Shakedown Brawl

(And so the campaign restarts after its break.)

Sagittarius 16-May 2, m0039.


Things fall relatively quiet for the team for a couple of weeks, with routine duties for Jianwei and Florence, and Vajra actually taking some time off. It seems that it has transferred its processes to servers at the University of Mars, taking Samadhi with it, for purposes that are initially unspecified. Its humanoid body serves as a hatstand in Jianwei's apartment, except when Dougal and Aunty take turns operating it. One never knows when it might be useful for one of them to take charge of that shell, so some familiarisation seems like a good idea.

However, at some point during this time, Jianwei receives a message concerning his non-executive directorship in the shell company which renders Vajra legal in jurisdictions where that is necessary. It seems that the company is in the process of becoming legally responsible for a second full-sapient AI. In fact, it turns out that Vajra, having monitored Samadhi's development and decided that the LAI is capable of more, is having Samadhi upgraded to full self-awareness. Samadhi will remain in Vajra's and the embassy's employment for the time being - it may have become fully self-aware, but it still needs supervision and guidance for the time being - but in due course, it will become fully independent, and Vajra will presumably need a new assistant.

Anyway, Jianwei signs off on the change of Samadhi's status.

May 3, m0039.

Jianwei often comes into the embassy to work, finding that more convenient in various ways than using VR connections from home, but this morning features one very minor extra amusement on the way in; a delivery van has pulled up outside the building and deployed its associated mover shell, while its driver AI falls deep into apparently rather brusque consultation with Quentin regarding where to place the large crate which it has brought. Jianwei shakes his head and leaves the infomorphs to their conversation.

Inside the building, though, he finds himself summoned to Ambassador Schmidt's office. She makes an idle remark about the delivery, then suggests - with seeming complete casualness - that Aunty might go and help integrate the new systems into the local embassy network. Jianwei takes the hint and doesn't ask how Aunty can help, instructing the LAI to divert its attentions to that part of the embassy network. A green light comes on in augmented reality, indicating that the ensuing conversation is not being recorded.

"Actually, I have some good news," the ambassador announces. "Your team has acquired some extra budget. With strings attached, of course. To begin with, someone back in Brussels evidently got interested in some of the events that you encountered. It's one of the analyst AIs there. It evidently wants to review things from closer quarters, so it's moving to Mars - and it'll be assigned to work with your team. Fortunately, Quentin was able to find room for the new mainframe that it will need to run on. He's had to move some other equipment around a little, of course."

Jianwei comments that this is indeed good news.

"Yes, we can hope so. Its name is Danteng, by the way." (Jianwei recognises a Chinese slang term that suggests tedium - perhaps the new AI really wants more excitement in its existence.) "It's arranged for some kind of assistant to be available to it, to act as its eyes and ears. You'll have to sort that out in due course.

"Oh, and that's not all. You'll be getting another team member. To be honest, somebody pulled some strings to get a favour. You're getting an intern."

Jianwei is politely noncommital.

"Yes, well - he does look quite promising for his age. Just as well, given that he's eighteen. He's a Mars native, but he's also an E.U. citizen - well. joint E.U. and University of Mars citizenship, actually. From an academic family, it seems. His name is Charles Dupont. He's up on Nix Olympica at the moment, actually - perhaps Vajra should have a word with him?"

Jianwei agrees that this sounds like a workable informal induction process, and after a little more inconsequential chat, the unrecorded conversation ends. Jianwei goes off and discovers that, with its new hardware still being installed and tested, Danteng isn't running yet. So he puts a call through to Charles Dupont at Nix Olympica, and discovers that the new intern is definitely keen and enthusiastic about the job. After explaining a little about what the team does, Jianwei introduces Charles to Vajra, and those two fall to talking, with Charles's energetic enthusiasm colliding with Vajra's measured philosophical attitude. Vajra asks how Charles is proposing to travel to Port Lowell; the answer predictably involves the equatorial monorail, and Vajra offers to keep Charles company through the train's systems, and continue their conversation.

