25 November 2410 16:52 GMT, Stockholm at Earth
I went to see Nils Bortsikt, a sarge vigilant who worked civil enforcement around the college. I knew him from a blackmail job I'd figured out for the Globalist Party.
When I got to his nook he wasn't alone. Two other humen sat with him around a battered stainless steel table. They were eating herring and boiled potatoes with dill and drinking brannvin.
"Hey Nils," I said. "I'm integrating the book theft at the university for Karl Slott."
"Sit down, Go, have a drink, that's Karl Kretiensson and Kurt Quant."
They stared at me blearily. I knew them to nod at.
"Leet Larsson says you're interested in those libers at the school," said Bortsikt. Soujourn," he shouted, "Bring us another bottle! The lazy boon's probably asleep by the stove."
Nils Bortsikt carried a burner, a Husqvarn Paroxys. Husqvarn made fine weapons. A Paroxys could carbonize a steak on the moon. Kretiensson and Quant were in uniform.
A naked chimpanzee came in with another glass and a full flask of clear, pungent liquor. Nils poured all around.
"Hold it chigger, you forgot the last one," he yelled.
He tilted back the first bottle and guzzled it empty before tossing it in the direction of the chimp. It made a graceful left-handed catch and scuttled for the kitchen.
"The monks get dumber every day," Nils Bortsikt said, shaking his head.
"Nice rump though," said Karl. Or maybe Kurt. "Damn right," said the other one.
I tasted the brannvin. It was like drinking herbed gasoline.
"About Chimera Libra," I said. "My case load tells me the local leader is named Noir, Rio Noir. You know about that?"
"Sure I do," Nils said. "Noir's a damned nuisance, an agitator, vandalizes marketing, remixes courseware, everything in between. The university doesn't like that shit, and neither do I. Where do those planet farmers get the gall, coming back to the Civilized World and preaching freedom for the chigras? They can't survive free - hell, they're only animals. You ever see how the free ones live at New Berkeley?"
"So Noir is a trouble-maker. Has Chimera Libra ever engaged in violence for their cause?"
"Nah, nothing serious, we don't allow that, do we boys?" Nils winked at his other guests, who chuckled appreciatively. "A roasted limb or two lets the steam right out of 'em. There've been a few scuffles between the libers and the townies, but just knives and clubs, everybody as good as new a few weeks later."
"You think Noir took the book?"
"Crazy enough for it, I'd say. They just don't have property morals on the wild worlds. No sense of ownership, none at all. You ever seen a boon with property? It's what happens when you set the chiggers loose, degrades society." The sidekicks nodded solemnly.
"Know an address for Noir?"
"Better - I got a fold from last week, a place near Sture Plan, Noir was hauling firewood," said Nils. He opened it and pointed out the building. "It's some kind of speesh commune. I'd guess Noir nooks there."
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
scuppernong - 4
The Backburn Era
by Verandra Doeuvre
Chapter 1: Queasy Beginnings (excerpt)
The Helsinki Chimera Relocation Act
@Kulan Belastningar AB
07 February 2410, Stockholm at Earth
by Verandra Doeuvre
Chapter 1: Queasy Beginnings (excerpt)
The Helsinki Chimera Relocation Act
@Kulan Belastningar AB
07 February 2410, Stockholm at Earth
Against the Chimera who now possess that fair city [Helsinki], what complaint have we to make? In what degree are their knives and clubs to be compared with our own great instrument of death, that which left Helsinki to them and not to the race of men? How little did they expect, ten years ago, that human beings would return from beyond the Baltic Sea to complete the great and horrible dispossession of the Blow?
-- Congressor Kale Mansard Dodge,
closing remarks in opposition to
the Helsinki Chimera Relocation Act,
11 September 2377
Stockholm at Earth
Despite intense pressure from Backburn, seventeen Backburners in the Middle Seats - some angry at their leader over impending Top Seat matters, others sensitive to the moral outrage of their constituents - voted "nay" to the act, while six more made themselves absent. Only the last-minute capitulation of the Mansard Dodge faction allowed the bill to pass.
Nothing can exculpate Deicer Backburn and his pro-removal supporters from the basic truths of the antirelocation arguments. Backburn's paternalism was predicated on his assumption, still widely but not universally prevalent among humen of the time, that all Chimera - although Backburn called them his "cousins", he also called himself their "Great Uncle" - were "feral in their habits" and inherently inferior to humen. His promises about voluntary and compensated relocation, and his assertion that Chimera who wished to remain in Helsinki would be allowed to do so, were constantly undermined by delays and sharp dealings - actions which Backburn condoned...
