March 8, m0039
Back on a maglev train, the group discuss the next phase of their investigation. First, though, Tiberius mentions that he has received a Web message from an acquaintance in Military Intelligence, which among other things, notes that, so far as that organisation has been able to establish, the hospital where he was uploaded is run ethically, and there have been no signs of the Chinese "Bureau" agencies taking an interest there lately; the privacy of his scan has probably not been compromised. Perhaps of more immediate importance, the agency has noted Tiberius's activities and concerns since his restoration, and having checked its own data sources, it has reason to believe that American Space Intelligence Agency operatives were active in or near the same part of Mars when Tiberius suffered his accident - although the SIA is unwilling to explain what exactly they may have been doing there.
This leads to a little discussion in itself. It seems unlikely that the SIA would be responsible for shooting down Tiberius's hopper - while they and the Europeans sometimes work at cross purposes, the two factions aren't actively hostile - but it's possible that Tiberius diverted to meet an SIA agent, although he can't suggest any reason why he'd have done so. Anyway, it's more information to consider. The group also discusses how to handle the visit to the Peruvians, although Florence rapidly loses interest as the planning grows more detailed and conditional.
As they travel, they are also contacted by Quentin, who tells them that he's arranged transport for them to the Nova Iquitos site. It's been hard to find a vehicle to rent - they're heading into more sparsely populated territory - but he's been able to book passage on a cross-country road train. However, the group aren't entirely happy with this; it will leave them on site with no transport of their own if they suddenly find that they have to leave in a hurry. Quentin is apologetic, but vehicle availability is a problem... Eventually, though, he says that, if they can avoid getting into trouble for twelve to twenty-four hours or so, he can arrange for a rented rover to drive itself to the site and make itself available for them after that time.
Eventually, the maglev train reaches the team's stop - which proves to be a halt rather than a station. They disembark, and determine that they have a couple of hours to wait before the road train arrives. Sitting around on their luggage proves boring, so they decide to take a walk and look at the local rock formations.
After a little while, they hear another maglev arrive from the other direction and stop, and Web tags indicate that someone else has disembarked. They contact the new arrival by radio, and discover that it is Dr Ming-Mei Liang, a Chinese planetologist, who is meeting the same road train; when they say what they are doing, she asks to patch through to their cameras, and promptly spends ten minutes telling them about the science of the rock formations. They return to the halt, and discover Dr Liang sitting with a large travelling case; however, she says that she isn't packed for a long visit - this is simply her professional equipment.
She's happy to talk, and explains that she too is visiting Nova Iquitos; indeed, it emerges that it was her who arranged for the road train to come this way and to have a passenger module installed - Quentin then got lucky on the party's behalf, as the module has enough spare capacity for them. Dr Liang, it seems, is heading this way to perform some research. Nova Iquitos have recently been reporting some much better-than-expected performance by the ecological "oases" they monitor - gene-crafted bacteriological/fungal cultures planted out in the Martian desert, part of the terraforming process. This has attracted a certain amount of attention, as it would be good news for the terraformers if these results are accurate, but they do seem very good, so it seems like a worthwhile idea for an impartial scientific investigator to review them in situ.
The road train arrives, and proves to be owned and run by a single driver - an organic human, not an upload like some Martian truckers. This is Harvey Hernandez, an American citizen who wears a Stetson over his heat suit and speaks with a definite drawl. Hernandez seems amiable and spry enough, but some of the party decide that he has something of the look of an elderly man; indeed, he eventually lets slip that this is his second career - he spent forty years working as an accountant. He's a rejuvenated eloi, and a recurver.
The PCs and Dr Liang load their luggage onto the road train and climb into the passenger module. This proves comfortable enough, with sufficient bunks for all of them (with sound-deadening curtains), giving Florence a chance to catnap a little, and also a fully functional miniature kitchen. It's docked immediately behind the train's tractor unit, with a linked airlock, and once the whole assembly is underway again, Harvey leaves the driving to his personal AI, Sundance, and comes through to join them and talk. He doesn't get company on many trips, and while this may not worry him, he's happy enough to have someone to chat to.
The travellers swap stories of Mars and elsewhere, and get on well enough, although Harvey's taste for Country and Western music on the sound system might become wearing (Florence decides that she likes it in small doses). Eventually, the group call up dinner; Harvey's systems specialise in Tex-Mex cookery, and can produce a passable taco if one allows for the possible provenance of the "meat". However, as the travellers eat and drink, both Harvey and Dr Liang look a little oddly at their drinks, although the Europeans, their taste buds adjusting to unaccustomed spicing, don't notice anything. Harvey steps over to the recycling system maintenance panel and begins checking diagnostics as all the organic travellers begin to look a little queasy.
Harvey sits down looking distinctly unhappy before he can complete the maintenance checks, and both Jianwei and Florence are feeling fairly seriously unwell by now; however, Dr Liang didn't eat or drink as much when she noticed the odd taste, and Tiberius has the benefits of a boosted liver, installed in his original body during his military career and carried over in the spec for his bioshell, which counteracts the toxins without difficulty. He considers the diagnostics available from his computer-body interface systems, and recognises the problem instantly; a bacteriological infection that sometimes occurs in some types of water recycling system. It's supposed to be a rare problem, easily eliminated by competent maintenance, but sometimes people do get sloppy.
As Florence takes to her bunk and then grabs a bowl more or less in time (leaving her cleaner swarm with a little work to do on her fur later) and Jianwei and Harvey sit groaning, Tiberius checks the vehicle's medical supplies and his own portable kit, and comes up with a reasonable set of treatments. Then he tells his AI aide, Vediovis, to load the system's maintenance manual, takes Harvey's place at the panel, and works out how to purge and reset the water recycling system. By now, Sundance is asking if it should turn the vehicle back towards the nearest community with medical facilities, but this is vetoed all round; Tiberius's treatments seem to have been effective, and there's some sense among some of the travellers that this may not be as much of an accident as it looks.
So Vajra sends a swarm into the interior of the module's life support systems, using it to look for anomalies - and finds one. Something - larger than a swarm element, small enough to fit in the access spaces - moves quickly across one microbot's field of view. So Vajra pulls up more schematics and consults with Jianwei, who has an eye for tactics. Then, he and Tiberius begin to move and dismantle some elements of the system, isolating their target. Eventually, they give it no more places to hide - and they are ready when the miniature snakebot pops into view.
Florence fires first, but the snakebot ducks away from her tangler shell, which merely makes a mess on wall. However, the thing is unable to evade Jianwei's electrolaser bolt, and lies twitching and writhing for long enough for Florence to score a clean hit with a second tangler shot. Then Tiberius's army background kicks in, and he suggests that everyone takes cover - he's trained to expect miniature cybershells to incorporate self-destruct systems. Everyone follows his lead, with varying degrees of agility and haste, but the snakebot takes a while to recover any sort of control, and any autonomous self-destruct systems it may include evidently aren't set too sensitive. Eventually, Vajra decides that he can afford to take a risk, grabs a cushion from the seating, and tries to use it to screen the effects if the snakebot does explode. He's still trying to get the cushion in place when it does explode, in fact, but it only carries a small charge, and the tangler covering it effectively absorbs the blast.
There are some parts of the snakebot left intact, though; it may be time to try some ad hoc forensics.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
A Handful of Dust
March 4, m0039, continued
The team spend the rest of that day sorting out the gear that they might need for this investigation. Dr Vartex has received a set of packages, routed by Quentin at the embassy, containing his personal effects from both Nova Iquitos and his old rented flat; the rest of the team note that this package has a security seal, suggesting that some of the contents may be legally controlled in some jurisdictions - probably nothing very worrying, but it seems that the doctor may own a sidearm or two. He reports that, by the best of his recollection and available records, there's nothing of his obviously missing or showing signs of tampering. That aside, the team apply some of their expenses budget to acquiring or (mostly) renting survey equipment, which fortunately proves to be fairly widely available - New Shanghai is a major city on a frontier world, not very far from a university, after all. Specifically, they pick up a lightweight ground-penetrating radar system, a small excavation cybershell, and an excavation cyberswarm to go with Vajra's survey swarms.
March 5, m0039
The next day is mostly occupied by a long maglev ride to the small Chinese outpost where a hotel booking and a rented rover will be waiting for them. They take the opportunity to catch up on paperwork and correspondence - Florence has a set of lessons from her continuing education in human society to deal with, and Dr Vartex has a slew of messages welcoming him back to the land of the living and expressing best wishes (and maybe one or two making it clear that old acquaintances regard him, not as his former self, but as a technological abomination). They also continue to talk over the question of what and who might have been behind Dr Vartex's death; their current preferred guesses involve some kind of smuggling operation.
At the stop, they check into one of a widespread chain of capsule hotels, and then look around. This is the place where the medical team who saved Vartex's life were based; it might perhaps be worth trying to locate these people, if only so that Vartex can thank them. Unfortunately, Jianwei doesn't manage to convince the clerk at the medical centre to be very helpful, but the group simply slip around the back of the site, find an employee who's willing to chat, and get the name of a bar (one of the three in the town) where the flying medics relax in their evenings. It seems that most of the team who found Vartex are still stationed here, and when Jianwei and Florence - the most sociable of the four - buy them a round of drinks and introduce Dr Vartex as "one of your success stories", they're more than willing to talk. (They too seem at heart to regard Vartex as a piece of software carrying some useful information recovered from a corpse, but as sophisticates by the standards of their society and also medics, they can still see this as a worthwhile thing. Anyway, one of them mutters, whatever the official legal position on ghosts in Chinese territory, there are rumours about some members of the Central Committee back in Beijing.) They remember that day last year fairly well - it was a dramatic sort of incident, after all - and one of them comments, when asked, that their aircraft's radar screens showed two ground vehicles more or less in the vicinity of the crash, though neither was visible at the scene when they arrived - they assumed that both were passing desert travellers who initially responded to Vartex's hopper's automatic distress call, but turned away once it was clear that the medics would get there first and be best equipped to help. The relevant sensor logs should still be available...
Meanwhile, Dougal has been mildly annoying the bartenders and some other customers who use augmented reality by running up and down the bar. Once Florence has persuaded him to stop and apologised for this, and also finished politely fending off an unconvincing amorous approach by one of the bar's other patrons, the four Europeans retire to their four capsules in the hotel for the night.
March 6, m0039
The next morning, reminded by his AI aide, the friendly Chinese medical team member from the night before does indeed transmit those sensor logs to the team, around the time that they are collecting and loading up their rented heavy rover. Once they are underway, they're able to review this material; examining it closely with trained eyes (and both Jianwei and Dr Vartex have some knowledge of intelligence analysis), they note first that both vehicles were showing only minimal transponder response - legally sufficient, and enough to avoid suspicion from casual observers, but not very informative. They also decide that one of the vehicles was probably at the location which the hopper would have reached had it not been shot down, and that it probably never came very close to the crash site; the other, which came from the shoot-down point, was probably the one that did reach the crash, but wouldn't have had very long there before the medical team arrived. This raises the question of why that individual didn't finish off Dr Vartex while he had the chance - but even if he didn't have other priorities, he may not even have seen the body amongst the wreckage, or he may have thought that Dr Vartex looked sufficiently dead - and putting in another shot to be sure would probably have left a mess that even a careless forensic examination would have noticed. Another point to note is that both vehicles would have needed to be long-range, well-supplied types if they could loiter in that area for long without having to head for some nearby community for fuel and life support recharges (the team's own rented rover comes with a trailer to carry extra fuel for this trip), but such specialised models do exist.
Although the rover comes with a NAI that can drive it competently, Florence decides that she wants to practise her vehicles skills. Her VR training was actually for lighter models, but she manages this one adequately, and decides to train up on such vehicles - the team will doubtless use others of the same general type again in future. After lunch, Jianwei too takes a turn behind the wheel, although he has a little more trouble - the vehicle AI cuts in to offer assistance at one point.
By the end of the day, the others note that Dr Vartex is looking especially withdrawn and grim, and realise that the thought of visiting the scene of his own death is becoming a little oppressive for him. Still, he focuses on the task in hand, and everyone prepares for the task of investigation. Rather than drive over the site, they stop a mile or two short of their destination, by which time it is late enough in the day that the three organic team members decide that they should settle down to sleep after eating and some final planning. Vajra, on the other hand, simply dons a bit of cold weather protection and some light-enhancing goggles, takes a full set of cyberswarms, and sets out to prepare an initial map of the location in preparation for the next day's work.
March 7, m0039
Hence, the team are awoken in the morning by the returning humaniform cybershell, and start their day with a prepared coordinate map of the crash site and some initial imagery. They drive carefully up to the scene, which has fortunately not been too badly disrupted by weather in the past year, and set to work.
The ground-penetrating radar locates a number of additional fragments which they're able to excavate, and they contact Quentin to tell him that these will eventually be sent his way. He in reply says that he's still having some difficulty locating a fully-qualified forensic analyst who the embassy can consider entirely impartial, but he's been able to conduct some analysis himself, and he's sent high-resolution scans and images back to Earth for assessment by specialists in Brussels; so far, everything seems to confirm the missile-damage hypothesis, although the best bet then is that a shaped charge projectile was used, and it's not clear that enough chemical traces would remain after this time to establish any more about that.
Looking at the site, and using downloaded skill sets to conduct efficient searches and to perform forensic analysis of their findings, the team decide that they can provisionally further confirm this conclusion. They also think that Dr Vartex was quite lucky, in that the craft's pilot AI did a good job of moderating the force of the crash, which is why he was, bluntly, in few enough pieces when the medical team arrived that they were able to recover his brain. The doctor also looks at everything that can be reconstructed from the site, both from the Chinese forensic store and with the aid of this extra work and equipment, and decides that he is pretty sure that there was nothing substantial being carried on the aircraft for which he could not account - unless of course it was recovered at the time.
So the team next extend the area of their search out in two directions, using the ground-penetrating sensors and more downloaded skill sets to track the two vehicles back along their respective paths. This is difficult at this distance in time, of course, and they quickly lose the tracks of the person who apparently performed the shoot-down. However, working back logically, they find the place where that vehicle most likely was located when whoever was on it opened fire; the combat-trained members of the group decide that this looks like a well-planned ambush from well-chosen cover. As for the other vehicle, which the hopper was apparently descending to meet, they decide that it must have been waiting for at least a little time on that spot. However, neither left much in the way of traces such as discarded refuse; both vehicles were apparently being operated by competent professionals who knew something about secrecy. Both seem to have moved off in roughly opposite directions - east and west - evidently after the Chinese medical team showed up, although there's no hope of following their trails for very long.
