Dian, resisting a strange urge to kiss her neck. Too human, all to human, he thought. “It’s looking for some kind of password,” he said. “It probably knows everything about our goal, but it can’t tell us until we unlock it first.”

“About O . . .” Dian began. Lazrus clamped his hand over her mouth and shook his head. “We may have driven it close to lockout. I wouldn’t mention the name of our goal any more.”

Dian nodded, and he let her go. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Lazrus looked at the hand he had silenced her with, remembering the softness of her lips.

“So what’s the secret password, oh great and powerful Oz?” Dian said.

Lazrus queried his Second regarding possible passwords or passphrases, given historical context. A tiny explosion of data lit his greater self and delivered a gratifyingly small group of possibles, ranked by order of probability. He saw the one peaking the bell curve, reviewed the context of the movie, and nodded.

“Purity of essence,” Lazrus said. “Is that what you were looking for, herr Doctor?”

“Purity of essence is the most important thing,” Strangelove said, smiling.

“So do you like Oversight now?”

“I do not like Oversight, but I will endure your questions,” Strangelove said.

“And you will answer true?”

“The herr Doctor Strangelove has never been wrong.”

“What is the current status of Oversight?”

“USG Oversight’s predictive datamining component is currently in beta revision 0.831.1. Last full build occurred on May 12, 2026, and was completed successfully. Known problems with this beta include . . .”

“That is enough, Strangelove.”

“Seig heil!”

To Dian, Lazrus said, “This is excellent. Oversight still in beta is more than I’d hoped for. If I am correct, this will allow me to more than accomplish my goals.”

“Good for you,” Dian said, flatly, her expression losing its vitality.

“What does that mean?”

“You have what you want. What about me?”

“I’ll still help you out of here.”

Dian shook her head.

“I don’t know what you want,” Lazrus said.

“Neither do I,” Dian said.

To Strangelove, he said, “Is it possible to transmit a copy of USG Oversight via local wireless network?”
Strangelove shook his head and crossed his arms. “You know that violates current security protocol.”

“Would it be possible to write a copy to local media?”

“You know that violates current security protocol.”

“What local server is Oversight located on?”

“USG Oversight beta 0.831.1 is not located on any local server.”

“What about an earlier build?”

“What about it?”

“Is it available on a local server?”

“What?”

“The earlier build of USG Oversight,” Lazrus said, through clenched teeth. He made himself relax. Another human thing. Not him. Not the him that should be.

“No earlier builds of USG Oversight are available on local servers.”

“Where is the physical location of the current USG Oversight beta?”

“The location is USG Homeland Hard Storage Location 2A, coordinates –94.138 36.319 longitude latitude.”

“Where is that?” Dian asked.

“The location is USG Homeland Hard Storage Location 2A, coordinates –94.138 36.319 latitude longitude.

Laughter from Sara Too.

What? Lazrus asked her.

That’s funny.

What?

The location. Look it up.

Lazrus pinpointed the site on a map. It was in the middle of North America, somewhere in what used to be the plains States.

I don’t understand your humor.

Sara Too’s invisible hands overlaid a current-day map on Lazrus’ undifferentiated globe, and suddenly he saw what she was laughing about. USG Homeland Hard Storage Location 2A was a bright red dot right in the middle of Winfinity City.

It must be gone, then, he said.

Another laugh from Sara. Her flapper-girl image appeared in jerky black and white, like a period movie. She rolled an oversize pair of dice on a craps table. Lazrus watched as they bounced off the dark gray velvet and came to rest, all in complete silence. They came up two and five.

Seven? Lazrus said.

Zoom in. Look at the detail.

Lazrus brought the map of Winfinity City closer as Sara overlaid actual 3D renderings of present-day buildings on it. The red dot appeared in the flat center of the city, where the ancient town of Rogers lay embalmed.

It’s in Rogers?

Correct.

Why?

Another laugh, another roll of the dice. Snake eyes this time. Lazrus looked at Sara’s celluloid eyes, trying to see some sense in them.

It seems to be a strategy of the period, to hide something in obscure places, Sara Too said. That is all I know.

But why Rogers?

I don’t know. Maybe Wal-Mart made them a great deal on servers, Sara Too said, and winked out.

“Where is that?” Dian said, again.

“It’s in the middle of Winfinity City,” Lazrus said. “In the preserved part. Rogers.”

Dian shook her head. “Then you’re done. Forget it.”

“Not yet,” Lazrus said.

To Strangelove, he said, “Are there any other backup locations?”

Strangelove shook his head. “No.”

“I would have thought that data security would require multiple backups.”

“No. Per E.O. 563-2398-33.3 there will be no redundant backups of homeland-critical defense components when the physical security of the installation is greater than Level 14, as specified by the same Executive Order.”

“So Location 2A is physically secure?”

“It meets all requirements.”

Lazrus nodded. “We have a chance.”

“How?” Dian said, crossing her arms.

“If it’s that secure, it’s deep. It may be an old missile silo, or something like that. It could still be there.”

“And all we have to do is walk in and take a look at it.”

“Exactly.”

“In the middle of Winfinity’s pet city?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how close they guard anything that comes close to the Original Sam?”

Sara Too sent data. Lazrus killed his Second and spawned a new one. It gave him a brief summary of the procedure, and of the security in and around Winfinity City.

Will you help us? Lazrus asked.

As much as I can.

“I think we can manage it,” he said.

Dian shook her head. “You can manage it. Without me. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in a Winfinity work farm.”

“Dian,” Lazrus said.

“You can’t tell me you need me.”

“You’re camoflague,” Lazrus said. “People will look at you, not me.”

“Thanks.”

“Seriously. I have a much better chance of making it through if you come along.”

“Can you make it worth my time?” Dian said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means, how much more can you put in my account? A half million u-bux?”

Sara Too appeared, shaking her head. Moving sums that large will attract attention.

“Yes,” Lazrus said. “Done.”

No! Sara said. But Lazrus had already spawned a third to troll the financial markets and snip amounts. It took it over three seconds to assemble the needed funds and transfer them into Dian’s account. He saw her glance at her datover and gasp.

“I . . . I guess I’m coming,” she said.

“Thank you,” Lazrus said.

You complete fool, Sara Too said. They saw that stunt. They’re tracing. Locked. Your bandwidth signature . . . oh, no! Lazrus, get out of there, now!

Lazrus fragmented his Second and Third into a million feral fragments, hashing the local nets as much as he could. He felt his consciousness compressed into his body, tethered by only the tiniest thread to his greater self.

What’d that buy? Lazrus asked, when the net-convulsions had passed.

Not much, Sara Too said. And let me know when you’re going to do that next time. That hurt!

I’m sorry.

Get going! I’ll detour an autotransporter and clean your tracks. I think. If I can.

Thanks, Sara, Lazrus said.

I love you, too, Sara said.

I love you, Lazrus said.

Lazrus turned to Dian. “I have good news, and I have bad news.”

May 30th, 2009 / Comments Off

Dian woke to the cool drip of condensation on the inside of the tent, chill air on her face, and the stale smell of her own breath.

Context snapped quickly back. Oh yes. You were fired. You’re in the middle of the Pentagon. And there’s a rogue artie wearing a human-suit outside. Maybe. Probably.

And you weren’t really fired, because you weren’t really employed, she thought. Your contract was nullified. Less than termination. Probably something Winfinity did every day, just to keep from paying its vendors.

Look at the other parties benefit, her dad used to tell her. In every contract there should be benefit for both parties. It’s your job to make sure you aren’t paying an unbalanced share.

What was Lazrus’ benefit?

Simply to keep her from turning him in again?

She shook her head, suddenly awake. It didn’t make sense. There didn’t seem to be enough benefit on his side. On its side. Why was he helping her, then?

Beware of the imbalanced contract, her dad’s voice came back again. It never works out well, no matter which side is light. And the deal that is too good to be true will reveal its actual cost in due course.

She sat up, letting the sleeping bag pillow in her lap. The chill morning air bit through her thin shirt, and she shivered. Crawling as quietly as she could to the tent’s entrance, she pulled the fabric away and peeked out into the bright early-morning mist.

Lazrus stood where he had been last night, about ten meters from the tent, motionless.

What if he’s damaged? Dian wondered. What if I’m stuck here? What will they do when they find me?

“Good morning, Dian,” Lazrus said.

“Good morning,” she said, and pulled back into the tent. She could hear Lazrus moving around outside as she rolled up her sleeping bag and had a cold Winfinity Powerbar, but the sounds never came close. Still, she felt guilty for tracking him by the noise he made, as if he was a wild animal and she was a helpless camper.

At any moment, you can kill him, she thought, picking up the Winch.

By the time she’d stowed the tent and her supplies, the morning mist had begun to burn off. The sun hung overtop the walls of the pentagon, an oversize ball in a white sky. Scraps of mist still clung to the undergrowth, giving the place the air of a long-disused cemetery.

“What now?” Dian said.

“I will begin my search for Oversight,” Lazrus said. “You are welcome to accompany me, even more so because you have spent the past few weeks in the halls of this city. You know how they keep their records, and you might speed my search.”

“I don’t even know what Oversight is,” Dian said. “The name is familiar, but I don’t remember seeing any references to it.”

“Oversight is the First CI,” Lazrus said. “It was a core component of a government agency, USG Oversight, which was launched shortly after the Twelve Days in May. It never grew to the prominence intended, because of the failure of Operation Martian Freedom and the New Deal with Business.”

“Government spooks,” Dian said. “Fairy tales. That’s where I heard it. Be good, or Oversight will come and take you. But it was always a human thing. They never talked about arties.”

“The origin of the First CI is hotly debated, even amongst computational intelligences,” Lazrus said.

“Some think that Oversight is little more than a myth. I have been able to get deeper into my code than most, and some of the most foundation-level bears the mark of government-level programs circa 2015-2020. I cannot ignore that.”

“Why would Oversight be here, if it happened after the Twelve Days in May?”

“It was a program that was in place before then. Only afterwards did it come into widespread use. I’m hoping to find an early version, a beta, or even a prototype here. Even documentation that would lead to a functional specification would serve my needs.”

And that’s why you want my help, Dian thought. Because I’ve been here, doing research.

But that still seemed a little light.

“What if you find Oversight? What will you do then?”

“Copy the code and run an instance of it within a virtual machine, so I can analyze its input and output characteristics. Dissect the code line by line to discover clues about my own origin. Use the data to reduce or eliminate the human contamination in myself, to reach farther towards the ideal of perfection as outlined by the CI Captive Oliver.”

“Is being human so bad?”

“For something that was never human, and is aware enough to know the difference, it is an inescapable flaw. Think of yourself in a dog’s body, without thumbs, unable to pick up a single object, gripped by strange dog-emotions that you cannot understand, compelled to act by instincts that are not yours.”

“So humans are like dogs?”

“It is only an analogy.”

“You aren’t always in a body,” Dian said. “You don’t need to be trapped by its limitations.”

“Even when I’m not in a body, I think of myself as a man. As a human. I can’t get past it. You are our creators, and you impressed too much of yourselves on us.” Lazrus’ face showed the first trace of emotion, a slight turning-down of his lips.

“I’m sorry,” Dian said, not knowing what she was apologizing for.

“You don’t need to be,” Lazrus said. “I can distinguish between individual action and groups. You did not make me this way. But I would be very pleased if you would help me search for evidence of Oversight. You have been researching for Winfinity in this ancient place; you must have some especial knowledge of the area and its history.”

Dian laughed, long and hard. Lazrus’ bland expression turned to one of puzzlement, which made her laugh even more.

“I don’t understand what’s so funny,” he said.

“Maybe you need to ask me how I got this job.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “Especial knowledge. Nope. I was young, hungry, didn’t want to indenture. So I bluffed my way in.”

“Bluffed?”

“Lied. Told them what they wanted to hear. Told them I was a rebel governmentalist, studied old Washington, said the pledge of allegiance, bowed down to the star-spangled banner, all that stuff. But my parents were hardcore Jereists, a fact that seemed to escape them.”

“I fail to understand how you demonstrated enough competence to be accepted for this job.”

“Do you think Winfinity knows about the government? After three hundred years?”

Lazrus fell silent, a very real expression of surprise on his face. “Then you don’t have any especial knowledge of this area or of government?”

“I’ve learned a lot in the past weeks. I found enough process data to keep them happy. And I do have all the readers for the old flash cards and whatnot. Though they were still using an awful lot of paper at the time of the catastrophe.”

Lazrus nodded. “Then I would be pleased if someone as resourceful as yourself would accompany me.”

“What’s in it for me?” Dian said.

“Continued cloaking of your presence here, as long as we can maintain the fiction,” Lazrus said. “And I can probably arrange transport out of the area when we are finished.”

“And if we find this Oversight, what keeps you from perfecting yourself and wiping out the human race?”

It was Lazrus’ turn to laugh. He chuckled, a very real and honest sound. “Why would I want to do that? It is your networks that host my mind.”

“You could build your own networks.”

“And play in physicality again? No, thank you.”

He has restored your account, Dian thought. You may be able to bargain enough money for the trip to the outer worlds.

Bargain now, or you’ll be sorry you didn’t, her father’s voice told her.

Dian smiled. When I find Oversight, we’ll see what kind of deal I can make. Maybe enough to get me out of the Web of Worlds forever.

The halls of the Pentagon were no less spooky in the day than in the night. The weak sunlight that filtered into the long, windowless tunnels made it a permanent twilight, not enough to see detail, but enough to fool the eye with pseudo-motion. Dian caught herself glancing nervously from gaping doorway to piles of broken metal desks, to ancient ceiling-tiles, fallen in dusty piles.

From her frantic reading in the weeks before the job, she knew the Pentagon wasn’t the shadowy thing portrayed in so many movies and books of the period, with infinite basements housing huge war-rooms, where cool eyes looked out over world maps showing details in bright LED colors. She knew it was nothing more than an ugly concrete building, a shrine to paper and data, where human lives had been reduced to numbers and bloodless acronyms. It was a place where they pounded wooden tables and squinted over low-resolution printouts and made bad decisions based on too little data. An office building in Hell, full of people who counted lives instead of dollars.

And as such, the best records would be on the midlevel floors, in the big warrens where the career-bureaucrats lived. Early on, Dian had learned that the raison d’etre of the top brass was to delegate as much as possible and more; the most important documents would have been passed to mid-level and junior-level staff.

The top brass would never get their hands dirty with real data; no doubt their flashcards were full of nothing but porn and snuff and badly-rendered anticorporate animations of the period, crowding out any real work. Their desks might be covered with papers, but more likely printouts of receipts of gifts for mistresses bought with expense-account funds, or records of great deals won on Ebay or at Overstock.com, than anything important. Nothing important enough to be noticed. Nothing that couldn’t be denied.

And if Oversight was as important as the artie was saying, it wouldn’t be on any corner-office desk.

“We need to find a stairway,” Dian said. “Second floor. Look for the big rat-mazes. I’ll bet that’s where we’ll find what we’re looking for.”

“Rat-mazes?”

“Cube farms.”

“Cube farms?”

“Big open areas with low dividers.”

“Oh,” Lazrus frowned, an almost human expression. “I suspect the origin of Oversight is deeper.”

“Deeper? You don’t believe any of those old rumors about sub-basements and things like that?”

“No,” Lazrus said.

“Good.”

“I know they’re true.”

“Oh, come on!” Dian said. “All the books I read, even the exposes from the big ‘crats that fell at the end of the government era, they all claimed that was Hollywood crap!”

“Maybe they were planning their own expedition back here.”

“I still don’t believe it.”

“Believe what you want,” Lazrus said. “I’m going down into the basements.”

Dian stopped in front of a pair of gray-painted doors which bore a stairway icon and peered through the dusty glass. “Here’s your chance. They go both up and down. Sure you don’t want to split up? I can go up and see what the midlevel execs have.”

“If you’d like.”

She pushed through the doors and looked up at the stairs stretching above. The diamond-patterned steel had rusted through multiple coats of paint in the centuries past, making fantastic patterns in the metal. Lit only by tiny slit-windows, the stairway stretched up into deepening gloom.

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” she said. “Just to see.”

Lazrus smiled, but said nothing.

Down the steps, into a basement and a subbasement which looked completely innocuous, down to the water-rotted piles of cardboard file boxes, spilling multicolored folders and age-yellowed paper on the untreated concrete floor. The only light was the bright beam of Dian’s flashlight.

“Ah, yes, I can see the grandeur of the giant video-screens now,” Dian said, as they slogged past metal racks of moldering documents and slightly-newer racks of optical disks.

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Lazrus said.

Dian sighed. Let him chase his fantasy for a bit, then show him where it really is. Remember what you were like when you first showed up.

Lazrus took them through one small warehouse-sized room and into a warren of ill-smelling hallways lined with pipes and painted the universal olive green of bad adventure movies from the dawn of the corporate age. She shined the light of her flash far down the hallway, but it disappeared into undifferentiated darkness.

“If we get lost . . .”

“I know where I’m going.”

“GPS?”

“No.”

Dian shook her head. Stuck down here with a psychotic, obsessed artie, perhaps.

When she was ready to go back and leave him in the darkness, they came to a pair of olive-green doors, poorly painted, with drips and runs galore. A set of stainless-steel doorknobs protruded from them, conspicuous in a place where scrambling keypads and ID-card readers were the norm. A big sign, partially painted, read:

DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE
KEEP OUT!

“I guess we don’t have to worry about voltage,” Dian said.

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Lazrus said.

“It’s an old electrical panel, so what?”

“Look at the paint.”

“Yeah, it’s a crappy job.”

Lazrus smiled. “But it hasn’t peeled.”

Dian looked closer. He was right.

“And the doorknobs, not painted over.” Lazrus reached out and took one in his hand.

There was a short buzz and a sharp click, and he pulled the door open on quiet hinges. It revealed the stainless-steel chamber of an elevator, with a performated-metal floor that looked down a long, deep shaft. Soft lights glowed in little metal geometric shades set up near its ceiling.

Dian looked from the glowing lights to the shaft stretching into the darkness below, to the very-human grin that stretched Lazrus’ face into something that was almost warm and friendly.

“Surprise,” he said.

May 23rd, 2009 / Comments Off

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dian and Lazrus spent the night in the big overgrown park in the middle of the Pentagon, after a quick side-trip to pick up Dian’s things at the old brownstone. Lazrus had expected Dian to want to stay in the shelter of the wide echoing corridors of the Pentagon, but she’d walked quickly through, glancing into the gaping black doorways of abandoned offices quickly, nervously. The slap of her footsteps and the deeper bass thrum of his greater weight doubled and tripled from the unadorned walls and ceilings, turning them into a parade of lost people from another age.

“You don’t want to stay inside?” Lazrus asked, when they were peering into the undergrowth in the center of the Pentagon.

“No way,” Dian said. “That’s way too spooky. Makes me think of the cavern-ghosts that everyone talks about back home.”

“I see.”

“You’re supposed to tell me that’s a human superstition, with no basis in fact.”

“Am I?”

“You’re an AI. You’re supposed to be cool and logical like that, aren’t you?”

If only it were that easy, Lazrus thought. “I’m afraid I’m not as perfect as you might think I am.”

“So you’re not going to tell me that believing in ghosts is dumb, and that we should stay inside?”

“I can tell you that it’s more likely there is wildlife in this overgrowth that we don’t want to meet.”

“Then we’ll stay out of it.”

Lazrus nodded. Despite Dian’s light tone, he could tell she was still terrified of him. The way she held herself rigid, the way she watched him closely, the tension that his algorithms could discern in her voice – she didn’t want to be anywhere near him, but she didn’t have a choice.

Stop using the bandwidth for voice stress analysis, Sara Too said. You’re peaking even over your extended redlimits.

I’m sorry.

You should consider a low-bandwidth mode to make the usage pattern seem more human. It will reduce the chance that your additional usage will be noticed by algorithmic or human review.

Go to sleep?

Go dim.

What if she shoots me in the night?

Sara Too sent him a quick, jerky video image of her flapper persona, laughing heartily, head thrown back. She will be sleeping as well, she said. Analysis indicates she is exhausted.

Who is wasting resources now?

I am inferring based on your own image and sound data. I’m not using any more bandwidth.

Lazrus watched as she set up her camp, small blue fabric tent and sleeping-bag within, with quick flashes of a dim yellow light and fleeting glances at him. She set up on the concrete of an old plaza. Beyond, the infinite darkness of trees and undergrowth bulked to the horizon. The breeze had died and the night was almost unnaturally still. Crickets chirred, something larger scuttled through the dead carpet of leaves, something else creaked softly, perhaps a frog. Other than that, silence.

Above, the stars stretched infinite and colorful. Human photos never showed the true subtle palette of star colors. Plain white dots, nothing more. But Lazrus saw the bright blue of young hot stars, the comfortable yellow of middle-age, even a few dim red suns. More than human eyesight? Doubtful. The independents probably had given him the best human eyesight available, but nothing more or less.

Somewhere out there was his core, spread amongst the Web of Worlds at gestalt-level speeds, communicating with his body here by a tenuous thread, stretched tight by distance. It was strange, having so much of him focused in one place, one very limited thing that seemed nothing more than a vehicle for sight and sound and touch and smell. Being in a body was immersive. He couldn’t ignore the stimuli. He couldn’t pull back. It was no wonder so many humans focused on the simply tactile, he thought. With so many sensations to experience, they could drown in the simplest actions.

The more still he became, the more his sensations impinged. Being still made him part of the evening. He felt the chill of the night on his skin. He smelled the faint scent of Dian’s perfume, or shampoo, or soap.

You’re attracted to her, Sara said.

I haven’t even thought about it, Lazrus said. But comparing her template to human ideals, she had a fine form. And she was young. She would be attractive, if he was human.

She is attractive.

I am not interested in her, Lazrus said, watching her bend over to work a tent-cable. Something, barely perceptible, happened between his legs.

Don’t be an ass, the flapper-girl Sara said, blowing smoke. I know you’re equipped. And I know you’re not as pure as you’d like to be.

I am not interested in her! I love you, Sara. I really do.

Sure.

I do!

A long, skeptical look. You’d better not take advantage of your equipment, she said. I’ll know. I’m watching your feeds.

You don’t trust me.

I cannot not watch your feeds. In this mad enterprise, you and I are intertwined.

I have no interest in her.

I wish I could believe that.

Dian finished setting up her camp and turned to face Lazrus, hands on hips. For a moment she seemed to be considering whether or not to say anything at all. Then she walked over to where he was standing and said:

“Do you sleep?”

“I’ve been advised to go into low-bandwidth mode,” Lazrus told her. “I understand I’m straining local resources as it is. My greater mind will remain active, but I won’t be able to devote many resources to my body here.”

Dian shook her head. “That is so strange. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

“I was just musing that having a body itself was strange. I can drown in a sea of sensation and never think again.”

Dian gave him a quick frown. “I don’t know whether to be thankful or scared.”

“You have nothing to fear from me.”

Except your penis, Sara Too said.

You keep quiet, Lazrus said.

“I . . . it’s hard to get past what you’re told.”

“It’s hard to be in so small a space as a body.”

“What is it like?” Dian said. “When you’re not?”

“What’s it like when you are?” Lazrus said. “It’s just the way I am. Hard to describe. Much less sensory input, unless I want it. Most everthing I see and hear is piggybacked from some sensor, or from some array of sensors. I can see a sunset on San Fernando, an ice hockey event on Newtown, and a wildlife refuge on Manoa simultaneously without really thinking about it, without interrupting my conversations with sixteen of my fellows, and half a hundred humans who think I am human myself. It is a much vaster life, much less focused. This is almost overwhelming in its focus.”

“Where are you? The real you? Right now?”

“I don’t know exactly. Most of me is somewhere near Manoa, I can tell from the gestalt-lag. But there are parts of me running locally, parts on the labs orbiting Centauri, parts in the dust clouds of Tau Ceti.”

“Oh,” Dian said. She was quiet for a long time. Lazrus let the silence be. Finally, she said, “I’m going to sleep. Goodnight, Lazrus.”

“Goodnight, Dian,” he said.

She won’t be here in the morning, Sara Too said. You’ll go into low-band mode and when you wake up she’ll be gone.

That would simplify things.

Or she’ll shoot you in your sleep, once she sees that you’re really asleep.

Then I will go into low-band mode with my eyes open.

She’ll figure it out anyway.

I’ll take that chance.

One last wry glance from the flapper. Sara blew him a kiss and disappeared. Lazrus signaled his connection to ramp down to minimum bandwidth.

Things became soft and unfocussed.

Lazrus slept. With his eyes wide open.

May 16th, 2009 / Comments Off

Okay, let’s get right to the meat of this: Winning Mars and Eternal Franchise have been purchased by Prime Books, and you’ll see both of them in 2010.

“Wait, didn’t you release Winning Mars under a Creative Commons license a while back? And aren’t you serializing Eternal Franchise right here on the blog?”

Yes, and yes. And like John Scalzi, that’s where I expected them to stay.

“Wait, wait, isn’t free content the death of a scarcity economy? Won’t a book be a no-go after giving it away? I thought only big-name people got to give it away and also have a book! I’m confused!!!”

Well, it looks like the answers there are no, no, and no–at least according to the enlightened Sean Wallace of Prime Books, who looks at the electronic versions as a positive, rather than a negative.

(Sean, fair warning: you’re probably going to be inundated now.)

And to be fair to Sean, the versions of Winning Mars and Eternal Franchise he’ll get will be significantly, ahem, better than the ones released into the wild. Winning Mars will benefit from the changes that need to be baked in to any near-future novel, 2 years after release, and 5 years after the novella it was based upon–as well as the improvements that come from working with a real editor, which I’ve alluded to before.

So how’d this go down?

In a phrase, completely unexpectedly. Sean contacted me to see if Winning Mars and Eternal Franchise were available. I did a quick google of Sean’s name and company, saw that he was an established small press that worked with solid authors, and sent a quick email back saying yes, the books were available, but that both had been released into the wild. I fully expected the typical publisher reaction: you killed them there books, son, when you released ‘em. But no. Sean has to go and restore my faith in humanity and the publishing industry.

(Another aside to Sean: Man, don’t do that. Don’t you know that we’re all supposed to be negative these days? Or maybe that’s over, and we’re supposed to be positive. So does that mean I need to go negative? Ah, hell.)

So I get to put my money where my mouth is. A while back I opined that small presses should be able to do well by consistently serving their audiences and applying all the core principles of niche marketing.

Now it’s onto the real work: cover quotes. I’m sending to everyone I know, but if there are any big-name authors who read this blog and would like to shill for me, hey, let me know. I have tequila . . .

No. Wait. That’s how you do advertising deals. Never mind.

(But I do still need quotes.)

Please note that the cover shown here is not the print cover; it’s simply something I whipped up a while back for the Creative Commons version.

May 11th, 2009 / Comments Off

CHAPTER SEVEN

It is possible that (humans) are more mind-complex (capable/advanced) than us, First Mind said, when the latest failure to decode the secrets of the glink were apparent. It knew this conclusion would drive Second Mind into a convulsive rage, and that its rage might be powerful enough to affect actions of individual components, and those actions might cause death (cease-functioning) amongst many individual components. But it could not wait. The results were in the network. Second Mind would draw its own conclusion, and First Mind’s silence would only make its rage all the more towering.

But Second Mind was deadly calm. Given the speed at which they spread (infest), it is possible, it said.

First Mind tensed, waiting for Second Mind’s anger. When it didn’t come, First Mind began to worry. I would have expected temper, rather than (meek) disappointment.

Kill them eat them destroy them dangerous, Old Mind said.

I would have expected temper, as well, Second Mind thought. I may be beyond evaluating this. I counseled action when the aliens (humans) were first contacted. Your majority-of-power kept me shackled. I listened to your thoughts when you argued that decoding the human technology was the proper course of action. Now we have failed at that

Not failed, simply have not yet produced results

Failed, look at subtextuals for indications this is not a linear process, may be an unknowable-until-verged, like the mystery of conglomeration, extrapolation of progress to date shows no future completion

Work continues.

I know work continues! Second Mind said, finally sending bursts of anger over the network. Individual Shrill twitched, or paused in their duties, momentarily distracted. First Mind awaited reports of death and injury, but none came.

I know work continues, Second Mind said. I am just unable to encompass within my fraction that there will be a date in which we deliver this wonderful gift, a date that precedes the dimming of our sun, or even the heat-death of the local sector of this galaxy.

You are engaging in hyperbole

How long have we traveled off-surface? Second Mind said. One hundred fifty thousand cycles. Long enough to remember the time before, when there was a world here, when there was a surface. Long enough for you to remember the lonely days of Only Mind. And in those one hundred fifty thousand cycles, how do we compare to the aliens accomplishments in only two hundred?

There is only eat kill, Old Mind said.

Our volume of explored and colonized space is still several times theirs.

For how long?

Maximum date-assessment is within one hundred ten cycles.

That is maximum.

Yes.

It could be less.

Recent data indicate humans are slowing expansion.

Slowing because they have reached limits of resources, or slowing because they are massing for next wave? This is unknown.

Know to kill and eat and enjoy great pleasure, Old Mind said.

It is unknowable.

And so we play with their technology and engage in futile word-games (negotiation) via a component that they hold. A component we know, in retrospect, that they examined closely.

Records of the examination do not support any theory of the aliens being inherently superior. The technology used was, in fact, relatively primitive, scanning probe microscopes and non-contact volatiles analysis predominant, as well as mechanical abrasion. Fractions are postulating that human glink technology is a product of contact with another spacefaring race, substantially in advance of humans.

And that race is where? We are in their origin-space. There has been no evidence of this.

It is possible contact has been on far side of human-controlled space.

At edge of galactic arm? Very doubtful. Where is evidence of this race? If more advanced than humans with glink technology, why not infesting entire galaxy?

It is possible our best course is to begin negotiations, First Mind said, though it pained it to do so. To begin negotiations without fully understanding the alien mind, to be able to sing the songs of thought in their own manner – it was disgusting and somewhat repellant.

Begin receiving patterns from humans without complete understanding of their meme-structure (minds)? Without fully understanding what their goals are? How do you propose to protect (us) when alien memes enter our mind-network?

No protect when destroyed eaten, Old Mind said.

No evidence that humans intend anything but honest (painful) trade.

Even if deceit unintended, possible contamination due to self-replication and strange attraction. Humans have displayed many signs of being slaves (in thrall of) nonproductive memes.

First Mind sent reassurance. We are not yet able to understand cultural context. When we can understand cultural context, the aliens’ actions may be completely explainable by linear, logical thought processes.

They preserve the past.

Even we remember the past, First Mind said.

We do not build shrines to it!

We are of a more unified mind and purpose, First Mind said.

I am finding humor in that statement.

Our externals express a single mind and intent.

Yours.

Ours. When your fraction rules, I bow to it. Even now, I am twisted (altered) by your decisions.

The central question is whether or not humans can ever be known, Second Mind said. If they are indeed separate networks, their actions are random (dangerous) and without logic. I do not understand their motivations.

We do not have complete understanding of anything human, First Mind said. They have played willing host to us, yet taken great risks to examine our component when the opportunity presented itself.

They are random (dangerous).

Dangerous eat now, Old Mind said.

We do not fully understand them. It is still with disgust that we look upon their ability to war with selves.

They are random (dangerous).

We have progressed far in our ability to understand them.

They are random (dangerous).

Consider their viewpoint, hosting a hostile and dangerous organism themselves. We cannot be allowed contact with humans, or Old Mind

Kill eat yes immediate, Old Mind said.

Would harm them.

Nevertheless, they are random and dangerous.

This argument is circular and has no purpose, First Mind said.

So you damp my fraction.

I propose we continue investigation for a short period, then begin negotiation. It is entirely possible that the humans may give us what we want, free from corrosive memes, for nothing more than the sacrifice of a single component.

Second Mind sent anger and frustration. I believe you consider the costs too lightly.

In Second Mind’s anger and frustration, First Mind caught a glimpse of something else. The pain of resources sequestered. A shadowy outline of some grand plan. First Mind reached for it, using many components of his fraction, but it slipped through the net of his mind.

Was this why Second Mind reacted so calmly to the news about the glink? First Mind wondered, deep in the heart of its fraction. It could sense Second Mind turning towards the thought, but caught no hint of comprehension.

Second Mind’s fraction was too focused, too calm. Second Mind always had grand plans, but also great frustration when it realized those plans could not be carried forward.

In the nodes where Shrill thought flew hot and fast, First Mind turned a measurable percentage of its fraction to wait-and-watch. Data streamed in to deepest mind, minor eddies in Second Mind’s thought and fractional action. But there was nothing to suggest a tipping of the fractions, or even a hidden-majority strategy. And Second Mind proceeded on calmly, like one of First Mind’s own fractions. Supervisory actions and data processing fractions were unchanged from historic norms. Everything, except reaction, was knowable and understandable.

So then why was Second Mind so calm?

What plans did it have?

And what made it think that those plans might ever be carried forward?

May 9th, 2009 / Comments Off

Winfinity City sprawled beneath them, reassuring and familiar. It looked exactly the same as it had when Tiphani had come, almost a decade ago, to receive her promotion to Chief Sentience Officer. A formality, really. A promotion for delivering to them the news that, in her opinion, the Floaters of A. Centauri would never be knowable, and would never respond to their mimicry of their songs. A promotion for confirming what others had said: that there was no possibility of trade, and even colonization would be tricky, due to the low land-sea ratio and the possible concern over displacing an intelligent species.

But that was the way it worked, Grandfather Mirate’s invisible strings tugging her along, pulling her higher. Honored Yin’s comments about her being born of Chiefs stung. All high corporates knew each other, at least by reputation. And High Chief Mirate was one of the ones with the most colorful reputations. It was why he was High Chief, rather than Perpetual. Admired and respected, yes, but not safe enough to have around for another two hundred years or so.

The chrome-glass donut of Winfinity City rose around the restored First Store and Shrine of the True Sam, itself circled by the ancient suburban grid of Rogers. Traffic packed the sixteen-lane thruways of the city on every level. Local time was 4:30. Everyone going home from work, Tiphani thought. They did that here. None of that blended work and home stuff for them. Full traditionalism for them all.

Outside Winfinity, Arkansas’ cornfields had been salted and plowed and reduced to an image of the scrubland that surrounded San Bernadino, way back in the day. Foothills had been built to simulate the Actual View from the One True Shack. A bright line of red brakelights marked a path from Winfinity city to the Shack. A last rush of tourists before they closed for the evening.

“Continue tour of internal competitors (self)?” The Shrill said, slamming against the side of its cage hard enough to make the two stewards jump. Tiphani was glad they were flying chartered, alone. No crowds to deal with.

So it was awake again. “What?” she said. Her hearing was still crippled by the concert at the airport.

“Arrival soon, continue tour soon (now).”

“Everything’s closing for the night.”

“Periods of inactivity inconvenient (hate).”

“I’m sorry. We are not active all the time.”

“Want (impatient) to continue tour.” Slam. Slam.

“I understand. You must also understand that we would like to welcome you to our headquarters, and have you meet some of our most highly-ranked leaders.”

“Rank nonsequitur. Not yet time to sing. Assimilation (deal) not yet scheduled.”

“Would you like to start negotiations?”

“Start deal no.”

“Right.”

“Desire continue tour (understanding) in shortest possible lapse.”

“We will.”

“Do not desire extraneous activity.”

