Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.2      Taking Control

1.2.6    An Assumed Role

1.2.6.19 Keynote

She was rescued from feeling she ought to be able to answer Bernard on the spot, by an incoming message.

Heather: {If you don’t want to miss the keynote, you better start heading back towards the big screen by Project Alpo. You’re quite a way away.}

She noticed that several others were standing up or putting on coats, while Rabia looked around for further hands and, finding none, started winding things up. She quietly nodded to Bernard and gave everyone a cheerful wave before heading off herself.

Nadine: {Are you tracking me?}

She could hear a grin in Heather’s replying voice: {No need. Your little rant out at Economics has already been posted to the event forum, and it’s even been leaked publicly by some gonzo livecaster. Weren’t you trying to keep your head down?}

Oh no. Cedi! She groaned.

Heather: {Namib asked me earlier about where I thought mythoi were heading, and I related our conversation about copia to him. He’s on board with it and will keep the details secret. He had his speech all prepared and rehearsed.}

Nadine: {I sense a ‘but’.}

Heather: {But he just watched your rant. “No Sex Please, We’re Mythoi!”. I agree with you on that, by the way. We do not want the media to pigeonhole the mythoi as just being an offshoot of furry fandom. Even if Greek mythology was big on trans-species activities.}

Nadine: {The Franciscans are going to kill me. I knew this disguise was a bad idea.}

Heather: {You said it yourself. Any time there’s a new technology, some people try to use it for greed, sex and violence, then others blame it for whatever they feel is wrong with society. It was inevitable the issue would come up. You’re just the first to address it.}

Nadine: {Tell me he’s not rewriting his whole speech.}

Heather: {I dunno. I’ve spent most of the last hour drinking with Mosley. I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out.}

Nadine: {You’re evil.}

Heather: {Not entirely. I just want you to know, I wasn’t responsible for designing the MythOS logo - I proposed theming it on “Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright”, but got out voted.}

Nadine: {Forging creatures upon an anvil? Yes, that could work.} Suspicion entered her voice. {Why, what did they choose instead?}

Heather: {Oh, you’ll see. Come join us. You know Mosley and he can introduce you to me.}

When she found them, Mosley had a bottle of beer from a microbrewery in a pouch slung around his neck, and was steadying it with his gripper while drinking through a straw. He waved his hook delightedly at her, and she headed over.

Mosley: “Claire, you rotter, you lied to me. They gave me loads of ribbons okay, but I’m still three feet short of being able to garrotte an elephant with them. How’m I going to get me hands on a treasure load of ivory now?”

He looked tragically bereft.

Nadine: “Hey ‘Arp. I didn’t specify what size the elephant was, did I?”

Mosley: “True, true. And I might just be a little too tipsy to try creeping up behind elephants this evening. You was right ‘bout Alpo being the place to go. They got beer and cake! The Alderney ‘ere even put me in touch with a Womble named Yoyogi whose says he can whip me up a pair o’ arms on the cheap. I don’t know. It’s a big risk… I might have to change me badge name.”

Nadine: “You can always use them as door stops if you don’t like them. Think of the joke potential in lending someone a hand. Glad you liked the cake I sent, anyway.”

Mosley: “That was yours? I should nominate you for a ‘true friend to the disadvantaged’ ribbon. Poncey name, but the ribbon’s pretty. Hey, Alds, stop messing about with your pair of big round ones and come over here a minute. Claire, have you met The Alderney for this event?”

Heather turned around from the bee hive she’d been adjusting and let Mosley make introductions. They both managed to keep a straight face.

Heather: “Harper has been very diligent in providing feedback on our designs.”

Mosley: “She means I slagged them off a lot.”

Heather: “We have added a ‘Mosley Test’ to the test suite that design changes must pass before they can be merged into the primary branch. It checks the utility delivered per impact upon the shared living space of having the mythoi live with you.”

Mosley: “If the design only helps you five minutes a day, and spends the rest of the time looming over you, a tiny animated Mosley gives it a good kicking.”

Heather: “It also provides appropriate verbal feedback which is sent to the failed designer.”

Mosley: “So ‘appropriate’ that one profanity filter broke down sobbing and two others blocked their ears with wax then started humming loudly.”

A buzzing sound came from the hives, and Heather’s light bees started to emerge, flying up into the twilight sky.

Heather: “It’s about to start. Don’t let anyone step on me, please, if I have to dive into velife to fix anything.”

Mosley: “Don’t worry, if you turn sleeping beauty, I’ll be your night Knight; I’ll defend you with me penultimate breath.”

Nadine turned to watch, as drones carrying a large screen hovered in the air, and lasers by the big kumoscope carried out a final calibration, measuring the distance to each part of it. The front row, she noticed, was reserved for womble dolls only, including a section in the middle labelled “Media”.