By the end of the day, the group still have no idea who attacked Dr Vartex, who the other party was, or how his hopper was diverted, whether by software subversion or some other means - but they have a fairly detailed picture of the events of that day, and at least they haven't been attacked (a possibility which had crossed their minds). The next step, they think, is to follow the trail back to the Peruvians of Nova Iquitos - which means taking the rented rover back to the maglev track, moving on to a stop yet further west, and then heading out from there. In order to save time, they tell the rover's AI to take over the driving and head back along the route it now knows, with Vajra keeping watch, while the three organic party members catch some sleep in its capacious seats.
So, next on the itinerary is Elysium Planitia.
The team spend the rest of that day sorting out the gear that they might need for this investigation. Dr Vartex has received a set of packages, routed by Quentin at the embassy, containing his personal effects from both Nova Iquitos and his old rented flat; the rest of the team note that this package has a security seal, suggesting that some of the contents may be legally controlled in some jurisdictions - probably nothing very worrying, but it seems that the doctor may own a sidearm or two. He reports that, by the best of his recollection and available records, there's nothing of his obviously missing or showing signs of tampering. That aside, the team apply some of their expenses budget to acquiring or (mostly) renting survey equipment, which fortunately proves to be fairly widely available - New Shanghai is a major city on a frontier world, not very far from a university, after all. Specifically, they pick up a lightweight ground-penetrating radar system, a small excavation cybershell, and an excavation cyberswarm to go with Vajra's survey swarms.
March 5, m0039
The next day is mostly occupied by a long maglev ride to the small Chinese outpost where a hotel booking and a rented rover will be waiting for them. They take the opportunity to catch up on paperwork and correspondence - Florence has a set of lessons from her continuing education in human society to deal with, and Dr Vartex has a slew of messages welcoming him back to the land of the living and expressing best wishes (and maybe one or two making it clear that old acquaintances regard him, not as his former self, but as a technological abomination). They also continue to talk over the question of what and who might have been behind Dr Vartex's death; their current preferred guesses involve some kind of smuggling operation.
At the stop, they check into one of a widespread chain of capsule hotels, and then look around. This is the place where the medical team who saved Vartex's life were based; it might perhaps be worth trying to locate these people, if only so that Vartex can thank them. Unfortunately, Jianwei doesn't manage to convince the clerk at the medical centre to be very helpful, but the group simply slip around the back of the site, find an employee who's willing to chat, and get the name of a bar (one of the three in the town) where the flying medics relax in their evenings. It seems that most of the team who found Vartex are still stationed here, and when Jianwei and Florence - the most sociable of the four - buy them a round of drinks and introduce Dr Vartex as "one of your success stories", they're more than willing to talk. (They too seem at heart to regard Vartex as a piece of software carrying some useful information recovered from a corpse, but as sophisticates by the standards of their society and also medics, they can still see this as a worthwhile thing. Anyway, one of them mutters, whatever the official legal position on ghosts in Chinese territory, there are rumours about some members of the Central Committee back in Beijing.) They remember that day last year fairly well - it was a dramatic sort of incident, after all - and one of them comments, when asked, that their aircraft's radar screens showed two ground vehicles more or less in the vicinity of the crash, though neither was visible at the scene when they arrived - they assumed that both were passing desert travellers who initially responded to Vartex's hopper's automatic distress call, but turned away once it was clear that the medics would get there first and be best equipped to help. The relevant sensor logs should still be available...
Meanwhile, Dougal has been mildly annoying the bartenders and some other customers who use augmented reality by running up and down the bar. Once Florence has persuaded him to stop and apologised for this, and also finished politely fending off an unconvincing amorous approach by one of the bar's other patrons, the four Europeans retire to their four capsules in the hotel for the night.
March 6, m0039
The next morning, reminded by his AI aide, the friendly Chinese medical team member from the night before does indeed transmit those sensor logs to the team, around the time that they are collecting and loading up their rented heavy rover. Once they are underway, they're able to review this material; examining it closely with trained eyes (and both Jianwei and Dr Vartex have some knowledge of intelligence analysis), they note first that both vehicles were showing only minimal transponder response - legally sufficient, and enough to avoid suspicion from casual observers, but not very informative. They also decide that one of the vehicles was probably at the location which the hopper would have reached had it not been shot down, and that it probably never came very close to the crash site; the other, which came from the shoot-down point, was probably the one that did reach the crash, but wouldn't have had very long there before the medical team arrived. This raises the question of why that individual didn't finish off Dr Vartex while he had the chance - but even if he didn't have other priorities, he may not even have seen the body amongst the wreckage, or he may have thought that Dr Vartex looked sufficiently dead - and putting in another shot to be sure would probably have left a mess that even a careless forensic examination would have noticed. Another point to note is that both vehicles would have needed to be long-range, well-supplied types if they could loiter in that area for long without having to head for some nearby community for fuel and life support recharges (the team's own rented rover comes with a trailer to carry extra fuel for this trip), but such specialised models do exist.
Although the rover comes with a NAI that can drive it competently, Florence decides that she wants to practise her vehicles skills. Her VR training was actually for lighter models, but she manages this one adequately, and decides to train up on such vehicles - the team will doubtless use others of the same general type again in future. After lunch, Jianwei too takes a turn behind the wheel, although he has a little more trouble - the vehicle AI cuts in to offer assistance at one point.
By the end of the day, the others note that Dr Vartex is looking especially withdrawn and grim, and realise that the thought of visiting the scene of his own death is becoming a little oppressive for him. Still, he focuses on the task in hand, and everyone prepares for the task of investigation. Rather than drive over the site, they stop a mile or two short of their destination, by which time it is late enough in the day that the three organic team members decide that they should settle down to sleep after eating and some final planning. Vajra, on the other hand, simply dons a bit of cold weather protection and some light-enhancing goggles, takes a full set of cyberswarms, and sets out to prepare an initial map of the location in preparation for the next day's work.
March 7, m0039
Hence, the team are awoken in the morning by the returning humaniform cybershell, and start their day with a prepared coordinate map of the crash site and some initial imagery. They drive carefully up to the scene, which has fortunately not been too badly disrupted by weather in the past year, and set to work.
The ground-penetrating radar locates a number of additional fragments which they're able to excavate, and they contact Quentin to tell him that these will eventually be sent his way. He in reply says that he's still having some difficulty locating a fully-qualified forensic analyst who the embassy can consider entirely impartial, but he's been able to conduct some analysis himself, and he's sent high-resolution scans and images back to Earth for assessment by specialists in Brussels; so far, everything seems to confirm the missile-damage hypothesis, although the best bet then is that a shaped charge projectile was used, and it's not clear that enough chemical traces would remain after this time to establish any more about that.
Looking at the site, and using downloaded skill sets to conduct efficient searches and to perform forensic analysis of their findings, the team decide that they can provisionally further confirm this conclusion. They also think that Dr Vartex was quite lucky, in that the craft's pilot AI did a good job of moderating the force of the crash, which is why he was, bluntly, in few enough pieces when the medical team arrived that they were able to recover his brain. The doctor also looks at everything that can be reconstructed from the site, both from the Chinese forensic store and with the aid of this extra work and equipment, and decides that he is pretty sure that there was nothing substantial being carried on the aircraft for which he could not account - unless of course it was recovered at the time.
So the team next extend the area of their search out in two directions, using the ground-penetrating sensors and more downloaded skill sets to track the two vehicles back along their respective paths. This is difficult at this distance in time, of course, and they quickly lose the tracks of the person who apparently performed the shoot-down. However, working back logically, they find the place where that vehicle most likely was located when whoever was on it opened fire; the combat-trained members of the group decide that this looks like a well-planned ambush from well-chosen cover. As for the other vehicle, which the hopper was apparently descending to meet, they decide that it must have been waiting for at least a little time on that spot. However, neither left much in the way of traces such as discarded refuse; both vehicles were apparently being operated by competent professionals who knew something about secrecy. Both seem to have moved off in roughly opposite directions - east and west - evidently after the Chinese medical team showed up, although there's no hope of following their trails for very long.
By the end of the day, the group still have no idea who attacked Dr Vartex, who the other party was, or how his hopper was diverted, whether by software subversion or some other means - but they have a fairly detailed picture of the events of that day, and at least they haven't been attacked (a possibility which had crossed their minds). The next step, they think, is to follow the trail back to the Peruvians of Nova Iquitos - which means taking the rented rover back to the maglev track, moving on to a stop yet further west, and then heading out from there. In order to save time, they tell the rover's AI to take over the driving and head back along the route it now knows, with Vajra keeping watch, while the three organic party members catch some sleep in its capacious seats.
So, next on the itinerary is Elysium Planitia.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
The Ghost Doctor
Libra 28, m0039, continued
The team report back to the embassy, where Schmidt acknowledges a job well done and accepts their report. After lunch, they head out to look around the town for extra resources that they may need for their work; they also find that there's a shipping box being held in the embassy stores for Florence, which turns out to contain the additional weapons which she requested; they are now fully equipped, they feel (and, when visiting many communities, Florence may have to carry some of her gear in electronically locked boxes with diplomatic service seals). In due course they take a walk out of Port Lowell to acclimatise themselves a little more to the Martian environment, testing their biomod adaptations to the conditions and so on; Florence practices the flamboyant martial arts moves in which she's been trained, proving that she can get clear over the head of a human opponent in a standing leap, and also confirms that her sidearms are fully functional.
Libra 28-March 2, m0039
Over the next couple of days, the team settles into their new posting, completing any necessary paperwork, learning their way around Port Lowell and the surrounding region, and trying out some of the bars and restaurants which they've had recommended to them. Port Lowell is a rather drab corporate town, perhaps, and the architecture is rarely worth a detour, but the variety of nationalities there, many of them fairly well-paid corporate or diplomatic employees, does ensure some fairly healthy nightlife. It also ensures steady employment for the consular functions of the E.U. embassy, and the team learns something about the mundane practicalities of all that; they may, after all, sometimes be assigned to deal with routine business when there's no call for their special talents.
The embassy itself is a modest-sized building, not much more than a large house - even on Mars, many of the staff do much of their work over the Web from home or from wherever they've been sent, and the team have no permanent office of their own, although they should have priority claim to hot desks when they can show need. They also discover that Quentin rules almost as much space in an ancillary building as the embassy proper provides; providing special resources required by E.U. contractors and even trans-shipping material is a large part of the embassy's function.
March 3, m0039
Then, when they arrive at work one morning, the team find that they have a brief meeting scheduled with Colette Schmidt. She comes straight to the point.
"It would appear that we have a possible murder case involving an E.U. citizen. Unfortunately, the incident happened nearly an Earth year ago now, but we've only just learned that it may not have been an accident, so the trail may be rather cold. However, the victim may naturally have rather strong feelings on the subject. I'd like you to go and talk to him in person - all else aside, he may need some moral support just now."
"Ah - he's been ghosted?"
"Yes. His name is Dr Tiberius Vartex. He's here on E.U. government sponsorship, so we have a duty to him. You'll have to travel to Haiyuan City..."
The team decide to set out straight away, reviewing the details of the case on the maglev as they go. Tiberius Vartex, it turns out, was - is - an English-born ex-military medical doctor who came to Mars as part of the E.U. special skills secondment programme. About a year or so ago, he was asked to act as medical officer for "Nova Iquitos Station", a semi-mobile Peruvian scientific unit operating on the eastern edge of the Elysium Planitia. After a couple of weeks there, he arranged to take a routine break, borrowed one of the unit's hoppers (with NAI pilot), and set off to fly to one of the Chinese-international towns west of Olympus Mons (with multiple refuelling stops along the way). He never made it; his hopper came down somewhere along the way. Luckily for him, a Chinese medical team were in the (very general) vicinity in their ambulance hopper, were able to reach the site within an hour or so, discovered his body in a somewhat-recoverable condition, and had the time and equipment to get him into nanostasis.
He was then transferred to a full hospital, initially in New Shanghai, where doctors confirmed that only an upload was feasible, and his E.U. contract certainly covered that. However, suitable facilities are still quite thin on Mars, and the most efficient approach proved to be to leave him in the hands of the Chinese medical services. Then, his medical plan, any living will arrangements that he'd made, and general custom, suggested that his ghost should be installed in a cloned bioshell - but that would take months to prepare and grow, and the best available facilities for that were in Haiyuan City. The hospital therefore didn't attach any particular priority to completing the upload; after all, while computer resources are cheap, they aren't free, and ghosts running on static systems in VR sometimes get uncomfortable. Hence, although the scan was run soon enough, and the conversion/compilation eventually followed, and was quite successful according to validation analysis, Dr Vartex's ghost was only really run, for initial test and acclimatisation purposes, a few days ago, when his bioshell was confirmed as functional and nearly ready for use.
Which was when Dr Vartex himself started raising questions about what happened to him. He hasn't said much yet, and he comes across as rather dour and still perhaps slightly traumatised by what happened to him, but he's dropped broad hints in messages to the embassy that he's highly suspicious of something. Anyway, he may need some practical or psychological support when he's first installed on the bioshell. The team also skims the official report on the hopper accident, which does strike them immediately as rather thin; the investigation was conducted by Chinese police, as the nearest authority to the crash scene, but given that they were dealing with a TSA vehicle and an E.U. citizen, it was perhaps predictable that they might not have been especially thorough.
With all this in mind, the team reach Haiyuan, and make their way to the hospital, where they meet Dr Feng, the attending surgeon on the case. He's pleasant but businesslike, persistently referring to Dr Vartex as "your program"; the Chinese don't grant ghosts full civil rights, which would explain a certain casualness in their attitude to the personal side of this matter, although there's no evidence that they were at all incompetent in regard to the technical aspects. He also reminds everyone that the process usually fails to recover the contents of very recent short-term memory - the last few minutes, possibly even hours, of the patient's life - and remarks that, while the procedure appears to have been quite successful in this case, there is always some danger of loss of other conscious memories or skill functions. It's clear that this is pro forma stuff, intended to protect the hospital against legal trouble, although the points he's making are entirely valid. Anyway, Dr Vartex has been running on the hospital mainframe, but it seems that his bioshell is checked out and ready to use, so the team are soon taken through to the room where a couple of technicians are linking it up to the download system.
