This is Earth_or_Better.info, produced by makeinfo version 4.11 from Earth_or_Better.texi. 6 March 2008 Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008 Robert J. Chassell  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Top, Next: Thank You, Prev: (dir), Up: (dir) Earth or Better? **************** 6 March 2008 Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008 Robert J. Chassell * Menu: * Thank You:: * Flashforward A Gift:: * Chapter 1:: * Chapter 2:: * Chapter 3:: * Chapter 4:: * Chapter 5:: * Chapter 6:: * Chapter 7:: * Chapter 8:: * Chapter 9:: * Chapter 10:: * Chapter 11:: * Chapter 12:: * Chapter 13:: * Chapter 14:: * Chapter 15:: * Chapter 16:: * Chapter 17:: * Chapter 18:: * Chapter 19:: * Chapter 20:: * Chapter 21:: * Chapter 22:: * Chapter 23:: * Chapter 24:: * Chapter 25:: * Chapter 26:: * Chapter 27:: * Chapter 28:: * Chapter 29:: * Chapter 30:: * Chapter 31:: * Chapter 32:: * Chapter 33:: * Chapter 34:: * Chapter 35:: * Chapter 36:: * Chapter 37:: * Chapter 38:: * Chapter 39:: * Chapter 40:: * Chapter 41:: * Chapter 42:: * Chapter 43:: * Chapter 44:: * Chapter 45:: * Chapter 46:: * Chapter 47:: * Chapter 48:: * Chapter 49:: * Chapter 50:: * Base Twelve:: * Sureness or Certainty::  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Thank You, Next: Flashforward A Gift, Prev: Top, Up: Top Thank You ********* My thanks to Mohd-Hanafiah Abdullah for suggesting names. My thanks to my sister, Karen Chassell Ringwald, for suggesting a guide to pronunciation. My thanks to Fred Ringwald for suggesting numerous changes. My thanks to Nick Arnett for suggestions concerning paradigms. My thanks to Maryann Rinsma for many suggestions, for enormous help. * Menu: * Pronunciation:: * Distance::  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Pronunciation, Next: Distance, Prev: Thank You, Up: Thank You Pronunciation ============= D and G are hard, as in `doll' and `gulf'. J is soft, without a D sound. It is a French `J', as in `Jean'. AE is a long `A', as in `name'. In English, the name `Djaeds' is spelled `Djades', where a vowel is made long by following it by a consonant and a silent `e'. `Gammae', which ends in AE, is pronounced `Ghah-may'.  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Distance, Prev: Pronunciation, Up: Thank You Distance ======== A light year is how far light travels in a terrestrial year. It is a measure of distance, 9,460,536,207,068,016 meters in base ten,  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Flashforward A Gift, Next: Chapter 1, Prev: Thank You, Up: Top Flashforward: An Explosive Gift ******************************* _He watched intently; he expected the bomb to detonate. A chain attached to a ring on the upper right hand corner of the gift brooch. It connected to the matching ring on the upper left. The robot carefully hung it around the Envoy's neck. Then standing so that the cameras could see the picture inside, the robot prepared to open it._ _Too bad no one would see the picture; it showed a lively man._ _Everyone of importance attended the ceremony: the planetary president, the prime minister, the leader of the opposition, their deputies, other political leaders, even the Envoy's girl friend. No doubt she was employed by Security, but it was clear he liked her. If she had not come around the curve at that moment, the previous murder attempt would have succeeded._ _He knew he would not and could not murder anyone else in the room. They had lived long; they had many private memories. But the Envoy had been reborn just a short time before. He would lose a bit of time, and a year or two while a new body was force grown, but he would not lose much. He would have the priviledge of falling in love again, maybe even with the same woman. It was not really murder._ _This time, he expected success. When the robot opened the brooch, it should explode._  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Chapter 1, Next: Chapter 2, Prev: Flashforward A Gift, Up: Top Chapter 1 ********* _Djem took one-hundred twenty years to reach Melior._ When he woke, Djem wondered what he lost when he died. Had he lost his soul? He felt good. Was the pre-trip briefing true? Supposedly, when he woke up he should feel good. It would not be due to chemicals. His new body was supposed to be better than his old and it should have been properly exercised. Then Djem heard a voice: "Ah ... you are waking. My name is Gammae Uttles." Djem opened his eyes. The woman looked attractive and young, but not too young, a fair bit older than Djem. She continued, "Please follow all the exercises, mental and physical. That way your nerves will connect properly." She swung a large display screen from the wall beside his bed. He could see it while lying back. It showed an image of him lying in the bed with the woman standing next to it. He saw a rather obvious camera on the ceiling. Evidently, it was taking the picture. `Good,' he thought to himself, `The technology is not too advanced.' The screen was a little fuzzy; it came into focus swiftly. The bed was next to a wall with wood paneling, in the alcove of an L-shaped room, his head towards the back of the alcove. He could not see the whole room, but saw a desk and straight-backed chairs in the bigger space as well as an exit door with a full length mirror on it. The floor looked wooden, too, but was darker than the walls. It did not have any rug on it. The air moved slightly; he faintly smelled damp soil, like that after a rain in a forest. He never noticed that the room had also been out of focus. Gammae spoke again, "The computer will remind you what to do." Djem grimaced slightly. No one had ever told him what to do, so he could not be reminded. `Oh well,' he thought to himself, `these people are trying to be nice.' The computer display stopped showing him live. Instead, its image split in two: the left side showed a cartoon of a person lying in a bed. The figure was raising an arm, the cartoon's left arm, which was on the right in the image. The cartoon consisted only of edge lines. It was well drawn. The right side had words in a script and language he knew. He read that part of the display, "Please raise your arm." Djem pulled his right arm out from under his sheet and blanket and raised it. And let it down outside the bed covers. "Good," said Gammae. Djem wore light pajamas made from a fiber that felt like cotton. The pajamas were covered by a small, abstract, colorful print that he did not mind. The cartoon promptly changed to show the figure raising the other arm. The text said, "Please raise your other arm." Again, Djem raised an arm. Next the computer showed the cartoon figure touching his nose with a finger, and the text saying, "Please touch your nose with a finger." Sometime later Djem realized that earlier he had not known either the script or the language on the screen. Nevertheless, as far as he could determine, Gammae spoke his customary language. The computer had him shaking his head from side to side, making faces, tossing his bed clothes aside and sitting up, twisting side to side, raising first one leg, then the other. It showed him a cartoon figure of a person's face. Then the figure faded away and the computer asked him to visualize it. Then it asked him to judge his visualization, on a scale of one through seven, with seven being the best. Djem replied with "five" and Gammae said happily, "good". Next the computer showed him cartoons of a person with arms and legs -- exactly the same figure he had been following to touch his nose and raise his knee. The cartoons showed motionless pictures of the person acting as he had already. Each image faded and the computer asked him to visualize it and then to judge its quality. Djem answered variously "five", "four", and more and more often, "six". The computer had him visualize a bird, a cow, and a cat. The computer started speaking the text, too, even though Djem could read. He had Djem adding numbers -- two plus two, four plus three. Then he had Djem add two digit numbers in his head. It was a while before Djem noticed he was adding in base twelve with symbols that were slightly different than those in base ten. Two-doz three eggs plus three-doz seven eggs is five-doz ten eggs. He could even add four digit numbers with three digit numbers. Seven-great eight-gross nine-doz zero plus six-gross eleven-doz eight is eight-great three-gross eight-doz eight. Djem forgot to investigate whether he continued to possess a soul. After a time, Gammae said cheerfully, "That's enough. You are doing well. You are probably hungry. Please get up. We must go to the cafeteria." Djem could not have said how long he had been exercising. This time, she spoke in the language on the screen. Djem understood! Djem swung out of bed with no trouble and found slippers. Except the slippers were more like low socks with tough soles. Gammae handed him a bathrobe, saying, "This will keep you warm." She opened the door by pulling a handle, turned left, and led him down a corridor -- a corridor with complex yet soothing patterns of green and blue. He had seen such corridors in hospitals before. Djem felt exactly the right weight and tried jumping to make sure. Gammae noticed and smiled. "The acceleration here is the same as on the planet below. It's a bit more than ten meters per second per second, a fraction more than Earth's. With stronger muscles and faster reflexes, you will think this is just the right gravity. None of the corridors are so long that you can see them curve, unless you put your eye close to the floor, like this ..." and she demonstrated, crouching down, then laying flat, closing one eye and staring along the corridor with the other. So Djem did the same thing. The corridor did curve up, but not much. Djem saw that there was no one else in the corridor. So far, Gammae was the only person he had seen. At a T-junction she turned right. "This won't curve," she said. They walked down it and then turned left. "In the cafeteria, we will see many people. They will think you are just another patient, soon to be better." He remembered to check whether he could feel that he lost his soul when he died, and then again forgot to check. In the cafeteria, perhaps half wore bathrobes and pajamas, like Djem himself -- all different, all soothing, all obviously designed. Many of the other half wore sensible and soothing trousers and shirts -- Djem kept noticing the idea of `soothing' ... A few wore garish clothing and fewer wore odd and beautiful clothes. Ahead, the floor curved up a little. Gammae took them to a nook beside the entry. In it was another visible camera. This one had a red light. Below it was a screen that showed her, and as he moved into range, Djem himself. Gammae explained, "The computer should recognize you and give you food. Me, too. Later, you will be able to order food you want, but right now, you have to take what the computer gives you. What you see on the screen is what the computer sees." A voice spoke, a neutral voice without emotion, one that sounded a little as he expected a computer to sound. The voice said, "Yes, I recognize you. Djem, you should like this. Gammae, I presume your usual?" Gammae nodded. A hatch popped open and a tray popped out. On it, a plate held a decent, solid breakfast of eggs on toast, sausages, and big pieces of fried potato. It was like breakfast in a lumber town. A mug held what looked like coffee with considerable milk. The plate, mug, cutlery, and cloth napkin all looked decent, tough, and customary. Another tray came out. Gammae picked it up immediately. It had chop sticks and food that looked Chinese. Gammae led an abstracted Djem to an empty table in the corner. He was hungry. The normality of the food helped. Gammae, who gazed into the distance momentarily, yelped and smiled. "We gave the AI someone to pay attention to. It was not simply a computer subroutine that spoke to us back there, it was the Artificial Intelligence himself! I guess he has decided you are healthy and going to live." "I am confused," said Djem. Gammae looked at him puzzled. "I do not know what is going on; what do you mean, we gave the AI someone to consider? How did you do it?" Gammae looked at him with more triumph. Djem asked himself whether everything was planned, including this confusion. Then Gammae answered, "I checked with the AI using my internal linkage. It is just the same as you have. You will learn to use it soon. If you look to the upper right with your eyes and think loudly `computer, time' you should see a digital clock and hear the time. The clock will vanish quickly." After a moment, she said, "Good, I can see you did that. As I said, I checked with the AI. This whole space station is run by the AI -- his name is Airlent Irtak. However, subroutines do most chores. The AI usually does not pay attention. Your waking up exercises are an example. The AI could have paid attention, but didn't. From his point of view, waking is rather boring. Of course, if you had acted odd, the AI would have directed his attention to you immediately. But acting odd is hard -- many have woken and the computer knows them all. You can say hello to the AI by looking to your upper right and thinking loudly `Computer, hello'." Djem noted the euphemism `wake up' for what would be called more accurately a `resurrection' if he had no soul or if it came with him, or a `roboticization' if he did have a soul and it were lost. He thought it very clever that Gammae distracted him by telling him how to contact the computer, which he did. He was not surprised to hear a `Hello, Djem' in response, but was surprised to see a momentary cartoon image of a rotating space station. It was a ring with tubes going to a center spindle, just like a design from centuries ago. In fact, he suddenly understood, he knew that the design was from centuries ago, albeit a bit bigger than early designs, but not too much bigger. Djem was not quite sure where he had picked up this knowledge. He was fairly certain he had never learned it before `waking up'; and he had not learned it since. Gammae spoke again, "Soon you will not need to turn your eyes or think loudly. You will find it easy to connect to whatever computer is near or use your internal computer. You will learn unconsciously when and where to direct your attention. However, at the moment, you need to turn your eyes and think loudly." Djem had eaten half his breakfast without noticing. He resolved to pay more attention. But first he had a question, "Gammae, why aren't you bored? You must have ..." and paused momentarily, trying to think of what he would call `waking up'. Finally he said, "You must have worked with many people." "I have," replied Gammae. "I am very good at what I do. I have picked this job and been picked for it. I smell OK to you, although you cannot detect that, and I am supposed to look maternal and attractive to you. Right?" Djem nodded. That selection indicated a technology ahead of what he knew. It was slightly scary. Somehow, he also knew that the technology could be implemented by a computer. It could go through the information packet holding him when he was dead, discover smells he was not consciously aware of, pick an attractive and motherly looking professional ... His knowing scared him more. Then he remembered to enjoy breakfast consciously; he had a third left. He focused on eating it. Gammae did not say anything. After drinking what he thought of as coffee with milk, Gammae went away and came back with two cups. Each contained a cocoa-like drink. It was like cocoa, but thicker. It was not too sweet, either. Gammae saw Djem enjoying it and said, "It is cocoa, but it has a built-in thickener. Centuries ago, a company on Earth genenetically engineered some. Evidently, the engineered trees incorporated seaweed genes that made the cocoa have a good `mouth feel.' They did not make it too sweet either, which was contrary to the usual rules. Perhaps they planned to sell it as an expensive, specialty item first. That kind of buyer did not like too much