The politics of Chimera removal also reinforced those elements within the Backburn Ascendancy that presumed the supremacy of humen over non-men, and interpreted any challenge to that supremacy as counterfeit philosimianism disguising a partisan agenda. True, Backburn's opponents, notably Ludd Heft, seized on the issue and aided the antiremoval petition effort, whatever their earlier views on the matter. But to reduce all of the critics, as many of Backburn's supporters did, to "fractious" politicians who were out to hurt the administration was to confuse the opportunists with sincere hominitarians like Nazard and Tierce, while making support for removal a matter of strict party orthodoxy. Recast in the political heat of the 2390s and after, this turn of mind would complicate and compromise the Backburnian variant of political democracy by rendering all kinds of benevolent reform as crypto-egalitarian efforts to elevate Chimera at the expense of ordinary humen...
-- Congressor Kale Mansard Dodge,
closing remarks in opposition to
the Helsinki Chimera Relocation Act,
11 September 2377
Stockholm at Earth
Despite intense pressure from Backburn, seventeen Backburners in the Middle Seats - some angry at their leader over impending Top Seat matters, others sensitive to the moral outrage of their constituents - voted "nay" to the act, while six more made themselves absent. Only the last-minute capitulation of the Mansard Dodge faction allowed the bill to pass.
Nothing can exculpate Deicer Backburn and his pro-removal supporters from the basic truths of the antirelocation arguments. Backburn's paternalism was predicated on his assumption, still widely but not universally prevalent among humen of the time, that all Chimera - although Backburn called them his "cousins", he also called himself their "Great Uncle" - were "feral in their habits" and inherently inferior to humen. His promises about voluntary and compensated relocation, and his assertion that Chimera who wished to remain in Helsinki would be allowed to do so, were constantly undermined by delays and sharp dealings - actions which Backburn condoned...
The politics of Chimera removal also reinforced those elements within the Backburn Ascendancy that presumed the supremacy of humen over non-men, and interpreted any challenge to that supremacy as counterfeit philosimianism disguising a partisan agenda. True, Backburn's opponents, notably Ludd Heft, seized on the issue and aided the antiremoval petition effort, whatever their earlier views on the matter. But to reduce all of the critics, as many of Backburn's supporters did, to "fractious" politicians who were out to hurt the administration was to confuse the opportunists with sincere hominitarians like Nazard and Tierce, while making support for removal a matter of strict party orthodoxy. Recast in the political heat of the 2390s and after, this turn of mind would complicate and compromise the Backburnian variant of political democracy by rendering all kinds of benevolent reform as crypto-egalitarian efforts to elevate Chimera at the expense of ordinary humen...
scuppernong - 3
25 November 2410 15:22 GMT, Stockholm at Earth
Aubrey Owsley, my systweak, had her nook across the square from the university. She worked from the first floor of a three-story brick building. Her immediate neighbors were a pamper-flesh called Svetti's and a preschool called The Ghost. There were three pizza shops and four coffee shops in the block. I pinged her.
"Heysan, Django, it's a long time since," she shouted when I opened the door. "Come on in."
"Hey, Ouch, nice paws," I said. She'd grown foot fingers.
"Yeah, now I can do four things at once."
Owsley half-lay on an ancient tobacco-brown cracked leather sofa, with her new heels resting on an Empire ottoman. She wore a black watchman's cap, a long, faded, brown corduroy skirt over yellowed once-white wool longjohns, and rough wool footgloves. She had a leather belt with a turquoise buckle. She had on a brown and cream Norwegian wool seaman's sweater which rode above her waist, revealing an unbuttoned longjohn hole. Let me take you a button-hole lower, I thought. All twenty fingers twitched randomly and Oswley's half-closed eyes shifted independently of one another as she worked. She drooled just a bit.
Owsley was a very busy, very wealthy, very good sysman. I'd met her when some sork kidnapped her twin long-haired Dachshunds, Myrtle and Methyl. I got them back unharmed, and the ransom too. Owsley still felt grateful.
"Ouch," I said, "I need some face. I'm going dustup on New Berkeley and I want your check-out. And I'm still having that problem with ping recall."
Owsley sat up slowly, focused, and wiped her mouth. "Glad to help, Go. Tell me about it."