(Any suspicions that such technicians will have loaded some compliant NAI onto any new shell in testing hours if not days ago, and then amused themselves seeing what they could order it to do, would of course be intolerable slanders on an entire profession. Anyway, the bioshell shows as being in perfect working order, complete with some minor internal upgrades that were included in the specification received by the hospital and a variety of protective nanomods.)
The download runs, all validation checks show positive, and Dr Vartex opens his eyes. Jianwei greets him and introduces himself and the other two, and suggests that they move to the hotel which has been booked for all of them. Vartex agrees, and the necessary administrative concerns are quickly resolved with the hospital. Jianwei requests that all backup copies of the new ghost be transferred to E.U. systems, along with the raw scan data from Dr Vartex's brain; although it would of course be impolite to mention any such thing to the Chinese, this could be used at a later date to validate the compilation job, if any suspicions arose about tinkering. As Dr Vartex won't have full human-equivalent rights in Chinese territory, Jianwei also suggests that he should set up another E.U.-registered holding company, with Dr Vartex as sole owner and himself as a non-executive director and the ghost and bioshell as its assets when it is operating in territory where they are regarded as property. This is handled in seconds; meanwhile, Dr Vartex downloads the last available backup of his assistant NAI over the Web and installs it as a secondary process on his computer. It comes as close as a NAI can manage to expressing surprise over the time that has passed since it last ran, and at its new situation.
And so the four beings head to the hotel, a comfortable but plain place in the business district, and the consular team can ask what's been worrying the unsmiling Dr Vartex. He confirms that he does indeed find the circumstances of his accident suspicious, but he hasn't wanted to say much to anyone while he was running on the hospital computers; being ex-military, he is fully aware that software running on a system controlled by someone else has no useful guarantees of security at all, and anything he chose to say might therefore have been readable by unknown parties.
As to the actual problem; Vartex looked over the details of his flight (which, no, he doesn't remember), and realised that he had been taking the obvious direct route from the Nova Iquitos base to his destination - until a few minutes before the crash, when the hopper made a slight but definite diversion. It was just a few degrees, but enough to require some explanation - which isn't available. He too has reviewed the official report, and the more that anyone in the group looks at it, the more they agree that it's clearly a very standard piece of writing, blaming the crash on an unspecified mechanical or software failure which of course can't be identified because the crash destroyed much of the vehicle.
It's getting late in the day by now, and the group all have rooms booked for the night in the hotel, so they settle in there to consider the matter further. Looking at the hopper flight log in detail, they realise that, at the same time it changed course, it switched from full real-time logging on external storage - the norm, which provides useful "black box" details - to a minimal level of recording, showing little more than bearing, speed, and altitude. Still, they can get a little from this; notably, they eventually discover that the hopper had begun a slow, controlled descent a few minutes before the catastrophic events of the crash, and so was lower than normal operating altitude at that time, although not yet quite low enough to raise a red flag for the routine Chinese investigation.
Next, Vajra pulls what he can find in the way of satellite imagery of the area of the crash from around the time of the accident off the Mars Web. This is relatively skimpy - better images almost certainly exist somewhere, but a lot of the satellites in orbit round the planet belong to military organisations - but it seems to confirm that confirm what aviation management records also say; that there were no other air vehicles in the vicinity. However, later, examining these images at length and especially scrupulously, the team will decide that there may well have been a ground vehicle very close to the point where the hopper's descent path would have brought it to land.
Everything does now seem to be pointing to foul play, but there are many unanswered questions remaining. Why did the hopper change course? Could its NAI have been subverted somehow? Who wanted it to land, and who may have been waiting for it? And still, what brought it down? The next step seems to be to examine the wreckage, and a quick records check shows that the Chinese investigators removed it - or at least the largest parts - to their facilities in New Shanghai. So the team decides to travel their on the next day, and make a few arrangements before retiring to sleep (or in Vajra's case, to meditate).
March 4, m0039
Another slightly boring maglev journey takes the four Europeans to their next destination, and a taxi then takes them to Police HQ, where Jianwei's immaculate grasp of procedure and the team's diplomatic credentials earn them admission to a storage unit on the edge of town. A large tray slides out of a stack, and the team are presented with a fine collection of scrap metal, consistent with the model and type of hopper and the story that it hit the ground at some speed. They are also given a large collection of images recorded at the site before anything was moved by the investigators. This isn't a perfect forensics exercise, though; the Chinese only collected up fairly large pieces. At Jianwei's instruction, Aunty loads up a forensics skill set, and under her direction, wearing suitably advanced anti-contamination gear provided by the building owners, he begins a careful examination of the wreckage. This isn't exactly conclusive, but it does look as though, at one point on the hull, where the jet exhaust emerges alongside the tail structure, the metal may have been driven inwards with explosive force - not outwards, as would be expected if the problem was an engine explosion, and not consistently with ground impact either...
"Okay, we have prima facie evidence that you were shot down."
Looking at the damage and the forensics program outputs, Florence, the team's weapons expert, decides that something large-calibre but man-portable was probably involved. That may be a small relief.
The team identify certain crucial elements of the wreckage, and make a formal request to the Chinese authorities that these should be transferred under forensic seal to E.U. embassy custody. It's been a long time, unfortunately, but it's possible that sufficiently fine examination could find further evidence of weapons fire. A SEFOP round would almost certainly leave traces of explosively-forged metal; a HEMP round or other shaped charge might only leave small traces of very volatile materials. Out of interest, they also request and receive footage from the medical unit's cameras. (Jianwei asks briefly if Vartex wants to look at this, given that it's likely to contain rather gruesome images of his own former body. Vartex points out that he's both ex-military and a doctor.) This doesn't add much to their information, but confirms that the wreckage was indeed much as the Chinese investigators' information indicates.
Working methodically along the chain of evidence, the team decide that their next stop should be the crash site itself - it's been a while, but the site has probably gone undisturbed, out there in the wilderness. Of course, this will mean quite a bit more travel; more than 1,500 miles by maglev - a full day's travel - to the nearest substantial community (the place where the medical team were fortuitously based, in fact), where they can rent a heavy rover vehicle, and then another three or four hundred miles to the site - another full day, and they'll need to rent a fuel trailer along with the rover to get them home again. Well, at least if they then decide to locate Nova Iquitos Station, it's just further in the same direction along the equatorial railway. They are only a little concerned that they may be about to tangle with people who are prepared to kill in the course of their machinations - and Florence doesn't seem worried at all.
The team report back to the embassy, where Schmidt acknowledges a job well done and accepts their report. After lunch, they head out to look around the town for extra resources that they may need for their work; they also find that there's a shipping box being held in the embassy stores for Florence, which turns out to contain the additional weapons which she requested; they are now fully equipped, they feel (and, when visiting many communities, Florence may have to carry some of her gear in electronically locked boxes with diplomatic service seals). In due course they take a walk out of Port Lowell to acclimatise themselves a little more to the Martian environment, testing their biomod adaptations to the conditions and so on; Florence practices the flamboyant martial arts moves in which she's been trained, proving that she can get clear over the head of a human opponent in a standing leap, and also confirms that her sidearms are fully functional.
Libra 28-March 2, m0039
Over the next couple of days, the team settles into their new posting, completing any necessary paperwork, learning their way around Port Lowell and the surrounding region, and trying out some of the bars and restaurants which they've had recommended to them. Port Lowell is a rather drab corporate town, perhaps, and the architecture is rarely worth a detour, but the variety of nationalities there, many of them fairly well-paid corporate or diplomatic employees, does ensure some fairly healthy nightlife. It also ensures steady employment for the consular functions of the E.U. embassy, and the team learns something about the mundane practicalities of all that; they may, after all, sometimes be assigned to deal with routine business when there's no call for their special talents.
The embassy itself is a modest-sized building, not much more than a large house - even on Mars, many of the staff do much of their work over the Web from home or from wherever they've been sent, and the team have no permanent office of their own, although they should have priority claim to hot desks when they can show need. They also discover that Quentin rules almost as much space in an ancillary building as the embassy proper provides; providing special resources required by E.U. contractors and even trans-shipping material is a large part of the embassy's function.
March 3, m0039
Then, when they arrive at work one morning, the team find that they have a brief meeting scheduled with Colette Schmidt. She comes straight to the point.
"It would appear that we have a possible murder case involving an E.U. citizen. Unfortunately, the incident happened nearly an Earth year ago now, but we've only just learned that it may not have been an accident, so the trail may be rather cold. However, the victim may naturally have rather strong feelings on the subject. I'd like you to go and talk to him in person - all else aside, he may need some moral support just now."
"Ah - he's been ghosted?"
"Yes. His name is Dr Tiberius Vartex. He's here on E.U. government sponsorship, so we have a duty to him. You'll have to travel to Haiyuan City..."
The team decide to set out straight away, reviewing the details of the case on the maglev as they go. Tiberius Vartex, it turns out, was - is - an English-born ex-military medical doctor who came to Mars as part of the E.U. special skills secondment programme. About a year or so ago, he was asked to act as medical officer for "Nova Iquitos Station", a semi-mobile Peruvian scientific unit operating on the eastern edge of the Elysium Planitia. After a couple of weeks there, he arranged to take a routine break, borrowed one of the unit's hoppers (with NAI pilot), and set off to fly to one of the Chinese-international towns west of Olympus Mons (with multiple refuelling stops along the way). He never made it; his hopper came down somewhere along the way. Luckily for him, a Chinese medical team were in the (very general) vicinity in their ambulance hopper, were able to reach the site within an hour or so, discovered his body in a somewhat-recoverable condition, and had the time and equipment to get him into nanostasis.
He was then transferred to a full hospital, initially in New Shanghai, where doctors confirmed that only an upload was feasible, and his E.U. contract certainly covered that. However, suitable facilities are still quite thin on Mars, and the most efficient approach proved to be to leave him in the hands of the Chinese medical services. Then, his medical plan, any living will arrangements that he'd made, and general custom, suggested that his ghost should be installed in a cloned bioshell - but that would take months to prepare and grow, and the best available facilities for that were in Haiyuan City. The hospital therefore didn't attach any particular priority to completing the upload; after all, while computer resources are cheap, they aren't free, and ghosts running on static systems in VR sometimes get uncomfortable. Hence, although the scan was run soon enough, and the conversion/compilation eventually followed, and was quite successful according to validation analysis, Dr Vartex's ghost was only really run, for initial test and acclimatisation purposes, a few days ago, when his bioshell was confirmed as functional and nearly ready for use.
Which was when Dr Vartex himself started raising questions about what happened to him. He hasn't said much yet, and he comes across as rather dour and still perhaps slightly traumatised by what happened to him, but he's dropped broad hints in messages to the embassy that he's highly suspicious of something. Anyway, he may need some practical or psychological support when he's first installed on the bioshell. The team also skims the official report on the hopper accident, which does strike them immediately as rather thin; the investigation was conducted by Chinese police, as the nearest authority to the crash scene, but given that they were dealing with a TSA vehicle and an E.U. citizen, it was perhaps predictable that they might not have been especially thorough.
With all this in mind, the team reach Haiyuan, and make their way to the hospital, where they meet Dr Feng, the attending surgeon on the case. He's pleasant but businesslike, persistently referring to Dr Vartex as "your program"; the Chinese don't grant ghosts full civil rights, which would explain a certain casualness in their attitude to the personal side of this matter, although there's no evidence that they were at all incompetent in regard to the technical aspects. He also reminds everyone that the process usually fails to recover the contents of very recent short-term memory - the last few minutes, possibly even hours, of the patient's life - and remarks that, while the procedure appears to have been quite successful in this case, there is always some danger of loss of other conscious memories or skill functions. It's clear that this is pro forma stuff, intended to protect the hospital against legal trouble, although the points he's making are entirely valid. Anyway, Dr Vartex has been running on the hospital mainframe, but it seems that his bioshell is checked out and ready to use, so the team are soon taken through to the room where a couple of technicians are linking it up to the download system.
(Any suspicions that such technicians will have loaded some compliant NAI onto any new shell in testing hours if not days ago, and then amused themselves seeing what they could order it to do, would of course be intolerable slanders on an entire profession. Anyway, the bioshell shows as being in perfect working order, complete with some minor internal upgrades that were included in the specification received by the hospital and a variety of protective nanomods.)
The download runs, all validation checks show positive, and Dr Vartex opens his eyes. Jianwei greets him and introduces himself and the other two, and suggests that they move to the hotel which has been booked for all of them. Vartex agrees, and the necessary administrative concerns are quickly resolved with the hospital. Jianwei requests that all backup copies of the new ghost be transferred to E.U. systems, along with the raw scan data from Dr Vartex's brain; although it would of course be impolite to mention any such thing to the Chinese, this could be used at a later date to validate the compilation job, if any suspicions arose about tinkering. As Dr Vartex won't have full human-equivalent rights in Chinese territory, Jianwei also suggests that he should set up another E.U.-registered holding company, with Dr Vartex as sole owner and himself as a non-executive director and the ghost and bioshell as its assets when it is operating in territory where they are regarded as property. This is handled in seconds; meanwhile, Dr Vartex downloads the last available backup of his assistant NAI over the Web and installs it as a secondary process on his computer. It comes as close as a NAI can manage to expressing surprise over the time that has passed since it last ran, and at its new situation.
And so the four beings head to the hotel, a comfortable but plain place in the business district, and the consular team can ask what's been worrying the unsmiling Dr Vartex. He confirms that he does indeed find the circumstances of his accident suspicious, but he hasn't wanted to say much to anyone while he was running on the hospital computers; being ex-military, he is fully aware that software running on a system controlled by someone else has no useful guarantees of security at all, and anything he chose to say might therefore have been readable by unknown parties.
