The Intelligent Use of Technology

As Mr. Insane sat there, propped up against a tree, he found his breathing becoming more laboured. When he coughed the combination of blood and mucus stained his fingers. He wasn’t exactly aware of what was happening but he had an idea that it was a nanoswarm slowly disintegrating his insides. This was the true end of the technology heralded to be one of medicine’s greatest breakthroughs. The nanoswarm could be ordered to maintain the victim in a state of limbo, pecking out his guts and then regrowing them for him every morning. In another part of his mind Mr. Insane was aware that he was equally quite safe. His suit would mask both his visual emissions and most of the non-visible spectrum normally radiated from a human. Especially in his current sedentary state he would be quite invisible to almost anything. He tried to reach for an emergency injection strapped on his arm but found that his voluntary muscles were incapacitated. Whether it was the nanoswarm or a directed energy weapon was quite unclear; however he could still move his eyes voluntarily and his legs so he assumed the nanoswarm had temporarily severed some of his nerves. He felt nauseous and fell sideways vomiting pathetically; some of the vomit ran down his cheek in a warm dribble he could feel, he could hear the rest being sucked away by the respirator. He had read the literature and was aware that the torture would continue for probably another three or four hours before the regeneration process began and that itself would last probably seven or eight hours and then the cycle would start again; it would not go on indefinitely – as it was working from a human template that would differ from his actuality in specific ways, it would severe things and never repair them.
He thought about what the Corporation was trying to achieve. His current state was aimed at demoralising him. Its purpose was to put him and others like him in their place and remind them in the most vivid way of their weakness and sheer uselessness when confronted with the full force of modern technology. It was a simple and age-old message - resistance is futile.
Mr. Insane’s eyes unfocused and then refocused. He was in a really bad place. He felt he would have surrendered, if there were something to surrender to. Unlike many of his colleagues his suit was doing exactly what it was designed to do and keeping him (and the nanoswarm in his blood), from detection and external harm. Thinking about it at that point he considered that perhaps the suit only made things worse. He was quite sure the nanobots would not be programmed to synthesise food from the outside. In fact so far he had no indication that their programming extended beyond the human internal environment.
For a moment he felt panic at the thought of remaining there under the jungle canopy until he starved to death, undetected and unknown; assumed dead whilst invisible objects maintained him for as long as was possible. Another thought hit him; perhaps they would digest his muscles to keep him fed. He started kicking about with his functioning lower half. If he weren’t invisible he would have looked like a fish out of water, as he was basically invisible his actions simply created a flutter of leaves on the forest floor.
The crunching of forest leaves brought him back to reality. He looked to his right and saw a semi-transparent man approaching him. The man was fully clothed and wore an advanced suit. He looked grotesque, insect-like; his body was covered in autonomous chitineous insect brained plates that clung to their “queen.” The newcomer was looking around as though he was sure that there was something around. His movements were somewhere between cautious and confident, as though he was quite sure his prey was wounded but wasn’t completely convinced. Eventually, about fifteen meters from Mr. Insane, he became aware of the prostrate figure under the tree. His hideous disguised body turned and approached; the plates crawling around to form a stronger fore armour.
When the newcomer was about ten meters away a hand settled on the Mr. Insane’s shoulder. Mr. Insane twitched and flopped around as much as his jerky muscles would let him. The newcomer was right next to him. The other being vanished: never having been there.

The newcomer, a Special Assault unit level undefined was called Sprac. He knelt at Mr. Insane’s side. Sprac’s movements indicated that he was laughing; his body bobbed slightly whilst he unfastened Mr. Insane’s mask and removed it. The invisible head suddenly became clear, floating as though decapitated above the floor. Sprac considered for a few second whether he should cut the suit open, but decided that it would actually have quite some commercial value on the market. Thus he took his slow time removing it, piece by piece. He wanted to hurt Mr. Insane but knew that the nanoswarm would be doing that well enough.
Eventually Mr. Insane lay naked at Sprac’s feet. Sprac meanwhile minimised the suit after having specked it online. Everything collapsed into a ball, which was small enough to fit inside the helmet. The helmet was however uncollapsible and virtually indestructible.
Sprac then knelt down again and stared at the prone and twitching man. His helmet was a bizarre contraption with five large blister-like composite camera eyes on it and three binocular eyes. The bug like eyes on Sprac’s helmet reflected Mr. Insane in a thousand sordid little images. In the reflection Mr. Insane could see that his throat and chest were covered in his vomit and his blood. His veins were pushing out against his skin. He was aware of what he was looking at. The blister eyes on the helmet were composite eyes. Each little eye in the bulging monstrosity a separate camera feeding images into an updated and enhanced occipital lobe of the man Sprac. Mr. Insane was aware of such technology but had no clue how it worked. He had a feeling that the occipital lobe was enhanced with insect neural matter.
Sprac held his hand over the chest of the defeated Mr. Insane. His actions mimicked a Reiki practitioner. As Mr. Insane watched blisters formed upon his chest and then the nanoswarm began to emerge through his skin, creating a shimmering cloud somewhat like a mirage. Their exit was deliberately messy leaving Mr. Insanes chest looking like it had been shot with a shotgun and feeling like it had been rubbed with salt. The nanoswarm disappeared into thin chambers in the forearm of Sprac’s suit. Once this was done Sprac leant forward and “stared” into Mr. Insane’s eyes.
“Stop wasting your time and your people’s energy.” He said in a perfectly clear and level voice, somewhat like a coach making a suggestion to a player. With that he turned and walked away. After a few meters he paused and turned. He withdrew a ration from his pocket and threw it to Mr. Insane; it landed in a puddle of vomit. Sprac then turned and walked off. Disappearing completely from view in two paces and reappearing as three holograms at a radius of approximately fifteen meters.

Fallen Man

Colenzo found the rest of the trip to the outer planets immensely tiring. The ship had a rather large contingent of passengers on board: people catching the ride from the gas giants to the outer planets for various business, social or migratory reasons. Colenzo’s work involved patrolling the areas these people frequented and ensuring the peace was kept and the local law was upheld. Meanwhile he was studying for a legal exam he would have to pass when they entered the jurisdiction of the outer planets. This was not an entry requirement but rather a work requirement; although he would be patrolling on ships that fell under his home legislature he would be interacting with people from other legislatures and would occasionally be visiting these legislatures. This meant that he had to be able to explain to people when their actions began to head down the “illegal” path and to understand why. He was also doing it for his own good; ignorance would not be considered an excuse in any legislature. Most of it was pretty boring financial stuff and minor variations on issues surrounding ownership and possession.
All the passengers had had their nanobots taken and although the ship had its own nanoassembler there were few templates on board from which new nanobots could be built. Furthermore the other templates that did exist could not be reproduced for anyone but the owner due to their purchase contract and although signals had been sent to the gas giants and the outer planets no company would risk transmitting a template as the signal would undoubtedly be intercepted and decoded illegally by groups such as the NoCoL. Many of the passengers had also been robbed of their luxury goods, including aesthetic nanobots, neural uplinks, jewellery and fancy clothes.

