Unamenable to Change

Having incurred a massive debt to the Corporation, following a freak high speed accident, Colenzo Majuba found himself working for the Corporation and traveling the galaxy. Together with the Sergeant and Edgar Rice, they now headed out on a new project to the mysterious asteroid habitat Shalamari 4.

Before making their way to Shalamari 4 the three Corporation Employees had to get a Clear Soul Visa. This entailed a comprehensive interview and an explanation of their previous actions to a committee of Cohabitationists; Shalamari fell within a Cohabitationist jurisdiction. The commission was deep within Cohabitation territory on the outer planet of Goodall. Their trip there was delayed by a Reedbuck, which had found its way onto the cubeline that they had been using. The reedbuck was casually chewing on some grass protruding between the tracks and they had to wait for a team to extract it. The extraction itself was painfully slow, as it had to be done with “minimal stress and pressure to the free person involved.” The process involved using a frequency emitter that was mildly annoying to the buck (though not harmful); this frequency was slowly increased until the buck departed of its own accord. This was due to Section 36 of the Cohabitation Act; the sergeant though a nature lover scoffed at the extremism of the Cohabitationists, Colenzo simply wondered why the Tourist Cubicle simply couldn’t fly over the animal – the answer he could have attained if he had a neural connection was that the rails themselves usually emitted a deterring frequency that kept animal and insect life away from the tracks. This Reedbuck had proven particularly resilient.

Sitting waiting at the High Commission they got into an argument. They were sitting on three rocks in what was otherwise quite an unattractive (some might say natural) piece of open ground that stood before the gates and the commission grounds. From here a relatively unworn path ran through long unkempt grass to the commission buildings about two hundred meters away. When they had arrived they had been told to wait for an escort. The sun was beating down on them and the air was alive with the sounds and actions of insects and birds.
“How can the killing of an ant not be a punishable action but the killing of a bird be one?” Edgar implored. “It is absurd.”
“Well it’s not that absurd. The definition of free person in the law is quite clear; a natural person has volition and personal thought or action. Well something like that…” Colenzo explained and the sergeant added (after looking it up on his neural connection), “A free person is defined as, “A being with a central nervous system, genetic code and who shows evidence of personal choice in action.”
“Oh, please” Edgar replied, “That is ridiculous and childishly pedantic. If you are going to pass laws to protect the rights of all free persons you can’t then go and be petty about definitions. What about bacteria?”
The sergeant shook his head, “Edgar, how did you pass the exams? You know as a representative of the Corporation in this jurisdiction you really should understand such things… actually not just understand you should know the law backwards!”
“I know. I know that the reason bacteria are excluded is their lack of neural system. But that is again pathetic and pedantic. Anyway all of this is about some power hungry bastard being…” he hesitated, waving his hands and struggling to find the word he wanted.
“I don’t think power is an issue here, it is just about cultural and legal definitions.” Colenzo added, a bit confused but having fun.
“It is not about definition it is about the spirit.” The sergeant threw into the fray.
“…greedy.” Edgar finished. The other two looked at him with raised eyebrows before Colenzo continued,
“What is the spirit of cohabitationist law anyway?”
“The spirit…” both other men began and stopped. Motioning the other to go and then both starting again at the same time. They paused and another voice spoke.
“The spirit of Cohabitationism is an attempt to encourage the peaceful cohabitation of all natural persons. It is also an attempt to create an environment that is suitable to the needs of the maximum number of such persons without infringing upon the rights of the individual.” The man who spoke was tall and dressed in a suit. He stood looking down on the three as they sat in discussion. “I am Svansky, Council to the High Commissioner for the Cohabitationist Republic on Goodall.” He reach out a hand, which the others shook in turn. “Please follow me.” He stated and started to walk off.
They rose and followed, the sergeant walking next to Svansky, the other two lingering behind like children; continuing their debate in hushed tones.
“I take it you are the three Corporation employees attempting to make your way to Shalamari 4.”
“Yes we are.” The sergeant responded, correcting his posture and through a neural connection to his clothes switching on the pheromone transmitters and adjusting their lighting to become more pleasing to Svansky’s profile.
