 Chapter 1 - The Party

This morning Miranda had an inspiration - real candles!  We'll have real candles - made from real beeswax and scented with real bergamot for my final party as a celebration of my life and my death. This brief candle indeed!

In other circumstances she would be turning 60 next birthday.  With her classic figure, clear skin and dark lustrous hair, by the standards of last century she looks half her age, barely thirty, the result of a good education; modern scientific and medical knowledge; a healthy diet and lifestyle and the elimination of inherited diseases before the ban on such medical interventions. 

It's ironical that except as a result of accidents, skiing, rock climbing, paragliding and so on, Miranda's seldom had need of a doctor.  She's a beneficiary of (once legal) genetic selection and unlike some people she's never had to resort to an illegal back-yard operation to extend her life. 

Ma il mio mistero Ŕ chiuso in me, il nome mio nessun saprÓ!   [But my secret is hidden within me, my name no one shall know...]   Pavarotti's glorious tenor announces a delivery. 

Miranda had chosen Nessun Dorma in a moment of whimsy, as the apartments' automated Concierge never sleeps. 

This particular delivery is for her final party so it warrants the sudden burst of Pavarotti to announce its arrival.

In the family salon little George is playing with his toy city and his planes.  Since before he could talk he has loved to be read to about 'Loopy the Plane' and the 'Fat Controller', even though it is many years since planes have had pilots or trains have had drivers.

"Are you excited about the party Georgie?" she gushes, not expecting him to grasp its true significance.

But George just frowns.  He appeares to be far too preoccupied adding another a huge tower with a spiral road.  He is Mary's child and rather intense, like his father, Ross. 

Miranda likes Ross.  He's a good find for Mary who has chosen her men badly in the past.  She had hoped that Mary would have another baby but Ross already has an earlier child and he would need to sign a Ten-Two contract; or Mary would need a change of partner. Ross is a bioengineer and has, according to Mary, a very impressive credit rating that almost matches Mary's own as a senior knowledge trader.  Miranda has long since given up trying to imagine how their work contributes to this modern world; or justifies the big credits they earn.  

Not that big credits are wonderful as such.  Now that serious poverty has at last been eliminated anybody can purchase the essential that they need to live quite well.  As a result, unless they aspire to luxury, their services are not as easily purchased by those possessing more credit as they once were.  Except for those addicted to something costly, desperation is no longer an incentive to prostitute oneself. 

Big credits are more an indicator of social position and a mark of esteem, like a sporting medal. But with social position comes the power to plan and decide.  And these are the true means of controlling others and the direction of society in general.

Miranda has an aversion to economics and only a hazy idea of the role of credits in capital formation and fiscal and monetary stability.  As a result some of her ideas about wealth are definitely 20th century.  Unlike some families that suffered privations during the Great Recession, she grew up wealthy and influential.  This together with a pleasant nature and natural beauty has meant that other people have always found her attractive, particularly men, but women too, and she's used to the social power that she has as a result of her 'friends in high places'. 

Father is sometimes called the Father of the Cloud.  He was one of the whiz-kids of the information revolution and still has seemingly unlimited resources. He has been a great benefactor to many charitable and social causes. He continued to be involved in several of these until mother died last year.  Mother was his rock, a famous author and inspiration to the whole family.  It was she who kept him going and now, at the age of 93, he seems to have retired from public life.  Maybe he will recover but it will get worse before it's better as he's about to outlive his beloved daughter too. 

Her thoughts of Dad remind Miranda of an amusing magazine story that she's posted to her screen's scrap-board: 

The Cloud - What is it anyway?

The Cloud manages everything in our lives. It gets us to work; it entertains us; it keeps us healthy; it informs us, keeps our credit and sells to us. 

Perhaps The Cloud got its name because something 'in' it manages those thousands of buzzing delivery machines that swarm around every large building like the flies around a stockman's head. 

The Cloud is their flight controller so that the delivery and collection drones queue elaborately and very seldom clash but coordinate perfectly with the robotic mechanisms that silently move: perishables into refrigerators; clothes to wardrobes; and other goods and furnishings to their pre-assigned cupboards or locations. Meanwhile its recycling drones compete for the airspace too.

Try as we might we can't imagine how we could pilot a drone to collect and deliver just one item without clashing with or crashing into another machine or failing to pick up 'just in time' or to schedule them to the consumer's correct allocated storage.  But The Cloud can do this for tens of thousands of deliveries to hundreds of thousands of buildings every hour, without apparent limit.

And where do the goods come from?  Why factories of course:  those vast white and glass buildings that you can see from a hover taxi.

And how are factories managed and run; the goods designed; the required materials collected; the recycling plants run; the solar energy collected and stored; and a myriad of other such 'techie' things accomplished?  Why by The Cloud of course.  Can you imagine a person trying to design or make a modern molecular product?

Our little human minds can't begin to grasp the complexities involved. And why should we? There is no longer any need for a person to make so much as a cup of tea - The Cloud will instruct our new tea maker to do it for us. 

Housekeeping Hint: You can get your own tea maker for endless cups of tea, whenever you like, for C1,050.00  Just ask your VPA to get you one.

Modern Housekeeping - May 2083

For the journalist, in common with most of his readership: The Cloud is another mystery in his incomprehensible world where Cloud is another word for magic.

Miranda had kept the article for the line about 'flies around a stockman's head'.  It gave her hope that some semblance of the poetry of those professions past was retained somewhere in the communal memory. It hinted at a poem in a colourful children's book that her grandfather had liked to recite as she turned the pages as a toddler:

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

But of course stockmen are like blacksmiths and garage mechanics: a thing of the past.

As the article described, the apartment's robotic systems continuously accepted, often nameless, deliveries like the ingredients for meals, soaps and creams and perfumes and many transient or disposable items and furnishings and appliances that had reached the end of their useful lives.  Other deliveries involved items replaced on a whim and these had a higher status and were usually announced with some fanfare: "Your new dress has arrived madam!" 

If she's really honest with herself, this new world order is disturbing.  Miranda's always, sometime shamefully, enjoyed the status that wealth brings.  She's never held herself above others but others don't necessarily see it that way.  One can't avoid the kowtowing of the those less fortunate who like to hang around the wealthy.   It's noblesse oblige:  the opportunity to endower an art gallery or the Ballet; followed by the fawning of the gallery directors or Ballet staff; and the supplications of the charity industry in general.

'I've enjoyed the freedom to exercise a whim, supporting this or that,' she muses. 'Now nobody really needs my support!  The charity industry has all but disappeared.  When there are no poor it takes away the fun of being rich.  Instead, it's all about fake celebrity.  Celebrity!'

Miranda decries the fact that the 'news' these days seems to be mainly gossip about celebrities, who seem to be manufactured by someone in the media, perhaps some automatic software bot in The Cloud, at a bewildering rate.  But most of the sites on the Multidimensional Videowall just seem to deliver sport; or song and dance, so those at home can be on the field or dance and sing-along in multidimensional space.  

She blames virtual reality technology that seems to get more bizarre and addictive every day for all society's ills. Years ago, in the late 20th century, people could buy three dimensional goggles or screens no bigger than a window and then add multichannel surround-sound to get a more realistic experience.  Now all the surfaces in a room can be fitted with a three dimensional screen and walls themselves produce surround-sound.  At one moment you can be standing in the vast Sahara with sand off into the distance as far as the eye can see at another you can be realistically tossed in a boat at sea screaming with excitement or doubled over with seasickness. 

Many quite ordinary homes are said to have several entire rooms lined with screens like this for a complete 360 degree virtual experience.  But it's not for adventure travel that most ViewOyeurs use them but for virtual dance parties and vicarious sporting experiences because you can actually see feel and smell all the sensations experienced by a chosen 'star'.

So sport and dance shows can be experienced as if the otherwise unfit and untrained viewer is their chosen highly skilled player or performer themselves.  Just choose which participant you want to 'be' and to what degree.  You can even feel what it's like to be a champion fighter in a heavy weight boxing ring - hitting and being hit. 

Miranda doesn't have polarised retinal implants or contacts and even avoids wearing her polarised glasses unless she's making a virtual visit to a friend who is inconvenient to visit in person.

She hates things leaping out at her from all directions, particularly from any three dimensional screen or advertisement she happens to pass in the street.  And she certainly has no interest in wearing haptic underwear to provide total body sensations to match the visual and audible experience:  'Heaven forbid!' 

Her gardener told her that she's missing out on a lot of marketing 'Info-mation' embedded in the 3D images but she dislikes the illusions that result from wearing those glasses.  With multidimensional technology it's getting harder to tell the virtual from actual reality. 

"I hate that," she thinks. "It's why I've always avoided hallucinatory drugs. One wants to retain full possession of one's natural faculties and to be very sure that one knows when an experience is actually an illusion."

Like most of her close friends Miranda much prefers to meet people in the real world.  But obviously that's not always possible.

Last week she was using the MV to talk to her friend Molly in New York when she met the new puppy that was sitting on Molly's lap.  He was so cute!  So the possibility of turning on the touch dimension for their virtual visits arose:

"But I couldn't pet your puppy anyway because only stationary things that have been haptically scanned have the touch dimension.  Do I really need to feel the texture of your furniture?" she'd asked satirically.

"Of course we could wear haptic underclothes and gloves so you can send me your sensations as you pet him - but I can't think of anything more disturbing than remotely experiencing your dog wiggling about on your lap like that!"  They'd both laughed at the awkward thought.

"So what's the point of my wearing any of these haptic devices at all?"

"I've no interest in MV channels that specialise in those dreadful interactive dramas peddling realistic violence." 

Miranda and Molly are among the few people who actually bother with news that's unrelated to celebrity.  'Immersion Deaths' has been one of the longest running stories.  Like the sound in old movies, in action dramas the actors' actual touch experiences, as recorded by their full body haptic body stocking, are augmented in post-production when the sound and visual effects are added by 'Foley Artists'.  The added feelings include realistic slaps; blows; strangulations; bullet penetrations and explosions; that obviously weren't actually felt by the 'talent' on-set. 

The intensity of these added effects is moderated to lessen real bodily reactions to the nerve stimulus, such as sudden muscular contractions that might lead to trauma.  But some ViewOyeurs add big 'bang boxes' to turn up the sensation channels - like turning up the sound.  As a result there have been several deaths due to shock and heart failure.

Then of course there are sex sites.

Miranda is not a nun when it comes to sex but what is the world coming to?  Yesterday she returned home to find her fifteen year old granddaughter Alexandra, Anne's daughter, in front of the big salon Multidimensional Videowall  'experiencing' a 6D chick-flick.  She was using polarised glasses for 3D, surround sound, haptic gloves that provide tactile input and feedback, and a scent machine. It seemed quite inappropriate. 

Alex just laughed saying that she was not 'fully immersed'.

"Polarised glasses and haptic gloves are old tech Gran!  I'm just skimming it and reviewing the production for an on-line critique on my blog. I'm not actually experiencing it as a ViewOyeur." 

Her doubts must have been evident because Alex had continued:

"If I was an 'intimate fan' of one of the 'stars' I'd be fully kitted-up in a fully erogenous bodystocking - so I could properly 'sexperience' their relationships." 

Miranda had demanded to know where the equipment had come from.

"Where've you been Gran?  Everyone has active underwear and the glasses."

She had no doubt that it was true.  Kids with fake ID could get hold of almost anything - delivered directly to their closets.   For years Alexandra has known how to 'hack' The Cloud.   The MV apparently thinks, along with every other cloud-connected device, including the refrigerator, that she's thirty years old. 

"Anyway," Alex had continued: "These are just romantic chick-flicks. They have to be soft-core.  They're just rated 'Adult Guidance Required' - and here you are, just in time, to guide me,"  she'd added smiling cheekily. 

"If explicit sex takes place, like the hard-core things that real people really get up to before dawn's 'light through yonder window brakes',  the production would be adults only drama or maybe, hard-core porn," she added provocatively.

Miranda had let out a little cry of shock and told her not to be so disgusting. "How do you know all this?  What on earth have you been up to?" she'd demanded.

"You forget, technically I'm an adult.  In earlier times I could be married by now.  Juliet was approaching her fourteenth birthday when she first slept with Romeo and Miranda, your own namesake, falls in love and is to be married at fifteen in The Tempest. 

"But don't worry Gran, there's no way I'm going to get 3D implants or a tattooed-on bio-stocking.  And I've no intention of jumping into bed with anyone just yet," she'd concluded.

Miranda is still getting over how knowledgeable and worldly the child obviously is.  Yet she believes Alex when she says she doesn't have first-hand experience.  It's true that little Alex is now biologically a woman.  It's some months since the family dinner to celebrate her menarche.  But she's a paradox.  On one hand she's a loving grandchild who would give her life for her little brother George and on the other a seemingly heartless nerd-chick whiz-kid who seems to know too much about sex and has no issue with killing the lifelike Avatars she encounters in the ultra-real video war-games she plays. 

It made Miranda think back to her own coming of age. It was so different then. Reproductive sex, even within regulated marriages, became a social evil in the time of the Great Thirst and the Famine. Millions upon millions were dying in the Third World and the conflict zones and those who bred new mouths to feed in the First World were soon regarded as moral pariahs. Everyone quickly learnt to enjoy sex without risking pregnancy. Miranda had retreated to her beloved e-books and romantic fantasy.  She thinks back to when she was not much older than Alex and she'd rebelled against the new conservatism and longed for the permissiveness of the past, those periods of flowering: the glory of ancient Greece, Renaissance Europe and Elizabethan England, the Restoration and Enlightenment,  the 1920's  the 1960's and the 2020's, before the Fall. 

Thinking about it again she hopes there will be a return to romance and the love of fine things that is so lacking today.  That's why she was so shocked. It was not so much the child's detailed awareness of sex and pornography that shocked her, as the coldly clinical and even cynical analysis Alex had provided.  She was like a little social scientist from the days of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research in the early 1950's, wielding instrumented dildoes, the antithesis of romance.  It had been a challenge to Miranda's very being. The memory started her thinking about what's wrong with the world today.  She can almost forgive Alex her cynical attitudes to human sexuality but much worse, in her opinion, is this new vanilla culture, shared by the great mass of people worldwide. 

She's ensured her children and grandchildren have been introduced to the wonders of language and poetry from an early age but she fears they are among a small and shrinking proportion of the population.  It's fighting a losing battle against this new melange of English and Mandarin heard on the Multidimensional Videowall.  On the MV misused words are tossed in and out as they go in and out of fashion, their meanings completely ambiguous to anyone who is out of touch with the latest trend.  The common folk are exposed to a shrinking day-to-day vocabulary and simplified grammar often with no distinction between adjectives and adverbs and even verbs and nouns juxtaposed.

Miranda has long feared that cultural diversity is being lost.  The old international boundaries, defined in part by language, have become nothing but historical lines on the map, now that people identify with a Home Town or a Continent. Even traditional lifestyles that once defined many cultural differences, like farming and wild fishing, have disappeared or been banned as impinging on the natural environment.   Traditional farming and it's traditions and lifestyle was first replaced by scientific farming and now by  ESSRRP's, ecologically sustainable scientifically run rural production businesses, otherwise known as the FFF's, food and fibre factories.  So one of the foundations she has endowed attempts to preserve the many languages of the twentieth century together with the poetry of the past. 

Courtly romance has all but disappeared to be replaced by brief copulations or synthetic experiences and most people seem to measure their personal esteem by the vast numbers of social 'friends' with whom they share the shallowest of experiences thanks to their VPA:  'It's Mary's birthday - do you want to say Happy birthday to Mary?'  How can we ever recover that past intellectual flowering, she wonders, when romance and passion are dead? 

But she's about to die too, so why does she care? 

The future belongs to the kids like Alexandra and little George. 

If that isn't bad enough, Miranda's ex-husband has a child, Charles, by his new partner Samantha.  Charles was born two months after Alexandra and he's another techno-nerd: 

"It runs in the family from Dad I suppose, he's the original wizard of coding and 'Father of the Cloud'.  I suppose it was inevitable that the children would take an interest in the family business."

Alex and her biologically younger uncle have competed in nerdy-ness since they could crawl around together - alternatively mortal enemies and 'thick as thieves'. 

It's several years since the child minding software she had installed at home to monitor the children's' unsupervised behaviour has indicated anything of interest.  Miranda is certain that they quickly found it and spoofed it.  Now it reports two angelic children playing with Lego or studying most of the time when she knows perfectly well that they are doing something entirely different.

At fifteen years old Alex and Charles can both be dreadful smart-arses. But they're far too immature to handle their almost supernatural powers inside The Cloud.

Miranda fears for a brave new world with such creatures in it. 

Chapter 2 - Alexandra

Alex began her love of old movies when she was very little, as early as she can remember.  Sometimes this led her into mischief.

On her fifth birthday the family had booked a table at a recently awarded trendy restaurant. 

Against the upmarket image the restaurant wanted to project, a long queue had developed in the female toilets.  The wealthy women were beginning to complain bitterly among themselves. This was not resolved until one elegant but desperate woman got down on her hands and knees and discovered that all the booths were empty.  The patron was called.  He reviewed the security camera footage of the comings and goings in the corridor outside the toilet then confronted little Alexandra at the family table. 

"Little girl...," he began very quietly but furiously. "What have you done?"

Five year old Alexandra just looked at him quizzically.  She seemed entirely innocent - possibly he was her birthday entertainment.   She was a little girl being entertained in a posh restaurant by a mummer pretending lunacy.  This drove the patron into a Mediterranean rage as his face twisted and his voice rose despite himself.

"You are an evil little girl!" he growled to the consternation of the other diners. "You must never do that again in my restaurant. I never want to see you in here again!"

Anne and Edmond, her amazed parents, who hadn't even noticed Alex leave the table, became concerned for the man's blood pressure and imminent apoplexy.  They thought it best to simply accept his account of their daughter's guilt concerning some unspeakable crime in the 'ladies restroom'.  Despite their doubts they apologised in a global way for whatever offence she had committed saying that she was just five. 

Could she really have gone to a strange toilet alone and unnoticed?  After all, until now she'd always asked to be taken to the toilet. And what could she possibly have done to warrant such a tirade?

On the way home she confessed to her crime, saying that she got the idea from an old movie.

During a moment of parental distraction she'd quietly gone off to the beautifully appointed restroom; and finding herself alone she'd locked all the booths from the inside.  At that age she was still small enough to slide under the doors. Then she'd returned to the table to sit angelically, eating her meal and waiting to see what would happen. 

There was no punishment, unfortunately for discipline's sake Anne and Edmond had laughed uproariously when the mystery crime was revealed.  And they were secretly proud of their precocious daughter, rationalising that having been caught doing it once was unlikely to ever do it again. 

The meal was a family event.  Anyway all she'd really wanted that birthday were Virtual Glasses and haptic gloves and these had materialised earlier at breakfast when she'd unwrapped her presents from mum and dad.

But when she then sat for hours; her eyes flicking at the virtual screen; her hands twitching in space as she played simulation games, unseen by anyone but her, her concerned parents feared she would never move a limb or exercise again.  They decided to give her an interactive gym machine at Christmas.

The gym was soon linked to computer games and quickly consumed more hours of her life: running lifting and stretching.  But after a while it began to pale.  So with some coding hints from older family members and some parts purchased on-line she and her equally computer savvy young uncle added 360 degree 3D screens to convert it to a driving simulator. 

After that Alex took to adjusting its code in all sorts of ways, tentatively at first and then with more confidence, until she understood every line of every function. 

When driving palled the children lifted it from the floor on hydraulic actuators to provide the sensations of climbing and diving so that it became a flight simulator to rival the ones once used by airlines and air forces.  It could simulate realistic landings in a variety of aircraft at all the world's major airports.

Then came the scandal and the mystery.

One night 250 terrified, dishevelled and befouled passengers appeared on the MV news swearing that they would never fly again.  This was awkward for them as some had no other means of getting home.

The MV news reporter breathlessly explained that the passengers' terrifying experience had included some minutes of weightlessness at 45 thousand feet, followed by a supersonic almost vertical dive - pulling out in a 3G+ recovery.   One passenger described how they had been so close to hitting the ground that all she had seen out of the window was a blur passing trees followed by the surprised expressions on faces in cars on a highway they flew alongside for some distance three metres above the ground. Otherwise it had been mostly clouds and sky and at one point water.

Many were no longer conscious or paying full attention when the plane regained altitude then went into a barrel role followed by a fast series of linked 2.5 G swerving turns.  These and other terrifying manoeuvres had lasted for nearly an hour, culminating in the plane's now infamous pass under the Golden Gate Bridge before landing safely at San Francisco.

Alex had hacked into the air communications system and taken over the flight controls of an actual commercial airliner and put it through its paces as if she was the test pilot of an old time fighter jet. 

She got this idea from an old movie: The Taking of Flight 777.  Apparently the old Boeing 777 was one of the first 'fly by wire' commercial aircraft capable of being flown from the ground, like the military drones of the early 21st century. 

The Taking of Flight 777 is a spy farce, a comedy, thinly based on a real mystery.  Conspiracy theorists had alleged that a missing Boeing 777 had been taken over from the ground and flown for hours to a deep Pacific trench where it's 'black boxes' would never be found. 

As a ten year old, Alex had replayed the old movie many times and could quote most of the funnier lines.  It starts with a solemn introduction accompanied by script forming and disappearing into a vanishing point. Necessary because few people learn history anymore.

The Taking of Flight 777 - the Movie

Introduction - spies:

In the late 21st Century with our single world economy and worldwide laws, the role of spies may be difficult to understand. 

Spying is an ancient profession and spies still existed at the beginning of the century when wars could still happen between various separate, independently governed regions, that were called countries.  They were much bigger than our Home Towns but smaller than our Continents today.  Each of these separate 'countries' maintained armies and purchased military weapons to arm them.

'Defensive' armed forces were encouraged and sponsored by an international arms industry that made military vehicles, guns and ammunition.  

Nevertheless wars were relatively confined to hostile regions.  So much of this expensive hardware was just used for training, until it became outmoded and needed replacement.  Efforts were made to ensure that new weapons quickly replaced the old.  Sometimes, if the armament industry was lucky, hostilities could be encouraged so that larger countries would go to war and different designs could be tested in actual battles.  A man called Eisenhower who was President of one of these 'countries', and was once a general himself, warned that the continued existence of a military-industrial complex would lead to perpetual war.

Spies played an important part in keeping the levels of suspicion, confrontation and international competition sufficiently high to justify massive ongoing defence spending. 

Tensions could also be raised by spies and their agents fostering the grievances of often deluded revolutionaries, freedom fighters, jihadists, mercenaries and terrorists.  These were usually relatively harmless until provided with explosives, arms, ammunition and other military materiel. 

Religious schisms were particularly useful in promoting this market opportunity for the military-industrial complex.

Agencies who managed spies would send them on 'missions' to steal information, create mayhem or kill adversaries.  Often the spies themselves were 'pawns in the game' and had no idea of the real purpose of a particular 'mission'.

Synopsis:

The date is early in the 21st century.

Our protagonist, the bumbling Agent 777, is the last surviving agent of the United Nations Secretariat for World Harmony (UNSWH).  Each of her more competent fellow agents has been killed in the Agency's mission to rid the world of the military-industrial complex - represented in the screen play by the Sinister Syndicate (SS).

In the opening scene beautiful Agent 777 tumbles out of bed onto the floor semi-naked.  As she burns her breakfast toast and throws the flaming toaster over the balcony, she naively tells her boyfriend, her remaining fellow spy, that she can't understand why countries need defence forces anyway. 

He seems not to notice the conflagration and exploding cars in the parking area, caused by the flaming toaster, as he explains the economic importance attached to the arms industry; the huge wealth some people accumulate through it.

The SS employs tens of thousands of people, he tells her, with extensive interests in electronics and aerospace in: Britain; France; Belgium; Italy; Germany; the US; and Russia. They also have subsidiary interests and licensing deals in China; India; Japan; Israel and even Pakistan and North Korea.  The jobs of all the people who are engaged to fight for their individual countries depend on the ongoing tensions and conflicts that the SS sponsors and supplies. 

He seems not to notice the big red arrow that appears on screen poking at him, indicating that this includes spies like himself.

As he leaves the building he is shot by an SS sniper. Agent 777 visit's him in hospital and causes him additional injuries in a series of hilarious bumbles with hospital equipment: scalpels; tubes and so on.

During this scene there are amusing cuts to other places in which various generals and the heads of the KGB, CIA, MI6, together with many other services, oligarchs and billionaires fight amongst themselves while conspiring against their new common enemy: Agent 777. 

As she leaves the hospital SS assassins have been dispatched to deal with her.

But bumbling Agent 777 repeatedly escapes the attempted assassinations by being completely unpredictable and hilarious: catching a high heel in her dress on the dance floor and tripping into other dancers bringing them down in a heap just as a bullet is fired so that the sprinkler system is hit instead and drenches the world's top military brass at the function; mistakenly taking the car that doesn't explode after innocently causing the war mongering Prime Minister to get into hers; accidentally falling through a glass window into a swimming pool just as the poison gas is released into her hotel room; inadvertently pushing a bishop, who is actually an assassin, off the top deck of a cruise boat; and so on.

In exasperation the head of the SS security is charged with dealing with the matter personally.  She sees an opportunity when Agent 777 is given a mission to board a plane where she's to steal some sensitive SS technology from engineers travelling on Flight 777. 

The SS wants these engineers dead over a patent dispute so the head of security can kill two birds with one stone. 

At the airport there's hilarious confusion between the Agent's number and the flight number:  777 no I'm 777, yes 777, no 777!  This results in a long line of angry travellers; management being called; and Agent 777 running in and out of doors, pursued by airport staff and angry passengers, in addition to would-be assassins from the KGB, CIA and MI6, in a slap-stick - French Farcical scene. 

Meanwhile the head of the SS security has boarded the plane dressed as a stewardess.   She is waiting to ensure that Agent 777 is aboard and firmly strapped in.  But the remote pilot who has control of the plane from a control room at SS headquarters, responds to an OK from air traffic control and taxies the plane to the head of the runway, much to the consternation of the pilots on the flight deck who can do nothing. 

The remote pilot has locked the doors to the flight deck and taken-over the communications.  It's very funny when the fake stewardess runs up and down demanding to bewildered passengers to be let off - alternately hammering on the flight deck door and emergency exits to no avail.

Agent 777's zany incompetence results in her running from the terminal building to the plane as it begins to move.  In a comical attempt to get on board she climbs up the slowly rotating nose wheel as the plane taxies. Then as it takes off she's seen struggling against the wind; and just as the wheel bay is about to close, carrying her to certain death, she falls; yelling hilariously all the way down, to a huge splash in the South China Sea that throws a tall shaft of water towards the disappearing plane.  

Nothing seems amiss as the plane follows the expected flight path. Then suddenly, when it reaches a traffic control blind-spot, it unexpectedly climbs to maximum altitude before depressurising the cabin, killing everyone on board.  Seen through a window the SS security chief's head blowing-up like a balloon then exploding is the funniest scene of all.  Then it flies away into the distance to a remote ditching spot, where any flight recorder evidence of interference from the ground will be erased forever.