Colenzo and Edgar’s “morning” shift had them at the food court. Theoretically food courts were redundant; every passenger and every crewmember had a room that was directly connected to a nearby assembler. This assembler could make and deliver whatever they wanted from the menu within minutes. The time delay would be a sum of the assembly of the product and its transportation. The three competing food franchises had further got the time delay down to a few seconds. Oom Piet’s promised a pap and wors in 8 seconds. They could achieve this because they had warming trays hurtling around the ship in microcubicles, statistically organised such that they could meet the demands of any pap and wors gathering within the required time (they had a disclaimer for groups over 30). Chairman Mau could deliver a Chop Suey in 9 seconds through a similar method. But instead of sitting in their rooms, gorging themselves on fast food and linking to the net to watch movies or be entertained, people gathered in the food halls. There was something social, something satisfying in being there - it appeased the general human need to be together and share experiences together. Using the age-old excuse people would get together and “have a coffee” or “go out for dinner.” Now that few people had any other form of entertainment they were even further compelled to gather at the food court.
There were tables and plants in this giant chamber. It was one of the largest sections within the ship. It had a clear blue sky and a warm sun projecting down the psychologically and physiologically tested “most satisfying” sunlight. This product had been patented of course although nobody would stand for patenting the light frequency; even capitalism had its limits.
A large bean shaped swimming pool dominated the one end of the food court – running about 150 meters in length. The bean analogy carried further as using localised gravity belts the pool curved up the wall somewhat like a half pipe – thus making the middle of the pool lower than the water at the sides. Near the pool were numerous strong updrafts that could hurl a person 15 meters into the air before allowing them to drop onto the sloping sides of the pool. Using boards a couple of youngsters were dropping artistically, riding the sides and shooting out the other side to catch new thermals. The ship’s AI was controlling the speed and direction of the updraft, whilst monitoring the direction and velocity of the other swimmers, with the intent of dropping the surfers in the most open water. It even analysed the preferred options of the different surfers and attempted to predict what moves they would pull and thus compensate accordingly. This stylistic profiling was beyond the scope of its job description but provided something to expend its excess processing power upon – it was the model employee: it worked hard not because it felt compelled to do so but because it couldn’t stand being bored.
Today however it was actually really working; the crowds were out en mass and with no neural uplinks and no hormone controllers the men and women felt the need not only to entertain themselves but also the nagging need to impress their preferred sexual objects. Regular surfers were finding the experience quite a rush compared to the usual hormone controlled option they would have experienced with their nanobots (or hormone controllers) and two people were throwing up after coming down on a adrenaline homeostatic low. The sun was hot and some people were sweating and smelling. One poor guy’s eyes weren’t adjusting as they normally would have and the glare was giving him a headache. Interspersed in the crowd were people whose bodily functions had always received such extra attention that they couldn’t fully understand the subjective experience of thirst. Some figured it out naturally whereas others slowly began to get slightly giddy and feel mildly drunk. And as for the rutting, without hormonal control these poor animals really had no other way to appease themselves.
Colenzo wasn’t doing too well himself. Due to his physiology he was not suffering from the sun as much as some other people but he was suffering from social fatigue. There were so many people; at the best of times he could only stand crowds for a while – now he had to monitor them and with nothing else to do a large section of the ship’s temporary population was hanging out in the food court, by the entertainment areas and the pool.
Edgar took his job quite differently. Between them, Edgar and Colenzo had decided that someone needed to be near the pool and following the action there. Edgar had decided that the best way was to join in. Consequently Edgar was riding the half pipe and the thermals. The sergeant seemed to agree.

Colenzo was watching in fascination as one child fought another for possession of a stretchable frog type thing when he heard a woman raising her voice behind him. His instincts told him that it was not normal and he turned clicking the shock ring on his middle finger. It took him a few seconds to notice what was going on. He stared more closely and started to make his way over when the woman spoke up again,
“Just stuff off!” She said, loud enough to draw stares from those around her.
The man sitting next to her on a sunchair rubbed his hand up her thigh and said something to her too softly for Colenzo to hear. Whatever it was though it really irritated the woman who rolled over and pushed the man away. He however just leant in closer nuzzling his unshaven cheek against her neck and subtly applying some of his weight against her. The woman squirmed a bit and moved away, placing a hand against the man’s shoulder and pushing him.
Colenzo hesitated a second and then tapped the piece in his ear and called Edgar. “Edgar I think you should get over here to section L3.” he said and then looking at the couple again. Colenzo noticed that the man had moved closer to the woman and was rubbing a hand across her inner thigh. Colenzo cleared his throat and was about to speak when a large Chinese man stormed past him, bumping him aside so he fell onto one of the near chairs. Soon the Chinese man had the other man off the chair. “Just watch yourself.” He warned the harasser who took a wild wing at him in response. Deftly the Chinese man dodged the fist and soon he was pounding the other man in the face.
The crowd simply stared in amazement, as did Colenzo; such violence was regularly seen on TV in sport and competitions but in a public place it was very rare. Then Colenzo remembered what he was supposed to do. He clicked the pacify ring and moved into the fray.
The two rings Colenzo wore worked amazingly well, much better in fact than did Colenzo; Colenzo was hesitant and in another age would have had the shit kicked out of him. The one ring – the shock ring – administered a strong enough shock to knock a man off his feet – in this case it was the Chinese man. The other – the pacify ring – flooded the target (in this case the other man) with calming chemicals. Having pacified the one man Colenzo quickly tried to pacify the Chinese man. It didn’t work though and so he shocked him again. Stuttering the warning they were supposed to give any lawbreaker.
The Chinese man was much stronger than Colenzo had anticipated though. In fact he was a regular participant in a form of gladiatorial exhibition and was quite used to being punished. He was up and at Colenzo before Colenzo could properly react. Colenzo cowered and covered his face bracing himself for the punch to come. It never came though as the man was tackled and pacified by Edgar.
As Colenzo stood there shaking Edgar got to work on the two pacified people. He attached small devices to the back of their necks and watched their arms go limp. He then activated a device on his belt and hauled the two men to their feet. Colenzo joined in and they started to lead the men away.
As they walked away the woman, the one who had been central to the entire situation, got up and thanked Edgar and Colenzo. She was very shaken. In her entire life she had never felt so directly under threat and so entirely powerless. No man had ever used the power of his physicality to overcome her and she was overwhelmed. She felt weak and terrified. She looked around the crowd with a fear she had not experienced in public before. This feeling would never truly leave her again. It was the one piece of evidence that shatters all one’s hypotheses about humanity and human nature. It was there and it could not be denied.

Colenzo and Edgar made their way to an exit cubicle. Colenzo, who had recovered from the direct physical threat to his person and the psychological threat to his worldviews, began thinking clearly again. He called through to the sergeant and informed him of the situation. He also suggested that some further resources be allocated to the area as things were getting heated. The sergeant agreed; he was currently in the small unlawful persons holding section with six other perpetrators – things were indeed getting heated.
In the cubicle the four men sat around awkwardly. The two subdued men were hanging their heads. The one, Grand Cru, who had started the entire thing, was mortified at his behaviour. Eventually he couldn’t hold his feelings in and spoke out to no-one in particular.
“I can’t believe I did that. I actually couldn’t control myself.” The other three sat in silence not knowing what to say. Grand Cru continued, “I have never felt like that before. The need was…” he stuttered into silence, wiping blood off his nose and looking at his bloodied fingers uncomprehendingly.
Colenzo stared at Grand Cru and considered the man’s situation. For one thing the man stank. He actually smelt of male body odour. Obviously the man was used to having aesthetic nanobots to keep him smelling nice and looking shaven. Without the bots he was a bit lost as to what to do. This was however the smallest of Grand Cru’s worries. His actions would be tagged onto his identity. All the information systems throughout the civilized universe would get this information when they looked him up. Wherever he went he would find doors being closed and security guards following him as though he were a criminal – because he was now a criminal.
Grand Cru was obviously thinking the same thing as he said, “Shit do you know what this will do to my life. I might loose my job. I won’t be let into clubs. I’ll be debarred. I might even get deregistered.” He started to panic and made to stand up. Subtly Edgar turned a dial on the control on his belt. A light on the device on Grand Cru’s neck lit up and his arm started twitching. As the frequency increased his voluntary control decreased and Grand Cru slumped back into the chair. Edgar grinned at this. He was enjoying having this kind of power over another individual.