“Watch the butterflies.” Svansky said in passing as they walked passed a flutter of four. Then as a thought he logged onto the local network and looked at each individual’s profile. Three paces further he stopped.
“Mr. Tokugawa,” he said, addressing the sergeant using his surname, “I wasn’t aware that you companions lacked a neural uplink. You do know that it will be impossible for us to even consider a Visa Application from a person who lacks a neural uplink.”
The sergeant paused quite confused; he looked up something before responding to Svansky. “It says here person’s need continual access to the Local Registry of Persons Network. At any point those two could pull out their iPalmPod for an update.”
“Indeed that was the case. However a recent ruling in the State verse Hobbes and the following changes in legislation require permanent access to the Registry of Persons through a neural uplink and a Neural Indicator. As in yours, which should highlight in your vision any higher order free person in the local vicinity and warn when other persons are nearby.”
The sergeant looked around and noticed a faint red glow under one of the acacia shrubs about three meters to his right. He mentally clicked on it and an information dialogue arose informing him that the higher free person under the tree was a field mouse. Looking around again with renewed consciousness he noticed various highlighted sections in his vision - so many. And soon enough that he was quite staggered by the abundance of higher order free persons surrounding him: mice, rats, birds, foxes, cats, more birds, a snake… the list went on. Svansky just watched.
Eventually the sergeant responded, “I see.” He looked back at the other two still engaged in a heated debate now about euthanasia. The sergeant continued, “I suppose we will have to come back tomorrow.” and then to the others he said, “Come on guys, let’s go.”

For Colenzo and Edgar the frustration caused by the administrative red tape was completely undermined by their joy at having their credit extended specifically to include neural uplinks. Edgar, being the narcissist that he was, failed to notice that the sergeant had to pull some rank to get this credit extension and had once again increased their salary. Colenzo was a bit more aware of this and the emotional statement of friendship it included. He wasn’t really sure how to express this though but decided that he would somehow make it up to the Sergeant in time (a bottle of Single Malt Choal Ila would probably be sufficient).
The process was quite painless. They made their way to a local Corporation Medical Facility and waited in the relevant queues. The sergeant who had “better things to do than stand around in queues” retreated to his rooms to do some serious investigation. Three things were bothering him: the whereabouts and health of Shiela (the neurologist he had been involved with before the NoCoL kidnapped her); how to elevate the NoCoL problem in the minds of the people who made strategic decisions; and Cohabitationism. Feeling annoyed and frustrated with the mindless administration behind the Visa Application he spend the rest of the evening arguing against the theoretical basis of Cohabitationism (symbolic of course of the Administration) with a friend who lived in the area.

The first thing Colenzo did when he got his new neural net connection was go back to his room. He lay down on his bed and logged on. His heart was pounding. He was very exited and had sweaty palms. It had taken four hours of intensive surgery to implant the connection. It had taken a further six hours for a controlled nanoswarm to repair the tissues surrounding the implants. He still lacked his own Medibots and so the finishing and check-ups would have to be done at a clinic; having the transmitters and receivers implanted at the back of his skull, where the spinal muscles connect with the skull also meant that he would probably develop a cancer in that region a few times in his life. A weekly scan would catch it before it could grow and become malignant.
The neural connection was mainly fed into his occipital lobes - to create images in his vision, and into his temporal lobes - to create subjectively experienced sound. It also fed into certain regions of his pre-frontal lobes to decide upon in system movements. What appeared shortly after he lay down on his bed was something like the head up display of a 20th Century aircraft and something like the Windows operating systems popular at that time.
By thinking about mentally reaching up and pulling down a task bar he made one appear at the top of his vision. He attempted to log onto his local service provider but found that his password had expired and his neural signature needed updating. Before continuing he had to do this. It was relatively quick and painless.
He logged on.