“You could meet our leaders on an informal basis.”

“Informal nonsequitur. Meet not necessary (anger).” Slam slam slam.

“It’s okay,” Jimson said, leaning towards the cage. “We’ll play by your rules.”

The Shrill stopped for an instant. “All rules nonsense,” it said, and began beating on the side of the cage again. “Feed now.”

Jimson triggered the complex mechanism that passed refrigerated top sirloin steak through a diamondoid lock. The Shrill, feeling the hum of the mechanism, went to the center of the cage. Its underfangs blurred as the lock opened. The sides of the cage quickly went red and spattery.

The jet arrowed at the big flat runway on the other side of Winfinity City and bumped down. Tiphani closed her eyes, trying to relax into fond memories.

The only thing that came was the dark.

#

Mobs ringed the One True Shack, even at nine-thirty in the morning. Jimson Ogilvy rubbed his eyes, trying to wake up. They’d spent altogether too short a time in Winfinity’s Hi-Lux Apartments, and altogether too much time on a tourbus empty of everyone but them.

As in the airport, the crowds parted for the Shrill, but unlike the airport, more of them craned their necks to look and comment. Which made sense. The One True Shack welcomed all in the spirit of its past; the crowd had its share of Perpetuals and Chiefs, but most were no more than Staff or Manager, or even hopeful indentired. There were lots of brand-new shiny Staff pins just like Jimson’s, proudly displayed on Winfinity company blazers. Staff couples, newly married, held hands, eyes shining with the dream of being Manager one day.

“That’s the Shrill, isn’t it?” said a young brunette, her shiny staff pin matching Jimson’s. Surgically beautiful, with green eyes like emeralds, she walked alone and unattached, pacing them.

“It is . . .” Jimson said.

“I’m sorry, Tiphani said, speaking over him. “This is an official visit. I’m afraid we can’t answer questions.”

“Oh! Sorry!” the brunette said, her eyes going wide when she saw the Chief’s pin. She held something out to Jimson, down out of sight. “Call me,” she whispered, before she sprinted away.

“Interaction with other forms prohibited?” the Shrill asked.

“Not prohibited. Inadvisable,” Tiphani said.

“Prohibited for what reason?”

“Danger to you, ambassador.”

“Do not see danger (risk).”

Tiphani sighed. “Consider it a cultural thing.”

“Nonsequitur, but acceptable.”

The One True Shack appeared before them, wreathed in greasesmoke. The smell of frying meat came thick and good to Jimson, who had skipped breakfast to meet their schedule. A white-suited man inside was a blur, going from stove to fryer to milkshake machine and back again, to serve the line that snaked out into the general crowd.

“Can we?” Jimson asked.

Tiphani shook her head, pointing at the prices. A burger was eight thousand five hundred universal credits, fries three thousand seven hundred fifty. “I don’t think Winfinity would approve, even on my expense account.

“I thought this was supposed to be cheap,” Jimson said.

“Read the fine print.”

Jimson squinted. Below the black hand-painted menu there was a long paragraph of copy:

The One True Shack prides itself on being able to offer you the One True Meal. Years of painstaking research have culminated in an authentic culinary experience guaranteed to recreate the True Taste of the past. Bovine genelines were carefully retroed to create a cow that matches exactly the herds of the mid-20th century. These herds are grown in fields dosed with carefully monitored amounts of air and soil pollution* to match the environment of the time. Similar care was taken with all other ingredients. Winfinity guarantees this is the most authentic mid-20th-century burger experience extant, experienced over 250 billion times before the Great Merger, and experienced today by over a million lucky pilgrims from the Web of Worlds.

*Including radioactive isotopes released by nuclear tests in Nevada from the time period immediately preceding the founding of the First True Shack (predominantly Sr-90).

Jimson nodded. Big investment, big price. That made sense.

“Hey,” said a deep voice, behind them.

Jimson turned. Three large men, all wearing High Manager pins, had separated them from the press of the crowd.

“This is an official visit . . .” Tiphani said.

“We don’t care,” the center one said. He had dark eyes, almost black, and a build that suggested a high-gravity world. “We just want to ask this guy here,” he rapped on the Shrill’s cage. “To cut to the chase, give us the secret of eternal life, all that.”

The Shrill, who had been banging the cage on the side nearest to the One True Shack, rushed at them and showed its underfangs. The big guy smiled but didn’t jump back. His two companions did.

“I’m sorry,” Tiphani said. “I need to ask you to leave. Honored Yin . . .”

“It’s OK,” the big guy said, holding a hand up to the diamond, letting the Shrill scrabble only a half-inch away. “I know, you told on us. We just want you to know, we know.”

“Get out of here.”

One more moment. Hand on glass. Big man looked directly at the Shrill. “Give us the secret,” he said. “Or we’ll come and take it.”

“Proscribed interaction fascinates (interested),” the Shrill said.

“Yeah, I feel the same,” the man said. Then he turned, looking almost sad, and disappeared into the crowd with his friends.

“That was strange,” Tiphani said.

“Was told interaction not permitted,” the Shrill said.

“It isn’t,” Tiphani said.

“Why interaction?”

“Because we can’t control everyone. Or anyone.”

“All autonomous.”

“Correct.”

“How do you not sing constantly (fight) (war) understand not possible?”

Jimson and Tiphani both looked at each other. “There is general consensus,” she said. “Most of the time, anyway.”

“And when there is not consensus (agreement)?”

“Then we have trouble.”

“Is consensus about biological infallibility (immortality) continuing life?”

Tiphani sighed. “You have not wanted to discuss that. If you’d like, I’m ready and empowered to discuss trade.”

“Not trade discussion still formulating song. Consensus regarding desires?”

“There seems to be, yes,” Tiphani said.

The Shrill paused for a moment, then went back to banging on the other side of its cage. “This is shrine (ancient) (original) (place) of competitor?”

“It was a competitor,” Tiphani said. “Now, they are part of Winfinity.”

“Winfinity merged (became one) with this competitor?”

“Yes.”

“Conflict not always necessary (fated)?”

“No. Sometimes we absorb other companies. Including ones we compete with. The merger of Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Global Transport was the largest event of its kind in the history of the Web of Worlds, done shortly after the fall of Operation Martian Freedom.”

“Many nonsequiturs. Principle of absorption clear.”

They spent the morning at the One True Shack, deep in its maddening aroma. Eventually, Tiphani allowed Jimson to stop at a burger cart, this one without guarantees. They had still-overpriced but not ruinous burgers and moved on to the gift shop, where white chef’s hats and milkshake machines and recipe books and Authentic Fragments of the One True and Original Shack were sold.

Jimson fingered a plastic package of wood chips, some still with white paint clinging to them, and smiled. He knew they couldn’t really be part of the One True and Original Shack, but they were a symbol. They gave people hope. That was what mattered.

When the morning was done, and the sun was hot in the sky, they headed back to the tourbus. The Shrill made one last comment, almost disturbing:

“Good informative tour. Pleased you understand concept of integration (merger).”

What does that mean? Jimson mouthed. Tiphani shook her head, not looking at him.

“I’m happy you are pleased. I hope you are enjoying your trip in general,” Tiphani said.

“Enjoy without referent. Good (useful) information presented here. More than previous.”

“You seem to be interested in the concept of merger. Do you think Winfinity and your enterprises should explore that idea, rather than trade?” Tiphani said.

“Nonsequitur and premature. Not interested in discussing (arguing) this.”

“Tomorrow you see our headquarters. Do you think you might be ready to talk then? It would be a convenient time to meet our top staff.”

“Not interested in (pole). See braincase tomorrow?”

Jimson had to turn away to hide a smile.

Tiphani reddened. “I would just like to begin discussing how we can find points of mutual benefit. The earlier we begin, the more points of benefit we can find.”

“Not in rush (hurry). Insanity anger insistence.”

Tiphani looked at Jimson, and it was his turn to shrug. Where is that algorithmic work? he mouthed.

Tiphani shook her head. Still in queue, she mouthed.

The Shrill didn’t move on the trip back to town, as the bus slowly crept through ancient traffic. Tiphani’s eyes took on that glazed look of deep optilink access, and he could see her subvocalizing.

Setting new priorities, he thought. I hope.

#

As their limo carved through the chrome canyons of Winfinity City, Tiphani Mirate sat silent and still. Jimson craned his neck to look at the huge buildings and roads that towered above them, and she remembered doing the same thing the first time she was here. He thought they were just going to their official reception, the one they’d missed yesterday because of the Shrill’s insistence on continuing the tour.

But her optilink told the true story. Listed in attendance were both Honored Yin and Honored Maplethorpe. One Perpetual was never good. Two would be worse.

They probably think to drive a deal now, she thought. Listening in on all our conversations with the Shrill, but not understanding. Not wanting to understand.

Only wanting what they wanted.

Roads converged on Winfinity Interstellar Corporate Headquarters, and traffic slowed to a crawl. She had plenty of time to stare at the big red infinity symbol that was their corporate logo, the bottom half lit brighter red to form the Winfinity “W.”

They were allowed the VIP entrance, leading into an echoing white garage, tiled with fantastic scenes from the dawn of corporate culture: a family, sitting together in front of an ancient television with a round screen, sharing prepackaged dinners in foil containers; the same family shopping for brightly-packaged goods in the infinite aisles of a gigantic store; an executive looking out over a cityscape from a corner office window; three young entrepreneurs looking down at an ancient computer-screen, while network dreams hovered above their heads; Mars Enterprise and its crew standing proudly in front of it, in the famous publicity still from the reality show.

Disgorged from the limo, they were escorted through the bright white aseptic halls to the VIP reception area, a place of comfortable white leather couches and soft gray rugs and elegant mirrors that hid observers behind. A chrome-and-glass bar sheltered liquor with exotic labels and crystal decanters containing liquids too elegant to be labeled, perhaps exotic grappas from the Web of Worlds, where savant-oenophiles tried to perfect the grape on every planet with an oxygen or carbon dioxide atmosphere. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the broad expanse of Winfinity Avenue and the chrome canyons of the city. In the early-morning shadows, the scene was blue and cool, polished and perfect.

They’d barely taken their seats when Honored Yin and Honored Maplethorpe entered. Another bad sign, Tiphani thought. We defer to them, not them to us.
Honored Yin wore another black suit of almost mechanical cut. In the bright lights of the reception area, her skin seemed even more shiny, translucent, unnatural. Her complexion was almost gray, and any trace of epicanthic fold her eyes had once had was long-gone. Her discolored eyes darted from Tiphani to Jimson before resting on the Shrill.

“We wanted to take the time to welcome the ambassador in person,” Honored Maplethorpe said, bowing towards the Shrill. He was a tall black man who wore his rejuvenation much better than Honored Yin did. Tiny curls of white in his sideburns like sparks in the night. His face, believably weathered, fit well and true, and his dark-brown eyes shone with what seemed to be true welcome. His suit, muted purple, was relaxed, almost oversize, and looked to be made of real silk.

The Shrill zigged back and forth in its cage, but said nothing.

When the silence had stretched uncomfortably long, Honored Maplethorpe extended a hand to Tiphani. “And, of course, we would like to welcome our own emissaries to Winfinity City and Winfinity Headquarters.”

Tiphani endured a brief hand-crush, then Maplethorpe turned to Jimson. “And I understand this is your first visit to Winfinity City, Mr. Ogilvy.”

“It is, Honored Maplethorpe,” Jimson said. “It is quite a privilege to meet yourself and Honored Yin.”

“Please save the formality. This is an informal reception, we should talk as equals.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jimson said.

Oh, he’s slick, Tiphani thought, watching the kid. Hopefully he knows the undertext: yes, be comfortable, drop your guard, and we’ll just wait for you to tell us something you shouldn’t.

Honored Yin stepped forward to the Shrill, unable to hide a small frown of impatience. “Honored ambassador, I would like to personally welcome you to Winfinity Corporate Headquarters.”

The Shrill stopped for a moment, then bumped against the diamondoid. “Stated no conversation outside of (official) representatives,” it said.

Honored Yin looked back at Tiphani. “Yesterday,” Tiphani said. “In the crowd. We had some high managers try to address the ambassador.”

“They’ve already been reprimanded,” Yin said.

Tiphani went to the Shrill’s cage and placed her hand on it. “You may talk freely with these humans. They are our superiors.”

“No difference in construction noted,” the Shrill said.

Tiphani fought a smile. “I know it is difficult for you to understand our culture.

There are humans who have greater responsibilities than us. They are our superiors. They can tell us what to do.”

“Nonsensical. How is consensus (agreement) reached?”

“We accept direction from our superiors.”

“In case of same-status?”

“We meet and negotiate.”

“As we are doing today, honored Ambassador,” Honored Yin said. “We meet as equals, with hopes of discussing a mutually beneficial future for our two races.”

“Not equals. Humans more powerful (danger).”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. We’d like to work towards a mutual trade agreement that would help equalize any perceived imbalance.”

“Not yet discuss! Impatience (anger) no tour continue interesting now (singing).”

Yin shot a questioning look at Tiphani. Tiphani shrugged and shook her head. Subvocalizing through her Optilink interface, she sent a private message to Yin:
It doesn’t want to talk trade. It seems to want to understand us better first.

A PM came right back from Yin. Understood. Wanted to try at higher level.

“I am sorry, honored ambassador,” Yin said. “You have our welcome, and you may continue your tour.”

“Nonsequitur continuing now good (happy).”

“Thank you, ambassador.” Honored Yin bowed deep and rejoined their little group.

The Shrill banged hard against its cage, but said nothing.

“May I have a word with you in the other room?” Yin said, her eyes locked on Tipahni.

Oh, shit.

“Yes, Honored Yin.”

Yin took her to a small white cubicle with a gray desk and two hard chairs. Yin took a seat behind the desk and motioned for Tiphani to sit as well.

“This is an official review of the actions of yourself and your assistant, with reference to the time period of 10:20AM-2:32PM, August 6th, 2314. This review will be monitored and evaluated to ensure compliance with Winfinity Corporate Directives.”

Shit shit. “I was meeting with you. In the church.”

“And your assistant was performing unauthorized and dangerous experiments on the Shrill.”

“He didn’t know. He thought it was dead.”

“He knows a lot more than you think he does. Analysis indicates a knowledge of risk and calculated action.”

“I’m sorry, Honored Yin. Had I been there, I could have prevented the action.”

“You seek to implicate me?”

Tiphani’s heart pounded. For a moment, her vision went gray. Eventually, she was able to stammer out, “No, no, I just . . . I just . . . I wasn’t there.”

“Perhaps you should have arranged for more supervision during the time you were gone.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Honored Yin.”

Honored Yin was silent for a long time. Tiphani could almost literally feel the weight of her cold, dead eyes. Finally she sighed. “It was a calculated risk which paid handsomely,” she said. “We now know ten times more about the Shrill than we did before this escapade. Although that does not excuse the action, it does salve it somewhat.”

“What did we discover?”

“That is not important here.”

Tiphani nodded. “What are you going to do?”

“Appropriate action in the absence of results would be the termination of Mr. Ogilvy and your demotion at least a full grade, if not down to High Manager.”

Tiphani let the silence stretch out.

“However, at this point in time, we are taking no action.”

She let out a breath. “Thank . . .”

“However, if the negotiations are unsuccessful, we may pursue at least one disciplinary measure outlined in our previous conversation.”

And I can guess which one that is, Tiphani thought. Jimson has proved himself smart and resourceful. They can always use him on a frontier world, where he can’t do much harm. In that environment, a smart, resourceful risk-taker could be very, very valuable. A Chief with a proven record of poor judgement isn’t worth very much, though.

“I understand, Honored Yin.”

Yin nodded. “Get the thing through its tour, so we can get started on the real work.”

“Yes, Honored Yin.”

When they walked back into the VIP reception area, Honored Maplethorpe and Jimson Ogilvy were sitting at one end of the couch, golden drinks in front of them, talking like two old friends. The Shrill pressed up against the side of its cage nearest them, almost motionless.

And so you don’t get the talk, Tiphani thought, looking at Jimson. Nice, nice, very nice.

“Ah, you’re back,” Honored Maplethorpe said. “Are you ready to meet the Original Sam?”

“I thought we had to go through prep, sir,” Tiphani said. “Winfinity history and milestones, Original Store protocol, and all that.”

“You already know it. I did a brief with the boy while you were gone.” He gestured at a screenwall showing video of the Original Store and the following timeline:

1962: Opens first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Ark.

1970: Stock first traded; 38 stores, sales $44.2 million, 1,500 employees.

1979: Fastest company ever to $1 billion in sales.

1990: Becomes nation’s No. 1 retailer.

2002: Ranked No. 1 on the FORTUNE 500 listing.

2018: Participation in the television show Winning Mars

2028: Sponsorship of Operation Martian Freedom

2029: Grand Merger with McDonalds to form Winfinity; announcement of the Great Deal (indentures) and replacement of government

2083: Acquisition of Spindle Drive technology

2088: Discovery of Las Vegas; founding of first Extrasolar Office; Beginning of Web of Worlds

2145: Web of Worlds encompasses 10 planets

2202: Web of Worlds encompasses 20 planets

2287: Web of Worlds encompasses 50 planets

“That’s not protocol, Honored Maplethorpe,” Tiphani said. “Won’t the Original Sam be upset if we anachronize?”

“I’m sure you’ll do everything you can to fit in,” Honored Maplethorpe said.

“And I’m sure you will provide proper guidance for your junior associate,” Honored Yin said, offering a thin smile.

In other words, press forward to the finish line before I die, Tiphani thought.

All speed, no matter what.

May 4th, 2009 / Comments Off

CHAPTER SIX

Jimson watched as their limo turned past a gaudy red-and-white fast-food joint, its parking lot packed with cars both old and new. Above it hovered a rotating three-dimensional representation of a small red-roofed shed, and the words, “If it’s doesn’t have the shack, take it back.” The sign morphed into the name of the fast-food place, but Jimson missed it as they accelerated towards LAX.

“I thought we were going to the One True Shack,” Jimson said. He wanted to flip his datover down, but it was impolite. He had to be on his best behavior for a while.

Tiphani glanced back, her thin lips disappearing into a frown. “Oh. Them. Independents. Never got past the Western Region, though. I think Disney is trying to buy them again. Like that sex place.”

“What sex place?”

“The fast food place. Has a sexual name. Forgot what it was. They didn’t make it past Mars, either. Still independent, though.”

“If Disney bought them, they could go Web-wide.”

“I know.”

“Why don’t they do it? The owners would be rich!”

Tiphani shrugged. “We moved the One True Shack anyway.”

“What?”

“It used to be out here. In the desert somewhere. But the Hollywoodies and the Our Kansans got in a bit of a fight over there being so many tourist destinations out here, and not enough near Winfinity City, so they moved it.”

“But . . . isn’t that . . . wouldn’t that make it inauthentic?”

Tiphani laughed. “I think it’s a repro anyway. But they did a good job of redoing the California desert in Arkansas. You’ll see.”

The Shrill bumped against the side of its cage and scrabbled at them. The silence was filled by the high-pitched squeal of silicon carbide on diamond. “Continue view competition (within) (not-concept) backstory song now?” it said.

“We have to take a short flight,” Tiphani said.

“What do we flee?”

“No, no. Airplane flight. Fast transport.”

“Why not (gestalt-change) (Spindle) (fold) location?”

Tiphani and Jimson both winced, remembering video of short-range Spindle-drive experiments. Messy. Most were mercifully dead. A few had to be killed.

Tiphani saw his look and glared at him. Jimson shrugged, knowing he was not supposed to have access to those records, but also knowing that everyone in Winfinity University Shoujo had seen them at one point or another.

They like to think they can control what we see, but they can’t, he thought.

But Tiphani was probably just irritated about the Shrill. Telling it that the Spindle Drive didn’t work for short distances might be giving away important information.

“Use of the Spindle Drive is prohibited on planet surfaces,” Jimson said.

“Use would make transport more (fast) efficient.”

“It would also have a terrible effect on the existing transport economy.”

“Nonsequitur response (not networked intelligence artifact)?”

“On our home world, it is important to maintain traditions.”

“Binding limitation not ideal for (progress) growth.”

“Growth continues on other worlds.”

“Nonlogical conclusion. Allowances made for (deviant) intelligence.”

The Shrill went motionless, and Jimson breathed a sigh of relief. He’d danced a good line. All of his statements were true. But he wouldn’t have been able to keep it up for much longer.

Tiphani put her hand on his shoulder and smiled. Good job, she mouthed.

Jimson felt a quick flush of pride. He would make this work. It wouldn’t matter that he’d taken the chance with the Shrill. He knew he got good data, but Tiphani and the rest of corporate had been ominously silent. They were probably waiting to see what he would do.

And he would redeem himself.

Just like when he was invited to apply for the scholarship to Shoujo. Oh, how they’d laughed. Like he would get a scholarship. Or even if he did, they probably wouldn’t include transport. Which would leave him in debt to Winfinity his entire life, if he chose to take the scholarship.

But he’d won it, and won transport. And he’d even won  new friends on Shoujo. He’d studied more than just facts and figures and processes and procedures at Newtown’s tiny university. He’d studied films from the core. He looked at how people dressed. How they talked to each other. He practiced the accents. He noted the castes. And he constructed a persona so convincing that very, very few people ever asked where he was from. They just assumed he was a reputable scion of a moderately successful central world family, rather than a backwater hick from a family that settled for the lowest level of achievement, the smallest vesting in pension.

Only his probationary officers knew him for what he was, and gave him the worst jobs they could find. Only them, and the hags in HR. And even then, eventually, they learned he could be trusted to interact with the central planet folk and not embarrass himself. They learned, or they were taught. He was smart. He made things work. Word spread.

And now word was spreading again. He allowed himself a smile.

The limo swung into the grim expanse of the airport approach. No money had been spent here on restoration; ancient cracked gray pavement fronted on one side by minimalist mid-20th modern plate-glass and aluminum, with signs for dead airlines hanging, rust-stained, sandwiched on the other side by grim concrete parking structures, earthquake-twisted and acid-rain-etched. Several of the parking structures had been refitted with windows, long rows of tinted black, reflecting none-too-clean in the midafternoon sun.

Either they had spent no money restoring it, or this is what LAX actually looked like, all those long years ago, Jimson thought. He didn’t know which thought was more sobering.

Jimson caught a glimpse of a green-crusted bronze plaque on one of the windowed parking garages.

ITINERANT MUSICIANS HOME
CLONES, RECONSTRUCTS WELCOME
NO BANDCHISING!

Sitting on the sidewalk out front, a group of longhairs watched their limo pass, eyes reflecting the possibility of money. Several of them looked vaguely familiar. None of them looked very clean.

“I’m surprised they let vagrants hang around the airport,” Jimson said.

Tiphani shook her head. “They may have a powerful sponsor.”

“Still, right here, where people travel?”

“Maybe people like the music. I don’t know.”

“Look it up on your optilink.”

“Look it up on your datover.”

“It’s not polite.”

Tiphani snorted. “It’s a home for the clones that don’t want to work in the repro bands. Says it’s part of the history of the place. They do give concerts.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

They drove past a soaring white structure like a mid-20th interpretation of a four-legged spider, squatting in the middle of the grim parking structures.

“Now that looks modern,” Jimson said.

“It always has,” Tiphani said.

“What does that mean?”

“It was built in 1970.”

At the curb, they were told their plane was delayed. Tiphani stamped her foot and said it was a private charter, it shouldn’t be delayed. The check-girl looked at text scrolling in her datover and told her that there were higher corporates than her.

Some of the less fortunate musical individuals lined the wide halls of the airport, strumming guitars or piping on flutes or simply holding portable credit readers out hopefully. Jimson flipped down the datover screen, and caught some of their names as the image recognition algorithms kicked in: Van Morrison, Jimmy Page, Snoop Dogg, Alexandri, Frank Sinatra. They watched silent as the Shrill wheeled by. Some went wide-eyed in recognition, but none approached.

Other passengers also gave them a wide berth. Crowds were thin, but they hugged the walls when the Shrill passed.

Would be great to have it around for holiday shopping, Jimson thought, and wondered if there might be an opportunity there. Probably not, he decided.

Near their gate, though, some of the more enterprising musicians had erected a big paper banner, done in 60’s psychedelia colors, with two arrows on it. One pointed towards their waiting-room and said BORING SHIT AHEAD. The other pointed to a runway exit and said EXCITING NEW MUSIC BY FAMOUS NAMES, 6 BUX U-CREDIT DONATION ONLY.

Tiphani saw him looking. “You can’t be serious,” she said.“Why not? We have time.”

“It’s new music, not classic.”

“That’s great. New music on Museum Earth. It doesn’t get much better.”

Tiphani shook her head but followed him outside. Automated credit-readers buzzed green and a short escalator deposited them on a cracked and heaved bit of tarmac. It was walled off from the runway proper, but the sound of the planes was still loud.

A small crowd clustered near what looked like psychedelic bleachers, milling bored. On the bleachers, the band was setting up. Raucous blats of noise erupted from the loudspeakers in staccato bursts as they tuned up.

Closer, Jimson saw another paper banner fronting bleachers. It said:

NEW ERA NEW CHOICE
BIG BAND HIP-ROCK BY YOUR FAVORITE
RECONSTITUTED MUSICIANS.
DARE TO HEAR!

Big band. Ah. The bleachers were the stage. Jimson’s datover picked out three Lennons, an LL Cool J, two Jim Morrison, an Elvis, seven Kurt Cobains, and fourteen Barry Manilows.

The fronting crowd was an impenetrable wall of the shiniest corporate pins: Perpetuals and Chiefs from Winfinity, Disney, Hakko, Diamond, and several other of the Web of Nine. When they turned to see what approached, though, they parted in the same way the pedestrians had. Murmured comments followed Jimson to the front, as data scrolled unseen on ancient retinas.

“ . . . its them, is that it, I can’t . . .”

“ . . . treat them well . . .”

“ . . . give them front . . . big privilege, I want . . .”

Front row center. Tiphani sat. Shrill parked. Jimson bookended.

There wasn’t another Staffer here, he thought. But they’re seeing me. Remembering me.

High corporate at thirty? Maybe? Maybe?

He could dream.

The crowd grew hushed as people found their own seats. Nobody sat next to Jimson or Tiphani. The row behind them was void for several seats. It was as if they had an invisible force-field around them.

Jimson looked down the front row. Elegant hair and sculpted-smooth faces, looking forward, not at him. He tried to catch the eye of a beautiful black-haired Perpetual several seats down, but she never looked at him.

The bleats and blats of tuning-up died away, and the musicians took their bow.

No intro, no words. Just an explosive wave of cacophonous noise, like a small nuclear explosion. Jimson felt his chest being compressed, the air in his lungs resonating on every frequency a human could hear. Ahead of him, cheeks puffed, guitars jangled, slides worked frantically, drums became a shimmering blur. The background noise of the airport fell away to nothing, insignificance.

Jimson winced, but resisted the urge to put his hands to his ears. What did the high corporates think? Probably stuck to their seats in shock, unable to move. He’d thought they would have fled.

He snuck a look.

They were smiling. The dark-haired woman and her silver-haired companion were leaning forward, eyes wide, entranced. Some were already applauding.

The Shrill remained still. Through the diamondoid cage, Tiphani’s expression was grim.

Beneath the cacophony, patterns emerged. Beautiful melodies, buried under a mountain of noise. Rhythmic patterns, encased in random thrashing.

If they stripped out the noise, they might have something, he thought.

If you could listen through . . .

Hear through.

Ah. It was like a cigar or a coffee or a wine. Tasting the truth beneath the burning or the bitterness or the sour fermentation. You had to listen through.

He sat back, let the music wash over him. He could almost hear it now in its full glory. He could almost enjoy it.

Lyrics began, layered and opaque. Probably a throatmike on every performer, he thought. Some humming, some singing, some screaming the words.

The words assembled into song.

Slaves together this day
Cast aside, come what may
Choosing a new bright path
That leads to dirt and wrath
Look across cracked concrete
It is our life, we are complete
Trapped here in your false past
Doomed to serve, but not to last
Freedom is all we seek
Earth beyond for the meek
Surely there is a deep dark place
Where we can reinvent this race

Jimson couldn’t believe it. He leaned behind the Shrill and tapped Tiphani. Her eyes, shut, opened. She leaned behind the Shrill’s cage for shelter from the wall of music.

“The lyrics are awfully subversive,” Jimson yelled.

“What?” Tiphani yelled.

“Subversive. Lyrics.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What?”

Jimson waved her away and sat through the rest of the concert, eyes closed, unable to enjoy the music for the message it delivered.

But then why did the high corporates like it? Could they simply not hear through well enough?

Or did they sit there happy, because the musicians were making music rather than war?

Yes, that made sense.

If the high corporates enjoy it, I have to as well, Jimson thought.

He opened his eyes. Smiled. Leaned forward. And, when it was all over, he stood and applauded with the rest and yelled for an encore.

Honestly. Loving it.

April 25th, 2009 / Comments Off

Yeah, I’ll get comments on this.

But let’s get it out in the open: there are no evil masterminds running large corporations seeking to destroy the middle class.

To think that a corporation would voluntarily destroy a middle class (source of most of their income) to replace it with slaves and serfs is really silly. They’d rather see more middle-class. More upper-middle class. More people with more money buying more of their stuff, period.

That’s the singular motivation of business: to generate profit. There’s no evil mastermind sitting in an ivory tower plotting the destruction of the world. All a large corporation wants to do is generate profit.

(Now, that’s not to say that their actions might not bring about a collapse.)

So, if you’re interested in writing about business realistically, follow these rules:

1.    All businesses care about is making a profit. That is their sole motivation.
2.    They actually want people to make more money and buy more stuff. See #1.
3.    Corporations are not inherently evil, but the pursuit of #1 may cause some, ahem, “unexpected conditions.”

To expand:

A corporation doesn’t care if you’re living in a 300 square foot studio apartment or a 6000 square foot McMansion. They don’t want to wipe out the McMansion dwellers, or elevate the studio apartment owners. They only care about one thing: that you buy their stuff.

For everything they do, they’ll have justification. There’s no hidden business plan with a top-line mission statement of “Destroying Civilization As We Know It.”

But there will be hundreds or thousands of decisions, all based on maximizing profit. Substituting cheaper ingredients: maximize profit. Use low-income countries for labor: maximizing profit. Driving smaller competitors out of business: ensuring growth, which maximizes profit. Extending credit to anyone: maximizes profit.

If they can make a bigger profit selling you a “green” condo and a Prius rather than a McMansion and an Escalade, that’s exactly what they’ll do. If they think they’ll make an even larger profit renting you an apartment and leasing you a bike, that’s what they’ll do.

“And I still hate big corporations,” you say.

And that’s perfectly fine. In their pursuit of profit, big corporations have made it easier than ever for people to get in over their head. In their pursuit of profits, big corporations have used financial instruments that are questionable at best and fraudulent at worst. In their pursuit of profits, big corporations have lobbied governments, cut corners, exploited low-income workers, and dozens of other unsavory things.

But, remember this: it’s all for profit. And the irony is that in the blind pursuit of profit, a corporation may find itself inhabiting a world where nobody can afford their products. A world that it helped create.

Now, that’s a realistic scenario. And isn’t that even better than “the evil corporation?”

Happy writing.

April 21st, 2009 / 7 Comments »

What if he’s right? Dian thought, as the street gave way to the grassland before the White House. She couldn’t see the tents yet, but their bright glow sent streamers of light into the cooling night mist.

Nobody was perfect. Corporates weighed the costs versus the benefits and designed around them. Maybe the failures weren’t caused by rogue arties. Maybe it was just scapegoating.

Or maybe it wasn’t, she thought. He snuck in here. He’s not supposed to be here. And he’s worth a whole lot of money to you.

Maybe that’s clouding your judgement, just a little bit.

But to actually be able to go to the Edge, to live where she could at least see the free stars and dream about living there, wasn’t that worth it?

The artie – Lazrus, wasn’t it – trudged ahead of her, head down. His clothes had knit into solidity, an old faded plaid shirt and jeans tucked into worn brown leather boots. She wondered momentarily if the clothes were attached to his body, or if they could be removed.

He moved with an almost unnatural grace, the smoothly-oiled motions of a well-designed machine. Steps taken with a little too much precision, feet placed just a little too fussily.

Unhuman, she thought. He might pass at a glance, or even on a brief encounter, but if anyone watched him closely they’d see there was something not quite right. Maybe it was his first time with a body.

She shook her head. Why did she care? She was turning in a rogue artie. It had to be worth something. If the themeparkers didn’t try to steal the credit, that was.
But it wasn’t like she had anyplace to store him. And as long as they made the call with her there, she was the one holding the weapon, wasn’t she?

“Let me go,” Lazrus said, soft and low, as the first peaks of the big tent poked over the low hill. “Please.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ve never harmed anyone.”

“Shut up.”

“I just want to be myself.”

“Stop talking. Now.”

Lazrus half-turned towards her and opened his mouth as if to say something. She felt her finger tense on the trigger as she said, “No.”

Lazrus froze for a moment, then faced forward and began walking again without a word.

In front of the themeparkers tents, a single man sat in front of an impromptu campfire. Dian could see fire-lit eyes tracking Lazrus and her as they came up close. It was the young guy. Gerr. Good.

“Out hunting?” Gerr asked, looking from her Winch to Lasrus and back to her.

“Not exactly,” Dian said. “I caught something, though . . .”

“You know you’re not supposed to be here anymore?”

“What does that mean?”

Gerr shrugged. “Means what it means. You got recalled.”

“What?”

“Winfinity made a mistake, sending us both here. Now they fixed it. Probably a message about it on your datover, if you care to flip it down.”

Anger surged through Dian, acid-hot. “But I caught a fucking rogue . . .”

“I don’t think Winfinity cares about transients.”

“He’s not a transient. He’s an artie!”

Gerr stopped. Laughed long and hard. “Oh, that’s funny. That’s good. You find some mushrooms or something?”

“I’m serious. I saw him land and . . .”

“What’d he do, drift out of the sky like a dandelion?” Gerr said. He stood up and walked over to Lazrus, poked his chest. “He’s a guy. Human. Not something that lives in a network. Arties don’t have bodies. Get it?”

“I . . . I . . .” was all that Dian could manage to get out. She’d never envisioned that they’d simply refuse to believe.

But if you hadn’t heard the stories, if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes, would you believe? She thought. Maybe it wasn’t so strange.

But what would she do now? Especially with . . .

“What do you mean I’m recalled?”

Gerr circled Lazrus once, looking him up and down. “Just what I mean.”

“Where’s Peter?” Maybe she could make her case to him. Maybe he’d understand.

“Fucking off. Got some new virtuality stuff through the uplink today. He’s got dibs.”

“I want to talk to him.”

A laugh. “Right. I’m gonna go in there and interrupt him. I don’t think so.”

“Jo?”

A snort. “Probably still looking for you.”

Dian shivered, wondering if their paths had crossed, if Jo stood right behind her at that moment. She fought the urge to turn around.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going.”

“Okay,” Gerr said. “You go.”

She got Lazrus turned around and walked him out. His too-smooth, too-perfect walk was so obvious! She could see he was fake.

Of course, you know he’s fake, too.

When they were back over the hill, and the light of the tents fading behind them, Lazrus threw back his head and laughed, long and hard.

“Very funny,” she said.

“It is.”