When they arrived at the holding cells they found the sergeant waiting for them. He was wearing his police armour. The four men felt an immediate inferiority to the sergeant and felt willing to obey his commands. Although they were unaware of this it was due to the pheromones being released by the suit which immediately placed everyone but the wearer of the suit in an subordinate role and placed the wearer of the suit in the alpha role, much like animals in herds or troupes. The sergeant, already a large and well built man looked much more powerful in the suit, as well as more graceful and confident. The armours angles also gave him a ferocious air and visually projected his prowess.
The room they were in had six separate cells leading off it and served as a control and observation room. A desk at the far side of the room had hologram screens that could examine the inmates on various levels; analysing not only their hormonal state and neural activity but also their pheromone emissions as well as their behavioural indicators (eye movements, hand movements, edginess etc.). All of this would help determine when the person had “cooled off” and whether the person was ready to be released back into the public. It would also stand as evidence in trail about the persons control over their actions and their guilt or remorse about their actions. The security company owned this information and would sell it to whoever wanted it. This would also be tagged to Grand Cru’s identity.
“Gentlemen” the sergeant began, “I have analysed the extensive footage of this incident, the actions leading up to it and your responses following it,” he paused and considered, “if one can realistically separate the actions that preceded any event from the actions that follow it and the event itself.” He nodded to himself in agreement. “On these grounds I have acquitted Mr. Smith. You actions were noble and correct given the circumstances and the local law.” He nodded with some respect to the burly Chinese man that had been involved in the fray. “Either way this will be tagged to your identity file and my statement will also be included. You can leave.” He stepped forward and removed the device from the man’s neck and shook his hand. Mr. Smith patted the sergeant on the shoulder and said, “Thanks Sarg.” before departing.
Colenzo noticed the mannerism between the two and wandered if there was something more going on there, some form of boys club or something, but he kept quite. The sergeant then addressed the three, “I have consulted with the more learned of this ship’s population and decreed that this is a disaster waiting to happen. Without hormonal controllers and nanobots humans are nothing but animals. Today alone we have had three attempted rapes and twelve fights. Given the normal distribution curve and the genetic sample on board this ship we are not surprised. On these grounds I am increasing the security warning on board this ship to green and extending your credit levels so I can arm you better and dispatch you both to improve security. Things might get ugly.” He paused and spoke directly to Grand Cru. “As for you, Mr. Cru,” he snorted at the rhyme “you will have to be placed in a shared cell with another and more aggressive perpetrator. This incident will be tagged to your file, although given the circumstances I feel that your actions are,” he contemplated, “understandable. Hopefully other people will understand too.” With that he led the fallen Grand Cru into a holding cell with a rapist, after which he cautioned Edgar and Colenzo, “You know” he told them, “humans without hormonal controls are nothing but beasts that craved to fuck and to fight. We are, as some would have us believe, born into sin.”
He turned and walked over to the holographic screen and pulled up a display of the greater entertainment area. “Colenzo, I am placing you in charge of this area. I am also dispatching four other human resources who will fall under your control, I want you to think ahead, plan. I will also be sending further technological resources through to you forthwith.” He paused and thought a second and then said, “Dismissed.” The two men left the room.

The Unperceived Consequences of Mindless Action

Colenzo felt like a tennis ball that had just hit the net. He stumbled forward and then fell backward. In his room an orange emergency light came on to warn him and any other non-linked soul that the ship was in mild danger. He felt the internal environment go but unlike in the simulations a strong gravity field remained. Unfortunately it was up, so Colenzo fell up toward the roof, colliding with his roommate - Edgar Rice. As they landed on the roof Edgar’s elbow connected with Colenzo’s nose and blood started to run down Colenzo’s face; this was the first injury of the encounter. The room began a homeostatic roll to correct so that up was once again up. It was slow enough that the two could scramble across the roof along the wall and back onto the floor.
The door opened and a cubicle awaited them. They stumbled in and it shot off through the interior of the cargo ship. The inside of the cargo ship was something like the inside of the gallery shed that houses a battering ram, with the gallery shed being the exterior of the ship and the battering ram the numerous internal compartments. That was about were the similarity ended because the battering ram could fragment and move around in the open space to facilitate the movement of things from one point to another. The cubicle they were in was heading to a nearby weapons control centre that was itself heading toward them. When the two pieces of machinery met, the cubicle spat its occupants out into the low gravity of the control centre and sped off.
The swirling orange light turned off and was replace by a flickering slightly redder one. This indicated that things were getting worse. The cargo ship was caught in a gravity well that was used to stop it and control it. A device upon an enemy ship was producing the gravity. The well was not huge but was large enough and fluctuated randomly enough to force the AI controlling the cargo ship to leave a large amount of processing power available to deal with sudden changes. To anyone watching, the ship would have looked like a fish trying to swim upstream. Behind the ship and closing in on it were a swarm of smaller ships. They knew what the seemingly random fluctuations and movements of the gravity well would be and hence they were making rapid progress toward the larger, bulkier and uninformed cargo ship.
The mines that the cargo ship had discharged almost immediately after being entrapped soon detonated near the source of the gravity well. This forced the ship producing the well to redirect energy into shields and away from the gravity. The fish jumped free of the water for a second, and then was once again battling upstream. One or two of the smaller ships, caught off guard, shot backward toward the gravity well. Their integrity was now at stake. One began to collapse and the gravity well disappeared.
Out of the five remaining smaller ships two had managed to penetrate the defences of the cargo ship; the rest remained locked in a stalemate. The two ships that had penetrated the cargo ship’s shields landed on the exterior of the ship and began to cut through.
Meanwhile Colenzo and Edgar sat facing each other at a rather strange table. Before each of them were three large buttons, almost like those in a game show. On one button was a picture of a rock, on another a picture of a piece of paper and on the last a pair of scissors. They were playing ching-chong-cha. Every five seconds they would play a round. A little gong would sound three times and then they would choose. The score was twelve-two to Edgar. The gongs went and they played their hand. Colenzo hit the rock; Edgar hit the paper - thirteen-two. Their actions were not trivial though. Each of their brains was an isolated system that was feeding “random” inputs into the AI’s calculations. This helped avoid the predictability that AI’s and programming in the broader sense were prone to; it did not solve it though. Slowly new patterns would emerge. The AI also watched the random quantum fluctuations of certain materials it had in its decision chamber and quantified these to add to its equations. As a result of that last hand and the random decay of a piece of uranium the ship surrendered.