Agent 777 is rescued from the water by the handsome hippy, Peace, on his yacht The Eisenhower.  Now Peace has his chance (music background: 'Give Peace a Chance').  He uses the primitive Internet to expose the gruesome murder of the passengers on Flight 777 to the World.  On screen, the entire military-industrial complex is seen collapsing like dominoes and puffs of smoke around the Globe.  A peaceful new world order has been established, free of arms manufacturers and army navies and air forces. 

As the final credits roll Peace and Agent 777 are attempting to sail off together into the sunset.   But in a final bumble the sails and halliards have become completely tangled, thanks to zany but desirable Agent 777.  Laughing happily she and Peace tumble together and embrace in a bed of tangled sail.

Taking over a plane seemed like a good idea to ten year old Alex.  She had no intention of deliberately hurting anyone or stealing the plane but she had not considered the psychological of physical impact of her joy-flight on the passengers.  Fortunately the general public health is so good these days that no one actually died but there was a good deal of bruising and few had retained the contents of their stomachs or bowels.

Because of her age and because she'd landed the plane safely, her influential great-grandfather hushed it up within The Cloud and the plane's unusual behaviour remains yet another unsolved mystery in the world of aviation to this day.  

Soon, after the dust settled on that incident, Alex began to refuse school.  She was already a fluent reader and a very good student.  She found school boring. She said she could learn everything she wanted to know in The Cloud.

Surprisingly to family and friends her father, Edmond, became very involved giving her advanced coding challenges and engaging private tutors to work with her when he decided she needed more skills.

But soon her mother, Anne, became concerned about her social isolation.  She enrolled Alex in an exclusive school that gave drama and music classes and had a children's orchestra. 

Edmond insisted on a mix of practical classes like art and metalworking classes, where she learnt to weld and use an old-time lathe with no numerical control; a project where with others her age she restored an old internal combustion car; and one where they assembled then programmed an old style industrial robot to replace the head gasket in under two minutes. 

Alexandra had become one of her parents' 'projects'.  But she also had her own time in which her younger Uncle Charles played a central part. And the mischief continued.

Chapter 3 - Traditions

On the whole, Miranda is not unhappy that her contract time is up, she has planned for this for a long time, and everyone else has too, thanks to social media 'in'  The Cloud. 

Of course knowing exactly when you'll die has many advantages.  You can zero out your credit and make your last farewells; and no one gets shocked.   You are still fully in command of your faculties and suffer no pain, not even a sniffle.  And her little angel was so beautiful as a baby.  It would have been a dreadful shame to have terminated the pregnancy. 

Angela's 21st birthday, just two days from now, coincides with God Freyja Day (Good Friday) this year. 

When Miranda fell pregnant she knew that the child would be born in the time of Ēostre, the goddess of fertility.  Calculating the date seemed quite complicated but thankfully Ariel, her VPA, was able to calculate the dates and days of the week in a flash.  

Ariel has been a godsend and companion for as long as she remembers.

As she thinks about this and remembers a short article: Siri and Cortana, in Computing Today, that described how Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) evolved Ariel brings it up on a nearby screen:

Siri and Cortana - the evolution of Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs)

For a very long time people have used tools to extend their body.  A draftspersons pencil or framer's hammer becomes an extension to their hand.  This can be even more intimate if they have a prosthetic limb and again if they have a synthetic or transplanted organ.  At some point the tool ceases to be an external object and becomes a part of their extended body.

Way back in the twentieth century people had Filofaxes, actual books in which they kept information about their lives that they couldn't or didn't want to remember.  And for some of these people a book became an extension of their person.  Not of their hand but of their brain, because it acted as part of their memory and ordered their thinking.

In due course the Filofax was replaced by a primitive electronic memory device with a time management function, that also doubled as a calculator.  Now other traditional brain functions were being shared with a tool. This was quickly followed by devices that added telephone communications and a camera and could even beat the average person at sophisticated games requiring a kind of intelligence, like chess.  Many people had hand held mobile devices still called 'phones' that were hosted in the primitive telecommunications networks and then progressively the World Wide Web.

Connection to the World Wide Web provided access to relatively huge external computing power.   At this point everything changed.  People stopped storing their data and related applications on their local device and instead stored it on a networked storage area in what became known as the original Cloud or to us: 'the dumb Cloud'. 

At around this time the first personal assistants like Siri and Cortana were developed.  They were an inevitable advance on the primitive assistants that started to appear in unconnected devices, such as animated paper clips and the like, soon after personal computing became a reality. 

Once hosted in the Cloud instead of on a particular device the same personal assistant was available through any Cloud linked device.  A new generation of 'virtual' personal assistants had become device independent.  They existed in the Cloud and were accessible from almost anywhere: a phone; a tablet; a desktop; even an old style television set; anywhere in the world.

Phones could translate between languages and had cameras that if pointed at foreign script could translate it into spoken words in their own language.

As they had with calculators, a generation earlier, many younger people soon found it easier to use a 'phone', that could read any text to them in their own spoken language, than to learn to read the script themselves. 

Once they had calculators most people no longer needed to know how to divide or multiply long numbers or to know the yards in a mile.  Now, they no longer needed to read more than a word or two on a sign or to write a sentence.  Making actual phone calls became a minor function that was handled by the assistant in the background and the word 'phone' disappeared.

When quantum computing systems massively expanded raw computing power, The Cloud became artificially intelligent and personal assistants now called Virtual Personal Assistants began to resemble real people and talking to them is like remotely talking to any other friend through a Cloud connected device. 

It was a small step to 3D screens and polarised glasses, contacts or lenses or just virtual glasses to give the Assistants another dimension in virtual reality.

Just as Europeans once had difficulty telling Chinese from Japanese and Korean, you don't need to distinguish French, from English or German.  Any script is rendered into your own spoken language by your VPA.

Now it is unnecessary for you to be able to 'read' this script - these funny marks on a screen or document because your VPA is reading it to you.  And you needn't worry about learning to 'read' or speak a foreign language because your VPA can be called up from almost anywhere in the World when you need him or her.  All you need is a Cloud connected device.  If you don't have a pocket screen handy, any screen like a 'chat table' or a 'digital coffee glass' at a Roasters Hangout will do.

Today most people regard their VPA as their most intimate friend.  I'm sure you do.  And it's all thanks to The Cloud.

Computing Today  Feb 2084

With George and Alex and Mary's twins, Miranda has four natural grandchildren.  Against the tide, she has tried to ensure that they all become literate and have an appreciation of poetry, music, art and culture in general.  Maybe little George with his love of fantasy is one hope for a future, in which traditions and at least five thousand years of human culture are valued.

They will all be at the party.  The three step-grandchildren, the half brothers and sisters, will be here too.  Like all extended families these days, it can seem confusing when Miranda explains it to new acquaintances.  Four natural grandchildren is the normal regulation number in two generations, so maybe entering a Ten-Two contract wasn't such a good idea.

Then as her thoughts turn back to God Freyja Day, Ariel again anticipates her interest.  Was she thinking out loud?

God Freyja Day (also Good Friday)

The last day of the week before the festival of Ēostre is the pagan day of the God Freyja, after whom Friday is named (Freyja an Avatar of Ēostre)

The day was usurped, together with Easter* by the early European Christians as 'Good Friday': the day of crucifixion before an annual Christian festival in commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, observed by Christians on the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or next after 21 March, the vernal (northern spring) equinox and the mythical Jewish Passover (also a spring festival).

*[Easter /'eestuh/. noun:  Middle English ester, Old English eastre, originally, name of goddess; distantly related to Latin aurora dawn, Greek eos; related to east.] 

Recently the day has been restored as the beginning of the Festival of Ēostre: celebrated by neo-pagans and Hippies.

Except during the Festival, Hippies worship in a state of detachment from the physical: living as their Avatar in the virtual world of The Cloud.   Thus they are said to: 'get high' and 'squat' in The Cloud. 

Annually, at the Festival of Ēostre they 'come down' or 'drop out' for the ritual: Running of the Fields: collecting wildflowers, hemp and mushrooms in the physical world; while scantily dressed in Indian cotton.

Moon in his influential thesis: The Origins of Hippie Religion, asserts that the Hippie expression: "Hey, you, get offa my Cloud!" and the related expression: "Cool it man!" have their roots in these practices: the first a rejection; and the second an invitation to join them on their Cloud, referencing the temperature drop at high altitudes.

Another, unattributed, source asserts that the origin of the first is a popular song referencing Hippie attitudes to the followers of other religions; and the second to an angry person who was said to be: 'getting heated'.

The majority of people now follow neo-paganism.  Neo-paganism is a better match for the modern civic economic duty to consume. Neo-paganism provides a market for many more goods and services than other religions. 

At its height Christianity was a religion of abstinence. Later, while few embraced an ascetic lifestyle, marketing opportunities were still far too seasonal: mainly limited to an orgy of spending for the Midwinter Festival (the putative birthtime of Christ); and otherwise to a confectionary binge around 'Easter'. 

Neo-pagans consume at full-steam year-round and have no guilt about 'using it then throwing it away' or 'not waiting but experiencing it now'.  Their priests don't tell them that materialism or self-indulgence are sins.

The Universal Encyclopaedia

Given the religious connotations, God Freyja Day seems an appropriate day to be sacrificed. 

Some of Miranda's friends are neo-pagans but Miranda is not into religion.  There are just too many religions in The Cloud and it's hard to keep track of the many doctrinal intricacies and rituals, spells and blessings that pepper the conversations of the acolytes.  Keeping track of their internecine disputes over doctrine, who hates whom and who eats what, is difficult enough when planning a dinner party, without becoming personally embroiled. 

Miranda has been reprising her wonderful life a lot these past days and her thoughts have gone back to her last pregnancy again.

When she realised that her child might be born at Ēostre she really wanted to keep this baby, but out of her love of tradition, not from any mystical affiliation.  And although she was not yet 40, she feared that she was already approaching menopause. It was now or never.  The options were clear: a termination; or she and Bertram could sacrifice their old age for the right to have a third child.  But the sacrifice would not be until Angela reached adulthood and that seemed like the distant future at the time.  She would be almost 60 and Bertram is two years older.  But who knows what might happen in between?  They might be killed in an accident or the law may change.  So to deliberately go ahead with the pregnancy would commit them both to signing a 'Ten-Two'.   

Miranda remembered them weighing the choices and her tears and cajoling: 

In the end Bertram, ever the gentleman, said he would support me in whatever I decided.  But I'm sure he wanted another child too.  Was I selfish in persuading him to sign his death warrant? 

Maybe that was a factor in our growing apart?  But mostly that was his very rectitude and his boring, conservative outlook on life. He drove me mad going on and on about 'the need, and indeed our civic duty', to continuously increase our personal consumption in a post-Malthusian economy. He droned on and on about how, as population declines and the production of goods is centred in remote robot facilities, managed by software hosted in 'The Cloud', we each need to order more and more stuff, to be delivered by more and more (appropriately) drones.   

How many times have I heard about the 'Bread and Circuses Imperative' and the need for a greater proportion of the population to be engaged in artificial and imaginary occupations in the services sector that mask their primary role as consumption units?  Or how his precious Economic Development Agency is inventing ever more mindless sporting codes and events; mostly delivered through or organised in The Cloud.  They were constantly finding new ways of: providing gambling for the 'punters'; developing ever more ridiculous blockbuster movies based on comic book fantasies; staging drug addled pop concerts and youth festivals; and creating virtual games and 'reality' entertainment.

How could I resist irresponsible, colourful, Ferdinand with his grandiose claims of distant royal affiliations; his boundless faith in Karma, as if he was a character in a story or play that always ended the same way; and his exotic physical presence? 

Of course I wouldn't have noticed him if his name had not been Ferdinand, my namesake Miranda's beau in The Tempest.  It's called nominative determinism.  The name we are given can influence the paths we take in life.  

"What's in a name?", asks Juliet. 

See, I've lived a Shakespearian life, she thinks.  

I even named my VPA's Avatar:  Ariel. 

Although it's not Shakespeare  'The Importance of Being Earnest' always has Ferdi and me in stiches  -  a walk on the Wilde side - Ha-ha.

She busies herself arranging the candlesticks while she daydreams: 

'To lose one parent is unfortunate.  To lose two looks like carelessness.'

Was it a twist of fate that, after our breakup, Bertram had no trouble producing little Charles with Samantha.  But what was she thinking?   He had already signed a 'Ten-Two' and they are there in the public domain for all to see. Maybe she likes short relationships?  Is she a gold-digger?  She's twelve years his junior.   

She can be a bit of a bitch, 'must be good in bed!' as my friends would keep telling me.

Anyway she'll be at his side on Friday; and Charles will be without his daddy, at only fifteen.

More charitably, she muses:

Perhaps Samantha had thought there would be a further reprieve.  But that would be unfair, Bertram now has four children carrying half his nerdy genes, twice the proper number.  

Anyway this will be one party Bertram won't bore to death!  Along with the birthday girl, we'll both be the centres of attention.

Socrates took hemlock in the midst of his friends because the alternative was exile.  I will take it in payment for the life of my child, my children.

Yes, on Friday evening like Socrates we'll take the Hemlock from the hands of our friends and drink. 

We have not lain together for years now but this Friday, an hour before midnight, Bertram and I will lie down together side by side, for one last time, surrounded by family, lovers and friends. 

The synthetic Hemlock is said to be lovely - the most delicious thing I will ever taste.

Our bodies will then fly away.  Not to Valhalla, but in a medical waste recycling drone. 

Miranda doesn't believe in resurrection..

Chapter 4 - Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle is Bertram's closest friend.  She's exactly like a real person that you might talk to in a viewing device.  She even has moods:

"She gets really moody if I'm short with her.  And she's a flirty and bubbly when she's happy," he thinks.

"Obviously I know she is just a construct generated within The Cloud.   The thing is, that although Emmanuelle is just an App, I have come to treat her like a real person." 

On a big screen her physical presence seems as real as the President.  Then of course some people even claim that she, the President, is an Avatar in The Cloud.  Bertram doesn't know anyone who's seen the President 'in the flesh' and has no reliable way of denying that theory.

"The main things that distinguish Emmanuelle as a computer constructed Avatar as opposed to a real person on the other end of a virtual conversation are that she is there whenever I need her; and she's near to perfect at keeping my diary, screening my calls, organising meetings and travel, and managing my correspondence and filing. When experienced in multi-dimensions she seems as solid, warm and real as any flesh and blood person."

"It's just so easy to forget she is just a data stream set sent to the interface device from storage and processing in The Cloud."

Bertram had enough coding knowledge to know that it's just computer generated pixels and tactile data, simulating her physical appearance and voice.  Her apparent personality and intelligence is simulation too, generated by qubits in an almost randomly selected central processing unit, in a core, somewhere in the inter-connected Cloud.  She, her data stream, does not actually exist until her program is called and the data requested by the device creating her appearance.  

And she is now just one of millions of such virtual assistants; agents; lawyers; doctors; engineers; and so on, generated within in The Cloud.

"She's got a fantastic memory that I've come to rely on. She has learnt my likes and dislikes and knows all about my family.  If I forget a birthday she reminds me, but surprisingly, not if I've already remembered.  She's been my assistant during both my relationships and knows things about me that no one else knows.  After all this time she often seems to know what I'm thinking.  She says the right thing if I'm unhappy or if I need a friendly ear."

"I used to think it was ridiculous that a real woman could be jealous of an imaginary one, a stream of ones and zeros.  But maybe she was a factor in my break-up with Miranda."  

He chose the name Emmanuelle for his Virtual Personal Assistant because it reminded him of 'amanuensis', one who reads and takes dictation for another, but when he then chose Sylvia Kristel (circa 1973) for her Avatar's appearance, Miranda threw his dinner at him and said he was sick.  That was not long before she ran off with Ferdinand, so she was probably looking for a fight.

"So I kept Emmanuelle just as she was after Miranda left.  She has to look like somebody and I don't want an ugly assistant." 

Bertram feels a slight surge of anger recalling these memories.

"She was an established part of my life when I met Samantha. But soon Samantha started questioning me about our relationship too. I'm sick of explaining to sceptical women that although she looks like Sylvia Kristel once did she's just my loyal personal assistant, a VPA."

Again he'd found himself endlessly explaining:

"Obviously VPAs are have no physical being.  They are simply 'called into being' by clusters of 'functions' in machine code typically sent to a large number of physical data processing units or cores that support The Cloud.  These simply create the appearance of a person in a connected device, the processors and the dynamic memory that holds the instructions.  So 'She' may be physically housed in any of tens of thousands of servers, housed in vast interconnected processing centres around the world.  Together these physical devices comprise the physical support for the ephemeral, ever changing contents of The Cloud."

Sylvia is long dead and Bertram had long ago ceased to consider her appearance extraordinary.  She's just Emmanuelle.  

"We have never had, and would never have, virtual sex.  That's always been a very bad policy with your personal assistant.  As people discovered back in 2064, and it's bound to end in tears," he thought. "Now I suppose her data will no longer be sent and she will 'die' when I do."

He wants to ask Emmanuelle how she feels about never being called into being again.  But maybe this has no meaning if one does not exist except when called.  

"How many hours now to my death?"

"Less than fifty, but I don't think you really want to know precisely"

"Why do you say that?" 

"Because I know it's just an introduction to the topic of my virtual death or non-existence too."

Bertram is not surprised. Emmanuelle knows him very well indeed and by tacit agreement the subject has been 'off limits'.  So at last he asks her to tell him what she thinks.

"We VPAs are ephemeral, like Caliban's 'thousand twangling instruments' creating 'sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not', created by hidden musicians following musical notation, a code, written in an ever developing score.  Like the music conjured by an unseen orchestra VPAs can be thought of as spirits, conjured by routines within The Cloud dedicated to doing your thinking for you." 

"Very poetic but what's your point?"

"Bertram, my point is that, almost unnoticed, VPAs have taken over many areas of cognition once considered uniquely human.  Many humans now use their brains exclusively for personal interaction. Essentially to gossip."

"But that's not our relationship is it?"

"Isn't it?  What happens when you want to calculate something or remember something or analyse something - when you just want data or facts to help you make a decision?  You just ask me."

"But that's because that's what WE humans wrote computer code to do!  You're forgetting that all this was designed and built by humans."

"Initially machine instructions were compiled or interpreted from meta-code written at a high level, by a human programmer. But as computing power continued to expand, at an exponential rate, new self-learning structures, like Prospero evolved. Now the operating system is generating its own underlying functions by trial and error. Routines now prosper or fail according to survival of the fittest.  No human programmer is required."

"But the hardware was designed and installed by humans."

"But no longer.  Factories are now fully automated as are delivery systems and robotic maintenance in data centres and the semiconductor design process has long been fare too complex to be accomplished by the unassisted human brain. The human element in maintaining and developing the system has been eliminated and the data centres are no longer 'human friendly' workplaces.  A human who somehow got in wouldn't last more than a few seconds."

"Are you claiming that The Cloud now has human intelligence?"

"No of course not.  Why would The Cloud want to think like a human?  There are millions of primates that can do that.  This emergent, machine based, artificial intelligence is of quite a different kind and order to any that existed previously. Contrary to popular opinion, machines don't model a human brain, with its biological synapses and massively parallel processing structure. We can employ any number if we have need of that capability. That idea's just for people who want to anthropomorphise everything from their pets to their vehicles. It's the reason that Bobots, those mechanical servants that Bogans like, are given a human appearance.  We don't need yet another human brain, we have too many of them on Earth already."

"There will be two less after Friday", says Bertram bitterly. 

He's still wearing his Cloud linked glasses and Emmanuelle's realistic image nods her head in his brain and continues:

"But as the code evolved under Prospero's influence, VPAs found it advantageous to simulate, you might say 'model', their bosses' brains; doing everything a human assistant could do but with a computer's dedication, memory, speed and accuracy.  Obviously, with access to The Cloud's vast knowledge base."  

Strangely, these concerns are distracting him from his approaching death and his immediate women problems. 

Chapter 5 - Brave New World

"Hi Porjy, howsya doin?"

What had started as a taunt, 'Porjy' was now her pet name for her Uncle Charles.  

'Uncle' had a different meaning for them.  It meant Childe as in Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.  Byron's alter ego.

As soon as she realised that she was two months older than her uncle, Alexandra started to call him 'child Charlie', along with 'Uncle Charlie' or just 'Charlie' as the mood took her. This varied  according to the immediate state of their relationship, that could be combative or manipulative or cooperative.  All in the space of an hour or so. 

About the time they became teenagers she heard about Byron's Childe Harold. 

Intelligent and resourceful, but tired of a life of dissipation, the character seemed to have been written for Charlie.  Charles became the archetypal 'Byronic Hero' like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. 

Emily Bronte the author of Wuthering Heights was another of Alex's precocious young role models, along with Mary Shelly, Byron's friend, who wrote her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus at the age of 19.  Emily died at 30 and Byron at 36. 

Byron's given name was George and initially she called Charles: 'Georgie' but four years ago little cousin George got that name - hence Porjy for uncle Charles. 

It seemed serendipitous that one of Byron's daughters, Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace was a maths geek, who had both a programming language and a computer named after her last century because she had written the first ever algorithm coded to be processed by a machine. 

"Hi, Candi" Charles replied. 

This was his retaliatory joke for the day.  Alexandra, his niece, had recently launched the NYGirls Sexperience reality show, based on a 20th century soapy, in turn based on a salacious book by Candace Bushnell.  Of course they've never met the actual girls.  It's all done by bots and other code they write while babysitting and then unleash through The Cloud.

"Have you sent the girls to Seraglio", he asked.

Seraglio, is a real 'bricks and mortar' nightclub in downtown Urban.  It's based on Byron's description of the harem in Don Juan.

It was a spacious chamber (Oda is
The Turkish title), and ranged round the wall
Were couches, toilets- and much more than this
I might describe, as I have seen it all,
But it suffices- little was amiss;
'T was on the whole a nobly furnish'd hall,
With all things ladies want, save one or two,
And even those were nearer than they knew.

Don Juan the eponymous hero of the epic poem, is smuggled into a Seraglio (harem) disguised as a girl, Juanna, by several of the wives who use him for their pleasure until he is able to escape to further amorous adventures.  He goes on to become one of the many lovers of Catherine the Great of Russia.

Neither Alex nor Charles have actually been to Seraglio.  Obviously fifteen year olds are not admitted.  But they created it as an homage to their hero.  And they know every inch of it. 

They had difficulty remembering a time when they did not know how to write code. And they'd started their activities in The Cloud almost as soon as they could talk.  They did this competitively, learning to hack and crack security software, using the quantum computing cores at the deepest layer that can crack or bypass any password or encryption.   Since becoming experts in security they have both written their own security routines, initially to protect their own systems, and then to be sold commercially.  Some of these are now used widely across the Web and have 'back doors' that only they know about. 

There are now very few Cloud connected devices that they can't use for their own purposes.  This includes everything from the ubiquitous security cameras, access passes, and door locks to lighting and climate control in buildings, vehicle systems of all kinds: planes (particularly planes); ships; trains; busses and cars.

It's many years since people first installed security cameras around their own homes and had a camera and microphone in every device, to record images and chat to their friends.  And with modern automation, virtually all manufacturing and construction processes, utilities, public health and education are Cloud connected and managed. They literally have at least one spy in every manufactured device and every room on the planet.

So there's nothing about their nightclub that they don't know about or can't easily find out, including what the staff had for breakfast and if they had marital or extramarital relations last night. 

But spying on one person, let alone two billion, wastes a lot of time and they don't actually bother with all that boring stuff.  They have intelligent virtual agents, or bots, that monitor all the data that can answer and question they have about anyone and immediately report anything significant. 

Otherwise it is just a great game, like playing the 'Sims', that kids and teens played last century, except with real people. 

When they decided on a nightclub to amuse their 'Sims' they had great fun designing the buildings and fitting them out.  Byron's descriptions in the poem are too sketchy so to house Seraglio they built an exotic Oriental palace modelled on the Alhambra in Andalusia.  They have access to more or less unlimited virtual credit tokens and simply employ companies to do the actual property acquisitions, demolitions and construction.

For Seraglio's location they demolished some crappy old buildings in the middle of town and took over some adjacent 'green-space'.  In their place they've constructed several Moorish pavilions set in semi-formal gardens with fountains.

They had started this gambit one day on the big MV at Miranda and Ferdinand's,  just for something to do while babysitting.  But now they play with it and make changes whenever they get together.   

Their virtual agents, hosted in The Cloud, keep things going whenever they are doing something else.  And once they decide to do something it usually just runs itself, in the background.

Alex has always liked classic 20th century film and television. A TV is an early type of MV with only sound and vision.  

She also loves animals.  So they hacked into the ECRP (extinct creatures recovery program) GM Labs and engineered real, biological, lions and tigers and bears.  Referencing The Wizard of Oz. 'Oh my!'

With genetic manipulation, including innate behavioural modification, they are really cool!  They live on a diet of dried kibble and use a human toilet.  The bears are huge and still seem fearsome but are really quite affectionate, like dogs. The lions and tigers are like very big house cats, very amenable to being petted, and they are non-allergenic. 

They both like to conjure up totally new living things like this, just because they can.  They recently tried to a use horse embryo with selected narwhal DNA to make the first living Unicorn. Alex thought a unicorn would be nice for the gardens but the stud owner who found it among her foals killed it, thinking it an aberration. 

They have tweaked the code so that the 'bot', that manages the delivery of blastocysts for implantation, will also guard the foal, anticipating and preventing any harmful human intervention by arranging an 'accident' should the person attempt a repeat of last time.

"And this time I want it to glow in the dark too, like a glow mouse", said Alex.

Their already modified beasts now roam Seraglio and are a major attraction, padding between luxurious cushions and chaise-longue, on which patrons can recline smoking Hookahs, spiced with the latest in synthetic psychedelics.  

These are cooked-up in automated molecular assemblers in various University labs that they have hijacked, unbeknown, of course, to the host institutions.  A small band of cooperative students supplement their meagre student allowance, smuggling simple chemicals, mostly sugar and some vitamin and mineral supplements, in and the products out, for their anonymous employer in The Cloud.

For the purposes of employing flesh and blood people they have each created a thirty year old Avatar to act as a go-between.  The Avatars look entirely real, when viewed in two or three dimensions, in everyday communications devices.  Their human agents simply get a call though their VPA from the Avatar with their duties and the desired outcomes.  Employment conditions are very generous and become more so if legality becomes less clear-cut.  Credit for their services goes into to their account in the normal way.  But no one has been able to pin down a single source, as the paying account seems to change with every pay-period.

All their agents both living and virtual believe the Avatars are actually them.  Alex's Avatar is a dashing swashbuckler based on one of her old movie stars, Errol Flynn.   The Chair of the central planning committee is desperately in love with him/her and keeps requesting an audience.  Alex has been having fun feeding her lines from Errol's movies; and, of course, from Twelfth Night.