As to the actual problem; Vartex looked over the details of his flight (which, no, he doesn't remember), and realised that he had been taking the obvious direct route from the Nova Iquitos base to his destination - until a few minutes before the crash, when the hopper made a slight but definite diversion. It was just a few degrees, but enough to require some explanation - which isn't available. He too has reviewed the official report, and the more that anyone in the group looks at it, the more they agree that it's clearly a very standard piece of writing, blaming the crash on an unspecified mechanical or software failure which of course can't be identified because the crash destroyed much of the vehicle.
It's getting late in the day by now, and the group all have rooms booked for the night in the hotel, so they settle in there to consider the matter further. Looking at the hopper flight log in detail, they realise that, at the same time it changed course, it switched from full real-time logging on external storage - the norm, which provides useful "black box" details - to a minimal level of recording, showing little more than bearing, speed, and altitude. Still, they can get a little from this; notably, they eventually discover that the hopper had begun a slow, controlled descent a few minutes before the catastrophic events of the crash, and so was lower than normal operating altitude at that time, although not yet quite low enough to raise a red flag for the routine Chinese investigation.
Next, Vajra pulls what he can find in the way of satellite imagery of the area of the crash from around the time of the accident off the Mars Web. This is relatively skimpy - better images almost certainly exist somewhere, but a lot of the satellites in orbit round the planet belong to military organisations - but it seems to confirm that confirm what aviation management records also say; that there were no other air vehicles in the vicinity. However, later, examining these images at length and especially scrupulously, the team will decide that there may well have been a ground vehicle very close to the point where the hopper's descent path would have brought it to land.
Everything does now seem to be pointing to foul play, but there are many unanswered questions remaining. Why did the hopper change course? Could its NAI have been subverted somehow? Who wanted it to land, and who may have been waiting for it? And still, what brought it down? The next step seems to be to examine the wreckage, and a quick records check shows that the Chinese investigators removed it - or at least the largest parts - to their facilities in New Shanghai. So the team decides to travel their on the next day, and make a few arrangements before retiring to sleep (or in Vajra's case, to meditate).
March 4, m0039
Another slightly boring maglev journey takes the four Europeans to their next destination, and a taxi then takes them to Police HQ, where Jianwei's immaculate grasp of procedure and the team's diplomatic credentials earn them admission to a storage unit on the edge of town. A large tray slides out of a stack, and the team are presented with a fine collection of scrap metal, consistent with the model and type of hopper and the story that it hit the ground at some speed. They are also given a large collection of images recorded at the site before anything was moved by the investigators. This isn't a perfect forensics exercise, though; the Chinese only collected up fairly large pieces. At Jianwei's instruction, Aunty loads up a forensics skill set, and under her direction, wearing suitably advanced anti-contamination gear provided by the building owners, he begins a careful examination of the wreckage. This isn't exactly conclusive, but it does look as though, at one point on the hull, where the jet exhaust emerges alongside the tail structure, the metal may have been driven inwards with explosive force - not outwards, as would be expected if the problem was an engine explosion, and not consistently with ground impact either...
"Okay, we have prima facie evidence that you were shot down."
Looking at the damage and the forensics program outputs, Florence, the team's weapons expert, decides that something large-calibre but man-portable was probably involved. That may be a small relief.
The team identify certain crucial elements of the wreckage, and make a formal request to the Chinese authorities that these should be transferred under forensic seal to E.U. embassy custody. It's been a long time, unfortunately, but it's possible that sufficiently fine examination could find further evidence of weapons fire. A SEFOP round would almost certainly leave traces of explosively-forged metal; a HEMP round or other shaped charge might only leave small traces of very volatile materials. Out of interest, they also request and receive footage from the medical unit's cameras. (Jianwei asks briefly if Vartex wants to look at this, given that it's likely to contain rather gruesome images of his own former body. Vartex points out that he's both ex-military and a doctor.) This doesn't add much to their information, but confirms that the wreckage was indeed much as the Chinese investigators' information indicates.
Working methodically along the chain of evidence, the team decide that their next stop should be the crash site itself - it's been a while, but the site has probably gone undisturbed, out there in the wilderness. Of course, this will mean quite a bit more travel; more than 1,500 miles by maglev - a full day's travel - to the nearest substantial community (the place where the medical team were fortuitously based, in fact), where they can rent a heavy rover vehicle, and then another three or four hundred miles to the site - another full day, and they'll need to rent a fuel trailer along with the rover to get them home again. Well, at least if they then decide to locate Nova Iquitos Station, it's just further in the same direction along the equatorial railway. They are only a little concerned that they may be about to tangle with people who are prepared to kill in the course of their machinations - and Florence doesn't seem worried at all.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Port Lowell Welcomes
Libra 27, m0039 (continued)
The train takes all day to travel from New Shanghai to Port Lowell (only slightly delayed by the clutter of cargo maglevs emerging from the ugly mining town of Hanggin Qi), in which time, Jianwei composes a report on the events on the elevator to submit to the ambassador before they even arrive. She will undoubtedly see the public postings on this subject at some point, so Jianwei thinks it best to be the ones who draw them to her attention, and best to reassure her that the matter won't become a greater problem. The report is well written and deftly phrased, but lacks his often keen sensitivity to the political complexities of his new posting...
He also spends a few minutes explaining to Florence that, while her new job isn't secret as such, some discussions with unknown parties may require a degree of discretion - handing matters off to himself may sometimes be best. The three discuss possible ways of dealing with "Double Delta" in future; it might be useful to establish a position of mutual obligations with a journalist - or it might be too chancy. The subject is left open for now. Another idea that arises and is agreed is that Jianwei should be appointed a non-executive director of the EU-registered company which legally has ownership of Vajra in certain territories (and of which Vajra is sole owner, of course); Jianwei and Vajra set the legalities in motion.
Then, as the maglev train begins to cross the long, high bridge across Lake Candor towards Port Lowell, the travellers receive a courtesy call from Quentin at the embassy. He reminds them that the organic pair have a couple of apartments rented for them as their initial accommodation - in an American-owned building, perhaps unfortunately, but there isn't much EU-owned rental property in Port Lowell - and says that he has taken the liberty of arranging for a maintenance case for Vajra's humanoid cybershell to be delivered to the same address. He's also booked a taxi to get them there.
The train slips down a spur line and docks with the sealed station. (Port Lowell isn't a fully domed city, but most buildings are pressurised.) The travellers disembark, making sure that their luggage comes too (the diplomatic pouch definitely included) with the aid of a porter shell from the station. The automated taxi (a yellow-painted box on wheels) then takes them to the apartment building - another dull box, which the architect has attempted to make interesting by placing each floor slightly skew to those above and below. The building AI greets them cordially and provides another porter shell to help them carry their things up the couple of floors to their new homes, which are adjacent on the same level.
They enter and begin settling in; the flats are small but immensely technologically efficient, of course, and have configured themselves into the colour schemes that they requested in advance. Vajra finds his maintenance case, and Jianwei uploads his personal choice in art from his implant to the wall screens.
Then there are knocks on the doors of both flats; the external cameras in both cases show fairly well-dressed young men holding what appear to be pizza boxes. Jianwei and Florence open their doors at much the same moment, and realise that their visitors are both on the same mission - and so they accept the neighbourly offers of pizza, and invite everyone into Jianwei's flat. The pair are Manuel Lacardio and Mika Hernandez, who live in a shared home on the floor below. (Yes, it would be possible to reconfigure Jianwei and Florence's flats into one large unit, but the design and construction of the building makes the task non-trivial.) It seems that some parts of this building are already occupied and some are not; these two will be the newcomers' closest neighbours for now.
Manuel and Mika are, it turns out, lower-middle management employees at the Mars Development Corporation - the American company which manages a great deal of activity on Mars, including the construction of Port Lowell and indeed the letting and maintenance of this very building. Both are Mars-adapted, having come down the elevator a couple of years since with a view to making careers on the planet and with the Corporation, although Manuel has spent some of the time since employed by a company other than MDC, before being re-hired in a higher position than the one he left (a notoriously standard "MDC career surge" move). They're affable enough in a youthful sort of way, and despite their cultural background, they are at least tolerably polite to Florence and Vajra - although there's little that Vajra can contribute to this meeting, being unequipped to eat pizza or drink the beer which Jianwei purchases through the house management system. There is a slight sense that Manuel for one is reflexively polite to Florence because of her very attractive (and exotic) looks, although the exact nature of the relationship between the visitors isn't stated.
Jianwei takes the opportunity to find out a little more about Port Lowell from a local perspective, and when Florence asks "Where's good to party?", Manuel and Mika are both happy enough to discuss the nature and quality of many local bars and clubs - working out what national jurisdiction each acknowledges, and hence exactly what substances and recreations may be legally available there, is evidently something of a local preoccupation. Once the visitors depart, Vajra quietly checks the flat for surveillance devices, but it doesn't seem that the visit involved any such ulterior motives.
Libra 28, m0039
The next morning, the new embassy employees have a 9:30am appointment with the ambassador, which reminds Florence that she can revise her wardrobe choices ("Hurray for gravity - I can wear skirts and heels again"). Jianwei attempts to offload the diplomatic pouch onto the embassy staff systems on arrival, but is advised to take it in and deliver it in person. Frau Doctor Ambassador Colette Schmidt is waiting at her desk, and proves politely businesslike; she received Jianwei's report, and has seen "Double Delta's" news postings (which indeed flick across the wall screens behind her desk as she greets her new staff), but she accepts that the unfortunate incident on the elevator probably was handled as well as could reasonably be expected. She is also very pleased to receive the diplomatic pouch; she uses her voice ID and personal codes to open it, extracts a sealed package from amongst the digital modules (mostly one-time pads, it seems safe to assume), and immediately calls for "Catherine", who proves to be a domestic spiderbot. Schmidt hands Catherine the package with instructions to "prepare one cup straight away, then follow my usual rationing schedule". Florence nods sympathetically, commenting that not even the Triad conditioning to fit herself perfectly for Mars can make her like the local coffee. The ambassador suggests that the Triads might think more in terms of green tea, to the quality of which she cannot speak.
Anyway, she expresses the hope that the newcomers are settling in, and that they can find... But then, the ambassador adopts the remote look of someone receiving a high-density information update. Vajra notes that the data flows in her vicinity have indeed increased in the last few seconds; presumably, her personal AI recognised that the importance of her dealings with her visitors was declining, and the importance rating of some new item of data was high enough to permit an interruption at that point.
"It would seem that we have a task for you already," she says. "One of our people - an EU citizen - who has been consulting for Ajiwau Ramen has, as I believe the expression is, gone postal. He appears to be holed up in his employers' offices here in Port Lowell. His name is Herge Bertrand. See if you can prevent any casualties."
The team leave the office briskly as the embassy systems summon another taxi and basic information on the problem begins to flow to their personal systems. Florence is a little unhappy that she hasn't yet obtained all the sidearms which she had arranged to have available on the planet, but she does have a tangler pistol on hand, everyone has at least a little nanoweave armour, and Vajra is able to arrange for his personal microbot swarms to be transported to the destination from the flats. Florence doesn't feel overly impeded by her (quite short) skirt, and the Triads were quite careful to engineer her joints and tendons so that she can fight perfectly comfortably in high heels...
Ajiwau's offices turn out to be yet another blandly unremarkable Port Lowell commercial building, set back from the road behind a Japanese-style raked gravel garden - and now surrounded by security men in smart dark uniforms, the look of which is only spoiled a little by the fact that each has a picture of a ramen bowl on the left breast. Jianwei takes the lead in trying to find out what is going on, but is slightly stymied by language problems until he manages to locate the team leader, a stressed-looking security manager who mutters something about Bertrand having an argument with the company, arriving earlier than anyone else that morning, and triggering the building fire suppression system when his colleagues arrived, driving them back out. There are no casualties (so far), but anyway, the security manager is a busy man, but he has this situation in hand...
Brushed off somewhat, the team manage to attract the attention of one other person who isn't part of the Ajiwau contingent - a woman of indeterminate age (but definitely not young), her steel-grey hair swept back in a tight plait, wearing a jacket that is bulky enough to suggest armour, a cap, and a visor that is probably armoured, and accompanied by a small cluster of businesslike cybershells. She introduces herself as Marshall Althea Kirkowicz. The US Marshalls Service has no jurisdiction here at this moment - the incident has so far taken place entirely on a Japanese corporation's own territory - but if anything spills onto the street, she will have due cause to react; for now, she's here to monitor the situation.
The team wonder if Bertrand has chosen to explain his actions, and a quick look into local virtual space shows that he has; he's published an open statement, in fact. Vajra downloads the document and skims it in a few seconds at computer speeds, and reports that it appears remarkably coherent and reasonable - something on which Jianwei agrees with a quick look. Bertrand has dispute with Ajiwau, and specifically with their corporate security. As a contract employee, he is (or was) entitled to their services in lieu of police protection in the highly corporate town of Port Lowell, but when he was recently physically assaulted in a bar in the town, they provided what he considers to be grossly inadequate assistance. All attempts at resolution having failed, he's taking this action. Glancing slightly further at the document, Jianwei forms the impression of a rather professional exercise in memetic design; all quite slick, even. The nearest it comes to ranting, really, is in the comments on Ajiwau corporate security...
Talking of whom, Aunty - who can speak Japanese - is attempting to monitor the situation with the on-site team, who appear to be forming up to attempt an initial assault, having determined that there are no innocent third parties in the building. They make a frontal entry through the lobby in textbook style, and then there is a pause. Then there are a number of loud explosions, and the assault team withdraw from the building at some speed, although still in textbook fashion.
The EU team note that the assault force apparently suffered no losses. Florence, who has some experience with firearms, notes that the explosions were really too loud for small arms fire. (She also downloads some building plans, and begins looking at options for intrusion on her own account. She could always climb the side of the building or something.) Following some polite but fast and forceful requests in the right quarters, Vajra manages to gain access to some of the building internal cameras, and identifies Bertrand sitting in his office, looking completely calm and with the distracted air of someone composing something on his computer systems. At some point, it occurs to Jianwei that this whole exercise might even be some kind of distraction - but there is no sign of Bertrand having a partner or an alternative strategy, and no other reports of trouble in the town.