sweetness. In any case, it was tasty. And it still is." She went on, "The plant was patented on Earth, as well as the formula for making the drink. It was only available in North America. My hunch is that some movement leaders liked it. They were like millions of others. That is why we have it. It did not obviously hurt people although the time and funding for studies of them was short. Minor things could be brought arbitrarily. "All patents ran out during the interstellar voyage. It took so long. We may not have got replicable seeds; we may have to make the substance from whatever was sold in a jar, made via nanotechnogical duplication." She paused for a moment, checking. "Yes, that is what we do. "If the patents were extended, the Melior government could simply say that Earth patents not apply on Melior. And if they were not extended, they would run out. Either way, the Earth corporations could do nothing, so they did not try. There was no change in the law at all. In dealing with us, the corporations had no power at all. It was not like dealing with people in a failed or corrupt country or one in which most people were extra-legal. Then you can sabotage organizations that grow big or persuade one government to act against the people of another." Gammae stopped for a moment thinking. "I vaguely remember reading about this new cocoa when it came out. The plant with the seeds used a great deal of fertiliser. And to enable the company that developed it to continue to charge high prices even after the end of government controlled price fixing -- patents worked remarkably well in countries in which people behaved legally -- the plants were not fertile. You had to buy new ones when the originals died. "I suppose over time, competitors would make alternates; but the time might well have been generations. I doubt anyone had that time before the Collapse. And after it, too few had the money and the distant transport. Anyhow, we left and I never learned of alternatives. You can be thankful for nano-technological duplicators." She grinned. "Have more." When they finished breakfast, Gammae took him to another hatch, where they put the plates, cups, and other stuff, unsorted. She talked about costs saying, "It turns out to be cheaper for robots to separate, wash, and reposition the trays, cutlery, and so on than to build them new -- by cheaper, I mean, it takes less energy. Only chipped or broken material is destroyed and rebuilt. I am not quite sure why we do this. For all practical purposes, solar energy is free and that is what we use here. In addition, growing plants provide much of the food rather than nano-assemblers, even though you can't tell the difference by eating." Djem paid attention to that. At the same time, he noticed that Gammae was speaking in a much more complicated way than before and in a foreign language, the language on the computer screen back in his room. He told her so. "Yes," said Gammae, "I am now speaking complexly in Lojban." Djem visualized its pronunciation in his native alphabet as Lozh-bahn, but he realized he also knew the local glyphs. Gammae went on, "You will be able to understand everyone. That is what we speak. Before we left Earth, most of us spoke English or Mandarin as a first or second language, but before we woke here, the computers provided us all with this language. I am glad we got it. Otherwise, we would have had one or other natural language, probably a pidgin. I doubt many adults would have bothered to learn an artificial language. "Long before us, some people started Lojban as an experimental construct. Unlike the natural languages of the time, it had a defined grammar. It was regular, too. Supposedly, at the time, it was logical and culturally neutral. It goes without saying that it has lost all those features since, but Lojban is a useful hybrid. It did not offend anyone except those who hated logic and truth. "As for writing," she said, "the language employs a phoneme-based symbol system rather than a word-based one like Mandarin. But on Melior, we changed the glyphs. The language now possesses nine symbols for vowel sounds rather than six. One was and is a schwa, which is a nothing sound so effectively we had five and now have eight. And we wanted zero to have a different vowel sound than four or the new ten. Consequently, we needed all six symbols in the old days and seven now. With the extra sounds, we can repeat single symbols for the vowel sounds of the first five numbers rather than for the first four as we did when our most common numerical base was ten." Djem realized the last was a long sentence. But it came in chunks, `single symbols,' `vowel sounds', `first five numbers'. Djem saw that Gammae did not count zero as a number. For base twelve, she meant that single symbols applied to one through six and seven through eleven. The sentence was hard, but not too hard to parse. Even so, at first hearing, it made no sense. When you spoke, you did not care about symbols. It did not matter how you wrote a sentence. Nonetheless, he understood Gammae's meaning: they had changed the glyphs. In another moment Djem found himself understanding more about everything, as if he had always known it. Three sources of new knowledge came with his new body: added normal memory -- he thought of it as learning without the effort -- additional memory that he carried with him, and an outside computer communicating with him. He learned promptly that shortly all three would come as `learning without effort.' The new memory: before he woke up -- no, Djem decided to use the phrase `resurrected or roboticized'. Before then, the computer had inserted knowledge into the data packet that contained himself. That produced his added normal memory. The process was difficult, but by now routine. For new people, this was much easier than learning the old way. Also, when it grew his new body, the computer inserted an internal computer and radio transceiver. That provided the additional memory that he carried with him and enabled an outside computer to communicate with him. They returned to his room. Gammae showed him a desk with a screen on it. She said that eventually he would learn to attend internally to communications with an external computer, "... but for the moment, it is easier to speak out loud and look at the screen." She had other work and he would probably want to look at his records and messages. She would come back later to help him with more exercises -- "Oh, yes," she said, "there are a lot of exercises. Nonetheless, it won't be long." As she went to the door, she turned and spoke, "I just remembered. Security asked me to tell you that they decrypted all your messages from your government to you. But don't worry about it. There is nothing they cannot handle. They will pretend they never did anything. They haven't told me what the messages are; they are a secret among you, your government, and them." Djem was shocked. The messages were supposed to be undecryptable. Well, his main job was to determine whether Melior was a threat, and if so, what kind, whether military, economic, or cultural. He could accustom the Melians to a habit of his sending reports, without his expressing his own opinion. That way, the Melians probably would not censor or stop his reports, and his superiors on Earth could learn. Gammae went on, "Also, Security understands that you are supposed to report on us. As a minor challenge, I suppose you might decrypt my description of leaving Earth -- I have never wanted to publish it, although it doesn't say anything harmful either." She smiled at his face, which was full of consternation: "I know, I look like an ideal mother for you; but I am much older ... more like a great, great, great grandmother. I lived my youth during what you think of as history. Discovering it will be good practice for you as a spy!" She smiled cheerfully, stepped out, and closed the door.  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Chapter 2, Next: Chapter 3, Prev: Chapter 1, Up: Top Chapter 2 ********* Taffod ran along a path through terraformed Melior forest. He made a good runner, tall and lanky. He enjoyed what to others looked like weirdly strange hair; it was blond. He was beginning to feel fatigue, fatigue so deep he hurt. He had run half the race and was glad for the leaves. They shielded him from the sun. Many organizers ran too, and they disliked the heat as much as he. That is why this part of the race ran under trees. The race covered a half-gross great of meters. Or, since Taffod thought in base ten when he read histories of distance running, more than one-hundred twenty-four kilometers. It was the roughest experience Taffod had endured for a long time; but it was not as rough as any one day of living on Earth. It was becoming more painful, though. He distracted himself by sliding into a reverie of his years in school on Earth. When he was eleven years old, he hated school. He was an active boy. That meant he fidgeted. His teacher was used to that and ignored it. Much worse was that he liked looking out the window. In the spring, he looked on the white blossoms of a black cherry tree that grew -- he had no idea how or why -- in the school yard. A week or later, choke cherries came into blossom. He noted both and was punished each time. `Fortunately,' he thought, `my school never sponsored running. School never imposed it. Its rewards never got destroyed.' He figured that was why he was so crazy as to run in this race. It amazed him. `It is so many years later, yet the hatreds of youth still influence me.' Like the rest, Taffod ran barefoot; his toughened soles were lighter than any pair of shoes. That saved a huge amount of energy over the distance. Robots had surveyed the path. He would not be injured by a sharp stone. He ran on dirt, leaves, or grass. The human racers started in the morning on rolling plains. They ran up and down hills, but mostly followed ridges. The air was cool. The sun rose behind them and the air heated. The plains were not that much different from those that Telren on Tegmar loped over, except that the Melior plains burst with Earth life. In the valleys were swamps and trees, along the ridges, grass. Taffod liked the land. The course ran west into the forest. There, the hills petered out. The trail then turned south towards a flat and open prairie. The rolling plains were beautiful; people ran on them while they could pay attention. Leaves shielded Taffod from the sun. He breathed mainly through his mouth, but some air came in through his nose. It smelled and felt dry, at the edge of drought. He found he was licking his lips often to make them wet. The trees were big and widely separated. They were almost all deciduous, like a temperate forest on Earth. The forest was old. It had grown from the time Melior was first terraformed. Unlike the fast growing builders' trees, this forest was never cut. When they laid it out, the robots curved the path among the trees. After a long period running, Taffod began to burn fat rather than carbohydrates. His reborn body stored more than his first body ever could have, but it shifted over. As he ran low on carbohydrates, Taffod felt empty and hungry. Fat provided, but permitted only seven-twelfth the rate of energy expenditure of carbohydrates. Worse, after sixty kilometers, three dozen greats of meters, running hurt. That is where people stuck with it or fell out. Like everyone else, Taffod had practiced. But he had never spent a whole day running. Shorter runs did not hurt at all. Since the runners' reborn bodies all had about the same capabilities, the race organizers did not give a single first prize; instead, they gave a prize to everyone in the winning cluster. (None of the young, first born people ran in this race. They thought it painful, useless, and could not see why the old-timers liked it.) Those who did not make the first cluster, but who stuck with the race, were listed as `also ran'. Those who dropped out were not listed at all. There were accidents -- people pulled muscles -- but the race's main test revolved around will. If you had enough grit, if your reborn body was not too old, and if you did not suffer an accident, then you could be among the winning cluster. Taffod ran to check his mind. In itself, the run was silly. Its only purpose was to test a person. Taffod wished he were Telren on Tegmar, chasing and catching wild animals. Melior was peaceful. That was the problem. Most people liked peace. So did Taffod much of the time. But he also wanted to wake and be addressed by a different name. For some reason, he had thought he was going to become Tindark, climb mountains, and kill himself doing so. But he did not wake as Tindark. Another self woke as Tindark, climbed the cliffs, and did not die. That fellow was too good. Like Taffod, Tindark was looking for more adventure. Neither had found it yet. Telren was their talisman. He ran great distances. Actually, he loped and did not feel pain at all. Not only did he have a better body, not human, he had good reason to run -- when he did not run he did not eat. Or more precisely, he ate badly. Telren enjoyed cities and their social life -- all that was transmitted to him by Taffod and Tindark. The three made for a good combination. Sharing experiences made each feel complete. On Tegmar there were no cities and little social life. The number of humans or former humans on it was small. Unlike Telren, most of them were very dedicated researchers. That is another way of saying that they were very strange people, at least to those who were not also dedicated. Taffod just wished that his current consciousness had been reborn on Tegmar in a babbo body as Telren and that Telren's had been reborn on Melior as the new Taffod. Tindark called when he was about half way through the woods. Taffod kept on running, but forgot his pain altogether. The conversation was a welcome relief. "The big news," Tindark said, "is that the new Earth Envoy is on the space station exercising and adapting." He went on, even though Taffod actually knew it all. "We will learn about him soon enough; and we will meet him at the Reception!" Tindark did ask what Taffod had not conceived, "What would be good questions?" The two would come on him separately, so they could use the results of one meeting to prepare the next. "We should ask Telren, too," Tindark said. Finally Taffod spoke with resignation, "I really should not entertain myself by talking to you, but feel what this run is like. I know I won't like it, but it cannot last more than a little while." Taffod kept on running. The forest ended, not suddenly, but in stages, with bigger and bigger meadows. The land became flatter. As the last patch of forest fell behind, Taffod felt a gentle breeze from the west and the warmth of the sun. Every half-dozen great of meters, a robot paced and handed him a bottle to drink. He did not feel thirsty, but knew to gulp it down. The drink was pure water. It did not contain any sugars or other energy source, just water. Taffod did not like it. The pain got worse. He distracted himself. A half-dozen great of meters; thinking in base ten, that was a little over ten kilometers. According to the histories, old time runners drank more often. But they did not have reborn bodies. He would drink ten times during the run, the first, a little over ten kilometers after starting and the last, a little more than ten kilometers before ending. Taffod spent time making the calculations in his head, counting his footsteps. He could stretch his stride out to a meter. He did for a while. It was a relief. But he had to think about it constantly. Usually, his stride was five-sixths of a meter. As he went on, running became harder and harder. His real-time, perceived world became smaller. He tried to repeat those big words. He couldn't. He remembered life on Earth, and ran on anger. He remembered his first steps on Melior, and ran on hope. He remembered affection, and ran on love. Finally, the run ended and he collapsed.  