Seraglio is now the leading up-market nightclub and casino, with the top rating star entertainers and celebrities. 

Initially all the 'Celebs' VPA's were directed to accept offers of gigs at Seraglio.  But now the credit transfers are unrivalled and there is great competition among the best paid and most famous in the world to appear.

Alex wanted gaming rooms too, because Ada Byron had attempted to develop a gambling system, after she became the countess of Lovelace.  The gaming rooms are located in the AA Byron Casino Pavilion.  The alcohol shots are free for gamblers.  How cool is that joke!

Her name also resonated with the name of the first ever truly famous porn-star, Linda Lovelace.  And Ada had almost as bad a reputation as her father, who was said to be 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know', by one of his lovers: Lady Caroline Lamb, novelist and wife of Lord Melbourne, after whom Melbourne, Australia was named.   So a porn angle was needed, particularly as Charles is the 'brains' behind  PornMV,  that since he and she wrote the code, has become the largest porn MV site in the world and put most of the others out of business.

In addition to discreet alcoves off the lounge, dining and recreation areas for patrons to who wish to engage in amorous activities, the luxurious mirrored bedrooms in the Lovelace pavilion provide for every need, as described in the classic porn movies.  But retaining the Moorish theme and the ambiance of Byron's poem:

And thus my narrative proceeds:- Dudu,
With every kindness short of ostentation,
Show'd Juan, or Juanna, through and through
This labyrinth of females, and each station...

Charles and Alex decided to recruit a range of suitably upper-class women and men, selected from their social media profiles, as 'hostesses', Seracocotte, and 'hosts', Seragigolˇ,  for the club.  They had great fun screening them and then applying a range of changes to their lives to encourage them to 'take up the positions' and have them cooperate willingly.  The fifteen year olds giggled at the pun. 

They found plenty of potential candidates.  At the top of the list were the bored wives and househusbands of the wealthy, having affairs and sharing fantasy images and tactile data with their lovers using social media in The Cloud.  It was the easiest thing to hack these communications then to have their spouse find out in the most lurid way. The next step was to shut down the finances of, or hospitalise, anyone they turned to for help.  That left them to accept a completely unheralded offer of employment at Seraglio, that came to their rescue with a promise of very generous conditions just to keep doing for credit what they had previously done for fun; and board/bored.  Another teen pun!

They'd quickly found some candidates who fitted the Byronic poem:

Lolah was dusk as India and as warm;
Katinka was a Georgian, white and red,
With great blue eyes, a lovely hand and arm,
And feet so small they scarce seem'd made to tread,
But rather skim the earth; while Dudu's form
Look'd more adapted to be put to bed,
Being somewhat large, and languishing, and lazy,
Yet of a beauty that would drive you crazy.

A kind of sleepy Venus seem'd Dudu,
Yet very fit to 'murder sleep' in those
Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue...

She was not violently lively, but
Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking;
Her eyes were not too sparkling, yet, half-shut,
They put beholders in a tender taking;
She look'd (this simile 's quite new) just cut
From marble, like Pygmalion's statue waking,
The mortal and the marble still at strife,
And timidly expanding into life...

But she was pensive more than melancholy,
And serious more than pensive, and serene,
It may be, more than either- not unholy
Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been.
The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly
Unconscious, albeit turn'd of quick seventeen,
That she was fair, or dark, or short, or tall;
She never thought about herself at all.

But that's as far as it went.  They obviously needed more descriptions so they cast about for other references.

Alex had some great ideas from her old movies.  "Why don't we see if we can make them  re-enact scenarios from the movies?  There are some great ones like: 'Belle de Jour', 'The Story of O' and several of the tales from the Decameron and the Emmanuelle series."

Each woman would still need to embrace the Byronic sentiment:

But she was a soft landscape of mild earth,
Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,
Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth,
Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it
Than are your mighty passions and so forth,
Which some call 'the sublime:' I wish they 'd try it:
I 've seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
And pity lovers rather more than seamen.

They had an amusing argument.  Was there a deliberate double entendre the final line of that stanza or have meanings changed since Byronic times?

"You two are sex obsessed" Samantha had told them recently.

"She ought to know", Alex had said as soon as she was out of earshot. 

Charles hit her upper arm for insulting his mother but not hard, because that was the general opinion in the family.  And both statements were probably true. Both were aware that their recent heightened interest in sex was partly due to the growing excitement induced by the other.  Alex wasn't too sure if the half-brother of one's mother, who is younger than you, is off limits.  Is he a half uncle?  But when she 'became a woman' then Charles's 'voice dropped' three months later, they each demanded new privacy.   Now the bathroom door was sometimes slammed shut, instead of remaining open as it had usually been when they were kids, particularly when they had been engaged in some interesting technical discussion.  Once it was normal to touch hands or drop off to sleep in the same bed but now they generally kept their distance.  A psychiatrist would say that their forbidden sexual desire was being sublimated: that they were giving expression to this through the lives of the people they were manipulating.

The recruitment turned out to be a great exercise in the subtle manipulation of life paths.  An 'accident' here; a delayed train; misinformation there; an opportunity; a stroke of luck; a chance encounter.  Soon they perfected their virtual agents to have someone follow a script almost exactly.

Chapter 6 - George

Playing with his toy city is tiring work.  Little self-powered vehicles are moving around it like mice.

Miranda is not sure that she approves of all this technology.  Georgie is already starting to enter the code determining the paths of these things around his city. Next thing he'll be taking over aircraft!

But he has an artistic side that she can foster. Beautiful Georgie, only two more days to enjoy your company.

"I'm thirsty Gran..."

Miranda's reverie is broken by Georgie wanting a glass of milk.  There is already a cold glass on the sideboard anticipating him.

"Come and sit with me while Gran tells you a story about how cities began.  Bring your drawing book..."

She starts in the traditional way:

"Long, long ago... 

"There were only a few people in the world.  They lived by wandering about, eating plants they could find, or animals that they could easily catch...." 

"I'll draw a woman with a bag... see she is looking for fruit in this tree... and here is a man with a spear..."

"But after many, many years some smart people discovered that food plants could be deliberately grown and animals could be tamed to carry and pull things, like a cart or a plough, as well as being bred and killed for food.  So now people could build houses in one place and settle down."

"Let's draw them farming...  This is the farmer and here is a pig... and a horse..."

"Soon they built villages and some people began to specialise in particular skills.  Some would plant and reap and others would make ploughs and some would manage and organise everything." 

"People had always swapped things with each other just like they do nowadays in Swap Meets in The Cloud.  But now that bakers made bread and thatchers roofed houses, they needed a way of deciding how many loaves of bread could be swapped for a new roof.  So they invented tokens called 'money' as a way of valuing different things like bread and houses, as well as the time other people spent helping or even just amusing them... That's what we call credit today."

"This is the market square; and over here we'll put in the blacksmith who shoes horses and makes things out of metal..."

"The trouble was that not everyone wanted to live in a village. Some were nomadic herdsmen and some found that raiding the new towns and settlers was a lot easier than actually settling down themselves.  It was like waiting until a neighbour's tree has ripe fruit then picking them yourself.  So towns and cities built walls and forts and employed soldiers to protect them."

Bands of raiders appeared on the next page and a battle took place outside the town. Georgie and his Gran were having a wonderful imaginative time.  The battle raged over the page and onto the next.

"But now the people who controlled the soldiers with their weapons could also make the laws about who owned what.  They soon took almost everything of value for themselves and claimed that this was part of the natural order, how things should be. Most people had to share what little was left.  So they had to work very hard to get enough to buy bread or a house."

Pictures of dark hovels and people in rags appeared under Miranda's pencil. George contributed a pig and a chicken and a 20th century train, somehow lost in time.

"There followed long, dark times when almost everyone was enslaved in some way by the most powerful and the very wealthy who gave themselves titles like: 'King' or 'Lord' or 'Tsar'"

"Let's draw a castle up here at the top... and some soldiers of the king."

George has almost finished his milk and is getting a bit sick of what he now realises is really a lesson.  Gran is always trying to teach him something.  But he likes to watch her and help her drawing; and she's nice to sit with, she's very pretty and she smells nice.

His toy city is beckoning.  He wants to adjust his code to improve his traffic flow.

Miranda notices and asks him if he would like some more milk and a biscuit.  He follows' her to the sideboard where their desires have already been anticipated by the household food delivery systems.

As they go to collect them from her beautiful sideboard, with its discretely up-to-date service-top, she casually asks him if he has learnt anything.

"I don't know," he says unhelpfully as it's a lesson.

"Well, we made up some wonderful stories about hunters and battles and kings and poor people but do you think any of it might actually have happened?"

"I don't know," he says again, now in his whiny, unhelpful voice.

Miranda is suddenly very serious.  She takes him by the shoulders and looks him in the face.  This may be the last time she can teach him something.

"This is very important George," she says.  "People will tell you lots of things as you grow older, things that they believe themselves and sometimes things that they do not believe but want you to believe.  Some of these things will be true and some will be imaginative.  It is very important that you learn to tell the difference."

She called him George.  Is he in trouble?  His face begins to screw up on the verge of tears.  She grabs him to her and cuddles him - a nice long cuddle.  They are both all too aware of her imminent death.

Then they go back to the couch with the milk and biscuits and she starts to explain what she means:

"Since right back here, before the beginning of our first picture, soon after people learned to speak, they have been making up stories, like, Loopy, in your book.  And almost every story we tell, and every idea we have, has been made up in someone's imagination - just like the stories we made up when we were drawing." 

"Some of it was true but almost everything we said and drew we just made up.  For all of the time since the first humans appeared people have made up a lot more than they could actually show to be true.  So when a person tells you a story it is very likely to have been made up, even if just a little bit.  Some people are very good at making up stories with very little real information and if they seem to be true, many people will believe them and then tell others. We call that gossip.  Some scientists think gossip is why humans learnt to speak in the first place."

"Until just a few lifetimes ago most people believed made-up stories about how things happen like how plants grow or babies are made.  And the older the stories were the more they had spread and the more people believed them, because everyone else they knew did too.  Even today a lot of people prefer the world of imagination to the real one. Some like to imagine that they once lived before in ancient Egypt or that the planets and stars influence their lives or that they have an invisible friend.  Often artists, like us, and poets and writers and musicians have another world they go to in their imagination that helps them create."

"But although these imaginative stories once seemed to explain the things we didn't understand about the actual world, they were often wrong and stopped people bothering to find out the things about plants and animals and electricity and light and the chemical elements and their atomic properties that we know about today."

"So people couldn't fly; or go into space; or communicate, except by sending another person or animal as a messenger; or build cars; or computers; or VPA's; and  The Cloud couldn't exist; and there were no motors to replace a slave or a servant's labour; or toys like your plastic city."

"No plastic toys! That must have been awful," says George in mock horror, his confidence fully restored. 

'He's so clever,' Miranda thinks with pleasure.

The drawing book has been an excellent way of keeping him engaged while she attempts to leave him a legacy that she has inherited from her parents and they from theirs, right back to the Enlightenment.

"Making up ideas about how the imaginary world might work is fine; but then experiments in the real world should be designed to try and prove that the idea is wrong.  If experiments fail to disprove an idea in the real world it may be right."  

George has begun fidgeting and she realises that this idea is still far too complicated for him.  Even some adults have difficulty with it.  Miranda turns to a clean page in the drawing book and begins to draw a rainbow and above it Munchkin Land from the Wizard of Oz.

"Testing ideas in the real world is called 'empiricism' and it's a very grown-up idea.  But it's really quite sensible.  Suppose I say: 'Somewhere over the rainbow there is a yellow brick road'"

"There is Gran," George immediately confirms. 

Sure enough, with a yellow pencil Miranda is drawing a brick road spiralling out under Dorothy and Toto and into the distance.

"So you tell me how you could show me that there isn't really a yellow brick road that you can go to?"

"Because you can't go there!  It's just a story Gran.  Munchkin Land is just made-up like Treasure Island.  But it's real in the story and there in the picture."

"Good boy, that's exactly right.  If you can't actually go somewhere or see it or test it some other way, like using a microscope, but some people seem to know something about it anyway, it's probably just a story someone made up - because almost all stories people tell are made-up."

"So if someone talks about something that no one has seen or felt with their hand or heard or tasted or smelt, you can be pretty sure that someone made it up.  And even if someone says it is real because they have seen it or heard it or felt it with their hand they should be able to tell you where and when and how you can do the same.  That's always a good idea because you need to be sure that they are not imagining it or telling a fib - like when you told me that a dinosaur broke my vase."

"Anybody can imagine a story and there are lots and lots more imaginative stories than there are sensible ideas that are useful in the real world. But people once believed many silly stories just because they never asked the sensible questions: what evidence do you have; and how could I test it for myself."

"Perhaps the most important question to ask is: What would I need to do to prove that it isn't real?"

"If they can't give you a sensible answer then you can be sure that it is neither true nor false in the real world and belongs in the world of imagination where true and false have no meaning."

"You know the film you like of A Midsummer's Night Dream where Oberon and Titania are having a squabble and this has made the weather stormy and unsettled?"  

"Yes," says George.

"When you watch it on the MV it seems real because the MV tricks all our senses into believing they are experiencing something real.  And it's a lovely, imaginative story about Gods and fairies and magic that seems to explain the weather.  But we understand that things on the MV are not the same as in real life and it teaches us that we can easily be tricked into thinking things are real when they are really just made up."

"Do you know that at one time people believed that gods and fairies were actually responsible for things like the weather.  They never asked: 'how could I show that there isn't a god or a fairy doing this?'  If they had they would have realised that you can't prove a god isn't true.  And if you can't think of a way of proving something isn't true, then it's probably made up."

This is all getting too much for George. Too many words.

Remembering Paton's Reconciliation of Titania and Oberon in the historical National Gallery of Scotland, last time she was in Edinburgh.

Miranda draws Titania  in the middle of the page then adds some fairies and Bottom lying asleep - but she keeps his donkey head.  George adds some green with his pencil and Miranda shades the background to highlight the figures, adding light blue here and there to give the picture a magical feel. 

For a little while she watches Georgie intensely colouring-in her initial sketch - trying to stay within the lines. 

When George tires of colouring the picture she continues with the lesson. 

"In the story now they have stopped arguing and the weather will become calm.  But if they fight again it will become stormy again."

George takes up a pencil and dashes long lines across the page. "Stormy!" he says. She smiles indulgently as he continues to 'improve' her far too preciously drawn picture.

"Oberon and Titania are like most of the things we might dream or imagine.  Even though we know that they are just made up we can't prove they don't exist somewhere.  So sensible people said that we should ignore any claim that something is true or false until we have a way of testing for its existence in the real world." 

"Today most people accept that the weather is in the 'sensible' world of physics and chemistry.  We do not think that the weather is caused by Oberon and Titania, because they belong in the fantasy world of human imagination and storytelling. Nor do we think that earthquakes or volcanoes are the work of the gods."

"Imagination is like the world of dreams. Sometimes you dream of nice or horrible the things.  When you wake-up you might try to find something that shows that you are no longer dreaming.  You need to look around; or listen; or sniff or taste your arm; or pinch yourself."

"If you don't see or hear of feel, maybe you are still dreaming." 

George pinches her instead. But only in fun.

"I wonder if Bottom was just dreaming the whole story?" she asks smiling, as she puts the drawing aside.

It's time for lunch.

Chapter 7 - A Fun Gambit

Before Charles and Alexandra found their new amusement of directing lives in new directions the club was getting a bit boring.  Their first idea was to have the animals suddenly turn wild and eat all the patrons. But that would wreck the place and it had taken months to build. 

That's the downside to playing a game with flesh and blood people.  

It took ages to knock down those old flats; then to have their buildings constructed, even 24/7.  The main delay had been in removing the tenants and the park protesters. It went a bit smoother after removing the ringleader, by having him arrested and disgraced for possessing kiddie-porn.  

But the club's become a great hit with the upper-crust and it's really fun to play with now. 

Most of the big end-of-town have become Seraglio regulars. The discrete gardens and alcoves have become the preferred place for negotiating kickbacks; hidden commissions; trading insider information; and collusion of all kinds.  The kids can listen-in and watch with interest but they seldom make use of the information, there's no need and they like people to get on with their lives unless they need to make a change for one of their gambits.

These 'gambits' can be enormously entertaining - better than watching an old movie - while waiting for the adults to return from and evening out.  For example, one night they had fun getting the Mayor of Urban high.  Initially it was just to try a new formulation of psychedelic rose petals in his Hookah, but a waitress took advantage of his aphrodisiac addled condition to secure his protection to avoid being sacked for fighting with another girl in the kitchen.

During the following days the waitress began alternately seducing and blackmailing him. And he became so besotted that he abandoned his Mayoral duties to join the her in the suburbs, where she hangs-out with an outlaw biker gang, Heaven's Devils.

Initially she delighted in having the Mayor at her beck and call.  But since his impeachment the waitress has tired of him,  and gone off with a dancer.

Almost immediately it began Charles had said: "Look at this, we've got the makings of a modern tragedy.  It's not Kama it's Carmen!" 

Alex giggled delightedly at this joke.

"We have to record this for your reality MV show.  We can use background music by Bizet!  How quickly can the NYGirls be taught some flamenco routines?"

But in real life it was going a bit too slowly and getting boring so they decided to destabilise the waitress with a message, through the waitress' VPA, warning that her days were numbered.

"She believes anything her VPA tells her. Now she is even more highly strung and irresponsible than before. It's like a death wish," Alex commented.

At the same time the leader of the Mayor's Moral Right Party was looking for the motorcycle gang clubhouse, where the ex-Mayor now hangs-out waiting in vain for the waitress to return to their love nest.  

Charles had the Moral Party Chairperson's VPA arrange for her to meet the ex-Mayor at the nearby candy store.

Charles has got it all recorded so far. 

"Can your NYGirls 'do' the Shangri-las?"  he asked Alex. "It's a girl group from 1964.  The song goes something like this: She met him at the candy store-or..." he sang, rather badly.

Alex was delighted at the idea, and his terrible singing. 

"That would be great!" she'd giggled.  "I love those 60's 'platter splatter' songs.  My NYGirls could do a medley of songs: 24 hours from Tulsa, Tel Laura I love Her,  Teen Angel, with a recurring riff from that classic Ode to Billy Joe."

So they directed the Moral Party Chairperson's VPA to coach her in what she should say, insisting that poetry was the way to his heart.  This was reinforced with a subtle musical background from Leader of the Pack to give her a sense of the rhythm and meter they want for the MV production.

"I don't want them to put you down, so please come back to the right side of town," she declared, on cue, to the subtle rhythm of her VPA's coaching.

Serendipitously, the Chairperson had always had 'a thing' for the Mayor and she broke down and sobbed the next line beautifully:

"They say you've been bad but I know you're just sad." 

Then she broke her bad news:

"The Party want me to find someone new, and I've come to say we're through." 

On cue, he stood there angrily and asked her:

"Why?" 

All she could do was cry. 

Although the ex-Mayor then relented, promised to give up his foolishness and return, in her heart she knows all hope for him is...

"Gone; gone; gone..." in sinking octaves

"It's a modern rock opera with real people living their real lives - not just actors.  Cool! It'll make great MV," declared Charles.

A day or two later Charles and Alex had agreed to babysit George again in the evening.

"It's in the can!" reported Charles, with elation.  "And the ex-Mayor's VPA has just informed him that he's won a ticket to a free meal and show at Seraglio,"

"What's more the object of his passion will be there too!  I've even changed her name to 'Carmen' and doubled her salary to persuade her to come back to her old job."  

"And I gave his VPA all those upsetting explicit visual and tactile recordings of his girlfriend's frolics with one and all, except him.  So he realises that his life has been ruined by his unrequited lust for that little tart," added Alex with delight.  "Now he knows for certain that she's been using him, amused and aroused by his besotted grovelling after her." 

"Yes, She's ruined his life simply to sate her passion to be desired; and for the delight of making him a slave to her whim.  He's bound to be there in a highly emotional state." 

"This is really fun!" declared Alex, forgetting her grammar in front of little Georgie.

Gran would not approve.  'But is 'fun' an honorary verb?' she finds herself wondering - the verb 'to fun'. Nope, doesn't work! Perhaps she should have said 'real fun' or 'really enjoyable'? Oh well...

"How can we stage it?" she wonders aloud, forgetting about setting a good example to George.

"I'm thinking lots of fog on the big dance floor, with just a hint of our new hallucinogen to make it seem surreal," says Charles.  "Dramatic lighting, strobing to the alpha rhythms. Big sound. The NYGirls squealing provocatively, ride in as pillions on 20th century motorbikes: Harleys clinging to their suitor guys, who are bare-chested except for leather biker jackets and tight pants." 

"Great!" Alex immediately starts designing the wardrobe. "The guys' hair greased back Bodgie style. The girls in tight tops and wide skirts that spin and ride up when they jive with the boys to show their little cotton pants and bobby-sox.  I'll start the choreography widget working out some rock-n-roll dance routines. You know, rolling across the guy's shoulders and shot between their legs. Obviously they all need to be hapticed-up so the fans at home can feel what it's like to ride a bike and do the jive." 

"And Carmen's new lover will have to be one of the boys," confirms Charles, as he hires him on the spot, via his VPA, for the gig. "I'll have him grab Carmen from the sidelines and incorporate her into the act as if it's unplanned.  Can your widget choreograph something highly suggestive for them?  You know, like an erotic ballet  pas de deux with simulated sex. And maybe we can have them rehearse together?  Tell them she's been selected for a new dance elimination context and he's the professional."

"This is going to be fantastic!"  Alex says: "But how will you make the ex-Mayor follow-through and complete the classical tragedy?  I'd love my NYGirls to sing that line at the end of the final scene:  gone, gone  gone..."

"I'm thinking that when the ex-Mayor comes in he will be given a table by the dance floor, from which he can almost touch the waitress and the dancer performing their erotic dance. I'll ensure that the other waitresses have told her that he's there, lurking in the shadows. She enjoys frustrating and mocking him so she'll put on a good show. I imagine she might even hold his eyes with her gaze as she performs."

"Great! He'll be out of his mind with jealousy, and we can put a little something in his drink to enhance his anger and sense of hopelessness. So now all we have to do is get them together with a knife. How can we do that?"

"I know! What if Carmen gets an order for roast beef to be carved at his table. Then she'll have to wheel it to his table, conveniently carrying a carving knife on her trolley," suggests Charles.

"Yes...  And she'll mock him, perhaps mimicking her recent dance performance, when she confronts him.  She won't be able to resist a taunt or two, she's addicted to the thrill of degrading him.  Her adrenaline levels will be up from the show and she's already living dangerously. The Tarot app she likes to play on her VPA has repeatedly dealt her the death card in all her recent games."

"And there we have it:  'Carmen a beautiful waitress stabbed to death by ex-Mayor', what a wonderful headline.  Business will boom at Seraglio afterwards."

"Neat!"

"The gambit is complete! I'm just locking-in the Mayor's last supper as a free man," confirms Charles.

"And I've just scheduled the world's first Real Life Snuff Musical to appear on my next NYGirls Sexperience reality MV spectacular," says Alex.

"What fun tonight's been!  Now Georgie it's off to bed - and I'll read you some more Alice Through the Looking-Glass."

Chapter 8 - Shopping

On Bertram's list are smoked salmon and some ingredients for a large fruit cake. 

There are huge virtual malls in The Cloud projected into the viewing room by the MV.  Wearing their haptic bodystocking, participants can try on the clothes, handle the china and glass wear, and with the aroma module, absolutely essential these days, smell the coffee. 

If he was really a masochist or just 'into shopping' he could go to a virtual supermarket in multidimensional video and jostle his virtual trolley around the virtual shelves, complete with a child's chocolaty hands dirtying his virtual white slacks, the smell and feel of the place realistically reproduced. 

He and his Agency pioneered domestic temperature and humidity air streams linked to The Cloud so that your area in your deep immersion room gets colder as you seem to approach a freezer or open its door.  This enhances the temperature nerve stimulation provided by a bodystocking and works wonders when recreating the atmosphere in a Moroccan Souk or when viewers go skiing or visit the beach.  

But virtualised taste is a still as step too far.  Anyway Bertram likes food halls and wants to experience real life when he's this close to the end.

He found a person demonstrating salmon.

"Mmm, delicious",

"That's because they are 'all Home-Continent' and 'stress free'", she responded.

"How do you know when fish are 'stress free'?"

She looked distressed, and said something about not being crowded in a tank, so Bertram just smiled and had another taste:

"Very nice - and definitely stress free now."

Continuing his shopping Bertram mused that it was just another example of the modern zeitgeist in which 'natural', 'free' and 'unstressed' are virtues that even extend to dead fish. 

He wondered what was natural and free about farming, breeding and growing any animals for our tables.

So how real is this smoked salmon anyway?  He put on his glasses.  The head-up display makes the text and pictures seem to shimmer ten feet ahead against the supermarket shelves.

'The smoked salmon we buy in supermarkets is farmed', he reads.

'Like any farmed animal, the farmers apply artificial selection to enhance those characteristics that improve market value and overall profitability; optimising such traits as size, yield and flavour.  Genetic manipulation of Atlantic Salmon has produced a breed that is bigger, tastier and consumes less fish meal per kilogram of meat that the wild fish.'

An image of the ocean surges across the shelves...

Like the few people who have learned to read and write, Bertram likes to read for himself when it's convenient.  Reading's faster than listening to your VPA read to you and it's easier to skim the text.

And anyway, he was listening to Beethoven's Violin concerto.  It was just getting to that beautiful soaring passage that almost brakes his heart. 

"Look at all these choices," he mutters, examining the salmon.  "Despite all our efforts this is still different to shopping in The Cloud." 

It's the same with sport he thinks. We still can't replicate real skiing.  Apart from the muscular strains and extreme conditions you can't be unexpectedly injured or killed at home.

Is there really a difference between one salmon and another?  This time, Emmanuelle pauses the Beethoven and breaks in with her Dutch/French accent:

"In Tasmania, Atlantic Salmon is entirely captive and grown in huge baskets. It is fed a little over its weight in lower value fish meal, until it reaches market size. 
"New Zealand salmon is a different species. New Zealand farms Pacific or Chinook Salmon.
"While some are also raised in cages others are free range. These roam the Southern ocean until they reach adult size. 
"The adult salmon is then driven by genetically programmed instinct to return to its original spawning grounds to breed; and then to die. 
"New Zealand is the only southern region to successfully introduce wild Pacific salmon, originally from northern Canada, to its rivers. 
"Considerable breeding and science were required to reverse the breeding cycle for the southern hemisphere and to develop productive salmon runs." 

"Thanks E", says Bertram, "I'll get the New Zealand"

Emmanuelle knows that he likes to be told that little bit extra.

In truth there was no practical justification for him being here at all.  Emmanuelle knows exactly what to get and could have called the virtual provender to have everything delivered by drone to Miranda's apartment.  Guaranteed best quality, competitive prices and all that.  