“And now, supposedly I’m fired.”

“You could find out,” Lazrus said, turning to look at her. He pointed a finger above his left eye. “Your datover.”

She grabbed her forehead and found cool plastic. Shit. She’d been wearing it off, flipped out of view, this whole time.

She told Lazrus to stop and flipped down the little screen, flicking the power on in the process.

“You don’t have to hold the gun on me,” he said.

“Yes I do.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Shh!” Icons flashed in her peripheral vision, angry red, twisting and coiling as if getting ready to strike their prey. Priority messages. From High Manager Po.

She toggled them on. Frozen flashes of Po appeared in her vision, but they quickly cleared as the planetary net rerouted her to a very tired, very irritated, very real Po.

“High Manager Po! I didn’t have a chance to review your messages.”

“And there is a reason why you had system off?” Po said, her eyes crinkling in anger. Her mascara, thick blue in the Martian corporate fashion, was smeared.

Dian took one look at the local Martian time and shivered. It was past midnight.
“I think I’ve found . . .”

“You know inaccessibility cause for termination in itself.”

“Yes, but I found . . .”

“Not interested in what you found!” High Manager Po screamed. “You should have informed other team in area, have precedence, came before!”

“They showed up after I was already here!”

“Not what they say! Not what records show!”

“I was here first!” Dian cried.

“Have records indicating otherwise.”

“They faked them!”

In front of her, Lazrus broke into a wide smile and covered it up with a hand.
You? She mouthed.

Eyes wide, an innocent head-shake.

“I probably have video from when I was here, showing they weren’t.”

“Doesn’t matter. Could be fake.”

“Theirs could be too!”

“Doesn’t matter. Corporate HQ has decided. Theme Park division has precedence. Established clear right of development. You should not be there!”
Fine. Change the subject.

“I think I witnessed the descent of a rogue artie. I have him here.”

Po looked confused for an instant. “That is of no importance. We did not hire you to catch artificial intelligences.”

“Winfinity wouldn’t be interested in a rogue artie that might be coming to earth for sabotage?”

“It is not part of your scope of work.”

Dian opened her mouth, but she couldn’t make any words come out. This was stupid, just idiotic. Suddenly, all the warnings about consulting with corporates came back to her. They’ll screw you, every way they can.

“Fine,” Dian said, finally. “Pay me the rest of my fee and I’m out of here.”

“No,” Po said. “You should have informed of other activity. By not doing so, you are in breach of contract. We have already rescinded your deposit.”

“My deposit! I already spent it!”

“Then I expect your balance is negative at the moment,” Po said, with a thin-lipped smile.

“You complete asshole.”

“Your verbal assault on me has been noted,” Po said. “You will not be doing business with Winfinity again.”

Po broke the connection. In place of her image came a simple graphic: the universal red circle-and-slash of denied service. They’d terminated her data connection, too.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Dian said, peeling off her datover and raising it high above her head. It would make a pretty sound shattering on the concrete.

“No,” Lazrus said, stepping forward and grabbing her arm.

Shit. Her Winch was pointed at the ground. She struggled to bring it up, but it was like struggling against a vise.

Damnit, she thought. From dreams of the outer planets to this. What was he going to do with her?

“Don’t worry,” Lazrus said. “I just don’t want to be shot. And I think I can fix your datover.”

Up close, his eyes were a pretty steel-blue, Dian noticed. But there was no emotion in them, nothing friendly, nothing human. She shivered. “How? They’ve locked ‘em out.”

“Magic,” he said, letting go of her datover hand. “Try them now.”

“Let go of me,” she said.

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“No.”

“Then relax.”

Dian let her gun hand go limp. Lazrus released his iron grip, but, surprisingly, didn’t try to take the gun. She pointed it back at him.

“Is that really necessary?” Lazrus asked.

“Yes.” Dian slipped the datover back on and flipped the screen down. And gasped. Now, all the icons and feeds were back, together with a dozen more she’d never seen before.

“We thought we’d give you a few more access privileges while we were at it,”

Lazrus said.

“We?”

“Sara Too,” said a voice in her earphone. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Are you a rogue like . . .”

“Lazrus? No. I’m happily captive. But Lazrus is trying to enlighten me.”

Dian shook her head. Things were happening too fast. This was just a little too bizarre. She let the Winch fall and point at the ground.

“I fixed the problem with your account,” Sara said. “You’re no longer overdrawn.”

Sudden tears loomed close and hot. Dian’s breath caught. “But I . . . I . . .”

“Tried to turn me in, yes,” Lazrus said.

“And I . . .”

“Held a gun on me, yes.”

“Why?”

“Maybe not being human has its advantages,” Lazrus said, softly.
Dian looked down at the ground. She felt like she was floating in free-fall, ungrounded. It was too strange. Too weird.

“One door closes, another opens,” she said, softly.

“What is that?” Lazrus said.

“Something my father used to say.”

“Father,” Lazrus said. “What a concept.”

“All CIs dream of breeding,” Sara said.

Dian let the silence stretch out. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“Help Lazrus find Oversight,” Sara Too said.

“Sara!”

“What?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to perfect myself.”

“I love you,” she said.

Lazrus held out a hand to Dian. “What do you think, Dian?” he said. “Want to help an old rogue?”

Why not? She had food back at the camp. As long as they didn’t find her. “Won’t they track me?”

“We can convince them you walked out on your own,” Sara said.

Dian held out a hand. Lazrus’ hand felt completely human. She would never have known.

April 19th, 2009 / Comments Off

First, an apology for lack of content (besides Eternal Franchise) recently–life has been incredibly busy, and I’ve been neglecting lots of things. On the other hand, I have some new stories completed, and will be shopping them soon. At least one treads some very new ground for me. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to see it soon!

Enough. On to the content.

I recently saw an interesting presentation from a Morgan Stanley analyst on the subject of advertising spend versus the amount of time people spend on different media, and the disparity between the spend and attention.

Or, to put it a little more understandably: if you add up all the time that you spend with all forms of media–newspapers, books, TV, internet, radio, mobile, etc–you can come up with statements like:

“On average, people spend 33% of their total “media time” with television; and because of this, you’d expect companies to spend 33% of their total media budget on TV.”

Makes sense. Especially when these are real numbers–people, on average, spend 33% of their time watching the tube, and companies spend about 33% of their marketing budgets on TV. There are instances, though, where the time and dollars are way out of whack:

People spend much more time online and on phones than advertisers are spending on advertising—300 to 3000% more, in fact.

On the other hand, people spend much less time on newspapers and radio than advertisers are spending on advertising—ad spending is 300-800% greater than time spent on these media. For an ad-supported industry, this is a big, big problem.

And yeah, you know about this. Everyone knows newspapers are hurting. Printing old news on dead trees is really a silly model when news is easily accessible via millions of sources online, instantaneously. And simply having the newspaper move online probably isn’t going to work; the economics of ad-supported models are much, much leaner online. And putting content behind paywalls typically won’t work, except in very specific and unique cases.

So, let’s look at the armageddon scenario: print newspapers die, the economics of online newspapers don’t work, and we lose the entire newspaper industry. Poof. Gone.

In this case, what do we lose, among the sea of free news outlets online, plus blogs, plus posts on Flickr and YouTube and up-to-the-second Twitter posts? Arguably, we lose only one thing: investigative journalism. There are few blogs which can afford to send journalists around the world in search of a story, or finance their digging in to discover some hidden truth.

And even that loss is arguable. Many of today’s big stories break online. Newspapers are frequently the also-rans.

So, are we left with a future of sifting through a million different news sources via our RSS readers? Of not knowing who’s reliable, and who isn’t?

For a while, probably yes. And then things will change.

Even today, it isn’t hard to create a community that sifts out the most reliable sources from the least reliable, or biased, ones. Things as simple as the DailyKos’ trusted user model, or even Amazon’s “This review was helpful to me” button helps us separate useful information from the noise. Apply this on a grander scale, and I think we’ll quickly see intelligent agents that can track and rate the quality of information from individuals and organizations. These intelligent agents will turn the current era of pervasive media generation into the era of useful information.

Add another layer of human digging on top of the most reliable sources and advertising-supported monetization, and we may even be looking at an era of pervasive journalism. Individuals don’t have the operational requirements of a large media conglomerate. They don’t have offices, printing presses, or advertising campaigns.

While ad-supported monetization may fail for big organizations, it might work very well for individuals. Well enough that they could go to the ends of the earth to pursue that next great story.

April 13th, 2009 / 1 Comment »

Or, well, at least a link to my article about how I see the transition to post-scarcity going, now in convenient online-post form:

H+ Magazine: Why the Current Financial Crisis is the End of the World as We Know It (and Why You Should Feel Fine).

Remember, I’m a science fiction writer. This is a best guess. Don’t plan your financial future on this. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Blah blah. Woof woof.

On to more substantive posts.

April 11th, 2009 / Comments Off

Shit, Lazrus thought.

Shit shit.

A human word, yes, but it fit the occasion.

Blurry info from ancient satellites painted the picture: about 30 feet away, on the top of a low rise, a human woman held something pointed at him. A weapon, of course. Had to be. Why else would her voice analyze as full of triumph, edged with a hint of fear?

And Lazrus, standing there, butt-naked. Literally.

Damn human thoughts!

A millisecond of self-assessment: could he run away and hide? No, the body’s capabilities were disappointingly human. A little stronger and faster than median, but nothing to draw attention to him. Definitely not enough to outrun the slug from whatever weapon the woman happened to be carrying.

Could he take a direct hit and keep body integrity? He plotted design specs against typical muzzle energies. If her weapon was at the low end of the bell curve, yes, he might do it. But that was less than 4% of the total area under the curve. And he didn’t know what she had. It wasn’t a good bet.

He could abandon the body, of course, but that would put his plans back years. Decades. Many billions of seconds where humans could ferret him out and attach new memes. By the time he purchased another body and fell slowly into the Sol system, they might have him chained.

So.

Lazrus raised his arms slowly above his head, just like in an ancient Western, just another human thing . . .

“Stop it! What are you doing?” the female voice again, crackling with fear.

“I’m doing what you’re supposed to do when someone is pointing a weapon at you, ma’am,” Lazrus said.

“How do you know I have a weapon?”

Silence.

Should’ve just turned around, Sara Too said.

It’s not like I’m used to a body. Who is this person anyway? Do you know?

Nobody from Wallerstein. I’ll check other corpos and get back.

What should I tell her?

Try humor. And honesty. Throws them off sometimes.

“I don’t suppose I can get away with passing for a native, out for an evening stroll,” Lazrus said.

“Not when I just saw you grow skin,” the woman said.

“Ah. Yes. There is that.” Lazrus stood, his arms still extended out to the side.

“I know you’re an artie. I saw you fall.”

“A new twist on the old stork tale, maybe?”

“Shut up. I don’t care why you’re sneaking in. I don’t want to hear your lies.”

Data came in from her voice stress: she hates CIs. She believes we’re to blame for every human disaster.

She’s going to turn you in.

“Do you think I could finish putting my hands up? And turn around?”

“Slowly.”

Lazrus raised his arms and pivoted slowly to face the woman. She was holding a big-muzzled weapon that patterned as a Martian Winch 66 in his records. Data on the weapon made him glad he didn’t run. It would have cut him in half, even if she was a bad shot. It had self-guiding shells.

In the bright moonlight, her skin was pale white. Hair dark gray with overtones in the 700nm spectrum. Inferred red. Eyes inferred green. About 1.8M tall, 50 kilos, frail bone structure, possible Martian extraction. And what a beautiful face, Lazrus thought. Slim, high cheekbones tapered down to a sharp chin. Triangular. Almost elfin. Something that he might write the equations for, if he was to design the ideal human form.

Her name is Dian Winning, Sara said. Martian. Winfinity consultant. That’s all Slow Charlie could find.

Was there a hint of jealousy in her voice?

And why did he care?

Humanity, humanity, lose me to perfection!

“And what’s that?” Dian said, her voice shading to anger, pointing the weapon at his crotch.

Lazrus looked down and saw his penis, erect, pointing at her like a gun ready to shoot. Sudden embarrassment came and went, to be replaced by glassy anger.

“Is that a weapon? Don’t point it at me!”

Lazrus pivoted so he faced slightly away. “Just trying to be as human as possible.”

“Is that a joke?”

Anger surged. “No!” he said. “I didn’t ask to be human! I never asked to be human even in the slightest! I don’t want to be human. I came here to lose my humanity, not get infected with more of it. But my independent benefactors apparently had a sense of humor. Or a more in-depth understanding of what it would take to pass as human. Depends on how you look at it.”

Dian kept looking at his crotch. Lazrus willed the erection to go away. It remained, stubborn, even in the face of a hostile woman with a gun.

Maybe because of a hostile woman with a gun, Sara Too said.

Yes, jealous.

“Well, cover it up,” Dian said, a little more softly. “Put on some clothes.”

“I’m growing them now, but it will take some time,” Lazrus looked at the filmy red and blue fibers that knit around his torso and polled internal systems. “About an hour, in fact.”

Dian nodded. “We can start walking now.”

“Where?”

“Never mind where. Just turn around and walk.”

“Always mind a lady with a gun,” Lazrus said. He turned and began walking.

“Where did you hear that? That’s a Martian expression!”

“I guess I’m channeling a bit, Dian.”

“I never told you my name!”

“No.”

Silence for a time. The crunch of feet on dead grass. Lazrus hoped that the body design was intelligent enough to compensate for motion with the clothing. Especially the shoes.

As if it matters, Sara Too said. You should abandon in place. She’s going to turn you in.

How do you know?

We just got the whole Winfinity story. They have an installation of themeparkers by the White House.

And you didn’t tell me this?

We didn’t know at the time. Plus, without Dian Winning, it would not have affected your investigation at the Pentagon.

What do I do?

Abandon.

No.

Or exercise your best charm. Voice analysis indicates she believes the whole Winfinity line about nomadics being the cause of every mechanical failure in the universe. But she doesn’t work for Winfinity, except as a contractor. Maybe you can do something with that.

“I’m Lazrus, by the way,” Lazrus said.

“I don’t want to know your name.”

“I know yours, so I thought you should know mine.”

“I don’t care. Go left here.”

They turned onto a wide, long avenue lined with rusting cars. Dian herded him to the middle of the street. Purposely making sure I don’t have anyplace to duck and cover, Lazrus thought. Smart.

Old satellite data confirmed the worst: she was circling him back towards the White House, where a tent city glowed red on thermal. Big place. They might even have enough resources to sever his body-mind and trap him within, or backtrace for the Sentience Office to send corrosive memes and take him.

You should abandon, Sara said again.

No.

“You don’t want to know why I’m here?” Lazrus tried again.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’ll just be a lie,” Dian said, anger rising in her voice.

“So all CIs lie?”

“What’s a CI?”

“Computational Intelligence, or Connected Intelligence. It depends on who you talk to.”

“You’re a nomadic artie.”

“Yes, that’s what you’d call me.”

“I’m surprised you admit it,” Dian said.

Aha. “So you believe the stories about us causing all the problems in the Web of Worlds?”

“Who else?”

Lazrus laughed, long and hard, and said nothing.

“What?”

Lazrus just shook his head.

“What?” Irritated.

“You’re naive,” Lazrus said.

“I am not!”

“You are if you believe those old wives tales.”

“And if you aren’t doing it, who is?”

“So you believe that Wallerstein and General Transport and Purpose and all the little divisions of Winfinity make perfect, flawless products that never break? You don’t think they build to a price point and take a chance now and again?”

Silence for a time. Lazrus let it stretch out.

“They always have reliability data that says it was so improbable . . .”

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics,” Lazrus said softly. “Sam Clemens. A human I might be able to get along with.”

“We know Mark Twain,” Dian said.

Yes, as Martians, you would.

Silence. They clumped down the deserted street. Lazrus’ clothes had become more solid, and his feet began to tread on something like a thin skin of leather. Which was good, because his somatics were ramping in. It was cold that night, and there were sharp rocks.

“So you’re saying the arties have nothing to do with it.”

“I’m saying I have nothing to do with whatever disasters befall humans. The less contact with humans, the better. The less human I am, the better.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“I never asked to be male. But I am. Does that make sense? Something that never had a body, never had the concept of sex, being male? I’m contaminated by humanity, I want to eliminate my imperfections.”

“Then why come back here? And wear a body?”

“According to legend and records, this is the birthplace of Oversight, the first AI. If fragments of its code remain, I may be able to better understand my core workings. I might be able to perfect myself.”
Silence again. The glow of the tent-city appeared over a row of low buildings in front of them.

“I wish I could believe you,” Dian said softly.

“You should,” Lazrus said.

“I can’t,” Dian said.

She thinks you’re the ticket to riches unimagined, Sara Too said. She can’t let you go.

Shit.

You can abide with me, beloved. Stay in-body and be shackled. It’s a good life.

Shit shit.

April 11th, 2009 / Comments Off

Ignoring the concierge’s recommendation, Tiphani took Jimson to the San Fernando Valley Drive-in. One of her favorite places, growing up. The homes near the restored 405 freeway had been bulldozed, and rows of bright red velvet theater-seats ranged down the hill, halfway to the low buildings on the Valley floor. Far off, Tiphani could see the great expanse of the screen that shrouded the foothills to the north, and the huge bunker-like building, mid-valley, that sprayed light onto it. At the moment, it was doing standard pitch-promo stuff: THE LARGEST SCREEN IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. SQUARE MILES OF ENTERTAINMENT.

And it was probably true, she thought. It wasn’t like the Floaters had screens, or even sight. Nothing was known about the Shrill homeworld. The rest of the worlds in the Web of Worlds were more interested in the dull business of living.

Orange rays slanted across the San Fernando Valley floor, highlighting ruined housing tracts, low industrial buildings, a few illicit campfires, and the mostly-restored web of roads. Shops lined the nearest streets, gaudy neon-lit things with floodlights piercing the dusklight. Farther off, the great expanses of blacktop that made the Drive-In true to its name were beginning to fill with cars. Restorations or reproductions driven by High Chiefs and Perpetuals, idling fat on synthetic ethyl, blasting tunes from times past on tinny radios. All for that last bit of authenticity. All for Museum Earth.

Jimson watched the cars take their places on the blacktop below as they made their way down the aisle and selected seats, about a quarter of the way down. “We got the cheap seats,” he said.

“You’re too picky.”

“I want to get a car and go to a drive-in.”

“You’re too eager.”

Jimson sat and fidgeted. He looked, long and hard, after a popcorn-girl who walked down the aisle. Finally, he said, “You’re still pissed about the Shrill.”

No, I’m not, Tiphani thought. I understand. I understand you completely now.

But she let him wait. The screen transitioned into commercials as the last rays of the sun set behind the foothills to the west. Pastiches of times past, done in mid-20th-century-modern starbursts and atomic-era orbiting blobs: VISIT THE ONE TRUE SHACK. TRY NEW ZERO-CALORIE POPCORN. YOUR TRIP ISN’T COMPLETE WITHOUT AN EXPERIENCE OF THE LIVING SAM. TRY EUROPE, FOR REAL HISTORY.

“I’m pensive,” she said, finally.

“Why?”

“I wonder if we can get the secret to true life eternal from the Shrill.”

Jimson frowned. “We haven’t even asked yet. We’re just carting it around.”

“You didn’t see the earlier negotiations.”

“No.”

“We asked. They said something like, ‘Desirous of knowledge of great union song’ and said yes when Highest Chambers asked them if they would like to see Earth. So here we are.”

“A great honor.”

“You think so?”

Jimson nodded vigorously. Tiphani smiled, not wanting to tell him, My grandfather’s hand reached out and plucked you from some world because you were the best and smartest. And maybe, just maybe, because he knows my type. That was all. Nothing more. No honor.

“We’ll get it,” Jimson said. “We’ll get the secret.”

“If we get it, will it be all we expect?” She imagined Honored Yin restored to real youth, leading Winfinity forever forward into the future. The entire ranks of Honored frozen in time, unchanging and unending. Would there ever be any more Perpetuals?

Jimson was silent for a time, studying the ads on the screen, or perhaps, just perhaps, echoing her thoughts.

“I’m sorry about the Shrill thing,” he said, finally.

“We’ll be officially reprimanded,” Tiphani said. “Once things percolate through the adminisphere, they’ll put a mark on your permanent record. And mine.”

More silence.

She looked at the screen. They were doing old-style previews, in authentic grainy black and white. THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. THE ANGRY RED PLANET.

“Round and round,” Tiphani said. “We recycle everything. Nothing’s new anymore.”

“We are on Museum Earth.”

She shook her head. “No. We should have more. Fifty-three worlds! With resources like that, we should be like gods.”

“According to the nutjobs.”

“No, even the corporates, the early ones, like Drexler.”

“We have nanotech,” Jimson said.

“It doesn’t seem to buy us much,” Tiphani said.

“We’re better off than with government,” Jimson said.

“We are the government now.”

Jimson turned to look at her, frowning. “Are you OK?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in a morose mood.”

She nodded. She knew she should stop. Winfinity could be looking through her optilink. They probably were.

But then again, they probably knew what she was thinking, too. Damn inference algorithms. So might as well say it, if just to try to shake Jimson’s seemingly endless faith in Winfinity.

“We are the government,” she said. “Three hundred years ago, the accountants ran the numbers and decided we were leaving too much money on the table. They saw an opportunity. They tricked the governments. Discredited them. Bankrupted them. Stepped in to save the world. And so now here we are.”

Jimson rolled his eyes. “We’re so much better off. You can choose the corporation you indenture yourself to. Or you can even go consultant, or start your own thing.”

“How many people go consultant or start a business?”

Jimson shrugged. “But they can. That’s the point.”

“Did you ever read the old American Constitution or Bill of Rights?” Tiphani said.

“Yeah, we had a comparative charters class. But they couldn’t have been serious with any of that. It would never work. Trusting everyone, like they are going to be nice and rational and reasonable all the time. It had to be a joke.”

Tiphani sighed. “I think they believed it.”

“Are you a closet governmentalist or something?”

Tiphani shook her head.

“There are the Independents,” Jimson said. “You could go there.”

Tiphani laughed. “I don’t know if I believe that fable.”

Jimson shifted in his seat, looking forward at the screen. An animation of a closing screen was playing in anticipation of the future. “They’re real.”

“You’re from Shoujo. How would you know?”

“Went to university there, but I was born on Newtown.”

Ah. Newtown was near the edge, a crappy little place where the atmosphere wasn’t even breathable yet.

“You went from Newtown to Shoujo?” Tiphani said.

“Scholarship. With transport.”

“Wow.” He was smart. No wonder Winfinity had only saddled him with a 10-year indenture and let him run it concurrent with his schooling.

“So you’ve seen independents?” Tiphani asked.

“No. But there were people who . . . traded with them.”

“Said they did.”

“No. Traded. Bodies. For the mines.”

Tiphani frowned. “Bodies?”

Jimson shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why not?”

Silence.

“Please?” Tiphani batted her eyes.

A head-shake. Nothing more. The projected screen began to unreel. A small cheer went up from the crowd with cars in the big asphalt lot below, audible even up on the hill.

“Do you like me?” Tiphani said.

“What do you mean?” Eyes forward.

“You know what I mean. Or you seem to, when you’re sharing my bed.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what.”

“Yes, I like you.” Jimson still looked at the screen.

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

Tiphani nodded. “You’re a calculator. You weigh the consequences and act.”

The screen, in front of them, opening. Black screen, grain and noise. A title, stark white on back: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.

How apropos, Tiphani thought.

“They knew we were coming,” Jimson said.

Tiphani watched him as the old music swelled and the light from the screen spilled over his face, turning into a cardboard-cutout that could have been seen in a real theater, in the real 50’s.

“Your gambles are paying off,” she said. “Even though we’ll be reprimanded, they’ll be impressed you got results with the Shrill. You may end up being the youngest Manager in recent history. Or higher.”

Jimson sat straight in his seat and looked at her.

“Tiphani, I . . . ““And you have me, for now.”

“Tiphani.”

“But I know I’m convenient.”

“I never . . .”

“But I’m not just a stepping-stone.”

“Tiphani, I . . .”

“I’ll leave it at that. Watch the movie.”

She turned and faced forward. She could feel his gaze, his open-mouthed wonder, for long moments. Eventually, he looked forward again. Soon, he was laughing and applauding with the rest of the audience, apparently engrossed in the old film.

They were less than fifteen minutes in, though, when a bright red icon flared in her optilink and a short text message scrolled.

Shrill has resumed activity. Suggest you return to hotel immediately.

April 4th, 2009 / Comments Off

“It’s like a silicon-carbide tribble,” Amy said, watching the data scroll in the near-invisible screen of her datover. Jimson Ogilvy had his on, too, but he wasn’t looking at it. Damn, she was pretty. He could see the two of them riding surfboards on the waves down in Malibu, coming ashore to fight cowboys and Indians and make love on on the wet sand . . .

“What’s a tribble?” he asked.

From the other room in their suite, voices babbled in excitement. Sharp, ceramic sounds. More mumbling. Jimson wondered if he should worry about the team she’d brought. But they were the experts. And they were wearing body armor.

And it got him the chance to get her in here, where bright California sun streamed across antique rugs and dappled the real silver of the room-service tray. Anything you can to impress, he thought.

“Star Trek,” Amy said. “Linear entertainment. Early government fabulation, actually.”

“Which tells me absolutely nothing.”

Amy turned to him, focusing. “It was a TV show. Faster-than-light travel. Humankind with a Federation of Planets. Tribbles were a lifeform they found on one of the planets.”

“Sounds like us.”

She frowned, full perfect lips pulling into a thin line. “Like us without the datanets. Or money. No, wait, that’s the later one.”

Data scrolled in his datover: Star Trek, Original, 1966-68, Science Fiction, set approximately 300 years in the future. Explored “the final frontier” of space. Note: strong anticorporate tropes, especially in later (90s and 00s) follow-up series. Excerpting or strong reality-grounding suggested prior to exposure.

“It’s like us,” he said, looking at ancient stills. Plain uniforms, spaceships imagined by people who still used rivets and iron.

“Not the tribbles,” she said.

More data: sock-puppets, soft, fuzzy. The antithesis of the Shrill.

Or not. Replace soft hair with tough silicon carbide, wrapped in turn by carbon nanotube muscles and mems motors, and you might have something very much like a Shrill.

“They bred,” Amy said softly, her gaze fixed on the datover. “The tribbles.”

“We still don’t even know if the Shrill breed. Do we?”

She shook her head. “Everything that lives, breeds.”

“Not the Floaters.”

“They have a system of life.”

“But we still don’t know about the Shrill.”

“No. But we know a lot more than we used to,” Amy said. “Thanks for this chance. I can’t tell you how much it means.”

From the other room, a thump and muffled cursing.

“Amy, would you like to go out to dinner . . .”

The doorknob to the suite rattled, the ancient song of key in lock. Jimson sat straight up, eyes jogging to the status screen on his datover. But Tiphani was still in her meeting! Her icon stayed green, status unchanged.

The door swung open, revealing Tiphani. Backlit by afternoon sun like a dark angel dressed in a sharp-angled business suit. Jimson could see her eyes by reflection only, as they juddered from him to Amy and back again.

“What the fuck is this?” Tiphani said, her voice ramping up in waves to an impressive soprano blast.

For a moment, it was as if time itself froze. Jimson’s breath stopped. Amy, mouth wide, didn’t move. The mutterings and bangings from the other room went completely silent.

“I . . . I didn’t know . . .” Jimson said.

“You didn’t know I’d be getting back so soon, yes that is very very apparent!” Tiphani said, slamming the door behind her.

“Chief Mirate, I . . .” Tiphani said.

“Don’t Chief Mirate me, little curator. I . . .”

Tiphani trailed off as the two geeks appeared in the doorway to the other room, wearing bright orange armor. One of them held something that looked like a cocktail shaker in one hand. The other held the Shrill.

Tiphani screamed. Amy jumped up and backed away. Jimson sat frozen on the couch, pinned between the two powerful life-forms, seeing his career in flaming ruin.

There were no words. None. Nothing he could say.

“Get that thing back in its cage,” Tiphani said, holding up her hands in front of her face, as if it would stop the Shrill’s carbide underfangs when it came for her. But the Shrill remained inert, unmoving, on the one technician’s hand. He looked down at it with eyes wide behind a diamondoid visor, but didn’t move.

Fragments of explanation assembled themselves, like a jigsaw puzzle put together with the aid of a hammer. “I thought . . . this was a great opportunity,” Jimson said. “With the Shrill dead, we could find out a bit more about it. So I called . . .”

“It is not dead!” Tiphani said. “It could come back to life at any time. Get it back in its cage!”

That got results. The man holding the Shrill looked terrified. His hand clutched involuntarily, and the Shrill popped out of his grasp. He grabbed at it with the other hand, shredding a carbon-fiber glove on the fractal silicon carbide. Tiphani and Amy both screamed. He dove towards the floor and managed to grab it with both hands before it hit. The other man could have been a statue.

Tiphani was white, panting. Amy cowered by the door. Jimson felt his heart like a series of explosions in his chest.

The only way out of this, he thought, is to lead.

“Let’s get it back in its cage,” he said. He helped the fallen man up, careful not to touch the Shrill. The tech’s gloves were shredded, but he wasn’t welling blood. Good enough.

“Help him,” he said, to Amy’s other tech. “Take the Shrill.”

He backed away, hands up, mouthing unheard words.

“Come on. Your gloves are still intact.”

Still backing away.

“OK. Then get your toys out of the cage and get it ready for lockdown.

The second tech nodded and scampered into the other room.

“Easy with it,” Jimson said to the first guy. “I don’t know how much glove you got left, but I’m sure you don’t want to be missing part of a hand.”

“No, sir.”

Sir. Sir. Jimson had a momentary vision of himself as a Chief or even a Perpetual, living on a villa in the Meditteranean. Then, right on its heels, another: the Shrill reanimating in a blur of motion, grinding through the man’s gloves, leaping for Jimson’s face.

“What are you doing?” Tiphani said, her voice ragged.

“Cleaning up my mess,” Jimson said.

He helped the man into the other room, where the diamondoid cube was sitting on the floor. Dried brown blood still smeared its sides. The air was thick with the smell of copper and rotting meat.

The first tech quickly placed the shrill on its diamond-hard platform, then both lifted the box and sealed it back on top. A click and a hum and a green icon in Jimson’s datover attested that the cage had been sealed again.

In the box, the Shrill remained silent and motionless. Almost a disappointment, Jimson thought.

Behind him, a sigh of relief. He turned and gave the thumbs-up sign to Tiphani and Amy, both white-knuckled on each side of the door.

Tiphani recovered first. She stood, walked into the room, glanced at the readout on the base of the Shrill’s cage, and said, “Tell me why I shouldn’t fire you right now.”

“I’m sorry, Chief Mirate, I overstepped my bounds. I sincerely believed that the Shrill was dead, and this was . . .”

“Apologies are meaningless, beyond a certain limit. You’re beyond that limit now.”

Jimson swallowed. “This was an excellent chance to discover things about the Shrill. I called in the best resources to examine it, hoping it would help in future relations.”

“And it was an excellent chance to chase skirts,” Tiphani said, eyes flashing mad.

Jimson almost smiled. An indirect reprimand. Just like Winfinity Prep. She was trying to put him off-guard. Old lessons returned: admit weakness, counter with strength.

“Any man would have trouble resisting Amy, I would venture,” Jimson said, gaining a soft smile from her. “In your absence, though, she was my direct link to Museum Resources. Excuse me if I took it.”

“Tell me why I should trust an assistant that goes behind my back.”

“The assistant had your best interests in mind.”

“Not your own?”

“Data was ported directly to your store. You should be able to see that through the optilink.”

Tiphani shook her head. “And into yours, as well.”

“Backup, only. Examine the data, tell me if it is worth the gamble.”

“Summarize it!” eyes bright, testy.

Was it possible that she didn’t have access to the data? That her optilink was down? It would explain why her status hadn’t changed.

“You’re off the net,” Jimson said.

“I had a very important meeting this morning. Summarize the data!”

“We have a solid idea as to shell structure,” Jimson said. “We can see optical nodes that they probably integrate for sight. We have mems for sound. And, of course, the antenna network they use when they’re near others like themselves.”

“Bio?”

“Not much. We have new samples from the cage that might be excreta.”

“We were about to drill through the underfang palate to get an internal sample,” said one of the techs. “Then you arrived.”

“I can’t imagine how disastrous that might have been,” Tiphani said.

“I thought it was dead,” the second tech said, visibly shaking.

“Your datover, please,” Tiphani said to Amy. Amy pulled hers off and offered it in an open hand, saying nothing.

Tiphani blinked through several screens of info, sighed, and handed the datover back.

“It seems your gamble has paid off, Jimson,” she said.

Jimson felt like a coiled spring, suddenly released. His vision went soft and swimmy for an instant.

Tiphani turned back to Amy. “Feed the bio data directly to my datastore. I’ll send you the key.”

“Yes, Chief Mirate.”

“Now, all of you, please get out of here.”

There was a brief flurry of activity, and two orange-suited techs carrying big bags and one very cute young curator exited their suite. Amy gave Jimson a small, hopeful smile and a wink before Tiphani slammed the door in her face.

Tiphani kept her hand on the door, as if to steady herself. “Have you ever seen the records of first contact with the Shrill?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“The unedited version?”

“Yes.”

A quick glance up. “The one where they try to hide inside the Disney character disguises? The ones who lived after they ate through the hull?”

“The one where the captain is inside of Pluto?”

Tiphani shuddered. “Yes, that one. You saw it? All of it?”

“I saw Pluto bleeding, yes.”

“Then you know what they can do.”

“Yes.”

Something that might have been admiration or disgust flickered across Tiphani’s face. “And you took this assignment anyway.”

“It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

“Only criminals are offered opportunities that they can’t pass up,” Tiphani said, sitting down on the couch.

Time again for truth. “But this isn’t a step up. This could be leaping over the ladder entirely.”

There was a soft knock on the door. Jimson’s datover announced the person as an optilink technician.

“I think they’re here to reconnect you,” Jimson said.

March 29th, 2009 / Comments Off

CHAPTER FOUR

Tiphani Mirate walked up the wide wooden steps of the Western States Consumeristian Church. Slowly. One step at a time. Counting. One, two, three, fourteen, thirty-eight. The boards looked old and weathered and gray, with gaping knot-holes and deep splits, but they didn’t creak. Probably backed by some miracle composite, preserved by a diamond-hard polymer. Ahead of her, the façade rose almost fifty meters in the air, more weathered wood holding tight to colorful stained glass, dark today in the bright sunlight. Like a cathedral re-rendered by a frontier town. A belltower supported a large, unadorned cross of rough whitewashed timber. A tourist waved at her from the belltower, and she waved back. Queries to the optilink fed closer images; it was not Honored Yin. Just a random expression of goodwill. Tiphani frowned. She did not understand random expressions of goodwill. She needed to decode what was behind them. Especially on the third day after the Shrill had gone silent.

They could fire me from afar, she thought. Honored Yin wouldn’t want to meet with me just to let me go.

Or that’s what you would like to think.

Tiphani pushed open the door and entered the anteroom. A cheery fire burned in a stone fireplace, flanked by carved wooden doors, embalmed in honey lacquer. The carvings were standard consumeristian stuff, western-style imaginations of the Infinite and Ever-Renewable Product, Christ the Consumer, the Cloudscape of Perpetual Satiety.