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Chapter 3, Next: Chapter 4, Prev: Chapter 2, Up: Top Chapter 3 ********* In his hospital room on the space station, Djem turned slowly. First, he looked in the mirror on the back of the door. As he hoped, he saw his own dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. He was stocky and moderately tall. He did not think of himself as too tall for his role. Then, as he looked at himself closer, he decided he was a little taller and a little leaner than he was on Earth. Next, he sat down in a chair by the table, looked to his upper right, and thought loudly to himself, `Computer, hello'. Quite promptly, he heard, `Hello, Djem, what can I do for you?' `Well,' he asked, thinking to himself loudly and formally; he knew he was sub-vocalizing; `what is the official status of this room? I thought legally it is Earth-territory.' `Yes,' said the computer into his head, `officially, it is diplomatic. You are the senior diplomat -- the only one, in fact. Your room is officially designated private. I am not supposed to talk with you unless you start the conversation. Except this is a hospital, so if you look like you need a conversation or any other kind of help, I am supposed to act.' To anyone else, Djem was just sitting there. He was not obviously talking, not even to the air. The computer continued to speak in Djem's head. `It goes without saying that, being foreign, Security pays attention. So you have less privacy than you would ordinarily. However, as Gammae should have said' -- Djem noted that the computer spoke as if he were not listening all the time -- `what you do in diplomatic space is a secret among you, your government, and Security. `As a practical matter,' the AI spoke again, or maybe it was just a subroutine, Djem could not tell, `it would be a good idea for you to investigate our privacy rules -- not the legal ones, the sociological ones. Those that everybody expects. Security will not expect you to talk much about them; and you need not expect Security to talk in public about you at all. Everything is private.' Djem closed his eyes and sighed. From his point of view, it was not secret if the other side knew. The computer spoke again in his head: `You may prefer to use the external screen and speakers, rather than work in your head. For one, you will know with familiarity that you are being monitored.' Djem nodded and spoke out loud, "Yes". Immediately, the screen came on and presented him with a top level directory. It did not look all that different from his office at home, an office that was only a few days away in his memory, and more than one-hundred twenty years away in time. Djem suddenly felt very lonely. `Well, to work,' he thought to himself. `That is the only solution.' What should he do, knowing that people spied on him? He would not read his mail. Perhaps Security had not decrypted his messages and was playing games with him. He would look at this schedule. What did his hosts plan for him, officially? `Hmm ...,' he thought, `several more days of exercises and adaptation.' After adapting, his hosts had him scheduled to visit various places -- the host planet, space stations, including one near Tegmar, a planet with complex life. First, his official acceptance as Envoy. This would be on the host planet and give him a chance to meet important people. He would move to his embassy, a building on the host planet. No budget -- but then Djem knew that everything material could be built by von Neumann replicators and therefore would not cost anything. Costly items would be location, status, and attention. As the only diplomat in the system, he had the status and therefore would get the attention and location. There had to be a budget based on that. Djem remembered the economic term, `rivalrous'. Location, status, and attention would be valuable because they could not be indefinitely reproduced. `On the other hand,' he thought to himself, `shirts, shoes, houses, electric generators, ships, space stations -- so long as there were not too many -- they could all be manufactured by smart computers, either by spraying little droplets, micro-technology, or by assembling atoms, nano-technology.' This place was not like Earth. Earth forbade cornucopia machines. Before he came, Djem did not even know they existed. People worked in place of machines. They had shorter lives and were more fertile. The powerful did not work. Djem considered; the only way this system could survive is if it restricted its population. Potential parents had to shun children, or perhaps socially, the emotion should be less strong; they should disfavor them. Well, he would report back. At that point, he heard a knocking on the door. His screen shifted and showed an image of Gammae standing outside of it. Djem puzzled over the timing -- was it luck, or had Gammae been standing outside the door monitoring him for the right moment, or was he predictable, or was it now time to do more exercises? Djem decided he would not be sure of the truth of any answer. Maybe Gammae or the computer would lie to him. So he chose not ask any questions. Instead, he said "come in" and Gammae pushed the door open. "Time for more exercises." She sounded cheery and practical. "Many of these will be very similar to what you did earlier. Please take off your bathrobe and lie down on your bed. You won't feel cold since the room will warm up and you will move." Again, Gammae pulled the screen out from the wall. Djem couldn't remember her having pushed it back to the wall. He discovered he could quickly and thoroughly visualize all he had seen since `waking'. When he left the room, the screen was out from the wall on its jointed arm, like a dentist's light. When he came back, it was snuggled against the wall. His bed was made, too. `Well,' he thought, `so much for diplomatic isolation.' Anyhow, it did not matter. Or his host was toying with him. He lay on the bed and found himself doing many of the exercises he did before. This time they seemed a bit easier and a bit quicker. That surprised Djem. He thought he had done them easily and quickly before. In addition to visualizations, he had to repeat sounds mentally. This was hard. He had never done this before. Fortunately, he thought, the sounds were phrases from tunes he knew and not very long. "That's good," said Gammae. "Next time we will do smells, which I bet you will find weird." They finished soon enough. Again, Djem could not say quite how long it was. Gammae remembered, "Time for lunch," she said and Djem found he was hungry. "Actually, we had a late breakfast," Gammae said as they were walking to the cafeteria. "This is the usual time for lunch. You will be hungry. Have no doubt. Later in the afternoon, you will want, and will be given, a `tea'. Then dinner. The computer chooses well. Beside being good for you, your food will taste good and you will like it. I am sure." No one walked through the first or second corridors, but in the third corridor they met three people heading towards the cafeteria, two wearing pajamas and bathrobes, and one dressed like Gammae in sensible and soothing trousers. Gammae looked at her happily, and said, "Let me introduce you." "Anna, meet Djem, our diplomat from Earth. Anna Lekting is an old fashioned physician; she manages the treatment of physically injured people, like those who fall off cliffs or are gored by bulls." Anna laughed, "Not that many are gored -- I bet you are thinking of that man from years ago. But a good number always fall off cliffs. That's cliff climbing for you." "Anna is a cliff climber herself." Gammae spoke in a quiet aside. Djem felt confused. He responded, "I thought you had a safer system than that, what with robots everywhere." Gammae explained, "Robots are not everywhere, especially not in the outback. A few live there. Others do crazy things, like climb cliffs," she looked mischievously at Anna who blithely ignored her, "and some are just plain stupid, like that man who got gored." Anna asked Djem, "Well, what do you think of our experiment, now that you are here?" "Different," Djem replied. He thought that was a very diplomatic answer, incontrovertible and meaningless. Anna laughed again. "Wait until you discover our line marriages and group sex. That will shock you." Then she vanished into the cafeteria. "That's Anna for you," said Gammae, "she will always have the last word, preferably something to rile you. Ah, here is our food nook." She swung into the image and Djem followed her. Djem could not help but notice that on the screen he looked a little stunned and a little amused -- so Gammae claimed that she never sought to leave anyone riled ... The computer voice spoke, "Hello, Djem. Hello, Gammae. Djem, please eat the soup first. It is not too hot, and while it is tasty, the rest is spicier and will overwhelm the soup. What would you like, Gammae?" "I'll let you decide," said Gammae. "OK," said the computer "... try this. It has a soup so you can follow Djem and then something a bit different. You will like it." Two trays popped out of the hatch. The second was obviously Gammae's since it had a Chinese spoon and chopsticks, while the first looked like a hearty northern meal. The soup was more like a stew. The rest included a spicy meatloaf. He had it on earth. He looked around; it was completely different from what everyone else was eating. Djem had not much talked with Gammae; nor had he wolfed the food down, but he ate it all. He finished just when she did. "Umm ... that was good," she said. Djem nodded. "Now," Gammae continued, "most people, if they are not with friends, take a moment to access their computer and check the news. I suspect it is a way isolates pretend to sociability. At least, that is what I do." Djem contradicted her, "But you are not an isolate," he said. Gammae looked at him. "Well, sometimes I am and sometimes I am not. In any case, the way to get news is to look to your upper right and think loudly `computer, news'." So Djem did, and a screen appeared in his vision, a little lower than the middle of his outlook and to the right. As if it were solid, it covered another table. The image did not move when he moved his head. A voice became more distinct as he paid more attention. The picture showed a cylinder -- at first Djem had no way of telling the scale, but then he noticed a bar with a marking on it; the cylinder was a little more than a twelfth of a meter long. The voice said, "The Emissary from Earth came recently. Here is the vehicle that was inside its solid hydrogen and liquid helium three shielding. The diplomat has been woken and is now exercising and adapting. He should enter the public eye shortly." Gammae smiled at him. "You are famous already, and you have not done anything. To turn off the news, just think `news off'. The computer will determine your intent." Djem did this. He felt that he looked bemused. He was. He was in a hospital. He was thirty light years from home. And he was the only representative of Earth. He had a right to be bemused. No one would report looks. Further, he thought, it would be a century and a half from the time he left Earth before any information of the present could possibly arrive back; his superiors would be new. He did not know whether Earth still existed at all as he knew it. Gammae waited until he looked at her again, and then said, "Back to your room. More exercises! These will be fun. You will mostly try to remember smells. I have to pick up a collection from the food dispenser." She took him back to the nook they used and walked into the see-able area. The computer promptly, and without saying anything, popped out a long rod with caps along its top. Gammae picked it up and took Djem on what was by now the familiar route back to his room. On the cross-corridor, they passed Anna, who was striding behind a self-moving bed with an unconscious person in it. Anna did not stop, but said simply as she passed, "another cliff climber." Gammae looked down at the person then at Djem. "With that information, and knowing the time, you can probably find out the person's name, picture, and where they were climbing, unless they put a privacy shield on everything, which cliff climbers usually don't." She looked abstracted for a moment, but kept walking straight. "No wonder he is here. He was pretty badly hurt. Why is he in this ring? I would have thought that they would operate in a lighter ring. There is no reason the operation could not take place on the planet. Ah, post-operative recovery is going to be on a lighter ring. The current acceleration is to pool his blood before they suture." She paused a moment, looking confused, "Regardless, I don't understand why the operation was not on the planet, unless we really were closer. Oh, we were. I hope Anna had a chance to finish eating. That is one of the advantages of waking people up. You don't get interrupted so often. In addition, it is much more interesting to work with the reborn than stare at the unconscious and watch robots do the work. She is mainly around for when the patient wakes up." Djem thought quickly. "Isn't she around for when the robots make a mistake?" "No," said Gammae. "We did that in the old days. We prepared with training exercises and all that. But the robots don't goof up very often. Not any more. Anna's work is post-operative. I think her walking with the unconscious person, watching the operation, and so on, is designed to put her in the right mood. Then she can say with utter conviction that `you were in bad shape when you came in' ... or what ever." In his room, Gammae sat Djem down at his desk. She pulled up a chair that Djem had not seen there before, although a quick memory search showed it to him. Gammae almost bounced. "This exercise is fun," she said. "You will learn smells. I get to smell, too. Based on what the computer says, you were never much of a people-person, so you never learned unconsciously to smell." She looked at him cheerfully. "One of the advantages of your new body is that you can smell better. Another is that you remember better. These smells are strong. Later, we will work with fainter ones. This is a whole new way to gain information. It's like looking on a screen at an infrared or radio image translated to visual frequencies, but natural, emotive, and different." Gammae uncapped a port at the far left end of the rod and waved it under Djem's nose. It was rose, not bad. Then Gammae capped the capsule and waved her hand. "That is the one disadvantage of this exercise; we have to wait until the smell is diluted and blown away. You can hear the room's air circulators turning up and feel the breeze. "OK, Djem, now please try to recreate the smell in your mind. Can you do that? How good is your recreation? Please tell me a number, one through seven, with seven being the best." Djem said "three, no, two." He paused. "I am not very good at this," he explained. "I thought not," replied Gammae. "Let's try this rose again." This time, Djem remembered the smell better. He called it a three. They went on. Djem did enjoy the session. He did learn smells. Near the end of the session, when Gammae asked him to recreate a rose, he called the memory a four. Then she uncapped the leftmost port again and he smelled what he remembered. At the end, he was exhilarated, tired, and hungry. Gammae exclaimed, "Time for tea!" and led him out the door. She dropped the smells bar into a trash chute right beside the food nook and stepped into sight. "Ah, tea time!" said the computer. Then, shifting to an excellent imitation of an English accent, he said, "Djem, this is an English tea. According to my understanding, you have learned the ceremony. Apparently, you are going to do it as a diplomat. Gammae knows about as much as anyone will know, that is to say, she will be cued appropriately by her internal computer. But nobody, neither Gammae nor any politician, thinks it is important enough to learn. So you will have to take command." A tray popped out of the hatch. Except the tray looked more like a good platter; it was