"You remember how I feel I have ping, but when I recall it, nothing's there, no source, no subject, no nothing?" Owsley nodded.
"That's slowly getting worse. And I have kind of a general fuzziness, nothing specific, just kind of a lost feeling I guess, and - well, it's embarrassing, Ouch. I, uh, I guess I dropped a fold on my foot."
"You dropped a pseudo-object on your foot?"
Good old Ouch. I can always count on her for sympathy. She slapped both hands over her mouth, squinched up her eyes, and slowly slid off the couch to lie on the floor, trying to stifle her laughter. Tears ran on her face before the mirth eased up a little.
"Go," she said, gasping, "did you - did you - hurt yourself?" She gulped, and chortled.
With what dignity I could muster, I said "Yes, Ouch, I hurt my big toe."
That set her off again.
"Go, let me take look around in there," Owsley said finally, wiping her eyes and getting up. "I'll see what I can do. I'm sure I can" - snort! - "fix the toe."
I unlocked my sys and watched Ouch work. It was all Geek to me. I saw flashing graphs and snaky interlocking balls of neon strings and incomprehensible fractal displays
and other artifacts of Ouch's trade come and go in our shared visual field.
Test patterns ran shapes repeatedly through my eyes - star, cube, pyramid, sphere, mobius, torus, saddle - or sounded chords to my ears, or tingled my fingers painfully at each tip in rapid succession, or made goosebumps rise in waves running down my arms. Each one a pattern, diagnostic and prognostic. Seventeen interminable minutes later, Owsley spoke.
"First, the ping problem. You understand that once it's in your extended memory, incoming information makes itself known to you via attention attraction focii?"
I nodded, trying to look as if I knew that. Well, I did know it, sort of.
"OK, in your case, the focus for ping got linked to your habitual learning system. I
bet you poll it pretty frequently, right? You know you don't have to do that? It will announce itself? That's what it's for?"
Ouch tends to preach. "Yeah, OK, so I used to check it from time to time. So?"
"Well, the repeated active attention you gave to it when it hadn't changed state made your sys think you wanted that to happen automatically - habitually, if you will. So now the focus tries to get your attention even when no ping has arrived. There's two ways to fix that, the slow way and the fast way.
"The slow way is to ignore it. Just check for ping now and then, not too often, to see if you actually do have any. After a few days, your system will naturally dissolve the habitual binding to the focus, and the problem will reverse itself.
"The fast way, I reach in and break the habit from outside. What'll it be?"
If I had to fight, I didn't want distraction. And I didn't have time to waste looking to see if I had ping or not. I had a business to run. "Fast."
Owsley grinned. Suddenly, simultaneously, I felt a painfully intense taste of cilantro, a piercing light behind my right eye, and a drastic phantom limb manicure. I said "Ouch!"
"You called? OK, habit's broken. As for the fuzziness, that could be several things. I adjusted your sonic quantifier - that's the organoid that puts hard numbers to your sound data, like when you want to know exactly what frequency a sound is, you know? - it was a little non-logarithmic, and I bumped your subitizer back up to 10. There's still that damned tendency down to the natural level - how could they function back then when they couldn't grok more than four things at a time?"
"Speaking of the past, did you notice my latest antique?" Her hand fingers pointed to her left.
Owsley collected and restored ancient electro-mechanical devices. Her new project was a group of large ugly black plastic boxes connected by stiff colored tubes or cables. There was an array of worn buttons, with letters still visible on most of them. There was a square-bottomed glass bottle lying on its side, with glowing colored figures and a moving cartoon dog on the bottom surface. The whole contraption squealed like a mutant mosquito and reeked of ozone.
"Is that a television? Or a typewriter?" Ouch had me puzzled, and she liked that.
"No, Django, that clumsy contraption was called a "personal computer". It's a distant ancestor of your own sys, and big sys too. Do you know that there was no direct connection between that thing and the cognitive perceptions of its operator?"
"But how the hell did they work it? Knobs and levers?"
"Very close to right. Almost the only input came from pushing on those lettered buttons with your fingers - that was still called type-writing. The operator had to see output in letters on the bottom of that bottle, and then read it back to himself!"
"But how did it ping? How could it load or show folds?"
"This device is more than four hundred years old, Go. It couldn't show folds because back then they couldn't share perceptual spaces. There wasn't any ping, just telephone and electrified mail. They couldn't load because they could only use one or two of the old senses for access to electrical memory. All right, now watch this."