Half an hour later, Colenzo and the rest of the crew were standing around in a hanger that was being used as a venue to sign the peace and settle the terms. Colenzo was watching the sergeant and the captain negotiate with the leader of the rebel-pirates.
The rebel-pirates were a generally messy bunch. Some had long hair and dirty nails. Others had uncontrolled facial hair. And still others had weight problems. Their leader was probably the healthiest looking of the group. He had his own nanobots, one for his medical needs and another for his aesthetic needs. He had also forcefully demanded access to the defeated ships LAN the minute the surrender had been declared. He was now demanding that the entire database be downloaded onto one of their ships and this demand was being met. His name was Nondollar Alpha and he wore the symbol of his rebel group proudly on his shoulder. It read NoCoL in holographic writing.
Despite being quite unkempt the NoCoL troops were highly disciplined and as such they stood in neat rows with their hands behind their backs. They also wore uniforms, with the NoCoL logo. Behind the group of rebel-pirates hung a set of flatron banners that repeatedly showed an animated NoCoL logo. It read something like a statement of business intent.
“We are committed to the liberation of the oppressed mass.”
“We work together in a leaderless environment.”
“We respect the individual and challenge the imperialist dehumanising system.”
“We believe in community of property and the manifesto.”
“We fill fight with our entire lives.”
“We will never give up.”
“We are the New-Communist Liberation Army.” The last line exploded with energy and swept out as a projection from the screen, the “smoke” cleared and the NoCoL logo remained suspended above the group. In about another minute the process would start again.
The sergeant was ignoring the propaganda and addressing Nondollar Alpha. He made a point he hoped would strike home, “The Corporation does not own any of the cargo on this ship. They don’t even own the ship. Indeed, they have a fair share in the ship’s parent company and the cargo producer’s holdings but I am here purely as part of an onboard security force. The reason I am addressing you now is that your actions are effecting trade between the gas giants and the outer planets and hence have come to the attention of management.”
Nondollar took it exactly the wrong way, “Great.” He said, smiling, “Then our actions are finally taking effect.” He looked around approvingly to his cronies who stood behind him. They nodded in approval.
The sergeant tried to explain himself, “No. What I am trying to say is that the people are getting unhappy. If you continue you may incur the Corporation’s wrath.” From Nondollars smile the Sergeant could tell that he did not really understand. In fact the Sergeant realised he himself didn’t really understand, but he did know, from what he had seen earlier, that this motley crew of bandits did not stand a chance if they pissed off the wrong people.
“Look Mr Ambassador” Nondollar said laughing and patting the Corporation logo on the sergeant’s shirt. “I appreciate your talk but you can take your imperialistic capitalism and shove it. We understand your oppressive techniques and we aren’t fooled.” He puffed his chest and looked around expansively. “Next you’ll be offering to employ us.” He laughed and his troops laughed with him.
The sergeant sighed. He had heard the rhetoric so often before. He had also been ordered to attempt to employ them as transport security forces. “Can we do a simulation?” The sergeant suggested, hoping that a more visual display of power would affect this obviously simplistic idiot or at least scare his followers.
Nondollar snorted and now seemed a bit annoyed. “Look just piss off ok.” He said, looking straight at the sergeant, “What do you think we are little children.” Nondollar made an obviously dismissing gesture with his hand and turned to the ships captain. “Captain…” he began but the Sergeant interrupted him.
“Consider yourself warned Mr Alpha.” The Sergeant said and then he turned and walked over to Colenzo, Edgar and the rest of the recruits. “Lets go.” He said and started to walk off.
Colenzo however wanted to see what would pass between the ship’s captain and Nondollar. Edgar noticed this and also stayed behind. The sergeant however turned and looked back, “Come!” He ordered like an owner talking to his dogs. Reluctantly the two followed.

As they sat in the Onboard Policing Lounge, later that day, one of the female recruits chatted to the sergeant. She was the neurologist that the sergeant had picked on in one of their earlier meetings. Colenzo remembered her, but couldn’t remember what she had said or even the fact that she was a neurologist. Again he was fooled by his lack of neural link and tried to look up her details and some pictures. Whilst he sat there feeling frustrated the other two talked.
“So what’ll happen here?” the neurologist asked the Sergeant.
He looked at her. His face spoke irritation, something that ran deeper than irritation at her question, but which might find a vent in his answer.
“Well,” he began, “these idiots will take all the cargo, which is almost exclusively design templates.” As he spoke he moved into his natural thinking mode and found that his feelings of irritation subsided. “They will also take the various original artefacts that constitute a large part of the ships bulk cargo. They will take the entire database and might order most of the crew to hand over their nanobots and suits. In return we will get their crappy, out of date clothes and spend the next thirty days biting our nails like Mr Majuba over there.” Everyone had a good chuckled, except Colenzo; he felt a stab of emotional pain at the rejection. In truth he quite liked his commander. He felt the kind of emotional feelings people often do toward authority figures; he was the sergeant as a father. Edgar started to retort on Colenzo’s behalf but the sergeant sooshed him. “They probably aren’t stupid enough to take any hostages, but if they do it won’t be any of us.”
Colenzo had tried listening as the two chatted but he quickly found himself drifting off. He looked at the neurologist’s legs as the sergeant continued, “What gets to me about these rebel morons is that they have no conception of the power of the Corporation. I realised earlier that even I don’t, but they really have no clue. They think they are picking on the big guy at school but they are actually picking on the whole fucken national team. Not even the team, the nuclear capable nation. In fact all that is saving them is how pathetic they are.”
“It’s like when a five year old picks on a thirty year old - the big guy just laughs.” The Neurologist added. The sergeant smiled and nodded, turning more toward her.
“For sure.” He said. He and the neurologist had retreated into a bubble. Although Colenzo could still hear what they were saying, their body language, eye contact and general mood indicated that he and Edgar were no longer welcome guests at the party. Colenzo got up, stretched and walked off. Edgar who wasn’t very good at reading human signs remained. Colenzo tapped his shoulder and Edgar followed him.

About an hour later the rebels ordered the crew of the cargo ship (with the help of the Corporation recruits) to transfer the cargo onto one of the rebel ships. The transfer was pretty mundane. It involved moving large boxes of diamonds on antigravity trolleys from the cargo ship to the NoCoL Mother Ship. The cargo ship’s, AI’s drones, could have done the work but the rebels insisted that people do it; they didn’t want any AI linked drones on board their ships, scanning things and remembering details with the kind of memory only available to a machine. Furthermore the AI had stated that it was not part of its job description and thus wouldn’t do it anyway. The sergeant had also been excluded, as the Nondollar was worried he would have some nanotechnology that would be able “to take notes or scan or do something…” Everyone else had received a thorough scanning each time they entered the rebels ship, this took time and used energy. The diamonds they were transporting contained design templates for various new and upgraded products. These templates would be fed into a nanoassemblers, which would then produce the goods.
The NoCoL mothership was in reasonable condition. As Colenzo moved through the halls of the ship he had watched a small machine hunt down and consume a cockroach. From this he had correctly inferred that they didn’t have nanoswarms sweeping the ship and keeping it perfect. He was quite used to the sight from his own previous work experience; only the rich and the executives could afford nanoswarms and such other luxuries. There was also generally a large amount of animal life and greenery. The passages were lined with long flowerbeds containing high oxygen yielding crops and fruits. These were fed by various little pipes and focused sprinklers. There were also lots of cats. The NoCoL obviously had an ecological leaning and preferred natural settings where possible. The majority of the interior was however pretty standard and quite out of date.
After this, at the Sergeant’s command (indirectly at Nondollar’s command) Colenzo had donned a heavy mover suit and helped transfer the larger original artefacts in a low gravity environment. Each object though had to be left at the entrance to the NoCoL motherhsip where a rebel in a heavy mover suit picked it up. Colenzo found the work mindless but quite soothing. The heavy mover suit was designed to fake resistance so as to provide the worker with a decent workout and as his muscles got more tired so the resistances lessened. By the time Colenzo had worked for sixty minutes he was pretty exhausted and doing little more that moving his fingers. Many of the objects made no sense to him; they were obviously art of some sort. Others were old style machinery including a combustion engine motor vehicle. It was probably one of the most valuable artefacts he had seen. One of the other objects was the remains of a collapsed MircoSun that was now housed within a glass and metal hand. The MicroSun was of an earlier type than that powering the ship but still would have weighed many tons if the gravity had been on. As he carried it he was sure he noticed motes being drawn toward this tiny centre of gravity.
As the sergeant had predicted the rebels took all the nanobots from the crew of the cargo ship and those of Corporation’s employees. They couldn’t take the sergeants as it was tagged to self-destruct if it entered another human’s system, although they did force him to remove it from his system and then they destroyed it. By mistake they also took the eggs of a new strain of cockroach, with increased resilience to radiation and the ability to live in a near vacuum.
Lastly they took the neurologist hostage after they discovered she was a neurologist. They assumed that she would be a valuable hostage and they were right; she was immensely valuable, but not because she was a neurologist though. Her real value was her debt to the Corporation, which was huge.
Five years previously she had been involved in a restructuring process for a rich man who had been mangled by a freak cubicle accident. As the man had stepped off the cubicle it had closed the doors on him and pulled away. His body had been grated along a wall for three kilometres at seven hundred kilometres an hour, then the cubicle had moved out into space and he had been ripped apart in the vacuum. That is about 15 seconds of being grated against a rough surface at high speed. He was insured though and he was so rich that his neural system was backed up in a spare brain every thirty minutes. The technology was very new and quite untried. Neural restructuring was the hardest form of resurrection and until recently made Class A accidents truly fatal. This new technology had changed that. The rich man was rebuilt and his backup brain was installed. It seemed to work but there were some problems. He had multiple motor co-ordination issues and verbal problems. The restructuring company (a subsidiary of the Corporations medical extension) could not be blamed for these; it was in the exclusions of liability on the eighty-ninth page of the contract. There was however one unbearable problem – the man’s brain had been backed up during the last ten seconds of his life, thus capturing 5 seconds of hell! In his own words, “I can remember getting slammed in that door and dragged along that fucken wall! It is fucken horrible! … I don’t care how much it costs Just Deal With It!” This is what our neurologist had dealt with and she had fucked it up. Neural restructuring was pretty hard, motor and co-ord stuff was pretty easy, some learning was easy although had memory problems as memory was a real issue - especially memory with strong emotional connections. She had really fucked it up and had linked the recall of his name to the first instant of the accident. The rest she had erased including his name. Whenever he tried to remember his name he remembered getting slammed in the door. Consequently she got sued and the Corporation, who covered her Professional Indemnity had to pay asteroids worth. She was on a similar contract to Colenzo at the time and hence she was now paying off her debt to the Corporation; she would be until she died - and then sum more.