He was not ready for the assault of visual and audio advertising that followed (luckily he did not have his taste, smell or touch receptors connected). Pop up screens started to fill his vision so quickly that he was soon struggling to see. Voices and sounds overlaid each other until he felt like he was in the middle of a riot. He was being pushed and shoved into buying and selling; he was being overwhelmed. For the months following the operation all his filter subscriptions had been cancelled. He had forgotten about this and so the spam had built up. The amount was so overwhelming that his processor was beginning to struggle. It was so bad that when he attempted to minimise all windows and halt all the sounds he had to wait! It took about five seconds - he tried to breathe and found that he had scrambled back and was sitting up in his bed.
“Stupid bastards!” He muttered to himself. And started closing windows – it was a fruitless exercise. When he closed the first window – an advert for hand crafted ducks from the Asteroid Belt – another window popped up with a new advert: “Mr. Colenzo, I take it you don’t like hand crafted goods, what about some random algorithmically constructed bed side pieces built by the famous AI artist Yule Thale.” Colenzo closed this but it threw up a new one: “Not into AI art either. I’ve got just the thing for your…” he closed that and minimised the new one that popped up. Colenzo was mildly annoyed with himself by now, he should have learnt this years ago.
Carefully with his sub-vocal he called a Google assistant who appeared in standard format – he had lost all his personalisation options after the accident. Interestingly this accounted for the relatively random selection of adverts being thrown in his direction – although his choices so far had been noted and were being sold across the information highways (as had the respective time delays – he had considered the AI art advert for 0.32 seconds longer than the Hand Craft etc.). His personalised advertising profile was quickly being developed.
Colenzo first moved the Google assistant from the standard, psychologically most soothing, and most generally user friendly, to his preferred functional option. It was less friendly and more to the point. He looked up advertising filters and got five alternate versions of exactly what he was looking for. A few minutes later he had two advert filters that were killing pop-ups. The first was a shareware version that Niall (his dead friend from his mining days) had suggested. He installed it with some nostalgia and felt a sense of connection with it that ran deeper than its functionality (it was actually quite out of date). He also had a professional filter that charged him a minimal fee for the service. He made a note to ask a more literate person to help him prioritise the shareware version. He understood what needed to be done conceptually - “if the shareware doesn’t work then use the professional” - but didn’t have a clue how to programme it in. Such prioritisation would save him on fees as the professional charged per advert killed and the shareware would kill them for free.
As an afterthought he went and looked up some information on the professional version; his paranoia ran deep. There was a two-week-old article the abstract of which read, “FlySwat, a professional advert filter service, has recently been under investigation by the information authorities due to suspected collusion with the advertising companies. As of yet no evidence had been found to support this position but we’ll keep you informed.” No subsequent articles had been published on the topic but it got Colenzo thinking. He looked at some of the other professional versions and looked up articles about them. The Horses Tail turned out to be the only of Google’s top five that had never been under suspicion in the media and though none of the others had ever been caught red handed he cancelled his FlySwat subscription and registered with The Horses Tail. The invisible hand had moved - the information network would have smiled, as would have Adam Smith.
During all of this Colenzo had also noticed an interesting new icon on his task bar. Some investigation revealed that it was a CorpAccelorator; apparently as an employee of the Corporation he got increased network speed and coverage. The icon also revealed that for work related purposes he could switch connection to a Corporation sponsored and notably faster one. Furthermore the Corporation would cover the cost of the advert filters during such searches. This would be actively and regularly monitored though and questionable searches would lead to penetrating questions.

Whilst Colenzo continued to deal with the administrative backlog that had built up whilst he was disconnected a beggar made his way past Colenzo’s room. The man was poor and unemployed. He wore tattered clothes, probably more tattered than anything Colenzo would ever have seen. His name was Richard but he called himself Wretched.
A year before that moment when he staggered past Colenzo’s door Wretched had been working as a Sales Assistant in a large clothing retail chain on Goodall. At the time he was a good salesman and liked clothing. He actually liked clothing a lot, soon after that time, some would say too much. Richard (as he was then) had a good eye and a friendly manner. He worked in the women’s section and was not only charming but also good looking and well built (the natural way; not the genetically enhanced way). He had an ability to read people and understand fashion that could have got him very far. Such skills were what mattered when logistics, production and supply could be handled a thousand times better by some random machine. Richards’s ability was based on his extensive use of person’s profiles. He liked to read up on customers and watch their public access video files before attempting to recommend clothing. Once having done this he could quite easily feel out the client; know how conservative they were, what they would want to achieve with their clothing and how they wanted to sell themselves. He was quite open to having relationships with clients and this increased his ability to provide useful personalised fashion insight.