bigger than a meal tray. It had on it a good ceramic pot and what looked like a silver pot, supported by an ornate contraption over a small candle with a burning flame. The silver pot would contain hot water to put in the ceramic pot as needed. Djem was surprised to see the flame. He was on a space station. But then, he was on a big space station with an AI that probably watched all the time, although he pretended to watch only through visible cameras, as in the nook. So the fire was not dangerous. In addition, the platter held cups, saucers, white sugar, brown sugar, cream, milk, lemon, scones -- the scones weren't English -- spoons, everything. It looked good. Djem picked up the platter and carried it to what he was now starting to think of as `their table'. It was in a corner and both he and Gammae had their backs to a wall. They sat at right angles to each other, not across from each other. So he served tea, trying unsuccessfully to remember whether technically that was a woman's task. Regardless, he did it. He was hungry and the scones were satisfying. It was not until he was putting the tea set away into what he thought of as `the trash hatch' that he remembered again the question of whether he had lost a soul. Was he a robot who thought himself Djem or was he truly resurrected? Back on Earth, Djem had never thought he had a soul, except maybe as a child; but then he had never thought about it much at all. Gammae said, "I have other things to do. Can you make your way back to your room on your own?" "Yes, yes," said Djem. "Will I see you for dinner?" "Yes," said Gammae, "I'll pick you up." Djem walked back to his room. It was easy and the room rather close. Indeed, Djem discovered that he could wander about on his own if he wanted to. He knew the station. He could make his way to an exercise room, to a room with genuine windows that looked out at the universe whirling around, to a `living room' -- he could not imagine it being a public room, but it was, for meeting people -- to a garden, to `the farm' where much of his carbon dioxide and other body wastes were recycled into oxygen and food. This was more evidence of `organic biologicals'. It must be from where the faint smell of damp soil came. But Djem did not want to go anywhere other than his room, so he didn't. `Later,' he thought. * Menu: * First Attack:: * Schedule::  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: First Attack, Next: Schedule, Prev: Chapter 3, Up: Chapter 3 First Attack ============ He came into his room. It had been trashed. His bedclothes were dumped on the floor, chairs and table upturned, a bureau upended. "What," he thought, and then called out, "Computer, what happened?" Silence. Nothing. That scared Djem. He stepped out into the hall "Computer, are you there?" "Yes," said the computer, "where have you been? You just vanished." "What happened to my room? It has been broken up." "No, it hasn't," said the computer. "It looks unchanged ... no, something has happened. My monitoring has been corrupted. I have been penetrated. This is serious and dangerous. I am going to bring up robots, six of them. Don't worry. Three will guard you and three will clean up your room. This is not expected. You have enemies. I do not know what is going on. Or why. Please stay where you are." Six robots soon appeared, three humanoid that went into Djem's room and three that looked like trashcans on wheels. Plus they had mechanical legs folded under them. They had protuberances that indicated where weapons came out. They never pointed at him. One carried a suitcase that he put down. The computer suddenly spoke inside Djem's head: `The guards are quasi-independent and bound to you. That is so that if I am lost, you have protection. The suitcase has a vacuum suit in it. That is for you in case of emergency. The guards will know what to do, as will you. Emergency drill is standard. You will know if you need it. I don't expect any trouble, but it is better to be safe. This whole event is very disturbing.' The cleaning robots left the door open. Djem could see them efficiently and quickly cleaning up. They finished and came out. One stopped and said out loud to Djem, "Since you had essentially nothing of your own in that room, I suspect the attack was designed to inform you and everyone else that they could physically penetrate the barriers. Interestingly, your electronic messages and records were not touched. I don't know whether that was intentional or whether they couldn't. Perhaps they are not as good as your information security. Or perhaps that is what they want everyone to think. I don't know who `they' are. You can go in now. I recommend you let your guards in, too." Djem nodded and went in. His guards followed. One carried the suitcase. The guards spread out into corners and stopped moving. Otherwise, the room looked just like it had when he last came back, with bed made, the overhead screen pushed back, his desk clean. Djem sat down at the desk. He puzzled over why he was attacked. Suddenly, the computer spoke in his head, not out loud. `I am able to see inside your room', he said. `I can see you. As far as I know, I am OK. `The penetration involved non-core subroutines, probably vision and cleaning robots. I am going to add monitoring, just in case they should try this again. But I don't expect anything to happen immediately. I am sure this was simply designed to throw you off balance. Or maybe it has more to do with our internal politics. Having come from Earth, you might be no more than a pretext. But still, why would anyone do anything in a non-conventional way? Our political mechanisms are pretty good.' Djem sat for a few moments. He could not think of any reason anyone would want to attack him. Maybe it was a political matter for his host and he was simply a bystander. Anyhow, the attack got him to thinking about a possible soul. He knew the reasoning and the arguments: what made humans different from other primates? He imagined a chimpanzee. What about humans without language, did they have souls? Did every living being have a soul of some sort? Was there any evidence that self-replicating entities needed to have souls, whether they were inorganic von Neumann machines, bacteria, or humans? Djem considered. He had no sense of how much time passed. There was no evidence for a soul, not that he felt meaningful. He concluded that maybe, he hoped likely, he was not a robot who thought himself a human, but was resurrected. That thought comforted him. Gammae came for dinner. She looked shocked. "The computer just told me of your attack. He did not tell me earlier." She looked at the guards. "I have never seen guard robots before. This is scary. I don't know what to do, except to continue on as before. Shall we go to dinner?" There was another knock at the door. On his screen, Djem saw a humanoid-looking robot. Djem asked, "What do you want?" "I am a disguised guard robot. I should come to dinner with you. Everyone will think that I am just a servant that you are practicing with. As a practical matter, I will be invisible. Anyhow, no one expects another attack. My being here is just to be safer." Djem looked at one of the guard robots in his room. The guard spoke, "Yes, he is one of us. He should follow you." So the three of them set out. Gammae looked surprised. "It never occurred to me that disguised guard robots exist. I doubt that others have thought that either. If we act normally, no one will suspect. I think that is the best thing to do, until we learn more." Djem remembered the guard saying that no one expects another attack. No one expected the first one either. Dinner was good. Afterwards, Djem could not remember what it was. He knew he could activate his strong memory and find out, but did not bother. Obviously, he continued in shock. He might as well live with it. Gammae was quiet, too. In a weird way, Djem thought, she was more disturbed than he. After all, he came from a tradition in which diplomats were attacked, although the convention opposed that. The convention made sense. You cannot negotiate surrender or victory with an enemy if you can't talk with him. So don't attack diplomats. By now, Earth was basically a one government world. But factions in the government sent what amounted to ambassadors to each other. They were mostly immune, but occasionally attacked. As far as he knew, this place had never had ambassadors because they had never had outsiders or factions so opposed to each other that they needed diplomats. On the other hand, Gammae had grown up on Earth when it had multiple governments. Even if she was not a diplomat, she should know. Maybe she should know better than Djem.  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Schedule, Prev: First Attack, Up: Chapter 3 Schedule ======== They returned to Djem's room. The computer spoke out loud from the desk. "Let's move your schedule up," he suggested. "You have more exercises, but by putting you into the public eye, you will be safer. Perhaps we can smoke out those who attacked you. As I said, we doubt you were the motive; rather, the attack was intended as a message in a domestic political quarrel -- but no message can be delivered unless someone tries to take advantage, and none has as yet." In his own mind, Djem continued to question whether the computer or Security, whether any of his hosts had been responsible, but he could not think of any advantage of this to them. He might be the only diplomat from Earth but nevertheless, he was not important. Anyhow, he was completely dependent and could not avoid whatever they did. The computer spoke again, "I would like you to travel with another guard robot. This will follow you around publicly. While I do not expect you to suffer any more trouble, it is possible. The robot will be independent of me or any other computer, so if any of us are penetrated, the robot can act to protect you. "Please pretend the guard robot is your seniors' idea from back on Earth." To Djem, this indicated that his hosts wanted to play down the attack, to pretend it never happened. The AI went on, "This new robot will look different from ours -- not too different, but enough different that people will think of it as having an `Earth diplomatic design'. It will carry your emergency suit in a storage compartment. Poor design led the current ones to lack storage. I suspect that the guard robots were originally intended for a planetary surface with a breathable atmosphere. No one updated them. I am going to fix that." Djem remembered about poison gas, but did not say anything. Maybe the Melian robots could carry a gas mask, even a complete, thin-walled environmental suit for Earth, but not a vacuum suit. Djem decided to accept another guard. The new guard robot came down the hall immediately. Djem saw it through his computer screen and nodded to let it in. One of the guard robots opened the door. Its body was wider than the other robots. Presumably, the emergency suit was stored within. The robot rolled on only four wheels, not six. Even with its extra width, it did not take up more space than a fat human. Like the other guards, it had legs folded under it and a ring of sensors around its head. Unlike them, just below the ring, it had two obvious cameras on either side of its head. A speaker grid was positioned between and below the cameras. The robot looked vaguely anthroform. When moving, the new guard swivelled its cameras back and forth, like a human guard looking left and right. It could see behind itself with the sensors on the ring, but plain humans might forget that. When it stopped rolling, it did not stop moving, but turned its head a third of a circle to the left and then to the right. Its turnings were not quite regular. The cameras swivelled farther, so they could see right to the back. Except, in the room, the robot backed to a wall and then only turned its head and cameras to look across it. The protuberances looked similar to, but not exactly the same as those on the regular guards. It said, "I can pull my gun barrels into my body, like this. That way, I look more harmless." Like the other guards, the robot had metal covered, humanoid arms and hands. Djem thought for a moment and then came to the opinion that the metal covering only looked solid, that the robot could feel as well as he. The computer spoke up again. "We are in the same time zone as the capital and will organize the Presentation and Reception for tomorrow evening. We won't have everyone there, but more people will be able to come in the evening than during the day. We will simply say that you want to begin officially soon. The Reception is supposedly our business. We will issue the invitations. That will make your job easier and give people on our side a chance to meet you." The computer continued, "Your guard robot will gather a great deal of attention. Few have seen any. None have seen yours, but almost none have seen ours, either, although they know what they look like. The robot will cause people to remember that Earth can be violent. The current government wants people to forget that. But others want it remembered. If reminding them was the intent of your room trashing, they have won this round. That is presuming this is an internal political matter, which goes on being projected as most likely." Djem had to concur. He could not think of any reason on his side for his room to be attacked. He did not think of it as an attack against himself. He wasn't there. Also, the computer spoke of an ongoing controversy, whether to remind people that Earth could be violent. Djem decided that this was a good time for him to start acting rather than reacting. He said, "OK, I will write and send my first report to Earth this evening. Tomorrow, Gammae can exercise me until I need to go down to the capital. How long will that take?" The computer replied, "In the afternoon, our orbital plane won't make for a direct flight. Even so, the trip should take less than an hour." Djem understood that the computer meant an hour that was one-twelfth of a Melior day and night, not one-twenty-fourth of a terrestrial day and night. So the time would be a tiny bit less than two Earthly hours. Djem spoke, "After the reception, I should go to my embassy. Gammae, will you come down and exercise me?" "Yes," she smiled. "I will come down with you tomorrow." That evening, Djem wrote a brief report saying that he had arrived, had come alive again, had exercises, and that his room had been trashed while he was out. Neither he nor his hosts thought the attack was against him, but was for domestic purposes. He mentioned the remark about perceiving Earth as potentially violent. Djem would send a radio message. Fortunately, von Neumann replicators would make the power sources and transmitters. Otherwise, the message would be incredibly expensive. Djem phrased his query about life back on Earth in a manner that would tell certain people in his government that all his messages were cracked. Djem did not know whether that would go through as-is or be changed. He would hear back in sixty years. Presumably, that message would say, in an equally hidden way, that his was understood. But that answer might be corrupted, too. He thought, `sixty years wait, just to receive a possibly corrupted acknowledgement.' He was alone. Composing the message took longer than he thought. He decided that encrypting it was polite, but used one of his weak, throwaway keys. Obviously, since the room was monitored, the key was public, that is to say, it was known to him, his government, and his hosts. He remembered that he should, soon, find out the sociological expectations of privacy, if only to be polite to strangers. He explained where he was, so no one would question the weak key, neither at home on Earth nor among his hosts. For the first time, he went to sleep -- natural sleep -- thirty light years from home. `It was not a bad day,' he thought. In fact, other than being alone, completely alone, it was better here than at home. Since he had been a loner