The Economic Circumstance of the Essential Framework in a Post-Trauma Circumstance

A week later Colenzo sat in a briefing room. A short immaculately sculptured man was lecturing him and a class of about thirty other recruits. The man was the classic cigar-chewing sergeant – minus the cigar (such oral fixations had long since been removed by sensitive neural restructuring). Interestingly what the sergeant was talking about was also (in a way) related to neural restructuring. He was talking about the rigorous training and exercise routine that the class would soon be embarking upon.
“The importance of this training is not muscle,” he explained, “it is the development of will power. You all know how easily we could artificially restructure your anatomy to whatever form we want. Nanobots could probably have that done in a few days, even a few hours at a cost. If we did that it would be at the Corporation’s cost,” he paused lost in thought, trying to remember where he was going, “but that is not the reason we aren’t doing it. The reason is that recent research indicates that the development of the will is not as easily faked as the development of muscle. And as you’ll all soon discover building muscle takes a lot of will. Perhaps our neural expert can explain.” He indicated one of the women in the small audience.
She looked up with her dark eyes. Her face said, “Fuck you” but her mouth said, “So right you are sergeant.” She was sitting in the front left corner of the audience so she looked around over her right shoulder to the class. “Yes, it appears that the human mind often knows what it doesn’t really know.” She explained. “In other words, when we teach people maths through neural restructuring they know how to do it, but also know that they don’t really know. Because it has been faked the end product is the same but somehow many people know they have faked it and this affects their ability to perform. Of course I mean they know subjectively; nobody else could tell by looking at the results.”
“Quite like good art.” The sergeant added, flirtatiously.
She raised an eyebrow and responded, “Yes quite.” with a snort of derision whilst shaking her head at the sergeant.
As the sergeant carried on pacing and lecturing Colenzo tried to go online to find some more interesting form of entertainment and once again, for probably the fiftieth time that day, he was reminded of the fact that he no longer had direct online access. He found his current state both immensely satisfying and quite terrifying. Even when he was busy the thought of having to sit and do nothing haunted him but when he actually had nothing to do (as had happened quite frequently in the last week) he realised that it was quite nice to actually see the world again; to notice the colours, the tables, the chairs, the corners and the edges. He also found his fingernails immensely irritating as for the first time in his life, he did not have a medibot floating around in his blood stream and controlling such annoying things as nail growth, body hair and decay. Almost immediately after being released from the Ward he had the made decision get another medibot. He was fully prepared to increase his debt if it allowed him to get online and to order one. However all attempts to acquire such necessities had been thwarted.
He started chewing a fingernail. Something was bothering him. He looked around the room and noticed what it was. The room had about thirty or forty recruits. Where then were the thousands of other people he had seen in the Ward. Those beds had all been occupied, yet somehow only thirty people had landed up in this briefing room. Even given the fact that his choice of military service would have immediately limited the number of people, it still seemed incredible that so few people had taken the option. Part of him felt that he had somehow been cheated in the product he had bought and the options he had taken.
He looked at the projector screen at the front of the room. “So incredibly primitive” he thought and read the heading - Interplanetary Space Patrols.
His discomfort with his choice arose again and once more he ran through his decision process, trying to convince himself that he had made the right choice. “It pays well,” he told himself, “better than almost anything else I am qualified for. There is more scope for promotion, side benefits and increased pay. And it’ll be more interesting than pushing rocks around and ordering micromachines to cut them up.” He shrugged, “Who cares, I am alive!”
As he sat there he remembered the moment of his accident and a wave of terrified exhilaration hit him; his heart started pounding and he felt like getting up and walking around. Then he remembered other peoples responses. When he had tried telling his friends and family about his incident they had all been a bit confused at his excitement. Rationally he was aware that most people had not experience such a near death experience and could thus not empathise but deep down he continued to feel the sense of alienation that had come following the accident. Furthermore in interacting with his family he had felt the awkwardness of being in a situation where 1 they felt they should be helping to pay his costs but 2 they realised that it was completely outside of their economic capabilities.

Mr. Majuba’s family and extended family were part of the Essential Framework for Inter-Stellar Development - the working class. Their economic standing was pretty normal for the times, they were not starving, sickly or dying but they could not really afford to resurrect someone. Generally life was good. They had seldom experienced pain and had been experiencing all kinds of pleasures since they were very young. They also got to play whatever they wanted to four days out of every ten. Of course they did not own their own property, they still had to “be there” (at the site of work that is) six times in every ten days and they had to share their asteroid with a collection of other people; some of whom had sound systems that could be felt kilometres away.
As a result of this Colenzo felt mildly relieved that he had been removed from his social circumstance. He remembered his wife’s look when he had first dropped in. She had seemed somehow disapproving, as though he was to blame for the accident. His therapist had taught him that it was simply a result of her guilt but it still felt crap. Yet now he could leave with real cause; he had signed a contract; he had financial obligations; and if he failed to pay the Corporation they would happily pass him on to the other world and sell his organs to sponsor his debt – hence he was free with debt.
“Are there any questions?” the sergeant asked, bringing Colenzo back to reality.
Colenzo raised a hand. “Where can I get a medibot?” he asked innocently.
The sergeant gave him an annoyed look, but noticing that Colenzo was serious replied, “6th floor, green room AD.”
“Thanks.” Colenzo replied and the silence that followed announced dismissal. People milled around for a bit and then started departing. Eventually, once Colenzo was left sitting on his own, he got up and departed.

Whilst he rode the cubicle from the lecture area toward his sixth floor destination Colenzo stared out the window at the beautiful world that lay beyond. Two suns hung out in the distance, casting a brilliant radiance that he could feel. The further away of the two was the brighter although it was currently partially eclipsed by the closer duller star. Their light would usually have been yellow but Colenzo had turned on a filter, which currently cast them in a bizarre green. He had also zoomed in on them and was watching a sunspot; staring at the intense moment happening so distant from him.
There was a woman standing next to him. Her tension and engrossment soon became felt and Colenzo turned and looked at her. She was power-dressed yet her current gait destroyed any power she could have exerted over him. She was staring at the wall. Her mouth was open and her hand was in front of it. She was moving with short, stiff movements. She was excited yet scared, aroused yet disgusted. To Colenzo she looked completely crazy. She was in fact watching a leopard hunt an impala in a reserve she owned three thousand kilometres away. The image was in fact being projected on to her retina. Colenzo understood that she was watching something but had no clue what. He continued to stare at her. He looked her up and down and moved around her like a visitor examining a statue. He was fascinated by the fact that although she was there, she was in fact not there. With a ting the cubicle arrived at his destination and regretfully Colenzo departed.