Meanwhile, Danteng has arrived on the new, fully verified system, and receives an orientation briefing from Quentin. It is an academic sort of system, specialising in Martian sociology, but it evidently has some kind of sense of humour, as its chosen VR avatar resembles a 20th century flatscreen cartoon character. Quentin passes the briefing duty onto Jianwei, who describes the team's work - actually, Danteng has seen a number of their reports - and then takes the new arrival on a walking tour of Port Lowell. Having studied a lot of reports about Martian communities, Danteng proves quite knowledgeable already, but demonstrates one slightly irritating habit; it almost seems to have difficulty distinguishing between actual conditions and the multiple social models and predictions with which it regularly deals, and so it keeps talking about landmarks and buildings as if they are only there some of the time, in some versions of reality.

At some point along the way, Florence makes an appearance, having escaped from her own routine tour guide duties, and more introductions are made. In due course, once Florence has taken her sidearms home, she and Jianwei go out for dinner, with Danteng along for company in VR. Danteng also mentions that its assistant/field agent will actually be an uplifted dog, which is being prepared for the duty at a local biotech company. Florence and Jianwei politely refrain from saying too much about the last such canine with which they had to deal.

Meanwhile, Vajra and Charles are talking about Buddhism and geology. Both evidently have very keen interests. Later that night, the organic team members sleep, while Danteng, having been advised to keep well in with Quentin, returns to the embassy to spend some time mastering the game of Robo Rally (specifically, the version which Quentin plays in the embassy storerooms in his off-duty time).


May 4, m0039.

Charles's train is due in the next morning, and Jianwei and Florence decide to meet it, accompanied by Aunty, who is operating Vajra's humanoid cybershell for convenience. At this point, it sinks in with the team  that it now has at least two fur-clad members; Charles is one of the first-generation Mars Adapt parahumans, complete with proper heat insulation, and Florence's tiger stripes contrast with his leopard-style spots. They both make fur look good, but the clash may be a problem.

From the station, the group head off to Crucis Bioservices, the company where Danteng's new K-10A aide should be waiting for them. The receptionist - human, but a heavy user of extreme cosmetic proteus nanoviruses - directs them to a room at the back of the building, where Woju the K-10A is waiting. By now, Jianwei and Florence have a clear idea of Charles's mood and general attitude, which is enthusiastic - he evidently finds the idea of working with this team very interesting. As the embassy have arranged him accommodation on another floor of the same apartment block as they live in, they realise that he'll be quite hard to avoid.


Woju, on the other hand, turns out to have a more sanguine temperament, to put it mildly. He seems almost depressed by the idea of his new employment, and the effect is somehow amplified by the barrel chest and long fur which his Mars adaptations have given him, and even more by the bulldog genes which have evidently influenced his facial structure. Still, the team hand him the computer harness which he'll be using to remain in touch with Danteng, and he gets up to come with them.

However, their departure is slightly delayed by the appearance of a pair of Mars cats which have been permitted to wander around the building. Being cats, they take an interest in these visitors as possible sources of food if nothing else. Charles accesses the building's systems to buy them some cat food. They're still bored and capricious enough to take a clandestine swipe at Woju's tail as he's leaving, but he retains his equilibrium, and Florence warns them off.

In fact, this leaves her and Woju discussing the finer points of tail management with the rest of the team as they all stroll down the street. They reach the apartment block, where Charles and Woju will be sharing some living space, and a battle of wills soon ensues regarding decor. Eventually, they end up with pictures of Martian landscapes on two walls, and an ocean scene from Earth on the other. It seems that Woju has dreams of travel.

Once the new arrivals are reasonably settled in, the team sets out to return to the embassy - but on the way, they receive a call from Marshall Kirkowicz. It seems that she's been alerted to a brawl in progress at an American bar - a New York-style place - and it that there are a couple of Italian tourists trapped in the middle of events. She's letting E.U. consular services know as a courtesy - her own cybershells are already on the way - but the team realise that they are close to hand, so they divert to deal with the problem straight away.