They try sending him a message, requesting a chance to talk, but that simply ends up in an in-box, and probably in a long queue. So the consular services team decides to take a simple approach, and walk in the front door. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of one of the Ajiwau security staff, but Jianwei breezes straight past him with a shrug. He continues to take the lead in moving through the lobby area, but not fast - and not only are Florence and Vajra right behind him, but Vajra has a crawler surveillance swarm deployed immediately in front of the whole group. It's this that spots the first signs of Bertrand's preparations for more uninvited visitors, and Vajra reacts with electronic speed and precision. Indeed, his warning reaches the other two in good time, and he and Florence hit cover as the flash charge goes off. Jianwei, with ordinary human reflexes and no combat experience, doesn't, and is left rather ruffled and partially deafened for the rest of the day. However, his nerve holds completely, and he refuses to let this stop him.
Hence, the team find Bertrand, still sitting in that office, calm and even prepared to apologise a little for that incident. By now, it's completely clear that he is in full control of himself; it's possible that someone should have checked his job qualifications, which are in the area of situational memetics. He's using that skill, and so far as he's concerned, things are going just fine. However, Jianwei suggests that he may need some help negotiating his way out of this situation; Ajiwau could press charges for assault or property damage or whatever... Bertrand, in reply, points out that no one has been hurt, the property damage so far has been minimal - and Ajiwau are a culturally very Japanese corporation, with a distinct concern for face. He fully intends to negotiate a way out with no charges pressed and a mutually acceptable set of compensations, and if Ajiwau corporate security are left looking humiliated, well, good. Still, he's not ungrateful for Jianwei's offer to handle some of the negotiations at this point.
So the team head back to the front of the building (although Vajra does quietly leave a few surveillance microbots in the office). Jianwei goes out the front door, looking ostentatiously harmless, while the other two remain in the lobby, ready to respond to developments as seems best. By now, the Ajiwau team appear to have called up a van full of shotgun-sized weapons to supplement the pistols of various kinds which they were previously carrying; they still look like a bunch of restaurant doorkeepers being pushed to operate slightly beyond their capacities, but now they have bigger guns. Still, Jianwei begins talking to their team leader, saying that he's spoken to Bertrand and that the fellow is prepared to cease his action in return for various assurances, including a guarantee that no prosecutions will be forthcoming. (He also points out that Bertrand, a memetics expert, is definitely manipulating Ajiwau's memetics in all this.) The team leader is slightly thrown by this, but consults his senior managers, and after a few minutes, agrees to the terms and conditions.
Jianwei relays this to Bertrand, who has in any case been monitoring the conversation. He seems quite satisfied with the result, but cautious. "You're a diplomat," he says to Jianwei, "does that mean you know about the law?"
"A little," Jianwei replies cautiously.
"So this agreement, which we've all recorded, would be fully binding on them?"
Jianwei thinks for a moment. "I believe so, yes."
"That's good. See you later, then."
The choice of words makes the EU team suspicious, but they don't have much time to act before Bertrand triggers another set of charges. These don't make so much noise, but they do flood much of the building with chemical smoke. Vajra attempts to use his surveillance microbots to see what else Bertrand is up to, but loses connection; Florence, who has been deeply irritated by this latest gesture, thinks about what his options might be, given what she knows about the layout of the building, and begins looking for a way to catch him.
Meanwhile, members of the Ajiwau team have taken this as a sign that they still have a fight on, and trigger their next planned assault on the building. Something grenade-sized comes through a window into the lobby; Florence reflexively dives behind a pillar, but Vajra doesn't react in time and is in fact knocked off his feet when the concussion charge detonates. The Ajiwau team storm into the building, but Florence guesses that they won't find Bertrand in the office any more, and deftly leaves by the door through which they've just come, meeting Jianwei outside.
The pair instantly agree that the best thing to do is to quietly make their way round to a point which Florence has identified at the back of the building. When they get there, Jianwei spots a furtive figure making his way down an external fire escape, and points him out to Florence, who has her tangler pistol out by now. She carefully takes aim, and when Bertrand reaches the bottom of the stairs, she hits him with a couple of rounds loaded with sticky strands. He quickly pulls himself free, but by then, she is up to him and making it very clear how angry she is.
Jianwei arrives a moment later. "You're an idiot" he tells Bertrand. So far as he's concerned, he'd negotiated a safe ending to the situation, and Bertrand put everyone back into danger. Bertrand, on the other hand, seems to think that he's scored one final point on Ajiwau's security people, and feels confident that the company's decision to back down and buy a quiet ending to the incident will hold. In any case, Jianwei and Florence haul him around to the front of the building, and essentially force him to apologise to the Ajiwau security team leader as his team straggle back out of the building. However, it does seem that the agreement should hold, and when Vajra has emerged and collected up his microbot swarms, they decide to take Bertrand back to the EU embassy for his own safety. They make a point of sitting with Vajra and Florence on either side of Bertrand and Jianwei facing him, and while they are on the way, Jianwei chews him out further for his reckless behaviour, hopefully cowing him sufficiently that he can be quietly removed from Port Lowell without him deciding to indulge in any more memetically-loaded gestures first.
Indeed, the team manage to extract an undertaking from Bertrand that he will be leaving Port Lowell, although running him off Mars altogether doesn't look feasible. They make a note to attempt to keep track of his movements, just in case he does anything unwise. "In order to provide consular services more efficiently, it would make sense to keep track of him. After all, our AIs have predicted that he is likely to have need of such services in future..." When they've finished filing a report on the incident, they also get clearance from the ambassador to send a summary of most of the details to Marshall Kirkowicz, making a point of mentioning that Bertrand will be leaving town - which they suspect will please her.
But that is something they deal with after lunch...
The train takes all day to travel from New Shanghai to Port Lowell (only slightly delayed by the clutter of cargo maglevs emerging from the ugly mining town of Hanggin Qi), in which time, Jianwei composes a report on the events on the elevator to submit to the ambassador before they even arrive. She will undoubtedly see the public postings on this subject at some point, so Jianwei thinks it best to be the ones who draw them to her attention, and best to reassure her that the matter won't become a greater problem. The report is well written and deftly phrased, but lacks his often keen sensitivity to the political complexities of his new posting...
He also spends a few minutes explaining to Florence that, while her new job isn't secret as such, some discussions with unknown parties may require a degree of discretion - handing matters off to himself may sometimes be best. The three discuss possible ways of dealing with "Double Delta" in future; it might be useful to establish a position of mutual obligations with a journalist - or it might be too chancy. The subject is left open for now. Another idea that arises and is agreed is that Jianwei should be appointed a non-executive director of the EU-registered company which legally has ownership of Vajra in certain territories (and of which Vajra is sole owner, of course); Jianwei and Vajra set the legalities in motion.
Then, as the maglev train begins to cross the long, high bridge across Lake Candor towards Port Lowell, the travellers receive a courtesy call from Quentin at the embassy. He reminds them that the organic pair have a couple of apartments rented for them as their initial accommodation - in an American-owned building, perhaps unfortunately, but there isn't much EU-owned rental property in Port Lowell - and says that he has taken the liberty of arranging for a maintenance case for Vajra's humanoid cybershell to be delivered to the same address. He's also booked a taxi to get them there.
The train slips down a spur line and docks with the sealed station. (Port Lowell isn't a fully domed city, but most buildings are pressurised.) The travellers disembark, making sure that their luggage comes too (the diplomatic pouch definitely included) with the aid of a porter shell from the station. The automated taxi (a yellow-painted box on wheels) then takes them to the apartment building - another dull box, which the architect has attempted to make interesting by placing each floor slightly skew to those above and below. The building AI greets them cordially and provides another porter shell to help them carry their things up the couple of floors to their new homes, which are adjacent on the same level.
They enter and begin settling in; the flats are small but immensely technologically efficient, of course, and have configured themselves into the colour schemes that they requested in advance. Vajra finds his maintenance case, and Jianwei uploads his personal choice in art from his implant to the wall screens.
Then there are knocks on the doors of both flats; the external cameras in both cases show fairly well-dressed young men holding what appear to be pizza boxes. Jianwei and Florence open their doors at much the same moment, and realise that their visitors are both on the same mission - and so they accept the neighbourly offers of pizza, and invite everyone into Jianwei's flat. The pair are Manuel Lacardio and Mika Hernandez, who live in a shared home on the floor below. (Yes, it would be possible to reconfigure Jianwei and Florence's flats into one large unit, but the design and construction of the building makes the task non-trivial.) It seems that some parts of this building are already occupied and some are not; these two will be the newcomers' closest neighbours for now.
Manuel and Mika are, it turns out, lower-middle management employees at the Mars Development Corporation - the American company which manages a great deal of activity on Mars, including the construction of Port Lowell and indeed the letting and maintenance of this very building. Both are Mars-adapted, having come down the elevator a couple of years since with a view to making careers on the planet and with the Corporation, although Manuel has spent some of the time since employed by a company other than MDC, before being re-hired in a higher position than the one he left (a notoriously standard "MDC career surge" move). They're affable enough in a youthful sort of way, and despite their cultural background, they are at least tolerably polite to Florence and Vajra - although there's little that Vajra can contribute to this meeting, being unequipped to eat pizza or drink the beer which Jianwei purchases through the house management system. There is a slight sense that Manuel for one is reflexively polite to Florence because of her very attractive (and exotic) looks, although the exact nature of the relationship between the visitors isn't stated.
Jianwei takes the opportunity to find out a little more about Port Lowell from a local perspective, and when Florence asks "Where's good to party?", Manuel and Mika are both happy enough to discuss the nature and quality of many local bars and clubs - working out what national jurisdiction each acknowledges, and hence exactly what substances and recreations may be legally available there, is evidently something of a local preoccupation. Once the visitors depart, Vajra quietly checks the flat for surveillance devices, but it doesn't seem that the visit involved any such ulterior motives.
Libra 28, m0039
The next morning, the new embassy employees have a 9:30am appointment with the ambassador, which reminds Florence that she can revise her wardrobe choices ("Hurray for gravity - I can wear skirts and heels again"). Jianwei attempts to offload the diplomatic pouch onto the embassy staff systems on arrival, but is advised to take it in and deliver it in person. Frau Doctor Ambassador Colette Schmidt is waiting at her desk, and proves politely businesslike; she received Jianwei's report, and has seen "Double Delta's" news postings (which indeed flick across the wall screens behind her desk as she greets her new staff), but she accepts that the unfortunate incident on the elevator probably was handled as well as could reasonably be expected. She is also very pleased to receive the diplomatic pouch; she uses her voice ID and personal codes to open it, extracts a sealed package from amongst the digital modules (mostly one-time pads, it seems safe to assume), and immediately calls for "Catherine", who proves to be a domestic spiderbot. Schmidt hands Catherine the package with instructions to "prepare one cup straight away, then follow my usual rationing schedule". Florence nods sympathetically, commenting that not even the Triad conditioning to fit herself perfectly for Mars can make her like the local coffee. The ambassador suggests that the Triads might think more in terms of green tea, to the quality of which she cannot speak.
Anyway, she expresses the hope that the newcomers are settling in, and that they can find... But then, the ambassador adopts the remote look of someone receiving a high-density information update. Vajra notes that the data flows in her vicinity have indeed increased in the last few seconds; presumably, her personal AI recognised that the importance of her dealings with her visitors was declining, and the importance rating of some new item of data was high enough to permit an interruption at that point.
"It would seem that we have a task for you already," she says. "One of our people - an EU citizen - who has been consulting for Ajiwau Ramen has, as I believe the expression is, gone postal. He appears to be holed up in his employers' offices here in Port Lowell. His name is Herge Bertrand. See if you can prevent any casualties."
The team leave the office briskly as the embassy systems summon another taxi and basic information on the problem begins to flow to their personal systems. Florence is a little unhappy that she hasn't yet obtained all the sidearms which she had arranged to have available on the planet, but she does have a tangler pistol on hand, everyone has at least a little nanoweave armour, and Vajra is able to arrange for his personal microbot swarms to be transported to the destination from the flats. Florence doesn't feel overly impeded by her (quite short) skirt, and the Triads were quite careful to engineer her joints and tendons so that she can fight perfectly comfortably in high heels...
Ajiwau's offices turn out to be yet another blandly unremarkable Port Lowell commercial building, set back from the road behind a Japanese-style raked gravel garden - and now surrounded by security men in smart dark uniforms, the look of which is only spoiled a little by the fact that each has a picture of a ramen bowl on the left breast. Jianwei takes the lead in trying to find out what is going on, but is slightly stymied by language problems until he manages to locate the team leader, a stressed-looking security manager who mutters something about Bertrand having an argument with the company, arriving earlier than anyone else that morning, and triggering the building fire suppression system when his colleagues arrived, driving them back out. There are no casualties (so far), but anyway, the security manager is a busy man, but he has this situation in hand...
Brushed off somewhat, the team manage to attract the attention of one other person who isn't part of the Ajiwau contingent - a woman of indeterminate age (but definitely not young), her steel-grey hair swept back in a tight plait, wearing a jacket that is bulky enough to suggest armour, a cap, and a visor that is probably armoured, and accompanied by a small cluster of businesslike cybershells. She introduces herself as Marshall Althea Kirkowicz. The US Marshalls Service has no jurisdiction here at this moment - the incident has so far taken place entirely on a Japanese corporation's own territory - but if anything spills onto the street, she will have due cause to react; for now, she's here to monitor the situation.
The team wonder if Bertrand has chosen to explain his actions, and a quick look into local virtual space shows that he has; he's published an open statement, in fact. Vajra downloads the document and skims it in a few seconds at computer speeds, and reports that it appears remarkably coherent and reasonable - something on which Jianwei agrees with a quick look. Bertrand has dispute with Ajiwau, and specifically with their corporate security. As a contract employee, he is (or was) entitled to their services in lieu of police protection in the highly corporate town of Port Lowell, but when he was recently physically assaulted in a bar in the town, they provided what he considers to be grossly inadequate assistance. All attempts at resolution having failed, he's taking this action. Glancing slightly further at the document, Jianwei forms the impression of a rather professional exercise in memetic design; all quite slick, even. The nearest it comes to ranting, really, is in the comments on Ajiwau corporate security...
Talking of whom, Aunty - who can speak Japanese - is attempting to monitor the situation with the on-site team, who appear to be forming up to attempt an initial assault, having determined that there are no innocent third parties in the building. They make a frontal entry through the lobby in textbook style, and then there is a pause. Then there are a number of loud explosions, and the assault team withdraw from the building at some speed, although still in textbook fashion.
