Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.2      Taking Control

1.2.6    An Assumed Role

1.2.6.21 On gratitude economies

Salat Isha, Friday June 9th, 2045

The interior was dimly lit, and there was not much point looking out now that it was dark. If ever there was an uninterrupted hour in her life to just sit and think, this was it. She’d set herself the objective of working out her vision for the wombles during the break and she’d only got this evening left. She’d tried her best to listen to everyone she could over the last day, and now her mind was awhirl with concepts, needs and opinions. Surely that was enough preparation? All she had to do was put them in some sort of order. Easy!

She sat and thought.

And thought and sat.

And thought about sitting. And wondered why emergency lighting was always red. Wouldn’t that panic people? Or did red panic people because they knew that when the lights suddenly dropped to a faint red, that was when there was an emergency happening?

After an embarrassingly short time, she gave up. Perhaps deliberately trying to think of the solution was the wrong approach? Maybe eureka moments were something you had to sidle up to and pounce upon unexpectedly, like a vampire?

She tried deliberately not thinking about vision statements.

After another five minutes, the only earth shattering conclusion she’d come to was that she was hungry. Maybe Alderney had put a snack in that bag for her? She opened it.

The bag had a smooth silvery lining she recognised as faraday shielding and, inside, was a pile of glowing gems. No, not gems…

Minion: [Hello my Queen. Would you like to lay that imposter aside and put on your rightful Crown?]

She felt a warm feeling, like unexpectedly meeting a friend. Far better than gems. She giggled to herself at the way her expert system came over as jealous of the goggles, like a worried court functionary fighting to hold onto his number one position. She took the goggles off and lifted her crown up, so she appeared to be weighing them, one in either hand.

Nadine: “Hmmm.”

Minion waved some strands holding the gemlike gel touchpads on top of the crown, making them appear like twitching cat ears.

Minion: *mew* *meeeeeow*

Nadine: “Oh, okay.”

She put the goggles in the bag and her crown upon her head, relaxed back against the seat and entered velife mode.

*flip*

She found herself in a local copy of the bier bedroom she’d constructed for The Burrow.

Nadine: “What have you been up to, Minion? Want to hear about my day?”

Minion:[I have kept myself appraised of your activities, my Queen. Alderney has been kind enough to share her stream with me and I’ve downloaded everything from those goggles. Including your performance as Sister Niu. If I may make so bold as to mention…]

He was going to offer constructive criticism? Well, why not, everybody else was.

Nadine: “Go on.”

Minion: [You do not make a convincing nun. They don’t actually go around blessing everyone, and the cord around your waist was tied incorrectly. Perhaps next time you should attend via a telepresence doll? It would make Terah’s task of arranging your physical security much easier.]

Nadine: “Brother Mikylos didn’t say anything.”

She felt uneasy. What precautions had Terah taken? The expert system she’d created might appear as an old man, but it was fully as powerful as any of her others. She knew Heather had brought military grade bots along with her, though she’d been careful not to brandish them. Would Heather and Wellington, or their expert systems Tink and Robin, have colluded with Terah to keep Nadine safe?

It wasn’t even worth asking. Of course they would. She shuddered to think what would have happened if those two brawlers had been sitting close enough to her, that Terah would have considered them a clear and present danger to her health. Still, it seemed unlikely that none of the Hexoikos would be paying attention to the launches; the Astors' main business was robots - they would, if nobody else. She didn’t think the Astors would kidnap a random nun, even if they’d identified her as Kafana, but it would still be foolish to forbid Terah from doing his duty. She’d just have to stay out of the line of fire, so he didn’t need to.

Minion: [The Franciscans are noted for their humility and forgiveness. Not for stupidity or lack of observational skills.]

Nadine: “Point taken. Next time I won’t go in person. Unless I must.”

Minion: [I have a message from Robin. Wellington has been thinking about the topic you inquired upon. He’s still available for a little while, if you want to talk with him now?]

Nadine: “Sure, connect me up.”

Instead of Wellington’s usual stone garden, she appeared next to him on top of a large semi-circular wooden bridge that arched high over a fish pond. There were a few birds in the sky and lily pads on the surface, but she couldn’t really see much of the fish. Minion had put her in the dress she’d chosen as her default for meetings, and Wellington was wearing his forgettable business suit.

Wellington: “What do you think of my mathematical bridge?”

Nadine: “Um, it looks ok?”

He nodded, as though her answer was expected.

Wellington: “Let’s stroll along the path as we talk. You asked about alternative currencies, and whether one could be based upon gratitude.”

Nadine picked her words carefully: “Not so much an alternative currency as an alternative economy, a way of affecting how goods and services are transferred between individuals and communities. Or perhaps I mean ‘complementary’ rather than ‘alternative’; I don’t want to get rid of money and capitalism, just provide an additional way to manage things, for those not being served well by the current system, who want to collaborate with others in the same position. A way that’s better suited to a world in which bots can churn out near endless quantities of physical items, and where expert systems can do nearly anything a human can.”