The green room was large and green. It was full of plants that were green. It had light green walls and dark green chairs. The chairs were in fact plants that had been encouraged to grow into the shape of seats. This was nothing new and except for the fact that everything permanent in the room was green it hardly managed to make an impression upon Colenzo.
He stood in the doorway for a bit before noticing a desk with a man behind it. Above the desk written on a sheet of something was the word “reception.” This was not a familiar word to Colenzo. He had to think a bit before its meaning came to him. When he finally understood he walked over to the desk. The man behind it had a flat nose and curly hair. He was rather large and his body suit had been adjusted to look like an old style button up shirt. Remarkably the man was sweating.
After a brief exchange during which Colenzo was informed that he would have to wait a bit he took a seat in one of the living chairs. As he sat a holographic screen was projected in front of him. It was the old style touch screen and for a while Colenzo sat flicking through the millions of channels. Without his preferences though, it was almost impossible to find anything that he really enjoyed. Channels (and their numbers) had not been standardised across locations and as a result he simply had to flick. The lack of standardization was an economic fact, a by-product of competition. The sequence of channels had been shown to have a psychological impact upon the channel hopper and hence could be patented. Also viewing rights varied dramatically. For an unimportant room like this, the Corporation would not be wasting its valuable resources. In contrast high net worth clients would find their entertainment sample dramatically increased whenever they entered a Corporation building or website. Such was they joy of human resource sector asset class allocation strategies that were currently implemented. Colenzo passed through fifty channels of sports that he didn’t know the rules of and fifty live sitcoms that he wasn’t really interested in before turning the thing off and deciding to look around the room. When he did this the receptionist told him he could go through.
He passed through the passageway and after ducking under a rudely protruding branch he entered a large room that was almost as green as the green room but about ten times the size. It was full of people. Most of differing racial groups to him – not that he noticed. There was also about an equal spread of men and women – not that he noticed that either. His choice of sex object was not bound by oppressive and politically ended guilt, thus his admiration of the people in the room was equal. Or so he was told.
In truth he immediately became aware of a limited sector of the female population that appealed to his current desires. These were momentary desires arising from one of his first sexual experiences. At the age of six he had met and had had some fun with a girl in an organic chamber. Although the chamber had been living mammalian flesh the similarity to the organic nature of the green room was close enough for his mind to make a connection. His desire for a specific sector of the green room’s female population was thus simply a reiteration of his childhood desire for the girl in the mammalian chamber.
In the room were five queues: medibots; neural nets; preference settings; specialty services; and debt repayment method modification. He started chewing his nail as he joined the medibot queue and noticed a quite attractive woman scratch her quite attractive arse. She was of his current object choice.
Normally Colenzo would of logged on and found out the details of this woman. He would have explored her history and even watched a couple of home videos that she had picked for her public access file. From these and other files he would have come to understand her a bit and seen if he would enjoy her company. He would probably have sampled her music collection, looked at her library, her house and her material object collection. From there things would have developed and he would have landed up having sex with her and probably some other people as well. She might have invited a friend or a spouse and he would probably have done the same – minus the spouse.
Instead he stood staring at the bizarre leopard skin pants that she was wearing and admiring her beautifully curved dark legs until she turned and looked at him. Considering he would normally have had access to at least one multisensory video of her it was surprising that he felt awkward at being caught staring.
He smiled in embarrassment and looked down at the floor. She stepped back one in the queue so they were adjacent to one another. He bobbed around mildly confused for a bit. Eventually she said, “Hi Colenzo.”
“Hi.” He said and looked around into the air hoping her name would emerge; it didn’t. “You trying to get a medibot?” he asked before realising the stupidity of his question. She raised an eyebrow and laughed a bit.
“Yeah. I take it you are to.”
“Guess I am.” He replied.
“Well you actually have no credit.” She responded after a brief moment.
“Huh?” Was all he could say before she turned around and looked at the front again. A short skinhead in front of her turned around to her and said, “Hey Terry. I was watching that video of you Solar Sailing AZ 23 Z. I was there to by the way, awesome sunspot that one…”
“Yeah…” she replied and their conversation went telepathic (online).
Colenzo stood dumbfounded for a bit and then started to sulk. If he could remember it he might have remembered that the girl in the organic chamber had got bored with him and resorted to the chamber’s nipples for sexual stimulation.

The Psychological Impact of Resurrection and Insolvency

Colenzo Majuba was aware that he was alive. He could see the soothing light through his eyelids before he opened his eyes. The first thought that came into his mind was “I should be in pain.” In truth the feeling was not there. He pondered whether the accident had been a dream but knew that it hadn’t. He decided he was going to sit up and although his head told him it would hurt he sat up. He patted his body down and then felt his groin. Everything was in order and nothing hurt.
Stretching off for some distance in every direction were hospital beds and swarming around these beds were millions of little drones. For a second Colenzo though it looked like a military parade of shit piles all swarming with flies. Then he realised that made him a shit pile and he chased away the thought. Despite the vast collection of sick and injured persons the air smelt remarkably fresh. The “fresh smell” was of course being pumped into it at a cost. There were also strategically placed living plants to add to the positive energy of the setting.
Colenzo looked at his body and realised that he was naked. All of the people around him were naked too: men, women, Blacks, Whites, Indians, coloureds... He decided he was very confused and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. For a moment he thought he was going to feel sick but he didn’t.
A faint tickling drew his attention to his hand. As he watched a three-millimetre dispenserbot burrowed under the skin and dispersed into his blood stream; and although he had watch it happen thousands of times before it, this time it made him gag. He felt infected.
For a while he continued to sit there aimlessly, his legs hung limply and he stared down between them. Eventually a small bump like a zit formed upon his leg, it grew larger and then two insect like antennae punctured the skin. There was a fractional pain and then the dispenserbot was crawling across his thigh toward his knee. When it got to his knee it took off and flew away back toward its hive. For a while Colenzo simply breathed the fresh air and then he started to massage his unbruised shoulders.
A few more minutes passed and then a hive-drone headed over in his direction. Eventually it stopped in front of him and hung suspended about two meters above the ground. It was about a meter long itself, made of a shiny metal and looked exactly like a metal beehive. It was also swarming with little micromachines of every medical kind. Swarming to and fro the micromahines looked quite like common bees, although a closer inspection would shatter this illusion.
The hive-drone shifted slightly in a canary like fashion. Colenzo was sure it had cocked its head at him and it probably had, at least part of its brain would have been biomatter quite possibly taken from a canary. Then without warning a bumblebee sized micromachine landed on Colenzo’s face and flooded his system with unknown chemicals. He felt a flush of heat run through his body as he tried to what the bug away. As the blood moved it seemed to burn everything it encountered. He felt like he was sweating from every pore. His entire vascular system felt like it was turning inside out - like it was emptying itself from his pores, into his armpits, his feet, his palms, his eyes and his balls. The sensation seeped outward from his groin and Colenzo was convinced that he was wetting himself. When he felt around though there was no wetness.
A minute later he had recovered and looked around for the hive-drone. He was keen to hurl abuse at it but the hive-drone was floating away on a new mission. Meanwhile passing between the beds and heading in Colenzo’s direction was a doctor. The man was good looking, healthy and well built. He had artistically grown stubble. He looked quite happy, even content, as he walked along looking at his patients. He stopped occasionally to inspect a patient and to pass on an order to one of the drones.
“Mr…” the doctor looked up as one does when inspecting a retinal head up display, “Majuba, I presume.”
“Yes” Colenzo replied; he really had no clue what else to say.
For no real reason the doctor vocalised an order to a drone, “Drone, fetch Mr Majuba some clothes. This nakedness is quite undignified.” With that the doctor turned and began to walk away passing a quick order over his shoulder, “Come along Mr Majuba.” As he walked the doctor continued to examine his naked patients. He would pause occasionally and retrieve some data from the neural net and examine it, before issuing an order, making an adjustment or just moving on. At other points he would stop and watch the drones working on their various charges, a quite unnecessary action but one that he did out of habit.
As Colenzo made his naked way along behind the doctor a drone floated up behind him. The drone eventually pulled up next him and held out in skeletal metal arms the archetypal, centuries old hospital gown. Colenzo quickly flung it on although the back end remained quite revealing, showing off his arse to any drone that cared to look.
Colenzo continued behind the doctor who he eventually discovered was actually a “Ward Administrator: Class C: Level 1. Specialist Role: Geneticist.” Colenzo made this amazing discovery by reading a nametag on the man’s shirt.
Quite without warning nausea swept over Colenzo. Before he could reach out a drone appeared to attend him and folded out a chair into which he slumped. The drone became a hover chair and floated merrily along behind the Ward Administrator. It also took the liberty of injecting things into Colenzo, scanning him, sticking a pipe up his arse, draining his bladder and rebalancing his fluid and hormone levels. However its use of specialised local anaesthetic ensured that Colenzo remained completely unaware of what was happening to him. He did however start to feel better again and took the opportunity to look around the room.
It was gigantic.
It stretched off to the horizon and was filled with innumerable beds, innumerable patients and as many as one drone to every five patients. It was also expectedly sterile with the psychologically and spiritually enhancing vegetation such rooms required. Colenzo watched a petal fall from a flower. It hit the floor and was covered by a nanoswarm. As he continued to watch the petal disintegrated before his eyes, undoubtedly to be transported back up to the plant’s soil. The absence of elevated hormone levels resulted in Colenzo’s complete obliviousness to the naked beauties he was drifting past.
After travelling for an undefined period of time a wall presented itself on the horizon. As Colenzo approached the wall he thought to laze back and look up. It was only then that he noticed that souring above him were multiple other levels, visible through their one way glass floors. He felt giddy and would have toppled backwards if not for the drone, which cushioned his weight. In the distance he noticed a bed detaching from one of the upper levels and drifting down to his. The numbers started to overwhelm him so he decided he was not well and needed to close his eyes.