The EU team note that the assault force apparently suffered no losses. Florence, who has some experience with firearms, notes that the explosions were really too loud for small arms fire. (She also downloads some building plans, and begins looking at options for intrusion on her own account. She could always climb the side of the building or something.) Following some polite but fast and forceful requests in the right quarters, Vajra manages to gain access to some of the building internal cameras, and identifies Bertrand sitting in his office, looking completely calm and with the distracted air of someone composing something on his computer systems. At some point, it occurs to Jianwei that this whole exercise might even be some kind of distraction - but there is no sign of Bertrand having a partner or an alternative strategy, and no other reports of trouble in the town.
They try sending him a message, requesting a chance to talk, but that simply ends up in an in-box, and probably in a long queue. So the consular services team decides to take a simple approach, and walk in the front door. Needless to say, this attracts the attention of one of the Ajiwau security staff, but Jianwei breezes straight past him with a shrug. He continues to take the lead in moving through the lobby area, but not fast - and not only are Florence and Vajra right behind him, but Vajra has a crawler surveillance swarm deployed immediately in front of the whole group. It's this that spots the first signs of Bertrand's preparations for more uninvited visitors, and Vajra reacts with electronic speed and precision. Indeed, his warning reaches the other two in good time, and he and Florence hit cover as the flash charge goes off. Jianwei, with ordinary human reflexes and no combat experience, doesn't, and is left rather ruffled and partially deafened for the rest of the day. However, his nerve holds completely, and he refuses to let this stop him.
Hence, the team find Bertrand, still sitting in that office, calm and even prepared to apologise a little for that incident. By now, it's completely clear that he is in full control of himself; it's possible that someone should have checked his job qualifications, which are in the area of situational memetics. He's using that skill, and so far as he's concerned, things are going just fine. However, Jianwei suggests that he may need some help negotiating his way out of this situation; Ajiwau could press charges for assault or property damage or whatever... Bertrand, in reply, points out that no one has been hurt, the property damage so far has been minimal - and Ajiwau are a culturally very Japanese corporation, with a distinct concern for face. He fully intends to negotiate a way out with no charges pressed and a mutually acceptable set of compensations, and if Ajiwau corporate security are left looking humiliated, well, good. Still, he's not ungrateful for Jianwei's offer to handle some of the negotiations at this point.
So the team head back to the front of the building (although Vajra does quietly leave a few surveillance microbots in the office). Jianwei goes out the front door, looking ostentatiously harmless, while the other two remain in the lobby, ready to respond to developments as seems best. By now, the Ajiwau team appear to have called up a van full of shotgun-sized weapons to supplement the pistols of various kinds which they were previously carrying; they still look like a bunch of restaurant doorkeepers being pushed to operate slightly beyond their capacities, but now they have bigger guns. Still, Jianwei begins talking to their team leader, saying that he's spoken to Bertrand and that the fellow is prepared to cease his action in return for various assurances, including a guarantee that no prosecutions will be forthcoming. (He also points out that Bertrand, a memetics expert, is definitely manipulating Ajiwau's memetics in all this.) The team leader is slightly thrown by this, but consults his senior managers, and after a few minutes, agrees to the terms and conditions.
Jianwei relays this to Bertrand, who has in any case been monitoring the conversation. He seems quite satisfied with the result, but cautious. "You're a diplomat," he says to Jianwei, "does that mean you know about the law?"
"A little," Jianwei replies cautiously.
"So this agreement, which we've all recorded, would be fully binding on them?"
Jianwei thinks for a moment. "I believe so, yes."
"That's good. See you later, then."
The choice of words makes the EU team suspicious, but they don't have much time to act before Bertrand triggers another set of charges. These don't make so much noise, but they do flood much of the building with chemical smoke. Vajra attempts to use his surveillance microbots to see what else Bertrand is up to, but loses connection; Florence, who has been deeply irritated by this latest gesture, thinks about what his options might be, given what she knows about the layout of the building, and begins looking for a way to catch him.
Meanwhile, members of the Ajiwau team have taken this as a sign that they still have a fight on, and trigger their next planned assault on the building. Something grenade-sized comes through a window into the lobby; Florence reflexively dives behind a pillar, but Vajra doesn't react in time and is in fact knocked off his feet when the concussion charge detonates. The Ajiwau team storm into the building, but Florence guesses that they won't find Bertrand in the office any more, and deftly leaves by the door through which they've just come, meeting Jianwei outside.
The pair instantly agree that the best thing to do is to quietly make their way round to a point which Florence has identified at the back of the building. When they get there, Jianwei spots a furtive figure making his way down an external fire escape, and points him out to Florence, who has her tangler pistol out by now. She carefully takes aim, and when Bertrand reaches the bottom of the stairs, she hits him with a couple of rounds loaded with sticky strands. He quickly pulls himself free, but by then, she is up to him and making it very clear how angry she is.
Jianwei arrives a moment later. "You're an idiot" he tells Bertrand. So far as he's concerned, he'd negotiated a safe ending to the situation, and Bertrand put everyone back into danger. Bertrand, on the other hand, seems to think that he's scored one final point on Ajiwau's security people, and feels confident that the company's decision to back down and buy a quiet ending to the incident will hold. In any case, Jianwei and Florence haul him around to the front of the building, and essentially force him to apologise to the Ajiwau security team leader as his team straggle back out of the building. However, it does seem that the agreement should hold, and when Vajra has emerged and collected up his microbot swarms, they decide to take Bertrand back to the EU embassy for his own safety. They make a point of sitting with Vajra and Florence on either side of Bertrand and Jianwei facing him, and while they are on the way, Jianwei chews him out further for his reckless behaviour, hopefully cowing him sufficiently that he can be quietly removed from Port Lowell without him deciding to indulge in any more memetically-loaded gestures first.
Indeed, the team manage to extract an undertaking from Bertrand that he will be leaving Port Lowell, although running him off Mars altogether doesn't look feasible. They make a note to attempt to keep track of his movements, just in case he does anything unwise. "In order to provide consular services more efficiently, it would make sense to keep track of him. After all, our AIs have predicted that he is likely to have need of such services in future..." When they've finished filing a report on the incident, they also get clearance from the ambassador to send a summary of most of the details to Marshall Kirkowicz, making a point of mentioning that Bertrand will be leaving town - which they suspect will please her.
But that is something they deal with after lunch...
Friday, February 19, 2010
Facilis Est Descensus...
Libra 21, m0039
On a Meizi-class Mars Interplanetary PSV which is just beginning the burns for its injection into Mars orbit, Jianwei Chen, a passenger, receives a message from his new posting - the EU embassy in Port Lowell. He was expecting to take the elevator straight down from Deimos to the planet's surface, but he is now instructed to remain on Deimos station for a couple of days. It seems that one of his new team-mates, Adele Florence, will be arriving on a Mochi-class independent-operator PSV from the Belt in that time, and as, technically, a legal minor, she really needs to be escorted through to Port Lowell. Anyway, this will represent the first opportunity for them to become acquainted.
Libra 23, m0039
On arrival and disembarkation at Deimos, most passengers from the PSV turn right towards the elevator terminal. Following an augmented reality tag, Jianwei turns left, taking the tunnel to Deimos's one hotel, instructing his implant AI as he goes to make sure that his luggage is being correctly routed. It is; confirmation comes in particular from the utilitarian trunk with attached tags that proclaim it, at every opportunity, to be EU administration property, travelling under diplomatic pouch privileges, not to be opened by any unauthorised party.
In the next couple of days, Jianwei samples what few pleasures Deimos has to offer, taking a particular interest in the local workers' restaurants. The invention of the spherical wok, for use in free fall, does produce some interesting cookery, but the practicalities are complex; the slightly more expensive restaurant which has a centrifuge track running around its circular perimeter, with automated cooking conducted as woks hurtle around that, perhaps achieves better results overall. Various solutions have been attempted to the problem of human taste responses changing in free fall, he notes, with varying success.
December 31, 2099/Libra 24, m0039
Vajra, a full-sapient AI and citizen of the Faroe Islands, shuts down on the mainframe in Brussels, Earth, where he is currently instantiated, in the process triggering a pre-set transmission protocol. From his point of view, he is immediately reactivated in what he realises must be a Virtual Reality environment; he and one other inhabitant are on a platform hovering above a floor made up of glowing squares, occupied by a cluster of what look like utility cybershells - but stupidly cute cybershells, moving clumsily on tracks or wheels and with cameras that look like mammalian eyes.
The other occupant of the platform turns to him. "Hi," it says, "you must be Vajra..." it extends a hand to shake; its digital avatar resembles a humanoid shell, albeit a clumsy and ill-designed one made up of angular silver-painted components. However, it immediately recognises its mistake, as Vajra's avatar has no hands to shake. Rather, it is a hovering form based on the traditional Indian vajra.
"I'm Quentin," it says. "I handle logistics for the embassy. I'm afraid that we haven't got the humanoid shell that you requested quite sorted yet, but it should be ready in a day or two. I thought that you might want to take a look round now you're here, though. We can provide you with time on a few mainframes and access to some external cameras."
"Thank you," Vajra replies.
"No trouble. Your team are on schedule to arrive at Deimos in the next couple of days. You might want to go meet them there. We can get you time on the Deimos and elevator car systems."
Vajra thanks him again. Quentin gestures towards the floor below them. "Do you play?" he asks.
"I... could" Vajra replies. Quentin transfers a set of rules for RoboRally v.17 as well as some briefing data relevant to his new work. Vajra departs to take a look around Mars.
Libra 25, m0039
When Florence's PSV docks, Jianwei makes arrangements for his luggage to be transferred to the elevator car on which they'll be riding, and heads to the arrivals hall, where the local AR systems guide them to each other. She is s strikingly attractive if heavily-furred Felicia bioroid, whereas his appearance is much more nearly baseline human. As they greet each other, Jianwei's personal implant AI, "Aunty", requests permission to manifest in AR, for convenience, suggesting that she adopts miniature form to avoid cluttering up his field of view. Likewise, "Dougal", the AI running on Florence's slinky implant, speaks in her inner ear.
"You seem to be trying to initiate a new professional relationship. Would you like some help with that?"
"No!" she snaps.
"Well, could I at least put myself into your public AR? In miniature form?"
Florence allows that. Hence, there now appears to be a tiny elderly Chinese lady, with a collection of scrolls and bottles, sitting in Jianwei's shoulder, and a near-cylindrical artificial but furry form - perhaps a puppet of a dog - circling Florence's head. Introductions are extended to the two AIs.
The two travellers make their way to the elevator car, which proves to be an adequately comfortable but essentially budget-class passenger module. As they arrive, onboard systems inform them that Vajra has been installed on the onboard computer, and with their consent, his avatar too appears in their AR view.
The two organic beings find their accommodation - minimal bunks, but adequate for the two-day trip down - and sit down together to compare notes. The task for which they have been recruited appears to be to provide active, mobile consular services for EU citizens on Mars, taking some of the load off the current embassy staff; Jianwei is a professional member of the diplomatic service, Vajra can provide surveillance and general computer resources, and Florence is trained in personal protection work. They then briefly exchange life stories.
Jianwei is ethnic Chinese, but a British citizen by birth; his family have been resident in the UK for generations (on both sides). They are cautious by nature, and he has the first significant genetic upgrade in the family; an Alpha. Unfortunately, this may have had an unexpected side-effect; while very bright, he lacks the mathematical abilities which have been present in the Chens for so many generations that everyone assumes that they are at least partially genetic. Hence, he didn't follow the family tradition of going to work in the computer software or engineering industries, but took his interpersonal skills to the EU diplomatic service. However, that is full of very experienced people with no plans to retire very soon - so when the chance came up of an assignment to Mars, he took it as one of the few unobstructed paths going. Aunty was a parting gift from one of his relatives; although only low-sapient, she is an exceptionally capable medical AI.
Florence, on the other hand, has a more dramatic history, having been extracted from a vat in the wake of a Royal Navy raid on a criminal enterprise in the asteroid belt a couple of years ago. It appears that she was being prepared as a companion and bodyguard for a Martian Triad boss, but fortunately, the raid came before the conditioning could go too deep. The Navy and the EU government gave her sufficient therapy to live as a free citizen, and she has since been wandering the system. Although she went down the well as far as Earth orbit and Luna, experience on a few stations there with sufficient spin showed her that she didn't relish full Earth gravity levels, and she briefly returned to the Belt before reports from Navy intelligence and Rust China convinced her that the Triad boss who she had been scheduled to call Master was now completely removed from the picture, and hence that Mars, the world for which she was shaped, was now safe enough for her. Somewhere along the line, her therapy or education involved somebody with an odd taste for recovering mid-20th-century children's television programmes from the depths of the Web, which explains where the name and usual avatar appearance of the fairly standard LAI in her implant came from.
Lastly, Vajra admits that much of his own history is unknown even to himself. He was first instantiated in Thailand, and he has some reason to believe that he was classed as property of the Thai military and that he worked for them during the Pacific War. However, large segments of his memory have been comprehensively (and apparently voluntarily) edited out - perhaps even self-edited - before or during his move to the EU, where he informally claimed asylum. (The current Thai government hasn't objected to him leaving the country, at least not formally or overtly, but living in the EU certainly makes him a lot more legally secure than he would be in Thailand.) He is assisted by a non-sapient program he calls Samadhi.
By now, the elevator car is moving downwards towards the planet, and the sense of acceleration has been replaced again by free fall. It was morning, local time, when they departed Deimos, and by the time everyone is settled in and introductions are done, a visit to the elevator's common area, a bar-restaurant, seems in order. That gives them a chance to observe the other passengers on this run; aside from a few low-level business types, mostly Chinese and mostly so quiet as to be almost invisible, there is a group of slightly odd-looking passengers, all Mars-adapted ethnic Chinese, speaking mostly Cantonese and generally with a blue collar air about them - and a pretty rough bunch at that, perhaps, favouring cosmetic biomods such as flickering luminescent cells on the skin of their arms - and also favouring loud partying in the bar, with plenty of old-fashioned alcohol. Jianwei notes that one of them seems to have poor fine motor co-ordination, spilling a fair amount of his drink.