Owsley reached out her left foot fore-finger and carefully pressed a button on the array of lettered keys. The images on the bottle's surface disappeared, replaced by an even glowing blue.
Owsley frowned. "It keeps doing that," she said. "I don't think it's supposed to."
"Anyway, Django, let's get back to you. One reason you feel lost is that they're chasing a dead cat in the quantcomps up on Orwell, so the big sys satpix updates are intermittent. Just ignore it until they get that fixed. There're no isats around New Berkeley so you'll have to work from static images there, but at least you won't notice any geographic agnosia.
"I corrected some other minor problems - I tuned your ultraviolet spectrum equalizer, I got rid of some hum in those hot Japanese transponders you wear, I reversed a tendency to Spoonerism in your French-English translator -"
"Berci meaucoup," I interrupted.
Owsley looked at me sharply and chuckled. "Can't tweak a tweaker, Go."
"I also found the problem with your hold on that fold. There was some unscheduled cell necrosis in your left haptic-tactile organoid. It made your in virtu touch experience tend toward the slippery. I fixed that, so you should be able to feel shared pseudo-objects just fine from now on. In short, you're in top combat form."
Owsley looked at me expectantly. She knew I had to ask. I tried to fight it. I clenched my jaw. I gritted my teeth.
I said, "What about my big toe?"
"Well, Go," Owsley said, already giggling again, "not to worry, that pain in your toe is all in your head. Now go break a leg at New Berkeley."
Aubrey Owsley, my systweak, had her nook across the square from the university. She worked from the first floor of a three-story brick building. Her immediate neighbors were a pamper-flesh called Svetti's and a preschool called The Ghost. There were three pizza shops and four coffee shops in the block. I pinged her.
"Heysan, Django, it's a long time since," she shouted when I opened the door. "Come on in."
"Hey, Ouch, nice paws," I said. She'd grown foot fingers.
"Yeah, now I can do four things at once."
Owsley half-lay on an ancient tobacco-brown cracked leather sofa, with her new heels resting on an Empire ottoman. She wore a black watchman's cap, a long, faded, brown corduroy skirt over yellowed once-white wool longjohns, and rough wool footgloves. She had a leather belt with a turquoise buckle. She had on a brown and cream Norwegian wool seaman's sweater which rode above her waist, revealing an unbuttoned longjohn hole. Let me take you a button-hole lower, I thought. All twenty fingers twitched randomly and Oswley's half-closed eyes shifted independently of one another as she worked. She drooled just a bit.
Owsley was a very busy, very wealthy, very good sysman. I'd met her when some sork kidnapped her twin long-haired Dachshunds, Myrtle and Methyl. I got them back unharmed, and the ransom too. Owsley still felt grateful.
"Ouch," I said, "I need some face. I'm going dustup on New Berkeley and I want your check-out. And I'm still having that problem with ping recall."
Owsley sat up slowly, focused, and wiped her mouth. "Glad to help, Go. Tell me about it."
"You remember how I feel I have ping, but when I recall it, nothing's there, no source, no subject, no nothing?" Owsley nodded.
"That's slowly getting worse. And I have kind of a general fuzziness, nothing specific, just kind of a lost feeling I guess, and - well, it's embarrassing, Ouch. I, uh, I guess I dropped a fold on my foot."
"You dropped a pseudo-object on your foot?"
Good old Ouch. I can always count on her for sympathy. She slapped both hands over her mouth, squinched up her eyes, and slowly slid off the couch to lie on the floor, trying to stifle her laughter. Tears ran on her face before the mirth eased up a little.
"Go," she said, gasping, "did you - did you - hurt yourself?" She gulped, and chortled.
With what dignity I could muster, I said "Yes, Ouch, I hurt my big toe."
That set her off again.
"Go, let me take look around in there," Owsley said finally, wiping her eyes and getting up. "I'll see what I can do. I'm sure I can" - snort! - "fix the toe."
I unlocked my sys and watched Ouch work. It was all Geek to me. I saw flashing graphs and snaky interlocking balls of neon strings and incomprehensible fractal displays
and other artifacts of Ouch's trade come and go in our shared visual field.
Test patterns ran shapes repeatedly through my eyes - star, cube, pyramid, sphere, mobius, torus, saddle - or sounded chords to my ears, or tingled my fingers painfully at each tip in rapid succession, or made goosebumps rise in waves running down my arms. Each one a pattern, diagnostic and prognostic. Seventeen interminable minutes later, Owsley spoke.
