Soul Bound

1          Soul Bound

1.2        Taking Control

1.2.5      An Idiosyncratic Interlude

1.2.5.9    Transparent cities

Tarik was in an unusually talkative mood; possibly because, as a retired accountant, the economics of warfare gave him plenty of things to grumble about and be cynical over. The three of them carried on chatting, about everything from the rules of the drone sports to the rumours of Ultramarine cutting backroom deals with ASGuard on conflicts where their forces ended up opposing each other.

They were discussing how stealthy drones made use of anamorphic illusions and even physically transforming the shape of their external layer, when a timer on the laptop chimed and Tarik was swapped onto Harun’s team in return for Jasic.

This time, instead of hunting for treasure, the drones were hunting each other through a landscape of smoke patches. When a drone left a patch to move to another, orglife cannons were fired in its direction, requiring constant dodging. Inside a patch, if a drone could keep an opponent on its scope for 10 seconds continuously, the opponent would be hit by a guided missile. If a drone bumped into an orglife wall, or made its fans buzz by trying to move too fast, mask-wearing simzens with shotguns would start homing in upon its position.

Nadine: “That’s spooky. Jasic, why are you still wearing your headgear?”

Jasic pointed at the miniature weathervane on his cap. “It’s fantastic. Ms MacQuarrie has actually built in a working pollen detector, which I can access from the interface. Out here in this weather with my hay fever? I’m definitely keeping these goggles on.”

He leaned back in his chair, contentedly.

Jasic: “Not often I get the chance to just relax outside like this.”

Bahrudin: “It takes a strong man to be a farmer…”

Nadine cleared her throat, pointedly.

Bahrudin: “... or strong woman. You’ve put in a lot of work, to pay off the money you owed the bank.”

Jasic: “The money Ms MacQuarrie insisted on paying me as rent to use my barn is going to help enormously. With that and my cheese sales, in a few months I should be able to afford the K27 refrigeration unit I’ve had my eyes on for ages.”

She could hear the longing in his voice. What made a man like Jasic stay, eking out a living from this stony land by the sweat of his brow, day and night in all kinds of weather, when he could have farmed more easily elsewhere with the aid of autonomous machinery?

Nadine: “Is being close to nature why you prefer being here rather than in the city?”

Jasic: “There’s no doubting that city life has its conveniences. No need for laptops, identity cards, keys or wallets. Everything recognises you and tracks you, every service knows what you like and tries to anticipate when you’re next going to want it.”

Jasic: “Have you been to downtown Sarajevo recently? ‘Smart Homes for a Smart City’. No need even for physical devices. Say ‘phone’ to a random wall, and it will pop-up a list of who it thinks you’re likely to want to call at that time and location. Then you can continue to walk, and the call will follow you, through microphones and directional speakers, even if you climb into a taxi or enter a barber surgeon’s shop. Though that’s really only caught on with the teenies; adults are still emotionally attached to their phones.”

She raised an eyebrow, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Jasic: “What they never anticipate is when you want peace. They compete to fill your every minute with services they can charge you money for, compete for your attention, compete to fill your mind until it feels like your head is trapped in a giant vice that’s slowly closing.”

Nadine: “Like living in a house with glass walls? And sharing it with a busybody who has known you since childhood? And who is the biggest gossip in the village?”

Jasic: “Like living with three of them, who continuously chatter and compete with each other to prove how well they know you. And they won’t leave you alone. They follow you everywhere.”

Jasic lifted up his DDF ring, which was signalling the presence of a surveillance satellite passing overhead.

Jasic: “Even here we’re still watched, but not quite at the same level. The community is smaller, the pace of life slower. We can still retain the illusion of escape, the illusion that we control our own lives.”

Nadine: “Only the illusion?”

Jasic: “I can’t compete on price with cheese made by robots on automated farms, but some purchasers specifically want hand-made stuff. However in order to keep the ‘TradeItional(™)’ certification mark I had to set a camera up in my parlour; an expert system reviews the footage of every milking I do, and if I don’t please the system, I don’t get to sell the cheese. I discovered a while back that my cheese sells for a higher price if I do the milking while wearing the sort of traditional local clothes the tourists love.”

Nadine: “So you’re not just selling cheese, you’re selling a performance?”

Bahrudin: “Strange. Why would expert systems care? Are you sure they are the only ones watching?”

Jasic: “No, I’m not sure. I’ve no real idea who is on the other end of the camera or what gets done with the data. For all I know, my cheeses are bought just for display, like books purchased by an interior decorator because their size and colour match a flat’s new theme; something a rich man puts on his sideboard at a dinner party as a novelty, along with a montage of my producing it, so the guests can laugh at it.”

Jasic: “I don’t really mind the thought of putting on a performance, but I hate the idea of the effort being unappreciated.”

Nadine: “Like playing a set in a club, putting your heart into your singing, then finding out when they raise the lights that nobody’s there? That the gift you gave was wasted?”

Jasic: “Right. Not knowing, not being in control, makes me feel like an organ grinder’s monkey. I’m dancing to another man’s choice of tune, and being paid in peanuts.”

He looked annoyed, no longer enjoying relaxing on the chair.

Jasic: “You know, I think I’d prefer living in your theoretical village where all the houses were made of glass. At least that way you could see who was looking in through the walls. At least in a community that small, the gossips would tell you what the other people were up to. There’d still be a human connection, you’d still be seen as an individual rather than as part of a commodity. It wouldn’t be so one-sided, I wouldn’t feel so damn powerless.”

Bahrudin reached over and gave Jasic a brotherly arm around his shoulders. Nadine looked on in envy, constrained by cultural gender roles from doing the same. Behind the goggles, she couldn’t tell if he were crying or not. Then again, he’d probably prefer she didn’t know. She tactfully went over to the laptop instead, to make it clear she wasn’t watching him.

The screen currently showed Dopey leading his team in stalking Bashful, with a timer showing how long Dopey had managed to keep Bashful in view. Ahead, Happy was bashing against the walls of a large circular corridor, drawing the attention of every armed simzen in the area. When the timer reached 7 seconds, Bashful shot ahead through a door Grumpy had opened, breaking the contact, while Happy then closed the door with a loud bang. Dopey, Sleepy and Doc were soon trapped by the shrinking ring of simzens, then blown to pieces by massed shotgun fire.

She carefully typed on the keyboard: /show something to distract Jasic/

It switched to showing an aerial view of a dell further up the stream.

Nadine: “Hey, Jasic, isn’t that your barn?”

Jasic: “Ye… hey, what’s that?”

Rising from the ground were a series of stalks that unfolded like beach umbrellas. The matt black colour of solar fabric was unmistakable and they oriented towards the afternoon sun.

Bahrudin: “Looks like the Roost has been busy.”

Now she examined the screen closely, she could spot other changes. Against the steepest side of the dell there was now a cascade of flat objects, connected by tubes.

Nadine: “Are those sedimentation tanks?”

Jasic: “Yes, I think so. Look, they’re connected to that pyramidal frame being moved by the large robot. It’s drilling for something.”

A few minutes later, the umbrellas folded back up and retreated into holes in the ground which were then covered by terrain-matching lids. Bahrudin, who was also wearing a DDF ring, gave a grunt of appreciation.

Bahrudin: “There’s a floating mirror about to pass over. Those flowers are hiding from it.”

Nadine: “Maybe they’re just shy, like a mimosa?”