There is also one human on the elevator staff - the bartender, a slim woman, probably Caucasian with a significant genetic upgrade, favouring baggy trousers and a vest-top. Her head is almost completely shaven, and decorated with a (presumably temporary) tattoo of a double equilateral triangle design. She is under the supervision of a low-sapient management system (who addresses her as "Triangle"), as it seems, and proves amicable and competent enough in her work.
At some point during the afternoon, the rowdy party on the far side of the room progresses to a perhaps inevitable stage, as one of the group throws a kick at another - quite a competent blow, by the look of it, but alcohol damps the brawler's appreciation of action and reaction, and he comes spinning across the room. Jianwei and Florence attempt to get out of the way, but not very successfully; Florence in particular was apparently looking the other way at the critical moment, and the brawler cannons straight into her. Whether it's her bioroid nature or just sheer reflex rowdiness is unclear, but the fellow apparently decides to take offence at her, goes into a combat pose, and starts throwing punches. She holds him off for a while, although he is clearly a trained fighter; meanwhile, his drinking buddies gather around, but seem disinclined to join in, even before Jianwei sidles up to one of them and drops a polite hint about the unwisdom of enlarging this incident. Vajra, who is watching everything through the bar's cameras, notes the bartender speaking rapidly to thin air; doubtless, she has access to the elevator's privileged management systems.
Deciding that her opponent isn't going to see sense, and unable to get any purchase on him (she's not a trained grappler), Florence begins trading punches, and finds that she has an adequate edge here; in fact, the first solid blow she lands, a full karate punch to the ribs, puts him out of the fight with cracked ribs. At about the same moment, the barkeep decides on a simple and classical way of asserting authority, and mimes firing a shotgun into the ceiling. She doesn't have a shotgun, of course, but the bar's sound systems provide a very convincing emulation of the noise, so the results are just about as good.
Jianwei takes charge at this point, organising the defeated fighter's friends to transport him to the elevator's medical facilities. In the process, he notes that both this fighter and some of his friends already show signs of recent injury and high-tech medical treatment. The friends seem impressed by Florence's rapid defeat of "Chow"; it's beginning to look like they are dedicated, possibly even professional, members of Mars's renowned martial arts sub-culture. A little more research reminds him that impaired motor skills, as displayed by another of the group, may be the result of a botched NERV drug treatment - a quick and too often dirty way to boost nervous system functionality. One possibility is that this group were travelling from a more or less illicit tournament on Deimos or somewhere else in orbit.
Meanwhile, Florence falls into conversation with the bartender, who seems happy enough that the brawl was resolved quickly and relatively cleanly. She asks what brings Florence here, and Florence - whose job is, after all, not a matter of any official secrecy - is open about going to work as a troubleshooter for the EU embassy.
Libra 26 & 27, m0039
The rest of that day and all of the next pass quietly - the martial arts group seem a little chastened now. Everyone can admire the breathtaking view, and on the next morning, they are all treated to the slightly disconcerting sight of the surface of the planet seemingly suddenly hurtling up towards them, although the elevator decelerates gradually and safely to a landing. Everyone disembarks, including the bartender, who is now toting a simple shoulder-bag, and our heroes are pleased to discover that there are no local authorities awaiting them. Presumably, given that the recordings from the bar cameras will show clearly that the person who started the fight was the one who then suffered significant injury, and that they are travelling on consular passports, the local cops have decided that launching any sort of formal investigation would be more trouble than it's worth. Or perhaps the martial arts group have connections. Anyway, they pass through immigration with no trouble.
At around this point, meanwhile, Vajra receives a message from Quentin, telling him that the humaniform cybershell that he requested is now available there in New Shanghai, in a shipping warehouse across town, and including an address to which he should transfer. Vajra follows standard protocols, and finds himself in a packing crate otherwise full of biofoam™ peanuts. He emerges and makes his way across town to join the other two on a maglev car bound for Port Lowell.
As they settle down on the comfortable carriage for the day-long run, all three of the group receive copies of the same Web message. This consists first of links to two postings elsewhere on the Mars Web; one is a brief and chatty politics-gossip blog mentioning that the EU embassy is apparently setting up some kind of troubleshooting team of unclear capabilities and mission, while the other consists of some good-quality video footage of the brawl in the elevator bar, but with the faces of the various participants neatly blanked out. (The fact that one was a Felicia would have been hard to hide, though.) This is simply marked as an interesting instance of a martial arts enthusiast meeting his well-merited match. The two posts are not linked in any way, except that both clearly come from the same poster. This may be why the message also contains a single line of text and a signature.
On a Meizi-class Mars Interplanetary PSV which is just beginning the burns for its injection into Mars orbit, Jianwei Chen, a passenger, receives a message from his new posting - the EU embassy in Port Lowell. He was expecting to take the elevator straight down from Deimos to the planet's surface, but he is now instructed to remain on Deimos station for a couple of days. It seems that one of his new team-mates, Adele Florence, will be arriving on a Mochi-class independent-operator PSV from the Belt in that time, and as, technically, a legal minor, she really needs to be escorted through to Port Lowell. Anyway, this will represent the first opportunity for them to become acquainted.
Libra 23, m0039
On arrival and disembarkation at Deimos, most passengers from the PSV turn right towards the elevator terminal. Following an augmented reality tag, Jianwei turns left, taking the tunnel to Deimos's one hotel, instructing his implant AI as he goes to make sure that his luggage is being correctly routed. It is; confirmation comes in particular from the utilitarian trunk with attached tags that proclaim it, at every opportunity, to be EU administration property, travelling under diplomatic pouch privileges, not to be opened by any unauthorised party.
In the next couple of days, Jianwei samples what few pleasures Deimos has to offer, taking a particular interest in the local workers' restaurants. The invention of the spherical wok, for use in free fall, does produce some interesting cookery, but the practicalities are complex; the slightly more expensive restaurant which has a centrifuge track running around its circular perimeter, with automated cooking conducted as woks hurtle around that, perhaps achieves better results overall. Various solutions have been attempted to the problem of human taste responses changing in free fall, he notes, with varying success.
December 31, 2099/Libra 24, m0039
Vajra, a full-sapient AI and citizen of the Faroe Islands, shuts down on the mainframe in Brussels, Earth, where he is currently instantiated, in the process triggering a pre-set transmission protocol. From his point of view, he is immediately reactivated in what he realises must be a Virtual Reality environment; he and one other inhabitant are on a platform hovering above a floor made up of glowing squares, occupied by a cluster of what look like utility cybershells - but stupidly cute cybershells, moving clumsily on tracks or wheels and with cameras that look like mammalian eyes.
"I'm Quentin," it says. "I handle logistics for the embassy. I'm afraid that we haven't got the humanoid shell that you requested quite sorted yet, but it should be ready in a day or two. I thought that you might want to take a look round now you're here, though. We can provide you with time on a few mainframes and access to some external cameras."
"Thank you," Vajra replies.
"No trouble. Your team are on schedule to arrive at Deimos in the next couple of days. You might want to go meet them there. We can get you time on the Deimos and elevator car systems."
Vajra thanks him again. Quentin gestures towards the floor below them. "Do you play?" he asks.
"I... could" Vajra replies. Quentin transfers a set of rules for RoboRally v.17 as well as some briefing data relevant to his new work. Vajra departs to take a look around Mars.
Libra 25, m0039
When Florence's PSV docks, Jianwei makes arrangements for his luggage to be transferred to the elevator car on which they'll be riding, and heads to the arrivals hall, where the local AR systems guide them to each other. She is s strikingly attractive if heavily-furred Felicia bioroid, whereas his appearance is much more nearly baseline human. As they greet each other, Jianwei's personal implant AI, "Aunty", requests permission to manifest in AR, for convenience, suggesting that she adopts miniature form to avoid cluttering up his field of view. Likewise, "Dougal", the AI running on Florence's slinky implant, speaks in her inner ear.
"You seem to be trying to initiate a new professional relationship. Would you like some help with that?"
"No!" she snaps.
"Well, could I at least put myself into your public AR? In miniature form?"
Florence allows that. Hence, there now appears to be a tiny elderly Chinese lady, with a collection of scrolls and bottles, sitting in Jianwei's shoulder, and a near-cylindrical artificial but furry form - perhaps a puppet of a dog - circling Florence's head. Introductions are extended to the two AIs.
The two travellers make their way to the elevator car, which proves to be an adequately comfortable but essentially budget-class passenger module. As they arrive, onboard systems inform them that Vajra has been installed on the onboard computer, and with their consent, his avatar too appears in their AR view.
The two organic beings find their accommodation - minimal bunks, but adequate for the two-day trip down - and sit down together to compare notes. The task for which they have been recruited appears to be to provide active, mobile consular services for EU citizens on Mars, taking some of the load off the current embassy staff; Jianwei is a professional member of the diplomatic service, Vajra can provide surveillance and general computer resources, and Florence is trained in personal protection work. They then briefly exchange life stories.
Jianwei is ethnic Chinese, but a British citizen by birth; his family have been resident in the UK for generations (on both sides). They are cautious by nature, and he has the first significant genetic upgrade in the family; an Alpha. Unfortunately, this may have had an unexpected side-effect; while very bright, he lacks the mathematical abilities which have been present in the Chens for so many generations that everyone assumes that they are at least partially genetic. Hence, he didn't follow the family tradition of going to work in the computer software or engineering industries, but took his interpersonal skills to the EU diplomatic service. However, that is full of very experienced people with no plans to retire very soon - so when the chance came up of an assignment to Mars, he took it as one of the few unobstructed paths going. Aunty was a parting gift from one of his relatives; although only low-sapient, she is an exceptionally capable medical AI.
Florence, on the other hand, has a more dramatic history, having been extracted from a vat in the wake of a Royal Navy raid on a criminal enterprise in the asteroid belt a couple of years ago. It appears that she was being prepared as a companion and bodyguard for a Martian Triad boss, but fortunately, the raid came before the conditioning could go too deep. The Navy and the EU government gave her sufficient therapy to live as a free citizen, and she has since been wandering the system. Although she went down the well as far as Earth orbit and Luna, experience on a few stations there with sufficient spin showed her that she didn't relish full Earth gravity levels, and she briefly returned to the Belt before reports from Navy intelligence and Rust China convinced her that the Triad boss who she had been scheduled to call Master was now completely removed from the picture, and hence that Mars, the world for which she was shaped, was now safe enough for her. Somewhere along the line, her therapy or education involved somebody with an odd taste for recovering mid-20th-century children's television programmes from the depths of the Web, which explains where the name and usual avatar appearance of the fairly standard LAI in her implant came from.
Lastly, Vajra admits that much of his own history is unknown even to himself. He was first instantiated in Thailand, and he has some reason to believe that he was classed as property of the Thai military and that he worked for them during the Pacific War. However, large segments of his memory have been comprehensively (and apparently voluntarily) edited out - perhaps even self-edited - before or during his move to the EU, where he informally claimed asylum. (The current Thai government hasn't objected to him leaving the country, at least not formally or overtly, but living in the EU certainly makes him a lot more legally secure than he would be in Thailand.) He is assisted by a non-sapient program he calls Samadhi.
By now, the elevator car is moving downwards towards the planet, and the sense of acceleration has been replaced again by free fall. It was morning, local time, when they departed Deimos, and by the time everyone is settled in and introductions are done, a visit to the elevator's common area, a bar-restaurant, seems in order. That gives them a chance to observe the other passengers on this run; aside from a few low-level business types, mostly Chinese and mostly so quiet as to be almost invisible, there is a group of slightly odd-looking passengers, all Mars-adapted ethnic Chinese, speaking mostly Cantonese and generally with a blue collar air about them - and a pretty rough bunch at that, perhaps, favouring cosmetic biomods such as flickering luminescent cells on the skin of their arms - and also favouring loud partying in the bar, with plenty of old-fashioned alcohol. Jianwei notes that one of them seems to have poor fine motor co-ordination, spilling a fair amount of his drink.
There is also one human on the elevator staff - the bartender, a slim woman, probably Caucasian with a significant genetic upgrade, favouring baggy trousers and a vest-top. Her head is almost completely shaven, and decorated with a (presumably temporary) tattoo of a double equilateral triangle design. She is under the supervision of a low-sapient management system (who addresses her as "Triangle"), as it seems, and proves amicable and competent enough in her work.
At some point during the afternoon, the rowdy party on the far side of the room progresses to a perhaps inevitable stage, as one of the group throws a kick at another - quite a competent blow, by the look of it, but alcohol damps the brawler's appreciation of action and reaction, and he comes spinning across the room. Jianwei and Florence attempt to get out of the way, but not very successfully; Florence in particular was apparently looking the other way at the critical moment, and the brawler cannons straight into her. Whether it's her bioroid nature or just sheer reflex rowdiness is unclear, but the fellow apparently decides to take offence at her, goes into a combat pose, and starts throwing punches. She holds him off for a while, although he is clearly a trained fighter; meanwhile, his drinking buddies gather around, but seem disinclined to join in, even before Jianwei sidles up to one of them and drops a polite hint about the unwisdom of enlarging this incident. Vajra, who is watching everything through the bar's cameras, notes the bartender speaking rapidly to thin air; doubtless, she has access to the elevator's privileged management systems.
Deciding that her opponent isn't going to see sense, and unable to get any purchase on him (she's not a trained grappler), Florence begins trading punches, and finds that she has an adequate edge here; in fact, the first solid blow she lands, a full karate punch to the ribs, puts him out of the fight with cracked ribs. At about the same moment, the barkeep decides on a simple and classical way of asserting authority, and mimes firing a shotgun into the ceiling. She doesn't have a shotgun, of course, but the bar's sound systems provide a very convincing emulation of the noise, so the results are just about as good.
Jianwei takes charge at this point, organising the defeated fighter's friends to transport him to the elevator's medical facilities. In the process, he notes that both this fighter and some of his friends already show signs of recent injury and high-tech medical treatment. The friends seem impressed by Florence's rapid defeat of "Chow"; it's beginning to look like they are dedicated, possibly even professional, members of Mars's renowned martial arts sub-culture. A little more research reminds him that impaired motor skills, as displayed by another of the group, may be the result of a botched NERV drug treatment - a quick and too often dirty way to boost nervous system functionality. One possibility is that this group were travelling from a more or less illicit tournament on Deimos or somewhere else in orbit.
