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.