at home, had no family left, no wife, and had few friends, loneliness did not bother him much. He decided he was the right person for the job. He slept soundly. The next day, he woke naturally. The computer said he had time to wash and dress before going to breakfast on his own, meeting Gammae in the cafeteria. The computer suggested he take his disguised guard, that the first display of his `earth-style' guard be at the reception. When he came into the cafeteria, Gammae was just beginning breakfast. Djem got a tray from the nook and joined her. No one looked at them. There were fewer people than at lunch, but more than during his previous breakfast. The food was similar to the day before, both filling and good. To himself, Djem questioned what extra medicines or chemicals it might contain. However, he did not believe that he could trust the answers to any questions, so he didn't ask. Gammae was talkative. She discussed the Reception. "Even though I woke at least five of the people who will be there tonight, including the president, I hardly ever go to such events. I am not in those circles. It will be fun! I like the advantages of being famous without having to do anything. I can see why people fight for feudalism, like the powerful on Earth." Djem said, "Well, you are famous to me." Gammae smiled at him. "Oh, you are so sweet." Meanwhile, Djem felt uncertain about the advantages of unearned power and fame. On Earth, you had to fight to keep position. People like him might rise and take it away. In a sense, his being sent here was a defeat. He had not been around these past one-hundred twenty years. On the other hand, he was alive and in a good place, with a great many advantages he might never have won at home. If he had not lost his soul, if he had been resurrected, he was better off. On the other hand, if he was no more than a robot who thought he was himself, then he had died one-hundred twenty years ago. There was nothing he could do about that. He could only bring to pass what he himself could effect. That morning, Gammae had him do more exercises. First, he did physical ones where he squatted down, got up, balanced himself on one leg. Then, Gammae spoke of exercises that were a day ahead of plan: how to use his internal computer and communications without appearing to. "Without looking to your upper right, but at me, think `computer, link faces and names'. You should see my name under my face." Djem nodded. "Good," said Gammae. "This is so you can respond appropriately to all the people at the reception tonight. We will use images projected on the desk screen. Pretend they are real." First, the face of an older woman appeared. Then, underneath it in Djem's mind, the phrase `Madam President'. He spoke the words, `Madam President'. "Splendid," said Gammae. "That's Eltis ... Eltis Akthorn. Except that nowadays we must call her `Madam President'. That is the protocol. I met her back on Earth. That was a long time ago. She was an organizer then too. She's let herself age a bit more than most people. I think she believes that she has more power when older. Officially, presidents don't have that much power; prime ministers do. That will be Jeltong Pekbung. He will come up next. But Eltis has influence. I think she has as much power as Jeltong, but less work." The next image showed the face of a middle aged man. It got labeled `Prime Minister'. Four or five more appeared, each labeled with a role, not a name. Then the images started including two or three people, the same people Djem had seen before, each with a label. Just as Djem noticed they were all facing him, they stopped facing him and started moving. It was as if Djem were looking at a crowd. Then the display shifted back to showing a face straight on and his internal sense showed him a biography: `Eltis Akthorn, President. An organizer for the Melior Project on Earth. Traveled to Farhaven. Spent nine years there ...' Djem was surprised. "What is this about going to Farhaven," he asked? And then he knew. Farhaven was a planet in another stellar system, a little over four light years away, more than seventeen Terran years travel time. Its star had only one-third the luminosity of Sol. Farhaven had its own biosphere, with complex, multi-celled life but no intelligent entities on it. Human bodies could be engineered and grown to live in that biosphere. Akthorn had done that. While most humans stayed on Melior, a number went on to Farhaven. A few, like Akthorn came back. Others stayed. Djem had not known that the phrase `Melior Stars' meant more than one star. Like everyone on Earth, he had presumed that the movement people went to just one planet circling one star. He was wrong. Farhaven was close to Melior. Akthorn went and came back -- she was away forty-three Terran years, living nine of those. A cynical Djem noted that when she came back, she would be born again and age out of synchrony with the rest of her cohort. If age in one body did correlate with power, then Akthorn had set herself up, at least in the latter parts of each rebirth. On the other hand, being reborn twice in forty-three years did increase her exposure to the risk of never waking. Djem remembered vividly the computer in Earth's Kuiper belt telling him in decimal numbers that the chance of never waking was one in six hundred seventy-four. Now that he enjoyed better internal calculations, or a better memory, he could readily think of that as one in four-gross eight-doz two. According to the computer, the current risk was about half the original. It was not very high. Yet even with the improbability of trouble, the risk was discouraging enough that most people did not want to take the chance very often. It meant that more than a thousand, maybe even a great-gross, of the original human settlers had died forever. Djem noticed that Gammae was watching him. Unconsciously, he had held up a hand as he was accessing his internal knowledge. When he returned to the present, Gammae said carefully, "I take it you have learned now about Farhaven." "Yes," said Djem. "Good," said Gammae. "At first, such learning is peculiar; then you come to experience it as just another memory, a part of your knowledge. Now, let's keep on with the labeling." * Menu: * Attack and Murder::  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Attack and Murder, Prev: Schedule, Up: Schedule Attack and Murder ----------------- _He was happy with the room attack. Fortunately, Melior had done little to secure cleaning robots. He subverted them. Security had not improved in the years since he first learned his skills on Earth. Then he had been working for a respected corporation in its `business competition' department. They subverted the digital restrictions of competitors, but pretended they were not responsible. He remembered his boss: "When you destroy a target's source of income, you destroy an enemy." What a different life now! Still, in all these years he had not forgot that or his skills._ _Presumably, the AIs who dealt with this sort of thing would shift to the techniques used to protect individual's privacy. As far as he was concerned, that kind of security was impossible to break._ _One attack was enough. Now, the Envoy would have to travel with a guard. His presence would remind people that Earth could be violent. This would increase the fear of a possible retaliation for assassination._  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Chapter 4, Next: Chapter 5, Prev: Chapter 3, Up: Top Chapter 4 ********* Telren Dowwen, Taffod's duplicate on Tegmar, made his way westward to the mountains. The sky was clear, the day bright. He could see that the sun looked about two-thirds its angular size compared to Melior and cast less than half the light. He vaguely wondered whether an unaugmented human would notice, but did not bother to ask a computer or library. The eastern foothills were covered with shrub, gravel and grass. The land was dry. The mountain range and another farther west acted as a double rain shield. These foothills were not as well covered as the rolling plains between the two ranges even though rivers flowed through the territory -- the mountains captured plenty of water from the high atmosphere. Worse, the foothills were too far from the east coast to receive back swirled rain from the ocean. They were in a desert. The eating was poor. Meanwhile, Telren composed his daily message to Taffod and Tindark. He hardly had to say why he loped -- he would eat unpleasantly if he did not. Instead, he showed the country. It was not much to see. Imperceptibly, except by comparing strong memories, which he did for his daily compositions, the landscape grew dryer. He dodged the pointy and scraggly clumps of tree and shrub. Besides being able to speak, Telren had other advantages over regular babbos. He could contact satellites. One showed him where to find a herd of Ponellees. It was on the other side of the mountains, eating good grass. He intended to kill and eat one of them. Ponellees were the equivalent of ponies, but smaller and had six legs each. Telren took the body of a babbo. They looked a little like Earthly centaurs, with four legs, two arms, and two forward looking eyes that provided binocular vision. However, like the rest of their bodies, their front appendages were furry, a deep brown. The forelegs were more like those of otters than human arms. Much of the time, babbos walked on all six appendages. Although they had a repertoire of several hundred vocalic sounds, they lacked language, unlike Telren and other humans. Unlike horses, but like centaurs, babbos were omnivorous, but with more carnivorous teeth than humans. They could bite and kill more readily. Many debated whether babbos had human or AI intelligence or were on the verge of it, but without language could not develop more. Years before, the first researchers had landed on Tegmar in human form. They walked around in environmental suits and stayed in domes with windows. The windows meant babbos could watch the humans as well as the reverse. By watching, several babbos learned card games. Somehow, they also stole several packs of cards. At first, the researchers simply put that to `monkey curiosity'. But then they saw the babbos pass on their learning to others. All played. To the researchers, the babbo development told them that the babbos could learn new categories and enjoyed using them to sort. Of itself, playing cards did not help. On Earth, various non-human primates had culture. However, the capability meant that a band could go into a new environment and learn to survive quickly. One or two would discover a new fruit and eat it. If they fell sick or died, the band would avoid that type of fruit. If they thrived, others would eat. This came to be observed. The species could adapt inside of a generation, rather than depend on the proliferate and prune nature of life and death over many generations. The researchers generally held that a short term interest in categories came from an internally felt pleasure, whether the categories were cards or fruit. Otherwise, no one would pay attention at the right moment. Pleasure-based interest meant that short term actions which were irrelevant to survival, like card playing, or even detrimental, meshed with long-term adaptive advantages, like picking a safe food. Others argued that card playing kept bands together and made them stronger. According to this thesis, card playing had both its short and long-term adaptive advantages, they just were not so obvious as eating the right fruit. In any case, the results meant that if babbo voice boxes changed to support more consonants, spoken language would follow. But no human or AI could imagine what would favor such a mutation before language. Maybe nothing would. Without selection to favor it, such a mutation might not spread for a great of years or even a great-gross of years. Fortunately, there was no reason to expect such a mutation to hurt either. So over many generations, it would spread among descendants. Only sometime later would language convey an advantage to those bands composed of such descendants. Other than that, the first humans discovered little. Their shapes confused the babbos too much. Eventually, the various Tegmar research councils got together and decided to ban human shapes from being seen by babbos. This was made easier by the newly invented technology that enabled humans to be reborn in babbo form. Lentergrin was the first. A few more humans followed him, not many. He settled on Tegmar, and unlike any humans-in-human-form, joined a babbo band. That was how he discovered that some babbos left one band and joined another -- he named them `wanderers' but decided later, too late, that was a bad choice of word. Other researchers confirmed his observations. He became an authority and developed into a wonderful teacher. Telren thought that people more like himself, more social, would have discovered more about babbo society than a person like Lentergrin. On the other hand, Telren had no interest in spending a dozen or more of the long Tegmar years in one band, pretending to be a pure babbo. Babbo studies needed people as dedicated as Lentergrin. Telren thought of him and his colleagues as somewhat crazy, but he was not going to do as they did, so it was worth having them around. Telren remembered looking out a window when he was in school, when he was very young. Besides the cherry trees in spring for their blossoms and at other times, each day he walked beside an apple tree with dense cluster of dead branches low down on its trunk. Telren had learned about that kind of apple tree. The location and form of the branches provided highly suggestive evidence that the tree had suffered heavy and repeated browsing in its youth. That meant that before it became a school ground, the tree sat in a pasture. The evidence became less strong as it departed further from the immediate, but Telren could not imagine any alternative. Telren did not think Taffod had ever read the kind of book that would teach him, at least not voluntarily. He, like Tindark, wanted to look with his own eyes and distrusted `book learning'. That meant both tended to use the abilities they were born with as interpreted through paradigms they had not considered. With books, Telren thought, you had a higher chance of figuring out whether the notions in them were suggestive or not. For that reason, Telren was willing to be more indirect. But a computer might have inserted information into a data packet before a person was reborn. Telren said to himself, `That is an advantage of rebirth. Even those who do not want to learn can. Of course,' it was obvious, `everyone has to trust that the computers only adjust the data packets beneficially.' Telren remembered from Taffod's memories that computers and governments on Earth were not trustworthy. Melior was better. Meanwhile, Telren loped away from the coast. That had been much nicer. It had forests, swamps, and grass. He ate well there. Now he headed towards the mountains. Up and down, left and right; he continued to moved fairly quickly towards the mountains, but not as quickly as if he had been able to go direct. He avoided trees and shrubs. According to the satellite maps and his internal computer, he was following the best route. He knew that if he stayed in the region long enough -- he could eat by the rivers or in them, they had plenty of fish -- he would start to enjoy the landscape. The barren land would not bother him any more. He would learn to see its beauty. But now he hated it. The land looked gravelly and grungy. He hoped to reach grassier and higher hills by evening. He did not imagine he would eat well tonight, but he hoped to sleep comfortably and start out for the high mountains early tomorrow morning. Telren was alone. He preferred his own company and that of other talkers. That is one reason is why he left the coast: too many babbo bands. Unlike the researchers in babbo bodies, he had not joined any babbo band; every band saw him as a `wanderer'. Consequently, he took care to avoid seeing any one band frequently. That way no one saw him excessively alone. For a babbo, that would be odd. He kept loping around the stringy trees, climbing hills and dropping down behind them.  