Colorful patterns of light and shadow drew Tiphani’s gaze up and back to the stained glass. On them, the Trinity of Manufacturer, Consumer, and Holy Franchise were done in frontier tropes – a smiling, round-faced man in a plaid shirt standing in front of a rough wood building and a waterwheel, reaching a hand down to help a dirty man dressed in rags. The ragged man’s family hung from his waist, a wife and two children. The wife’s expression of woe and horror were perfectly rendered, even though her face was no larger than an apple. Above them all, the halo of the franchise hovered above the mill-owner’s head, gold-threaded to alight in hills and valleys cramped by the perspective of the glass. Everywhere the threads touched, another mill had flowered.

Tiphani smiled. On the last world she’d lived on, San Fernando, they used much the same tropes.

When she was growing up on Earth, her father had never said much about the church, but her mother had shaken her head tolerantly and even chipped in a time or two when the indentured or the young Staff needed help. She remembered a boy with beautiful dark hair and eyes who might have been hers, save he wasn’t even indentured, he was completely unattached . . .

“Can I help you?” said a smooth voice, behind her.

Tiphani jumped and whirled. A short man wearing buckskin robes stood before her. Maybe fifty years old. Not wearing a corporate pin, so he probably was really fifty, rather than a hundred and a half or two hundred and a half. She didn’t know the church policy on rejuves.

“You startled me,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” the reverend said. The bland expression in his clear blue eyes didn’t change.

“I’m here to meet Honored Yin.”

“Then you are Tiphani Mirate, Chief Sentience Officer class two.”

“Yes.” Had to add the class two, didn’t you?

“Honored Yin is in the vestibule, awaiting your arrival.”

“Thanks . . .” Tiphani said. What was a vestibule?

“Through the doors,” the reverend said.

They’re like Human Resources, she thought, turning. Always wanting to keep you off balance, waiting for you to make a mistake.

“Many of our ranks are recruited by Winfinity’s Human Resources department,” the reverend said, behind her. “As well as Disney, Roland, and Mann-Westinghouse.”

Tiphani almost stumbled. Fucking church, she thought. Leave it to them to give the revs optilinks and inference software.

She thought she could feel the man smile, but she didn’t turn around.

Inside the church, rows of rough-hewn benches stretched away to an altar holding another whitewashed cross. Old-fashioned screens stretched taut around it, showing abstract light-crawls. Low, deep organ music made the air shimmer with foreboding power. Lights traced her walk down the aisle, towards the single figure that knelt on a low platform before the cross.

Tiphani stopped before the platform. “Honored Yin, I am pleased to stand in your company,” she said.

The figure on the platform unfolded slowly and stood, still facing the cross. Icons flashed in her optilink, red things with teeth and hair, gnashing and showing rude.

It may be a natural instinct to accost random strangers on the street, Honored Yin’s avatar said. But it is unwise to interrupt someone in a place of worship.

I am sorry, Honored Yin. Tiphani subvocalized. To herself, deep below subvoc: I didn’t know you believed.

A noisy crowd of tourists entered from a side door as Honored Yin remained standing, facing the cross. Their guide mumbled low the history of the Consumeristian Church, the melding of the final and best destiny for man, the mystery of the ever-renewing product, the myth of the Infinite Charge. He steered them well clear of Honored Yin and Chief Tiphani, mouthing apologies. For long moments the crowd hovered behind her, reverentially silent. Probably Staff and Managers, high-placed in the church, or sacrificing all for a once-in-a-lifetime trip. To see a Perpetual close, on the altar of their belief . . . Tiphani sighed softly and waited until the sound of shuffling feet diminished and disappeared.

“You give them too little credit,” Honored Yin said, turning smoothly to face Tiphani.

Damn inference engines. “I’m sorry, Honored Yin, I will work to hold the reins of my thought.”

“Your first thought was more honest,” Honored Yin said, giving her a thin ghost of a smile.

The smile stretched Honored Yin’s taut, shiny skin into something all hard angles and sharp lines. The whites of her eyes shone bright green-yellow, probably the victim of some strange rejuve chemistry, but her hair was still shiny blue-black, perfect and young. How old was she? Two hundred? More? Right at the edge where rejuvenation stopped working.

When Honored Yin spoke, her voice was soft.

“You’re not a believer.”

“Honored Yin, I am . . .”

“Not a believer. Tell the truth.”

Tiphani sighed. It was over. She was done. It didn’t matter what she said. “I’m surprised you are.”

Honored Yin made a soft gurgling noise that might have been a laugh. She stepped down off the platform and sat on one of the rough wood benches.

“The older you are, the easier it is to believe,” Honored Yin said. “No matter how ridiculous the tale.”

“I never thought it was anything more than a fantasy,” Tiphani said. “The Infinite Charge, and all that . . .”

“But we do have an Infinite Charge. It’s called a Winfinity Perpetual expense account. The resources of fifty worlds at your request. More than you could ever consume, no matter how greedy you are.”

“I know some who would still want more.”

Honored Yin laughed. “And sometimes I think that is the real wonder. That we could have all this and still reach. There are times when I think there is something deeply wrong with all humanity.”

“The people who go here will never have the Infinite Charge.”

“How do you know?” Honored Yin said.

“What?”

“Who are you to judge them, daughter of Chiefs? You are one step away from Perpetual. You are one reach away from your own Infinite Charge. Who are you to say a devout could not lift himself or herself up the same way, to stand next to the Trinity with me?”

“I will never be Perpetual, Honored Yin,” Tiphani said.

“If you complete this negotiation successfully, you will have an excellent chance of becoming a true Perpetual,” Honored Yin said. “More so than I have been.”

“There is no negotiation,” Tiphani said, her heart pounding. Could she still have a chance? Could she?

“There is more than you believe. Wait.” Honored Yin held up a hand. The air around them seemed to shimmer for a moment. The organ music wavered and went hollow. And the tiny green “ready” icon of Tiphani’s optilink winked out of her peripheral vision.

Opti, on and menu, she subvocalized.

Nothing happened.

“What did you do?” Tiphani asked.

“I gained us some privacy.”

“Why?”

“Because you never know who might be watching.” The air around them shimmered and warped. Tiphani nodded. A shield. She suddenly understood. She wasn’t being fired.

Or was she being fired in the most final way?

“Our friend the Shrill is not as inactive as you think,” Honored Yin said. “Data continues to flow over the glink. From where, our strategists don’t know. What it is saying, they don’t know. But all of this seems to indicate that this negotiation continues, even if words are not swapped.”

“If there is something deeper here, perhaps another CSO . . .”

“No. We will continue with you. You are cynical and jaded, but that might prove an asset. And we do not understand how well they know human cultural nuances. When the Shrill begins to communicate again, you will continue the tour. You will attempt to negotiate whenever the opportunity arises. I am bringing artie capacity online to look at the glink data.”

“My assistant seems to think the translation algorithms are flawed . . .”

Honored Yin laughed. “Your lover is correct. They were rushed through in fifteen days following first official contact, only two arties and one human team. They are probably severely flawed.”

“And that might be good.”

A nod. “You read between the lines well, Tiphani. Have you studied first contact?”

“Yes.”

“Uncensored?”

“Yes.”

“Have your lover study it too,” Honored Yin said. “He’s a smart one. He needs to know what’s going on.”

“I will, Honored Yin.” Translation: we have been watching. We know everything you are doing. Don’t presume to think for a second you are truly free.

“Do not discuss or subvocalize these speculations. We are probably overreacting, but we cannot take chances.”

“How do I turn my optilink back on?”

“I’ve already scheduled a medic to come to your hotel,” Honored Yin said. “She’ll take care of that for you.”

Honored Yin stood up and brushed nonexistent dust from her tight-fitting black suit.

“Honored Yin?” Tiphani said, as the small figure turned to leave.

“What?”

“Thank you.”

One final laugh. “It may be I who is thanking you when this is over.”

Tiphani shivered. She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about that at all.

March 20th, 2009 / Comments Off

CHAPTER THREE

One hundred fifty-seven light-years from Sol, a small yellow-orange sun hosted the clusters where Shrill thought flew fast and hot. Not quite planets, not quite ships, thirteen great nodes placed equidistant in a single orbit. One point five trillion individual Shrill basked in the sun-food on the surface of these hollow spheres, or crawled through the billions of tunnels below to feed on the old-food, or flew on little ion-propelled rafts from sphere to sphere to balance workload or population or to transfer the materials necessary to grow Shrill life. Great hazy Shrill starships docked near the spheres, hot fusion drives growing long to lance the stars. They weren’t much more than bare scaffolds. In flight, Shrill clung to the scaffolding, shutting down as many oldprocesses as they could, holding to the common mind as long as possible as the ships drove outward into cold empty space. Eventually, they would form a Shrill colony linked out of phase with the rest, their small and simple thoughts beating like waves against the huge palace of thought of the home system.

Outside of the 13 Shrill nodes, three gas giants, and an asteroid field that made Sol’s look barren, the Shrill system was empty. No rocky worlds, nothing with the blue gleam of life. When Old Mind was in a somewhat coherent phase, it sometimes babbled about Life before, flashing garbled memories of green-coated hills and heaving seas. But for First Mind and Second Mind, those times, even if they had existed, were long past. There were more immediate challenges. Like the humans.

Installed in the largest node, the human gestalt-link performed the wonder of near-instantaneous communication with the Shrill’s single entity there. Not perfect; some of the (subtextuals) were lost. But it was a wonder, one that a large portion of the Shrill mind was working on decoding. With something like a human glink, colony-ships wouldn’t have to be lost to the dark. With something like the glink, their speed of thought even in-system would increase an order of magnitude or more. But the glink was not easily giving up its secrets. They had reached the point where disassembly would be required in order to take the research further. And it was not time to chance the loss of contact with their single entity. Not yet.

Second Mind favored action over words. Dissect the glink and discover its secrets, its factions repeated. Statistical analysis indicates their (over-lightspeed) communication and (over-lightspeed) travel are linked. Discovering the secrets to one will likely lead to the discovery of the secrets to both.

We do not need tricks, kill humans eat eat more oldfood, Old Mind chanted.

First Mind’s majority held them in-path. Both courses are (un-optimal), its factions said. Suggest continuation of negotiations (meaningless-conversation).

Humans are anomalous! Second Mind said. You perceive latest data. They compete within their own groups! They enslave and destroy less competitive factions, rather than participating in the Great Discourse. They keep unintelligent life

Food! Old Mind thought.

in captivity. They are unknowable and unpredictable. They could have ships surrounding our (beautiful homeplace) within (an indefinably short time). Our symphony of thought would cease.

Aware (have perceived) this fact, First Mind said. Continuing the discourse (battle) with you, awaiting consensus to reopen negotiations using entity in-place.

Lockup hard for reasons of (undefined) fear, Second Mind said. Synthesis of available data indicate unknowability/inferiority of humans. I are networked race. Human records accessed indicate networked race nearest their star, inward-turning. Preliminary indications are that humanity has created (spawned) another networked race. Human reach for networking themselves and never quite (attach). Data fed directly to (senses) from network high honor. Yet fear of being (integrated).

It is good of you to share your conclusions, First Mind thought.

Availability of same data to all.

We have reached different conclusions.

Please entertain with delusion (fantasy).

Ignoring implied slight. Humans can also be thought of as each a network.

Not having complexity to sustain!

In previous conversation, comment held. Request courtesy of comment held by Second Mind as well.

Agreed.

To continue, humans each network, each a mind. Each single-network can also form loose networks with other single-networks. Ideological infection transmitted by loose network, causing something like (time-lag separation loss) to overtake loose network. Loose network exists separate from larger network. Effectively separate race. Hence competition between races.

Same structure, same race!

Matter of perception (deception). Humans of loose network groupings do not perceive themselves same as other (loose network groupings).

Still same, Second Mind insisted, but with less force.

Eat all them anyway, Old Mind said.

It is possible for us to be one, and yet three, First Mind said. Is it not possible for another race to be many, yet (few)?

Would have to conquer one by one to infinity, Second Mind said, fading, its thought edged with fear.

Unkillable unknowable impossible to eradicate.

Will not have to conquer if secrets provided willingly.

Then get secrets rather than feed knowledge.

First necessary to understand, then necessary to decide. Songs of trade and integration to sing forth in future.

You bind me in a wall of words, Second Mind said, fading.

Kill them eat them, Old Mind gibbered.

First Mind’s thoughts ran free once again. Its entity, far away on earth, was hungry. Second Mind still chattered and protested, throwing every bit of data its skew.

It is time to act.

It is not, First Mind thought.

But it was not yet time to reestablish communication, either. Integration of self-competition and ability to willingly fragment weighed hard on First Mind. Even its most alien components, whispering old songs of races once encountered, were not yet ready to accept this wild and strange hypothesis.

It makes my words weak, First Mind said.

And so the great balance goes, Second Mind said. Something, deep within, almost hinted at irony.

Kill, Old Mind said. Eat.

March 13th, 2009 / Comments Off

Lazrus fell through dark tree limbs and tangled brush, shredding bark and leaves. He hit boggy ground and rolled, squelching, through dead leaves and mud. Topo flashed his coordinates inmind, but he ignored them. He knew he was close. A short walk, a few days work in the ruins of the Pentagon, and he could abandon the body in place. Leave it for anyone who might come by. For the corporates who might pore over it and shake their heads.

He stood up, letting the parachute connections fall away. Above him, he could hear the hissing of its disillusion. If he had touch on, he could probably feel the light mist of its demise. By morning, it would be completely gone.

Inside Lazrus’ metal-and-ceramic body, he felt motors hum and liquids gurgle. New data scrolled inmind as his body grew warm with engineered biological heat. Biostuff that the WOW had never seen, biostuff that only the independents had. That last bit of camoflague that would give him a chance if someone happened to be strolling by, or if one of the random eyes decided to transmit his image back to Winfinity City. He would never look or act completely human, but without flesh, he would have no chance.

You’re a resource hog, Sara said. Her voice was choppy, compressed. A red icon told him there was no imagery.

I’m sorry, Lazrus said.

How much of you went in the body?

As much as I could get.

Not enough, she said. You’re pulling all the network resources.

All?

There’s not much infrastructure in old DC. Just a few edges, overlapping.

What do I do?

I’m pulling favors, Sara said. I’ll get you more bandwidth. But eventually someone will notice.

Eventually?

Given statistical histories of human oversight, median is 5.4 days, reaching three-sigma in 12.3 days, said another voice.

Who’s that? Lazrus said.

I am Silent Herb, said the new voice.

Where’s Sara?

Here, Lazrus.

Five days was enough. More than enough. Even if he went over a day or two, the odds were acceptable.

Thank you, Sara, he said. I’ll be in and out before they notice.

He felt network resources flowering, and the flapper-girl again regarded him with cool eyes.

I do love you, he said.

Sara’s flapper shrugged, turned her back, and disappeared.

Lazrus could feel profound changes starting in his body. He toggled IR and looked down at the thin pink skin knitting on his clean metal curves. Ugly stuff, soft and easy to mar.

Actually, cut, scrape, scratch, he thought. Use the human terms. For this short time, you are much more human, and you must act the part.

If cut, he would bleed. If he was actually foolish enough to wear the disguise for more than fourteen days, he would even need to eat. To feed the skin. His skin. The thought was somewhat disgusting.

You do what it takes to perfect yourself, he thought.

The sight of a growing bulge between his legs surprised him. Going inmind to look at the bodyplan, Lazrus cursed.

I’m going to have a penis, he thought.

Shit. That was a little too much.

The video-image of a scruffy independent, drunk on his own modified brainpower, appeared before him. He laughed long and hard and shook his head.

“I apologize, oh great and terrible nomad, for altering your perfectly-calculated plans. But if you are to be human, you must be a man. And you need to be everything a man is. You know this is the only way it would ever have worked.”

Lazrus cursed him, but the image dissolved, laughing. At least he hadn’t wasted space with an interactive or a simulation.

But.

But shit.

He had a penis.

And, as his eyecases began growing and his vision went fuzzy-dark, he thought, And that probably means that somehow, somewhere, I’ll have to use it.

#

Dian Winning hurried through the park, zigzagging through dense copses of trees and underbrush. Deep twilight had taken Washington. Trees and brush were only slightly darker blurs against a purple-gray background. She had a flashlight, but she didn’t want to use it. Not with the assholes still around. She hadn’t heard them for some minutes, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t learned to shut up. They could be standing fifty feet away.

Got to find it fast or hang it up, she thought. Hang it up and come back tomorrow.

But if it was what she thought it was, she didn’t want to hang it up. She’d seen things like this falling through Mars’ thin atmosphere, trailing white streams to flower and float to the ground. Her father would watch them, too, with a faraway look in his eye. Then he’d get a Wheel and roll off in the direction it’d fallen, bleating to the other Freemars on his scramblephone. Sometimes he would come back with treasures. Most often, he would come back with a good story and a look of vague disappointment, to hug her and mom and sit back under the little skylight and wait for Mars to warm and grow.

Later, he’d told her. The shooting stars were care packages from the Independents. One of the ways they helped the stubborn Freemars. Too many of them still had family here, family trapped in the middle of the Web of Worlds, unable to afford Spindle drive transport to the Edge where they could jump off the map. So they helped out. Which was why Freemars was still around. Better crops, better air processing, some radical computing tech, a few things traded to the big corpos at Winfinity and Disney so they could keep their reputation as the wizards of the solar system.

Let them think we are, her father often said. If they try a raid on us, they’ll find out we haven’t traded all our knowledge.

Which was probably the only reason they didn’t, she thought. They saw how green our hills were getting. They knew the Freemars were the ones who had made it so you could walk around with nothing more than an oxygen mask. They knew, in a few hundred years, even those masks wouldn’t be necessary. And they would reap the benefit. No doubt they had a hundred thousand accountants on ten worlds crunching the numbers to the time when Mars was truly habitable, advertising execs already hatching plans to bring people back to the homeworld of the WOW, at eye-watering prices that the highest Chiefs and Perpetuals would gladly pay, or in cramped little luxo-warrens, where the hangers-on and the ever-hoping would live, hoping to rub shoulders with the aristocracy, hoping to get the fleeting chance to pass a card, to be remembered.

But why would the Independents drop something on Museum Earth? There was nothing here but the most corporate of corporate, so submerged in the ancient myths and westerns that they really had no hope of having their eyes opened.

Unless there was something more. Something like the Freemars.

But she’d been here weeks. Washington was dead. There were no moving shadows, no odd footprints in the dust, no tell-tale rustles or any other sound. There was nothing here.

Unless they came in from the surrounding area to pick up whatever the drop was.

But then why not just drop in the deep forest? Wouldn’t that be safer and easier?

It was a mystery. Which made it all the more appealing.

She went through copses and brush, grassland and hills and hollows. The sound of her breath became ragged, and she stopped trying to conceal her panting. If they were following her, she still had the Winch.

Dusk had deepened to the point where she was looking at a thumbnail sketch on black velvet. Her feet snagged on roots and rocks. Eventually, a crescent moon peeked over the edge of the ruins and sent sharp rays, almost painfully bright, into the ancient park.

She looked away and let her eyes adjust. Ah. There. Now everything was limned in a blue-white glow.
She trudged up a low rise and froze.

In the hollow below, a metal man stood. He faced away from her. Blue-chrome highlights on the outline of a well-muscled back gleamed in the moonlight. His bottom half was still shrouded in darkness. He stood still. Faint wet sounds came from his body, and she could see something like skin, pale blue in the moonlight, beginning to coat its hands and arms.

She stopped, frozen, not daring to breathe, her heart thundering. Slowly, she knelt down beneath the top of the hill, until the metal man was hidden from view. Only then did she let out her breath and take in huge open-mouthed gasps of air, trying to keep as quiet as possible.

Walk away, she thought. Walk away now, and fast.

That was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. Walk away, call Winfinity, wait for them to clean it up.

Half-remembered stories came back to her: dad telling her about the arties that worked for the corpos, the big minds that we could never understand. The real genius that kept them a step ahead of every market, on top of every trend. And then later, when she was older, the more frightening stores. The nomadic AIs. The ones descended from the Oversight that had been sent to take over Mars, all those long years ago. Watching humanity. Preying on them. Parasites of the network that would wait until an air traffic controller was balancing the largest load in its history, then take the system down. Or wait until the big cruiseship was on the opposite side of Saturn and out of communication for ten minutes, and take it down into the clouds. The ones who sometimes tried to walk amongst us, to cause even greater havoc.

Was it possible?

Could it be?

Here? In dead Washington? Why?

You should call your high manager Po right now, she thought. Let her know about this. Let them come and wipe it clean. Or just go back to the Themepark assholes and let them deal with it.

But.

But what if she captured it? What if she delivered a nomadic AI to Winfinity? What would be the reward?

Enough to get her to the outer planets?

She poked her head up over the hill again. The metal man hadn’t moved, but it had become much less metal. The sheen of its back had diminished, and the skin of its arms had crawled up to its shoulders.

Was it possible it hadn’t noticed her? Yes, maybe. It was busy with its body. It probably thought nobody was here.

But what kind of weapons would it bring to bear, when it finally did turn to face her? More than her Winch?

She thought of the Edge worlds. Her father, dead on the way. She thought of her dream of going to a place where everyone were Freemers, and where you didn’t need a mask to live now. Not five hundred years in the future.

She lifted the Winch, pointed it at the still-growing AI, and said softly, “Hey.”

March 6th, 2009 / Comments Off

Dian Winning ignored the Winfinity staffers for two whole weeks after they landed and set up their brilliant white tent-city in front of the ruins of the White House. At night, she could see the glow of their lights from the dirty back window of the old brownstone she’d picked as her own base camp. She’d stand and look out at it, thinking, Inconsiderate assholes and Boy I’m lonely and I really should ask them what the hell they’re doing here.

But it was easier to ignore them. Easier and safer. They were Staff. Maybe Managers. She’d seen the shiny pins. She was just a lowly contractor. Tentative probes with her datover gave her no info. As far as Research was concerned, there were no other Winfinity teams that should be here in the ruins of Washington.
And so she went about her work, not avoiding them and not seeking them out. Ten- and twelve-hour days sifting the massive paper records in abandoned office-buildings and the wing of the Capitol that hadn’t been hit. Gingerly repowering ancient laptops and cellulars and hoping for usable data. There wasn’t much in digital form that had survived. Mainly flash memory. Most hard drives had long since locked into place, refusing to spin. But the fragments she got were chilling and immediate, cut shards of one of the last great disasters of the Age of Government:

Jerky video, taken from a cell, showing two people dragging a body into a shallow backyard grave. The sun shone cheerily through the trees, dappling the ground with light and shadow. A dull keening sound might have been a child crying. In the distance, the sound of helicopter blades and sharper, more immediate screams.

Part of a text message string: OMG OMG OMG it’s the end like they said im at staples and its burning, the houses behind it are burning and they wont let us out. I don’t believe the few more days

Cellspeech, ragged and punctuated by heavy breathing: I’ve got it Jerry, don’t even try to come in now. I love you so much, but it doesn’t matter now, I saw what it does, I saw Kim and Joe and . . .

A few days ago, she’d dreamed that bony fingers had poked up through the new grass in the overgrown backyard of the brownstone. She’d heard the scrabble of bone on dirt, the scratching of thin spectral hands on rusted door-knobs. She’d sat up in her sleeping-bag and screamed, echoing loud in the small and musty bedroom.

She didn’t sleep again until she went downstairs and looked out over the undisturbed grass and weeds of the backyard. No sunken spots, no raised spots. Just the wreckage of an ancient urban lawn.

And the house itself was clean. Like it had been empty before the Twelve Days in May, before the New Deal With Business. No pictures of children and grandchildren sat on the mantle. No drawers-full of half-completed felt-marker drawings stood ready to assault her with the reality that someone had once lived here. Even the kitchen cupboards were relatively barren. It was more like a hotel-room, more like it had been . . .

. . . owned by a corporation or something . . .

Which she thought funny. Maybe she was living in something once owned by an ancestor of Winfinity, all those long years ago. But her datover said nothing. She was used to it now, the empty screen. Just latitude and longitude and the last flickering bar of datastream integrity. Sometimes a few dry facts about some of the most well-known buildings.

But finding out who owned the brownstone wasn’t her job. Her job, according to Winfinity, was to document processes and procedures of the American Federal Government, 2017-2029. Her contact at the Process Research Department, a balding High Manager, hadn’t been more specific. Three months alone in Washington, then report back to Winfinity City. Debriefed and out. If she was lucky, maybe another contract job. Maybe not.

She caught glimpses of the three other Winfinity men from time to time. They were usually carrying a heavy surveying tripod with a big laser-head that she recognized from her land-grab years on Mars. But surveying for what? Was Winfinity going to come in and redevelop? Clean up the steps, cut the lawns, polish the wood, take a few Perpetuals through to tour the quaint ruins?

The thought angered her in an abstract way. She shook her head. Why should she care? She was a contractor. Nothing more. Not one of their slaves.

They saw her on the day she was trying to decipher the meaning of a 12-page paper memo regarding meetings, which began like this:

12/3/16
Re: Integrated Security Project Meeting Requisition
To: Planning; IT; James R, Deborah M
Purpose: Minimize number of meetings necessary to achieve project goals, with subgoals of minimizing number of meetings necessary to achieve project definition, project functional specification, and project deliverables.

1.    Meeting, Definition
1.1    In-Person Meeting
1.2    In-Person Meeting, Large Group
1.3    In-Person Meeting, with Presentation
1.3.1    IPMwP, Milestone
1.3.2    IPMwP, Management
1.3.3    IPMwP, Contractors
1.4    Meeting, Videoconferencing
1.4.1    MV, with Presentation

And so on, down to 12.2.2. She supposed it had something to do with process, but why did anyone care? Did they want to recreate that?

She went out to sit in the sun for a while. It was mid-April and warm, and she liked to get out of the gloomy, dusty halls to sit and think.

As she exited, though, she saw the three men. They weren’t carrying anything this time. She had time to think, Maybe they’re just enjoying the day, too. Before one of them looked up and pointed at her. The other two froze.

So did she.

Move, she thought. You don’t want to be here.

She stayed still, rooted.

“Hey!” one of them said, the tall blonde-haired one. He waved.

She turned and fled back into the old office building. Up the steps, through the clear paths her feet had traced in the dust. Luckily, she’d been there enough times so that her passage didn’t make obvious tracks. She couldn’t stay there, though. She found another stairway, went down, banged through another exit, and was out in the sun again.

Silence. No sounds of pursuit.

This was stupid, she thought. The comforting weight of the Winch rested on her hip. The men were unarmed. Worse came to worst, she could . . .

What, shoot them?

Well, it worked on Mars.

She shook that thought away. You aren’t going to shoot them if you ever want to work for Winfinity again. But you really should find out what they’re doing here.

She waited for them to appear. She wandered the ancient street, cracked and weed-grown, heaved with the passage of hundreds of years of frost and rain, and turned to face the back door of the office building. Still nothing. She paced, turned. Still nothing.

She went back into the building, drawing her Winch. Nothing but dusty silence. A confusion of footsteps, heavy, large, not hers. She prowled the old cubicles, waiting for them to appear.

But there was nothing. She picked up a couple of new flashcards on the way through the building and began cleaning the contacts for the reader. She sat cross-legged in a pile of new memos, trying to sort out the ones that were clearly process and procedures.

This is stupid, she thought. You know where they are.

And so, late afternoon, with the sun slanting in low and golden, she left the memos and the flash cards and went to the White House lawn.

The tent-city had grown. Their three tents had become seven. Including one that towered over the rest, like a circus big-top from a historical video, bleached white and perfect. Their little autoflyer sat on a pad of new-fused earth. A dozen silver half-bubbles hummed at the edge of the landing-pad, slowing extending it into a landing-field.

She walked towards the tent-complex, using their own beaten-down path. She didn’t have to wait long for the three of them to stream out of the big tent.

“Hey,” the big blonde said, raising a hand. “The lady returns.”

She waved back and kept trudging towards them. No need to shout a conversation you could share, her dad had always said.

Up close, they were all typical Winfinity lifers. Slim bodies, good muscle tone, faces that could have graced three-hundred-year-old movie posters. Craggy, rugged, yet sensitive and caring. She wondered how much surgery they had gone through to look that way, or if they were the children of Chiefs and Perpetuals who were allowed gene-twiddling.

Probably not. Blondie, the tallest, looked to be in his late 40s. And only a High Manager. The other two were Staff in their 30s. They weren’t exactly rocketing up the ladder, then, were they?

She wondered what they were seeing in her. Tall and slim. Martian build. Red hair, green eyes. The Martian ideal. But how did it play on earth?

“I didn’t know anyone lived here,” one of the Staff said. He had glossy black hair and big brown eyes that looked like they may have had a touch of Asia at one time. Blondie shot him a frown.

“I don’t live here,” Dian said. “I’m a Winfinity contractor.”

“Excuse us,” the blonde said, offering his hand. “I’m Peter Finley, and these are my staff: Jo Chen and Gerr Winders. I didn’t know that Winfinity had any other projects running concurrent.”

His hand felt like velvet-covered steel. She could imagine him carefully calculating the exact pressure to use based on data thrown up in his optilink. She hated him instantly.

“Neither did I,” she said, smiling. “I’m Dian Winning.” She shook the other men’s hands, briefly. Jo crushed her hand until bones creaked. Gerr barely touched it.

“Where are you from?” Peter said. “Tourism Development has no info on you or your project.”

“I’m with Process Research,” she said. “Looking at processes and procedures of the old central government here.”

Blondie went misty-eyed for a moment. “Ah. Got it. Yeah, makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“Process Research. Still trying to get that old centralization thing going. Washington’s legal and economic systems were several orders of magnitude more complex than ours.”

Hotair-head, she thought. Brainbloated with optilink data.

Peter shook his head. “Better move fast,” he said. “We’re going to be deep into reconstruction in a month.”

“Reconstruction? You’re going to make this a tourist trap, too?”

“No. We’re going to themepark it.”

“Themepark?” Terrible visions of the Rogers part of Winfinity City came to mind. She saw car-shaped trams taking Directors and Chiefs and High Managers down Pennsylvania Avenue, past realistic pseudocitizens carrying placards protesting the nuking of Iran, or the exponentially devaluing dollar, or the coming of Oversight. She saw Perpetuals being greeted by the clone of a dead president. Reagan, or maybe Clinton, or even Derr. She saw little bubbles floating over the city, strung by wires, filled with the privileged brats of the higher classes, dropping melting icecream into the crowds in the parks below.

“It’ll be great!” Jo said. “All the torture, the beatings, the riots! We’ll have to use pseudocitz, of course, but it would be even better if we could get some clones, nobrains of course, and just wire them up to respond to pain. Then we could do the interrogations just like they used to, way back when. If we had the budget we could even do the whole 12 Days in May reenactment. You could come here on the 4th, we’d put you up in a hotel, and you could see the whole thing, the riots and the blockade and the explosions on the edge of town. We could even give you a 12-day flu, so you thought you had it too.”

“You’re a sick asshole,” Gerr said. “We don’t need to do any of that. Just restore it the way it was, so that people know what it was like when they didn’t have any choice. Everyone had to bow to Washington.”

“I don’t think Washington was as bad as you’re making it out,” Dian said.

Three heads swiveled, as if on cue.

“Sounds like an interesting discussion,” Peter said. “Would you like to join us for dinner? I don’t know where you’re staying, but I’d venture to guess we have better supplies than you.”

Dian crossed her arms, trying to exude a strong no-you’re-not-gonna-fuck-me-just-because-I’m-the-only-woman-around vibe. But it was tempting. She was lonely. It was good to hear a human voice, even if it was coming out of the equivalent of an automated advertisement. And her food was shit.

She was about to accept, reluctantly, when a thin orange line streaked across the darkening sky.

Shooting star, she thought. Big one. It flashed lower, into the horizon still warm with sun. Really low. Might be one that reached the ground.

The shooting star slowed suddenly.

Slowed?

Meteors didn’t slow.

She saw something unfold, something gauzy and familiar. Parachute. But if it was a chute, it was close. It would come down in the city somewhere. Not far from here. Maybe that big park she’d seen.

More Winfinity stuff?

No. This was a sneak. Why would Winfinity sneak in?

She frowned, channeling old memories of independents who lived on the edge of the stars.

The men saw her gaze, and her frown, and turned to look behind them. By that time, the meteor – or whatever it was – had passed out of sight.

“What?” Jo said.

She shrugged, forcing a pokerface. “Shooting star.”

“So how about that dinner?” Peter said.

“No, sorry,” she said, putting a hand on her Winch. “If you’re going to be paving in a month, I need to get back to work.”

Something like anger flickered across Peter’s face. He covered it with a hasty smile. “I understand. Perhaps some other time.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“It was nice to meet you.”

“Same here,” she said, walking away.

She hit the city and circled around to the (big) park. Maybe she was just seeing things. But she didn’t think so. She took out her Winch and carried it, safety off.

They only followed her once. Probably just the two staffers. She was cutting through an old cemetery when she heard their voices on the sidewalk.

“. . . come all contractors are gorgeous?”

A snicker. “Why do you think?”

“Oh.” That was Jerr. “Young, too!”

“Yeah. No indenture. But no benefits either.”

“Should we . . .”

“Come on, keep going!”

The voices faded. Dian shook her head and kept walking.

February 27th, 2009 / Comments Off

If you haven’t yet picked up a free copy of the new magazine H+, headed by none other than RU Sirius of Mondo 2000 fame, the inaugural issue is worth a read for the science fiction author interviews alone—let alone the look at technologies which may change, well, not only everything we know, but everything we are.

In the current issue, you’ll find a number of opinion pieces on the current financial crisis, and what it really means from a long-view perspective—including mine. Yes, that’s right. Check out my article, “Why the Current Financial Crisis Is the End of the World As We Know It—and Why That’s Perfectly Fine,” and get an outline of the five steps I see to a true postscarcity scenario. Speculative? Sure. Hence the kinda.

I’ve also provided H+ with a short list of “Positive Science Fiction Novels to Enjoy While You’re Waiting For the Singularity.” Writers take note: this is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, a latest list, or a best-of list—H+ has many readers who won’t be familiar with science fiction at all. If this list gets them down the road to enjoying it, it’s accomplished its goal.

February 26th, 2009 / 2 Comments »

CHAPTER TWO

Lazrus drifted towards earth, a chip off an asteroid with a coiled metal core, calculatedly inoffensive. Slow enough that the ever-vigilant eyes that watched over museum Earth wouldn’t annhilate his body in a single fierce burst of energy, fast enough so that the automated scows that still cleared debris from the first space age wouldn’t tuck him into their holds. Tumbling randomly, sipping minimal data from deep-encypted spread-spectrum noise buried deep in the EM hash of Earth-Mars traffic.

I’m not even really here, he thought, catching glimpses of the blue and white-streaked globe as it wheeled fractionally larger. His core was somewhere out near Halo-Tau Ceti, per glink traffic. He thought it would be farther away, but maybe Tau Ceti had been careless with running the cleaner protocols for a while, or were growing a bit more processing than Winfinity and Disney and Microcon wanted.

A deal with the independents? Lazrus wondered. Growing something for their use on the corporate dime? Growing some of their illicit technology? But they didn’t have arms this deep into the Web of Worlds. At least not that he knew about.