A change in the general audio environment brought Mr. Majuba back to consciousness. He looked around and found himself in a non-descript passage. Looking forward again he noticed the Ward Administrator surveying him like a piece of meat. The Administrator indicated with a flick of his head that Colenzo should follow him and then moved on down the corridor. Colenzo sat for a second and then realised the drone was no longer going to be his personal chauffer. Hence he stood up and followed the Administrator.
“Mr Majub e.” The Administrator began as Colenzo drew up alongside him, “Minutes before you were involved in your high speed collision, some six weeks ago, you were online attempting to procure some form of medical aid or health cover from the Corporation.” Colenzo could remember this and grunted his agreement. “I am an employee of the Corporation. This is one of the Corporations Central Depositories for Wounded or Prematurely terminated clients – A C C Dwop.” The man looked hesitant as he considered what to say next. “Your situation is slightly complicated by the fact that you had not actually signed the agreement at the time of your accident.” The Ward Administrator stopped and looked into Colenzo’s eyes. “Our records show that you had tried to sign but were held back by automatic checks whose main aim is to enforce informed decisions. As you had not signed we had no obligation to repair your Class C wounded body. Yet as an ethical person the Corporation felt some responsibilities toward you.” The Administrator flicked his eyes to something on the wall. “Why did we feel responsible?” He continued, now well into his speech, “Well considering the situation, the fact that you were on our site, the fact that you tried to skip to the end, the fact that you,” the Administrator pointed at Colenzo “had come to us, was enough!”
Colenzo spoke before he thought, “Are we on camera?”
“Yes” the other man brushed him quietly aside and smiled. Then he continued, “The essence of what I am trying to say is that we felt we had a moral responsibility to you – our client.”
The man turned and walked off. Colenzo followed after briefly looking for the camera that he rationally knew would be too small to see. As they continued the Ward Administrator spoke to Colenzo over his shoulder, “The complication is that the contract you were attempting to sign stipulates that the Corporation will cover any non-terminal Class C injuries up front and you the client, or your family, or anyone really, can pay us back over time at standard interest rates.”
Colenzo felt a bit unstable. “Can I sit?” he asked.
“Yes go ahead.” The Ward Administrator replied as the wall next to them folded back and a chair slid out.
Colenzo perched himself on the edge. He laughed uncomfortably. He felt breathless, he didn’t know quite what to say, he sighed and scratched his head, however none of his actions would bring forward the kind of response he wanted to make. Eventually he decided to ask, “So how much is it? How much has all of this cost me?”
“A detailed report will be sent to you soon and will be available online, when we get you back online that is, meanwhile as far as I understand, the interest on your debt is about equal to your current salary. The debt itself is about equal to the gross value of your extended families collected assets.”
There was a silence. “Shit.” Colenzo muttered and sat back
The Ward Administrator paused, “Yeah… shit.” He thought for a second and then carried on. “Mr Majuba. Um… you were also fired last week. As you had opted for less job security in return for increased income, they had the right to fire you after four weeks off work. It’s now been six.”
They both sat in silence for a few seconds. A thousand thoughts ran through Colenzo’s head. But all he really felt like doing was going and lying down again and going back to sleep.
Meanwhile the Ward Administrator sat uncomfortably next to him. As Ward Administrator he was constantly put in the difficult position of explaining to client’s their dire financial situation and their other financial woes. He was annoyed about this; this wasn’t what he was trained to do. He didn’t want to spend his time explaining to people that they were completely broke and that to save their entire family from liquidation they would have to spend the next twenty to sixty years working for the Corporation; fighting pirates, killing things, travelling around on the far corners of human civilization and doing all the dirty work that machines were too qualified to be wasted upon. He was an expert in understanding the means to maximise the efficiency of the drones, mircomachines and nanobots, when dealing with microbiological issues directly related to the individual’s genetic makeup in a post-trauma circumstance. This was the same conceptual problem he had been working upon for the last two years and frankly he wanted to get back to programming machines to deal with such problems. In fact this Ward Administrator probably knew more about genetics than Colenzo knew about anything and yet here he was counselling the poor bastard and helping him cope with the psychological impact of resurrection and insolvency.
A wave of compassion attacked the Administrator who reached out and patted Colenzo on the shoulder. “Um…” he started and paused momentarily, “it’s not as bad as some people think it is.”
Mr Majuba snorted and gave an unconvinced smile. “Yeah I’m sure.” The silence stretched out and eventually the Ward Administrator rose, hesitantly patted Colenzo’s shoulder once again and then headed off.