"First, the ping problem. You understand that once it's in your extended memory, incoming information makes itself known to you via attention attraction focii?"
I nodded, trying to look as if I knew that. Well, I did know it, sort of.
"OK, in your case, the focus for ping got linked to your habitual learning system. I
bet you poll it pretty frequently, right? You know you don't have to do that? It will announce itself? That's what it's for?"
Ouch tends to preach. "Yeah, OK, so I used to check it from time to time. So?"
"Well, the repeated active attention you gave to it when it hadn't changed state made your sys think you wanted that to happen automatically - habitually, if you will. So now the focus tries to get your attention even when no ping has arrived. There's two ways to fix that, the slow way and the fast way.
"The slow way is to ignore it. Just check for ping now and then, not too often, to see if you actually do have any. After a few days, your system will naturally dissolve the habitual binding to the focus, and the problem will reverse itself.
"The fast way, I reach in and break the habit from outside. What'll it be?"
If I had to fight, I didn't want distraction. And I didn't have time to waste looking to see if I had ping or not. I had a business to run. "Fast."
Owsley grinned. Suddenly, simultaneously, I felt a painfully intense taste of cilantro, a piercing light behind my right eye, and a drastic phantom limb manicure. I said "Ouch!"
"You called? OK, habit's broken. As for the fuzziness, that could be several things. I adjusted your sonic quantifier - that's the organoid that puts hard numbers to your sound data, like when you want to know exactly what frequency a sound is, you know? - it was a little non-logarithmic, and I bumped your subitizer back up to 10. There's still that damned tendency down to the natural level - how could they function back then when they couldn't grok more than four things at a time?"
"Speaking of the past, did you notice my latest antique?" Her hand fingers pointed to her left.
Owsley collected and restored ancient electro-mechanical devices. Her new project was a group of large ugly black plastic boxes connected by stiff colored tubes or cables. There was an array of worn buttons, with letters still visible on most of them. There was a square-bottomed glass bottle lying on its side, with glowing colored figures and a moving cartoon dog on the bottom surface. The whole contraption squealed like a mutant mosquito and reeked of ozone.
"Is that a television? Or a typewriter?" Ouch had me puzzled, and she liked that.
"No, Django, that clumsy contraption was called a "personal computer". It's a distant ancestor of your own sys, and big sys too. Do you know that there was no direct connection between that thing and the cognitive perceptions of its operator?"
"But how the hell did they work it? Knobs and levers?"
"Very close to right. Almost the only input came from pushing on those lettered buttons with your fingers - that was still called type-writing. The operator had to see output in letters on the bottom of that bottle, and then read it back to himself!"
"But how did it ping? How could it load or show folds?"
"This device is more than four hundred years old, Go. It couldn't show folds because back then they couldn't share perceptual spaces. There wasn't any ping, just telephone and electrified mail. They couldn't load because they could only use one or two of the old senses for access to electrical memory. All right, now watch this."
Owsley reached out her left foot fore-finger and carefully pressed a button on the array of lettered keys. The images on the bottle's surface disappeared, replaced by an even glowing blue.
Owsley frowned. "It keeps doing that," she said. "I don't think it's supposed to."
"Anyway, Django, let's get back to you. One reason you feel lost is that they're chasing a dead cat in the quantcomps up on Orwell, so the big sys satpix updates are intermittent. Just ignore it until they get that fixed. There're no isats around New Berkeley so you'll have to work from static images there, but at least you won't notice any geographic agnosia.
"I corrected some other minor problems - I tuned your ultraviolet spectrum equalizer, I got rid of some hum in those hot Japanese transponders you wear, I reversed a tendency to Spoonerism in your French-English translator -"
"Berci meaucoup," I interrupted.
Owsley looked at me sharply and chuckled. "Can't tweak a tweaker, Go."
"I also found the problem with your hold on that fold. There was some unscheduled cell necrosis in your left haptic-tactile organoid. It made your in virtu touch experience tend toward the slippery. I fixed that, so you should be able to feel shared pseudo-objects just fine from now on. In short, you're in top combat form."
Owsley looked at me expectantly. She knew I had to ask. I tried to fight it. I clenched my jaw. I gritted my teeth.
I said, "What about my big toe?"
"Well, Go," Owsley said, already giggling again, "not to worry, that pain in your toe is all in your head. Now go break a leg at New Berkeley."
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