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Chapter 5, Next: Chapter 6, Prev: Chapter 4, Up: Top Chapter 5 ********* After another tea, Gammae said she had to prepare for the trip. Djem went back to his room, found clothes laid out on his bed, and dressed for the first time since he was resurrected or roboticized. On Earth, no one would have remarked. The clothing included a jacket, albeit without tails. It was appropriate for a formal affair, as well as being suitable for travel. The suit was well made. It had the extravaganzas that Djem expected, like lapels, but did not look like the local clothing Djem had seen in the cafeteria. It was not too different -- perhaps only its lapels were a little wider -- but it marked Djem as foreign. Gammae returned with a small bag and the station said it was time to go down to the planet. To reach their transport, Djem, Gammae, and the undisguised guard robot rode an elevator up to the spindle. They entered a little room with handles on the padded walls and bars near the floor. In uppercase letters, the floor said `FLOOR'. The word was oriented towards the door. The ceiling said `CEILING'. The wall on the right said `SPINWARD WALL' and the one on the left said `ANTI-SPINWARD WALL'. Djem knew, again with knowledge inserted into his head, that when the elevator slowed as it entered the spindle he was supposed to hook his toes under the obvious, but not ugly, bars at the bases of the spinward and anti-spinward walls. Going up, he could expect Coriolis acceleration towards the spinward wall. So he walked over to the right. It was exactly as he expected. He leaned against the wall and grabbed a hand hold rather than stick his toes under the bar. When the elevator decelerated, his feet rose up and, using the hand hold as a brace, he ended up floating horizontally when the elevator stopped. The tiniest push sent him out the door. Although he noticed a slight downward acceleration, it was not enough to prevent him from acting as if he were in free fall. His guard robot went ahead. Djem followed him. Gammae came last. From the room in the spindle, Djem dove down a short passage, went down a tube with an elbow and two airlocks, and came into an aerobody cabin. The cabin was only big enough for him, Gammae, his guard, and one more. But there wasn't any other. The space was small. A slightly bigger downward acceleration pointed towards the floor. `That is why,' he thought, `the connecting tube has an elbow; it goes straight out from the spindle then turns to connect to the side of the rocket.' The aerobody had the first windows Djem had seen, although he knew the space station had a room with windows. Through two windows on the left, stars seemed to come from behind. Looking out, Djem could see the universe slowly twirl around, with the spindle at the tops. He sat in the right front passenger seat. The window to his right showed the outside of the spindle extending away with a patch of slowly moving stars beyond it. The hatch was on the right side of the aerobody, not the left. It was exactly the opposite of the Earth convention. Someone had decided. It was very strange. But then Djem remembered that on Earth, those who drove, drove on the right because of the French revolution. The computer pilot asked him and Gammae to belt in and said that after drifting away from the station, the aerobody would retrofire for a short time to lower the perigee of its orbit, and then turn around to enter the atmosphere front first. The flight was remarkably smooth. Once in the air, radar from the aerobody bounced off variations and the computer compensated. After the reentry glow vanished, Djem saw clouds far below, then land, then human works as they came even lower. The landing gear extended with noticeable thumps. Gammae spoke, saying that she thought that the thumps must indicate a human factors design, since they told the passengers that the gear was down. Djem did not pay attention, since he was too busy looking out the window. He spent the whole time looking. It was not until later that he remembered that through his internal link he could receive real-time images from observational satellites. The aerobody landed. It used jet turbines to taxi to the terminal. Except for being smaller, the terminal building looked rather like those on Earth. Indeed, just as on Earth, a flexible tunnel connected to the aerobody's hatch, which is to say, its door. There was no hiss when the tunnel connected, but after the door opened Djem noticed a slightly different smell -- that of the inside of a building. Djem walked through the tunnel into the terminal proper. There, the Interior and Foreign Minister, a single person, met him, Gammae, and the guard. "Welcome to Melior," he said to Djem, who responded appropriately. Djem was amused. He did not show it, but Kulray Pakkard's biography made it evident that the government had only recently added `Foreign' to the minister's title. Djem guessed that everyone, including the AIs, had forgot that their ceremonies were supposed to be complete and consistent. Djem had brought up Pakkard's biography quickly and internally with no trouble at all and was now sure he could do the same at the reception. "Let me take you to the Presidential Mansion," said the Interior and Foreign Minister. During the drive, the Minister made small talk. "We like to think of our government as a table that stands on four legs. The judicial leg looks to the past; the legislative leg looks to the future; and the executive leg looks to the present. The fourth leg, the presidential, mediates. Djem held back amusement again; whereas a three-legged stool had to be stable, a four-legged table might wobble. But he did not say anything about a wobbly Melian government. "Obviously," the Minister went on, "civil servants in the executive remember the past and try to anticipate the future. Similarly, judges decide for the future and only pretend to focus on the past; and the legislature mostly makes incremental changes to what they have done before. But Past, Present, and Future, with a mediating Presidency -- that is what we like to imagine." "As for politics," he said, "my party does not want to change much; we are Conservative. The prime opposition want much more interstellar expansion. For them, we as a society should develop the necessary tools. In particular, they think we should encourage AIs to reproduce. Few exist. It would be hard to get humans to reproduce more. The Expansionists also want the AIs to act a bit smarter than now -- I am not quite sure why. Put another way, the opposition wants a slightly smarter machine middle class." "A few Expansionists want longer lifespans, too, although that is not an official policy. Their argument is that natural human population growth is too slow, at least in our environment. At the same time, no one wants to duplicate existing humans or AIs more than currently. The distinction between reproduction and duplication -- for non-sentients it is irrelevant, but for sentients reproduction usually involves two or more parents, while duplication is binary, a fission. As for longer lifespans, there is, as I say, a minority of Expansionists who say that life extension is the only solution. Therefore, they say we should make rebirth even safer than it is now." "(Actually," and he spoke what sounded like a parenthetical remark, "machines can repair themselves incrementally, make backups easily, and last more or less forever. This debate is about and for humans. Fortunately, machines are a sufficiently small portion of our population that it doesn't matter. Indeed, their capabilities are useful.)" "I myself think these life extenders are scared of personal death, even if statistically it is a long time from now. Certainly they do not talk about the social implications of easy-to-make human safety backups, implications we might have to handle if life extension became safer." The Minister smiled. "After a half dozen great-gross of years, that is to say, after waiting a duration twice as long as written human history so far, then we should consider the matter. I expect to be around then. You, too, if you stay." "The Transcendentalists are our third main political group. They think humans ought to transcend. That means waking into an electronic body rather than an organic biological one and then hoping that someday the technology will arrive to increase their thinking rate by a factor of four or six gross of greats, that is, in base ten, by a factor of a million. As far as I can see, this is a cult belief with transcendence as the heavenly goal. "As far as I am concerned, it is quite irrational. But it seems real to many with a technological orientation since it merely involves a speed up. I think the evidence suggesting such a speed up is very faint; but others say it is strong. This is not the same as adding processors to think more complexly, or to speed up a little, like mathematicians do. "The transcendence belief was invented and became popular on Earth in the latter 20th Century. Artificial thinking speeds -- they called it computing in those days -- had increased exponentially for two generations. Many thought they could extrapolate such increased speed for another two or three generations. They were wrong. "Progress slowed on whatever might consist of intelligence augmentation for biological minds, too. Although, to tell the truth, we do have much better medicines for improving memory, concentration, and the like than any in the old days. In any case, we don't have very many Transcendentalists. Most voters say they will try transcending later, if the technology is invented. First, they will try to find out what it is like to be a regular human or AI." "Another group is Earth Beware. These are mostly allied with the Expansionists, since expansion provides more protection against Earth. However, they had enough influence on the rest of us to cause you to be invited. Nonetheless, I must say, curiosity is another major factor. Indeed, I think curiosity was the major factor. Still, they claim that your being here is a triumph of theirs." "Conservatives, Expansionists, Transcendentalists, and Bewarers, those are our main political groups, with us Conservatives and the Expansionists being the largest. We are the `tend our garden' people and they are the `migrants'." The Minister continued, "On Melior we don't have anything like the pro and anti-reason groups, the modernists and the feudalists, that existed on Earth at the time we fled. The legislature even has a good custom of trying to determine reality before deciding what it prefers. "Every party is in touch with the universe, not like your Earthly feudalists -- the romantics on the left and the post-modernists on the right (but they all called themselves something else)." Djem understood: the minister used the term `feudalist' to mean those who did not try much to determine what was going on, those who did not encourage criticism as an antidote to error. In a sense, the minister was correct. The government Djem represented was feudalistic. It did not want criticism, even implicit criticism. That is why he was banished. On the other hand, it was not stupidly feudalistic. It did find out what was going on. It wasn't like governments he knew from history, ones that these people had known when they lived on Earth. Those governments were stupid. Smart governments had destroyed them. Djem thought rapidly to himself. Evolution in action. Proliferate and prune. That happened when you had a bunch of governments and the smart defeated the dumb. It did not mean the survivors were moral or better. It meant only that they were more in touch with the current reality. They lasted longer. When the reality changed, they had to change, or they were no longer in touch with it. The evolution was hard on people who suffered pruning. Under a Conservative government, this society did not proliferate much and did not prune much. So, there was not much suffering. The Expansionists wanted to proliferate. They planned on migration instead of pruning. The extra land on new planets would mean people could proliferate. They were clever, or so they hoped. The Earth Beware people feared pruning at the hands of Earth. The Transcendentalists never spoke of pruning or proliferation; they spoke of a bigger change. Djem asked himself whether future, transcended, god-like beings would have political parties. Probably, he thought, since they would have different preferences and expectations, just like any other thinking entities. In any case, this society's politics were very different from those at home. Djem, Gammae, and the Minister arrived at exactly the right time. Looking into his strong memory and new learning, Djem saw that they had driven a roundabout route. Even though his arrival looked casual, it wasn't. The Presidential Mansion was large, formal, and beautiful. Clearly it was designed for ceremonial affairs, like this Presentation and Reception. No one lived in it. The president lived in her own house. The Presentation was simple and the procedure old. Djem entered a very large and crowded room. He could smell the people. It was pleasant and friendly. His guard, with weapons retracted, stopped and stood by the door. People moved aside to form a walkway down the middle. At the end, the President sat behind a desk. He walked towards her. She got up, walked around in front of the desk, looked at his paper documents, and said "Djem Galt Dorodden, I accept you as Envoy from Earth." They shook hands. Without doing anything, the President conveyed an impression of competence and friendliness. To Djem, she was very good at her job, at least the public relations part of it. He had expected more fanaticism and more stuffiness. Not at all. He could comfortably have dinner with her or do business with her. `Well,' he suddenly thought, `it was likely I will do both. I will have to remember to be careful.' Then the Reception began. Djem shook hands and said a few words with each member of the government, and then with a huge number more. He was thankful for the food and drink brought around. When Djem spoke to the head of the Earth Beware group, the man, a human, said, "Hi, Djem. Good to see you. I hear your room was trashed while you were out, and that the station AI fixed everything. I hate to say it, but I suspect the perpetrators had many of the same opinions we do -- that Earth is a closed-in society that will decay and die, but may hurt others in its last spasms." The man, Gellor Thurnsby, was cheerful and soon introduced Djem to another, older man, the head of the Transcendentalist party. "Gerroej here has already transcended, but he sticks around ..." As Djem perceived, the man's full name was Gerroej Gernsy. Gellor's introduction inspired sputter, "That is not true! I have not transcended. If it were true, I could do magic tricks; I would make you vanish in a cloud of smoke. Unfortunately, I cannot." Gerroej turned to Djem, "Don't believe a word this fellow says. Why anyone needs to beware of Earth, I don't know. In any case, welcome to Melior! "As to why I am here ... I find this world fascinating. Transcendence is wonderful, too; but we are not there yet." Djem looked around. Even though some addressed him informally, the whole event was expensive. It was in the most expensive location possible, the Presidential Mansion, with people of the highest status. No one thought in material terms, but in terms of attention, status, and location. Anything material could be built by von Neumann constructors. Djem wondered whether any of the old rulers had thought the same. What about ancient Chinese emperors? Except they would not have possessed machines, but people. You could not duplicate the location. You could not duplicate the people's or