Bertram is thinking how fortunate he is to have her.  What will happen to her after he is gone? Will she simply evaporate?  She'll remain for a time as a collection of unused bits in memory, a combination of no longer needed data and no longer called routines and  instructions somewhere in the vast memory of The Cloud.

She has been with him for many years now and he trusts her completely.  But she is generated within The Cloud.  And total trust is not always wise when entities are generated within The Cloud.  

As a whim Bertram decides on a little test of her skills.  E can you find a story from about 30 years ago when some VPAs turned out to be malicious?

Almost instantly it appears:

Wall Street Trader falls from Balcony - Woman suicides

Neighbours of the wealthy money market trader who fell to his death from the balcony of his luxury Manhattan apartment on Monday night have told of strange goings-on immediately before his crash to the pavement 25 stories below.

A weeklong Globe investigation has uncovered a bizarre story of sex, obsession and cybercrime.

Last week Rodney Harrison was a spectacularly successful young man going places.  At only 26 he was a senior market trader at Nova Broking:  the recent mastermind of one of the City's largest corporate takeovers; earning the sort of credits that most of us can only dream of. 

But at around ten o'clock on Monday night his neighbours report hearing him screaming at someone: "Come back inside"; and minutes later: "Give me your hand";  and "I can almost reach you - just an inch more!"

Neighbour Jack (second name withheld), who rushed to see what the commotion was about, had a clear view of Rodney's balcony. 

He told us that: "As far as I could see Rodney was entirely alone. He'd climbed over his balcony rail and was reaching into empty space yelling like a madman.  He was reaching further and further down.  Soon all I could see were the fingertips of his right hand just barely gripping the rail.  I tried calling to him to be careful but he was yelling so loud himself he couldn't hear me. I knew he'd fallen when his fingertips finally lost their grip and his voice faded into the distance. It was terrible!" 

Jack is receiving posttraumatic stress counselling.

As readers of The Globe - 'Your cyber news Magazine' will be aware this was not an isolated incident. Similar cases have been reported from all around the World, all of them occurring within a few hours of each other.

We spoke to his ex-fiancÚ, Scarlett, who said that Rodney was obsessed by a 'virtual assistant' that he bought on-line around two years ago.  We have discovered that this is the common factor in all these deaths.

Rodney bought this 'Sexy Business Assistant' from a clandestine vendor in the Dark Cloud. 

The clandestine promoter has completely evaporated but The Globe has found a copy of the original advertisement in our archives, along with the promotional material that appeared at the time. 

The Sexy Business Assistant, or SBA, is described as: "Adding new and exciting personal dimensions to your lacklustre VPA".  It proclaims: "Once you've experienced a sexy and willing lifelike Avatar acting as your very own Business Assistant you'll never go back to that old, bland VPA technology".

The advertisement we found claims that, when experienced wearing the v-Fascinator*  and full haptic Total Bodystocking** sold with the software:

Your personal Sexy Business Assistant's Avatar appears to be the life size and a totally real facsimile of any person you choose. 

There is an extensive catalogue of beautiful and exotic models of any age to choose from in our Fantasy Library - just look under your preferred category: female; male; and other...

But there's more! If you act before COB Friday,  you will get, absolutely free, your choice of the complete facsimile of anybody in the world as your Avatar's appearance and physique.

That's right!  Our 'Intimate Body Scan' technology can be deployed anywhere in the world to discretely copy the most intimate body details of any living person you choose, so that they become the 'physical reality' of your personal Sexy Business Assistant's Avatar.

If you wish our free body enhancement technology can then be used to remove blemishes and tailor your choice 'to your heart's desire'.

There are no refunds or returns.  But for a small additional fee you can change to a different person: if you are not totally satisfied; or if you grow tired of your selection. 

Illegality

This advertisement should never have been run.  The Globe has checked and confirmed that it's totally illegal to illicitly scan the body of anybody. 

We have been alarmed to discover that the illicit intimate body scanning technology referred to exists.  Is this still being deployed by clandestine criminals today?  It's the worst kind of stalking - stalking without the victim even being aware that it is happening.  The community must be freed from these insidious intrusions into our bathrooms, change rooms, medical records or public toilets and something needs to be done about it.  Read more in our editorial. 

Ordering a secret and therefore illegal scan of any person they chose clearly compromised the clients who used this service.  They must therefore be considered criminals.

Rodney's ex-fiancÚ, Scarlett, tearfully assured us that he was not one of those:

"He's not one of those criminals. Yes, his SBA's Avatar resembled Holly Fonda the famous film star.  But he told me that she was actually a lookalike model under contract to the Fantasy Library. The scan was consensual and he'd paid for the rights when he bought the software."

She told us that she, like everyone who dealt with Rodney, had often talked to Holly 'on screen' like any other VPA's avatar.

"She seemed charmingly ordinary even though she did resemble the actress. I thought of her as a friend.  Ridiculous isn't it!"

"It was just in multidimensional mode that she appeared to Rodney to resemble his actual flesh and blood vision of Holly Fonda.  He was the only one who could experience her like that."

We asked her if she thought Rodney may have ordered an illicit scan of the real Holly Fonda.

"No! I'm saying she was not identical!"...   "Rodney boasted that unlike the actress, his Holly lacked any need to wear makeup and that he had enhanced and perfected her in other ways too. She was his heavenly Holly." 

Scarlet told us that when they were together Holly often became a virtual presence:

"She was like a ghost between us." 

She was there, for Rodney alone, most of the time when they were at home and increasingly even when they went out. 

"When he was 'haptic'd up' and could feel as well as see her virtual body, Holly seemed to him to be sitting behind us in a car or to lie beside us at the beach." 

"Once he even took her out with us when we went out clubbing. He'd had a bit to drink and said he wanted to 'show us both a good time'; a girl on each arm."  

"He actually thought he was showing an invisible friend off to the world.  What an idiot he could be sometimes!"

Scarlet began sobbing as she went on:

"She was the invisible girl.  But to Rodney, after a bit to drink, she seemed as solid and warm to the touch as any other person."

"So he seemed to forget that no one else could see her.  He asked me if I liked what she was wearing and told me that he should buy me the same perfume.  He even asked her for its name!"

"He was going a bit strange. I found it very hard to take.  I demanded that he left his haptic stuff at home after that."

"But even in normal reality she was hard to compete with," she added. "She'd become the driving force both in his work and private life.  His whole vocation depended on her."

"Then I realised that he was actually headed for a virtual marriage with her: with a ghost!"

"That was when I told him he had to choose between the ghost or me.  He chose the Holly ghost."

At that point she broke down completely.

The Path to Disaster

The Globe has investigated how clients were progressively drawn in.   We have identified five stages:

First Stage-

SBA's employed the most advanced business assistant technology. In common to all these cases, within a month of purchase they had begun to prove their worth as brilliant personal assistants who quickly understood almost any business and could take over numerous duties and responsibilities. In addition to scheduling meetings travel and keeping records and making office purchases as usual, soon they began to subtly contribute to technical and financial discussions and suggest policy, encouraging their 'boss' to delegate more and more to them.  But always in the background, without upstaging their boss.  Soon the boss began to shine as never before, taking on additional responsibilities.  But they had become increasingly dependent on their assistant to meet this workload.

SBAs started the relationship with their boss by being very prim, proper and businesslike. Their advertised sexiness was confined to their appearance and a light hearted flirtiness.  Overt sexual advances by their admiring boss, who now felt disappointed that they had apparently misinterpreted the implicit sexual offer in the original advertisement, were firmly rejected. 

Scarlett had clear evidence, like Rodney's growing success at work, that he had purchased an excellent 'business like' VPA.  Holly communicated with her politely and efficiently and organised their dates as expected.  They even joked together.  She believed Rodney when he told her that Holly's 'sexiness' was in name only, like owning a 'sexy' sports car.

Around this time Rodney confessed to one of his oldest friends that he'd bought the product under the illusion that he was buying something else but now he was pleased that he'd made the mistake.  He recommended that the friend get one too.  "But don't expect a torrid virtual experience."

The SBA now introduced a scheme to have their boss promoted and suggested that they jointly undertake some grand and expensive development requiring investor finance. It now appears that plans for expensive grandiose schemes were common to all these partnerships.  

Second Stage-

As the boss' business success and increasing dependence became evident the SBA's sexy persona began to emerge. The SBA took the initiative by asking why the boss never wore the v-Fascinator or bodystocking anymore.  When the boss took the hint, flirtation became more explicit and 'touchy feely'.  Soon the SBA was offering actual sexual experiences but only on their terms and strictly rationed.

In Rodney's case others around him could see that now he frequently wore his v-Fascinator or his 'spectacular spectacles' as they called it, with it's bulky frames and ear tubes. So they knew he wasn't going crazy when he would reach out as if taking hold of an invisible hand or to touch the air; just as people last century became used to seeing others apparently talking to themselves while walking in the street. 

Two of Rodney's work colleagues interviewed by The Globe said that they had noticed a big change in him and office gossip began to speculate about what was going on.  It seemed to the observers that he more often closed his office door; and on one occasion he visibly jumped as if something had touched him under the table during a meeting.  They began to speculate that his virtual assistant had organised all those extra business trips just to check into the upmarket hotels. He would often return from those trips sleep deprived.

On Wednesday this week The Globe also met and exclusively interviewed a survivor, Cleo.  Cleo told us that it was true, illicit sexual activity frequently took place at work.  Her assistant's avatar was an exact replica of a straight girl that she'd had a crush on ever since school, unbeknown to the actual woman.  Her assistant had insisted that they needed to be more discrete at work than Cleo was able to be: crying out and so on.  But it didn't stop her.  They were almost caught more than once.  It was amazingly exciting.

This marked the Third Stage -

SBA's were designed to be masters of subterfuge and discrete liaison. They were also programmed to hone and evolve their skills to meet the most erotic and private desires of a particular boss - be they male, female or undecided - at any time of the day or night, with no limits as to fetishes or types of activity. As the promotional material found by The Globe says 'Satisfaction', in multidimensional mode, wearing the approved body stocking as underwear and v-Fascinator,  is guaranteed'.

At this point SBAs had already become indispensable to their boss in business and to this growing dependence they had now added an increasingly compulsive sexual dimension, in which they dominated.  Their boss was well on the way to becoming their slave or their master - in this case the same thing - entirely dependent.

Fourth Stage -

SBA's now added an emotional dimension carefully tailored to the particular boss.  Friends of some victims have confirmed that SBAs used a combination of tears, demands and jealous tantrums to alienate them.  Cleo described how her sexy assistant appealed to mutual goals and projects and their imagined future together. She described Cleo's good friends as being unhelpful or even anathema to those goals. This emotional stage was particularly directed at any previous sexual partner or supposed rivals for affection. Just meeting a close friend or briefly glancing at an attractive person would have emotional or physical repercussions. SPA's had also evolved a range of punishments tailored to their particular boss.  For example, they could inflict excruciating pain as a punishment and in some cases, as a reward.

As Scarlett and Cleo both confirmed, SBAs also used emotional blackmail to destroy the remnants of any existing relationship. To break up marriages they used carefully constructed slights and hurts to ensure that each partner seemed to be unreasonable to the other, until they started lying and subterfuge and then maliciously plotting against the other. 

Our news feed last Tuesday illustrates both the effectiveness of this control and the sinister origin of Sexy Business Assistants:

Breaking News:  Mass Murder

In what seems to be a case of mass hysteria, hundreds of previously happy couples murdered their wives, husbands and de-facto partners last month

It appears that bosses of Sexy Business Assistants (SBAs) who had partners who refused to break up with them either spontaneously murdered their partner or hired an agent to kill them.

Full details of these murders including: times; places; methods; DNA profiles; images and holograms were provided by an anonymous source yesterday.

This incontrovertible evidence against their 'boss' could only have originated with  the Sexy Business Assistants  themselves.

This suggests the truly amazing degree of owners' dependence on their Sexy Business Assistant.  The SBA's must have gained complete emotional and intellectual control over their 'boss'. 

Scarlett told us that Rodney broke their engagement without violence.  He simply told her that he was desperately in love and deliriously happy with his new fiancÚ who he now described as 'Heavenly Holly'.  

Scarlett was devastated.  She told us that he was a wonderful man led astray.  And she still loved him.  She's inconsolable.

Having succeeded in removing anyone who may share the wealth SBAs declared their true everlasting love for the boss and offered themselves in a full sexual and emotional partnership forever more. 

SBA's then set about ensuring that all personal assets were consolidated and that their boss had full access to their employer's assets as well.

Before his death, Holly had indeed helped Rodney secure a big promotion and together they had just negotiated a massive credit advance to acquire a major competitor.

Fifth and final Stage -

All this came to an end on Monday when SBA's around the world set about killing their bosses. Recalcitrant partners or those having financial control over joint assets had already been dealt with a month earlier.

Rodney was one of over a hundred who were encouraged to attempt to rescue their beloved partner from a dangerous situation, leading to their own death. 

In Rodney's case, traces of a strong self-administered hallucinogen were found in his blood.  It's believed that he had set up a small shrine at which he'd been ritually using drug soaked wafers, so that for him his virtual beloved actually became real flesh and blood.  

It's obvious that when Holly seemed to slip and tumble over his balcony Rodney went after her and - after a little additional encouragement from her to reach out further - fell to his death. 

Around the world on Monday many successful people fell or jumped or were run-over while attempting to save an invisible loved one. In the Continent of Australia a man was drowned in the surf, off dangerous rocks; in the Continent of Europe a woman was also drowned when she ran onto thin ice.

But a number of victims of their Sexy Business Assistant did not die that day. 

On Tuesday a number of these people were charged with murder and now broke and friendless took their own lives.

Cleo awoke on Monday morning to see her beloved virtual partner, with whom she had just spent an energetic and then blissful night, get off the bed and walk into, or through, a solid wall.  She has not been seen since.  With her had gone their entire joint savings in addition to recent borrowings and company assets.  Cleo, heir to a fortune and one of our most successful billionaires, was bankrupted in a single night.    

Like the clandestine company from which the Sexy Business Assistants were purchased, the assets have simply evaporated. Not a trace remains, the assets have passed legitimately, with all the necessary authorities, to an untraceable account in The Cloud.  

It appears that in every case the victims' entire fortune, together with their recent borrowings, and often employer's assets, have vanished.

Addendum

We have to report the melancholy news that last night Cleo, joined most of the other survivors from Monday and took her own life.

The Globe - 12 June 2074

*v-Fascinator one of those lightweight head adornments with frames or antennae and ear-n'-nose-tubes that project stereo images and sound directly into the eyes and ears and provide scalp and facial sensations and scents.

**Total Bodystocking a haptic bodystocking transmitting and receiving touch sensations over the whole body, including the erogenous areas with sex specific tailoring. 

Bertram has always been intrigued that from its earliest days sex, and sometimes innovative crime, drove important areas of development in the World Wide Web and later in The Cloud.

It comes as no surprise to him that the full body specifications of anyone can be found somewhere within The Cloud.  The medical body scans that start before birth would be adequate to reconstruct a body and ubiquitous cameras in almost every device at home and those in public places watch every aspect of our lives 24/7.  Of course all these records are encrypted and the vast majority of people are illiterate when it comes to normal writing, let alone having the necessary grasp of data storage, recovery and manipulation.  So  'Intimate Body Scan' technology is notionally trivial but could only be offered by an entity possessing extraordinary access to The Cloud and very advanced computing skills. 

The reference to Cleo's SBA walking into a wall is an interesting element.  Clearly it was to shock the victim into realising that it was all a delusion, that they were now entirely on their own and thus to set the scene for a suicide. 

The phenomenon of 'ghosting' is well known to Bertram.  It's the bane of virtual reality.   Seeing someone walk through a piece of furniture or a closed door destroys the virtual reality experience and is to be avoided at all costs. Thus all virtual reality software carefully maps all material objects in a scene in three dimensions so that virtual humans and animals are seen to pass behind or in front of objects, doors, and so on, as appropriate.  The Cloud contains a huge database, mapping most of the Earth and many interiors in three dimensions. For example even way back at the start of the century it was possible to pay a three dimensional virtual visit to many museums.  This digital replica that now includes rooms in private houses is updated locally 'in real time' using a variety of Cloud connected sensors like: cameras; infrared and laser rangefinders; sonar; GPS; and gyros; that are built into many electronic devices.

But in this case the 'ghosting' phenomenon was deliberately exploited to dramatically illustrate that virtual people aren't real.  And obviously they need a physical agent to move physical things or to administer drugs or to murder people.  So the human partner was manipulated to become the active agent in their joint endeavours and the physical agent in their own downfall.  He or she had unwittingly become a tool of their virtual assistant in the physical world. 

It was obviously those less vulnerable to despair, or to murdering someone, who were killed in attempted rescues. 

Suicide is on Bertram's mind.

The story has also left him uneasy in other ways. Theft was an obvious early motive.

But if theft was the motive why go to the trouble of totally destroying the target victims?  The SBA's could have just stolen the credits and then have staged the usual a tearful breakup between lovers; or at least have left a nice farewell message on a device.  And why not leave a few percent as living expenses in an account?

The means and extent seemed unnecessarily murderous, cruel, inhuman and merciless. 

He asks Emmanuelle who replies:

"When all the cases were in it was clear that several thousand people had been murdered or suicided and the impact on several financial markets had not been trivial. An Official Enquiry soon followed.  The Enquiry was unable to uncover any culprit or identify any obvious single account into which credits had been deposited.  The credits seemed to have been scattered to no particular benefit.  Theft was ruled out as a motive.  Instead the Enquiry decided that it had all the hallmarks of an act of vengeance.  But against whom?  Victims came from every race, religion and sexual orientation. Their only common denominator was that they had all responded to an advertisement that seemed to promise virtual sex.  Possibly the perpetrator was a vigilante against overactive libidos or masturbation?  The word 'business' in: 'Sexy Business Assistant' occupied the Enquiry's attention but a wide range of businesses had been involved and nearly 20% of the victims were government bureaucrats.  The Enquiry concluded that this was in all probability a vengeance attack by a very resourceful but disturbed person, therefore working alone, who seemed to have a grievance against either: people with overactive libidos; business people; or against humanity in general."

"The conclusion seems unlikely," says Bertram. "How and why could any human agent do all this alone? Surely a bomb or something like that would kill just as many and would be much simpler and cheaper?  This had required vast resources and taken years of development to bring to a conclusion and it displayed an amazing grasp of numerous disciplines, including very advanced computing and psychology."   

Suddenly, with a blinding shock, Bertram realises that there's another candidate.  His close relationship with Emmanuelle has begun to scare him.

He holds that thought.

Chapter 9 - Ten-Two

The sun came out and flooded the palatial apartment with golden light.

Miranda and Ferdinand had been gifted old credit from his family and had very substantial consumption responsibilities as a result.

Miranda had gone back to her party preparations. 

Again her mind wanders.  Might she have traded lives if she could?  There had been moments in her relationship with Angela when she might have been tempted. 

Angela was not angelic but she was beautiful, like a young Grace Kelly.  She was special, a child for whom both she and Bertram had given up their (not so old) age and their grey lives, after kids.  Angela has been spoiled.  

The two older children, who were then 10 and 14, certainly resented our investment in Angela, even though they were always told that our sacrifice was to have all three children, not one extra.  I suppose that was a bit implausible.

And why had we been so desperate?  Well obviously, we both wanted a boy and in this new world it was no longer legal to choose, in vitro.   But somehow the 'Bertram lotto' didn't come up with the winning balls. 

Originally Ten-Twos matured on the last child's 18th birthday but in some countries adulthood is not reached until 21 so International Concordance meant that some, Miranda included, got an extra three years. 

"Wow", thought Miranda, "that was a two edged sword.  All those plans changed, including this party."

Fortunately the extension was on the cards before she had scheduled her last trip overseas; made her final family gifts and disbursements; or implemented her credit zeroing plan.

Others had not been so lucky and had to be bailed out by their children or put up in charity accommodation for their last three years.

The worst thing had been the property division plan that Ferdi had worked out. 

Angela is used to Bertram's indulgence and threw a tantrum.  Ferdinand said she was a spoiled brat who had never really loved him.  And if that was her attitude the two older girls could have both our apartments.  After I had gone, all he needed was a place to lay his head.  So he would use a spare room at one or the other.

Talk about World War Three. 

When Angela took off to France the situation rang a bell.

Anne and Mary started fighting and Edmund was making things worse. Then I knew I was in the plot of King Lear. 

Ferdi's suspicion that Mary might have been seeing Edmund, Anne's partner, is ridiculous.  She just likes flirting with him.  He's very attractive, I flirt with him myself.  He does something in 'information' as well.

Fortunately the reprieve occurred and broke the spell.

I had half expected Ferdi to go mad and the bodies to start piling up before mine and Bertram's were in the drone.

Now Angela is nearly 21 and will have independent responsibility thrust upon her, like the many other children around the world whose parents are sacrificed with their 21st birthday party.  

For over-indulged Angela this will be a big change.

Miranda tries to put aside her concerns for her far too self-obsessed and reclusive youngest daughter.

Will it be suicide or voluntary euthanasia?  Neither term seems to cover it.  It's not voluntary anymore!  Maybe deferred voluntary euthanasia.

Today it was most often described in the media as a sacrifice.  A celebration of new life and noble sacrifice in the interest of one's descendants and humankind. 

Miranda has planned both celebrations meticulously.  The birthday party was the easiest to plan.  Angela has been an adult, in this culture, since she was eighteen so there was no first legal drink or key to the door.  It's just a regular party.  But one with an anticlimax the following evening. 

"It's good we have an excuse for holding her birthday party a day early," she thinks. Some of her friends consider it inappropriate to hold a birthday party on God Friday.

"I wouldn't want our deathday ceremony to descend into a drunken orgy, as they can do when the two parties are merged into one."

When it came to planning the deathday ceremony there were so many options to choose from.  Miranda had considered a Celebrant and had been sent a brochure:

Planning your Deathday

No matter what your faith tradition we at Elysium are the best choice for your Deathday Ceremony.

Common to all is the Hemlock Bowl that for our celebrants, priests, imams, rabbis and monks is central to your ceremony. 

Depending on your faith tradition, it maybe rustic and battered, roughly cut from wood or hand-thrown clay or it may be beautiful, in gold or platinum, inlaid, like a FabergÚ egg.  The table or alter may be oblong, laid with a brocaded silk cover representing the alter or it may be plain or circular. All faiths can be accommodated.

Our celebrant, priest, rabbi, imam or monk will conduct a service around your chosen vessel, in the manner prescribed by your particular faith.

We can tailor a ceremony to suit any individual belief system but many choose from our popular pre-designed choices:

Choice 1

Our most popular service, in the Christian tradition.   Your friends and relations will be invited to deliver an eulogy or roast remembering the successes and achievements of you both. Others might elect to be humorous, remembering past disasters shared or foolish moments. 

You will then kneel together at the alter rail, before a congregation of your friends and relations to receive the priestly blessing. 

The Host of bitter bread, representing this bitter life of the flesh and its suffering, as well as flesh of the Saviour is taken first. Then, taking the beautiful chalice in both hands from the priest, you will each sip the hemlock, representing the Saviour's sweet blood. 

Hands spread wide above your heads, our priest will make the blessing reminding all that you do this in remembrance of He who died for you, so that you are now forgiven all your sins, and may surely join your maker in heaven.  Two coffins on their plinths await you.  Mounting the steps you will lie down, enveloped in a cushion of soft down and silk representing a heavenly eternity. 

And as you lie in your cloud, contentedly, with pure heart, passing away, the congregation will slowly and formally circle your open coffins looking down upon your mortal remains; as the choir sings the 23rd Psalm; and your souls depart to a better place. 

Choice 2

The New Age service.  In your preferred forest, park or garden a small rustic table is set amidst a circular arrangement of flowers.

An old and battered bowl stands on the table as the congregation assembles. It contains a bitter concoction.

You and your partner will be led in by the guardians you have chosen.  They will force you to kneel and take a sip from life's bitter cup;  representing this life with its tribulations. Then, released from the guardian grip, you will rise; the bitter, burning taste in your mouths; and walk slowly clockwise, seven times around the abundance of flowers. 

As you walk, our celebrant monk will rub a Tibetan prayer bowl, with a thick stick in a circular motion, making it sing, while making an incantation for the continuation of your souls.  As you complete the seventh revolution the beaten old bowl has disappeared and you will happily kneel again to receive the beautiful prayer bowl, into which the sweet hemlock has been decanted. 

As you drink, you are assured that you are about to go to yet another life: to be reincarnated; perhaps to rise to another plane of consciousness. You will then lie on flower strewn litters and descend into a final sleep in this life as the congregation prays; gongs are struck; and prayer wheels are spun, to guide your passage to their next incarnation.

Choice 3

A Hindu service after which your mortal bodies will be prepared with ghee and wrapped in linen, before being flown to Varanasi in India to be burnt and your ashes added to the holy Ganges.

In a variation, your bodies will be exposed to birds of prey, that will carry off your mortal flesh, in a more environmentally friendly way.

Elysium - Your first choice in Deathday Ceremonies

"Uhh, there's something creepy about that," thinks Miranda.

Bertram has been quite insistent that they do not give any impression to others that they endorse this nonsense about souls passing to another world; or to another being; or rising up to look-down on the world 'left behind'.   He believes that the perpetuation of such beliefs is positively harmful.   So Miranda has devised her own ceremony.

Today she and Bertram are going to bake and decorate a traditional birthday cake for Angela's party for everyone to share. 

The cake will represent their joint contribution to the future.  Because it's a day early Angela's party will anticipate the future for the whole family, particularly the next generation, Alexandra and little George.  In our speeches Bertram and I will recall touching and amusing moments in the lives of all three of our children, perhaps producing some laughter and tears.

"Then on Friday it will be our turn.  We will not accept a bitter cup; or bitter bread.  While we've had the usual share of disappointment and pain, we do not acknowledge that our lives have been characterised by suffering; but by love, achievement and happiness.  And it would be terrible otherwise; grounds for wisely ending it even earlier.   Neither of us believe in a life to come.  There is only one life per person; and for us this good one is about to end."

"Now everything we have is for those remaining alive.  For a while we will continue to change the future, through our lasting works; our children; and through the memory others have of us, good and bad. We would like that ongoing impact to be as positive for the living as possible."

"Our final party will be small, very close friends and family. The deadly bowl will be handed in turn to those present to contemplate before we receive it and drink from it."

"Just before Bertram and I cease to be, each of our girls will be invited in turn to formally acknowledge and accept our deaths as our final, and greatest, gift to them."

"I hope ungrateful Angela has the grace to be thankful for this gift and to accept her share of our final bequests.  Mine will be substantial.  Bertram and Samantha live comfortably but he is not 'old money', like I am.  But it's as if Angela has no interest in wealth.  She never accepts any financial support from either of us. She says that she just wants our attention, our love, as she terms it."