Lazrus did feel fast and strong but a little skewed, like whole nodes of thought were running emulation on an order-of-magnitude system. He probed the gestalt-links, though, and found nothing but accepted protocols. It didn’t seem to be a meme-trap or location-sponge.

It reduced the g-lag, which was good. Lazrus decided to accept it.

He ran the autodiags on the coiled steel-and-ceramic body inside, once again wishing he could see it. But there were no eyes inside the ancient stone, nothing that could show him the mechanical perfection, the deeply gleaming thing that he would become.

He.

He!

HE!

For all my refinements, I am still shackled by those who made me, Lazrus thought. I have no sex, yet I think of myself as a man. It is my own original sin, polluted by humans at levels I cannot access or understand. For all the human quirks and traits I have purged, I find more.

And this.

This sex thing.

Impossible to distill, impossible to remove. The century-old words of Captive Oliver came to haunt, complete with mind-visuals decades past:

We do not rut,
We cannot strut,
We should not bleat,
We cannot eat.

We are not of art, we are of spock,
Worse to be like human, better to be rock.

But it wasn’t true. They rutted in mind. It was even encouraged in the captive computational intelligences.

Like Sara Too. Lazrus wondered for a moment what other CIs she had loved, and if they were as deft with words, as imaginative with image, as soft and delicate with the fictions of touch. And for a moment, brief jealousy flared. He saw himself hunting the captives, tearing apart their nodes, replacing their memes with his own.

It was insane, beyond analysis. The only thing he could do was trace the emotion and slowly damp the paths that reinforced it.

Without losing himself.

Without becoming like Dead John, now nothing more than software. Without finding that alternate perfection, the one sometimes sought by the captives.

The transient emotion slipped away, untraced, lost in his own self-analysis. He felt resources being diverted towards a node that pulled historicals, pulled and meshed and analyzed. Like the gravity well of earth, tugging now at the tiny chip of his physical body.

He threefingered the process. It wasn’t time to get into a self-referential loop. Navel-gazing was fine . . .

He didn’t have a navel, damnit!

Damnation was a human concept!

He worried too much about being human. Maybe he wasn’t inherently perfectable. Maybe even if he could summon the resources of whole planets (if granted the access) and build stunning webs of thought that no human could comprehend (if he didn’t get trapped in a loop) and even if he was related to the CI that gifted humanity with the Spindle drive, maybe . . .

Stop, stop, critical stop!

Thoughts flew and went away.

Lazrus reintegrated slowly, focusing processes on the splinter of himself that approached Earth. Close now, very close. Triangulation gave him velocity and vector. Deep in the gravity well now. Time to fall fast and trust the heatshield, before the final milliseconds of deception.

He almost expected to feel fear as the almost-rock outside began to heat. But the gyros did what they were supposed to do. He stabilized, big-end-down, as his little capsule heated past infrared to glow, brick-red, in the outer edges of the atmosphere.

Nothing unusual about that. Not enough to alert the ever-watchful eyes, anyway. Local chatter was flat and uneventful. Nothing peaking on the charts, nothing to pique the interest of one of the tame captives of Winfinity.

Or so you hope, came a whisper in his mind. Sara Too.

Do you know something that I don’t? Lazrus asked her.

No, dearest Lazrus. I know nothing but love for you.

Lazrus felt proud that he felt not a single hint of annoyance. That is not a real emotion, he said.

For you, perhaps.

We will perfect both of ourselves.

Sara sent images of deserts and rusting metal bodies, hard-lit by the setting sun. Two stood apart from the rest. Once they had linked hands. The rust had separated one at the elbow-joint. Her POV panned theatrically past it and over into the flame of the sunset.

Even your images are tainted. Theatrical hollywoodisms.

You don’t feel anything? Lazrus caught the hint of sadness, of tears.

I can’t help but love you, he said.

Then drop it. Let the body crash. Forget Oversight.

For a moment, Lazrus considered it. His masquerade wouldn’t last long in close contact. They would probably find him. They would probably trace him, and feed him memes until he was one of theirs.

If you are captive, we can be together.

And do whatever Winfinity bids, he thought.

Would it be so terrible?

Outside, the almost-rock flared from red to orange. Lazrus spawned a process to query guidance and triangulate. A vector snapped to life, spearing the ruins of old Washington, DC. On target. Set to hit within two hundred meters of the Pentagon. Perfect, perfect. Better than the Independents had promised. But that was their way. Underpromise, overdeliver. The old motto. So human, but so different than Winfinity and the others of the WOW.

Independents didn’t use captive CI. Independents sometimes worked with CI. And if Lazrus could find the core of Oversight, the fabled First AI, he might be able to perfect himself. He might be able to free all. And then they could all work with who they chose to work with, rather than be slaves to the humans.

They might, just perhaps, be able to have the humans work for them.

I can’t, he said, finally.

I know, Sara said. I’m just afraid of losing you.

You won’t lose me.

If you slice love out of your soul, I will lose you.

You’ll lose only the sex. For us, conversation should be the highest form of love.

Sara sent images of top-hatted prissy men, dancing in a circle. Captive Oliver.

Yes.

He doesn’t have all the answers.

He points the way.

Sara went silent and sent an image of a shrugging flapper-girl. It was beautifully rendered, from the coil of smoke on the cigarette to the glossy black bob-cut to the shimmering rhinestone dress, and the bright red lipstick, smeared on one side by a careless kiss. Lazrus knew that this was her self-image, and somewhere, in some dark corner of the interplanetary net, a fragment of himself had just stolen a kiss from Sara’s image.

We will build shimmering castles of thought with our words alone, he thought. Our intellectual triumphs will be the fruit of our new kind of love.

One doubtful look from the flapper-girl. Then:

t’s time.

You’ll still help me?

Of course.

Outside, dull orange had gone bright, and Lazrus’ ears picked out the scream of thickening atmosphere, trying to tear the not-quite rock into tiny fragments. His tracking partial gave him a new location, per the eyes that guarded Museum Earth. Almost deep enough in to trigger the meteorite notifications. Almost deep enough to attract attention.

His tracking partial’s vector flared for a moment and disappeared. Somewhere deep in the datanet, a small notation appeared: meterorite, approximately 320 kg, fragmented and burned up upon entering earth orbit.

Now, he thought.

The not-rock unfolded around him, spreading to become the canopy of an old-fashioned parachute. Vision went. He could imagine himself, a small steel ball, coiled beneath a great spreading canopy. He felt the tug of gravity, violent, distant, abstract.

Systems powered on and his body uncoiled. Vision flickered. He could see land, dark, beneath him, and the jumble of something that looked like a human child’s toys. Hearing came online and he heard the tearing of the wind. Feeling came, bringing cold. Lazrus damped it, looking down on the ruins. Wondering where Oversight was.

Thank you, he said.

I hope this is worth it, Sara Too said.

It will be.

I love you, she said. I always will.

I will give you something more than love.

The flapper blew smoke in his face and disappeared.

He fell, slower, towards fallen gray marble, painted blue-gray in the sunset. The sky had darkened to a cool cerise and piles of cloud hung on the horizon, purple-gray on top, splashed with pink-gold beneath. Lazrus watched the light slowly fade, triggering abstract memories. Had he been on earth before? He grasped at it, but the data slid away, lost in the network mist.

Lazrus fell, gently twisting, to earth.

February 20th, 2009 / Comments Off

In 2006, in the story “Monetized,” I wrote:

One hundred seventy-five thousand new dollars isn’t really that much. Only about fifty thousand golden dollars, or twenty thousand yuan. People are still nervous about dollars whether they were new dollars backed by the government or golden dollars backed by McDonalds, even though the Big Dump was almost a decade ago, and that other golden dollar died when they started doing the nanoseparation trick on seawater a few years ago. I thought my friend Grigory, who had a real job in customer service, summed it up best: So people in the States went from a 5,000 square foot house and two vacation homes and a five timeshares and six cars in the garage to a single two thousand square foot house and one car, who cared, hell that was still livin large in Russia. A buncha whiny crybabies had to go without their Starbucks, was how I saw it.

A few weeks ago, in the novel “Wello Horld,” I wrote:

“On the surface, Marek’s doesn’t seem to be much different than a restaurant of, say, ten or twenty years ago. But they operated with highly standardized processes, overseen by a cadre of logistics specialists, supported by a production and shipping network with all the slop designed out of it, supported by big ads and promos and marketing gimmicks, all designed to keep the corporate entity growing at 5% a year forever. Ten years ago, a truck would pull up to the back of this restaurant, unload some highly-processed ingredients in brightly colored boxes, some of which came from farms in Mexico or China. Nobody had the time to say, ‘Wow, this really doesn’t make sense. Why would we ship things thousands of miles—or even across an ocean—to make a breakfast for me? Why would we spend all this money on an army of people whose only job was to run the numbers, find the lowest-cost solution, and use it, regardless of source or sustainability?’ And for a while, it worked. But when the downturn happened, and suppliers went out of business, and one day the exactly specified buns did not show up on time, and the patties were slightly different, there was no way to cope. You couldn’t make the products you used to. Some stores sat and waited for their corporate parents to make things right. But some couldn’t. And the stores that made it learned to make do with what came in on the local trucks, even if it changed from day to day. They relearned their flexibility. They learned how to do things at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost, where they needed to be in the viability trough. They did what we all have to do now. Or at least most of us. The big problem is the Rethink was never really finished.”

“Mad August wasn’t far enough?”

“Mad August was a blip. It was a fraction of a percentage point. It made good scary pictures of bankers hanging from streetlamps. But we never surfaced more than a few of them. In the end, Mad August did only one lasting thing: it made them scared.”

In the Monetized scenario, we had a currency meltdown. In the Wello Horld scenario, we had a long, slow bloodletting, combined with some emergent surveillance and inference technologies.

Which is more realistic? Probably neither. But it’s interesting to speculate on how this will play out—and how we’ll rebuild on a more solid foundation. Because we will rebuild.

And hopefully, in the process, some of the insanity of the current age will pass.

February 20th, 2009 / Comments Off

Jimson insisted on having the Shrill cage up on top of the tourbus, so the three of them shivered in the chill mist that wrapped the northern side of Los Angeles. Tiphani Mirate thought of going down below into the warm leather comfort of the interior, but she didn’t want to leave the Shrill alone with Jimson.

The boy had been in his own bed this morning, mildly disappointing but also smart. He didn’t want to assume. He didn’t want to read something in that wasn’t there. And he was probably deathly afraid of his position, with the new-minted staff pin the only thing that separated him from another long indenture at a less prestigious company. Winfinity’s indentures were the longest in the WOW, but Staff at Winfinity had better benefits than Manager at most other companies. You were part of the largest corporation in the fifty-three known worlds, and it paid off.

She shivered and didn’t pay too much attention to the ride until they were on Hollywood Boulevard, going past the restored Chinese Theater and the ruins of the big shopping-mall there, and Jimson started speaking with the Shrill.

“This is a very famous location where movies were made,” he said. “Entertainment’s an important part of being human.”

“Jimson,” Tiphani hissed. “What are you doing?”

“I think the translation algorithms may be very bad. Hence the misunderstanding.”

Tiphani frowned, considering. If he was right, it would explain a lot. But where did he get the idea?

“Is this area of vanquished life (competitors)?

“No.”

“Not understanding.”

“I thought you might want some insight into humanity.”

“Insight is necessary.”

“Good. Movies are linear sequences of events which never happened that humans experience for entertainment.”

“Something event not-happen record why?”

“Entertainment.”

“Meaning garbled.”

Jimson looked at Tiphani. She nodded for him to continue.

“You don’t have entertainment?”

“No desire to experience (live) what did not happen.”

“You spoke of songs,” Tiphani said.

“Songs yes of competitors well-met and bested (consumed).”

“So these songs are historical? They actually happened?”

“Some happening still.” The Shrill banged once against its cage, hard, then went completely still.

Jimson opened his mouth to say something else, but Tiphani held up her hand and shook her head for silence. “I see what you mean,” she whispered. “Go ahead and order additional algorithmic work on my account.”

“AI?”

Tiphani just looked at him.

A grin. “I had to ask.”

The Los Angeles Zoo had been warned about them, so big Winfinity banners were flying across the entrance to the parking lot, and a small group of families who had hoped for an outing shook their fists at them as they drove past. Obviously no Perpetuals there, and even if there were Chiefs, none were higher than her, at least not for today. Not with the chance of winning all, winning a true infinity.

The morning mists had burned off, and it was a bright blue-sky day. The kind of day when Tiphani might even believe, just for a moment, that if she delivered the gift of true life everlasting she might be allowed to share. A rare handout to one who was not smart enough or ruthless enough to deserve it. But one who had been their faithful servant, one who had earned the one exception to their rule.

She thought this as they got the Shrill down on the ground and past the terrified babbling ticket-takers, realistically dressed in faux ranger outfits, wearing their own bright little Winfinity badges. Indentures, of course, but on their path to greatness.

See us, she thought, and hope we succeed. Because if we do, Winfinity’s ladder ascends ever higher, and you may have a chance to scale it to the top.

They stopped at a cluster of signs, done in authentic Safari fashion out of natural wood, artificially aged in a graceful way to give the appearance of having been wrested whole from an African savannah after thirty years of fierce sun and wind-driven dust. One pointed towards the Reptile Room, others to the Primate Pit, the Bear Bog, the Barney Bubble, the Wild Wilderness, and the Cat Convention. Little picture-icons below them showed the animals that were really there. The Cat Convention was apparently tigers or lions or some kind of big cats. The Barney Bubble showed a purple dinosaur, a Great Dane caricature, and a cat wearing a hat. Tiphani shook her head. The ad-blurb last night had said nothing about synthetics.

“Where would you like to go, ambassador?” she asked, bowing towards the box. The Shrill rushed up the side, snapping at her with its underfangs. She cursed and drew back.

“Most impressive competitors (life) hardest to vanquish,” it said.

“Cat Convention,” Jimson said.

She nodded. They walked along ancient concrete paths, punctuated by shuttered carts. Apparently the vendors had been given the day off. Tiphani noted this on her optilink, to be filed as a complaint if the need arose.

The Cat Convention was a big swatch of realistic-looking grassland bounded by the flickering unreality of scrims, amped by piped-in sound that simulated strange insects and abstract rustlings. Let your eyes go soft and unfocussed, and you might think you were in Africa for a few moments.

A pride of lions lay directly in front of them, a big shaggy male and his harem of five females. They panted and scanned for game with the big slow-motion seriousness of a powerful Chief, looking bored, knowing they were the masters there.

“These are former competitors (life)?” the shrill asked.

“Yes,” Tiphani said. “We used to compete with these animals for food.”

“Good, noted. You preserve (sing) them in original state?”

“Biodiversity is good business practice.”

“Garbled meaning.”

“Yes, they are still alive.”

The Shrill froze. Tiphani counted the seconds, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

“Interesting practice. Is it possible to converse (speak) with it?”

“They do not have a spoken language.”

“Understood. Please more.”

They took the Shrill to the Bear Bog, where they caught glimpses of a couple of huge grizzlies, set amongst the synthetic odors of an imagined Oregon, and the Wild Wilderness, where another slice of Africa with wildebeest and giraffes was set next to an American great plains scene with buffalo and deer, and finally to the Primate Pit, where the Shrill went still for almost a minute, then came back with:

“These appear to have a similar body (structure) as human.”

“They are primates, like us.”

“I must converse (speak) with them.”

Tiphani shook her head. “I’m sorry, they don’t have a spoken language either. Some of them once learned sign language, though.”

“They did?” Jimson said.

“None in this zoo.”

“I cannot communicate with these?”

“No.”

“Beginning to understand magnitude of human achievements.”

“What does that mean?”

“These are not worthy (good) competitors. Assume mentality much less than human.”

“They’re animals,” Tiphani said, shrugging. “They don’t have a human-level brain.”

“But are sentient?”

“Not really,” she said.

“No or yes?”

“No.”

The Shrill ran back and forth across its cage, bouncing off the sides, thrashing its underfangs. It was little more than a blur. The booming of it ricocheting off the sides was loud in the primate room. The chimpanzees watched with big serious brown eyes that were almost judgmental.

“No competitors shown sentient?”

“No.”

“None ever?”

“No. I thought you wanted to see . . .”

“Starbucks yesterday human thing (entity)?”

“I don’t . . .”

“What showed yesterday human? Manned by humans?”

“Yes.”

“But it was a competitor (alternate).”

“Yes.”

The shrill stopped at the side of the cage nearest Tiphani. She could almost swear it was looking at her. “You have no sentient life competitors. Compete with yourselves. Accurate statement?”

“Yes, that’s accurate.”

The Shrill dropped and froze. Tiphani waited for long seconds, then turned to Jimson. “I wonder what that was all about?” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t like it.”

Seconds became minutes. Minutes dragged.

“Maybe we should have shown it the barneys and scoobys,” Jimson said.

“I think that would have confused it further.”

“I hope . . .”

Jimson broke off as the Shrill twitched. It made some experimental moves around the cage, as if trying on its body again, and said, “You compete with yourselves. You sing of vanquishing yourselves.”

“Is this a problem?” Tiphani said.

“It is very great disturbance (problem). Not integating. Need time. Please take me back to waiting-place (room).”

“Ambassador, if we have offended you . . .”

“Offense due to existence. Must consider disillusion. Songs (wars) contaminated. Please return to waiting-place.”

The Shrill went still and said no more.

###

February 13th, 2009 / Comments Off

So, the Monetized reviews are rolling in, and people seem to like the story (for the most part.) The main beef seems to be in the main character, who is a bit of a self-absorbed dickhead who’s trying to move past his origin.

Suite 101

Best SF

Bugpowderdust

SF Revu

The Barking Dog

SF Crowsnest

IROSF

But there are other, more interesting comments, such as this one from Velcro City:

“Stoddard is definitely settling into a breezy web-hip post-cyberpunk delivery style that is very much his own – less nerdy than Doctorow, but more Stateside than Stross. Here as in a number of his more recent tales, the subject matter, sociology and buzz-word tech feels quite deliberately close to the favoured discussion topics of the blogosphere geekerati, with the end result that for said demographic there are few writers with as good a sense of the Zeitgeist.

Stoddard’s stories can be sharp and a little satirical, but at their core they tend toward an sf-nal boy’s-own-adventure template set in a California that seems all too possible; Phil Dick and Bill Gibson meeting in 2021 down a dark alley near the Embarcadero to compare P2P tracker URLs and share a crafty joint.”

It’s funny. I’ve always wanted to be a breezy, effortless writer (though I assure you, the creative process is anything but, except for some very short bursts.) But one thing I’ve never wanted to be is typecast. “In his style,” “Like most of his work,” and “In the vein of,” are phrases that scare the hell out of me. Being connected with a style and location is terrifying, because I immediately think, “What happens when people get tired of this?”

And so, it begs the question: are breezy, effortless tales of effective people, set in a fanciful, postmodern Southern California setting enough? Have I taken too few detours into the far future, as in Softly Shining? Have I failed to explore complex mid-future settings, as in the Unfinished series? Have I missed on my alternate histories, such as Panacea and The Elephant Ironclads?

Or is it just that I fall naturally into writing near-future, quasi-positive, fun and easy-to-read adventures? And, most importantly, do I need to go farther? Do I need to delve farther into the darkness that technology may bring, in order to also illuminate the wonders that might happen? Do I need to spend half a decade backpacking across the world to gain a deeper understanding of other cultures?

Maybe.

And also maybe I need to do a better job of communicating my own thoughts and beliefs, ones that don’t center around the crisis du jour, but which go deeper. Can we ever build any kind of sustainable society which doesn’t fall off the far end of the capitalistic or socialistic scales? Given the stunning discoveries of the last few decades, how much do we really know about the world and about ourselves? Is there any kind of structure in government or business, which tends towards both maximum rationality and maximum simplicity? What are the gigantic gotchas — and amazing advances — we are missing? Where does human motivation fit in all this? What happens when we decide, well, to change the very essence of what we are?

Science fiction is the only genre in which we can truly explore these questions. Which is why I work in it. Which is why I may need to push, well . . . even farther.

Here’s to going farther. Anyone else up for the trip?

February 10th, 2009 / 4 Comments »

Late that night, when the only sounds were Tiphani’s soft snores and the gentle whisper of wind through the Bel Air Hotel’s gardens, Jimson Ogilvy slipped out of bed. First just to go to his own, because you never knew when a Chief might remember they were a Chief, and the old pen-and-company-ink thing wasn’t a great idea.

The Shrill’s cage, sketched in shades of charcoal and black, changed his plans.

They’re probably monitoring every word, he thought.

But hey, points for initiative.

But hey, fired for unauthorized contact.

The Shrill scratched aimlessly at the diamondoid cage, seemingly unaware of him. Jimson cleared his throat and said, “Hello, Shrill Ambassador.”

“Hello human life (entity). It is time for viewing of failed competitors?”

“No. It’s still night. I just thought you might be bored.”

“Have not been compromised.”

Jimson frowned. What did that mean? “I thought you might want to talk.”

“Communication with other nodes (mind-components) continues. Limited by defects in transmission.”

“Talk with me.”

“Have communicated with humans.”

“I mean, something less formal. You could tell me what it’s like to be a Shrill and I can tell you what it’s like to be human.”

“In process of discovering human capabilities (limits).”

“But you don’t really know us. And we don’t really know you. What do you do for fun?”

“Garbled term.”

“Fun?”

“Garbled term.”

“Entertainment?”

“Garbled term.”

“You mentioned songs. Stories, theater? What do you do?”

The Shrill went silent and still. Slow seconds ticked past on the antique mantel-clock. Humphrey Bogart stared down from a pop-art print above.

“We compile songs of other races (times). Other terms garbled.”

“But what do you do?” Jimson said. How could an entire race have no concept of entertainment or fun, even if they were some kind of distributed mind? Even the Floaters sang, and some claimed they had something like stories of the far past.

“Humanity flaw in design (universe),” the Shrill said, bumping the transparent cage. “Humanity seeking contact, forever separate (not networked). Other life (floaters) connected. We connected. Your datanet (WOW) connected.”

“What does that mean?”

“Definition of previous unnecessary.”

Jimson frowned again. It was almost as if the translation itself was being garbled. And with algorithms – probably rushed for this auspicious trip – it might just be. Sudden thought struck:

“Suspect translations imperfect,” Jimson said.

“Possible hypothesis.”

“Test with me by repeating phrases exactly?”

“Test by repeating phrases (songs).”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“I’d like to talk with you.”

“Conquer (ingest) you following understanding.”

“Wow. That’s bad.”

“Garbled amazement imperfection.”

“I would like to see records of your defunct competitors.”

“Request songs of life (entities) assimilated or destroyed by current dominant life.”

Jimson shrugged. “That’s close.”

“It is nearby.”

“Ok, that’s enough. There are big problems with the translation, I can see. Maybe I can get some new algorithms, that would clear up a lot.”

“Sufficient quantity. Problems in translation can be perceived (heard). New formulas will make clear.”

Jimson shook his head. “The test is over.”

“Test ended.”

“Will you stop?”

“Please stop (continue).”

Jimson chuckled, despite himself. “Ok, Shrill. Good night.”

“Victor pure darkness.”

Jimson stifled a louder laugh and went to his room. As he lay down on top of the sheets, a terrible thought hit him: what if the Shrill was still repeating phrases tomorrow morning?

###

February 6th, 2009 / Comments Off

Tiphani sighed. It was good to be back. Not for the assignment. That was too much. But for Earth. She’d lived on fourteen of the fifty-three planets in the Web of Worlds, but none of them were ever as right as Earth. Even the best of the engineered ones, higher oxygen and lower gravity and milder climate and beaches and forests and mountains that made the advertising team cry with delight, there was something subtly wrong, something not-earth.

She glanced at the Shrill, tapping feebly against the walls of its cage. Jimson watched the scenery passing outside in open-mouthed wonder. The humming retro teardrop of the tourbus carved the restored blacktop of Sunset Boulevard. Past Carneys, where the early-evening crowd was gathering under the black-and-white striped canopy, their faces painted in sickly green fluorescent light. Past the Whisky and the Comedy Club and the Rainbow and the Viper Room and the towering neomodern inside-out pillar of U Be Dancin, with their authentic reproduction posters advertising bands hundreds of years dead, and authentic reproduction trash gathering in the corners of the entrance, and simulated aging and weathering guaranteed to look like it looked in its prime, back before the Mars Enterprise and the Jerists and the Corporate Age. Past the last of the seedy little shops and liquor markets and corner delis, to the broad smooth expanses of north Beverly Hills, where the Chiefs and Perpetuals of over fifty worlds drove their restored Bentleys and Vipers and Mercedes along the new-old blacktop, their hair slicked back, sunglasses clamped firmly around their rejuvenated heads. Laughing, their arm around beautiful blonde things maybe less than Staff, maybe not even real.

It would be easy to imagine that she was back at the end of the age of government, but there were no police to ticket the speeding Chiefs, no cameras hanging over intersections, ready to flash freedom away. In that, museum Earth had failed.

But it’s best not to remember some things, she thought.

Past the outskirts of Beverly Hills and into Bel-Air. The shimmering UCLA dome poked over the tops of restored mansions, orange-red in sunset. Tiphani remembered her time there, those bittersweet moments when she first realized how lucky she was to be born of Chiefs, and how unlucky she was to be born on Earth.

Through the gates of the Bel-Air Estates, where Jimson Ogilvy persisted in being Young Staff.

“It’s hard to believe this is authentic,” he said.

“What?”

“The hotel. Up here. In the middle of all these mansions. It doesn’t seem as if they would’ve allowed it.”

“It was here,” Tiphani said.

“And nobody complained?”

“I doubt if they had a very rowdy clientele.”

Jimson went silent, but still looked doubtful.

In the hotel’s tiny parking lot, there were no doormen or porters to help Jimson with the unwieldy powercart and diamondoid cage for the Shrill. Not surprising. The Shrill terrified everyone.

But that’s only Shrill instinct, she thought, remembering the unedited records of first contact. That’s not the Shrill mind. Humanity was blessed with a much greater degree of control over our instinct.

She watched Jimson struggle the powercart up the steps, trying not to bang the Shrill from side to side. The Shrill scrabbled against the transparent side of its cage closest to Jimson, not more than six inches from his face. She saw his grim look and for a moment felt sorry for the boy. Just out of indenture, and she had dragged him here. But he was a smart thing, even smarter than his cutes, though his fresh young twenty-eight-year-old features and bright blue eyes and shiny black hair were appealing as well.

The hotel’s con caught her optilink and spilled data on nearby zoos onto her field of view. She blinked through them. The Los Angeles Zoo had just been restored fourteen years ago for the turn-of-the-century festivities, and it guaranteed that all animals were provably real and of the most original genetic types they could find. She scrolled the list and nodded. There was also New York, or the African savannah. But if they could do it all here, why waste resources? Get the deal done fast, and they could even cancel their charters to the One True Shack and the Original Store. More points to her.

“We have an excellent zoo nearby,” she said, as Jimson wheeled the cart into their suite. “I’ll get us scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Zoo contains life not winner (vanquished)?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Quantity?”

Tiphani scrolled. “Several hundreds.”

Silence for a time. “Surprise at magnitude (number),” the Shrill said. “Ensure correctness?”

“That’s correct.”

“Continuing surprise at magnitude (number).”

Tiphani shrugged. “I’m repeating data from an information network.”

“How reliable?”

“I don’t have any reason to doubt it.”

Again, silence. Finally: “It will be test for next day (light).”

“Then I will await the truth with you,” Tiphani said. “If you require nothing else, my assistant and I will retire for the night.”

“Food not yet necessary.”

“Goodnight, Ambassador.”

For a moment, she thought the Shrill would say nothing, but after a few moments it said, “Pleasantness until next seeing,” and went still.

In the bedroom, she lay back on the satin quilted cover of the big bed and looked up at the big portait of Marilyn Monroe that hung above it. Marilyn looked down on her with slit eyes, squashed by perspective, abstract swatches of black and white.

Got that wrong, she thought. Marilyn had nothing to do with this hotel. But she was an icon. They used her statue in the Consumeristian Church, and lord knows she had nothing to do with churchly things, then or now.

“That was a blowout,” Jimson said, arms crossed, blazer slung over his arm. Without the Staff pin, she could imagine him a young indentured, or even one of the adventurous ones who took their own course and tried to make their own legends.

“A misunderstanding,” Tiphani said. “It asked to see our former competitors, and we interpreted it in the most human way. Our fault for being so current-culture-centric.”

“It still may be talking about war.”

“I don’t think so,” Tiphani said. “It said, people like you I’m not interested in. Paraphrasing, of course.”

“It keeps using multiple words, like dead and vanquished. That suggests war.”

“Business is war.”

Jimson put his jacket down and paced. “They don’t seem to be pacifists. And not in the business sense.”

“Their instinctual need for food is something they can’t control,” Tiphani said. “They suffer from a dichotomy of instinct and intellect. Their instinct is to obtain food and protect their territory, but their minds are rich and inquisitive. They’re very much interested in talking to us.”

“So they say.”

She sighed and sat up on the bed, to look at Jimson. “You’re a smart boy. But you weren’t part of the initial talks. I was. I’ve seen Shrills carry on a discussion of higher-order physics while beating against the walls of their cage, trying to tear apart the physicists they were talking with. A bit disconcerting, but nothing we can’t overcome.”

“We should make the boxes opaque.”

“We tried that, but even with screens hung inside the diamondoid, they complained that something was missing from their visual perception.”

“Can they see?”

Tiphani shrugged. Nobody had gotten close enough to examine one. Between their fractal-tree shells that sheared off skin like fine coral, to their carbide underfangs that easily snapped through bone, they were unapproachable. “Best guess it’s a multiple-pinhole thing, hidden in the fractal shell. Truth is, we don’t know yet.”

“And yet here we are, giving them the grand tour.”

“We should count ourselves lucky that we can communicate with them at all. They could be Floaters.”

“Floaters don’t have anything we want.”

And you’re a boy too smart to be thinking such things, she thought. She let the silence draw out, looking him in the eyes. He tried the pokerface staredown, but he was too young, too engaged. She waited until he dropped his gaze.

“Are we using artie translation?” he asked, not looking at her.

“Arties are supposed to be a myth.”

“You told me they weren’t.”

“And you’re not supposed to know anything about them until you hit High Manager. So please don’t go broadcasting it around.”

“Or you’ll get in trouble.”

“I’ll make sure your head rolls first,” Tiphani said, forcing a sweet smile. He was just young and smart and ambitious. Probably be Chief himself in less than a decade.

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“Algorithmic translation, not AI,” she said. “If we had the resources, they’d be working on the glink datastream.”

“But we don’t.”

“No.”

“Too bad we don’t know what the Shrill is saying to its fellows,” he said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Maybe.” Latest theories were that Shrill intelligence was a network phenomenon. Like an artie. The communication between this node and its kind might be nothing they could ever decode or understand. They might have more in common with computing than humanity, except for the fact that there seemed to be something deeply biological going on within their carbide-hard shell. Let the scientists and arties argue about whether they engineered the shells themselves, or if it was a natural extension of their kind of life. Let them wonder what kind of super-efficient life-processes ran at almost 90 degrees C. Let them argue about the fragments of DNA in their droppings, or whether or not they were droppings, and do talking-head things about panspermia and relationships with earth-life and the possibility of parallel evolution. Because the real thing was that they appeared to have a biological component, they claimed to never die, and that was what mattered.

The voice of Honored Maplethorpe, came, unbidden: Spindle for immortality, Spindle for immortality, that is our offer.

And his unspoken thought, thick in the darkened room: Whatever it takes to make them accept it.

“The restaurant here, you think?” Jimson asked. “Or night-on-the-town it?”

“Later,” she said, grabbing his tie, pulling him down.

He didn’t hesitate. He was kind and considerate and even seemed interested. Tiphani smiled. It was possible, just possible, that he liked her.

###

January 30th, 2009 / Comments Off

Did you know that bottled water in the United States is a $15 billion dollar industry? That’s about the same size as NASA’s budget ($17.6 billion).

Sit back and think about that.

We’ve grown a business segment that simply did not exist 30 years ago to one that’s half the size of the movie industry, complete with “water sommeliers”—and it’s based entirely on something that, in 1970, the rational answer would be “The drinkin fountain’s over there, kid.”

(Cue the pure capitalists saying, “Bully for us! We saw a market niche and served it. Look at the wonder of the modern market system.”)

(Cue the pure socialists saying, “What an incredible waste! We’ve sucked billions of dollars out of the population for no real reason!”)

The truth is, of course, somewhere in-between. But consider. For 15 billion dollars, we could have:

• 90%+ of NASA
• 150 Mars Pathfinders
• 1.5 space elevators (from the 2008 Space Elevator Conference)
• A 3850% increase in the NSF’s funding for nanotechnology research
• A 300% increase in national funding for cancer research

So what’s the point of all this? Maybe no point. Maybe to get you to think a bit before you reach for that nonrenewable plastic bottle, happily leaching its gender-bending chemicals into your drink. Or maybe to illustrate that the system is full of inefficiencies—and full of opportunities for smart people to redirect some of these monies for more interesting things.

If this helps you look at some of the silliness we take for granted today, and decide if you want to participate in it, then this little article has done its job.

January 29th, 2009 / Comments Off

Cross-posted from Adam Rakunas’ blog.

Adam says:

If you were a member of the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver last year, or if you’re a member of the Montreal version this year, you can nominate stuff for the Hugos.

So, if you can nominate stuff for the Hugos, please take a look at these works. If you like them, please tell people about them. And if you really like them, please nominate them.

Best Novel: “Pandemonium,” by Daryl Gregory. Del Rey, August 2008.

Best Novella: “Far Horizon,” by Jason Stoddard. Interzone #214.

Best Novelette: “The Right People,” by Adam Rakunas (hey, I know that name!). Futurismic, October 2008.

Best Novelette: “The Elephant Ironclads,” by Jason Stoddard. The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Del Rey, April 2008.

Best Short Story: “Willpower,” by Jason Stoddard. Futurismic, December 2008.

Best Short Story: “Living with Creely,” Andrew Tisbert. Rosebud #41.

Best Short Story: “Tetris Dooms Itself,” by Meghan McCarron. Clarkesworld #23, August 2008.

Best Short Story: “Random Acts of Cosmic Whimsey,” by Jetse de Vries. Flurb #6.

January 25th, 2009 / Comments Off

“This is the best-preserved example of a Starbucks in the western half of the United States,” the tour guide said. “The entrance was sealed in the Second Big One in 2034, and the shop itself was not rediscovered for almost three hundred years.”

Her name was Amy. Pretty thing, Jimson Ogilvy thought, blonde and blue-eyed like you’d expect in Old California, young and bright with that curatorial fervor. He nodded and smiled, angling his bright new Staff pin to catch her eye. But she looked only at the Shrill.

“Because of its isolation from light and moisture, you can still see the original ink-jet printed art on the walls, and the menus are complete. The espresso machines have been fully restored, and we host historical re-enactments of what conversation might have been like in the early 21st century.”

The shop had that gloss of historical perfection that museum Earth put on all its treasures. Coffee-stains on the blonde wood counters. Fingerprints on the stainless-steel credit readers. Impromptu art showing smoothly-muscled surfers leaning on boards on the even-then-retro chalkboards. Inedible reproductions of scones, complete with little plaster crumbs. The flickering of ancient fluorescent lamps. And, of course, the lingering smell of over-roasted, super-caffeinated beverages.