When Richard was young he had fallen in love with his mother: well at least some archetypal split all good symbolic interpsychic version of her. Being a naturally emotional type his love ran deeper than most, in fact it bordered upon obsession. At the height of this obsession his mother left – divorcing Richard’s father and catching a Colonising ship heading to a new star. Understandably Richard was furious. He was six and threw a tantrum anything that age would be impressed with. When this didn’t work he got all sulky. When she still didn’t return despite receiving regular grumpy messages from him, Richard wished her dead. Some sadist thought it would be pretty funny to grant a child’s wish and a week later the Colonising ship’s MircoSun experienced technical faults and blew the entire ship and all in it back to dust. Naturally little Richard blamed himself and the guilt started to grow.
The guilt was not however something he could face directly. The emotional pain of thinking he killed his mother (his only true love) was too much for the young child and way too much for the teenage boy. Hence Richard’s unconscious started to punish him indirectly. He started by not eating well. He then tried loving abusive women; two birds with one stone that one. He even tried believing in unfashionable and taboo religions so he could feel guilty. None of this was enough.
His superego/conscious wanted more. He had to suffer and feel the guilt, even if he couldn’t know the real reason for the guilt. One day it found the solution and Richard (now twenty and calling himself Wretched) walked out the retail store with two unpaid for items. The system found out immediately but he told his superiors he was taking it to a special client.
The next day they followed up on his movements on the information network. Nothing showed any visit to a special client or even a call to one. Wretched made excuses for the next few days until his superiors forgot. Each night he sat at home, alone, feeling guilty about it. Soon the guilt passed and he felt better for a while although that dark secret remained, the fact that his wishes had killed his mother continued to haunt him and the guilt started to come back.
He stole again and this time got no forgiveness. The superiors and the authorities remembered the last time and following up found the clothes suspended above Wretched’s bed.
He was fired and started going to therapy. He also had his physiology and neurology checked. They found nothing. Therapy went on. He still got into stores as he had money but he found his movements closely monitored. A month later when he tried to steal again the doors closed permanently on his access to retail stores. He had to order food and could not get a job anywhere.
The therapist was dumbfounded. They tried an expert. It almost succeeded but Wretched couldn’t handle the pain of those memories. As the true reasons for his pain and his guilt started to emerge he ran away, stopping therapy and accusing his therapist of being uninformed and unprofessional (the investigation found nothing of the sort).
Soon Wretched was deemed “unamenable to change.” More and more doors closed on him. The Information Networks, reading his IdentityTags, pre-empted him by shutting the entrance. He was kicked out his room and moved to a cheaper one on a habitat, which circled Goodall like a moon. This didn’t last long and soon he was too poor to afford that and had eaten all his savings. Even the doors of transport cubicles closed before him.
That day, as he walked past Colenzo’s door, he was down to his last cents. Occasionally he was topped up by sympathetic strangers. However his record (kleptomaniac: repeat offender; unamenable to change), available to all, made sympathy a rare blessing. He had made his way onto the Freight Ship by pure accident and hadn’t been aware of the increased charges for the oxygen he was breathing and the warmth that sustained him.
Eventually closed doors led him to an air lock one hundred meters from Colenzo’s room. Each breath saw the cents stripped off his savings and each second some more. When he reached zero a Systems Administrator was called. The man looked at the display showing Wretched crouched in the corner in a three by three meter airlock. The System Administrator looked around at his colleagues and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing for it.” He said and waited a second. No offers of credit materialised and the System Administrator pushed the expel button.
In a half starved state of blurred misery Wretched was expelled into space. As he exploded in the vacuum a small part of him felt satisfied. In fact, it laughed.