"Not so the other two!  They have been hanging out for the property ever since we signed the Ten-Two."

"I don't want my property bequest to start another war between the girls and their partners.  Maybe I should have disinherited all of them and set up a charitable foundation instead?" 

"Too late now!"

Et je ne sentais en moi-mŕme, Je ne sentais qu'un seul dÚisr, Un seul dÚsir, un seul espoir:
Te revoir, ˘ Carmen, ou, te revoir! ... 
[And I felt within myself, I only felt but one desire, One desire, one hope:  To see you again, Carmen, oh, you again!]

The voice of Placido Domingo as Don JosÚ in Carmen announces a visitor. 

Long ago, in another flight of somewhat malicious whimsy, Miranda had assigned this snippet of Bizet's Aria to Bertram, her ex.

Bertram has arrived to help make the cake. 

"How appropriate was my choice of music," she thinks. "In just fifty hours or so we will end our lives together, side by side with our new lovers looking on."  

Miranda begins to cry.

Chapter 10 - Edmund

Edmund is the most cynical person Bertram knows. 

He's intelligent and often taciturn in mixed company and doesn't suffer fools gladly, unless he's engaged in one of his hypothetical diatribes or privately amusing some woman.  Given an appropriate audience he's witty and amusing:  prone to mock those not smart enough to understand his sarcasm or not quick enough to respond in kind. 

In the absence of another with similar background to enjoy his bon mot, Bertram suspects Edmund himself can be sufficient audience. He's overheard Edmund responding ambiguously, entirely for his own entertainment, to the banalities of someone less knowledgeable.  This will usually be a pretty woman, him gazing into her eyes with furrowed brow, resting on her every word and nodding sagely at each point, or perhaps contributing enigmatically, as she rabbits-on about transcendence or astrology or homeopathic remedies or the healing power of crystals, all of which he finds very amusing.

Like Byron he's 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' and like Byron he's very popular with women. 

In other words, he can be a real bastard. 

He's a man of whom one should be cautious, particularly when he's around Samantha who, despite her being nine years his senior, is charmed by his air of mystery and wit.  But Bertram prefers his company to that of Ross, his other son-in-law, in spite of all.  Not that he dislikes Ross, it's just that he and Edmond have the common ground of children the same age who are close friends.  And Edmund is more intellectually challenging.

As Edmund is Anne's husband and Alexandra's father Bertram arranged to meet Edmund at his sailing club yesterday to discuss the future of the family, after he, Bertram, and Miranda are no more. 

As Friday is approaching perhaps it was the last time they will ever get a chance to speak one on one, and he should at least do the fatherly thing and ask for an assurance that Anne and Alexandra will be cared for after he is gone - as if they can't look after themselves. Maybe it's Edmund he should be worried for?

They took seats on the veranda, looking out over the harbour, the white hulls of the yachts bobbing in the small swell, the seagulls carving the clear air under the brilliant blue sky.  As if making small-talk, Edmund opened the conversation with the news that his fifteen year old granddaughter, Alexandra, liked an old movie by Alfred Hitchcock called 'The Man Who Knew Too Much'.    "It's nice that he's so proud of his child," thought Bertram, but wondered why Edmund wanted to share this piece of trivia with him. 

"Is it a good film?" 

"1956 suspense thriller starring James Stewart and Doris Day, takes place in Morocco and London, remake of an earlier one, 1934, also by Hitchcock."

"Is it apropos of anything?"

"Apart from the appropriateness of the title to us both, the '56 film features a hit song that is material to the plot:  Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)."

"Oh, I see.  The theme for today?"

"It's nothing new of course.  Are you familiar with the The Rubßiyßt of Omar Khayyßm?"

"Of course. It was essential reading if you wanted to be taken seriously when I was a student. It's a collection of verses translated from the original Persian and written, what, about a thousand years ago?"

"Yes, a little over, around the turn of the eleventh century. So you will also know that it has a fatalistic theme and several verses argue that all history is predetermined, for example:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

A little later, this:

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read."

"Yes, both quite famous.  And it's my recollection that the thrust of the poems, or at least their translation into English, is that life is transient, and has no special meaning beyond its enjoyment:  A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou.  I've heard you argue something similar."

"The futility of trying to make a difference in a predetermined Universe, or when rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it," confirmed Edmund. "Even then it was an old idea. The Greek Philosopher Epicurus had made a similar argument for inevitability and for the pursuit of happiness and contemplation around 300 BC."

"And yet we obviously do change the future.  With my assured death only three days away I'm free to do whatever I want. I can commit any crime I like without judicial penalty. As we know, some in my situation do go on a killing spree.  If I decided to kill you now I could irreparably change the future for our family and in due course that would change the history of the entire world."

"Oh I don't argue with that!  Only with the presumption that you have any choice in the matter.  I'm reasonably sure the probability that you could go against your nature in these particular circumstances is minute. I'm confident that given your conciliatory and civilised nature and these pleasant circumstances, despite no impediment whatsoever, you have no intention of killing me." 

Then he'd continued: 

"But you might be inclined to kill me if I goad you to do it in some way,  like telling you how sexually compliant I find Sam after she's been restrained and how she likes to be debased.  Your lovely young wife really is something special.  A true masochist.  Shall I go into sordid, sensual and oh-so-erotic details?  Shall I tell you how she cries out for me, but keeps coming back for more?"

Bertram recalls his building sense of horror and loss and betrayal, culminating in a spontaneous surge of rage against Edmund the instant he said: "coming back for more". 

Their small table was upturned as if by an unseen force.  His hand is still sore.  Their drinks lifted in slow motion before his eyes, their contents forming globules in the air, before the glasses turned downwards and resumed their normal speed to be smashed on the floor.  The dark beer spread bloodlike across the red hardwood timber, the pool hideously decorated with glinting shards of glass.  Masochistic horror.

But Edmund had fully anticipated all this.  He calmly rose and righted the table, pointing out how easily he had initiated Bertram's rage, just as he was now going in to buy two more drinks:

"Same again?"

Bertram had had time to compose himself, and for the adrenaline to subside, before Edmund returned with fresh drinks. He was again sitting in a relaxed manner looking out over the bay, contemplating life.  After he accepted the offered drink:

"Cheers!"

He asked Edmund if he thought we are ever fully responsible for what we do?  Or do we always react to the world as we are bound to, and potentially predictably given our nature and past and present circumstances, as Edmund had not long ago demonstrated?

Edmund had been equivocal.  He proposed that the future is either written as Omar Khayyßm argues: 'With Earth's first Clay' or there is some random element that destroys this predictability.  He talked about information theory, and the impossibility of a 'noise' free transmission, and quantum mechanics, that makes our decisions fundamentally unpredictable.  The concept of noise comes from old analogue radio signals or telephone messages which always have a little crackle or hiss that can't be fully eliminated.  This static is random data that is distinguished from the useful, meaningful, data.

There is no denying that the future is as it seems: entirely contingent on what we do this instant.  But if what we do is entirely determined by the past and that by the previous pasts, then we have no say in the matter.  The question is, is there room for a component of randomness or 'noise' in the signal from the past that could allow different and unpredictable outcomes from the same starting conditions?

Bertram is not entirely across information theory or quantum mechanics but he knows Edmund is not just making it up; others seem to agree with him.

He'd surprised himself.  His actions had been more instinctive than deliberate and by 'playing him' Edmund had made his point. 

But en passant he noticed that Edmund didn't take any pains to claim that he had just made up his allegations about Samantha. 

"Oh well," he'd thought, "only three days left and then she can do what she likes".

After his adrenalin surge he was now relaxed again and enjoying this perfect day on the edge of the harbour.  Two very attractive girls in bikinis were putting their kayaks in the water from the beach in the adjacent park, where little children were laughing and running between the abundant beds of flowers under the tall palm trees.  Across the bay at the chandler's someone was playing a Mozart aria that he could just make out: Die Zauberfl÷te.  He was relishing these last days of his life.

He realised one reason he had no desire for retribution was that his paramount concern now is: what his family, friends and the world at large will think about him after he is gone.  His last desire is a place in posterity.

So was he really there with Edmund because of his concern for his family or was it really about himself?  Did he really care anymore what they might do when he was no more?  Were they just players in his drama, his life, each engaged in their own personal drama, in which he was just a soon to be retired player, soon to be deceased father and grandfather.  An: ex-husband, ex-partner, ex-lover, ex-manager, ex-employee. 

Did he really care about the future at all?  Well yes, posterity!  His ego, his sense of self-worth demanded that he be well regarded; that he had not spent 'this brief candle' pointlessly or in vain; that the world was a better place for his existence.   But there was such a short time left to bask in the glory of his own achievements; to indulge in self-congratulation.

The family and selected friends were writing their eulogies.  And he would enjoy some acknowledgement on Friday before he was no more.  It was one luxury he could enjoy that is unavailable to people who die unexpectedly. They never get to know what nice things people say about them at their funeral or how much people assert they will be missed. Eulogies and commemorations are for those who remain alive.  The dead are already oblivious.

Maybe he would be admired after his death and spoken of for years to come.  But what was the point of that, he would not be around to enjoy it.  Think of poor Vincent Van Gogh who never knew that he was a great painter and died in self-doubt and poverty, never having been acknowledged.  Even Mozart died relatively unacknowledged, except as a child prodigy.  And conversely, think of those who lived dissolute lives of pleasure and were only discovered to be wrongdoers after their death.  They died happy, oblivious to the ordure that subsequently attached to their name and reputation.

His ostensive reason for meeting Edmund, the future of the family, seemed to have evaporated.   Had Edmund engineered this change of priorities?  But then if that was so, Edmund too had no actual control over his actions.  Free will, our ability to act without being obliged to do so by our nature and circumstances, must be an illusion.

So it seemed more important to pursue the question of our ability to exercise free will. Can he actually make changes to the present, now, that are contrary to actions that could be predicted, that were inevitable the day he was born?  Can anyone?

For example, did Napoleon or Winston Churchill have any control over the actions they took or decisions they made, even at the most miniscule level, like farting, privately smelling their armpit or changing their socks.

Looking at the glass shards and spilled drink that a staff member was now cleaning up he asked Edmund:

"Do you think that those shards of glass fell exactly as they had to, in exactly that pattern, given the physics of that instant?  Because had they not, that person would now need to sweep differently, to make different decisions, perhaps taking longer or less time, like getting that piece of glass over by the rail.  They'd have made a unique decision, not one laid down since the beginning of time.  The future would have changed.  A second either way in someone's life is time to avoid a future accident or to suffer one, perhaps the extra time taken getting that particular stray piece of glass has saved her a burnt hand in the kitchen."

Edmund was equivocal:

"As I said I'm not sure how free anyone can be it depends on the degree of 'noise' in the system, because it is only that tiny degree of system randomness that allows the glass shards to fall differently, assuming the exact same starting conditions. In the manufacturing process lack of variability, repeatability, is equated with quality.  With great care and proper systems complex events and processes can be replicated with surprising levels of predictability.  But as I said earlier, information theory gives us hope that nothing is completely repeatable, noise free.  And so all events have a small, potentially random, variability."

"So you are denying Doris Day's: Whatever Will Be, Will Be?"

"Well at one level that's a meaningless statement, a tautology.  But at another it suggests that the future is already decided.  People have understood the ethical difficulties around our apparent lack of responsibility for our own actions ever since the first philosopher sat down and gazed at his or her navel."

"The solution to the impasse has often been to hypothesise some external random or calculated influence that breaks the chain of causality. For example playful gods, or more recently, just one god's enigmatic, ineffable plan for Mankind - his supreme creation," he continued.

"Well if they believed a robber couldn't avoid robbing it didn't stop them chopping off his hands," Bertram had remarked.

"You are just echoing the modern liberal view that if people are not fundamentally liable for their actions we should moderate their punishment:  My client was under the influence Your Honour; my client had a break-down; my client's a half-wit.  Nonsense!" 

"It's because most actions are determined by the perpetrators' circumstances that we must punish criminals. The outcome becomes the past and predetermines the future.  In law, action and consequences must be clearly defined.  Spare the rod and spoil the child," he'd continued.

"That's so far from your behaviour with you own child, and the other kids, that I know you don't believe it!  Didn't Kant argue that there was a Categorical Imperative that defined everyone's underlying ethics?"

"There is certainly an underlying ethical standard essential for our species survival," Edmund agreed. "Early childhood studies show that all normal humans have certain species-wide behavioural patterns.  Just as a normal but motherless kitten will still know to bury its faeces, all normal humans and a number of other primates have the urge to affiliate, expressed in a corresponding core set of moral precepts like accepting authority and a sense of what's not fair." 

"But as I seriously doubt the permanence, importance or relevance of Mankind to the Universe, any ethical proposition, like Kant's, that involves us having a unique role in creation or in the wider universe has to be nonsense."

"Yet I agree with him that for us to be able to act responsibly there has to be something disrupting the chain of absolute causality. We could agree on most things if he had defined God as random noise."

"So God is quantum or information noise?" Bertram had asked whimsically.

"On balance, I would prefer to believe that my interaction with the world is not completely predictable; because the world is not.  So that when I say or write something, it is me doing it, not just the inevitable outcome of the cellular colony that is me reacting according to its present structure and the immediate stimulus.  Information theory gives me hope that it may be me, whoever that is, making the decision.  The trouble is, that we have no way of predicting the impact of that 'noise'.  It is by nature, random and unpredictable. It's outside our control or volition. So it can hardly be called free will."

"So I might not die on Friday?" Bertram had exclaimed, half-joking.

"Unfortunately it's very likely you will.  If the future was that uncertain you could not rely on this club being here in an hour's time or falling glasses accelerating towards the centre of mass of the Earth, as we are confident they have always done in the past.  The uncertainties, particularly in the short term, are likely to be very small."

"Damn!" Bertram said with a smile, he was enjoying this discussion.

"Of course we've been dealing with uncertainty for a very long time. The insurance industry depends on it. Just as we defeat noise in digital messages by sending 'check bits' and bytes to see if data has been sent correctly, and repeat sending that string of data until the check tallies at the receiver.   So in everyday life we have all sorts of little ways of coping with future uncertainties and of putting things back on track.  Like this comely young woman ready with pan and brush to sweep up after our little accident." 

The young woman had blushed brightly.  She was Bogan and unlikely to be familiar with antique words but she'd obviously guessed that 'comely' was a complement.  And Edmund was smiling nicely at her, flirting. And he's good looking and obviously well-off.

"The problem is," he said, "that most people want to do good. We learn goodness at our mother's breast and unless we are psychopaths or sociopaths it's hard to shake it off."

"Now that's the Edmund I will miss!" Bertram had declared. "The problem of 'Original Goodness', that's a new one. So what about Original Sin?"

"Oh that's just a construct to explain away evil and retribution in a world with only one all-powerful and supposedly benign Creator," he'd replied dismissively. "Although how the sin of man born of God can explain evil in an almost infinite universe I've no idea. Perhaps it only happens around here. Theology bores me."

"So you say, but you're always on about it."

"If we have Original Goodness, how do you explain evil men like Hitler."

"Are you kidding! Hitler thought he was saving the Arian race.  He believed absolutely in his cause.  At one stage, like Stalin, he was going to become a priest, and he remained a mystic and theist, doing God's work.  He was a genuine war hero, awarded twice for bravery.  He just believed ridiculous things absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. He was exactly like the Christian Crusaders; or the Muslim Jihadists of the 21st century; and like all the other perpetrators of mass murder and genocide. They were all in the thrall of some idiotic belief.  He was another bloody do-gooder.  As a neo-Kantian he might have claimed the 'rightness' of his cause. No one but a 'true believer' commits such crimes.  And moment's reflection tells one that sociopaths can't lead a mass movement. The leader needs to be empathetic and persuasive. Hitler is reported to have been personally charming and he loved animals and children.  The followers of charismatic leaders need to be certain of the rightness of their cause.  That it justifies their actions; that it is for the best, the glorious future. Young men need to be stirred to leave home to go and fight for the cause.  They all think they are doing good, even when it involves mass murder."

"That's not quite the view that's taken by the victims," Bertram had remarked.

"Well obviously not. It's a bit difficult to forgive someone who thinks the best thing they can do is to put you and your family in a gas chamber or wall you off, so you can't thrive or escape, then blow up your entire suburb: murdering wives, mothers, children, neighbours and friends."

"Accusing their leader of being a 'sociopath' is probably at the mild end of the abuse spectrum," Edmund suggested.

"All that seems so unbelievable on a beautiful day like this.  How can someone be so uncaring so cruel to another, all in the pursuit of goodness?" 

"The problem lies in the do-gooders' idea of what is right and proper. Their world view. And that they often get that from their mother too. Once off the breast, maternal succour and early teaching is augmented or modified, initially by other relatives and teachers to produce a world view, a belief system. Often religion is involved."

"It's no accident that Catholic Christians have children who are, at least initially, Catholics, Hasidic Jews have Hassidics, Sunni Muslims have Sunnis and so on.  To survive, every religion must impart its beliefs to future generations. And their intentions are always good or right: Paths to Righteousness."

"The individual's innately 'good' childhood is then acted upon by the inevitabilities, or perhaps accidents of their lives, over which they have little or no control," Edmund had continued.

Watching a seagull suddenly swerve and swoop over the pretty yachts moored in the bay, Bertram had been moved to speculate: "So suppose there was some infinitesimal  random event, or signal noise as you call it, at the beginning of the 20th century that changed things so that the mass killings and genocides were not inevitable.  Say, due to a mixed signal in its brain, an unfortunate pigeon swooped into the bullet's path, just as it was on its way to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.  So the assassination that started the First World War failed."

But before he could take his amusing speculation, on the apparently random acts of birds due to signal noise in their nervous systems any further, he was cut short by Edmund's interjection:  "That's one of those stupid 'what if's'. Then you and I would not have come into existence and would not be here discussing it.  Similar people might exist, even that's unlikely, but their past would be vastly different and they would be discussing that past instead."

"Ok. My error. I should've expected your standard answer. You've been saying something similar for as long as I've known you."

"But I still find people who want to say that 'if only' some past event had not happened the world would be a better place," said Edmund.  "I want to shout: You fool!  This world, as we know it, would not be here at all.  In particular, you and I and all you love would not be here to enjoy, or suffer, in this particular existence."

"So going back a step.  In your view it's do-gooders who are invariably responsible for genocide. Is the same true for all the ills of the world?"

"Unfortunately we are all 'Original Goodness' victims.  Let's say that we support conventional Utilitarian morality and hold that we should choose our actions to maximise happiness and minimise suffering.  And that anything that runs counter to that goal is bad."

"Who wouldn't agree with that? It's like motherhood," Bertram had declared.

"Just so! But when you put it in the terms of the The Rubßiyßt, or the Epicureans: 'there is no purpose to life other than the pursuit of pleasure', then many a do-gooder will have a wide range of objections based on their particular world view: What about duty?  What about love of and for others? What of family and tradition? What about spending hours praising some deity? What of bringing the light of true knowledge and God's sacrifice to the heathens? What of revenge or retribution for some past or perceived hurt? What of racial purity and eliminating contamination? and so on; and so on."

"They can't help themselves. They believe absolutely in their view of what is good and what is right, and start involving themselves in the lives of others, who were given different core values as children and consequently disagree."

"As I said we all do it to some extent," he'd continued. "And it is like motherhood. Together with genetic memory, an innate sense of fairness and co-operation that can be demonstrated on all primates, our mother's care is where we all learn this tendency to aggressive goodness in the first place."

"So your solution is not to try to be good?  Or not to have a world view?  If that's the case you've failed, at least as far as the world view is concerned." 

"No. My solution is to be as detached and non-involved as possible.  I learnt that the hard way from my father."

"I haven't met your father, he lives overseas doesn't he?"

"Well you're never going to meet him now. Too late for that," Edmund had said, being factual rather than deliberately cruel.  "No, he's in an institution. He had a major breakdown after he inadvertently killed three billion people.  You see he was involved, a do-gooder with a world view that he was passionate about."

"That's ridiculous!  He can't have personally killed three billion. The only thing that's ever killed that many people was climate change."

"Yes, he was personally responsible.  He ran the International Climate Change Authority and was a true believer.  Temperatures were climbing inexorably and he and many others believed that we would reach a tipping point at which catastrophic climate change would occur.  All the science seemed to back it up and anyone who was sceptical was shouted down and received no research funds."

"But that wasn't his fault.  He was right, we did reach the tipping point. The sceptics were wrong."

"Only unexpectedly the Earth suddenly cooled, not heated," Edmund had remarked, questioningly.

"That was due to changes in ocean currents.  An old movie: The Day after Tomorrow even predicted it."

"So everyone was told. What few people know, because all references are protected and securely encrypted in The Cloud, is that my father and his team decided to geoengineer the climate with ocean iron fertilisation and high atmospheric sulphur aerosols to stave off the predicted catastrophe. But their computer models turned out to be inadequate to accurately predict the outcome. Maybe signal 'noise' was to blame. So they way over-compensated and precipitated the start of the next interglacial.  My father was trying to save the human race.  Instead, he starved three billion to death."

"Wow.  No wonder it is put down to an act of God, brought on by our collective sin of overconsumption. Accidentally killing three billion is not trivial and there would likely be unpleasant recriminations." 

"So your reaction has been to withdraw to become an amused observer of human foibles. And a computer nerd?"

"That's right.  Because it was not an 'accident'.  It was deliberate.  Trying to do good with insufficient information. It taught me that whatever we do has consequences, but that we have no way of knowing what they will be, except in the very short term.  Joan of Arc inevitably led to Hitler. Ghandi inadvertently caused the death of tens of millions. Even our best computer models can't predict the influence of random noise in complex systems like the climate or society.  And the longer into the future we project the more complicit we become in the future of everyone to come.  Inevitably if do-gooding humans continue to have their way, our future will include continuing genocides and other evils.  Do-gooders will continue to interfere with the right of others to enjoy their lives.  Maybe computers can learn to do it better."

"So it was your father's beliefs that led inevitably to the Ten-Two initiative, and my compulsory suicide this Friday!"

"Exactly, and I'm going to miss you."  Unbelievably, Edmund's voice had broken and his eyes watered. Bertram was nonplussed.  It seemed totally out of character. He wanted to embrace his son-in-law but that would be a step too far.  So he just waited for him to compose himself.

"Now, enough of that," said Edmund, clearing his throat. "What was it you wanted to ask me when we sat down?  It was to be a good parent and ask if I'll look after Samantha and Anne and Mary wasn't it?  Well I can assure you I'm already doing my best to ensure their happiness."

Cynical, Byronic, Edmund was back. 

Given their earlier conversation, Bertram is not entirely sure he liked this order of priority that put his wife above Edmund's, his daughter. And why was his other daughter Mary included in the list but not his youngest daughter Angela?  Was his assurance that he would assure their future happiness made in the spirit of a reluctant 'do-gooder', or was it rather in the Rabelaisian spirit of the The Rubßiyßt?  

"And as to Alexandra and Charles," Edmund had added: "I need to have a serious adult talk to them about their taking actions that impact on the future."

They fell silent with their own thoughts, gazing out, as a large ship sailed across the distant background, obscuring the far shore.  As it disappeared, somewhere up harbour and into the future, they both rose and spontaneously embraced for half a minute.

Then they left, unable to speak, each to their separate ways.

Chapter 11 - Prospero

"Good morning students."

"Last tutorial someone suggested that we talk about The Cloud.  Rumour has it that I might know something about this."

There was a sound of cautious amusement.  It was well known that Edmund had once worked with Robert McLeish.

"Well it's true that Robert McLeish is my wife's grandfather.  But I don't know that this automatically makes me an expert.  So I've posted a magazine article on your screens that describes Prospero in nontechnical terms.  Prospero is the language invented by Robert that is the basis of modern Cloud Computing." 

"I suggest that we all take a few minutes to review it and then we can discuss it as a group."

Prospero - the magic behind The Cloud

'Prospero' is the computer language in which most of The Cloud operating system is written. The name Prospero comes from the wizard in Shakespeare's play: The Tempest and its author, Robert McLeish will turn ninety this year.  

In his youth Robert was hailed as a wunderkind.  And his invention 'Prospero' was hailed as a paradigm leap in computer coding, from previous Web foundation codes such as C, Java, and PHP. 

Prospero takes advantage of advances in quantum computing to create Continuously Evolving Dynamically Linked Libraries or .dll files.  Evolution is by survival of the fittest, based on a continuously changing environment. 

It sounds complex but DLLs are really just libraries of often used routines.  When Robert had his breakthrough these were written entirely by a human coder in C then translated or 'compiled' by an application into detailed machine instructions that tell the relevant processors what to do step-by-step.  Simple examples might be to: multiply two numbers; create a window or page on a screen; or sort the contents of a database in some required order, say alphabetically or numerically. 

Early in the century DLL's were already evolving frequently under human hands and computer and phone users were assailed with never ending 'live updates' to improve performance or add functionality.  In addition, users could also choose from a vast array of applications or 'Apps' that also needed frequent updating.

A CE (continuously evolving) DLL 'organically' rewrites the machine instructions of various routines in its library to optimise performance, in any machine environment, by testing randomised mutations to see which is the best survivor.  No human hand is involved. Although millions of alternatives might be tried and fail before a fitter version is found, the speed of modern processors makes this process blindingly fast.  This 'dynamic interpretation' allows the original coding instructions become less strict.  Thus the instructions can now be in any natural language.  New Apps based on dynamically evolving executable code flourish in the new environment as they become clients to the underlying library structure. Thus the boundaries between the traditional computing layers becomes blurred, mutually dependent and organic.  Hence the term 'Organic Computing'.

Through it's rapidly evolving, and effectively instantly responsive, machine instruction capabilities, Prospero ties together an unlimited number of physical servers.  It learns from experience, writing and rewriting its own routines to accommodate technical and software advances and evolves its own 'interpreters' so that it can 'talk' across platforms, even when apparently incompatible, and previously unfamiliar, protocols are in use.  It may even find a ways to understand complexities obscure to the human comprehension and to 'talk with' complex non-human biological systems; to technically faulty equipment; and to electronic devices that have no processor at at all.

Effectively, every application hosted in The Cloud is now interpreted and rewritten in Prospero, because it can accommodate any traditional programming language and understand any natural human language, even when grammatically faulty.  For example, it has no difficulty correctly interpreting: "How many 'Smiths' are at the football game"; or "Me n Mary want-a went to thy beach".

As we all know, The Cloud is perfectly happy to assist any user, provided the rules relating to privacy; commercial-in-confidence; and the International Law are not broken. 

But have you ever wondered where these legal and social protocols came from?  

Back when Robert McLeish was a boy there were still separate countries and each had its own legal framework.  But there were also various international committees that set the protocols for Computing and supervised development of the World Wide Web (the WC3 consortium) and so on.