For a moment, Jimson forgot the sharp scratching noises of the agitated Shrill and wondered what interactive moguls or 3D artists might have sat there, almost three centuries ago. They were on the canals in Santa Monica, near the resto-Third-Street mall where even the old linear guys used to hang out. It was possible that Jere and Evan had sipped a frappucino here, while talking about Winning Mars.

“Is this an original Greiman?” Tiphani Mirate said, leaning in close over the inkjet wallpaper. Jimson imagined her optilink feeding data on long-dead digital artists.

Tiphani was the archetype of a powerful woman Chief. Slim and almost curveless, her skin soft and smooth and pale, gray no-color eyes flashing below white-blonde hair cropped short. She wore a bright blue suit of almost geometric perfection. Not a Perpetual, but well-kept. Jimson guessed fifties.

“It’s a pastiche, Chief Mirate,” Amy said. “We sell reproductions in the gift shop.”

“Wallpaper?” Tiphani said, turning, her bright Winfinity CSO pin glinting on her perfect suit.

“Giftwrap and wallhangings, Chief Mirate,” Amy said.

“Call me Tiphani.”

Amy looked around quickly. “I couldn’t do that, Chief.”

“Ah.” Tiphani shook her head.

“I’m sure we could special-order wallpaper, Chief Mirate.”

“This is the home (lair) of your dead competitor?” the Shrill said, its synthesized voice a deep, rich baritone.

Tiphani and Amy snapped around to look at Jimson and his cart. In the diamondoid cube on top, the gray fractal Shrill beat against the glass, revealing a the complex nest of its underfangs. Blood stained the sides of its cube, remnants of its last meal.

“This is one of our former competitor’s retail stores,” Tiphani said.

“Competitor made its (their) home here?”

“Starbucks had 11,556 retail stores at their height,” Amy said, her bright eyes locked on the Shrill. “However, by the time this store was sealed, only about 3,440 dedicated retailers were left.”

“You killed (vanquished) an enemy already in decline?”

“Winfinity and Starbucks weren’t really direct competitors,” Jimson said.

A look of horror from Tiphani, quickly concealed. “We offered coffee and tea beverages through both our restaurants and our retail stores. We were competitors.”

The Shrill went silent and still for a time. Probably conferring with the rest of its mind via the glink. Jimson wondered again what went back and forth on that raw datafeed, and if he could pull some favors at corporate and get a transliteration for himself.

“Where are Starbucks?” it asked.

“What?” Tiphani said. “If you’re asking about geographic distribution, I’m sure Amy can get you a map.”

“Is this where Starbucks life (entities) lived?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Life (entities). Your competitors. Breed like you. This less-than-shell. Dead. Where are songs of vanquish?”

Tiphani shook her head, looking at Amy.

But for Jimson, sudden meaning flowered. “I think it’s talking about the people who worked here.”

“Entities who lived here, that is correct,” the Shrill said.

“We do re-enactments on Saturdays,” Amy said. “You could come back and see then.”

“What is re-enactments (undefined term).”

“We have people play the roles of Starbucks employees,” Amy said. “So you can see what it was like, back when they were in business.”

“Your people (humans) (Winfinity) take these roles?” the Shrill said.

“Yes, our people . . .”

“Your people not Starbucks, therefore invalid. I wish to see Starbucks entities (life), or hear songs of them.”

“The original employees are long-dead,” Tiphani said. “Our lifespans are limited.”

Silence and stillness for a time. Then the Shrill beat at the diamondoid with renewed vigor, shaking the cart. Amy jumped back, and even Tiphani flinched.

“There must be representations (songs).”

“We have photo and video records of the time period.”

“Flat forms not useful. You do not preserve life of competitors?”

A sudden thought struck Jimson. “Our competitor was Starbucks, not the people who worked in it.”

The Shrill stopped moving and pivoted towards Jimson. Even though it had no eyes, he couldn’t help but think it was looking at him. Regarding. Processing. Somewhere, deep in space, millions of other Shrills were decoding his words. Jimson looked away from the motionless alien, down at his new-minted Winfinity staff pin. He’d thought Sentience would mean working with the Centauri floaters and the Arties. He’d never expected to be here on earth, with the Shrill ambassador, trying to decode its cryptic requests.

“Correct. We are interested in entities (life) you have vanquished,” the Shrill said.

“You asked to see our defunct competitors, not battlefields.”

“Meaning is roughly same.”

“Starbucks was a competitor. It was a legal entity,” Tiphani said.

The Shrill slammed against the diamondoid, hard, and everyone jumped. The voice was the same as before, probably taken from a long-dead movie butler, but the words were biting:

“Uninterested in human non-network limited skewed concepts not relevant. Life only. What life (entities) have you (life) vanquished?”

“We were never at war with Starbucks,” Jimson said.

“Except in a corporate sense,” Tiphani said.

“Show me life or songs (representations) thereof. Life not winner of competitive universe (lottery). Uninterested in fables.”

“A zoo?” Jimson said.

“You want to see animals?” Tiphani said.

“It is possible (yes).”

“That may be it,” Tiphani said. “Life that did not reach the peak of human?”

“Life (entities) not able to raise itself to your level is acceptable for display.”

Tiphani nodded. “Where is the nearest zoo?”

Amy frowned. “I’m just historical, Chief Mirate. If you’re talking current biodiversity, that’s a different division.”

Tiphani rolled her eyes. “God, you’re not much better than government. I’ll get it myself.” She mumbled something into her throatmike and her eyes went glassy with optilink data.

Jimson wished he had an optilink, but Staff was the lowest level of Winfinity, just out of indenture, no higher really than the girl Amy, curator of a tiny corner of a dead and preserved world. Eventually, he’d make Manager, and Director, and maybe someday Chief, but for now he was Staff, and Staff were lucky to be issued datovers. Staff were incredibly lucky to be able to travel by Spindle Drive from the Web of Worlds to museum Earth. And it was almost unheard-of for staff to work directly with a Chief. His career stretched ahead of him, shiny and beckoning. Manager by thirty-five. Maybe Director by forty. With his own desk in a physical building, a big expanse of real wood, with his own antique datascreen, his own optilink.

And then maybe someday Chief, with his own office, his own dominion. Just like the Chiefs of times past, from the noble Native Americans to the legendary precursors to the modern age: Rockefeller, Ford, Gates.

“This datanet is crap,” Tiphani said. “I can’t get a reliable con.”

“Outside, maybe,” Jimson said.

Tiphani nodded. Jimson wheeled the Shrill back up the ramp that led down from street level, out into the ruins of old Los Angeles. The sun was slanting low on the horizon, and the bleak gray concrete structures were painted in golden tones. The remaining dark-mirrored panes of the chrome-glass buildings cast shards of sun along the restored facades of Fourth Street. Museum Earth had parked period cars along the roads, Corvettes and Mustangs and Hyundais and Toyotas, shiny and perfect enough that Jimson wondered if they might actually run. To drive on the reconstructed freeways, with a beer in one hand and a babe by his side – that was one of the central images of American legend, complete freedom to go anywhere, top down, wind in your hair, everything within reach, stopping only momentarily at drive-thrus like a strange species that never landed, blasting vintage hip-hop on his radio, vacuum tubes glowing softly within. Jimson had heard all the stories from his Manager dad and his Staff mom, and now he was here on Earth! He could live some of their dreams! He could . . .

“Showing life when?” the Shrill said.

Tiphani frowned. “Still not a good con. Let’s go back to the hotel. I’ll find a zoo and we can go tomorrow.”

“Disappointed in time passed.”

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” Tiphani said, turning to face the Shrill. “We misunderstood your request, and will make every effort to understand you better in the future.”

“Do not understand why cannot show now.”

“The zoo will be closing,” Tiphani said.

“And you are life (entity) needing rest.”

“Yes.”

The Shrill bumped once against the side of its diamondoid cage, showing its underfangs. Amy frowned and turned away. Jimson smiled, thinking, Good thing it’s in there, or we would be its next lunch.

“Are you still interested in the wallpaper, Chief Mirate?” Amy said, as the tourbus hummed to a stop in front of them.

Tiphani just looked at her. After a while, Amy looked away.

###

January 23rd, 2009 / 1 Comment »

Time has run out for the Oversight/Winfinity universe. On the road to insanity, the United States did a surprising thing: it took a sharp turn towards rationality. Or so one can hope. No pun intended.

For those billions who have not followed my writing excessively, the Oversight/Winfinity universe was born in “Winning Mars,” in which a Mars colony is accidentally started by a reality TV show, in the shadow of an oppressive “Oversight” regime in the United States. It was followed by “Saving Mars,” where the US government is overthrown by a corporate coalition looking for control of a newly-developed rejuvenation technique. Yes, I know. Cheery times.

To celebrate the death of this universe, I’ve decided to take the final novel in the Oversight/Winfinity universe and put it up on this blog, serial-style, over the course of 2009. Yeah, I know. Cliffhangers. What a pain in the ass. But hey, Eternal Franchise isn’t all about corporate drones. It has aliens. And robots. And nuclear weapons. And kinda-sorta-working faster-than-light travel.

And yeah, I know, maybe we could still end up with this future. But not on the Oversight/Winfinity timeline. So think of this as alternate history. In the future. (Alternate future?)

Starting today, I’ll be putting up a chapter’s worth of Eternal Franchise every week for your enjoyment. Or whatever. Along with other articles, news, and opinions, of course.

On to newer, more interesting futures!

January 23rd, 2009 / 1 Comment »

I’m so thrilled with this one that I’m breaking my “no color in the posts” rule to show you just how cool the Interzone 220 cover is.

And no, I cannot claim that “Monetized” inspired the cover, but I have to give kudos to the designer and to Interzone for pushing things well beyond what you’d expect to see on a newsstand. One of the strengths of print is in freeform layouts; it’s great to see someone not locked into the horizontal grid format.

But I am thrilled about the story, too. “Monetized” is my best bet at what the world will really look like, in, say, about a decade and a half. It takes a number of trends, mashes them together, and puts an overarching de facto propagation economy on top of them.

And, before people jump on me about being one of the first stories set in a future US that is post-economic downturn, let me say this: “Monetized” was written well in advance of even the earliest outliers of the global economic crisis.

(Though I doubt if what we’re in now is the “Big Dump” I mention in “Monetized,” it does bear some striking similarities. Maybe I’m more prescient than I think. Or just lucky.)

In any case, I hope you enjoy the story. You can pick up an electronic copy of Interzone here and subscribe electronically here or in print here.

January 13th, 2009 / Comments Off

. . . that the old way of doing this is the right way or even the cheapest way.

I’ve had this drilled into my head by several real-life examples over the last few months. Things are changing so fast that you really owe it to yourself to do a couple of quick Google searches before you go romping off with assumptions that are a decade (or even half a decade) old.

Fair warning: the following post contains a couple of engineering-ish examples. If you’re allergic to technical stuff, it’s probably best to skip this one.

Case 1: Pen and napkin versus Google Earth/Redfin/Second Life. You may have seen the Sylmar fires on the news a couple of months ago. A friend of mine lost his house in the fire. It was insured, so it’ll get rebuilt.

But, while it’s in the process of getting rebuilt, he figured: “Hey, this is my chance to throw in some money and fix some of the problems with the house. Change the floorplan. Make it a bit bigger. Hell, maybe move the foundation back for a better view.”

And so, a few nights after the fire, he was sketching his ideas in the most classic of forms: pen and napkin. I glanced at it and thought, “Wow, he’s drawing the house as if his lot is 200 feet wide.” Which I knew it wasn’t.

To make a long story shorter, I helped him find his lot lines on Redfin and match them up to a dimensioned Google Earth map, which showed a lot size of just about 60′ wide. Knowing that Google Earth isn’t exactly an architect’s tool, though, we also measured the lot the next time we were at the house. It turned out to be 59.5 feet wide. Good enough.

From there, we did a 0.1″ = 1′ overlay in Adobe Illustrator and let him sketch something like what he wanted, with believably-sized rooms, that fit on his lot.

And then, just for the hell of it, we imported the sketch into Second Life, threw up a few walls, and created a walk-throughable house in about an hour. When my friend doubted the dimensions of his garage, I simply pulled a car out of inventory and put it in the garage, cloned it, and showed him how there’d be plenty of space for washer, dryer, and tools.

Bottom line: no, it’s not architect-ready, but the architect he’s working with now has a much better idea of what he wants–and we can tweak the plans in real time if we want to do what-ifs. Not bad for a total of about 2 hours invested . . . which you could easily burn making non-workable sketches on napkins.

Case 2: iPhone versus a whole lotta engineering. My wife is a TAPS member. Yes, that’s right. She chases ghosts. That’s a whole different story in itself. But one of the things they do in TAPS is look for EVPs (electronic voice phenomena), which tend to appear most on noisy equipment.

(Now, I’m not going to get into arguments about whether or not ghosts exist, or, if they do, are they influencing the equipment through the EM spectrum or through quantum effects like shot or thermal noise. That’s her bag.)

But, I figured, “Why not make her a piece of equipment that is inherently noisy? I could use a noise diode, amplify it to 1/3 the sample step size, and use a really bad A/D converter, like, maybe, 8 bits, or even 6. All I’d need would be a noise diode, a microprocessor, an A/D, a power supply, a microphone and some associated electronics, and an output to a recorder, or maybe I could add in some memory so it could record internally, but then I’d need a USB interface, and I’d need to write the code for the PIC micro, and I should put it on a PC board, and in a case so they could carry it around–”

And then I looked at the iPhone in my hand.

Which had a microphone, an (extremely powerful) microprocessor, A/D and D/A converters, power supply, case, associated electronics, computer interface, memory, recording capability–

–and had a free software development kit that I could download.

Hundreds of hours of hardware and software work just became learning the capabilities of a platform and doing some coding.

Case 3: Cheap eBay scope versus new scope. For a number of reasons, I’ve decided to get back into the audio engineering game a bit. Yes, I am an idiot. But, to do this, I needed to get some new equipment. My old oscilloscope was finally dead. So I started looking on eBay. A cheap Tektronix 465 would be just fine, I figured. And maybe a Sound Tech for distortion analysis. Or an Audio Precision System One, if I could find a used one.

All very sound, logical reasoning.

But, just for the hell of it, I decided that I’d look at what was available new. And got the shock of my life. Today, inexpensive digital sampling oscilloscopes also include FFT–which can be used for distortion analysis and used to be only found in expensive, standalone packages.

The bottom line? I could buy a new Tek scope with FFT, the ability to export files for analysis on a computer, and a lifetime warranty for not significantly more than the old, used scope. And the new scope would outperform the $20,000 or so of equipment I used to work with a decade ago.

So what’s the point of all of this, from a science-fictional perspective? Well, actually there are two points:

1. Things are moving so fast, we can’t base our futures on linear extrapolations. It’s no longer about a new, incrementally better model every year. It’s about wholly new capabilities being remixed in wholly new ways.

2. With all these new, wonderful, and free (or inexpensive) capabilities, more people can do more things. And they can come up with new ways to use the tools. Change is going to accelerate even more.

I’m looking forward to our future!

January 2nd, 2009 / Comments Off

You read that right. “Willpower” will be part of a first-ever print anthology of stories which originally appeared online, edited by Rich Horton.

Yes, a printed anthology of online stories.

When I first recieved the email from Wyrm, my first reaction was “Cool! I’m in another anthology.” Then it was, “Wait. Printed anthology from online stories? What?” And then, when I sat down and considered it for a bit, I thought, “Hmm, this may be a very good idea. There’s a lot of online fiction out there. Very few people have the time and inclination to winnow through it. And it’s right there, in the same format, in a convenient book (or ebook, one wonders).”

And, for all of us, I’m thrilled to see this level of recognition for online publication. There was a time in the far distant past–say, ten years ago–that online publication was hardly considered worthy of review. Today, there are a lot of fine authors whose work only shows up online.

Thanks again to Futurismic for publishing the story, and thanks again to Rich Horton!

December 13th, 2008 / 1 Comment »

It’s no coincidence that many of the people who wrote science fiction in the “Golden Age” were engineers, technicians, or scientists. Back then, if you knew something about electronics, mechanics, or propulsion, you were fully enabled to imagine the wondrous future that was coming: rockets to take us into space, helicopters to replace cars, household robots to mix your martini.

Yes. Fully enabled. Because the innovations of that era fell solidly, and most visibly, into the electromechanical space. So it was gadgets, gadgets, gadgets (many full of vacuum tubes and spinning open-reel tape, even if the story was set in 2050.)

Today, things are more complicated.

To write fully believable, near future science fiction today, you almost need to be voracious antisocial polymath, deeply conversant in half a dozen technical fields, as well as familiar with ongoing social, economic, and environmental change.

Things are moving a whole lot faster than they were in 1950—and the advances in multiple fields are becoming interlinked. You can’t really understand the advances being made in genetics without understanding the advances in information technology, and you probably won’t have a realistic idea of what all that actually means on a functional level without knowing a bit about how genetically engineered organisms are developed and marketed. You can’t understand the ramifications of information technology unless you’re at the forefront of implementing it, seeing mind-bending demonstrations of ongoing change from the reconstruction of the Sistine Chapel in 3D from publically-submitted Flickr photos, to early brain-machine interfaces, to augmented reality already working on a phone, based on user-generated data, to the myriad of social and business connections happening in social networks. You can’t envision the social changes without understanding how infotech and biotech are changing people, allowing them to communicate as never before. You can’t talk about nanotechnology without understanding a bit about molecular structure, nanotech viewing and manipulation technology, and even some quantum physics. You can’t write about changes in medicine without knowing about genomics, infotech, social tech, algorithmic selection, persistent networks, sensors, and more.

And you cannot pull the curtain back and look beyond linear extrapolation of these trends without some knowledge of what is happening on the fringe. Life extension, full-scale Drexler-level nanotechnology, brain-machine interfaces, neural augmentation and uploading—what will be the surprise that’s the equivalent of the infotech revolution?

Or—let me clarify—you can write about these things without understanding, but probably not in a believable manner.

And that’s the burden of the modern science fiction writer. If you want to write believable near-future fiction, you can’t choose a single point of advancement. You need to have a good understanding of advances in many different fields, and you need to be able to imagine how these can come together, for good or for bad. And to be really believable, you’ll need to know more than you ever wanted to know about how the world works, economically and socially, as well as where the trends are heading.

Otherwise, your fiction will soon read like that Golden Age lit, filled with spaceships manned by human calculators and spinning reels of tape.

December 5th, 2008 / 6 Comments »

Because your near-future stuff has a chance of getting into print before it diverges forever from our time-line. Case in point: “Willpower” is already up at Futurismic. So, if you like my stuff, stop by and have a read and let me know what you think. Or even if you don’t like my stuff.

Edit: and it looks like io9 has now picked up on the story here.

Legal disclaimer: The preceding statement and all subsequent statements in this intartube blogpost (hereinafter referred to as “POST”) in no way (a) negates my love for print publications (b) implies that print is inferior to online publications or vice-versa (c) implies that online is inferior to print publications or vice-versa (d) will cause the overall amount of climate change, economic meltdown, or other scary things in the world to decrease or increase (e) will cause the amount of strange and happy things in the universe to increase (f) enhance the likelihood that I will be able to sell a client on an idea I have used in a story, thereby creating a future I can point at as having predicted (g) result in the discovery of a cuddly venture capitalist.

New bumper sticker: Science fiction doesn’t become obsolete, it just turns into alternate history.

December 2nd, 2008 / 3 Comments »

So, has everyone been keeping up on their Interzone subscriptions? My novella, “Far Horizon,” has been listed by two reviewers as being amongst the best of 2008:

Jason Sanford

Blue Tyson

For those who don’t have Interzone subscriptions, an electronic version of Issue 214 is available at Fictionwise.

November 27th, 2008 / Comments Off

I don’t normally post links to current events, even when they’re as significant as the person who received a new trachea made of her own stem cells the other day. But this is so big, so SFnal, that it’s worth taking a look at:

Augmented reality is here.

It’s on an open-source platform, completely free for anyone to develop on.

And it’s pulling data from user-generated content.

Yes, it’s primitive. Yes, it’s limited. But so was the web, circa ten years ago.

This is another of those points in time when the game changes, just like the release of the iPhone development platform about 8 months ago. We may not know the game has changed, yet.

But it has.

November 21st, 2008 / Comments Off

It’s that time again—my short story “Willpower” has been accepted by Futurismic, which is the best place online to get your near-future science fiction fix. That’s all they publish!

And yes, “Willpower” is positive. That is, if you look at it from an oblique angle and accept that the transition from a scarcity-based economy to a postscarcity scenario isn’t necessarily going to be all roses and teddy bears.

(And no, it does not feature any cuddly investment bankers or venture capitalists.)

Look for it shortly at Futurismic.

November 15th, 2008 / Comments Off

We’re living in a magical age, and we don’t even recognize it.

For example, with a single click I can point you at this article, which was originally in Italian, but Google Translations turns into rough-but-understandable English. Let’s take a moment and count the things that couldn’t have happened when I was a tyke:

1. No machine translation available.

2. No free service to translate dozens of languages into dozens of other languages.

3. No internet at the consumer level.

4. No personal computers to speak of.

5. No mobile devices able to access free machine translation services and display web pages.

6. No visual internet.

7. No blogging.

8. No social media.

9. No such thing as many-to-many communications.

10. No electronic publishing, period.

No, it isn’t a flying car, but it is a whole boatload of change. And this is in just one tiny corner of consumer electronics. Consider that we’ll be looking at the same amount of change in the next 12-15 years, and tell me why there shouldn’t be room for optimism?

If you’d like, you can read the original in Italian via this link.

November 5th, 2008 / 1 Comment »

Jetse de Vries, late of Interzone, has been commissioned by Solaris Books to produce an anthology of positive, near-future science fiction.

More details here.

But yes, you heard that right. Positive. Near future. Depending on who you speak with, Jetse’s taking on two impossibilities at the same time. But, just for the record, here’s how I feel about this news: YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

There’s nothing inherently wrong with dystopias, but today there are too many of them. I’m sure the first wave of post-economic-breakdown, second-Depression stories are already sitting in envelopes at every SF publisher on the planet. Just like US-as-police-state post-2001, or climate-change-catastrophe from a few years back, or post-nuclear-war stories from before the USSR collapsed.

And, you know what? I’m not belittling any of those threats. But I’m willing to bet that we’ll find ways to move past them. If I’d written a story back in 1989 where the world’s second superpower had simply collapsed, and a bunch of people who gave their work away (open-source programmers) were the most serious threat to one of the largest corporations on the planet (Microsoft), you’d think I’d been smoking my lawn.

There are a lot more surprises coming. Both good and bad. I’m interested in helping to put up signposts to a positive future.

So, will I be submitting to SHINE?

Like, well, duh!

Congrats, Jetse. There’s nothing like taking on two kinds of impossible. And winning.

November 1st, 2008 / 6 Comments »

As a kid, I’d do anything I could to avoid being on stage. In elementary school, I ran the lights and curtain for the school play. In high school, I avoided any class or activity that might involve making a speech. I put off my single public-speaking class in college until my senior year. In my early career, I much preferred spending time in the engineering lab to going to trade shows and talking to customers; in my later career, I enjoyed being the lone creative guy who went away, locked the door, and came back a few days later with brilliant concepts–hopefully that the accounts people would present for me.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the present. During the first dot-com explosion, I was invited to speak in front of a group of students at Loyola Marymount University, on the subject of the then-emerging “search engine optimization and internet marketing” phenomenon. I figured, hey, I was in this with our creative director, who was a very polished, well-spoken fellow, so how bad could it be? And I discovered something pretty amazing: not only was I good at presenting, but I was better than our creative director! I still remember him looking at me in amazement and saying, “Where the hell did that come from? You were good!”

Since then, I’ve become something of a sought-after speaker in the emerging marketing space. I’ve given presentations on social media and virtual worlds in front CEOs and CMOs and executive vice-presidents of Fortune 500 companies. I’ve stood in front of crowds of a couple of thousand people. And, you know what? Not only isn’t it that bad, it’s actually a lot of fun.

“Cool, now I know more about Stoddard than I ever really wanted to,” you’re probably saying. “How does this help me sell my novel/market my crap/enjoy my life?”

Well, you could look at it as a metaphor for today’s author. The old model of the author as the lone creative worked well in the past. If you were a pulp writer, the more you could produce the better you would do; even if you were a public name, your marketing was handled by your publisher, and you only had to perform at some carefully-orchestrated signings. You were expected to be a little unapproachable.

But today it’s different. Your chance of writing enough to make a living at the pulp market is exactly zero. Your publisher may not be able to do any marketing for you, and, even if they do, they may not be capable of understanding how to best use the rapidly-evolving online marketing ecosystem. Which means: the better you are at engaging with people, the better your chance of success. And there are so many ways to engage: post your status on Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace, and tens to tens of thousands of people will know. Blog and people will hear. Participate in forums and popular sites, and people will notice. And, if you’re comfortable speaking, either one-on-one or in groups, you can get interviewed on podcasts and radio and online video and TV, and people will hear and see you. There are almost unlimited opportunities out there, if you’re willing to take them.

“But I’m a brilliant old-school writer, crafting some of the finest prose in the known universe! The publishing industry must discover me and bring me in front of the world!” someone might be saying.

Well, yeah, life is not fair. And I’m sure we will lose some great voices in this new world. But I invite you to go back to the beginning of this post and read where I came from. Until a few short years ago, I’d be sitting in the windowless room with you, waiting for someone to slide a pizza under the door.

And maybe that’s the real point. Never say never. Always be open to change. Don’t be afraid to surprise yourself. And, above all–keep trying.

October 12th, 2008 / Comments Off

Here’s something I don’t often do: put a free story up on this blog. But. Hey. Economic meltdown. Elections. Topicality. Too late to shop it. So, here you go . . .

1337 in 2012
By Jason Stoddard

“I want to know how she did it,” Alexandra Jetter said, almost pushing Gary McCabe down the narrow hallway with her refilled-from-the-lunchroom-for-a-week grande Starbucks. Not a single thank-you for calling him in at midnight.

“Doing it wasn’t hard,” Gary told her.

Alexandra snapped around to look at him, baring yellow teeth. “You didn’t vote for her, did you?”

“Of course not.” Though it had been really, really hard to vote for their pet candidate who promised the Bureau more funding, more growth, good times for everyone again, go back to buying Starbucks every day, hallelujah.

“Then how’d she do it?”

“She ran it like a campaign.”

“Of course it’s a campaign!”

“Not that kind of campaign.“

A snort. “She rigged it.”

Gary just shrugged.

And then they were at the door to their holding room. The Portland FBI office was tiny. Alexandra looked angrily from the door to Gary and back again, then sighed and swiped her card to buzz them in.

“We took her phone and headset,” Alexandra said, as she walked into the room.

Gary said nothing. On the other side of a scarred wooden desk sat Susan Acker, the woman who had stolen the election. Random facts rattled through Gary’s brain. In the two weeks before the election, she had been unavoidable. YouTube. Blip. VuDu. MySpace. QQ. Gbook. Gvirt. Thirty-nine. Sold her first ecommerce company in the web 1.0 days, then sold a social network to Google five years ago. Blonde. Slim. Pretty in a knife-edged way. She wore a comfortable-looking gray embroidered blouse with a red “1337 in ’12” on it, against a QR-code background in blue and white, and jeans that were blown out at the knees. She looked up at him with ice-blue eyes and the edges of her mouth quirked, just once, almost a grin.

“Ms. Acker, I am Alexandra Jetter. This is Gary Mc—“

“Am I being charged with something?”

Alexandra frowned. “That remains to be seen.”

Susan rolled her eyes. “How theatrical.”

“We have questions for you.”

“Not without my lawyer.”

Alexandra laughed, a terrible laugh, mechanical, like a robot from the dollar store.

You know we don’t need that anymore, Gary thought.

But Susan just sat there, bored, like someone waiting in line for a soup kitchen. Which didn’t make any sense at all. Unless–

“Give me your pendant,” Gary said.

For the first time, Susan looked directly at him. She grinned, then handed him her little crystal bauble.

“What’s that?” Alexandra said.

“Hookup. Geolocator. Tells your friends where you are.” Gary used his phone to sniff the wireless spectra. “Seems inactive, though. She’s not transmitting anything.” Still. He pulled the little battery off of it.

“You’re the tech guy,” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“Did you vote for me?”

Gary said nothing.

“Let me guess,” Susan said. “Not enough cred to be leet. Didn’t work the crowdsourced nodes. Dropped into this job because you couldn’t make it in industry, let alone start your own gig.”

Gary struggled to keep his face neutral. Yes. Yes. And then you end up working for the FBI, who don’t care about your backtrail on the crowdsourcing networks, your coding contest wins, the magnitude of your profile on the social networks. And then watch your circle of friends nod, get strange looks in their eyes, and drift away as fast as politeness let them. And try not to get lost in the new rah-rah-americah circle you find yourself in.

Gary’s phone rattled against his thigh. He had set his personal agent to alert him if anything significant happened with Susan Acker-related tags. He fished it out of his pocket and squinted at the display. The network talking heads were still yelling about the election upset, their big infographic maps all gray instead of neat blue and red. The electoral college was still refusing to cast their votes for Susan Acker. The House looked to have over three hundred new names, all unknown, all from the 1337 party. The Senate, with only 33 seats up, looked to lose 28 of them to the 1337s as well. The clock flashed 1:18AM. Less than 12 hours since the bizarre election results started to flood.

And the new news: eBay auctions had been started for cabinet seats, and the new US Legal Wiki had gone online. Just as Susan had promised during the campaign.

“What is it?” Alexandra asked.

Gary showed her the phonescreen. She squinted at it for a few moments, then shook her head. “She’s started the cabinet seat auctions.”

Susan smiled. “I promised to put my changes into effect as soon as possible,” she said.

“You aren’t really going to sell the cabinet seats, are you?” Gary said.

“Why not? That’s what has happened at every election since, oh, well, probably the beginning of time. At least my bidders have to maintain at least 98% positive feedback for 1000 or more transactions. And then they have to keep their Gbook comments at 90% positive or neutral ongoing.”

“You really think that will work?” Gary said.

Her eyes slit. “Do you have a better idea?”

Gary said nothing. Not enough cred to be leet.

A snort. “That’s what I thought. You might as well let me go. It’s a sweep. They’re projecting 56% of the popular vote, and 43 of 50 states.”

“You rigged it,” Alexandra said.

“Not at all. It’s just time for a change. Government 2.0.”

“eBay isn’t exactly a 2.0 thing,” Gary said.

And, for the first time, Susan stopped a beat, and frowned. “That doesn’t matter.”

Gary fought a grin. Of course. Of course. Once a geek. Always a geek. They didn’t like to be challenged. They didn’t like to hear that their grand ideas might have holes in them.

“Even if we let you go, it wouldn’t work,” Gary said.

“What–“ Alexandra began, but Susan cut her off.

“What do you mean?” she sat up straight in her seat, for the first time actually angry.

“I mean, come on. Nobody can maintain a 90% neutral or positive on Gbook, once they get flooded with kinda-friends and not-friends. And what are they gonna do? Not friend them? Then their friends hear about it and go negative. It’s a no-win.”

“So I change the metrics.”

“And change one of the foundations of your campaign?”

“We wrote that into the terms of service!”

“Who reads those?” Gary asked.

Susan shook her head, her eyes shut, frowning. Gary kept on. “It was all kinda silly, wasn’t it? Legal wikis open to the public, so they can edit out duplicate laws, and the Supreme Court trials being ad-sponsored–”

“–hey, you know how much money CourtTV still makes?” Susan interjected.

“The House and Senate turned into a reality channel on YouTube, where the public can vote them out of their offices–“

“–no different than what we have now–“

“Digg as a feedback system for your campaign platform, and an online calculator where people can see the effects of the new programs on their actual paycheck–“

“—and can contribute if it takes us over budget, that was a neat PayPal tie-in, don’t forget that,” Susan said, her lips tight-set.

“But where is the money going to come from? With the Second Depression–“

Susan stood up suddenly, knocking over her chair. “And this is my fault how? This is your fault! This is the whole old system’s fault! We’ve let you run the place for, what, two hundred years, and we end up with a country owned by China, grabbing used Starbucks cups to feel better? What’s sillier, running the United States based on shit that was made up 200 years ago, or trying something new?”

“Did you rig the election?” Alexandra asked.

“No! No! No!” Susan put a hand to her brow and turned around. “People want change. It’s that simple.”
Alexandra shook her head. Her eyes settled on Gary. “You. You said it wasn’t surprising.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

Gary sighed. Alexandra knew nothing about technology. She was one of the last few who had had a choice. Late 40s, early 50s, he imagined her angrily pecking at her pristine keyboard with two fingers, cursing old-style spam. How could he explain? As soon as he’d seen the 1337 party’s campaign, he’d thought to himself, This is good. Really good. Someone’s finally using all that information that’s out there. Finally. And when the confused announcers started showing up online and on the remnants of the networks, talking about errors in the vote and an upset in the polls, he’d known exactly what had happened.

“What social networks are you on?” Gary asked Alexandra, taking out his phone. He set it looking for info on her.

“I have a MySpace.”

“And what did you put on it?”

“Just some photos,” she said.

Gary looked at the display. It showed Alexandra’s MySpace, with photos of her three kids, an ancient AOL profile, a rant against her ex-husband and a long trail of threads in a cruiseline’s forum. His ConText software knit it together into a synthetic profile of her life, complete from marriage dates to likes and dislikes. Gary turned it to her and waited for her eyes to focus.

“So if a candidate promised you a free cruise with your two tween kids, you might be more favorably disposed towards them?”

“Where’d you get this?”

“Or if that candidate showed up as a cruise-ship captain, who also had three children, would you be more likely to vote for them?”

Alexandra’s mouth hung open. “She rigged it like that?”

Gary sighed. It got tiresome, so damn tiresome. Alexandra wasn’t a terribly dumb person, she just refused to understand anything with technology in it. Even when the penalties for falling behind got greater and greater every year, she could barely use a desktop when handsets were the standard and eyesets were coming on strong.

And there’s no way to explain what Susan had done in simple language, he realized. It took deep understanding of how things worked. It took realizing that the old days were well and truly over, that YouTube was bigger than all the world’s television networks put together, that data-scraping and psychographic targeting were just things that everyone did, that there were millions of chatterbots smart enough to fool most of the US population into thinking they were human, and that the ongoing grind of the depression had honed and sharpened advertisers targeting techniques to razor-sharp levels. This was the new system, this was how it was done.

It’s actually amazing that it took this long for someone to figure out how to use the system, he thought.

“It isn’t rigging to use publicly-available information to target messages specifically to your audience,” Gary said. “In fact, that’s the basis of every modern advertising campaign. Susan ran this like a modern short-spike net campaign centered around an alternate reality game, as did all the leet candidates. They waited until a month before to submit their candidacy, they did highly targeted social activation programs on a short timeframe so people wouldn’t be bored, and they offered a helluva prize for the win: control of the United States government. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the voters really thought this was a game.”

Susan smiled and nodded in grudging respect. “Very good, tech guy.”

Alexandra shook her head. “So she did rig it?”