Meanwhile, Florence falls into conversation with the bartender, who seems happy enough that the brawl was resolved quickly and relatively cleanly. She asks what brings Florence here, and Florence - whose job is, after all, not a matter of any official secrecy - is open about going to work as a troubleshooter for the EU embassy.
Libra 26 & 27, m0039
The rest of that day and all of the next pass quietly - the martial arts group seem a little chastened now. Everyone can admire the breathtaking view, and on the next morning, they are all treated to the slightly disconcerting sight of the surface of the planet seemingly suddenly hurtling up towards them, although the elevator decelerates gradually and safely to a landing. Everyone disembarks, including the bartender, who is now toting a simple shoulder-bag, and our heroes are pleased to discover that there are no local authorities awaiting them. Presumably, given that the recordings from the bar cameras will show clearly that the person who started the fight was the one who then suffered significant injury, and that they are travelling on consular passports, the local cops have decided that launching any sort of formal investigation would be more trouble than it's worth. Or perhaps the martial arts group have connections. Anyway, they pass through immigration with no trouble.
At around this point, meanwhile, Vajra receives a message from Quentin, telling him that the humaniform cybershell that he requested is now available there in New Shanghai, in a shipping warehouse across town, and including an address to which he should transfer. Vajra follows standard protocols, and finds himself in a packing crate otherwise full of biofoam™ peanuts. He emerges and makes his way across town to join the other two on a maglev car bound for Port Lowell.
As they settle down on the comfortable carriage for the day-long run, all three of the group receive copies of the same Web message. This consists first of links to two postings elsewhere on the Mars Web; one is a brief and chatty politics-gossip blog mentioning that the EU embassy is apparently setting up some kind of troubleshooting team of unclear capabilities and mission, while the other consists of some good-quality video footage of the brawl in the elevator bar, but with the faces of the various participants neatly blanked out. (The fact that one was a Felicia would have been hard to hide, though.) This is simply marked as an interesting instance of a martial arts enthusiast meeting his well-merited match. The two posts are not linked in any way, except that both clearly come from the same poster. This may be why the message also contains a single line of text and a signature.
You owe me!
-- Double Delta.
The new team look at each other. Tomorrow, they actually start work...
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Our Heroes
Memorandum
ref. CCS0-1-2732-47
Diplomatic Encrypt level 2 - self & authorised support AIs only
Subject: Consular Reaction Support Requirement
Earth time as packet headers (relativistic adjustments apply).
Source Language: English.
from: A. MacRoberts, Admin-3, OEDR, Brussels. Validated by ERITHACUS-2.
to: C. Schmidt, Head of CCS, EU CCSO, Port Lowell.
Colette -
Okay, you'll be pleased to hear that we've finally managed to swing the budget for that no-portfolio consular services team your people insist that they need. We've approved the team memberships - two organics and a full citizen AI. Yes, just three for now, but when the new year appropriations come through, we'll see what more we can swing. Hopefully, this lot will establish the principle, and the case for expansion will make itself.
The two organics are already in transit, and the AI will transmit when the office is ready to go. Budget includes a humanoid shell for it, although hopefully it'll be happy on your static boxes most of the time. (It tells me that material things are a distraction, unquote.) Specification is attached, along with Personnel dockets for all three - review at your convenience.
Best,
Adrian.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memorandum
ref. CCS0-1-2732-48
Diplomatic Encrypt level 2/Personal - self & authorised/private support AIs only
Subject: Consular Reaction Support Requirement
Mars time as packet headers (relativistic adjustments apply).
Source Language: English.
from: C. Schmidt, Head of CCS, EU CCSO, Port Lowell. No local support validation.
to: A. MacRoberts, Admin-3, OEDR, Brussels.
Adrian -
Please tell me that this is a joke.
We ask you for a qualified support team so we can actually do the job that you've sent us an AU to do, we tell you precisely what our requirements will be - and you send us this?
Please recall that I made it clear that our specifications were not a negotiating position. We have a clear analysis of what this task requires, and our last three or four unfortunate experiences should have illustrated the point perfectly well. If you want reliable EU practical and memetic representation on this planet, you have to be prepared to pay what it costs to pull our people to safety when things go messy. It's not just about finding lost luggage for idiot Eloi tourists, despite what some of the accountant systems in Appropriations may think. But I also seem to have neglected to say that we are not, repeat not, organising some kind of witness protection programme here. It's strange; why didn't I see that anyone might think that?
Of these three, Chen is at least appropriately qualified, and his academic background is impressive, I'll grant you. But he's junior in service and inexperienced. The other two are just trouble magnets. I'm always happy when the UK RN pull another of their showpiece raids out in the Belt - even if it does make certain of the Chinese citizenry on the ground round here slightly less kindly inclined towards our people - and I'm happy to hear that EUEICC's tame medics agree with the British evaluation of Florence's, quote, relative stability, unquote - but that doesn't oblige us to hire her. Can't she work the memetics circuit back down there on Earth or something? And if MedServ are so happy about her state, how come they're insisting on continuing monitoring by their local people?
(Actually, I didn't even realise before that MedServ had local people round here. Foolish of me. I might have guessed some of those bright-eyed medics we keep lending to under-resourced Japanese factories or ad hoc Chinese 'former squads were actually working two jobs.)
As for "Vajra" - I'm entirely stunned. I'm sure that it's a terribly nice entity, and yes, the file says that our best consultants insist that its claims that certain areas of its memory have been completely deleted are entirely valid, and yes, we are currently on passably good terms with the current Thai government, who so far as we know have negligible presence on Mars anyway - but do I really have to reiterate the phrase Presumed Former TSA Military Asset? If EUEICC are really telling us all they know here (not all it knows, all that they know), I'll drink Martian coffee for a month. Though I'll probably be happier not knowing more.
You've presented me with a fait accompli here. I can't turn those two ships around, and the penalty clauses on those contracts would doubtless chew another slab out of my budget anyway, let alone the lousy memetics if I did what I probably ought to do here. Fine. We'll see how they do. But I want these comments on file.
Regards to Mielle and the kids,
Colette.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memorandum
ref. CCS0-1-2732-49
Diplomatic Encrypt level 2/Personal - self & authorised/private support AIs only
Subject: Consular Reaction Support Requirement
Earth time as packet headers (relativistic adjustments apply).
Source Language: English.
from: A. MacRoberts, Admin-3, OEDR, Brussels.
to: C. Schmidt, Head of CCS, EU CCSO, Port Lowell.
Colette -
It's not as bad as all that, really. Believe me, we wouldn't supply you with a team who were being actively hunted by anybody. Florence was built to the order of a Triad boss who was comprehensively shut down by that raid - I'll attach the RN reports and the stuff we got from the Chinese, and you're welcome to validate through your own local assets, but in summary, they've got a body with a DNA match and no trace of ghosting, and anyone who was close enough to him to worry about and who's still standing is more inclined to thank us than to look for revenge. And if you want security for your team, Personnel say that it would take months to get anyone else up to her standard, even if we could find a volunteer willing to take an Andraste. (The ex-mil pool has been a bit thin lately; too much aggressive private sector recruiting.) Florence, on the other hand, has evinced little interest in visiting the inner system, and is deep-conditioned for Martian planetary ops; we'd have an Ethics inquiry on our hands if we tried to deny her the chance. When you've got a square peg, you look for a square hole.
And Analysis say that Vajra appears to have its former employers fully convinced that its self-editing was effective - we don't know the full story ourselves, of course - or perhaps just that, if it could and wanted to talk, we'd have everything it knew by now anyway. There is no evidence of Directorate interest in that direction. Vajra is just intent on pursuing its ... particular and personal concerns, and seems to think that Mars would be a good venue. Though I guess that putting a bit of space between it and Directorate interest for a few years may have struck it as a good idea.
And you've got Chen, who's bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and a ridiculously good fit for the job. With fogies like me sitting around in the upper offices, we've got to give smart laddies like him the chance to show what they can do. So we'll give him Florence and Vajra; either they'll introduce him to a dose of reality, or you'll get the sort of team out of this that you've been dreaming of. But if they do let you down somehow anyway, you'll have a good junior diplomat on hand there.
Mielle sends best wishes,
Best,
Adrian.
ref. CCS0-1-2732-47
Diplomatic Encrypt level 2 - self & authorised support AIs only
Subject: Consular Reaction Support Requirement
Earth time as packet headers (relativistic adjustments apply).
Source Language: English.
from: A. MacRoberts, Admin-3, OEDR, Brussels. Validated by ERITHACUS-2.
to: C. Schmidt, Head of CCS, EU CCSO, Port Lowell.
Colette -
Okay, you'll be pleased to hear that we've finally managed to swing the budget for that no-portfolio consular services team your people insist that they need. We've approved the team memberships - two organics and a full citizen AI. Yes, just three for now, but when the new year appropriations come through, we'll see what more we can swing. Hopefully, this lot will establish the principle, and the case for expansion will make itself.
The two organics are already in transit, and the AI will transmit when the office is ready to go. Budget includes a humanoid shell for it, although hopefully it'll be happy on your static boxes most of the time. (It tells me that material things are a distraction, unquote.) Specification is attached, along with Personnel dockets for all three - review at your convenience.
Best,
Adrian.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memorandum
ref. CCS0-1-2732-48
Diplomatic Encrypt level 2/Personal - self & authorised/private support AIs only
Subject: Consular Reaction Support Requirement
Mars time as packet headers (relativistic adjustments apply).
Source Language: English.
from: C. Schmidt, Head of CCS, EU CCSO, Port Lowell. No local support validation.
to: A. MacRoberts, Admin-3, OEDR, Brussels.
Adrian -
Please tell me that this is a joke.
We ask you for a qualified support team so we can actually do the job that you've sent us an AU to do, we tell you precisely what our requirements will be - and you send us this?
Please recall that I made it clear that our specifications were not a negotiating position. We have a clear analysis of what this task requires, and our last three or four unfortunate experiences should have illustrated the point perfectly well. If you want reliable EU practical and memetic representation on this planet, you have to be prepared to pay what it costs to pull our people to safety when things go messy. It's not just about finding lost luggage for idiot Eloi tourists, despite what some of the accountant systems in Appropriations may think. But I also seem to have neglected to say that we are not, repeat not, organising some kind of witness protection programme here. It's strange; why didn't I see that anyone might think that?
Of these three, Chen is at least appropriately qualified, and his academic background is impressive, I'll grant you. But he's junior in service and inexperienced. The other two are just trouble magnets. I'm always happy when the UK RN pull another of their showpiece raids out in the Belt - even if it does make certain of the Chinese citizenry on the ground round here slightly less kindly inclined towards our people - and I'm happy to hear that EUEICC's tame medics agree with the British evaluation of Florence's, quote, relative stability, unquote - but that doesn't oblige us to hire her. Can't she work the memetics circuit back down there on Earth or something? And if MedServ are so happy about her state, how come they're insisting on continuing monitoring by their local people?
(Actually, I didn't even realise before that MedServ had local people round here. Foolish of me. I might have guessed some of those bright-eyed medics we keep lending to under-resourced Japanese factories or ad hoc Chinese 'former squads were actually working two jobs.)
As for "Vajra" - I'm entirely stunned. I'm sure that it's a terribly nice entity, and yes, the file says that our best consultants insist that its claims that certain areas of its memory have been completely deleted are entirely valid, and yes, we are currently on passably good terms with the current Thai government, who so far as we know have negligible presence on Mars anyway - but do I really have to reiterate the phrase Presumed Former TSA Military Asset? If EUEICC are really telling us all they know here (not all it knows, all that they know), I'll drink Martian coffee for a month. Though I'll probably be happier not knowing more.
You've presented me with a fait accompli here. I can't turn those two ships around, and the penalty clauses on those contracts would doubtless chew another slab out of my budget anyway, let alone the lousy memetics if I did what I probably ought to do here. Fine. We'll see how they do. But I want these comments on file.
Regards to Mielle and the kids,
Colette.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memorandum
ref. CCS0-1-2732-49
Diplomatic Encrypt level 2/Personal - self & authorised/private support AIs only
Subject: Consular Reaction Support Requirement
Earth time as packet headers (relativistic adjustments apply).
Source Language: English.
from: A. MacRoberts, Admin-3, OEDR, Brussels.
to: C. Schmidt, Head of CCS, EU CCSO, Port Lowell.
Colette -
It's not as bad as all that, really. Believe me, we wouldn't supply you with a team who were being actively hunted by anybody. Florence was built to the order of a Triad boss who was comprehensively shut down by that raid - I'll attach the RN reports and the stuff we got from the Chinese, and you're welcome to validate through your own local assets, but in summary, they've got a body with a DNA match and no trace of ghosting, and anyone who was close enough to him to worry about and who's still standing is more inclined to thank us than to look for revenge. And if you want security for your team, Personnel say that it would take months to get anyone else up to her standard, even if we could find a volunteer willing to take an Andraste. (The ex-mil pool has been a bit thin lately; too much aggressive private sector recruiting.) Florence, on the other hand, has evinced little interest in visiting the inner system, and is deep-conditioned for Martian planetary ops; we'd have an Ethics inquiry on our hands if we tried to deny her the chance. When you've got a square peg, you look for a square hole.
And Analysis say that Vajra appears to have its former employers fully convinced that its self-editing was effective - we don't know the full story ourselves, of course - or perhaps just that, if it could and wanted to talk, we'd have everything it knew by now anyway. There is no evidence of Directorate interest in that direction. Vajra is just intent on pursuing its ... particular and personal concerns, and seems to think that Mars would be a good venue. Though I guess that putting a bit of space between it and Directorate interest for a few years may have struck it as a good idea.
And you've got Chen, who's bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and a ridiculously good fit for the job. With fogies like me sitting around in the upper offices, we've got to give smart laddies like him the chance to show what they can do. So we'll give him Florence and Vajra; either they'll introduce him to a dose of reality, or you'll get the sort of team out of this that you've been dreaming of. But if they do let you down somehow anyway, you'll have a good junior diplomat on hand there.
Mielle sends best wishes,
Best,
Adrian.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