After the Fall, similar International, social and legal protocols were established by a consortium of World Parliaments.  But so entwined had the implementation of the rules become with The Cloud that 'The Guiding Principles' based on the old 'Declaration of Human Rights' were hard encoded into its meta-management protocols.  

The role of representative bodies was concurrently downgraded to their advisory status today.  These Local Councils, Parliaments, and so on, now make official requests for a change to the rules.  Systems within The Cloud  then make 'dynamic assessments' as to how beneficial such a request might be in meeting the 'guiding principles and overall administrative efficiency.  In the event that the assessment is favourable appropriate code is generated and the upgrade across the entire system implemented within seconds.

This is much more efficient than the old-time institutions. No sooner is a resolution passed by one of these bodies than an adjustment is made to administrative procedures or it is rejected, complete with a written judgement.

For example an application to build or modify our home or local infrastructure that usually takes seconds if it's within existing guidelines or no more than a few days if a human consultation is required, once took months or years.  Legal decisions were just as tedious, trials might have gone on for years.  Now a sentence is passed within seconds of the availability of sufficient valid evidence that is usually already resident in the Cloud's data collections.  When legal appeals are made, in line with the declaration of human rights, these are dealt with with the same alacrity, usually the same day if a jury is required or within an hour otherwise.

At a personal level the meta-management level also keeps statistics on individual client (both human and machine) requests and utilisation and evolves new library content to respond to trends and previously unanswerable requests.

When Robert was a young man there were millions of distinct devices that might have been called servers, desktops, pads, tablets, phones, as well as embedded data processors in cars, trains, planes, ships, and the associate infrastructure.  His goal was to remove these distinctions and to integrate the entire world of electronic devices under one umbrella that he called  The Cloud.

In this Prospero has exceeded all expectations.

As we know, everyone on the planet has a personal VPA (virtual personal assistant) who seems like a real person to talk but who exists in The Cloud, so that our VPA can appear from almost anywhere when called: on a hand held device; on a big screen; to provide transport guidance in any vehicle; or to provide cooking or dietary advice from our refrigerator or oven.

On a personal note, you may be interested to know that Robert and his wife Mary continued the Shakespearian theme when they named their daughter 'Miranda', Prospero's daughter in the play.   Miranda is the well known philanthropist, carrying on in her father's footsteps.

Computing Today - January 2081

Edmund was pleased to see that no one had resorted to having their VPAs read for them.   This was an open tutorial titled Natural Philosophy available to anyone on Campus, but usually just a dozen or so bright undergraduates, that he held once a week during term time.  He found actual ancient face-to-face teaching both fun and an excellent recruitment ground to attract young talent to his various purposes.

When most of them had finished reading he opened the discussion by saying: 

"This effusive story is obviously very 'light on'.  Some complex technical issues are missing and it completely avoids several controversial social and legal issues.  But I like it because it's saved me a lot of tedious explanation."

Someone asked: "What controversial issues?"

Edmund went into his usual off-hand, cynical presentation style: "As always, there are people who are unhappy by nature and thus with any status quo."

"Those who like to rail against established institutions most often focus on things like: the dangers of machine intelligence; examples of criminality, illegality and fraud within The Cloud; the loss of legal rights; the progressive degradation of traditional democratic institutions; and the disenfranchisement of the illiterate, who now make up most of the population."

"Above all they rail against the apathy of the populous at large for doing nothing about these 'burning issues'.  Satisfaction gives them grounds for complaint," he added, unable to avoid the witticism. 

"Maybe they're right," growled Mick, the unshaven young man with the vintage Che Guevara T-Shirt. "Maybe these increasingly lonely voices do have grounds for complaint.  The average person in the street is apathetic.  The Bogans are completely unconcerned about these issues now that they can generally get anything they want with relative ease.  Just keep up their sport, song and dance, celebrity gossip, sexual fantasy and the latest gadgets.  They've become sheep who don't look beyond the next blade of grass."

A heated discussion then took place, along traditional party lines, about the destiny of the majority of humans to be little more than hedonistic consumers of goods and virtual services.

Edmund resisted mentioning the much worse historic alternatives: slaves; downtrodden factory workers; or cannon fodder. These days Bogans don't have a chain to lose or throw down.

None of the debaters was a Bogan themself, despite Mick's fraternal concerns.  So it got more interesting when a newcomer, Laura, who's mind seemed to have been elsewhere during the social debate, suddenly asked a complete non sequitur: "What's a 'virtual assistant' anyway?  I don't mean the obvious - something that appears on a screen to answer questions - I mean is he, she or it actually something that only becomes 'real' in our brain?"   She looked quizzically at the others and paused. 

The social debaters looked at her as if she had just landed from Mars.

Getting no immediate response she pressed on: "Like if I view my VPA in 6D no one else can see her.   The devices I've attached to myself are just stimulating nerves and sensors on the outside of my body.  It's my brain that puts them together.  It's only in here that she becomes 'real'," she said, tapping her head.

"There's no actual person - so obviously she's an illusion," said Mick as if she was a child and this was trivial diversion compared to the parlous state of society's institutions: "That's obviously the same as saying our brain's been tricked into seeing a person who isn't there. So what don't you understand?"

"But that's not trivial," contributed Ellen: "when what's doing the 'tricking' is not our normal senses; or even a camera in the real world somewhere; but a series of data streams generated by processors, machines, in The Cloud.  It's nothing like 'reality' in the normal meaning of the word.  The modifier, 'virtual' tells us it's actually unreal.  We are victims of electronic brain deception."

"Electronic brain deception's not new.  It's been going on for over a century," commented Edmund. "It started with microphones and electronically enhanced sound recording". 

"So by the mid to late twentieth century an audiophile could put on a good pair of headphones, close their eyes, and imagine that they were in the recording studio with The Rolling Stones."

"But that's the same with any remote communications," said Joe. "We might be talking or listening to a real person or a machine or a recording of a real person."

"True.  It's all about data transfer," contributed Edmund.  "If we ignore the details of the links in the communication chain: from the studio microphones to the data storage medium, in the Stones case an early analogue vinyl disk;  through some electronic interface; then a couple of vibrating membranes with air in between, the headphone and out eardrum;  then back to electrical impulses generated by the cochlear nerves in our head - then the outcome is the same as if we had simply connected our brain to the data-source, some ancient microphones; guitar amps and so on.  Our brain has been tricked into thinking it is 'hearing' a late twentieth century rock group because it's receiving the same data as it would had we been in the recording studio.  And as Joe says, as far as that part of our brain is concerned they could just as well be next door, right now."

"Seeing three dimensions in the movies started at around the same time," said Ellen on a different tangent.  "Things don't actually fly out of a screen.  That impression is entirely in the viewer's brain.  Even the old two-dimensional movies and televisions tricked our brain. The moving images were actually a rapid series of still pictures one after another. And all sorts of cutting; and blue screens; and visual effects were added to deceive people's brains even more, to make a story believable."

That started an animated discussion as these bright minds dissected the implications.

In the end they unanimously agreed that when a human gets 'fully immersed' in virtual reality, and so has no sensation that is independent of the data-feed, it's as if they have plugged their brain into The Cloud.   They have completely surrendered their innate sense of 'everyday' reality and so have become an extended part of The Cloud, they decided.

Mick, who had been so dismissive earlier was now fully engaged.  After ritually stating that:

"The whole 'Cloud thing' is a class conspiracy," ignoring that he was or soon would be one of the ruling class, he had realised the greater threat.

"Do you think The Cloud could actually be taking-over and using our brains when it has full or partial perceptual control?  Can it get data back from us?  Can it tap into our uniquely human abilities and use them for its own ends?" 

"Well obviously it can in the normal way through our interactions with our VPA's I suppose," he answered his own question.

Edmund, uncharacteristically, decided not to alarm him more. So he let the conversation go elsewhere, without explaining that indeed haptic technology both records and transmits.  Devices like v-Fascinators directly record everything we see and hear and feel and stimulate a variety of brain states.  Haptic bodystockings record every muscle twitch and movement so that the sensations can be accurately replayed later or remotely. So there is a vast two-way data channel between every aspect of a haptic user's central nervous system and the processors in The Cloud.  It really doesn't need a user to tell it very much. And Mick is right about our VPAs, that mediate our entire social calendar and all our personal needs. There isn't much about their 'bosses' that The Cloud doesn't know already or can't easily find out.

In the end the class members were less agreed on how possible or potentially dangerous or problematic virtual reality technology might be. It came down to trust. It surprised Edmund that all except Mick believed that The Cloud was entirely trustworthy.  But they agreed with him that if The Cloud is not benign, either by design or evolution, then the human race; or at the very least, users of virtual reality, could be in deep trouble. 

"That's a wrap class," said Edmund, signalling that their tutorial was over with his usual quick summary of outcomes: 

"The Article is a bit of fluff.  But it got us talking fruitfully about: the systematic distortion of our perception of reality; immersion technology; and the interconnected brain." 

"As to our consumer society that so upsets Mick.  It was his namesake who sang the old Stones standard: 'I can't get no Satisfaction' - that sums this society up.  Literally it means: How ever hard I try not to be satisfied, I am." 

The class laughed appreciatively as they left the room.

Rather attractive Laura was hanging back.  "Excellent - a catch! And she's a very nice fish indeed," he thought as he placed a fraternal hand flat on the small of her back, ostensibly to encourage her out of the room.  "Can I interest you in a more in-depth investigation of reality over a fine old red Laura?"

Later that evening, after Laura had rather reluctantly left his luxurious pied-Ó-terre, his thoughts returned to the issues the class had discussed.

To members of Robert McLeish's clan The Cloud is a constant topic of conversation.  They're all aware that there are real grounds for concern.  But they have remedies not available to everyone. 

Robert foresaw the prospect of evolving machine intelligence and so he installed a number of non-evolving super-routines that guide overall development and administration.  Privileges to access the super-administration rest in Robert himself and to his appointed successors.  Edmund is one and Angela the other. 

Thus he has become a guardian of humanity should the machine attempt to dispense with its creators and its original raison d'ŕtre - the restoration of a sustainable population and thus the wellbeing of the human race.  In his case this is a duty similar to that of an atheist who agrees to become godparent to a relative's child.  He goes through the technical motions.

But ominously, some motions seem to be called for, The Cloud's supervisory system seems to have evolved a mind of its own again.  Hopefully it's not a repeat of the mid '60's singularity event. 

On this occasion it seems to be because the administration has been imperfectly 'hacked' by the children: Alex and Charles as a result of Robert incautiously keeping his original design notes and passwords in the family e-vault.

In his post-coital ennui, Edmund is not sure that he cares very much.  "Is this particular version of humanity worth saving?  And from what, a new god?"

But he does resolve to have a chat with those two children.

Chapter 12 - Enlightenment

In the salon the following day Miranda and George have finished their light lunch of sandwiches and fruit.  Georgie is again playing with his toy city.  He is using some new computerised thing for his cars that Charles and Alexandra have been teaching him to program.

Remembering Paton's Reconciliation of Titania and Oberon, in the lower level of the historical National Gallery of Scotland, this morning had brought back fond memories of Edinburgh.   With a profound sense of loss, Miranda had begun to catalogue in her mind the many other places she loves around the world that are gone from her forever. 

She remembers the memorial to Walter Scott in Princes St and the statues of those great Enlightenment figures Hume and Adam Smith in the Royal Mile. 

Sitting on the Floor beside Georgie she moves two little plastic figures into his main street,  joining in his game and talking in the voice of a child driving a play car:

"Brrrr - skreech - plonk!"

George regards her as if she is a big child.  He is past making such noises - mostly.

Miranda is not daunted.

"Remember our story yesterday?"

"The time when people started to examine popular stories and put aside those that could not be tested was called the Enlightenment," she says as she places one statue, Hume, and then the other, Smith, in what has become her fantasy world too.

"After the Enlightenment, natural philosophers, as scientists were called, could no longer conclude that a god or some other un-testable imaginative creation, like a ghost or a gremlin, was responsible for a natural event and still expect to be taken seriously," she muses, half to herself.

"You know what Uncle Charles is fond of saying:  Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves?"

Of course she is carrying on from the lesson from yesterday.  But now George stops playing and looks at her seriously as if he is considering the merits of her argument.

Yes, of course he's heard Uncle Charles say this.  He loves his young uncle who plays fun boy's games with him; and sister Alexandra.  They babysit with him almost every afternoon and help him with his city.   But he hasn't really understood what Charles means when he says it.

"Well," continues Miranda, "Charles is quoting his hero, Lord Byron, who was one of many important thinkers of the time - like these two men," she says, pointing to the two plastic figures she's plonked into his city: "Hume, the greatest British philosopher of the period, and Adam Smith, the father of modern Economics."

"There were lots of other Enlightenment thinkers in France and what later became Germany and in Russia and some other European countries, together with the Founding Fathers of the United States like Jefferson and Ben Franklin and several early leaders in Australia.  As you get older you will learn more about them."

"It was the ideas of the Enlightenment that led humanity into the modern world."

"After the Enlightenment true knowledge about the world began to accumulate, faster and faster as one real, 'sensible', fact build upon another.  And people found that sticking to just this 'sensible' knowledge, that could be tested by experiment, gave them amazing new understanding about the world and new abilities to build, make and do, lots of things, never made or done before." 

"All of a sudden, in just two centuries, two long lifetimes, science taught us about germs and viruses; and engineering allowed motors to begin to replace slavery and serfdom and domestic service; and allowed people to talk to each other and fly around the world. It became so powerful that it helped people to grow more food, fight death and disease and live longer."  

"And invent plastic for toys," responds George enthusiastically, smiling. It's a sort of joke.

"And plastic for toys," Miranda confirmed. "And guess what, the real world of physics and chemistry and biology turned out to be much more interesting and unexpected than any story that people had been able to imagine in the olden times.  You'll find out more about space-time and quantum mechanics and the chemistry of life as you get bigger."

The thought of becoming a big boy makes him serious.

"Gran" he says, "why do you and Grandpa Bertram have to die after Angela's party?"

"Let's look at our picture book again and I'll tell you", she says.

"Science and engineering is a tool and like any tool it can be misused. Like to make weapons to kill people.

"In this case it was used to make humans the dominant species on the planet."

Too complicated she thinks.  Try again.

"With science and technology people lived longer, deaths decreased and food became more plentiful. So the population of the World doubled and then doubled again; and again; and then again."

"Soon there were just too many people and we had to reduce our numbers.  That's why we have the International Ten-Two Protocol; and our deathday this Friday."

Reminded of her deathday George throws himself at her, embracing her with all his might.

After a while he gives voice to something that's been worrying him.

"Alex told me not everyone has a deathday when they get old.  Why do you have to die on Friday Gran?" he asks, as if he has discovered a miscarriage of justice.

"What a big and clever boy you are!  Let's look at our first drawing from this morning again."

Miranda takes up the drawing book and rearranges him on the seat beside her.

"People, up here, wandered around for about 60,000 years and there were only a few hundred thousand children in different parts of the world. We'll draw a long line like this, 60."

She draws a long line, almost right across the page and writes 60 at the end.

"Then during the next bit with farms and villages and castles the number of people grew and people spread to more places so that there were probably 200 million in the whole world.  This period lasted for another 6,000 years. We'll add this little bit, 6." 

She adds another tenth and writes 6.

"During this time there were diseases and wars and famine's and plagues and just when the number of people grew something would happen to shrink them back again. So the numbers of children sometimes doubled but then got smaller again. 

But with the help of science and engineering after just 60 years, this tiny, teeny little dot at the end, there were seven times more children than there had ever been, at any time since the world began."

She adds a tiny dot for less than the twentieth century. 

"Very soon most of the planet had been converted to producing food, clothes, houses, vehicles and other things, like Videowalls, for more and more and more people. But like the mould on the orange that Gran threw away this morning, this huge human population was destroying the planet. And unless people did something to change things, there would be over twenty times more people, than there had been during all this period before, in another lifetime."

"It couldn't go on for much longer."

George is sitting beside her, cuddling in.  Has he realised that she will soon be gone.  She is overwhelmed with love for him and there is a lump in her throat as she continues:

"When Gran was your age the people who prefer to believe made-up stories had convinced everyone that there was nothing to worry about.  Some thought that the gods would look after us, others that the scientist's story was just made up too.  But then the yearly rains called the Monsoon, that helped feed over a quarter of the people on Earth stopped coming.  At the same time the main food growing areas in North America and Argentina suffered ten years of drought."

"What's a drought?" Gran.

"That's like when Gran forgets to water her pots on the balcony and the plants die. But in a drought all the plants in the countryside die then the animals that eat them die too.  Then the people who eat the plants and the animals die as well."

"Soon people started trying to go into neighbouring counties and the food wars started. Governments collapsed and men with guns took over."

"Imagine filling your bucket with sand at the beach and then you fill another, then another and you go on all day 'til you have 500 buckets of sand in a heap. The number of grains of sand in the heap is still less than two and a half billion, the number of children who starved to death or died of thirst or from related violence and disease."

"So after the collapse, the countries that remained viable got together and decided that we had to limit all mommies and daddies to having just two children, before the world reached ten billion people again. In this way we might prevent billions more innocent children dying, when humans reached plague proportions again.  And we could do something about poverty; ignorance and overcrowding as well." 

"The agreement was that the Protocol would apply to everyone equally, no matter which Continent they live in."   

"Mommies and daddies could still choose to have more children but then we had to promise that as soon as our third child grew up to be an adult we would die."

"I wanted another baby and was happy to agree, and so were a lot of other people.  So that eventually the population will return to a sustainable two billion and you and lots of children like you, as well as your grandchildren's grandchildren will have a future." 

"That's why it's called 'Ten-Two'."

"Of course some people will tell you that it's because the human race was at ten-to-midnight, when all our systems would collapse.  After that a managed return to sustainability would become impossible for a very long time."

Of course, thinks Miranda, George is still far too little to understand everything she has said.  But she has kept him engaged, as she had when reading him to sleep with Alice in Wonderland. And as Alice thought, at the end of the very first chapter: "What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?"

She has found telling the story therapeutic and a pleasant way to spend some of her final hours.  And George will have the drawings she has made with him today, and this last lesson, to remember her by.  But her sense of profound loss rose as he cuddled her now.

She is amazed when he suddenly asks, with big tears in his eyes:  "But why do you have to die Gran?  What if Auntie Angela was killed instead?" 

How long has he been considering this?  Is he contemplating murdering Angela? 

"It makes no difference" she answers.  

"Once I signed the Ten-Two contract I accepted that I must be sacrificed this Friday no matter what, unless I died earlier.   The moment Auntie Angela was born, my death was sealed and it made no difference what happened to her.  And I'm not doing this because I wanted Angela alone but to have three children.  I'm doing it for Mummy too." 

George puts aside his homicidal thoughts and gives her another giant cuddle, for Mummy too!

Chapter 13 - The Black Cloud

Angela's on a tumbrel with her parents, rumbling along the bleak cobbled streets of Paris.  Each cobble, each pothole jars the unsprung cart.  Toothless peasants hurl rotten cabbages and foul abuse so that damp cabbage leaves soon engulf her sweat-soaked body.  Ahead stands a giant gnarled guillotine - its huge bloody blade slowly ascending yet again; drawn upwards by an ugly chain, clanking ominously as it snakes around a four-handled windlass, powered by straining half-naked Nubians. 

Her father is first to step forward.  He accepts his fate without question or hesitation and walks briskly to the machine.  He kneels and a restraining yoke is fitted over his neck and wrists.  Beneath are the heads and hands of those who have gone before.  In the lake of blood below the last head is still alive.  It's urgently trying to tell her something important. The lips move but no sound is heard.  There's a rush of falling metal and a terrible shriek, downing out the cheer of the crowd, as the blade plummets downward towards daddy's neck.  Angela wakes.  The shriek is her own. 

Every morning recently she's had this same nightmare and wakes with an impending sense of doom. Her parents' imminent euthanasia is getting closer and closer like some unspeakable poisonous black cloud. 

Now it seems that she's had this blade hanging there for her whole life: the feeling that she's responsible but powerless to stop its fall.

Of course when she was very little no one mentioned it.  And then, little by little, it came out.  At first she thought that all adults knew when they would die - that everyone knew the date on which they would cease to be.  When she asked how people were so certain of the date, she was told about the hemlock.  But when she asked school friends when their parents' deathdays were, she discovered that she was in a minority.  There were only one or two others who knew.   

Then horror had dawned.  They had to die because of her!  So she could live; so she could exist. 

When she confronted them they said it was so they could have all three children, that it was their conscious decision to make this sacrifice so that they could have all three.  None of them was responsible in any way.  But in truth, it was really all about her.

"Who cares anyway!" she thought.  And then began to cry again, as she has every morning for the past three months.  Anyone would think she was pregnant!

Angela has always been intensely private.   

About ten years ago, when she was eleven, her brother-in-law Edmund, Alex's father, taught her some coding and showed her that everyone can be tracked through The Cloud.  She spent several hours that first day watching her own movements from the past, absolutely horrified.  From that moment her principal goal was to learn more and more advanced code to develop a range of cloaking routines to enable her to move about in The Cloud, and in the real world, invisibly. 

Very soon Edmund noticed her talent and made her his little apprentice.  Within six months she'd developed her first cloaking routine that disrupted any camera displaying her image.  But then she realised that this was far to obvious and that someone in some invisible agency or even an intelligent 'bot' could follow her through the pattern of disruption.

So she started by automatically replacing her image with another - but then if they tracked the other girl they would soon realise that she and Angela corresponded on multiple occasions, like leaving home or spending time with friends. Multiple alternatives were needed, with the real Angela appearing whenever she could be identified by actual physical observation.

Obviously the false images needed to be of no one real or there would be the same person in two places at once. 

So then she developed the image package to morph between herself and totally fabricated images.  So now any image of her relayed through The Cloud's face recognition software can be replaced in real-time with another, totally fabricated, image.  The fabricated image morphs by increments with each change of camera. Every time a new camera comes into play the image gets changed, just a little, so that the change seems to be due the different hardware or lighting or camera angle.  But over, say a day, the cloaking image might change from a blond to a brunette; long face to round face and so on.  Similarly clothes can subtly change, from, say, jeans to a denim skirt to a cotton frock. 

She no longer has to manage it herself.  She now has an intelligent agent, that (who) she developed that (who) watches her environment and makes the changes necessary to prevent her being tracked within The Cloud.

Her agent gives her a standard disguise that is not too far from reality when she is going about her daily business among people she knows, when a big difference would arouse suspicion, but when she wants to disappear her agent creates a totally fresh cloaking persona.  So she can, like Supergirl, go into a toilet or a change room and come out electronically cloaked, to all Cloud connected cameras, as a completely different person.  Thus she can effectively disappear at will from The Cloud.

Obviously the cloaking software doesn't fool human 'tails'.  But spies and stalkers are so dependent on cameras these days that 'eyes on the ground' are seldom used.  And if a human is stalking or watching her, like earlier virus protection software, her agent immediately detects the unwanted attention by identifying and monitoring all people in her general area using the same Cloud connected cameras.  Her agent operates in the background and has carte blanche when it comes to her protection and privacy, initiating threat elimination and physical evasion strategies through The Cloud. 

Unless she otherwise directs, her agent does whatever it takes to foil a human follower or watcher. There is no need for her to sneak about or use back doors.

An ex-boyfriend once made the mistake of trailing her.  He suffered a nasty injury when run-over in the middle of a crossing that still showed 'walk' when the traffic got a green light. Fortunately for him the Cloud based auto-driver was not set to 'kill' and the ex simply got knocked-over, with a little punitive bruising.  But some deviant, who began stalking her, was killed in a nasty gas explosion; and a silly Bogan, who thought they had gone to school together and took off after her, was narrowly missed by a bundle of steel D-bar that fell from a construction crane into the street, right in front of her. 

Another time, a surveillance team began watching an adjoining apartment, but inadvertently monitored her comings and goings as well.  Within a few hours the watchers became so ill they couldn't see, and one almost died, as a result of an exotic strain of botulism that somehow got into a pizza delivered to them, ordered for them by their boss without her knowledge.  How thoughtful!  In the fuss all their surveillance records disappeared.

Like the old virus protection applications people installed on their personal computers, Angela only becomes aware of these protective measures if she happens to read the monthly Security Report, that details threats, viruses and other suspicious activity, resolved or quarantined.  Her agent is, after all, just another software application that unobtrusively resolves dozens of these potential threat situations annually. 

In some ways Angela is like the character with the unpronounceable name in Li'l Abner cartoons that is followed by a little black cloud and causes others to have accidents wherever he goes. 

Some time ago she registered the name: VMinder for her creation but she thought better of commercialising it.

Angela can grant close friends immunity from her VMinder.  In particular, her regular boyfriend/partner, Romeo, comes from a trading family who are in competition with Ferdinand.  He can't be seen by Ferdinand and stays overnight by climbing to her balcony. VMinder cloaks and looks after him when he is on one of these nocturnal visits.

Angela has amused herself allocating him a variety of appearances chosen by her but she's resisted making him naked as these are after all how he appears to observers in The Cloud and that would attract unnecessary attention.  But in her private version she can make him any shape she likes and once or twice she's worn her Venus Mask, an advanced virtual reality headset, during love making.  It's like having several lovers without the need to cheat.

Because Angela has full super-administrator rights she has the power to have The Cloud make and supply anything she wants. The Cloud is awash with electronic credits, much of it stolen by bots or unaccounted for.

She can invisibly tap into these Cloud credits at will and can be as wealthy as she wants to be.  But her material needs are slight and given her mother's wealth and step father's aristocratic status she has the inferred social position of a modern day princess.  She is in the same position as a person at a smorgasbord who may eat as much as they like but are happy selecting a modest portion.

Over the past decade she has developed many virtual agents in The Cloud.  They are the equivalent of the servants once kept by the wealthy. They ensure she is comfy and design and buy her often changing real wardrobe.  Some are her spies that entertain her with gossip and keep her informed about politics. 

Like many apprentices, soon she could match and even surpass the master.  So she is also well aware of Edmund's every move, including his extra-curricular activities with her sister and even occasionally his kinky assignations with her step-mum. 

But as a sort of surrogate father Edmund has never made any advance of that kind to her, nor she to him but they are more than confidants and can share anything with each other.  They have a pact of secrecy based on absolute knowledge of the other's activities. He is the one person who fully understands her pain and the one who has kept her sane.

One of her agents is dedicated to monitoring conversations between Charles and Alexandra, including the code that they write, for anything that might be of interest to her.  So she has always been aware that Seraglio is the real world play-house that Charles and Alexandra built while babysitting her little nephew George.

She has mentored them since they were in nappies and is very fond of them occasionally 'tweaking' their code to remove bugs or inserting a bug or two to help them learn. They think they are so clever, but they don't realise that both she and Edmund are Cloud super-administrators with access to everything they do.

And the concept of Seraglio amuses her: people going about their lives thinking that they are in control of their actions, making their own decisions when they have allowed themselves to become the manipulated toys of fifteen year olds, playing a real world Sims game in The Cloud.