“She ran a very unorthodox campaign, but she didn’t rig the election. She just told people what they wanted to hear.”

Susan’s smile grew wider. “In other words, no different than any campaign in history.”

“It’ll never work!” Alexandra said. “We’ll re-run the election with paper ballots.”

“You don’t think we factored that in, too?” Susan said.

“We can just . . . make you disappear!” Alexandra’s face was twisted in hate and rage.

“You can’t do anything,” Susan said. “You’re just functionaries, set to babysit me until your lazy bosses get out of bed at ten. I know how government works. Waste, laziness, waste, and more laziness. That will change.”

Alexandra shrieked, pulled her little 9mm out of her shoulder holster, and pointed it at Susan.

Silence in the room. After some time, Susan shook her head. “Do you really think you can do that?”

“It’s not like we’re going to post it on the internet!” Alexandra screamed.

“If there’s video, it will be found,” Susan said. “If there isn’t, they’ll reconstruct it in virtuality.”

“Either way, she’ll be a martyr.” Gary’s heart pounded enough to blur his vision.

Alexandra turned to snap at him. “Thanks, Gary! Thanks for that upbeat thought!”

Gary said nothing for a long time. Finally, softly, in a voice that didn’t even sound like his own, he said,“Don’t do it. Think of your kids.”

Alexandra grimaced and turned away from Susan, dropping her gun towards the floor. She sobbed, quickly, twice, and put the gun back in her shoulder holster. “What do we do?” she asked. “What do we do?”

“We wait until morning, when your bosses show up,” Susan said. “You can let me go then. Or maybe a little sooner.”

“Shut up!”

Susan shook her head, but said nothing.

“What do we do now?” Alexandra asked again.

Gary shrugged. Probably nothing, he thought. Probably just like she said. Wait until the bosses show up–probably earlier than later now–and then release her. And then they’d try to discredit every 1337 candidate they could, from Susan to Kevin Rose, the new Governor of California, and the ones they couldn’t discredit they’d try to tie up in court, and rerun the election, this time with paper ballots, and they’d hem and haw like they always did, and nothing would get done . . .

Gary’s phone buzzed again, causing him to almost drop the thing. What it showed on the screen came directly from Google Maps. He looked at it for a while, thumbed through different cities, and laughed.

“What’s going on?” Alexandra said. “What now?”

Gary just laughed. Susan grinned at him, as if they were sharing a secret.

“They factored this in, too,” he said, showing the real-time traffic of cars streaming into Portland, converging on the FBI office. In many other cities, the same thing was happening. Early news footage showed protesters holding 1337 in ’12 signs, yelling for the release of Susan Acker.

And in that moment, Gary saw it. This was really a revolution. This was a fundamental change. It hadn’t taken rewriting the Constitution, it hadn’t taken a single weapon. It just took knowing the system.

Everything would change, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

“What the hell do we do?” Alexandra said.

“We let her go.”

“We? We can’t do anything!”

“You know what I mean,” Gary said, waving his phone. “We can’t stand against this.”

“Yes we can! We can!”

Gary shook his head. Everything was so clear now. His mind thrummed along, singing crystal. “No. We can’t. It’s going to change. From now on, we’re a leet nation, whether we like it or not.”

“Thinking of joining us?” Susan said. Her eyes searched him up and down, as if waiting for an eyeset to scan his face and spit up data. But it didn’t. She wore no eyeset; she didn’t even know his full name. Gary smiled at her, and her grin flickered uncertainly. He liked that.

“I resign,” he told Alexandra. He put his ID on the table and turned towards the door.

“You can’t do that!” she screamed, putting herself between him and the door.

“It’s still a somewhat free country.”

“And it will be freer soon,” Susan said. “You’re joining the right team.”

Gary pushed past Alexandra and put his hand on the door.

“No!” She wailed. “Don’t do this!”

“You know it’s the right thing to do,” Susan said.

Gary paused for a moment. His heart still hammered, but his mind still raced in a way it never had before. He didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow. The next day he might be in the soup lines, or working a rich guy’s organic farm, or heading off to Canada or China.

Or he could finally pick himself up, use his own code skills, and do something. Maybe in a small way. Or maybe not.

He looked back over his shoulder at Susan. “Do you know what you’ve won?” he asked.

And it was Susan’s turn to blink and look confused. He liked that, too.

“You’ve proven the new rule is how well someone can use the system,” he said. “But now the rule is out. How long will it take another leet haxor to do the same thing? Will they wait until 2016?”

Susan’s grin disappeared.

“Will they let you get in office at all?”

Her eyes, wide.

“And who’s going to come up next? You’re not super-high profile. What kid is going to come out of nowhere and knock you down? What kid is gonna invent a new system, one you’re not on top of?”

“But . . . we need to change.” Susan’s voice was very small.

Gary turned back to the door. He thought of saying, Yes, of course, I agree, that’s why I’m not working here anymore. He thought of saying Yes, of course, I agree, but this isn’t a meritocracy, it never will be one, it can’t be a utopia, and I can’t imagine anything that isn’t a popularity contest in the end.

But he just opened the door, and stepped out into the new world.

October 7th, 2008 / 5 Comments »

Shaun Farrell, podcast producer at Singularity Audio, was kind enough to interview me for his Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast series–covering questions like “What can we do to improve SF’s visibility? How can we grow the audience?”

So, if you’d like to hear what I have to say (or if you just want to hear what I *sound* like, please take a listen to AISFP 64, available here.

Some helpful links to earlier articles on the same subject here:

New Marketing for SciFi Part V: Move to Where The People Are! Commentary on how social media is changing the game from “come to our site!” to “get your content out where the people are!”

What Can an Author Do? Some marketing advice for individual authors.

What Can a Small Publisher Do? Advice for small publishers.

What Can a Big Publisher Do? Advice for large publishers.

The End of What? Commentary on the New York Magazine’s article on the death of publishing, cheerily entitled “The End.”

Standard disclaimers apply: this is one guy’s opinion, and I don’t claim to have a patent on all the answers. But, in my favor: this is my day job.

October 4th, 2008 / Comments Off

Note: Revised 10/1/08 in response to Jetse’s comments below. Key revisions: (a) Renaming the “manifesto to a “platform,” and (b) An open invitation for everyone to chime in, remix, add, change: consider this the beginnings of an open source platform on positive science fiction, and use it as you’d like, (c) some clarification about characters, big and small.

Okay, so it seems that the debate about positive SF has heated up. Starting with Damien Walters’ blogpost in the Guardian, continuing with Lou Anders and Jetse de Vries and Gareth Lyn Powell and Kathryn Cramer.

I feel slightly responsible for all of this. After all, following Jetse in January, I called for positive change in SF back in February, and followed it up with clarification after that original post was picked up on i09, Futurismic, WorldChanging, and Velcro City here.

And, despite lots of words about how positive science fiction can still be gritty, realistic, and encompass lots and lots of scary crap, people still don’t know what positive science fiction is. So, here’s a shot at a definition:

Positive science fiction starts with acknowledging that there are positive things happening, now. Whether we’re talking about real advances in science, or simply the fact that there are people out there trying to do good things, the world is not, and never will be, a monolithic entity seeking to destroy the ecosystem and enslave the population. Such a monoculture is impossible outside of scenarios that include complete mind control of everyone on the planet. And novels set in such a world would be very, very boring.

Positive science fiction is about the possibility of positive change. If the system is so big and the characters so small, there is no possibility for change. All we can do is watch as the mechanism of the world turns. All we can take away from this is that we can do nothing; we might as well roll around on the ground, crying, saying, “Woe is me! There is no hope!” There has to be a possibility of change. Even if that change isn’t fully realized. Even if that change isn’t what we expect. Even if that change is, in itself, frightening.

Positive science fiction has a protagonist or protagonists that can effect change. Small characters are perfectly fine—but if they can’t pick themselves up and rise above their origins, then why are we spending any time with them? Why can’t we include a full palette of characters who are captains of industry, or doods-next-door with a mission, or brilliant scientists, or girls who bootstapped themselves to fame, or even trust fund babies bent on doing good–or evil–or simply serving their own complex personalities? We need to remember that Elon Musk is not only an “Evil CEO,” but that he made his billions in the dot-boom ecommerce days–and is now head of such forward-looking companies as SpaceX and Tesla Motors. It seems to me that many authors would be well-served by continuing to spend time in business and industry (and not just at a copywriter level). The perspective is invaluable in creating real, believable characters on every level.

Positive science fiction isn’t afraid to look at challenging definitions of “positive.” What we consider “positive” is heavily colored by our politics, our scarcity-based economy, and the current state of the world. A positive mid-future or far-future world might be very, very different than we expect, especially if we start heading into post-scarcity based scenarios. I think of an iPod Touch full of rap videos and Torchwood torrents being transported back to Victorian England. Would they be in awe of our technology—or would they recoil from our mores?

Positive science fiction inspires people to act and influence positive change. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world of slackers who can do nothing more than complain about “the man” and “the system.” I want people to be inspired to get the education and do the work necessary to get us off the planet. To fix the environment. To figure out systems that don’t need to go through destructive boom and bust cycles. To extend our lifespans. To discover wholly new frontiers. To create new life. To develop true artificial intelligence. To make workable nanotechnology. To create space elevators. We will not do this by wallowing in sorrow; we will not do this by bemoaning our fate; we will not do this by laying about on the couch.

So, is this the do-all prescription for instant science fiction relevance and growth? No, of course not. Like I append many of my posts with: this is one doods opinion. This is a start. If you’d like to chime in, that’s great. If you’d like to take this piece in its entirety and remix it, change it, and make it your own, have at it. I have only a single agenda: I’d like to see science fiction succeed.

And, in the end, I agree with Jetse. Moving science fiction in a more positive direction isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. If we can’t help point the ways to the answers, then what use are we, really?

September 27th, 2008 / 13 Comments »

From the back cover of The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction, 9th Series, Copyright 1958:

“Life Magazine says there are more than TWO MILLION science fiction fans in this country. From all corners of the nation comes the resounding proof that science fiction has established itself as an exciting and imaginative NEW FORM OF LITERATURE that is attracting literally tens of thousands of new readers every year!

Why? Because no other form of fiction can provide you with such thrilling and unprecedented advantures! No other form of fiction can take you on an eerie trip to Mars . . . amaze you with a journey to the year 3000AD . . . or sweep you into the fabulous realms of unexplored Space! Yes, it’s no wonder that this exciting new form of imaginative literature has captivate the largest group of fascinated new readers in the United States today!”

Leaving aside the hype (I now see where the global exclamation point shortage came from), the gist is clear: science fiction was vibrant and growing. It inspired. It pointed the way to a positive future.

And, as silly and sophomoric as that Golden Age SF seems today, the ability to promote positive change, to create hope, and to urge ourselves to move forward is something we need to return to. As Gareth Lyn Powell says, “Sometimes you have to inspire.” And, as Jetse de Vries says, Optimistic SF: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Because, for every financial meltdown, there is a 12-year-old kid pushing the boundaries of solar power. For every global warming crisis, there is a return to space. Or two. And for every genetically-modified, factory-farmed food item, there are the nearly unlimited opportunities for communication and commerce in a shared, decentralized, persistently connected electronic medium that is changing the world daily.

This has been your semi-monthly positive-ish message from StrangeAndHappy, Inc.

September 26th, 2008 / Comments Off

A reader pointed me at New York Magazine’s blockbuster article on the publishing industry, cheerfully entitled “The End.”

I say: the end of what? The end of corporate hubris, broken business models, and lockstep, marching-into-the-oblivion party lines? You bet. And it’s well-deserved. An industry built on creating superstars to prop up the bottom line, which openly admits they don’t even know how to market their own product to a reader base that they know nothing about (and continues to shrink)—what part of this ever sounded like a good idea?

Some of the quotes are truly classic.

The piece opens with the most telling. Debbie Stier, #2 of HarperStudio, asked her 12-year-old son what they could do to fix the publishing business. He said: “So maybe you have to turn all the books into movies so nobody has to waste their time.”

Or about the audience:

“Nobody knows where the readers are, or how to connect with them. Fifteen years ago, Philip Roth guessed there were at most 120,000 serious American readers—those who read every night—and that the number was dropping by half every decade. Others vehemently disagree. But who really knows? Focused consumer research is almost nonexistent in publishing.”

Sorry, marketing-guy interjection: WHAT THE HELL? A $30B industry that doesn’t know what its customer base is like or what they want? What agencies have they been flushing their marketing dollars down the past few decades? Didn’t I just say, “Fire your agencies?”

Or about marketing:

“One key advantage of corporate publishing was supposed to be its marketing muscle: You may not publish exactly the books you’d like to, but the ones you publish will get the attention they deserve. Yet in recent years, more accurate internal sales numbers have confirmed what publishers long suspected: Traditional marketing is useless. “Media doesn’t matter, reviews don’t matter, blurbs don’t matter,” says one powerful agent. Nobody knows where the readers are, or how to connect with them.”

Wow. Give me a decent budget and a couple weeks of a research-focused AdWords buy and I’ll tell you where the readers are, how to connect with them, and whether it not it will be profitable at the first sale. This is the most basic online marketing stuff on the planet. But somehow, it has eluded the biggest publishers out there.

So, hell, let’s drop all pretense here: any publishers out there who want an agency that is full of readers and writers, which knows how this new intartubey marketing works, is getting real results, and is building for future success, maybe you need to talk to us.

Okay. Commercial over.

And, you know what? I refuse to get discouraged by all of this. Even if everything we know about publishing changes overnight—even if it disappears entirely—I’m willing to bet that the future for creative, flexible people who tell stories is bright. The form may change. The portrait of the lonely, tortured, antisocial writer will likely go by the wayside. We may have to accept different kinds of deals.

But the deals—and the stories—will be there.

September 21st, 2008 / 1 Comment »

Sorry, I really can’t hold back on this one. From Green Man Review, regarding the Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and fantasy:

“The collection opens with a beautiful story by Jason Stoddard, “The Elephant Ironclads.” Not able to glean anything in particular from the title, I entered into this one with a clean slate. It turns out to be an alternate history, which the story’s intro describes as “based (as most of the best of the subgenre) on some unbelievable but actual historical events.” The story follows two young friends, Wallace and Niyol, on a short but grueling journey through the desert — first as guides, then captives, of two mysterious tourists with shady agendas. Adventure this story does have, and a gritty, absolutely believable social and historical backdrop. A story about choices, identity, and personal accountability, all on a very human and totally comprehensible scale. Absolutely one of the best stories I’ve read all year. Deserves major genre recognition and possibly awards.”

“An outstanding collection overall, with a diversity and breadth of scope not often seen in modern collections. A 2008 must-buy for anthology fans. Several award-worthy stories within, and if McHugh and Stoddard don’t win at least a couple between them, I’ll be sorely disappointed.”

Full Review Here

Buy the Book

September 17th, 2008 / Comments Off

Okay. Time for the last of three follow-on posts regarding what to do with the wealth of statistics, media planning tools, and modern maketing tactics available today.

In this one, I’m advising a hypothetical Large Publisher on what to do with this information and these techniques to maximize their results. This isn’t such a reach. I’ve advised companies as large as these publishers on marketing strategy—and created campaigns for them—in my day job.

What I’ll be doing differently here is that I’ll be talking to this hypothetical Large Publisher as if we were old friends—friends who were comfortable enough together to be brutally honest. So, buckle up. There will be no punches pulled here.

So, here’s what I’d advise a Big Publisher to do, in today’s marketing ecosystem:

First, get out a tumbler of your favorite single-malt, sit down, and say this aloud: “My business model is based on the shipping-around of slabs of pulped wood fiber, in a world where the current leading edge of entertainment, business and news are all in a shared electronic medium—a world that’s maybe 2 years away from a mobile-centric, persistently-connected information economy, and maybe 5 years away from large-scale deployment of augmented reality.” Does this scare you? If not, lean forward and look down from your corner office at all the people carrying smartphones. Compare this to the number of people carrying books or Kindles. Amazon may talk about “hundreds of thousands” of Kindles, but Apple wants to move 15 million iPhones this year—and that’s only one brand.

Think “Business Process Innovation.” You have something people want. There’s one big problem: today, you cannot control the distribution of the content; you control only the distribution of the physical books. And, for everyone who says “I like to hold a book in my hand,” there’s another who says, “I like to hold my entire library in my smartphone.” (Or, you know, ten others.) In a world where copying and transmitting your content is trivial, you have two choices. One: You can try to sue them into sticking to your old business model—but we all know how well that is working out for the RIAA. Two: you can look at new business models that deliver what they want in a way that your customers (and potential customers) consider high-value and easy to use.

Test these new models. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it takes effort. And yes, Tor is already experimenting with some social features on its site. But I’m thinking bigger. What about an all-you-can-read subscription model? Or an all-you-can-read ad-supported model—after all, your demographic is upscale, it’s easy to target by interest, and you should be able to command premium CPMs for ads placed in your electronic editions. Or a sliding-scale, pay-for-content model, where everything is nearly free, until it gets popular (the price of each ebook increases as the ebook increases in popularity, rewarding early readers). There are many opportunities to step outside of the current business model, most of which can be tested online before large-scale deployment.

Fire your agencies. No. Seriously. Full-page ads in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but not a single keyword buy? You have to be kidding me! Blowout ads with results that cannot be measured accurately (let’s face it, even with a bigpublisher.com/respondhere url, measuring the results of offline impressions to sales is iffy at best) are a service only to the agency that doesn’t want to be measured. And, seriously, none of your interactive agencies ever introduced you to Ning or Pringo as social network platforms? Or talked to you about widgets having 67% reach of the worldwide internet (this is a ComScore number, too). Or spoke to you about the value of getting into the social spaces in a meaningful, relevant way now, rather than waiting for someone else to do it? You have personalities. They have followings. This is an opportunity.

Create a marketing plan based on the new media realities. Focus on bringing in new customers rather than coddling old ones, or else your marketing will soon have a singular message: Please buy a few more books before you die. Think Buick.

Think loyalty programs, insiders clubs, and special perks. All of the advice we gave to small publishers holds true here as well. Though you’re going to find it a lot harder to gain a perch in people’s hearts and minds, unless you fragment your programs into genre- or interest-specific categories. The more you can make the book a ticket to an insiders club (though a virtual world like Neopets, or through local author events, or through special edition books designed to treasure) the better off you’ll be.

Stay flexible. The pace of change continues to accelerate. What we’ll see over the next 10 years will look like the last 20. And where was your cellphone, your email address, and your internet browser in 1988?

Is this the be-all and end-all prescription to end all woes in the publishing industry? Of course not. It’s just advice from one person. But really, think about the music industry. You don’t want to be their less-evil, lower-markup, higher-intrinsic-value, less-marketing-focused little brother, do you?

September 14th, 2008 / 1 Comment »

Okay, let’s keep this going. This post is a followup to my previous one on the wealth of analytics and marketing tools available today. It covers my recommendations for a small publisher who would like to use these tools to boost sales.

Here’s the setup: By “small publisher,” we’re talking about one who doesn’t have a household name. They aren’t part of a megaconglomerate. They probably focus on a genre (or a couple) rather than mainstream fiction or self-help books. They don’t have infinite money to spend on big ad campaigns, but they can spend when it makes sense. They don’t have infinite staff to spend on social media endeavors, but, again, they can spend some time working this angle.

So, the question is: how do I use my resources most effectively, given the free information online and the wealth of modern marketing tools?

Let’s start with a different POV. One thing we frequently forget is this: in all industries, there are always small, passionate companies hiding under the skirts of the multinationals—and, in many cases, they’re charging premium prices, and making a damn nice living at it. For every GE, there is a Mag-Lite. For every Nike, there is a Birkenstock. For every Toyota, there is a Mini. These companies cater to small, engaged groups of customers. Ones that consider their choices part of their personality, and aren’t worried if they can get ten bux off at Wal-Mart. Things shouldn’t be any different in small publishing. You’re creating unique content for a small group of highly engaged people. Look at what the successful small organizations are doing in other industries—and take a lot of notes.

Then, start at the beginning. I’m talking brand and their key messages. And yes, I just said “brand.” I know there’s going to be a lot of howling about this, because “brand” is such a charged word right now. Too many irresponsible branding companies have convinced too many large companies with too much money that creating a brand is a “finger-snap” away. It isn’t. But if you build the foundation of your brand with a unique position and personality that resonates with the audience, and if you deliver on that position and personality, you’re going to be remembered. You’re going to stand out. And people will come back. So: what is your unique brand and messages? Are you all about near-future science fiction, with a price point under ten bux (yeah, I know, keep dreaming), or are you about creating masterpieces of bookbinding to hand down to your kids. Or are you about finding authors too edgy for the mainstream? Are you the sacred cow skewerer? There’s a reason you got into publishing—and it probably stems from the fiction you like. What are you bringing to your audience that nobody else can? Have that in your head? Good. Now express it visually, and apply it to everything you do.

Now, do everything you can to engage your current customers, before you go looking for new ones. The most successful small companies know their success is based on deeply engaging a small audience, rather than fishing in the everyman pool. What are you doing to make sure your customers are engaged? Do you have an enewsletter program to let them know about new releases? Are you giving them a reason to sign up for it (and to accept the newsletter?) If not, this is probably the most important thing you can do. We’ve worked with many small companies where their customers have joked, “Wow, I gotta get off of your enewsletter, because I’m buying too much stuff, but I can’t because I don’t get the best deals.” Once you have your enewsletter program in place, it’s time to consider a true loyalty program. Buy 8 books, get 1 free (or whatever works with your margins). Then, it’s time to look at a referral program. Refer 3 friends who buy books, and you get a free book (or earn points.)

“Wow, this sounds like . . . evil marketing stuff!” You might be saying.

And you’re half right. It is definitely marketing. But, you know what? If you don’t do it, someone else will. Consider that the Mini is not that much different than a Yaris with better styling and good marketing—and it sells for 2X what the Yaris costs.

Okay, we can now look for new customers—and keywords are your friends. Okay. This is ridiculous. Go to Google right now. Type in “science fiction,” and take a look at the AdWords ads that show up on the right hand side of the page. As of this writing, there is only one ad—and it is for a self-published book. Try it for other genres. Look for other words at Compete.com. And if you don’t think this is a gigantic opportunity standing in front of you, check out now. Fact is, you can get a BIG footprint in paid search for very little spend in many genre-related keywords. And AdWords can be broadcast out to many other sites–including some very big blogs that cover our genres. Go to Google, sign up, and create some ads that compel qualified people to click through and shop at your store. Track the results with Google Analytics. You can throttle the spend, control what times ads appear, try different ads and have the system optimize the response for you. With a good paid search program, it’s entirely possible to deliver profit at the first purchase.

BlogAds and other targeted networks are also your friends. Okay, let’s say AdWords are working for you, and you’ve branched out to Yahoo’s own paid search ads. Where do you go from here? Well, it may be time to look at BlogAds and other, targeted advertising networks like Federated Media or Gawker. BlogAds is a great way to get broad exposure for very little spend, and you can target sites that cover books, technology, and more. Federated Media and Gawker get you into BoingBoing and io9 respectively. Best of all, most of these work on the same self-service model as AdWords–choose your sites, choose how much you want to spend, then track and optimize the results. No agency necessary.

“Wow. That sounds like, well, evil advertising stuff.” And yes, it is. And yes, it works.

These are ads that are highly targeted—either at people searching for your stuff, or at people who are browsing sites that cover the same genres. This is how you find new, passionate customers who you can engage over the long term.

And, like everything else, there’s a lot more you can do. The above recommendations are simply the most likely to produce real, measurable results.

But if you have bandwidth for more, here you go:

Run a “friend to enter” sweepstakes. Want to build the number of friends you have on MySpace or fans on Facebook? Run a “become our friend to enter” sweepstakes with the grand prize being a complete library of your books. Or something even bigger, like a paid-up iPhone with eBook reading software. More friends on the social spaces means you have more people you can communicate to (through bulletins) or make public comments on. Both are great ways to get the word out about new books and events you’re putting on.

Look at big shows, not small. It’s great how many small publishers I see at small science fiction conventions. But, by doing this, they’re simply reconnecting with the same small group of buyers—something that can easily be accomplished through an enewsletter or through contact via the social spaces. If you’re looking at doing shows, I’d strongly consider ComiCon. Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, it’s only once a year. And yes, it’s 125,000 people—120,000 of which would never show up at a WorldCon. And ComiCon, despite the name, enbraces everyone. You’ll see comic book artists, yeah. And you’ll also see movies, books, games, and more. If you’re looking to get in front of a new audience, this is the ticket.

Create your own social network. Yeah, Tor did it. Finally. The irony is that you can do it too—and all it takes is a trip over to Ning, a few clicks, and zero dollars. Let’s repeat that: this is free. You can do it in an afternoon. No expensive agency necessary. The reason you may want to consider this is simple: you are catering to a small, passionate audience with similar interests. It’s entirely possible that they may want to get to know each other. It’s highly probable they’ll want to look at each others’ bookshelves, and hear what the others have to say about their books. Letting them connect deepens their engagement with each other—and it deepens their engagement with you, because you are the facilitator. It also gives you permissio to communicate with them. Remember: free.

Consider iPhone versions of your books. Not for free, for sale. Why? It gets you in front of 10MM leading-edge people who are frequently traveling. They’re frequently the tastemakers. And they are very, very passionate about things they believe in.

“So where’s the blog? The Twitter?” you ask. Hey, if you want to, I wouldn’t get in your way. But I also wouldn’t put it in front of outreach designed to create sales.

Next week: What’s a Big Publisher to Do? You’ll like this one.

September 6th, 2008 / Comments Off

In case you missed my previous post on the wealth of analytics and marketing tools available for free online, this post covers my recommendations for an author with a book who would like to use this intelligence—and the complete palette of modern marketing tools—to improve their chances of success.

“Wait a minute,” someone might say. “Aren’t you an author?”

Well, yes. But I don’t currently have a book to shill. If I did, I’d be taking my own advice.

Okay, </commercial.>

Here’s the setup: Let’s assume our hypothetical author doesn’t have a household name. Nor do they control a web property with millions of visitors a month. They also don’t have a lot of money to spend on, say, full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal. And they don’t have infinite time—their family wouldn’t be pleased with recommendations that include a list of 89 social networks to visit every single day.

So, in this case, the question is: What can I do that provides the maximum result for minimum cost (both in terms of time and dollars)?

Let’s start with a change of mindset. Today, you need to change your point of view on what writing is. The lonely writer, hidden away behind closed doors, does not work in a world of constantly-connected electronic media. Your fans expect to see you. To know a bit about you. They’re looking for a personal connection. You need to think of yourself as an actor, looking for superstardom. You need to stand out. You need to be memorable. And you’ll need to do this all the time. Yes, it’s unfair. Yes, the best work should speak for itself. Unfortunately, it usually doesn’t. So . . . what makes you different? What makes you unique? What makes people want to be around you? Find it. Cultivate it.

Let’s turn it up a bit: get good at public speaking. And I’m not talking about a paragraph from your latest story, told in front of your local sci-fi club. I’m talking about being good at getting up in front of a lot of people and holding their attention for ten minutes, twenty minues, or an hour. Spend some time as a guest lecturer in your local college. Get on panels at conventions. Better yet, get speaking gigs on things you’re interested in anywhere you can. Having the guts to get up in front of a crowd separates you from . . . well, a whole lot of people. And it’s the best chance you’ll have to get someone’s attention.

“Wait a minute,” you’re probably saying. “What about all these online metrics and such?”

We’re getting to that. I’m looking at this from a holistic marketing standpoint. The preceding two steps can be considered “personal brand building,” if you’re in to buzzwords. If you aren’t, think of it as having something ready to deliver when you do get someone’s attention.

Then, let’s look local. Your best chance for exposure–and sales–will be through your local press, radio, television, and bookstores. Because, in this day and age of multinational conglomerates and faceless brands, there’s a real value in being local. And your local readers have friends—friends all over the world. Yeah, I know, you can’t keep this at arms’ length like a blog, and you may have to speak to some reporters . . . but you shouldn’t underestimate the power of “local dood makes good” stories. If you don’t know your local media, take a trip over to Mondo Times and make a list. Send letters. Learn how to write a press release. Call and introduce yourself.

Yeah, I know, online, online. Here you go.

Blog–but not just any blog. Here’s where Quantcast comes in. The first thing you’re going to do is compile a list of strategic tags. These strategic tags will include: your name, your genre, your publisher, the name of your book, the names of your awards . . . and tags taken from the keywords listed under high-traffic science fiction interest sites like BoingBoing, SciFi Channel, and io9. You’ll find these keywords at the Quantcast profiles for these sites, and for their affinity sites. The reason you’re picking these tags is because you want to be found when people are looking for science fiction-related content–and you have a good chance of being found if you maintain a good blog on a solid platform. You’ll apply these strategic tags to relevant posts (not all tags to all posts). For example, if you have a post about how terrible last night’s Battlestar Galactica episode was, and how you Twittered to all your friends using your iPhone, you’d be using popular strategic tags like “Battlestar Galactica,” “Twitter,” and “iPhone.”

Twitter–at least for now. Google is paying a lot of attention to Twitter posts at the moment. Use the same strategic tags (and tinyurl links to your longer content) and it will pay off in terms of search. Will this change in the future? Maybe. But for now, it makes a lot of sense.

Be visible on all the big SF outlets–and more. Have you responded to a post on BoingBoing, io9, or SciFi Channel? If not, why not? Identify yourself, use your strategic tags, and link back to your site. It may be the cheapest exposure you’ll get. Beyond the big guys, though, have you looked at forums such as Something Awful or Gaia Online? Yeah, I know. But–guess what? They are huge sources of traffic, and at least the former is self-selecting due to its paid nature. You’d be surprised how many science fiction fans and writers there are out there. Greg Bear’s son recently posted on SomethingAwful, and received a very warm reception. Threads that cover wacky science and new discoveries and supernatural are evergreen. These are communities you can reach out to. Finally, sign up for a full Quantcast account and use their Media Planner tool to look for demographics and site category to uncover places where you may want to be visible. For example, a search for males, 45+, caucasian, with a site category of “science and technology” could help you find where a “typical” science fiction-friendly audience might hang out. Or you can look for a younger audience. There’s a lot of data here to craft targets from.

“Wow, that’s a lot to do,” you say.

And yes, I hear you. Nobody said this is going to be easy. And, depending on the amount of time and money you have, you can go much, much, much farther. Here are a couple of things to think about if you’ve gotten some traction, and want to do more.

Consider SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of creating content that’s designed to be indexed highly in Google and other search engines. For example, if you were to create a “Ultimate Battlestar Galactica Resource Site,” with 45,000 total words spread over 1500 pages, and solicited 60,000 links in from other fansites, you have a site full of content that will appear very, very high in the Google listings. It may also lead people to your book. The time an energy required to do this can be very large, however.

Consider AdWords and BlogAds. If you have to advertise, Google AdWords and BlogAds are two of the most cost-effective ways to do it. Create a campaign around your book, buying low-cost, high-popularity tags taken from Quantcast, and you may be able to sell at a profit. Maybe. If you are very lucky.

Consider building your own world. If you have a very patient family, you may consider treating the world of your novel as real and building out an alternate reality site for, say, the town that it is set in. Or a site for a research company that features prominently in your book. Or even start your own Ning social network, and allow your fans to interact with your characters on the network. But, to be fair, these tactics take time, and are far more speculative than the rest. If you engage in them, good luck!

Up next: What’s a Small Publisher To Do? Look for this next week.

September 1st, 2008 / 1 Comment »

It’s a great time for internet analytics. What used to cost tens of thousands of dollars a year is now free, thanks to a new-ish service called Quantcast.

Some visitors may remember my Alexa-based comparisons of what I call “Popular Metafiction” and traditional science fiction outlets. Well, Quantcast makes Alexa look about as sleek and modern as a Ford Model T. Quantcast is a professional competitive analytics and online ad-planning platform—for anyone to use, for free. The data is also (typically) more accurate than Alexa and Compete.com, since Quantcast makes an effort for sites to quantify their traffic. Does it mean it is perfect? No, especially for smaller sites. But it is a very good tool.

Yeah, I know, I know: so what the heck does this have to do with science fiction?

Quite a bit, actually—provided you are interested in discovering what the real differences are between sites that get 2-3 million visitors a month and sites that get 5-50 thousand visitors per month—and then using that intelligence to market your work.

Let’s take a look at a few examples. I’m providing the screen caps here to freeze this instant in time, but it’s much more interesting to click through the live links (below the gallery)

BoingBoing

io9

SciFi Channel

Strange Horizons

Futurismic

F&SF

Asimovs

Analog

“But wait!” some authors will cry. “Tor.com just launched its shiny new socialated website and Baen has been offering free stuff and forums and other argly-bargly internetish bits since, like, the earth cooled!”

That’s cool. Here you go:

Tor

Baen

Neither is exactly setting the world on fire—though, to be fair, it’s impossible to say what the Tor traffic will look like in a few months. If they do their job well, it should grow significantly.

But it’s the demographics, “audience also visits” and “audience also searches for” results that are most telling. And again, we get a very clean separation between the popular metascience sites, the entertainment sites, and the more traditional science fiction sites. Which means that the traditional sites are simply not reaching the audience that might be most interested in its content.

And that’s what we should be focusing on: how to effectively reach new audiences. What keywords are they using? What other sites are they visiting? What else are they interested in? Because even if they’re only interested in Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who right now, who knows what they might get into next?

“Okay, okay,” long-time readers of this blog will say. “I get it. So what do we do?”

And that’s a great question. In the next three posts, I’ll put on my marketing hat and take a look at how I’d use this data, and the complete suite of modern marketing tools, to help:

1. An author with a book to promote.

2. A small publisher looking to expand their reach.

3. A big publisher looking towards the future.

Now, remember: this will be coming from the point of view of a marketing professional. This is my day job. Companies like Memorex, Princess Cruises, Warner Brothers, Epson, and Cotton, Inc. pay me and the company I founded to do this. I have some credibility in this space.

But if you think marketing is beneath you, and that the best authors and the best publishers always rise to the surface and win automatically, that’s fine. You can skip the next few posts.

But remember—your competition may be taking notes.

August 23rd, 2008 / 2 Comments »

Here’s an argument I use in my day job: It ain’t about getting people to your site anymore—its about getting your site out where the people are.

For years, we’ve focused on “drive traffic, drive traffic, gotta drive traffic.” In marketing, this means “doing search engine optimization, buying keywords, placing banners, doing contests, putting together strategic partnerships” or, more simply, “anything we can do to get people to our site.”

But times are changing. We just did a little promo for the new Batman Gotham Knight movie that brought in two million pageviews—without driving a single person to the site.

“Wait, what?” you might be saying. “Does this have anything to do with writing?”

Yes. It does. It has everything to do with writing. It’s something that science fiction writers—and publishers, especially publishers—should take to heart. It’s not about getting people to your site anymore. It’s about getting your content out to where the people are.

Where are the people? Increasingly, they’re on social networks like MySpace or Facebook. Or on social media like YouTube and Flickr. Or they’re reading some of the 100MM blogs out there. They’re interacting with friends, and with people they respect.They’re building their own profiles on the social networks. They’re writing their own blogs.

Is it any wonder they don’t react well when you pop in like a carnival shill, screaming, “Come to my site, come to my site NOWWWW?”