They arrive at the bar at much the same time as the Marshall's cybershells, which head in first, but as no gunfire ensues, the E.U. team quickly follow (Woju, who seems uncertain, being encouraged by Danteng). Inside, they discover a stand-off situation, with the Italians keeping their heads down on the far side of the room. As Jianwei endeavours to talk the drunken brawlers down, Charles sidles around the walls towards the tourists, accompanied by Vajra's flying microbot relays. As he spirits the Italians clear, Jianwei's efforts start to bear fruit - except that some of the brawlers seem persistently bloody minded. But as one or two of them move towards Jianwei with a hint of threat, Woju remembers the basic police dog training that is part of his background. Stepping up beside the team leader, he emits a deep-throated growl - and the troublemakers lose interest in making trouble, giving the Europeans time to leave the bar.

And so they can head on to the embassy after all. So far, the expanded team seems to be working.

Carrying a Load

April 23, m0039, continued

As they settle in, the team members chat a little over encrypted channels - after all, the Chinese might have dropped surveillance dust. (The conversation is managed by Jianwei and Vajra, whose skills prove fully adequate to compensate for Florence's lack of secret messaging experience.) They theorise a little more about Sergei's presence; if he's a GRA agent, what is their interest in Eden Unlimited? Something to do with plant genetics, perhaps?

Whatever... Vajra deploys a bug-hunter swarm, but doesn't find anything with it, and feels fairly sure that there is nothing to find. So while the organics sleep, he chats to Eve, assisting her re-planning work.

April 24, m0039

Nothing untoward happens during the night, and in the morning, the team do a little more local investigation. They don't find anything much in the way of genetic engineering equipment on the site, and when Jianwei finesses Eve's psychology, gaining access to more of her files, he doesn't find much more there, either.

However, a message comes in after a little while, asking the team to take their rover down to the lake shore, as there is an (unspecified) delivery arriving. Jianwei stays in the station on general principles (his presence might help assert continuing E.U. authority on the site), while the other two make the short trip. A small water vehicle - essentially an unmanned powerboat with a cargo pod - pulls up, emits a "sign here" pulse, drops off a crate, and then departs, leaving Florence to complain that it didn't take the crate itself away after its contents have been removed. In fact, the crate opens itself to reveal a rather generic "wanderbox" cybershell, a box on large wheels. Sergei promptly installs itself on that, and the group head back to the domes.

As Sergei now has an independent shell which it and its employers trust, it tells them that it is happy for them to leave. It also hands over a small box, which they might perhaps take with them... Florence wonders what's going on here, but Jianwei guesses that there's a deniability issue somewhere, and kicks her ankle.

The team head back toward Santo Tomas. On the way, they send requests for (a) a closed metal box to put the box they are carrying in (after Vajra has discovered comms ports on it), and (b) a flight back in a hopper with no other passengers. They're not actually this nervous really, but they don't want people complaining about finding themselves on an aircraft with an emergent intelligence. (Quentin actually calls back to query this. "You people know human memetics best, but it sounds a little paranoid to me...") In any case, they make an uneventful journey back to Port Lowell.

While they are en route, Marshall Kirkowicz sends them a polite note. ("We really should do something nice for her some time," Vajra comments.) Then, when they reach the embassy, they determine that the ambassador is in her office, with no signs of digital activity there. Jianwei sees the invitation implicit in that, and suggests that Dougal, Aunty, and Samadhi should be shut down or temporarily offloaded to the embassy network, thus removing any danger that their memories might be subpoenaed later by someone who wants to know what's said in the office.

Mostly, it turns out, Schmidt wants to talk to the team about the GRA - who do indeed appear to be behind Sergei. She isn't sure what they're up to herself,but she suspects that they want to move into Mars - where they do not currently have a significant presence - and this incident has given them a minimal but adequate excuse. Anyway, all that the embassy can do for now is watch and try not to annoy anyone.

Oh, and someone has identified an organisation that is competent and trusted to analyse Adam-4 and what happened to him, and the team are being sent along as observers (and guards). They have to take that box on to a company called Equatorial Data Services. They have tickets to Bako booked for the next day.

So the team head to their various homes (and Florence heads on from there to the local bars, but has a dull time of it). They chat a little about that idea of doing the Marshall a kindness, but identifying anything that wouldn't be classified as a possible bribe is hard.