AIs' status, either. You could duplicate the AIs easily and the people over time. It was not the people or machines that counted, but the roles they filled. All that aside, even though another person could have been Envoy as well as he, Djem enjoyed the reception as if it were intended for himself. Money could purchase services or the rights to services, but it could not buy services that you could not duplicate, like invitations to the Reception. Well, money could purchase an invitation, but it would be expensive. Then Djem changed his mind. `Maybe not, definitely not,' he said to himself. In a fully networked society, robots would discover uninvited guests, even in very large crowds like this one. They would stop interlopers. So invitations could not be sold. Invitations and other such services would be allocated through an ordinal social structure; that is to say, the more powerful would command the less. Since there was no trade between Earth and Melior, Earth could not pay, or even promise to pay, Djem's use of scarce resources, his expenses, whether they be for him privately or for him as a diplomat. As in everything else, he depended on the Melian government. They had not said anything yet. Djem expected the amount to depend on how much he cooperated. Djem's last introduction was to a young woman. Leestel Kemmel had light brown hair and dark eyes, was a little shorter than Djem and slightly thin. Djem decided she was pretty. She looked young, and according to her bio, which came up, was young! Not too young; she was Djem's age. Djem said, "You've never been on Earth, have you?" "No," she said. "I am one of the young people, born here. There are not that many of us, even though the population could multiply several gross without running into resource limits in this system. I am supposed to become your permanent liaison." Djem did not know it, but Leestel was quite like him in wanting to understand the universe, able to concentrate and persevere well. Unlike him, she also had a knack for understanding others. She had been picked for the job because her superiors wanted a long term spy. She went on, "Security asked me to report on you. They decided that you would gather that immediately, so they told me its OK to tell you." Djem blushed discretely and, he hoped, invisibly. As soon as they met, he had asked himself. But he had not expected such a forthright statement. He liked her. He enjoyed being assigned a `permanent liaison'! Djem found Gammae with Eltis Akthorn, the President. They both looked younger. Akthorn looked flushed. When he came up, Akthorn turned, laughed, and said, "Please excuse us. We have been reminiscing. At times I think I organize too much and enjoy life too little. Oh, well. These alternatives are not opposites. I do enjoy organizing. But it is fun to remember the irrelevant past, too." She went on, "I do hope you like being here. Speaking more formally, you on Earth do not dare to destroy us, since we would destroy you in return, and vice verse -- a traditional mutually assured destruction stand off. Perhaps you can destroy us through ideas, as the Earth Beware people fear. But I doubt that. I think we are more likely to destroy ourselves by a policy misjudgement. You are likely to do the same. I hope you can tell us where we are going wrong, just as we can tell you. Of course, it may not work. We have already, to no avail, told you where you are going wrong; that why we are here." "We live," she said, "in interesting times. But then everyone who is powerful always thinks that." "Thank you for talking with Gellor. Security hasn't the foggiest idea how the Earth Beware group learned of the attack on your room, or what he had to do with it. But the talk does tell us that it is a domestic political matter and that you are a pretext, not a target. We have not heard the end of this yet. It increases perceptions of Earth danger. Maybe it is all an Expansionist gambit. It is certainly true that expanding would make us safer. That is for me to mediate and you to report." Djem was glad he had his new, strong memory. He could recollect. In just a few moments, the President had discussed interstellar war. By implication, she had confirmed the Melians' declaration of independence. She had claimed that the Earth Beware people, normally considered the least powerful political faction, had a crazy notion about the Earth danger. Except the domestic and foreign affairs Minister said they were the reason he was here, so maybe they were not the least powerful. They had attacked his room. The President had suggested that maybe she was going to support the expansionists ... And she said she hoped he could tell her where they were going wrong. Madame President was definitely an operator. In addition, Djem noted that her words focused his attention on the Earth Beware people and on the Expansionists. He had multiple reasons to do so: he did not like his room penetrated; he was a diplomat from Earth and supposed to detect dangers; and he was a diplomat who was going to try to be friendly to his host country. Nonetheless, Djem thought that all this might be designed to distract him from observing the Conservatives, who were, after all, the government in power. After a few moments of meaningless small talk, Djem said he should go to his embassy. Gammae said she was staying with Eltis Akthorn, but that she would be over the next morning to help Djem with more exercises. Then Leestel, who seemed to materialize next to Djem, said that she would be over for lunch because they had scheduled a tour for that afternoon. She said, "It is essential for us that you be seen, and for you to see." Everyone else nodded. It was not clear what lunch was for. Since he could see no reason against either proposal, lunch or tour, Djem acquiesced. He would need time for himself to think, but not yet. An embassy vehicle, a limousine, took him and his guard home. It traveled on the surface. The trip was short. Like the embassy itself, the vehicle was built locally. Like Earth cars, its tires moved, but not its wheels. In each, the tires were the rotors, the wheels, the stators of electric motors. Djem did not know whether the energy itself was stored in a battery or as a chemical that was converted to electricity. Then suddenly he knew. Djem thought more. Unless Earth could send its own star wisp with its own AI, and be confident it was not subverted, he had to presume that Security learned his every action. As far as he knew, Security could not read his mind remotely. For that, they would have to put him inside a machine. He doubted they would do that. He did not think of what could be done with his built-in radio; but then Melior had not exploited the possibility. A park surrounded the embassy. The whole city center was a mixture of buildings, cobbled squares, parks, and gardens. Pricing did not work. Or else, the grounds were far more costly, in terms of location rather than material goods, than he could imagine. The building itself was fairly small. It did not quite look like any other official building in the city or like any of the private dwellings. But it did not look bad. Obviously, the computer that designed it had aimed for an `Earth look'. As Djem came in, several humanoid robots bowed to him. So he knew they were there. Two guard robots stood discretely back, but he saw them too. They looked almost, but not exactly like the one that came in with him. Now he had three. He could tell them apart. There were no humans. The downstairs was designed for receptions; it had a main hall and several smaller rooms off on the left. The main hall had windows on the front, right, and rear. The upstairs included Djem's private apartment with a bedroom, a living room, a dining room, a toilet, a bathing room, and a miscellaneous room. There was no kitchen, but there were several additional rooms for the robots, at least one of which was used by them as a kitchen. He supposed that if he liked cooking, he would have the apartment rebuilt. It was bigger than any place Djem had lived in before. Djem's office was on the upper floor as well. In a corner, with windows on two sides, it looked to be designed for meeting people. It had peach colored walls and a darker floor. It felt warm and friendly. In a fashion that Djem welcomed, which however might be an architectural shadow of the past, it also provided him a space to work, a table and a display screen. That evening Djem composed his second message home. He worked in the office. Djem decided not to express any theory, but simply state whom he had met and what he had heard. However, he did start the body of his report with the President's last remarks. This brought to the fore her warning about interstellar war. He had never thought about it before, but with von Neumann replicators, a military could easily destroy a distant planet secretly -- and if the target also had von Neumann replicators, the attacker's planet could be destroyed in turn. Moreover, even though Earth officially did not use von Neumann replicators, presumably it continued to have those that built the Melior star wisp. In any case, it knew how to build them. Djem asked himself whether he was saving two worlds or whether everyone in power had learned this years and years before. It finally occurred to him that Eltis Akthorn was not so confident of Earth people's sanity that she could forget the matter. She wanted to make sure that in thirty Terran years, senior members of the Earth military and government would hear again. For politeness, Djem used strong encryption for this message. He explained where he was. But he phrased his introduction to indicate that this communication would be intercepted and decoded. So long as the embassy was built by local machines, there was no way it could not be.  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Chapter 6, Next: Chapter 7, Prev: Chapter 5, Up: Top Chapter 6 ********* The next morning, Djem found he had a valet robot. Djem did not think it was an AI -- why would an AI want to work in his embassy? Too boring. But the robot was pretty smart. It suggested that he put on a bathrobe, since Gammae was coming for exercises. It also suggested that he let the house computer choose breakfast. So he did. That was the phrase used by the robot, `house computer'. Again, Djem did not think it was an AI, but the implication was that house computer was smarter than the valet robot, although neither were sentient. Breakfast was good. Afterwards, Djem accessed news -- he was isolated and Gammae had suggested a good solution. He found that his Presentation was a top item, as was his guard robot. Several news reports more or less said that while the Envoy's clothes, guard robot, and embassy all had an unmistakable `Earth look', probably the design was created on Melior. The news also said he was scheduled to visit the planetary museum that afternoon. Gammae came with a large bag. Djem led her into one of the smaller rooms downstairs. It had chairs, a table, and enough open space for him to lie down on a soft, thick rug. Gammae said that one of the exercises involved touching and she had objects in the bag. But first, exercises. After lying on the rug, touching his nose, raising his knees, and doing sit ups, he stood up and practiced his `ballet' exercises -- he curled up a leg behind and grabbed a toe with a hand from the opposite side, and twisted left and right, all while balancing on this other foot. It was not hard. Gammae pulled out a blind fold. Djem sat at the table and put it on. Gammae said, "I want you to feel each object with both hands and tell me what it is. I will put each on the table in front of you." Djem felt a cube, then a ball, then a cylinder. He described each. Gammae said, "The cylinder is about the same size and shape as the star wisp cylinder you rode from Earth. That cylinder was protected by a ball of solid hydrogen and liquid helium three in a Dewar. The whole was embedded in a huge, artificial magnetosphere. Nonetheless, a good portion of the vehicle's mass was in that cylinder. We call the vehicle a star wisp, although when Forward invented the term, he had a different technology in mind." As if she were still surprised, she said, "Our technology worked." She added, "That's how we all got here. That's how I got here." Gammae asked Djem to try to recreate each touch memory. That was hard. Then, Gammae took him back to smells. Djem found it easier to concentrate when he couldn't see. Those exercises were not difficult at all. After the exercises, Gammae said, "I will come back tomorrow morning and the next day. That will be all! You are doing well with your exercises and adaption. That is probably because you are young. Old people in young bodies: that is hard. Young people in bodies of the same age, but a little better: that is easy." She continued talking, "We don't have many people like you anymore. In fact, I cannot think of any. The youngest who come from Farhaven are older. Not old in our sense, but middle aged. Almost no one your age travels. Also, no one your age has done enough to be declared a national treasure and duplicated." "Dying is scary," said Djem. "Yes, it is," Gammae agreed. "Would we see more young people if it were as safe for humans to make backups as for AIs? Young people die forever. You can tell I grew up on Earth a long time ago -- when I refer to people I often mean `human people'. I don't think of AIs. That is very bad of me. But that is what I am like." Gammae went on, "AIs back themselves up all the time. Their failure rate is sufficiently low that no one minds. Even with a failure, they don't lose more than a day or so. Moreover, it is easy for an AI to wake. Other than learning they have lost a bit of time, they awake ready to go." "On the other hand, humans need robots or people like me. Humans have to connect to a new body. They need exercises and time to adapt. Unless good robots are created, which I doubt, wakening will always be expensive, since you will need a fairly rare human to attend." She stopped for a moment and looked grim. "Or, you can do as we did when we came. We woke the first group with not-so-good robots. But that was horrible. I did not like it at all, although I was pleased to discover I was alive. In some fundamental way, I had not expected to live. My more recent awakenings have been much more pleasant. It is not merely the experience, although that helps, it is the human awakeners." "Oh well," she said. "You are an envoy who sends reports that won't be acknowledged for twice your life so far." "Speaking of diplomacy," she went on, "as far as I can see, one of Taffod's duplicates will go to Earth. You probably will not have to give him a visa. I bet we will make him a return Envoy. The legislature will be unanimous. The whole opposition will support the motion. That is because everyone wants to hear what this version says. Taffod adventures. Many do not. And he is good at describing them. That is why he is a national treasure. He already has two duplicates. One, Telren, is on Tegmar." Djem did know, but he had not thought about it. In fact, studying his strong memory, he had met Taffod at the Reception. And he had met a duplicate! Gammae left and Djem decided to let the computer pick his clothes and his lunch. So far, the computer had done a good job. More to the point, he did not know much about this place, or at least he did not know whether he knew. Djem thought further. The language needed changing. Or he needed to change his use of language. The problem was that information existed in his memory and he did not know it. Or he could access it easily using internal communications. It was not suppressed or hidden information; it was right there if he knew it. In a sense, it was like a public library with books that he had not yet read. No one would say that he himself knew what was in those unread books, although others knew. Similarly, he would not call this information by the word `knowledge' until it came to mind. The information was readily