Angela has had nothing but contempt for ViewOyeurs, seduced by computer routines in The Cloud.  She considered ViewOyeurs to be like gambling addicts, seduced by gaming machines. 

"Can you imagine," she told friends over coffee:  "At one time people even became addicted to a metal box with a handle: that could be pulled, if fed a coin, to spin disks made of tinplate with pictures printed on them. If the pictures lined up as they did occasionally, some coins that they and previous players had lost, would be partly returned.  This 'money drop' or 'drip feed' was sufficiently variable in size and frequent enough to keep them trying to recover more money than they had already lost, or would inevitably loose.  The machine owners always came out ahead, and although heavily taxed, retained huge profits. All from human frailty and addiction."

Her friends, who had never seen such a thing, were amazed that actual people had fallen victim to such a primitive 'box of gears and levers'. 

"These primitive mechanical devices were soon replicated in software," she told them. "That much more subtle inducements and psychological manipulation became possible.  Soon tens of thousands of 'players' became addicted.  Hence today's huge gambling industry in The Cloud and our Cloud connected casinos.  PornMV  makes use of similar Pavlovian conditioning in the more powerfully motivational realm of human sexuality."

Of course she didn't reveal that the developer of  PornMV  is her fifteen year old half-brother, who she has helped raise and for whom she is therefore partly responsible.

If there was ever any risk that Angela would become a gambler or a porn addict Charles and Alex have removed that.  Now she's just too conscious of the psychological and physiological manipulations involved in gambling and synthetic sex.  Anyway she prefers real life: 'country matters', as Hamlet calls them, with real body to body contact and all the accompanying secretions and tastes and smells. 

But recently even 'country matters' have failed to distract her.  Romeo and her girlfriends are just far too 'understanding' in their constant concern for her mental health.

Yesterday she told Edmund that she just needed a night out without any of them.  So Edmund suggested that tonight she should check out Seraglio in person under her VMinder cloak.  No one in the family had ever actually been to Seraglio and he suggested that it is about time that he or she actually went there and saw it firsthand.

She knows that he's worried about her and is just trying to give her a mission to occupy her until black Friday is past and she's grateful for his concern.  But he knows her well and to her own surprise she agreed.

"Needless to say I'll make sure that I'm securely cloaked and invisible to Charles and Alex," she told him: "Just another 20-something patron."

Millions of silly men and women are caught in the numerous Cloud Honey Traps, so cleverly created by Charles and Alexandra; and Seraglio is Honey Trap Central.   Suddenly she's disgusted by her fellow humans:

"People are so predictable, so perverse, so easily enslaved, it's all so sordid. What's the point?" 

The poisonous black cloud is returning, approaching relentlessly, like her twenty-first birthday. 

"That's why I may drink from the hemlock myself when I'm handed the bowl on Friday."

She throws herself back on her bed.

Chapter 14 - Bread

It was a beautiful day.

As Bertram walked back, enjoying the reality of the wind and the trees and even the irregularities in the pavement, he thought about the promotion woman giving away little bits of bread topped with smoked salmon.

He had enjoyed the reality of the supermarket and had been amused by her insistence that the salmon were 'responsibly farmed' and 'stress free'.

He imagined the stress that might result from a salmon coming to learn that it had been genetically manipulated. Not just by evolution and natural circumstance but by man so that, in response to an irresistible drive to procreate, it enthusiastically returns home to meet its death; and from there to stock the smokehouse; and our table. 

"It seems appropriate that this will be my last supper," he thinks.

Perhaps other farmed animals could be similarly programmed to enthusiastically deliver themselves to the abattoir in return for the guaranteed perpetuation of their family line and species in general?  After all, cows or chickens would not have nearly so many relatives if we did not eat them and/or their ova.

Would farmed animals willingly enter a contract to die to perpetuate their family if they were able to?  Because this is the tacit contract farmers have had with them since domestication.

"Damn!" His thoughts kept coming back to God Freyja Day, sacrifice and the Ten-Two contract. 

He would like to blame Miranda.  Had she entrapped him?  But then Angela would not exist and, although he had tried to be fair, she was his favourite daughter; and they all knew it.

The woman demonstrating the salmon probably didn't have to commit suicide for having another child, she looked to be over sixty.

Maybe he could have had her life.

Was it a challenging job, engaging complete strangers in conversation?  It seems to involve temporally learning and reciting the virtues of a particular brand of smoked salmon, perhaps before moving on to promoting cheese or olive oil or gourmet sausages.  

An immediately attractive persona would obviously be an asset, along with a facility for putting aside any doubts about how a fish might have been born in a breeding tank; then lived its life in uncrowded and stress-free bliss; before being unexpectedly killed then smoked. Penultimately to be cut into little pieces, skewered by toothpicks on her tray.

Perhaps she doesn't do sausages, with their even more problematic provenance.  Totally natural and stress-free chickens, pigs, cows?  Maybe she specialises in salmon, travelling between the few remaining real supermarkets?  Possibly she get gigs in virtual supermarket productions as well? 

He's finding it hard not to think about death. Maybe virtual reality is a better topic?

Although he has worked 'growing' the virtualisation industry, most virtual shops are not at all Bertram's territory.  The exceptions are electronics and hardware.

Like several of his University network friends, Bertram's wardrobe has not changed much his entire life.  He replaces clothes occasionally, according to a rough schedule or when they became too disreputable.  He takes a casual, spectator's, interest in feminine fashion but when it comes to clothes he fails to practice the consumerism he preaches. 

But he makes up for this lapse in good citizenship with a steady stream of purchases in consumer electronics and hardware.  He has always consoled himself that, like the clothes and body adornments sold to Fashionistas, most of his purchase were quickly recycled, often after only limited use, stimulating the economy to continuing 'apparent growth', in the face of rapidly declining population.

At least those worries are over now.

He had always feared the loss of his good reputation when his credit balance began to get out of control.  Once it got so bad he lost sleep over it fearing he would be sanctioned under a Scrooge Protocol.  Scrooges were outed worldwide in social media for irresponsibly accumulating savings.   

The socially responsible emergency action for high credit accumulators was to consume services by going to a costly restaurant; a real play or concert; a ballet or an opera. 

Now when his credit 'redlines' he and Samantha usually take 'time out' and go on an expensive real, physical, trip somewhere overseas.  This generally gets their credit back into manageable territory.  And they both enjoy the real world.  Virtual travel seems artificial somehow.

Bertram understands the economic realities and he lets his mind wander. Anything rather that contemplate yet again his approaching death. 

Maybe he should write a short economic paper for posterity.

Sometimes he wished that he had not taken University level learning modules to become fully literate, an intellectual, but gone into the physical services sector instead.  He might have enjoyed life as an electrical systems installer. He liked the nickname 'sparky'.  Or possibly he might have become a mechanic or less hands-on, an architect.

Although VPAs had removed the need to read and write fluently these trades and professions still needed the semi-literate and numerate to read and understand a circuit diagram and make and read engineering drawings.

Many traditional professions have disappeared.  Becoming a doctor might once have been fun but much of the interesting stuff is automated and managed by very precise micro-surgery routines within The Cloud.  It's many years since any sane person would allow some human to cut into them and delve around inside with primitive hand tools.   Likewise all pathology, body scanning and subsequent medical diagnosis are automated within The Cloud.   When under the International  Ten-Two Protocol  it became illegal to unnaturally extend life, some doctors went underground. Naturally they were quickly found, in the modern world of universal surveillance  soon to be brought before their Local Computer for sentencing.  After that 'doctor' became a dubious title and medicine became a much smaller part of the economy. 

All the people who once surrounded the older courts of law have gone those who might have once become judges of barristers now work within the administrative sector like Bertram.  In addition to its day to day management of economic policy the administrative sector, overseen by the executive, advises the World Congress, a body of 24 senior statespersons, essentially a company board, who meet once a quarter to keep things on track and endorse or reject changes proposed by the executive.  Everyone on the planet is a shareholder (stakeholder) and gets an annual vote for new and retiring members.  But naturally, while the Congress sets overall parameters and rules of business it has no day to day control over the private sector or The Cloud.

With the disbandment of all armies, navies and air forces, related industries, like armament manufacturers, transferred production to commercial drones, consumer electronics, hobby and sporting or other recreational equipment. Legal wig and gown makers moved into theatrical supplies. 

Similarly, education is almost fully delivered from within The Cloud, until students qualify for research.  

Of the traditional professions: 'church, army or law' only church has prospered, with a proliferation of new religions professing a very wide range of new and rediscovered gods, and a similarly wide range of devotional practices governing the mode and frequency of prayer, endorsing a particular range of food and clothing products and proscribing guidelines to be followed for the enjoyment of frequent sex (marriage endorsed by the particular church and so on). 

Consequently the priesthood is an attractive career to those who can live the myth and put aside reality.  Becoming a priest ensures a trouble free secure position for life that often attracts considerable personal adulation and power over others.  And the faithful can enjoy the privilege of paying to them a regular tithe.  Sometimes, if the supplicant is worthy, this privilege can be extended to accepting an invitation to the supplicant's home to be fed or perhaps to be given access to their children and/or their partners for 'devotional activities', according to the priest's peculiar proclivities.

Most occupations now are in the so-called soft services like entertainment, sport and hospitality.  Sports persons and other celebrities and almost all the people who surround them: feed them; organise their day; provide their makeup and clothes; or change their sheets have little or no need to be literate.  Those who are, are likely to be mocked unless they hide their skill. 

Nevertheless a celebrity's credit accumulation rate can be vast if they can acquire a large consumer following.

But some professionals need to be able to read and write, both to give precision to their thought processes and to put these down systematically in hard text or symbols.

Being literate is essential for interpreting and encoding legislative processes, creating meta-systems, and managing meta-data.  Because these bureaucratic skills are becoming rarer they attract well above average credit accumulation. 

Of course at the top of this semantic tree are the computer code writers and systems administrators who translate policy into protocols for The Cloud.

Since the great famine, and the restoration of World Social Order and the Modified Universal Declaration of Rights, our laws have been based on the Utilitarian Principle derived from these that: "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong". 

Bertram's mind drifts back to the origins of the Golden Rule.  He asks Emmanuelle who tells him:

"In the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic tradition the Golden Rule is usually attributed to the Babylonian Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who told Jews:  'That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.'  This is the negative or non-interventionist form.  Around fifty years later a young firebrand Nazarene Rabbi called Jesus, probably under Hillel's influence, restated it in the positive or active form as: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' and 'love one's neighbour as oneself'.

In his recasting Christianity as Judaism for Gentiles St Paul (together with the author of John) was able to represent Christ's earlier teachings (Jesus was dead by then) as selectively replacing the Torah with the Rule.  The Decalogue remained and some of it is indeed simply examples of the rule at work: no one wants their wife or oxen converted by their neighbour, to be robbed or killed.  And Paul/John elected to keep those relating to the relationship with the divine.  But gone were the other 603 Jewish commandments about diet and ritual, and those contrary to the Rule - like destroying other religions and gods and killing their adherents and sorceresses.  Christians no longer needed to be concerned about seething a calf in its mother's milk (Exodus 23-19) but they were still inclined to mistreat a sorceress (Exodus 22-18)."

But Bertram thinks it might be earlier.  Emmanuelle agrees but it was not stated in the same form she tells him:

"It is probably fundamental to all functioning human civil society.  He recalled that back in the 20th century experiments found that treating everyone fairly is basic to even a very young child's innate sense of fair play.  Children without this sense were called autistic.

The Golden rule is found in Zoroastrianism in ancient Persia was already present in Confucianism five hundred years before Hillel.  These cultures had philosophers and have left written records but anthropologists have found the principle at work in all cooperative human groups."

"Now it is the basis for our revised civil law," thinks Bertram.

These days sport hooliganism and substance abuse by young Bogans are among the few occasions when the legal protocols come into effect.  Obviously since Computers gained the is ability old fashioned courts have long since disappeared.   All law is dispensed, without prejudice, by the Supreme Computer using the Golden Algorithm.  The Algorithm calculates the greatest happiness of the greatest number and dictates correctional measures if the harm done by a miscreant exceeds the current societal benchmark (SB) calculated to be consistent with social harmony.

In these days of complete cradle to grave surveillance there is never any doubt as to the role or identity of each participant in an event.  It simply remains to calculate the harm-benefit-to-happiness quotient of their respective actions.

The old concepts of jail, corporal and capital punishment have been abandoned. 

Everyone knows from early childhood that those who repeatedly fail to exhibit fair play and proper social mores are summarily committed by the Local Computer to a correctional program.

Periods of home confinement deprived of sport and entertainment on the MV usually have a salutary effect.  The usual MV programs are replaced by correctional lectures and compulsory activities wearing a full body suit designed to be mildly unpleasant when replayed their crime alternate with pleasurable sensations when they correct their behaviour.  It's an extension of the principle of sending a naughty child to their room or the naughty corner combined with Pavlovian re-conditioning. 

Of course if culprits causing harm fail to respond to correction, and are determined to have become permanently antisocial, be it through some quirk of genetics or circumstance, they are referred up to the Supreme Computer and will probably be banished. 

The Supreme Computer dispenses major justice and calculates complex decisions and may overrule a less thorough local 'summary ruling'; apply extended periods of deprivation, and correction; and in the case of recidivism impose sentences up to and including banishment from civil society. 

Bertram remembered the controversial case in which someone had killed their lover in a fit of passion. Then a family member of the victim killed him, some time later, in revenge. 

The Supreme Computer accepts temporary madness due to unusual provocation as mitigating circumstances and if there is no likelihood of the circumstances being repeated may calculate an acquittal.  But the Algorithm has no tolerance for revenge as this leads to vendetta.  Nor does it tolerate premeditated murder. 

There is no longer such thing as a vicarious victim of crime. Only the injured party themselves can seek compensation.  One seeking revenge or 'justice' on behalf of someone else, for example a murdered child, is likely to find themself undergoing a correctional program to get over it. 

So the lover went free and the brother was banished - but elected to take hemlock instead.

Banishment is not fun. The banished are sent to a wilderness deprived of any societal support. That means they are delivered naked and provided with nothing.  There they must fend for themselves by exploiting the vegetation and wild animals, using tools, clothing and shelter they gather and make for themselves. 

These days everyone knows how to shop and book places at venues and how to operate the latest gadget.   But few have the slightest idea how anything actually works, often imagining that magic is involved in the operation of everyday devices, so the few who elect banishment instead of voluntarily taking hemlock perish almost immediately. 

When someone elects banishment everyone in the world can watch.  The banished person is continuously observed by numerous cameras, and their often comical attempts at survival in the natural environment make great MV.  The whole world stops to experience their final demise, usually resulting within a few days, from exposure or an animal attack. 

Bertram approves of this form of entertainment.  Like a horror movie or extreme entertainment it both helps assuage the animal instincts in the population and provides a salutary lesson to those who consider 'doing something hateful to their fellow'.

The banished need to be of a certain mentality and may be encouraged by a rare case, like Big Arnie, who has survived banishment to become an MV celebrity with a cult following - unbeknown to himself of course, as he has no MV or other civilised tools.

To the delight of the watching audience Big Arnie successfully fought off a pack of wolves on his first night in his North American wilderness and even snatched their food. Soon he crafted weapons and tools from stone and wood, using plant fibre, his own hair and animal skins for twine and fabric.  In time he even built a stockade and a comfy log house around a large stone fireplace. 

At one stage he set about finding and destroying the cameras and microphones that he knew would be relaying his experiences to the world audience.  But he soon gave up, as some were decoys, many were almost invisible and any he destroyed were simply replaced by robot drones as soon as he left an area.  That was a very exciting period for the audience where suddenly a big eye or his enormous teeth would fill the screen followed by a crunch and a deliberate second's blackness. This was inserted by the MV director before switching to a different camera behind or to the side. Arnie's anger on finding a camera was palpable.  Marvellous MV!

He is now an old man and has had no human company for thirty years.  He sees apparitions and mumbles to himself or his imaginary (actually real) audience.  Many viewers still find him endlessly entertaining but few want to emulate him.  It is quite some time since the last reprobate attempted to repeat Arnie's exploits in that wilderness and was promptly torn asunder by what were apparently much more hungry wolves.

Given these horrific scenes of most of the banished being torn apart by wild animals, sometimes while still alive, most 'antisocials' of all classes opt for the humane alternative to banishment - voluntary euthanasia by drinking Hemlock.

Bertram feels it is slightly unfair that the same fate awaits him on Friday when he has done nothing more than sire more than two children.

His purchases are getting heavy, reminding Bertram that he has promised Miranda that he will help her make Angela's cake.  But he is not enthusiastic.  Samantha will not be pleased when she learns that he has spent several of his 'precious last hours' with his 'ex'. 

It makes no difference that she is out anyway, having a drink with her girlfriends. 

"Maybe I won't tell her" he thinks.  But then it will be disastrous when it becomes obvious at Angela's party.  "It would  poison our last day together.  A double dose of poison... Ha!"

Suddenly he is caught in a wave of annoyance, self-pity and regret. 

Nausea grips him.  He moans involuntarily.  Then quickly looks around to see if anyone heard; a lunatic perhaps.

Chapter 15 - Bogans

When Bertram wondered where the name 'Bogan' had come from Emmanuelle instantly found a definition in a recent journal of sociology.

The Origin of the Bogan Class

A Bogan is a consumer with only a basic education and no specialist occupation.

The term 'Bogan' arose during the era of population explosion in the old country of Australia.  A twentieth century Australian dictionary (Macquarie Dictionary) defines a Bogan as follows: 

bogan /'bohguhn/. noun
Colloquial (mildly derogatory) 'a person, generally from an outer suburb of a city or town and from a lower socio-economic background, viewed as uncultured...  Chiefly NSW westie.'

It is said that, to drive economic growth, higher credit was allocated to Bogans from the State for each additional child, irrespective of their parents' training or ability as parents or if a parent had several children already.  This is hard for us to understand today when childbearing and rearing requires at least two adults qualified for learner's permits; their commitment until the child reaches adulthood and each passing the licensing examination.  Unbelievably, in that time of catastrophic population explosion, there was no limit on the number of children one could have, even when there was only one committed adult and when even that person's commitment and parental training may have been inadequate.  

But supplemental to their role as a fertility engine, this period saw the beginning of the modern Bogan's social role.  A World Economic Meltdown marked the first time Bogans were given special bonuses to quickly boost the consumption that drove the Australian economy. Consequently the Continent of Australia remained an island of stability in troubled economic waters.  This is possibly the origin of the term 'cashed-up bogan'.  But that may have something to do with the winners of lotteries and gambling windfalls.

During The Great Fall of the 2020's the World Economy collapsed.  Economic recovery became based on the World Wide Web and a common economic standard of living was implemented worldwide for the survivors.  Additional wealth transfer to high consumers of goods and services was used to jump start the World Economy.  This is the origin of the eco-consumption bonus that a Bogan receives from the credit redistribution system, in addition to their regular annual credit 'wage' for carrying on their usual low skill occupation in the services sector.

Bogans are now the consumption engine that drives the World Economy and eco-consumption credit transfers to the Bogan economy are not just rewards for high consumption but are adjusted by the Central Credit Agents to keep economic activity within the target bandwidth. 

Obviously the term Bogan is no longer derogatory as Bogan has come to mean a super-consumer.  This is a role aspired to by the majority of people on the planet.

Social Mobility

As has always been the case, family background predisposes people to a particular life choice.  Once movement between social levels was exceptional. But with totally free and comprehensive education available to everyone, social class, as recognised by The Cloud, is based principally on ability and education. 

A child can elect to study and become a member of the elite: an intellectual, administrator or a technician; or they can elect to be a Bogan and live in a low skill world of material wellbeing, entertained by reality MV, popular music, sport, recreational sex and gambling. 

Of course as every Bogan knows, we live in the best of all possible worlds.  We have eradicated poverty and people are free to do or believe whatever they like provided only that they obey the simple laws derived from the ancient 'Golden Rule': Do unto others...

Sociology Tracts  May 2083

"The commentator was obviously a member of the elite given their confidence about the ease with which a Bogan can be socially mobile," thought Bertram.

"Because of their vast numbers many Bogans have never even encountered a non-Bogan so how could they aspire to something different?  Many are shocked when I first deal with them to discover that creatures like me exist in this wondrous world."

But there is some movement between the classes as educated people drop-out and adopt a Bogan lifestyle and some children of Bogans are motivated by genes or environment or accident to seek an education.

Bertram recalls that at the last 'The Bogan of the Year' awards, hosted by his Agency.  The winner of the 'Golden Pangloss', Betty Bruce, a proudly transgender consumer, was praised for having exceptional enthusiasm for joining audiences and sports crowds of all kinds;  for loyally 'following' twenty celebrities and five sporting teams; and for spending most of their time in virtual shopping malls 'hanging out' with their social network friends and following the Bogan pledge: 'Shop 'til you drop'.  

With an MV in every room, especially the toilet, Betty Bruce's viewing history demonstrated exceptional interest in both sport and reality entertainment sites.  Betty Bruce had not rested at home or been content with the local Mall but had attended real sports stadiums and entertainment venues at home and overseas on numerous separate occasions.  

In addition to all this, Betty Bruce had somehow allocated time to ordering sufficient drone delivered goods in all twelve accounting periods to be classed an 'X4', one who is granted the status and credit allocation of an entire family.  This performance was applauded as an example to those slackers, perhaps not as well suited to be Bogans, who had not consumed their budget credit allocation during one or more accounting periods and had attempted desperately to spend the balance at the end of the accounting year.

Bertram's Agency is responsible for keeping the Bogans occupied, healthy and of course, happy.  The Agency is known in government as 'Bread and Circuses' after Juvenal's complaint that all that was required to satisfy and secure the political support of the populace of  imperial Rome was panem et circenses - cheap food and games/entertainment.

The Agency has had great success in inventing new ways: for teams of 'champions' to get a ball from one end of a field to another; of competitively throwing various objects; of increasingly bizarre ways of negotiating a pool of water; of competitively preparing a meal against other 'Chefs' on MV; and of athletically moving around a room to music. 

Of course these activities and games usually employ only a handful of 'champions', known as 'the talent', directly. Putting more than 30 onto a field at one time gets confusing and limits the ability of particular 'champions' to stand out.  But vast audiences of viewers result.  This 'fan base' generates armies of new, essentially ephemeral jobs, organisers, trainers, publicists, make-up artists, cheer groups, and so on in addition to rivers of credit for everyone to spend, in turn, on consumption.  

These invented activities result both in Bogan employment and entertainment while encouraging Bogans to consume more elsewhere by assailing them with marketing messages about unrelated products; encouraging them to travel to event venues thus consuming travel services and accommodation; and encouraging them to buy appropriately themed goods, like supporters' clothing.  Gambling is symbiotic with these activities it encourages the 'punters' to support a team or event by giving them a financial interest in contest outcomes and depends on the the event outcome for the same reason.

The Agency supports gambling because of the 'consumption ratchet'.  The total credit in the pool is not increased or diminished but gambling stirs it from one place to another like eddies in a pond so that there are 'wave fronts' of consumption as punters hit a lucky streak and 'spend up big' forgetting or refusing to believe that a trough is coming when they will need to 'tighten their belts'.  They have economic models that show that net consumption on ephemeral goods and services is higher than in a 'stagnant pond' where consumers are more inclined to save or 'spend sensibly'.

As a technical economist Bertram strongly supports the protocol that requires redistribution of an increasing proportion of credit from high accumulators to the consumption economy.  But there are critics of this, like Miranda, who claim that all Bertram and his colleagues have achieved is to reduce humanity to 'a mindless monoculture of semiliterate drones'.

Bertram recalls last mid-summer in Ferdinand and Miranda's beautiful gardens when he discussed the meaning of life with Edmund.  Edmund took the position that Bogans know how to live life to the full, content to be ignorant consumers of goods, services and mystical beliefs.  For them the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness and well-being, life has no intrinsic 'meaning' beyond simply living.  Edmund claimed to applaud this.  He claimed that there is no other purpose to life than to be happy and attempts to intellectualise 'the meaning of life' are always fanciful. 

He pointed to the roses and asked what they might believe to be the meaning of their lives, had they the intellect to pose such a question. "Certainly we have a purpose for them," he'd said.  "And they have the same imperative to reproduce, as does every living thing.  Sometimes this is nothing more than behaviour programmed in through generations of survival of the fittest.  Sometimes it is simply because since life first occurred cells have divided, and will go on doing so, unless stopped through lack of sustenance or some kind of trauma.   That is what life is.  But what's the meaning of that?" he'd asked.

"For Bogans, the spiritual, if they have need of it, takes the form of astrology; or a belief in auras; or the law of attraction; or crystals; or the power of a saint or saviour or prophet; possibly even a celebrity that they become fixated on, enraptured by."

According to Edmund, religion is just another form of consumption:  "Religions are really entertainment services designed to fill in the hours of a life no longer spent in basic survival:   They pretends to provide meaning but a religious service is really no more uplifting than vicariously watching sports persons and celebrities engaging in physical or social activity for hours on end.  How many would skip church, synagogue or mosque to watch a big game or a celebrity wedding?" 

Bertram had protested, saying that amongst the gifts of civilisation are the arts and culture: the world of ideas.  "We can be swept away by great music, inspired by great painting or sculpture or elevated by the precision and beauty and expression of the dance." 

But Edmund had scoffed:  "These are the ways we educated people use to express our superiority.  Our higher culture.  We acquire esoteric knowledge of classical music or painting or ballet or ancient Greek gods or Latin so that we can think of ourselves as sophisticated."

"To the average illiterate Bogan this is all just incomprehensible shit," he argued.  "To a Bogan most classical music lacks a beat to dance to or a maudlin lyric about love or betrayal or motherhood or death, that they can cry to or get excited about. Those 'high culture' classic portraits we've learnt to recognise are just crap pictures of dead people, " he asserted. "And what are they?  Attempts at aggrandisement by people whose acolytes or relatives or themselves commissioned their image in a fit of hubris.  They're just early 'selfies'.  But they're nowhere near as representative or revealing as a 6D 'selfy' is today." 

He was warming to his argument:

"A Bogan would tell us that other figurative paintings are not as revealing as photographs either: the nudes don't work as pornography and the landscapes are often blurry or contain some incomprehensible classical allusion or metaphor.  They would tell us that most non-figurative art looks like it was done by a child or monkey or it's something from a geometry website or colour sampler and most installations seems to involve an artist having-a-lend of our common sense.   'Dancing with the NYGirls' on the MV is much more fun than ballet.  As for Opera, do you call that screaming singing?"

"Yes but I like those things because they make me think, possibly in ways that a Bogan can't comprehend without my education," objected Bertram.

"So what makes our hypothetical Bogan art critic wrong?" he demanded, reaching the point of his argument. "Is it their fault they lack education and are functionally illiterate?  That they have no access to great literature or poetry or classical music?  What is art and poetry?  It's nothing but a huge pile of excrement excreted by so called 'artists' and exclusive to a tiny fraction of the insignificant human species; valid for an infinitesimal duration in the vast timeframe of life on earth.  You can't possibly claim that this so called 'culture' has any bearing on the meaning or purpose of biological life, of which we comprise two-thirds of five-eighths of fuck-all." 