April 25, m0039


 With a hopper booked, Jianwei calls ahead to avoid legal problems. Bako, it turns out, has rules in place for this sort of thing, and Jianwei has a straightforward conversation with the cops there. In fact, a lot of clearances have been arranged; the short trip is on a commercial flight, with Adam-4 travelling as what is enigmatically known as "19-inch hand luggage". The team can relax enough to pay attention to the street scenes in Bako, which proves to be full of ethnic-African somatypes, including the odd lion-maned Felicia.

Equatorial Data Services proves to be a hive of African computer geeks, but there are still formalities and legalities to observe and certificates to be exchanged; Jianwei ends up processing a mound of digital paperwork. The company have acquired source information and documentation from Eden Unlimited, which they regard as generous reference data, and the team are directed to a coffee lounge (with access to the building's internal networks and cameras) while the analysts work.

This work turns out to involve a lot of cryptic 3-D holographic models, but the analysts seem to know what they are doing. After a while, one of them stares hard at the holographic display. "That's interesting", he murmurs...

Observations and Assessments

March 10, m0039, continued

And so the team are on their train, in a carriage temporarily defined as EU territory, for a twenty-hour journey. Actually, the trip is going to be divided in two; once they reach a stop on the edge of more densely inhabited territory, they're booked to transfer to a sleeper car. Meanwhile, this two-carriage train picks up only a few more passengers - Chinese colonists, only one of whom decides that a carriage occupied by a bunch of foreigners, one of them a Felicia who's nursing an automatic weapon, is preferable to one occupied by a group of large gentlemen whose manner screams "Chinese government agents" (and even he sits as far from the group as possible).

Just moments before the train reaches the stop where they're due to change, Jianwei efforts in preparing reports for the embassy are interrupted by a call over the Web. The caller speaks as though she knows him, and identifies herself as "Diana D'Ollio".

"Oh yes," says Jianwei, guessing that this is the bartender from the elevator car, "I've been thinking about you..." Which is no more than the truth; however, he asks her to call back in ten minutes, by which time he's able to chat as he eats takeaway Chinese food in the sleeping compartment.

It turns out that her software agents alerted her to a report appearing on a technological problems board; wildly misbehaving hoppers aren't exactly common on Mars, and the incident earlier that day is sure to draw attention - she's merely got in first. She was quite impressed by the video footage she found, and is politely amused by Jianwei's responses to her probing. (Well, politely by her standards. "Oh yes - you're government scum, not corporate scum, aren't you?") She knows some basics that the team also picked up - that the hopper, which had only recently arrived at the maglev stop, was the property of a small hire company with rather obscure ownership, now that anyone checks. The software and software-hardware combination (supposedly) involved are being investigated, but no other anomalous behaviours seem to showing up so far. She suspects that there's more to be found.

"I don't suppose that you can give me anything else to look up while you decide what you can tell me?"

"No," Jianwei replies, "but do check the news for the last 36 hours."

"Okay. That's not just a distraction for the next six or twelve, is it?"

"I don't know."

"Fine, okay. By the way, do bear in mind that not all of my colleagues are as subtle and polite as me..."

She ends the call, and the train journey continues, with the train stopping occasionally for other passengers. Dr Vartex explores the benefits of his new part-electronic condition, turning his hearing down so as to sleep more easily. But as everyone settles in, the unsleeping Vajra notices one passenger, apparently confused and in the wrong carriage, pausing for oddly long outside the group's compartment. He puts some surveillance dust out through a ventilation vent, and is pleased to determine that there are no obvious booby-traps or weapons outside; however, when he follows this up with a bug-hunter swarm, he does find some other surveillance dust. So he sends a surveillance swarm further afield, into the carriage where the "lost" passenger is now sitting, and manages to identify him and acquire a decent video image. Running this through a facial recognition system and accessing a few public databases achieves a quick success; this is a known professional freelance reporter. So Vajra leaves messages with his colleagues' AI aides

March 11, m0039

When the organic team members awake, they all consult silently and decide on a policy. Florence lends Vajra her cleaning swarm, and he uses that and his other resources to locate and gather up the dust that's supposed to be watching them. They put it in a disposable cup, to be left in the compartment when they depart.