At the foot of the bridge there was a gravel path heading to the right, veering slowly towards the bank of the pond, the size of the pebbles growing larger and flatter as they walked.

Wellington: “So you don’t want a fungible currency that can be freely traded between individuals, or exchanged for other types of currency. But you do want something less restrictive than barter, and less fragile than centralised allocation. Can you give me some concrete scenarios?”

Nadine: “I provided some help to Gorana, a new chef at my kafana. Gorana is going to be putting on a performance so Heather gets to see some traditional dances before she leaves. Heather has helped out the Bahrudins and other villagers with repairs. And now the Bahrudins are likely to try to balance that by helping me expand my kafana. Everyone is receiving good value for the effort they have expended, everyone is grateful. But it has taken lots of face to face planning and total awareness of what everyone involved wants and can offer. It doesn’t scale well.”

Nadine: “But, if you tried the same thing by negotiating a financial price for each service being delivered, it wouldn’t work, especially if you threw into the equation bots and expert systems who were competing to provide some of those goods or services. The vast majority of the profits would get siphoned towards either the few in a position to offer something unique, or those who had part share ownership of the companies running the bots and expert systems.”

By the time the path reached the bank, the pebbles were the size of flagstones and the path continued out over the water as stepping stones, curving back towards the bridge.

Wellington: “Heather has been keeping me updated. Where do you see mythoi and copias fitting in with this?”

Nadine: “If mythoi take off and each community ends up with a copia, that would create a near endless supply of food and other goods. Enough to move most people on the planet above the first two layers of Maslow’s Hierarchy. At least if they don’t just alter their expectations to demand more and more, until they feel unsatisfied again. Enough that we can shift from hand-to-mouth supply-on-demand to creating a stockpile, a buffer in the supply chain, that gives flexibility and insurance, that allows people to feel safe and secure.”

Wellington: “Endless, but not at an unlimited speed. If it is possible for just a handful of people to walk away with the whole stockpile, then someone out there will do just that, if only to build a two mile high pyramid of crushed televisions as an art project. So you need some form of division or prioritisation. All economic systems do. In practical terms, if two villages both request a tractor, who gets it first? And if there keeps on being a shortage of tractors, what do you use as an incentive to lead to tractor production being increased?”

She was out over the water now, with Wellington walking two steps ahead of her. She could see the fish more clearly now. They were colourful and had billowing fins and tails so large, they looked like decorated paddle fans. The stone slabs ahead, directly underneath the bridge, seemed increasingly substantial and close together, each rising clear of the water.

Nadine: “That’s where tiaras come in. We know from the game they can be used to detect sincerity and emotions such as gratitude. Couldn’t tiaras be used to put an objective measurement upon how grateful someone was to receive something they’d asked for?”

Wellington “Yes.”

Nadine: “So what if we let people request anything they want, and let people produce anything they want, but each producer could specify the criteria they wanted used to decide the allocation of what they produced? It could be money, gratitude, reputation, or even a promise of a specific good or service in return. Any combination thereof.”

Nadine: “And, similarly, those offering warehousing and transport services could do the same, so they could (if they wished) give priority or a better price to pure gratitude transactions.”

Something weird was happening to the direction of gravity. The slabs had merged into a single path and it was rising steeply to join the curve of the underside of the bridge, yet her feet stayed on it as steadily as if she were walking on a flat surface.

Wellington: “What do you mean by a ‘gratitude transaction’ ?”

Nadine: “A gift, I guess. Or something like it. You look at how grateful someone has been for what they’ve already received, and whether they used what they receive purely for their own benefit, or whether they have in turn caused many others to be grateful back to them. If you like their record, then you (or your automated proxy) makes a portion of the stuff you’re producing available to them as a gift, which they can accept or decline, depending on whether it matches their wants and needs. When they request something, their proxy checks if something suitable is available from someone willing to gift it to them. If it is, they claim it and record their thanks, which gets sent back to the originator to experience.”

Wellington slowed down to think and they paused for a while, standing upside down, the wooden planks beneath their feet and the pond above them like a sky. They’d come a full circuit and were now directly under the spot on the bridge where she’d first appeared.

Nadine: “You could even use the tiara to record the producer’s sincere estimation of the risk and effort involved in producing the item. I know my gratitude on receiving a present often varies not only with the object but also with what giving it meant to the giver.”

Wellington: “Well, it’s certainly novel. The level of tiara technology needed has only become available recently, so nobody has tried this before. You’d need an abstraction layer in there, to prevent everyone being able to find out the details of other people’s transactions, and you’d need a way to make it distributed in order to cut out the need to trust some central arbiter or database owner.”

Nadine: “Could it be done?”