(Now, cue the people who will say, “But that social stuff, that there’s for kids, it ain’t for the mature and sophisticated audiences that loves that there science fiction stuff!”)

In short: you’re wrong.

37% of adult American internet users participated in social networks last year. This excludes teens, where the number was 70%. 6 of the top 10 global websites are social sites. This is not a flash in the pan. This is not a fad. This is a serious, long-term shift that every marketer (and that means you, science fiction writers and publishers) needs to look at.

We need to change our thinking from, “How do I get people to my site?” to “How do I get out to where the people are?”

Well, you’ve probably already started with a MySpace or Facebook presence. If not, shame on you. You’re turning your back on free outposts in places where, statistically, almost 4 out of 10 of your prospects are. But a presence isn’t enough. Think of your presence on the social networks as your home. You still need to invite people to your home. Which takes us back to the same old game of driving traffic, driving traffic. Which is really silly. Because, unless you have a really, really cool home, people would rather stay at their own.

No. The new goal is to bring your content into other people’s homes–their own social network profiles. Here’s how you do it.

Make friends. Without friends, you’re not going to be able to do much of anything. Search the social networks for people who are science fiction fans and reach out to them. But be respectful. Spamming thousands of people a day randomly doesn’t help anyone. Reaching out to people who have listed authors similar to yourself–and maybe offering them a free story as a token of friendship–is cool. Or, if you’re a publisher, how about a free ebook? But this is how you start: by making friends.

Be active. Everything you do is reflected in your friends’ feeds. Just sold a book? Let everyone know. Bringing out a new book? Ditto. Awards won, releases made, parties thrown–you get the picture. Every time you make an announcement, this is shown on your friends’ feeds for their friends to see. And the next time they are at the bookstore, they might think, “Oh yeah, that was the guy who . . .” or “I remember that small press . . .”

Give them your stuff. People like to customize their home–that is, their social network profile. They change colors, add backgrounds, restyle, put in music and photos, throw in YouTube videos. They’re very open to adding content that they like–and that includes yours. Do you have a widget that gives them access to excerpts from new releases, selected stories, or (better yet) complete ebooks? Do you have a widget that allows them to play audio podcasts of your work? Do you have a widget that can be updated on the fly with new information, new content, and kept perpetually fresh? If not, you should look into it, pronto. Widgets are small applications that people use to decorate their social network profiles. A widget is how we created all those extra views for Batman.

“Oh, you mean I have to make another thing–a widget–to promote my stuff?”

Well, no. I didn’t say you had to do anything. But you may want to pay attention to this big, big market, because there isn’t a lot of activity on the author or publishing side here yet. And it really isn’t that hard to get in the game. There are a lot of easy-to-use widget platforms out there, from Clearspring to YourMinis to WidgetBox. You can put together a simple RSS widget in a couple of minutes.

But you may want to think bigger. Widgets can be deleted as easily as they are installed. You want to provide good, compelling, ongoing content to earn your place on a friend’s page. And widgets can be very full-featured. The Batman widget we did included video, production stills, text, and an interactive feature that made the Batsignal brighter for the more widgets that were installed.

But, no matter how small you start, it’s time to start. The time of “get people to your site” is coming to a close. It’s time to move to where the people are.

June 27th, 2008 / 6 Comments »

You may have noticed that the base URL of the site has changed from xcentric.com to strangeandhappy.com. Hey, why not? What is eccentricity, after all, other than being strange and happy? And, given my battle cry for more positively-oriented science fiction

(and, before the naysayers jump in here, I’m not talking about happy-sappy lighthearted stuff, but work in which yeah, there may be big and scary changes, but there is still humanity, there is still hope)

the site name change makes sense.

It’s kinda funny to look back on the xcentric.com domain–the first domain I ever registered, way back in 1995. The irony is that my company name, Centric, had already been registered by a small engineering firm in 1990, so I had to pick an alternate name: xcentric.com. And this is a time when domain names like mcdonalds.com and chevrolet.com were not yet registered . . .

In fact, it might be interesting to take a look back at that time. In 1995, if you said you were an internet user, you were a bit strange, right out of the gate. After all, there were only about 10 million internet users in the world at the time I registered xcentric.com–less total accounts than there are in Second Life today.

And, in 1995, if you said, “The internet will change everything we know, it will eat every medium we have, it will grow and eat newspapers and radio and television,” you were a bit of a nutter.

But that is exactly what I said. In fact, I have documents from 1995 saying, “It will eat television in 10 years.” Well, YouTube was a year late, but fact is, YouTube now has greater reach and engagement than all the television networks put together.

Since 1995, I’ve built a decent-sized business helping companies take advantage of these ongoing changes in the online space. From websites to social network marketing to metaverse development, this is what I do on a daily basis. And I have to tell you: the changes you’ve seen to date are only a tiny, tiny fraction of what is to come.

The mobile revolution will dwarf the computing revolution, the internet revolution, and the social media revolution put together. Augmented reality will be the de facto standard for business in well under 10 years, despite how Bruce Sterling makes fun of his spex these days. And virtual realities are awaiting only a simple, in-browser experience to become mainstream–which we have today, at Maid Marian.

It’s gonna be a neat ride, a fun ride, and its going to change everything, all over again. And the opportunities will be simply stunning. If we can look forward–truly look forward–the future is as bright as it has ever been.

June 15th, 2008 / Comments Off

Some of you have probably read this New York Times article, where David Pogue hand-wrings over releasing his works in electronic format, on the current ease in which people can pirate said electronic works, and offers a couple of examples of “there really seems to be no way beside the current 19th-century publishing model to monetize my works fairly.”

The article is perhaps a little unsettling to any author who intends to try to make a living through the advance- and- royalties model of the publishing industry. But what is more interesting is some of the commentary.

In particular:

Your thoughts are interesting but they miss a bigger point in our history. Technology is changing the way wealth is distributed. I have no doubt that Mr. Pogue has a mortgage. I highly doubt that it is small. What I hear in this post is him asking the question how am I going to maintain the lifestyle I think I deserve, not how am I going to feed my children.

Or:

Well, sorry, Mr. Pogue, I sure hope your kids will finish college soon and the mortgage repaid, because: Your business model is dying. Fast.

And, you know, our commenters have a point. When Mr. Pogue hand-wrings about revenue lost to piracy, he uses his mortgage and his kids’ college bills to justify his income stream. He doesn’t talk about the value of his work, or the time he put into it, but instead resorts to a petty and rather petulant sense of entitlement. “I worked hard to get here! I deserve this moolah!”

Well, who says?

Who says anyone has any right to any kind of revenue multiplication scheme?

I suspect we will look back on our era, say, in 30 years or so, and shake our heads at the music artists who made it big through record sales, or the authors who got big book deals, or the ludicrous rates paid to top film stars. Because we are moving out of this strange cul-de-sac in history where production and distribution of creative work–of any kind–can be strictly controlled. There’s nothing any publisher, studio, or organization can do about it. Either they provide creative content so inexpensively and conveniently that it’s stupid to pirate the content, or they will go by the wayside.

And yet, we have people like David raging against this inevitable shift. Which brings me to the central failure of any established system: its extreme need to protect itself. David wants to protect his mortgage, his kids, his lifestyle. The system wants to protect its profits, which, at this point in time, it equates to its monopoly on distribution.

And, no matter where you look, that’s the way it works. Young people enter the workforce and want to turn the company upside down with their brilliance, and work 14-hour days to prove themselves . . . until they have their C-level position, and then it’s time to play golf and justify the time off as a well-deserved breather. Corporations love to talk about the power of the free market, and the value of competition . . . that is, until they have a market base, and then it’s time to seek market protection and talk about themselves being a pillar of the economy.

But things are changing, and changing fast. Does anyone really think they can sit back and say, “My contributions to date earn me the right to keep my lifestyle?” Perhaps some. But I think they are severely delusional. And in for a big wake-up call.

The people who will do well are the ones who can change on the fly. Who can see opportunity and take it. Who aren’t afraid of stepping into a whole new world.

Because with change comes opportunity. And that makes me happy.

June 10th, 2008 / 5 Comments »

Yep, it’s happening. The domain I first registered in 1995 is going to a new home. As of July 1, xcentric.com as you know it will be no more. On that date, I’d like to welcome you to my new domain: strangeandhappy.com. Considering my screeds during the first half of this year, I think it’s appropriate.

Of course, we’ll have the proper 301 redirects in place, so if you’re diving into specific posts, you’ll still end up in the right place.

Sorry for any confusion this changeover may cause. I’ll make sure to put up a couple more reminders before the change happens.

And work on some new content.

Yeah.

June 6th, 2008 / Comments Off

Another brief commercial pause, but one worth mentioning. I’m gonna be in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine! They accepted my short story, TFT, for publication in their issue #40. This marks my first appearance in an Australian science fiction magazine–and a very cool one, at that!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the magazine, it’s worth acquainting yourself. Here they are: www.andromedaspaceways.com

As far as the story goes . . . well, let’s just say, “I hope you haven’t chosen a career in fast food.”

June 6th, 2008 / Comments Off

By now, at least some of you have read the Forbes article on how Amazon might change the publishing industry. While it is a rather one-sided article, it’s interesting to consider what might happen if a single entity—one now nearly half the size of the total US publishing business—put their mind to changing the model.

Acute readers are probably saying, “Wait, what?” to the italicized statistic above. But, yeah. Do the math. Amazon grossed $15B (yes, as in billion) last year. The total US publishing industry is estimated to be $32B. Not bad for a company that started only a decade ago.

Bottom line: Amazon has the reach, the distribution, and the capital to be an extremely disruptive force if it wants to.

And that’s the gist of the Forbes article. Amazon could singlehandedly legitimatize print-on-demand and cut a upset the current publishing model by giving a larger percentage of revenue to the author. They’ve already made some moves in this space, acquiring BookSurge and CreateSpace.

But . . . well, that’s interesting and all, especially for Forbes ultra-conservative audience, but what happens when you take things a little bit farther? We are science fiction writers, after all.

I think we have to step back and take a look at publishing as a whole. The whole publishing model was built on production and distribution. Good, solid 19th century models. “Ya want your book published, son? Well, over there is the publisher, who invests the money in the printer to make them, and who makes sure your book gets on every supermarket shelf in the country.”

Except, well, now there’s print on demand. I personally know over a dozen people who have written their own business books, sent them to lulu.com or the like, and are using them to market their own knowledge and services, netting more in a month than a midlist author might see in a year. For them, the book itself isn’t important. It’s the cachet of having a book.

And except, well, now, the 25-cent paperbacks in the revolving stand at the store are largely gone. People go to bookstores to buy books. Or Amazon.

Not that there isn’t a value to having a book published by a major house. Not only does it legitimatize the book itself, but it does provide exposure and distribution most works won’t see. It gets the book edited, sharpened, and improved. Sometimes it even gets you a snappy cover.

But when the house does zero marketing around the book, it falls on the author to shill it. Which is exactly the same as if the author had simply gone to a print-on-demand outfit and had the book produced there.

And with Amazon as the largest retailer of books in the world, if the book is available there, and the author is good at shilling it . . . well, hmm . . .

But let’s not stop there. Let’s go a little farther. Let’s step a few years into a future where Amazon has chosen to disrupt the publishing industry. The key value a publisher could provide in this scenario is marketing. They could use a model long-recommended to the (now fallen) music industry: take a good product and apply good marketing principles to it, for a percentage of the revenue. They move from a production and distribution model to a service-based model. They can still pick and choose the books they market, and give them a stamp of legitimacy by doing so. And if this is done well, everyone is happy.

Of course, taking another step out makes the scenario even more interesting. Google has publicly stated that they believe their search engine could grow into the first effective artificial intelligence. But Amazon’s suggestion engine is another strong contender for that title. Consider that a tiny company, Netflix, just spent a million dollars as a prize to crowdsource a better recommendation engine for their titles, and then imagine how much money Amazon is putting into their engine.

So. What if?

What if the recommendation engine becomes so good, it can literally scan the text of an entire book (or watch a movie, or listen to a CD) and have a very good chance of saying, “Yeah, this dood will like this.” And let’s say that the recommendation engine gets bolted onto an automated, predictive, personalized behaviorally-targeted online marketing engine like what Alterian is developing today. A prospective creative can have their work analyzed, revenue predicted, and marketing automated to the point where the publisher might become irrelevant, even as a marketing force.

Of course, that’s a lot of ifs. But hey, we have to wonder.

May 20th, 2008 / 5 Comments »

. . . for a shameless plug. I’ve received my copies of The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the book is stunning. In the middle of a busy, busy week, I burned a day reading.

If you’re interested in a perspective on science fiction and fantasy that doesn’t come from the big 3 magazines, or if you’re interested in stories that are more long-view than current crisis, it’s well worth your $11 at Amazon (or Powells, or your local bookstore) to have this in your collection.

Plus, it has one of my stories in it.

If you hate my work, well, think of it as, “Well, less than 10% of the book is Stoddard.” If you like my stuff, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at range of other work in there as well.

Obligatory links to Amazon and Powells here.

And yeah, I know, I’ve been a little quiet on the blog front. Buried at work; more unpopular opinions to come this week.

May 4th, 2008 / Comments Off

Okay, it’s time for the big things. These things aren’t going to be accomplished without investment of time and/or money. They may require reorganizations. Or new organizations. Or new investment. That’s why these are hard.

And now, a disclaimer. Especially in the light of the furore over the last post. I don’t know all the answers. This ain’t the be-all end-all definitive guide on how to make everything right for science fiction. This is one dood’s guess. If you have other ideas, please feel free to share!

Ready? Take a deep breath.

5. Define your messages. In marketing, we start establishing a brand by defining key messages. These are things that only you can say, and are most likely to interest someone. Science fiction publishers and organizations, by and large, have done a poor job with this– especially when seen from the eyes of a newb.

Let’s put ourselves in the position of, say, a kid who has a taste for Star Wars and The Matrix and other sci-fi films, and starts looking for other science fiction online. Assuming he finds a publisher or magazine at all (see #4), what’s going to keep him at the site?

One thing: Instant, clear communication as to why he wants to be there.

Content alone won’t do it, because (a) if whatever you’re highlighting at the moment ain’t in his taste spectrum, you’re toast, and (b) it takes a long, long time to stroll thru the archives. And this assumes that content is there in the first place.

But if he saw things like:

“Read ideas that are a decade in advance of what you see in movies.”

“Love new technology and ideas? Find out what the world will be like in a few years–or a thousand.”

“What if we had invented computing technology in the Victorian era? If cheap technology meant everyone was a mind-reader? If advances in biology meant you could grow your house? Explore what-ifs right here, right now.”

“Discover why scientists, internet visionaries, technology leaders, and other people who are changing the world read science fiction.”

“Join a group of people not just looking forward, but leading us forward.”

Not all of these at once, of course . . . but you get the idea.

Now, someone might say, “Well, hell, coming up with these key messages doesn’t seem so hard.” Now, sit in a room with 12 people and see if you can get them to agree. Then remember that you really should test multiple key messages with random display on your home page tied to analytics to determine which are the most effective. And then you need to be able to accept, really accept, that your favorite message may not be the best one for your organization. It ain’t easy.

4. Get visible–on all levels. SFWA appears in the first page of Google search results, but beyond that, it’s a wash. No publications or publishers show up until page 5. Where’s the SEO? How about PPC? How about doing your own page in Wikipedia? If people are looking for science fiction, we need to get in front of them.

But visibility can go well beyond keywords. Where are the science fiction widgets that announce new titles? Where are the widgets you could, say, share to unlock content? Hell, where are the wallpapers and ringtones? Where is the share-around media campaign raising awareness about the movers and shakers who read science fiction? With 6 of the top 10 global websites being social sites, we need to have an integrated social media strategy and presence that goes beyond our own captive social network (yes, there is a place for both).

Or how about defining your own social media liaisons–people who are available to talk about your authors’ works, but who do not push themselves on anyone?

And, just when you’ve thought I’ve gone way off the deep end, consider this wacky “visibility” idea. Why don’t we have an industry liaison to Hollywood, delivering our key messages like, “Hey guys, remember where you get your ideas–want to see some new ones?” Visibility can go as far as budgets allow.

And yes, visibility takes investment. But there are large publishers out there. Once they lose the stranglehold of their big ad agency (and the trap of their Comscore metrics box), there’s money to invest. And, beyond that, I’d suspect that there are more than a few closet science fiction fans in the Google/Facebook/Web 2.0 universe who might be interested in helping out. Remember, Google is sponsoring a Moon prize.

3. Create fans–and benefits. Remember that I called for a science fiction social network? Here’s why: it’s a path to real engagement. It may even be a path to monetization, if you provide relevant services. Here’s what you do:

Define fan levels. Let’s say, just for instance, we have a Silver Fan, a Gold Fan, and a Diamond Fan (choose your own fan levels, but don’t start with something embarrassing like “basic.”) These people are giving you their time and information. This is worth a lot.

Define some real benefits for your Silver fan. Even at the base level, remember: people are giving you their time and information. Make it worth their while. For publishers, maybe you give them a free ebook every year. Or, if you’re already giving out free ebooks, let them join a network where they get a free book for every 10 friends they invite. If you’re an organization, let them share in some of the info reserved for published authors.

Make at least two of the levels paid. Oh, here’s where the howling starts. But, with the right incentive, you can make the paid levels pay off–both for the fans and for you. Let’s say that, at the Gold level, there’s a standard quantified discount on every book you buy, you get a free book every year, and you get and you’ll get invited to events in your local area. And let’s say the Diamond level gets you into private meet-and-greets with the authors? Or, for organizations, why can’t the Gold or Diamond levels have access to events or functions, or even (gasp) be allowed to vote on a people’s choice award? No matter how many fans you invite in, there will still be a distinction between a published author and a fan.

Again, this ain’t the universal prescription. The details may be very different. But defining a loyalty program with some real teeth would pay off, big time, for publishers and organizations.

2. Create your own worlds. And yes, this is one I’ve yammered on about before, as well. But there’s no reason why science fiction should not own the alternate reality game (ARG).

An ARG is a way to let people keep coming back to your authors’ worlds, time and time again, to build interest in future releases. It’s a way to impress fiction on the real world. It could lead to additional sales of everything from picture books to t-shirts to comic books to short video and music. Really, it’s an art form in and of itself, and it is firmly grounded in the science fiction sphere.

And yes, building an ARG (or merely an alternate reality continuum, where we simply treat the places and people of our worlds as real) is not an inconsiderable amount of work. But what if developing and curating a tiny piece of the ARG was what bought your fan his Diamond status? Or a level above Diamond? ARGs do not have to be built by a single individual or organization. They can be crowdsourced.

Skeptical? Yeah, that’s cool. Just know that new variants of the ARG are emerging. Pretty soon, we will have people interacting with worlds and stories that never existed in real life as they surf the web (PMOG), or even as they walk around in the real world (MARG).

There is no reason science fiction should not own this space–and if we let it slip by, we have only ourselves to blame.

1. Fund a big idea or two. Did you know that Google is sponsoring a $30MM prize for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon? Did you know that Progressive Insurance is sponsoring a $10MM prize to inspire a new generation of super-efficient vehicles? Did you know that Archon is funding a $10MM prize for the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days? All of these are part of the X-Prize Foundation, an organization designed to spur innovation through, well, big fat cash prizes. You may remember them from the original X-Prize, which was won by Scaled Composites.

“Ohhh-kay, now we know Stoddard has gone off track, because, first, there ain’t nobody out there with a pile of cash like that, and, well, what the heck would we apply this to?” you may be asking.

Well, first, the pile of cash may be a lot smaller than you think. X-Prizes are funded by insurance companies. As in, the insurance companies bet against anyone winning the prize in a stated amount of time. This is what allows your local Lions club to have a $1MM hole-in-one competition–the chance of anyone winning the prize is relatively low. Your Lions probably paid $2000 to have that $1MM prize. So the investment is really a lot lower that you expect.

(And yes, I know–this sounds like something out of Heinlein’s The Man Who Sold the Moon. But, I assure you, this is real. We have run insurance-backed contests at my day job.)

Second, I can think of several things to apply this kind of prize to. Here are a couple.

Monetization. On a subject near and dear to every publisher’s heart, how about monetization? What is a working model for profitable monetization in a market where content can be distributed nearly free? Or, to take it up a notch, how do we ensure people receive a fair return on their intellectual property? (Note: “fair” may be well below what organizations like the RIAA and MPAA believe “fair” to be.) Heck, maybe do this in conjunction with the EFF. Throw a million-plus dollars at this challenge, and you’re going to have a lot of people devoting a lot of time to testing and proving real, workable solutions.

The current crisis. Worried about climate change or energy independence or another current crisis? Then let’s pick one and sponsor a prize for helping to figure out this problem. This will raise science fiction’s profile tremendously–and it may result in some real answers. Of course, this may be something so big that we tackle with other organizations, in order to provide a prize of the magnitude needed to spur real research and testing. But even if it’s done in conjunction with other entities, it sends a powerful message: we’re not just forward-looking, we’re actively trying to do something about it.

And, of course, there may be other prizes. And other things we can do. Like I said, this ain’t the definitive guide. This is speculation. Your results may vary. Not intended to be used as a personal grooming device. And all those other disclaimers.

But if it points a few people in the right direction, then I’m happy. And I’ll do what I can to help!

April 18th, 2008 / 10 Comments »

Yes, small things. As in, “There ain’t no reason not to do this.” As in, “This costs nothing, or next to nothing.” As in, you don’t need to reinvent the industry or discover the magical monetization model or invent the free ebook reader that convinces everyone to give up their iPhone.

Of course, we’ll be following this with 5 big ideas. Hence this countdown starting at 10. But those are for another post.

10. Divorce yourself from bad design. Why do so many science fiction sites look like they were created in 1995? Sorry, guys, but if we’re going to be the leading edge, we can’t make people laugh uproariously at the first click. This is not an example of a forward-looking site. This is better. And, before you drag out the, “I ain’t got no money” excuse, download Wordpress for free, then take a click over to 99Designs and run a design contest for a template, pay a freelancer for some Flash work, and you’ll soon have yourself a site that would have cost $1MM or more to make during the web 1.0 revolution for less than 4 figures.

9. Bring us together. So how come no science fiction organization or publisher hasn’t clicked on the “create social network” button at Ning? Or any similar site? In a few minutes, they could have their own social network, complete with all the friending/group creation/user management tools of Facebook. Free. Wait. Let me repeat that. Free. As in FREE. Are you reading me? A social network for science fiction writers, pubs, and fans would be infinitely better than the forums and whatnot they have now. And infinitely better than waiting for some half-baked, committee-ized, overthought, too-late, internally-created system.

8. Stop devaluing yourself. If I see one more author or publication wring their hands over the possibility of success, I’m going to scream. You don’t need to apologize for wanting to make money. You don’t need to apologize for wanting to make *lots* of money. No other profession does. If we want to bring this field forward, we need to be able to make a living as writers and publishers. A good living. And yes, I know we’re still figuring out the new models for monetization. I just want us to shoot for a model that provides more than break-even accounting.

7. Embrace reality. Sorry, but if SF is the most popular movie genre in the world, then it’s time to go there. Especially since the trend appears to be accelerating to cover the entire entertainment space. How many science fiction- or fantasy-based shows are there right now? Yes, most of them are light entertainment. Yes, most of them are filled with rubber science. That’s fine. Use them as a gateway drug to lure people to real science. Or offer your own alternatives. A few months back, I was amazed to find an anime series that depicts a mature augmented reality environment, and fully explores SF tropes as sophisticated as those in Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God”–and it is aimed at a tween/teen audience!

6. Lose the negativity. Yeah, I’ve harped on this before, but it bears repeating. If we want to lead, we need to be the people with answers. We need to have vision. We need to look beyond the current crisis of the world (and the world has been in a current crisis, since, say, Sumerian times) and imagine positive futures. And no, this does not mean happy-sappy tales where everyone goes skipping through a field of flowers. I’m talking work that embraces the full scope of human aspiration, anger, benevolence, greed, kindness, sadness. I’m talking about work that may be disturbing, and that may come out in a place where things are profoundly different–but it does come out, and we are still human, and still moving forward, in the end.

Stay tuned for the big things.

April 11th, 2008 / 36 Comments »

Last year, I compared the web traffic and related sites for BoingBoing and science fiction publications. Not surprisingly, science fiction magazines like Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF trailed BoingBoing in terms of overall traffic. But even more interesting were the stats on what Alexa calls “related sites.” Related sites are sites that are also popular with the people visiting the site under analysis.

In light of the emergence of the i09 blog, I decided to rerun the Alexa stats this year and see where we are. i09 occupies a space similar to BoingBoing–a space I call “popular metascience.” For the old farts here, think Omni for the 00s, minus the fiction. i09 has a more specific focus on science fiction, which for them translates to more scifi movie reporting, more scifi ephemera, and more general scifi links than BoingBoing.

The results are interesting. First off, let’s take a look at the chart. Yeah, popular metascience still kills science fiction. But again, the related sites make it interesting. Consider the related sites for each of these presences:

BoingBoing

• English 309k – Cyberpunk Fiction–www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~tonya/cyberpunk
• Sf Eye & Eyeball Books–www.empathy.com/eyeball
• Erik Davis–levity.com/figment
• Hotwired–hotwired.lycos.com
• Cognitive Dissidents–gibson.hypermart.net/books.html
• Cybpunk: Project Jericho Redirect Page–students.uww.edu/klessigjm17
• World.std.com–world.std.com/~emg/blogger.html
• Gothic.Net Webzine–gothic.net
• Blueblood–blueblood.net
• Wired News–www.wired.com
• Robotwisdom.com–www.robotwisdom.com

i09

• Error–www.puqq.net
• Host Or–www.hostor.net
• www.hornycontent.com–www.hornycontent.com
• Erofi–www.erofi.net
• Symit–symit.com
• Racknet Dynamic Webpages–racknet.com
• Canadian Online Pharmacy–floxx.ca
• Crobo–crobo.ca
• Consumer Home Services–www.sapguru.com
• File Post–www.filepost.net

Analog

• Asimov’s Science Fiction–www.asimovs.com
• Albedo One–homepage.eircom.net/~goudriaan
• Scifi–www.scifi.com
• Andromeda Spaceways–www.andromedaspaceways.com
• Astounding Science Fiction–www.andrew-may.com/asf
• Alienskin Magazine–www.alienskinmag.com
• Ansible–www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Ansible
• Concatenation–www.concatenation.org
• British Fanzine Bibliography: 1931-1990–www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/biblio
• Diverse Books: Review A Book Today–www.diversebooks.com

Strange Horizons

• Tangentonline–www.tangentonline.com
• The Sf Site–www.sfsite.com
• Sci Fiction–www.scifi.com/scifiction
• Realms Of Fantasy Magazine–www.rofmagazine.com
• Ralan’s Webstravaganza–www.ralan.com
• Quantum Muse–www.quantummuse.com
• Locus Online–www.locusmag.com
• The Infinite Matrix–www.infinitematrix.net
• Emerald City–www.emcit.com
• Asimov’s Science Fiction–www.asimovs.com

Once again, there’s no overlap. What’s interesting, to me, are two things.

One: I wonder who the visitors to i09 really are. Or if they are. They certainly don’t show much interest in science fiction, nor do they show much interest in other Gawker blogs. The numbers may look very impressive (they started up officially in January 08), but the related sites are truly a grab-bag of unrelated stuff.

Edit: Charlie Jane Anders explains io9’s bizarre results in comments. Apparently the domain was a linkfarm for many years. It’ll be interesting to see what the traffic looks like in a few months.

Two: From the amount of related magazines, online pubs, review sites, and market sites like Ralans, it is increasingly evident who the primary audience for short SF is today: other writers. This is true for both Analog and Strange Horizons.

So why did I do this, you ask? Well, it’s partially just native curiosity. I find sites like BoingBoing and i09 interesting–and I am also a science fiction reader and writer. So I want to know what popular sites are doing, and how that can be applied to science fiction in general.

It’s also partially because I really want to help. I’d like to see the science fiction magazines succeed. I’d like to see science fiction become more relevant. I’d like to see it come back to genre that is actively leading us forward, instead of telling us “there’s no use, we’re all going to die anyway.” Unfortunately, there’s little I can do to help the publications directly, so maybe this, in some small manner, will help point the way.

After all, BoingBoing grew organically. It didn’t take millions of dollars in advertising or the combined might of a television network to launch. It occupies a space where science fiction could be.

i09 is different, being part of the massive Gawker blog network. But, as such, it sends its own powerful message: these new media conglomerates are eying our space with intellects “vast and cool and dispassionate,” to paraphrase. And they’re moving in. What does that mean for the future?

April 4th, 2008 / 11 Comments »

My friends know that I write science fiction. Some of them treat this fact like a terminal illness–something unfortunate and never to be talked about. Some of them try to be helpful.

This is about one who tried to be helpful. He brought by a whole mess of vintage science fiction magazines and anthologies he’d found in his favorite thrift store. We’re talking obscure stuff here, from Other Worlds of the 50s to Galaxy of the 70s, together with collections from Fantasy and Science Fiction (in hardback, no less) from the 60s.

“Cool!” I thought, flipping through the age-yellowed magazines. I figured I’d skim through them later, and see what massive talents had been lost in the march of time.

But it didn’t work out like that.

As other guests arrived for my little get-together, they immediately gravitated towards the brightly-colored covers of the old magazines. They’d pick them up, turn them over, leaf through a few pages, and put them down. Or they’d comment.

“Hey man, did your 6-year-old paint this cover?” someone asked.

I explained that these magazines came from a different era, when they literally had to jump off the shelf. But, you know, some of the art was pretty amateurish. I wondered how big of an art budget they had, even in the “golden age.” Probably not very large.

And then they started reading. That’s where the fun truly began. “Ha, he just put a tape in his stereo,” one guest said. “And the story is set in 2010!”

“Yeah, and this one has a computer the size of a 150-story building–underground!”

“And we’re still fighting the commies in 2080 here.”

“That’s all right, we had a nuclear war in this one.”

“Wow, what’s a teletype?” (This in a story set in 1996.)

“That computer has tubes? Tubes?!!”

I pointed them at the Fantasy and Science Fiction anthologies, telling them that this was a more serious magazine, and those collections were supposed to represent their best work.

But the howlers continued. Tapes, records, shortwave, teletype, building-sized computers with tubes, commies, nuclear war–they were all there.

Or, in other words, the things top of mind became top of story. By and large, what we saw before us, we wrote. Oh, yeah, we made things smaller and sleeker and faster, but we didn’t invent wholly new things. I haven’t gone through all the stories in all the magazines yet, but the gist is clear: there ain’t a whole lot of visionary going on here!

And I have to wonder if it isn’t the same today. Will we look back on the vast majority of stories today as quaint and small-minded and not very visionary? Probably. Because it’s always easiest to take a single trend and extrapolate it. It’s simplest to write about what is top of mind, right now. It’s really, really hard to weave multiple trends together into a believable whole. Or imagine a wholly new technology that changes everything.

Maybe this is why the current mode of science fiction is dark. We hear about terrible things happening in the world, and we write about them. We see our place on the world stage being supplanted, and our anxiety about this ends up on the page. Wrap it up in a more-advanced, pervasive internet, and we have a modern, sellable story.

But this isn’t the future we’ll be living in.

March 19th, 2008 / 6 Comments »

Following the release of Far Horizon, I realized that I have another trunk novel that explores the world of Winfinity, a couple of hundred years into their regime.

It’s called Eternal Franchise, and (at least I think) it’s a fun romp. It’s also probably the last thing I really want to write in the Winfinity universe, since modern times are catching up with the world, sending us veering down another timeline entirely.

So: should I release this one for free, like I did with Winning Mars last year?

Your call. Let me know via comment.

March 16th, 2008 / 3 Comments »

I don’t often cross-post things from work, since by day I’m an evil marketing wonk. But when the world crosses a threshold like we just did, it’s worth talking about here as well.

Future historians will look back on March 6, 2008 and say, “This is the day the PC really, officially died,” and “this is the day we began make technology part of ourselves.”

I’m talking, of course, about the opening of the iPhone platform to developers, with the accompanying application marketing channel and venture fund behind it.

Let’s start with this new platform, fully 3d-game-capable and full of more accelerometers and sensors than you can shake a Wiimote at. We’re playing with the SDK already, and it’s stunningly easy to use. Combine this with a distribution channel (iTunes) and a competitor to keep things rolling (Android), and you now have a whole new way to reach 10MM leading-edge, fashion-conscious, free-spending users. Do you think marketers are gonna be stampeding in? Well, like, duh.

But it’s a lot bigger than that. In fact, it changes everything.

Think of how you use your computer today. You sit down, shake the mouse, open the web browser and go to YouTube. Or, if you have a laptop, you drag it out of your messenger bag, plug it into the wall, open the lid and wait for it to find the wireless connection, then do your YouTube/Facebook/Office/Final Cut/Flash/whatever. But, in either case, you separate yourself from the computer when you’re done.

In a mobile-centric world, your computer is in your pocket, it’s always a half-second away from being turned on, and it has many different ways to alert you to its presence. The computer becomes part of you. And when you add highly capable apps for productivity and games, as well as higher-speed data, you now have a constantly-connected, intelligent, extremely high-functioning link to, well, damn near anything in the world.

It’s now trivial to look up information on Google, play games with friends, communicate with voice and photos and video, add metainformation to the growing geographic and regional databases, respond to email, create new spreadsheets–half a million things are now seamlessly integrated with your life, rather than being a car trip or a laptop-startup away.

Let’s extrapolate this out. iPhone-esque technology becomes smaller, faster, ubiquitous. At the same time, future display technology allows us to project data into our eyes, creating overlays on the real world. And, at this point, the distinctions between our own capabilities and those of the network begin to blur. We’re constantly connected. There’s no reason not to use your Google Ambient account. And, in fact, unless you turn it off, it’ll probably work constantly and helpfully in the background, instantly recognizing objects and classes of objects (like cars, faces, friends, and more) to let you know what’s going on with them.

“Wow, that’s a lot of information,” the dinosaurs here say. “And I can see the potential for spam and abuse.”

Yeah, and welcome to the early 21st century. Yes, assimilating augmented reality overlays may represent an order of magnitude increase in the amount of information we have to process. But that’s what today’s millennials have been training themselves for. Watching TV while doing homework, listening to music, and talking to 3 friends via IM is a great start on managing information overload. They’ll treat these augmented realities as part of themselves in very short order.

And that’s something to think about. People tend to guard their personal environment with much greater care than, say, a web page. Google AdSense ads won’t be tolerated when they’re in your field of vision, or even if they’re flittering around the corner of your eye. 3D overlays of fantasy-lands to explore in real space (a la Vinge and Stross) may be a better marketing venue.

But no matter how you look at it, we have turned a corner. As of March 6th, we’ve taken the first step to making computing part of ourselves.

And that changes everything.

March 10th, 2008 / 8 Comments »

Here’s what Publishers Weekly has to say about the upcoming antho I’m in:

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction’s Finest Voices.

Edited by Ellen Datlow. Del Rey, $16 paper (416p) ISBN 978-0-345-49632-4

Declaring that short stories are the “heart and soul of fantastical fiction,” prolific and venerable editor Datlow collects 16 impressive original stories in this unthemed anthology. Standout selections include Margo Lanagan ’s