When the maglev train eventually reaches Port Lowell, Dr Vartex receives a message from "some people he knows", and announces that he's going to have to leave the others now; somebody to whom he evidently feels obliged to respond has called him in for a debriefing. The others bid him goodbye and head to the embassy, where Colette Schmidt calls them all in for a meeting in person. Once they're all seated and basic courtesies have been observed, she gives an invisible signal, and one whole wall of the room turns into a viewscreen, showing a virtual space that is designed to look like an extension of the office. This space holds one chair, which is occupied by a figure - clearly an avatar, not designed to look entirely realistic; a man all dressed in grey, with his grey-tinged face partly in shadow.

Schmidt introduces this as "Mr Grey", a representative of certain agencies who've been assisting with background investigations regarding recent incidents, and then hands things over to him. Mr Grey nods and begins to talk.

First, he apologises for any mistakes on the part of his organisation that may have caused or exacerbated the team's recent problems. It's clear that they became mixed up in a complex situation, made worse by what was probably sheer coincidence in that they found themselves in company with Dr Liang. Anyway, it would be useful to know more, so "appropriate people" have been trying to extract more information from the SIA, who have been slow to respond; it seems probably that they've been escalating questions of need-to-know right back to Earth orbit. Still, they've released a little more now.

So the EU now has a file on "Quipu", although they aren't necessarily sure that it exists as anything more than a codename for some temporary operation, or perhaps just a piece of disinformation. There really isn't much to go on. The betting in European circles is now that, a year ago, the SIA determined, through what the EU thought was an exchange of routine information, that Dr Vartex was on good terms with British military intelligence, and used the information that they had about him to lend them weight when they requested a private chat with him, out in the desert. However, "Quipu" (if it exists) must have spotted that something was going on, decided that having someone with potentially hostile allegiances actually working in the middle of its operation at Nova Iquitos was dangerous, and chose to eliminate this potential threat by a brutally direct method.

After Dr Vartex was saved for uploading by the Chinese medical team, Quipu must have decided that he was no longer a threat, or that attacking him in a Chinese hospital installation was too dangerous. Hence, it left him alone there, and was evidently slow to respond when he and the team began investigating his murder. The team then became entangled with Quipu's countermeasures against the problem posed by Dr Liang, and in the end, after they helped her work, it may simply have panicked or turned downright malicious. The attack with the hopper may have been a desperation measure, or an opportunist attempt to remove both the immediate threat of Dr Liang (and her collected samples) and a possible hostile agent in the person of Dr Vartex - or both.

In any case, it failed, and with Dr Liang under Chinese government protection and the EU prepared to make it clear that attacks on the team will be investigated strenuously, the threat is hopefully now over. Anyway, Mr Grey thanks everyone - and the wall screen switches off.

Colette Schmidt has one or two things to add to this. It seems that Dr Vartex is probably being checked over by his old military superiors, who can't be entirely happy that his brain scans have been in Chinese hands for a year - but she's seen his record, and while he had routine military clearance, there was nothing in his past (that she can discover) that was either deeply secret or of great interest to the Chinese (or his scans would perhaps have been pulled out of Chinese hands much sooner). The current "debriefing" will presumably include tests and checks to make sure that he hasn't been edited; if those don't find anything, though, it's unlikely that the military will be entirely sure about him.

However ... Schmidt is pleased to be able to say that she suddenly seems to have acquired a little more funding for the consular services team project, somehow. Hence, the team can now add one more member - and she wonders if the existing members would mind if that new member was in fact Dr Vartex. After all, he's an EU citizen, a medical doctor with military experience; it might be hard to find anyone better.

The team agree happily enough, and so the decision is formalised; Dr Vartex will be asked if he'd like the job. Then, Jianwei raises one more matter; the contact from "DD". The main question is how much they can release to her; he thinks that she could be a useful press contact, and he'd rather not antagonise her; on the other hand, the Nova Iquitos affair presumably rates as at least somewhat secret. He and Colette Schmidt review the matter, and she gives him permission to admit to some elements of the incident, and perhaps to hint at a little more - but mostly, he should be careful. He's going to have to be cagey if he speaks to "DD" again, while playing matters by ear.