Nadine: “Only your penultimate breath?”

Mosley: “Of course. Gotta use my last one to leave some really memorable last words behind. Got them all planned. Won’t tell you what they are, though. It’s a secret.”

Nadine: “Sworn not to reveal them, on pain of death?”

A deep resonant voice interrupted them: “Hello Hajduk.”

The massive screen flickered to life, showing the face of a middle-aged dark skinned man with a pointed goatee beard and wire rimmed glasses. It panned out to show he was standing in a featureless desert under the stars and wearing a plain white burnous. His only decoration was a circular black on gold broach showing a two eyed warshield, crossed by two diagonal spears and surrounded by a sun in splendour.

Namib: “My name is Namib, of the Susubey tribe. I have had the honour of coordinating the global aspects of this launch, as part of the N’Songhai contribution to the great MythOS project started by the Wombles of The Burrow.”

Namib: “I am here to tell you about progress at the other launch sites, and then a little about where this is all headed and what you can do to help, before carrying out my most important task… but more on that later.”

The figure on the screen turned left and right, poking out with his arm and stopping it each time as though the borders of the screen were a cage holding him.

Namib: “Make way, coming through.”

The figure on the screen gave three sharp claps with his hands and, on the third clap, two things happened.

The figure on the screen vanished, leaving it showing just empty desert. Nadine couldn’t tell if the feed had been of an arlife overlay, or some other form of trickery had been used. Visual simulation was sufficiently good nowadays that even forensic expert systems looking pixel by pixel often couldn’t tell.

Simultaneously, Heather’s bees turned on their lights, showing that they’d quietly moved into position as a 3D sculpture of Namib, towering beside the screen.

The audience gasped, and craned their heads back as it animated, the arms raised to clap now moving smoothly back down. The speaker system shifted, so his voice now appeared to come directly from it.

Namib: “Ah, that’s better. Much more room. Room to be free.”

Namib: “Freedom. That’s something we don’t get much of nowadays, isn’t it? Freedom to travel, freedom from surveillance, freedom from hardship, freedom from corporate discrimination and control.”

Namib: “Do you remember the good old days of the 2020s? I’m old enough. Freedom, it felt good, didn’t it? Sure, there were warning signs, but things weren’t too bad. We had hope, back then. A path forwards. But now? What hope do the modern generation have, when all the entry level jobs they could use to learn expertise have been taken by automated systems? Book learning is fine, but it isn’t the same as real experience, and employers know that. What can enterprising young designers do, to gain that experience, to gain it in a way that demonstrates they can handle real projects with real impact?”

The desert on the screen was replaced by a solar-panel-winged surveillance satellite, shining in the darkness of space. The camera drew back, making the satellite appear to be growing smaller while the darkness grew larger until the satellite was just a glint. Then a fiery border started to frame the darkness until it became clear the darkness was just the hexagonal pupil inside a watchful eye outlined by ashen eyelids with eyelashes rising from the upper lid.

The scene panned out further, leaving the eye at the top of the screen while tiny unhappy figures toiled away on the ground far below. The eye closed slowly, and, the moment it shut completely, one tiny figure (a female) sprouted wings and flew up to the eye, grabbing a single eyelash, lit like a torch, before swooping back down towards the ground. The screen zoomed in on her, showing her using her hands to mould the torch into the shape of a stone egg covered in flames.

Hang on, why was that figure wearing mirror sunglasses. And blue hair?

Nadine growled: {Heather...}

Heather: {Wasn’t me, wasn’t me.}

The screen showed the egg now being placed on the ground and the eye far above opening again to see it hatching to produce a mandala pattern with pieces rotating in opposing directions like a kaleidoscope, flicking from a flower, to the star of Ishtar, to a sunrise, to a heart shape, to Fú Lù Shòu, and then back to a flower. It looked like it had been put together by a particularly indecisive pancultural committee who’d been directed to produce an emblem symbolising hope and didn’t want to have anyone feel left out.

Nadine: {Oh I believe you. Even on your worst day, you’d never produce something that bad.}

The eye closed again, and this time three winged figures rose up, wearing top hats and carrying smaller eggs. They flew off in all directions and disappeared, while the figures left on the ground seemed to be greeting companions emerging from the mandala then working alongside them.

Heather: {Be glad Bulgaria hasn’t seen this. He’d insist the original figure be chained to a rock and have its liver pecked out by an eagle every day, for the sin of stealing fire from the gods.}

Namib: “What can you as a designer do? If you want to demonstrate your skills, if you want big impact, you need look no further than The Burrow, because MythOS has launched and mythoi are spreading. Let me show you…”