The Chance Encounter of Two High Speed Transports

Colenzo Majuba was heading back from work. He sat at the front of a high speed bus as it shot from the outer mining district back toward the colony. The bus was seventeen decks tall with three rows of seats per deck. The seats were arranged like those of a stadium allowing everyone a view. The view was breathtaking: to the right thousands of large asteroids dominated a horizon, flickering with the light of the settler inhabitation; to the left, the deep blackness of space. The sun shone from somewhere behind the bus, lighting the outer asteroids and casting long shadows onto those behind them. At this point the asteroid belt was fairly thin but further away to the right the belt thickened, rising like a wave of tiny lights.
The bus was cruising a connecting highway that ran from the “undigested” asteroids to those now digested and inhabited by settlers. It whizzed pasted the asteroids at a few thousand kilometres per hour. Most of the people on board were returning from a shift at the mining district. They were all in the low quality high quantity asset class; the high quality asset class would be travelling in their own vehicles. The majority of the buses’ passengers were paying no attention to the view. Rather, most of them were watching multisensory TV on whatever display they possessed. Some, like Colenzo, had bought into the idea of head-ups on their glasses; others used the busses displays - paying a nominal fee for the service rendered; few were rich enough to afford a neural head up display.
Colenzo was sitting with a friend he had worked with his entire mining career. The man’s name was Niall. They were both speed express low skill heavy loaders: men who donned suits during they day to allow them to float in free space, moving micro-asteroids so they could be converted from mindless space junk into low value resources. Sometimes Colenzo and Niall would pair up and move larger asteroids, moving pieces as large as three hundred meters in the weightless environment. Most of the time though, they floated around watching multisensory TV or listening to music, whilst nanomachines did most of the work. Occasionally the nanomachines would encounter a problem that their simple programming could not handle and Niall or Colenzo would be forced to intervene. That made for an exciting day.
Colenzo flicked through the hundreds of channels quite quickly passing new shows he had never seen before as well as many long-standing series. He skipped the reruns and eventually decided to open a catalogue and peruse the options. He filtered first by genre, settling for drama. Then he filtered out the various annoying actors and films that he had already entered into a sixty eight thousand item, filter-excluding list. Whilst he did this a playlist of his favourite tunes hummed away in the background. It had followed the prompting “question and answer” form he had filled in three days before: How do you feel when you come home from work? Dissatisfied.
To his right his friend laughed, absorbed in his own world of comedy series. Colenzo envied the man; Niall seemed to be able to escape work and completely forget about life. He also seldom seemed bothered by life. Colenzo on the other hand was perpetually bothered. Since a young age he had vacillated between periods of anti-depressant addiction and periods of what he termed “real life.” This was because something, in the drug-induced contentment, would eventually begin to annoy him. The psychiatrist explained that it was simply a hormonal homeostatic response but Colenzo believed that it was actually a genuine intellectual dissatisfaction that no drug could truly solve. His neo-integrationist psychoanalyst agreed. At times Colenzo got fed-up with trying to solve life and resorted to the drugs. Everyone was quite happy when he did this; his wife found him less taxing, his lover found him more exciting, his kids could talk to him and the human resource sector moved him up a class to medium-low quality high quantity asset class.
For a while Colenzo had even had gene-therapy to address one of the underlying causes, but much to his wife’s annoyance he had eventually paid to have his genes returned to their original state. He had tried explaining to her the intellectual principle behind it but she would not listen. His therapist had convinced him that this was indeed what life was about and using an advanced theory of constraints had solved the problem by redefining its boundaries.
“You want to be happy?” The therapist asked.
“Yes.” Colenzo would reply.
“But happiness comes from the ups and downs of life.” The therapist would then explain, “You cannot experience pleasure without pain. Thus you cannot be really happy unless you are sometimes unhappy.”
Problem solved. Well not really, Colenzo thought, but he could also see the point. To be happy you also need to accept that at times you’ll be unhappy – then you’ll be happy. He flicked to the news.

Murders, death and destruction.

Depending on the channel some of the perpetrators were defined as terrorists, revolutionaries, disgruntled employees or Satanists. Psychology had failed. The answer had never really been found. Although many claimed it had, most took the position that the answer was really a matter of the question. You could be perpetually happy, but why would you do that? Colenzo tried to refocus upon the news.
The bus turned without slowing at all, it cut through the traffic, taking a gap that left a five hundred meter margin of error on each side as ordained by the local traffic company. The bus now shot through the asteroid field passing deeper and deeper into the chaos. The closeness of the asteroids heightened the sensation of speed for anyone watching, although nobody was watching.

On the news was a report detailing a multiple murder that had happened five minutes earlier. The murders had occurred on a bus similar to the one Colenzo was on. Live from the bus, still heading to its destination, the report interviewed some of those involved.
“He had been muttering to himself for quite some time. At one point I had to raised a shield to keep the noise out…” The man was cut off and another brought on, “He just pulled out his weapon and opened fire,” whilst he said this the bus companies medic worked on a laser burn under the man’s eye.
Colenzo nudged Niall and told him to turn to the report. His friend willingly obliged and then gave Colenzo a questioning look.
“Tell me,” Colenzo began, his friend tilted his head (carry on), “The bus will pay for the funeral expenses and the medical expenses, won’t it?”
“Of course.” Niall replied.
“But it is Metero.”
“Is it?” The other man responded. They both quickly flicked their eyes to the displays. The heading at the bottom stated, Multiple Metero Murders. “Well then I don’t suppose they will.” Whilst they continued to watch another vehicle pulled up next to the Metero bus and connected with it; the bus had not slowed down at all. The dead were offloaded and the vehicle pulled away. They both noticed the logo on the side, which the editor of the report enhanced – Hades Mortuary Services.
The news agency and Hades had a mutually beneficial contract. Hades got advertising, the news agency, Mineorite, got to use their onboard cameras as well as those at the mortuary itself. Mineorite’s CEO had once explained, “The public like nothing more than the sight of unhappy people and where better to find them than at a mortuary or the scene of a death.” Neither Niall nor Colenzo had ever heard that titbit of useless information. They probably never would either.

Colenzo logged on to the CoPut site to check the status of their indemnity and medical cover schemes. CoPut was the transport company that owned the bus Niall and Colenzo were both on. As far as Colenzo could remember CoPut offered various cover options for its clientele, including medical cover in the case of an accident. Colenzo opened the page that detailed the CoPut transport services that ran from the mines to the colony. He scanned the pages of information that detailed their service agreement with anyone using the bus service. The bus offered: security services; the latest traffic controller systems; high speed change-overs; and many other features - but did not offer medical cover for its users.
Colenzo forwarded the article to Niall and drew his attention to that fact. Niall nodded and then explained, “I thought you knew. They dropped medical cover to lower prices. Apparently they were loosing out as many miners wanted to save the credit and were hence using Metero.”
Colenzo felt a wave of panic, he had always feared accidents and even given advanced composites, force fields and traffic controllers he felt that high-speed transport was intrinsically unsafe.
In a rush he logged on and searched the general web for “medical aid.” Thousands of offers flashed up on his display. Three-dimensional adverts exploded into his face. Voices blurted into his ears. In response he put on a filter, which deducted a nominal fee from his bank account. The world quickly became more manageable. There were however still thousands of options. As always, at the top of the list, was the latest offering from the Corporation. Colenzo logged onto their site and hurriedly scanned the options. An assistant appeared upon the page and asked if he needed help. Colenzo accepted it (and again a nominal amount was withdrawn from his account to pay for the financial service rendered).
In a hurry Colenzo explained, “I want just a basic medical aid scheme, right now. Cover just… just the whatever. Well not basic, I have that. I mean big stuff - accidents, death, surgery…”
“How about this one sir? We’ll loan you the money to buy this scheme, then you can pay us back, as you see fit, over your life. Once you’ve paid it off you own it… like a house. From then on it is just maintenance costs really. You can even use it as leverage. From your data the Corporation feels that it would happily loan you the required credits and let you pay them back at standard loan rates.”
As Colenzo stopped to ponder the option the hairs raised on the back of his neck. Something felt very wrong. “I’ll take it,” he almost shouted.
“Please place your index finger on the gene scanner on the seat and provide voice authorization.” the assistant said. Colenzo did this as quickly as he could. “Please read the terms and conditions.” Colenzo attempted to scroll straight through the terms and conditions but found he could not. The assistant on the screen spoke to him, “Mr. Majube” it said tutting, “You cannot read that quickly, it would be in your file if you could. So please, take your time, we don’t want you signing anything you don’t fully understand.”
The bus pulled over to pass a heavy-mover and then pulled back again. Normally Colenzo would not have even noticed but for some reason he looked out through the semi-transparent head-up display and noticed a dot, expanding to something. Then he realised they were on the wrong side of the highway. He looked around in panic and reached out for Niall’s arm. The something was now a major feature of the window. He grabbed his friend’s hand as the Hades Mortuary Service vehicle pounded head on into the bus. He didn’t have time to scream.