Notes: EU Diplomacy on Mars

Our heroes will be working for the EU Embassy in Port Lowell, on Lake Candor. Strictly speaking, this is not a true embassy; the EU is a supra-national federation, not a sovereign state, and no community on Mars has recognised sovereign status itself - so there's nobody to be an embassy from or two. Rather, the EU has requested and received the right to establish consular-level representation in most of the national colonies on Mars, including full diplomatic privileges for a limited number of staff.

So the establishment where the PCs will report is, strictly speaking, the Central Consular Services Office, which reports to the Office of External Diplomatic Relations, part of the External Action Service, in Brussels. Colette Schmidt, who runs the CCSO, is officially the Head of Central Consular Services. However, virtually everyone refers to the office as the "EU Embassy" and to her as the ambassador, in everything except the most formal documents (and message headers which no one reads). About the only people who will make a systematic effort not to do so are those who are aggressively opposed to any sort of independence for the Martian colonies - allowing that a power like the EU has ambassadorial representation there is giving away too much. Of course, this in turn might annoy people like Ms Schmidt, although a professional diplomat would never show offence at someone else being formally correct.

Anyway, her privileges are pretty much exactly those of a full ambassador, and her position in the EAS bureaucratic hierarchy is appropriately high - though whether going off-Earth at her level is a clever career move or career suicide is doubtless a nice question. The CCSO performs almost all of the functions of an embassy, including trade negotiations and, everyone assumes but is too polite to say, a bit of intelligence gathering, with the added advantage of not suffering real-time telecommunications/VR oversight from home, unlike embassies on Earth in 2100. It also has full extraterritoriality - but then, given the ambiguities of "common courtesy" land ownership law on Mars, that's pretty easy to claim. The major EU powers (the UK, France, Germany, etc.) have some kind of independent consular representation on the planet, but even they are often happy to leave things to the embassy, and less wealthy EU members with only a handful of people on Mars are happy for the embassy to handle this sort of business.

Of course, functioning as both a consulate and an embassy means that the CCSO has a lot on its plate, and Ms Schmidt's memos of the last year or two suggest that this is becoming a bit of a strain. This is why she requested the budget and authority to set up a mobile consular services team "without portfolio". Now the team exists, its primary task will be to take a load off the rest of the consular staff's backs. It clearly doesn't help that there aren't actually that many people in the Port Lowell establishment - fewer than twenty full EU citizens, including three infomorphs, plus of course a lot of lower-level infomorph support. Most of them have some kind of diplomatic status, but it's hard to arrange this for additional people, if only because someone has to convince the USA, the Chinese, and preferably at least a half-dozen other powers to accept things. The OEDR swung this for Chen, but would take a bit of convincing to make the effort for anyone else. After all, a lot of work for the EU on Mars is undertaken by people other than consular staff with no formal immunities.

These are, of course, among the assorted professionals and consultants which the EU happily provides to assist communities of other nationalities on Mars (or among their families). The diplomacy involved can be delicate - everyone realises that these people are, ultimately, agents of EU influence, and it's not hard to guess that some of them are on some kind of government retainer, but getting too flagrant about it is bad manners, and being chucked out of a community for espionage or similar is highly inconvenient to say the least - but Europe does have people of some kind in a lot of places, and no one is really shocked by the idea. After all, everyone on Mars seems to have at least two jobs if you look closely enough. The EU also has official consulates in most of the larger cities on Mars, although some of these are literally virtual - infomorphs installed on local computer systems, able to provide aid on request - and in some cases, there are people whose overt second job title is "Honorary Consul".

Hence, administrative and diplomatic business on Mars can seem both entangled and very informal, especially by the standards of a hundred years ago. Remember that the prevalence of AI assistance has flattened a lot of administrative hierarchies considerably, while the Web speeds up communications and permits many tasks to be undertaken by people on the other side of the planet. On the other hand, the EU embassy has clearly been infected by the Martian philosophy that a job should be done by the nearest person who's qualified to handle it, and sort out the permissions later. The PCs' task is to be such a nearest person, as often as possible.