available once discovered -- it was better than being in a library -- but discovery was key. This information about the Envoy to Earth -- Djem did not doubt that the government was informing him though Gammae -- this information was an example. In addition to enabling him to become accustomed to a notion unofficially, which was why the government would be informing him, Gammae used the topic for another exercise, this time in converting information to knowledge. Djem learned rapidly. Taffod Dowwen was a national treasure. That was the phrase, `a national treasure'. The status meant not only that Taffod could die and be reborn at any time, as could anyone else, but that he could be and was duplicated. He could make many copies of himself. That was the unusual right. His duplicates lacked that right. They were like ordinary people. Each replication meant a new person was born into a new body. That person enjoyed Taffod's memories up to the time he died. But the duplicate, the second or third copy, took a new name. He became a different person. He gained voting rights as another person. Djem thought that the word `duplicate' was wrong. Very quickly, a duplicate stopped being the same as the original. `Clone' was the wrong word, too, since it made one think only of genetic similarity, not of identical memories. The word `twin' was equally wrong. There were too few duplicates to bring in a shorter word. AIs could also reduplicate themselves. Indeed, it was simpler for them. But duplication was legally and socially restricted. You could reproduce non-sentient robots or non-human organic biologicals as often as you wished, but not sentients without permission and certainly not yourself. The default presumption was that sentient reproduction was a community affair. Suddenly Djem realized that a married couple needed a license to have a child. He doubted he agreed with the policy. Djem kept exploring the information already in his head. Presuming Taffod followed his previous pattern, in five or seven years he would intentionally die. He would take the risk of forever dying, but most likely be reborn into an excellent body. At the same time, he would provide a replicate who could go to Earth with all his memories, skills, and knowledge. An Envoy born from an earlier self would know about Djem only through information inserted into his data packet. That would not be the same as having lived through it all. Or maybe the duplicate Djem had met at the reception would go. Why did Tindark exist? Well, Djem could report rumors that said that Melior would send a return Envoy, perhaps in five or seven years, perhaps sooner. Earth would not be able to say no. In seven years, Djem's message would have traveled less than a quarter of the way back home. The envoy would arrive at Earth one-hundred twenty Terran years after leaving Melior, two-hundred forty or two-hundred fifty years after Djem set out. As for other information already in his head or easily received, the planetary museum would help. By visiting it, Djem would discover what he should know. Leestel came for lunch. She was enthusiastic about the museum. "I have not been to it since school. We visited it to bring to mind what we had studied with attention-focusing medicines. Sadly, I don't remember as much as I should. This visit should help me bring to the fore what I already have in my mind -- just like you. Except you have been reborn. That kind of learning is much easier. You did not have to spend any conscious time learning." She did not consider information communicated to her from outside, although Djem guessed it contained everything that might be internal and more. And mostly, people had such communications. Presumably, Leestel reflected an atavistic desire to take it all with you, all the time. Then he discovered that in their first life, naturally born humans had no internal computer, memory, or communications. They depended on their organic mind and memory. Leestel did not consider what she did not have. Leestel spoke more, "If it were safer, I would get a reborn body, just so I could be sure that I had all that information in here." She tapped her head. "It's true, it is mostly irrelevant, nevertheless ... "By looking at exhibits," Leestel said, "you will learn what is in your head. Also, a lot of people will want to see you, or rather smell you -- that is why personal presence is important. They want to get a sense of you that isn't conveyed by a screen or by one of the reporters. Actually, a sentient with the appropriate sensors could gather the information, including smell, and you could perceive it internally. But no one does that." "I bet the museum will be crowded. Many will want to talk with you. The robots will let three through their cordon. They will be vetted and safe. Please talk with them in your usual diplomatic way." "Also," she went on, "personal presence is rivalrous and zero-sum; when one person is there, others cannot be. You can be sure that most of the people at the museum will be oriented towards people and towards zero sum environments. They will think of themselves as gaining status by being near you. I am oriented towards people, too, but expect positive sum situations." She laughed. "The museum will be good for the people you attract. Many of the founders were more technically oriented than people oriented -- by technical, I mean, non-humanly oriented. So there will be that reminder. In addition, the whole Movement tried to create positive sum situations." In a complete non-sequitur, Leestel then said, "This lunch is good. I have never had anything like this, but it tastes delicious!" For Djem, the meal was strange, too. It was not like eating anything he had on Earth. He did not know what to call the different servings. Presumably, the computer had designed it to have enough of an `Earth taste' to be strange to Leestel, but enough similarity so she would like it. He did not know, and did not think to discover, that its tastes were merely old. The foods had been copied before the Melians left Earth. As far as Djem was concerned, the food tasted fine. He murmured a few diplomatic phrases. As expected, the museum was crowded. Djem noted that people looked at the exhibits before they learned he was there, but turned to him shortly. He also looked at the exhibits. The museum was well designed. Besides having exhibits that were attractive in themselves, information kept flowing into his mind. The first hall showed samples and pictures of the planet before humans came. It was a world with nothing on it other than single-celled bacteria. This reminded him of Ward and Brownlee's ancient hypothesis, that `Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe'. This stellar system provided anecdotal evidence against the hypothesis: not only had it contained one planet with simple life, this one, it had another, Tegmar, with complex life. But Leestel said, "It's true, isn't it, that most stellar systems within a gross of light years of Earth lack life you can see, except maybe for scum?" Djem responded, "Sad to say, other than to discover out-of-balance atmospheres with telescopes, we have not explored enough." Life pushed atmospheres out of thermal balance. Their detection might be an indicator of some sort of life. But volcanos could also push atmospheres out of balance, so telescopic observations were not enough. He thought more, "That is a good question: has Melior investigated planets within a few hundred light years? Robots could build big, high resolution telescopes. We could build them around Sol, but the government is against that sort of thing." He paused for a moment as new information flooded his conscious mind. "Ah ...," he said, "astronomers from Melior have investigated. They do have the telescopes. Not many want to be astronomers, though. In any case, for nearby planets -- which means the vast distance of a gross of light years -- they have ruled out large, non-natural features. The only ones they see are human on Earth and on Farhaven. That means there are no aliens who use technology. But their work does not tell us about non-technological life, whether complex or simple." Leestel looked alert. She said, "I did not know about that. Yes, we should investigate more." The next hall showed the terraforming. The process took quite a while. Djem had not understood how long. It was still going on. During the initial terraforming almost all the humans and AIs stayed dead. A few woke. One did not wake, even after several attempts. For him, death was forever. Another died of accident. Nello Vergid was reborn again quickly in an already grown, general purpose human body that matched the average with its dark hair and dark eyes; but, like all reborn bodies, tall and stalky. Vergid kept on working. Later, the fellow was reborn again, this time in a replicated version of his own body, a little wider and not quite as tall. He kept on with versions of his own body. They looked different than his general purpose body. He was now an Expansionist politician. In fact, Djem remembered, they had met at the Reception. Humanoid robots maintained the cordon around him. They did not appear to do much. The crowd was good natured. After a few moments, people at the cordon gave up their positions and new people took their places. This surprised Djem. Giving up their positions was giving up their status. Or maybe extended presence did not matter. In any case, it was not what Djem expected. Except for his own `Earth style' guard robot, none of the robots looked like guards. Since Djem's own guard robot had withdrawn his protuberances, weapons weren't visible. It all looked peaceful. A person simply walked around a robot and came up to him smiling. Djem understood that this was the first meeting. The man asked whether it was true that rich people on Earth depended on government-enforced location income? "Was it mostly a rentier economy?" Djem was surprised to hear the word `rentier', an old French word with the same origin as the word `rent'. Also, the man asked, "Was it true that Earth had stopped innovating and lived on technologies developed in years past?" It took a moment for Djem to work out what the fellow was asking. Djem fell back first to saying that technological advance was slow. Then he explained the phrase `rentier economy': it meant that benefits come from stable laws and the like. Djem pointed out that, "All economies need the kind of stability that only a government can provide, such as institutions for resolving disputes peacefully." There was no need to point at the bad side of a rentier economy, the monopolies, the social stagnation, the injustice. Speaking of the good side, successful mediation services that were initially private ended up public and coercive. After all, the world was finite and none could flee. They could only surrender or fight, which meant a successful organization had to be able to overcome them. "Well," he remembered, "people in the Melior movement fled Earth, but they had a hard time." Djem acknowledged that more of the rich on Earth focused on receiving income from protected industries than on physical investment. He asked, without mentioning Melior, "Could a society whose physical economy is based on rapidly reproducing von Neumann machines be considered anything but rentier?" The man left with a preoccupied expression on his face. Djem asked himself whether the question was intended as an attack against Earth? If so, he had responded well. The final set of halls showed artifacts and pictures of the terraformed Melior and its human and AI presence. They did not show anything about Tegmar, Farhaven, Earth, or the rest of the universe. In a picture, Djem saw a younger and haggard looking Gammae. Leestel also saw it. "That's Gammae," she said. "She is our age or somewhat older. But she must be in her second life, since she would have died to come from Earth. She looks bad. It must have been rough to wake up without a human. More dangerous in those days, too. Even so, I envy her traveling out into the unknown. We have it easier." A second person came up to him. This one a woman. She asked whether Earth people expected rivalrous circumstances more often than those in which all could benefit? Djem had no trouble answering that. "Yes," he said, "on Earth, physical needs are rivalrous. It is like all your politics and status striving were extended everywhere." The last hall focused on wild parts of Melior: mostly mountains, deserts, and polar ice, but also quite pretty hills and prairies. Evidently, on more than half the planet you could not even establish a primitive vacation home. You had to camp. And the rule was `bring out what you brought in.' Djem thought that the government engaged in rather extreme protectionism, especially since the planet had been terraformed in living memory. Even with a dozen times its current population, even with a gross, there were not enough humans to fill that space. Or AIs. Apparently, many AIs liked such places as much as humans. The third `accidental wanderer' asked whether Earth's governments consistently failed to decide how well they judged evidence? By this time, Djem was gaining an appreciation of how his host government spoke unofficially. After pointing out that Earth now had only one prime government, Djem said that foolish governments no longer existed. They had been overcome by his government, which he thought was smart. He said nothing about Aristotle's deliberative branch of rhetoric, to persuade others of `the worthy, the unworthy, the advantageous, or the disadvantageous'. That branch was used on Earth. The Melian style of "determinative" oratory was ignored. That involved making judgements of what might be reality, based on evidence of more or less certainty. Only after that did Melians choose. Earth-style deliberations worked fine in a very slowly changing world. Melior-style deliberations were better during changes, although Djem had the impression that Melior did not change quickly either. Djem came out of the museum fully satisfied. One way or another, he had learned about the planet and the people. More to the point, he had unofficially told his hosts important notions, especially the last. Earth should not be underestimated. Its current government had defeated the others. All in all, he thought, a rather good afternoon. And he had his `permanent liaison' at his side. He told Leestel how much he enjoyed the tour. "It was a good idea," he said. * Menu: * Interview with Taffod:: * Leestel::  File: Earth_or_Better.info, Node: Interview with Taffod, Next: Leestel, Prev: Chapter 6, Up: Chapter 6 Interview with Taffod ===================== As they left the museum, Taffod Dowwen met them. He came through the cordon of robots that continued to surround Djem, although there were not any other people. Djem remembered Taffod's face; very likely, according to Gammae, a Taffod duplicate would be the Melior Envoy to Earth. Evidently, Taffod was an adventurer who did not mind sending duplicates off to strange places. "I am working as a reporter now," he said. "I would like to interview you, so everyone here can come to a better sense of what you are like. Everything you say will be on the record. Let's go to a café; I am sure you would like something to eat and drink. And we can sit and be private." Taffod looked at Djem, Leestel and the guard robot -- Djem noticed that Taffod included the guard robot as if it were sentient, but not the Melian ministry robots that protected him. Leestel nodded almost imperceptibly and the guard robot spoke by internal communications, saying simply, "The man and the nearest out-door café are both safe." Djem decided he had nothing to lose; and he would like something to eat. So he agreed. The three humans sat down at a small table. The guard robot stood a short ways off. He looked to be facing away from them, towards the entrance. The other robots did not stop moving, but became less obvious, even though, Djem could see, they had him well covered. Besides coffee, the café offered a