Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.2      Taking Control

1.2.6    An Assumed Role

1.2.6.13 Eat your own dogfood

Frieda: “Let’s get you an arlife badge.”

Nadine checked their chests and saw nothing. Then noticed a round disk hanging from each of their dog collars. “3D” and “Rnd()” If wearing a collar like that was the standard practice, it really wouldn’t work with her wimple.

Frieda spotted her worried look: “Don’t be worry-ya. Talk to the hole.” and swung both her hands to point the index fingers at a familiar looking grass mound with a small wooden door, that lowered like a drawbridge as they approached.

A tiny furry womble came out and twitched its nose at her.

Frieda jerked a thumb to point at Nadine: “The Sister needs a badge.”

Nadine nodded her head: “I’m new.”

The womble rushed off, and there followed loud clanks, hammer banging, a blast of steam, a drill sound and finally the squeak of something being polished. The womble returned and presented a gleaming white ceramic badge on a blue silk lanyard which, in elegant handwriting, said: “Sister Niu”. She hadn’t the heart to return it, and instead solemnly placed the badge over her neck.

Frieda giggled: “You found a bug!”

Nadine: “It isn’t too bad a name. I can live with it.”

Rand: “We should give it to Alpo. You’ll get a ribbon.”

They led her towards a peanut-shaped tensegrity dome, five times the size of Jasic’s barn. By the door was a large poster with a yellow background, showing an immaculate 1950s American housewife with a spoon poised above a full dog bowl. At the top of the poster it said “Project Alpo” and at the bottom was the text: “We make dog food so tasty, we eat it ourselves!”

Nadine asked, in a puzzled voice: “They make dog food?”

Frieda stuck her tongue out in disgust: “Food made of bugs? Ewww.”

Rand: “No, Project Alpo fabricates bots; the weirder the better. But their boast is that they do it so well, they don’t have to use anybody else’s bots to assist them during the fabrication process. They say it forces them to discover any problems with the machines faster, because they are their own first customers.”

They made their way inside. It wasn’t smoothly automated, like Heather’s setup in the Roost. Instead there were bots of many designs, most carrying items or holding things steady while teams of humans assembled things or engaged in heated discussions. The overall impression was one of chaos, with bots bumping into each other, but Frieda confidently led them over to a table to one side, on which stood a small furry womble doll wearing a badge: “Ashgabat”

Nadine looked around for a human to explain the badge name mixup to, but none were manning the desk. Then the doll spoke up.

Ashgabat: “Hey 3D. Got another bug for me? You can use the orglife board, you know.”

Frieda: “And miss the chance to stroke you? I wouldn’t do that! But this isn’t my bug. It’s Sister Claire’s. Her first ever bug report! Make sure you credit her.” and she wagged a finger at the doll.

Ashgabat: “Welcome. What did you do, what did you expect to happen, and what actually happened?”

Nadine carefully explained the circumstances, while Frieda looked on proudly and Rand wandered over to a nearby desk labelled “Teardown Team”. When she finished, Ashgabat thanked her and Frieda briefly slid on some goggles to look at Nadine, careful not to smudge her eye makeup.

Frieda: “Good. You got the ribbon.”

Nadine looked down at her badge, seeing no alterations, then flicked on her goggles and joined the event’s orglife overlay. Now she could see a brown ribbon dangling down from it with the words “Bug Hunter” on it. Looking up at Frieda, she noticed that not only was Frieda’s badge already festooned with different ribbons, there were also moving textures on her clothing and wig that made her appearance much more spectacular.

She looked around at the others in the dome, and then back at her own entirely undecorated self. No wonder it was obvious to anyone looking at her that she was new here. She also spotted more wombles, standing as part of the groups of humans, and realised they must be acting in telepresence mode, steered by interested members of The Burrow who couldn’t be physically present.

Ashgabat! He was the womble who’d designed the Great Library for The Burrow. She was about to thank him, then realised she couldn’t - not without revealing she was Kafana. Damn the need for disguises. Instead she asked him about something else.

Nadine: “Thank you. Do these ribbons do anything?”

Ashgabat curled his whiskers: “No, they’re just a gift showing the appreciation of the community. Some people”, he looked at Frieda, “try to collect as many as possible, to show how much they’ve been participating, but it isn’t a currency. You can’t trade them or spend them to jump ahead in a queue.”

Frieda: “Potlatch gift economies vs market economies, yadda yadda. Boring! I’m going to join Rand. Coming?”

Near the Teardown Team table, a group was looking at a humanoid bot bounding around on all fours. It had the head of a canine, with muscular jaws and rows of metal teeth like a shark. In fact the gaping jaws took up most of the head; its nose was small and it only had one eye, squashed over to the side next to the nose. It was ugly and disturbing.

Nadine: “What’s that? Is that meant to be a Psoglav? They eat corpses, don’t they?”

One of the group replied: “Hey Sister Niu, good eyes, you know your mythology. Yes, it’s a Psoglav; we want to use it to pick up organic waste during the teardown, so you won’t even be able to tell that the event had been here. Leave no traces!”

Rand: “The problem is, it can tell the difference between live organic and dead organic, but it isn’t reliable at telling the difference between discarded food, and a plate of fresh food that someone has momentarily put down.”

Nadine: “Well that’s ok, isn’t it? You don’t want to replace a valid human job, just help out with the icky, dangerous or boring bits. Have someone walk the Psoglav around on a lead, like a dog, and make it beg or whine when it’s in doubt and in need of human direction.”

It took more discussion, but by the time she left the dome to move onto the next area her badge had acquired two more virtual ribbons. The electric blue one saying “Designer” was awarded for being on a team which got its change accepted by the test suite. The deep green one saying “Eco-Friendly” was for her suggestion that, since you had a human along, the Psoglav could safely branch out into more general rubbish clearance and recycling, especially if you had a pack of them and gave them a role in sorting the rubbish stored in their bulging bellies.