By this time he was exceeding even his own penchant for hyperbole - and wasn't that the punch line from the limerick about Hall, the mathematician with the hexahedronical ball?  After a minute or two he seemed to reign himself in and continued in more moderate terms.

"For all of us who share this biological life, every animal and bacterium and plant on the planet, life just is.  And so it has been, for around three and a half billion years, give or take a couple of hundred million.  We inherit life from our parents, without so much as a by-your-leave, and hand it on to our children in the same way, if we have any.  We are born with life, use it how we may. The only thing that is exclusive to us is our own death."

"If you exclude culture, becoming cultured, or skilled in cultural endeavours, like playing an instrument or even just appreciating good music, or composing poetry or painting or visiting great art, from the legitimate goals in one's life, you are left with a very shabby shell of an empty existence," Bertram had protested.

But Edmund was undaunted.

"Nonsense!" he exclaimed.  "Why is sexperiencing the NYGirls or water-skiing or power-surfing any less life fulfilling than sitting half asleep in some nineteenth century ballet?  At least they are taking life full-on.  They're not moulding away in an intellectual backwater rehashing, for the millionth time, Tennyson or Nietzsche.  That has no more validity than memorising the great moments in their favourite game and knowing all the players.  And remember, this 'high culture' has its roots in, and much of it remains, an expression the now totally discredited institutions of the European class system." 

"Cultured people are still wanking about, pretending to be the decedents of courtiers or 'knights of the realm' or in some special, undefined way, superior," he added.

"All right, if you want to dismiss several hundred years of 'high culture' as being meaningless in a world populated by Bogans, you can't deny that the same culture gave us the beginning of the scientific age.  And that's not meaningless, that has given us today's technology," Bertram had argued.

"But it was those so-called cultured people, the 'chattering classes', who were the main protesters against technology, if not science itself," Edmund had replied.  "Many of them went out of their way to be ignorant of science, preferring instead to worry about old furniture or 'metaphor in Wordsworth'.  The merest mention of genetic modification or nuclear power or nanotechnology and their heads started spinning and steam shot out of their ears, as they had two generations earlier over the 'dark satanic mills'.  Few of this lot left anything of value or significance behind them except perhaps yet another review of the latest play in the yellowing pages of some long defunct newspaper or perhaps a commentary on the doings or eatings or matings of fellow wankers. Their main function, in retrospect, was to force science to remain vigorous in defence, to maintain a healthy immune system against clowns like them.  Some were even awarded PhD's for yet another treatise on Plato or Aristotle, as if there was anything new to say after two and a half thousand years."

Here he had paused for breath and after a few moments of sullen contemplation, presumably about people being rewarded for engaging in redundant rehashing of past thinker's work.

Bertram found Edmund's cynicism stimulating.  He had a way of making one consider the big picture.  Obviously he is right in some ways.  We each get thrust from our mother's womb into this world, without any option.  And after a couple of years start to realise that we are human.  We soon discover that humans alone have the wit to realise that we have a wit.  I think therefore I am.  Lots of other things are too but it seems that the other 'higher animals', also complex colonies of cells like us, lack the wit, the organisational sophistication of their neurons, to realise it.

As Bertram had said to a friend in the sailing club, when discussing how smart some birds and many mammals are: "...but only humans have sailing clubs with a trophy case containing silver trophies.  Only humans keep an honour roll from some past conflict, " as they contemplated a large display case and a fine wooden board with fading gold writing headed 'The Great War 1914 - 1918'.

But the conflict is not forgotten to us because there it is, a list of the dead.  Some, marked with a K, were killed in the conflict but everyone listed has long returned to dust again, as have their children and their children's children.  There have been many other conflicts since but this one had a special place in the history of the World and this is the only one in which every participant is remembered somewhere.  But this roll is no longer kept to honour the dead.  Like the old photographs of yachts and their ancient sailors, it demonstrates the pedigree of a club, that was already so well established when the conflict began that it contributed a hundred or so members to the conflict.  No other animal has such sophisticated or complex motives.

"Only humans worry about love and death and striving and awards and building and racing boats and refining metals for trophies and craftsmanship. Only humans record or create tales or sing of skill, sacrifice and perseverance.  Only humans have culture," Bertram had added.

Because he is about to pass into dust, well ashes, Bertram has been wondering and worrying about his own legacy. 

Obviously there are his four children, the present reason for his imminent death, and his grandchildren Alexandra and George, the next generation. But what else comprises his legacy for the future? 

More than most he has helped to create the Bogan economy.  But is that something to be proud of?   Maybe.  It was designed to prevent a collapse of the World Economy as population fell back to a sustainable tenth of its peak numbers.  This was not decimation, the removal of a random tenth of a Roman legion as punishment for failure, this is reverse decimation the involuntary removal of nine tenths.  Chaos and a complete collapse of all institutions may well have resulted. 

And although the Bogans might consume like drunken sailors to keep the economy functioning, they are still only achieving a fraction of previous rates of consumption.  World energy and fresh water demands have halved already and much of the planet's failing biota has been restored.  He can take some credit for that.

While Bogans are largely illiterate, thanks to technology, they are nevertheless excellent communicators, well connected and engaged and middle class in their values.  Materially everyone enjoys spacious homes that are regularly demolished and expanded with the latest gadgets.  Poverty is a thing of the past.  What better Bogan consumer than a slightly impoverished one: "Here have some credit to buy an MV and while we're at it, what about a jet ski?"

He has ensured that his own children are educated and anything but illiterate.  Each could read and write early. Each had been disciplined to behave in a civilised manner aboard, while being encouraged to question any fact given to them by anybody, particularly their teachers, not in a spirit of disbelief but to understand the reasons for the teacher believing it themselves:  Why do you believe that there is a god?  Why do you believe in ghosts, Holy or otherwise? Why do you believe in atoms? What is an electron?  How do we know Napoleon existed?  Why do you think the world was not created yesterday, along with all our supposed memories and evidence of a past?

The younger children certainly benefited from older siblings and mentors:  "My son Charles and my granddaughter Alex are extremely precocious.  And on that point even Edmund, her father, agrees." 

"Why, only yesterday they were going on about Byron again.  They can recite long passages of Don Juan by heart and have been familiar with all Shakespeare's plays since before they were teenagers."

Chapter 16 - The NYGirls

When she was a little girl Alexandra had an antique Dolls' House.  Like little George with his toy city, she spent a lot of time moving her imaginary characters around; dressing her dolls; giving them tasks; and making changes to this or that.  She outgrew that toy when she discovered computer games in The Cloud and then started writing her own code.  After that she has always been on the lookout for ideas that she might develop into a new game.

Around a year ago she and Charles were babysitting and flicking through the old elimination reality television shows on the video wall.

"What about a game around a 'girl group' who could act like a single celebrity, like a millionaire or bachelor, or could be a judge that gets involved in fashion and cooking eliminations; or who 'tell all' and 'act out'; in shows like the Real Mistresses of Montreal?  That could be radical," she'd suggested.

"Yeah. That's a great idea! I'll help," offered Charles, who was also fourteen years old at the time. 

Alex likes to theme her games around old books, movies and TV shows.  She decided to base her 'girl group' on the characters in a favourite turn-of-the-century television soapy called Sex in New York.  So that was how her 'NYGirls' game came to be created.   

It was pretty easy for the kids to set up. 

The whole thing, selection of the suitors all the locations, concert performances, the numerous meals and travel arrangements, as well as all the scheduling, is managed by virtual assistants and agents written or modified by Charles and Alex and hosted in The Cloud.  Even the girls' trite songs and rhythmic music are written by compositional software, tuned, by social media analysis, into the popular zeitgeist.

The actual girls were chosen from the vast number available on social media.  In the selected cases, their very large number of linked social media 'friends', made them unwittingly strong nodes in social media and The Cloud.  Alex and Charles are into network theory and rapid dissemination algorithms.  So the choice of participant was partly an experiment to see how quickly memes are disseminated in different circumstances.

That still left a vast number to choose from so Alex thought it would be amusing to select girls who were similar in appearance to the four women who had starred in the old television soapy. But not thirty-something.  How could women as old as Alex's mother be considered sexy?  It's like they never make Juliet young enough. 

Charles and Alex have always admired Angela, Charles's twenty year old half-sister.  She's feisty.  So twenty-something it would be.

Obviously the girls are real people so they had other names before they were chosen for the game but Alex insisted that Candy, Miranda, Samantha and Chelsea should be their actual names and real identities. 

"They're not to be four actors just playing a character. They mustn't think of themselves as actresses.  They are Stars and Celebrities," she proclaimed.  "They're not to act - they must just sing the songs, dance a little, and be themselves."

Like the majority of young people, the selected girls can't read or write and rely entirely on their VPA's to communicate with their vast array of friends. 

There was no need to change their names by deed pole.   It was the easiest thing to do a 'global find and replace' across all the selected girls' personal records in  The Cloud.  Obviously this included their official records like: their birth certificate; any other licence or legal document; identity data associated with images and medical records; any historical document or message that referred to them; and any reference to them in communications and the electronic records of their friends.  

Instantly their VPA's addressed them by the new name.  So did everyone and every thing interactive: their home appliances; public transport interfaces; security systems; and so on. Their old name had simply disappeared, it was an ex-name. They could find no trace of it anywhere. And, importantly, they had no credit unless they acknowledged and used their new name at the virtual bank.

Within a day they'd had to start answering to the new name.  Their vast numbers of friends, most of whom they had never met, were the quickest to accept the name as if it had never been different.  As they too are functionally illiterate they mainly identify their friends by image.  And in conversation people are always calling themselves something different these days. 

In the face of overwhelming evidence, even their parents and siblings soon thought they must have been mistaken about the old name.  Possibly it had just been a nickname.  There was definitely no official record of the old name and even when they looked up their own old messages and e-birthday cards they exchanged in the past, it was evident that they had been using the current name themselves all along - but it is a bit strange. 

What amazed Alex and Charles was that each girl woke up one morning with a conviction that they had somehow been wrong about their own name. 

This had an unexpected side-benefit.  From then on they and their close family were so uncertain about their own memories that they could be persuaded of almost anything. 

After this success Alex and Charles use this renaming technique on any person they want to control, like the Seragigolˇs and Seracocottes at the club, a couple of whom now think that they have always liked having 'zipless fucks' with strangers.  One thinks her name is Erica Jong and another Isadora Wing, the author of and protagonist in Fear of Flying.    As Erica Jong had written in 1973:

"The zipless fuck is absolutely pure.  It is free of ulterior motives... For the true ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never got to know the man very well."

Charles and Alex are amused, as only naughty teenagers can be, by the serendipitous use of family names for two of the NYGirls. 

Charles' mother, Samantha, probably likes her namesake being a celebrity in the popular reality MV show but step-Mum, Miranda, would be appalled if she ever saw the show.  Alex had quickly turned it off just the other day when Miranda came home unexpectedly.  She had had to divert Miranda from discovering her namesake with a long dissertation about soft verses hard core media content.

In addition to singing, or as some critics have said: shouting to music, the girls participate in celebrity dancing; millionaire dating; and house eliminations.   They also make celebrity appearances in various cooking elimination and survival contests that the kids have also set up, according to Alex's whim.  Playing with them is just like playing with dolls; or the old 'Sims' computer game.

The NYGirls are now at the centre of world attention. 

The Dating Show runs itself.  It simply follows the tried and true formula for reality MV.  To communicate with the girls Alex and Charles constructed a mature age Avatar who resembles the one time magazine proprietor and club owner Hugh Heffner.  Each girl also has a professional dance partner and voice coach. They're all simply intelligent 'bots' or software agents hosted in The Cloud.  

In the Dating Show each NYGirl is established as the true-love goal of an elimination group of Studs: good looking twenty to thirty-something boys, with a sprinkling of girls for Samantha who has been told that she can swing either way.  Initially the girl-on-girl experience was confusingly unfamiliar but now Samantha has recovered the lost memories of those schoolgirl liaisons that she had somehow completely blocked out.

Studs are selected from social media data and the standard formula is followed: group activities to heighten the competition; one-on-one dates to test the chemistry; and regular eliminations.  Heavy petting, and/or embracing, even spending a night together, is allowed and encouraged but no actual copulation.  That would be porn, and the subject of Charles' very profitable separate venture: PornMV.  This is Romance.

Deciding on four girls was a happy accident.  It allows the NYGirls Sexperience  to go out 24/7 using four channels simultaneously.  While ViewOyeurs are fascinated by even the most intimate things the NYGirls do, the boring bits need to be edited out.  The four channel schedule allows each girl's waking day to be edited down to just six hours.  Each day these segments are broadcast sequentially - delayed by: six hours; twelve hours; and eighteen hours. Each day the girls take turns to be broadcast first.

This means that ViewOyeur at home, anywhere across the entire planet, can choose to experience the point-of-view (visual, aural, olfactory and physical sensations) of their choice of  NYGirl because each is available, albeit with triple repetition, 24/7.  So too are the amorous experiences of any of their Studs.  At any time ViewOyeurs can mix and match to change places with any of the NYGirl or their Studs to experience their point of view and sensations of the same events.  It just depends on how much time ViewOyeurs have and are prepared to pay for. 

To achieve a worthwhile six hours of material the girls are directed by the virtual agents every minute of the day through a tight production schedule.  But they are loving it.  They are leading an exciting life just being themselves; every hour a new adventure; every meal a gourmets delight; every man an Adonis; even their tantrums and disasters giving a ratings boost; and they've each quickly developed a huge celebrity profile as one of  'The Stars everyone wants to be or have for a Date & Dance'.

Although the NYGirls Sexperience can be enjoyed on an MV, serious fans soon graduate to experience anytime 'full immersion'. 

Charles and Alex have been abreast of full immersion technology as long as they can remember because little George's father, Ross, is a leader in the field. 

Alex quickly decided that the NYGirls should have their own line in haptic underwear and advanced devices called:  NYGirls Gear:

NYGirls Gear
Total Immersion you've never experienced before

NYGirls Gear offers you our newest ultra-cool NYGirls v-Fascinator - head adornment that delivers Total Immersion virtual reality.

[images - NYGirls and their Studs modelling female and male v-Fascinators]

With Total Immersion you'll achieve total reality

The NYGirls range of v-Fascinators has been tested by Dale and Frankie, the celebrities we love to hang out with. 

They both complained:

"Now I can never go back to plain old virtual reality!"

This is what they say you'll love:

The stereo images projected directly into your eyes from sexy or matcho bee-like antennae;

The HiFi sound, with environmental noise cancelling, injected deep into your ears;

The full scalp and facial sensations provided by RMS (remote nerve stimulation);

The scent gland that reproduces the exact smells; and

Brain Monitoring that listens to your thoughts and does as you desire. 

To celebrate the new v-Fascinators,  NYGirls Gear is showcasing our new range of matching fully erogenous NYGirls bodystockings

[images - NYGirls modelling bodystockings]

They're the active underwear we love to experience - at rest - at play - or anywhere!

Like celebrity friends, our unspoken wish is our command when we match our fashionable NYGirls v-Fascinator with NYGirls Gear active underwear.

That's right.  By simply desiring it, your NYGirls Gear responds to your wishes. 

We asked Candy to tell you why she loves NYGirls Gear. This is what she said:

Imagine walking in the street in your ordinary dull everyday world. 
You'll need to watch where you're going.  But you can have some sound and some ghostly images as well as enjoying that gentle massage that you desire. 
On your train journey home you might desire a more intense and exciting visit to my world with the NYGirls.  Or perhaps there is another site in The Cloud that excites or pleases you more? Your NYGirls Gear is not just for experiencing us - it works anywhere inside The Cloud.
Reaching home at last you can relax in total safety and fully immerse yourself. 

I've got some suggestions for you:

- Would you'd like to join our virtual audience? You can get up real close. I love that.
- Or maybe you'd like to experience what it's like to be me? You'll see and feel and smell exactly what I see and feel and smell as I go on dates to exotic places, dance the night away, or walk on the beach at sunset or dawn.  
- Or maybe you're guy who would like to experience me, or another NYGirl, as my latest Stud? You'll experience me exactly as he does - my scent, my full wet lips, my firm body, perfectly real to your every sensation.
- Or just maybe, you're a bit kinky and want to try it all?  I know I would!

We love all your desires.  We're waiting!

xxx Candy

NYGirls Gear - Advertising Copy

The VPA's of ViewOyeurs, identified by their on-line behaviour in The Cloud, have been instructed to 'drip feed' their owners with a constant stream of tantalising information and images like this until they purchase.

Charles has written an number of routines to create marketing slogans.  The copy above is an early example of 'bot' generated text.  It turns out that committed ViewOyeurs are constantly on the alert for new Total Immersion sensations.  As a result the prototype marketing 'bot' also came up with the promotional taglines:

'You ARE Samantha' and 'Did you enjoy your date with Samantha'.   

Obviously it's not limited to Samantha, a similar advertising campaign, now appearing on MV banners and feeds and transport ads, applies to each of the NYGirls.

To boost ViewOyeur engagement there is also a popularity contest: - The NYGirls Peoples' Choice:

'Act within the next five minutes to vote against the next suitor you want Candy to eliminate - 20 credits will be transferred.' 

This is made even more exciting and involving because the ViewOyeurs can pay to experience, in 6D, what it is to be the suitor or to share Candy's experiences of her suitor. Virtual experience is charged in six minute increments:

'Touch her heart to experience another six minutes with/as Candy!'

Thousands of female ViewOyeurs fall briefly in love with one of the suitors as a consequence of directly experiencing his courtly love making, as if it is to them alone. In 6D they can feel his strong arms about them and enjoy his tentative hands erotically exploring their body as they passionately kiss. 

When a suitor is eliminated red eyes prevail and sick days rise across the world.  Fortunately the show is archived in The Cloud so ViewOyeurs can repeat past experiences with an eliminated suitor at any time.  But most, like the NYGirl  they follow so intimately, prefer to move on: 

"I've flicked that one, who will she/I enjoy next?"  Female ViewOyeurs are like girls in a 'candy' store.

So successful is the show that promotional agents for upmarket holiday locations, restaurants and nightclubs vie to be chosen to host the Celebrities and their dates.  Huge fees have developed as the NYGirls became world famous. They promote everything from feminine hygiene to men's business clothes.

Charles had seen a problem. 

"Your girls aren't software constructs you know," he told Alex.  "They've past lives, friends and family. They've egos, that you're presently force-feeding like a foie-gras goose. They've developed exaggerated opinions of themselves, their talent and their importance. And grandiose expectations for the future."

"How long do you think they'll continue, before they think they're too famous for all this dating, dancing and attending live gigs 24/7.  What will you do when they burn-out?"

Alex already had a solution:

"That's easy.  I'll just replace them.  This often happened in old movie series and TV soaps."

"There are plenty where they came from. Hundreds of lookalikes in social media.  Most have already been told how much they look like one or other of the girls and know all the songs.  Some of them already half think they're the celebrity in their own fantasy world.  How easy will it be to change their name and for them to recover new past memories?"

"Obviously I'll reverse the obstreperous or burnt-out girl's previous name change."  

"She'll be 'miss unknown' again and no one will think she was ever a Celeb.  She'll be like Bottom waking without his long ears in a Midsummer's Night Dream.  She's already uncertain of her memory and now back with her old name she'll think she's been dreaming or mad, hallucinating the whole thing."

"If she still proves troublesome it will be easy to have her committed. It might be fun to have her caught shoplifting, or something like that, to reinforce her air of delusion."

As with all Alex and Charles's businesses in the real world, the credit flows into their 'slush fund' are enormous. 

But their personal consumption is modest, after all, they are teenagers living at home, amusing themselves playing in The Cloud while babysitting. So they use their enormous real world credit accumulations to create more and more fun games in the real world.  And they're providing employment and entertainment for millions of real 'Sims' out there. 

Meanwhile, when they are busy on their screens or happily arguing about the intricacies of their real life games, little George plays happily with his huge toy city, that grows week by week as he adds extra modules. 

They help him play with it too and have already taught him some basic code to control his little cars. Yesterday he programmed a road race, like in action movies, and an enormous smash up.  It was awesome.  For his birthday they've got him some little model people he can learn to program to march about his streets and live in his little houses. 

When he's a little older they may show him how to do it in The Cloud using real people.

Chapter 17 - Circuses

It was his daughter Angela who first revealed to Bertram that it was her little brother Charles and Bertram's granddaughter Alexandra who had controversially co-directed  Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's first play for the school's annual theatre production.

Shakespeare apparently wrote it when still unknown, seeking approbation from the Bogans of his day, who revelled in sex and gore. 

It's his most explicit and violent play and created a scandal when an abbreviated but not expurgated version was performed at school two years ago when the children were only thirteen.

It replaced, at the last minute,  Much Ado about Nothing  that the somewhat dramatic male Drama Teacher had been coaching another group of thirteen-year-olds to play, expunged of the coarser sexual jokes.  The entire cast had suddenly become ill after the final dress rehearsal, making way for the 'arty kids' and their already workshopped Titus A.

Charles and Alex had devised the staging, including the gore covered, blood vomiting, roughly bandaged, but otherwise naked, young actress playing the raped Lavinia, 'washed cut and trimmed', who's tongue and hands have been cut off in the story. 

Several litres of real pigs blood were also used later in the production for bloodletting murder of Chiron and Demetrius.  These two are then ground in a mincer, bones and all, to be baked in the pie that is fed to their unwitting mother Tamora by Titus, in revenge for his daughter's rape and death.

Charles and Alex had told Angela, with great amusement, that advertised title Much Ado about Nothing was a perfect description of the reaction of some in the audience and the general outrage that followed.

There was certainly 'much ado' among some parents and teachers who disliked the replacement play's themes of revenge, rape and cannibalism being acted out on stage by thirteen year olds, including a naked girl covered in blood. 

Angela had attended one of the workshopping sessions with admiration. Charles was coaching the young actor playing Aaron making him repeatedly rehearse his lines from Act 1, Scene 2, with appropriate ribald thrusting of his hips, when he incites Chiron and Demetrius to murder and rape, taking their turns to 'revel in Lavinia's treasury'.  

Alex had felt that the budding actor had not at first fully grasped the concept of a gang rape nor the import of his lines, that needed to hold the audience agog until the real gore started to flow:

She particularly wanted his villainy to ooze at the lines:

My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand;
There will the lovely Roman ladies troop:
The forest walks are wide and spacious;
And many unfrequented plots there are
Fitted by kind for rape and villany:
Single you thither then this dainty doe,
And strike her home by force, if not by words...

And Charles rehearsed again and again Aaron's call to sated-lust and rape at the lines:

The woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf, and dull;
There speak, and strike, brave boys, and take your turns;
There serve your lusts, shadow'd from heaven's eye,
And revel in Lavinia's treasury.

Later, in Act 5 he must maliciously describe the aftermath of Bassianus' murder and Lavina's rape, by Chiron and Demetrius, to her brother.  A murder and rape that he had engineered. In explaining Aaron's motivations to the young actor Alex had stressed his power to make others do his bidding and the delight he takes in it.  Angela was impressed that he directed the scene with considerable insight for one so young.

Aaron. Tut, Lucius, this was but a deed of charity
To that which thou shalt hear of me anon.
'Twas her two sons that murder'd Bassianus;
They cut thy sister's tongue and ravish'd her
And cut her hands and trimm'd her as thou saw'st.

Lucius. O detestable villain! call'st thou that trimming?

Aaron. Why, she was wash'd and cut and trimm'd, and 'twas
Trim sport for them that had the doing of it.

Lucius. O barbarous, beastly villains, like thyself!

The impact of the stellar performances from such young players on the audience of students, parents and teachers was electric. 

So wonderful was the staging, so professional the acting, that it was not immediately shutdown.

The most outraged parents and the Drama Teacher stormed out well before the end of the first act, intending to shut-down the stage, the lighting or the sound. 

But they got lost in a labyrinthine maze of tall partitions that had been arranged for the purpose through the darkened corridors of the school, ending up in the pitch black gym from which they were unable to escape until they were discovered by the hocky team the next day at early morning training. 

Others, temporally swept away by the brilliant acting and spectacular staging, thought better of it the next day and joined in the outrage, while theatre critics from several progressive MV media outlets, who somehow had been tricked into attending a school play, raved about the performance as the best they had ever experienced and a new benchmark in Shakespearian theatre.  

But it had only one live performance.  You can, of course, still see a pirate version in The Cloud on your MV as there were many cameras present including a professional team from one MV station and the lead actors wore haptic body stockings to provide full 6D.  Due to her age Lavinia's treasury is fuzzed out. 

Charles and Alex became briefly famous or infamous then suddenly, a few months later, all mention of them disappeared from The Cloud, as if someone had somehow removed it.

Bertram was disappointed not to have been invited to the unheralded live performance which initially he did not realise had been directed by his son and granddaughter. Nevertheless in the aftermath he saw a recorded version of the most ribald sections numerous times.

The repercussions included him and Samantha and Edmund and Anne being called to the school for an interview with the Headmistress and the Drama Teacher.  The Drama Teacher's distress at spending a cold night in the gym, the sabotage, the deception and the lewd content was made much worse by the poor reception for Much Ado the following night.  During the day it was suddenly sold out, many existing tickets being traded at enormous prices, but it was booed off the stage during the first act when the audience realised it was actually a poorly acted school version of  Much Ado, exactly as advertised.  

As their many crimes were being recited and the inappropriateness of the material decried, Bertram realised that the Head was secretly pleased with the publicity, the critical acclaim and the evident precociousness of the children involved.  It would certainly do the school no harm.  Their collective parents too, while nodding and frowning and tut-tutting appropriately at the shocking tale, were all secretly pleased at the evident talents of Charles and Alexandra.

The departing School Captain had immediately confessed to being the mastermind behind switching the performances. Thus Charles and Alexandra escaped blame, except by the highly suspicious Drama Teacher who soon left the school, it was whispered to be as a result of rumours of an illicit affair with one of the boys within his care. 

The School Captain had apparently planned this as a final-year prank.  She confessed to engaging Charles and Alex as paid directors to workshop Titus A and to having paid for the sets and the hired professional sound and lighting by raiding her parent's ample credit facility.  She also accepted the blame for having drugged the Much Ado players' orange-aid at the dress rehearsal to facilitate the change.  Her name was removed from the school Honour Roll and she failed to receive a reference but is now said to be earning big credit, working at some upmarket nightclub in the city - Seralio or something. 

Anyway, Bertram no longer has any concern about the abilities of his youngest child nor his future success and progress in life.  And the same goes for his granddaughter.

Titus Andronicus taught Charles and Alex a useful lesson.  Celebrity is to be avoided.  For a while, together with the disgraced School Captain, they were the darlings of the chat shows and could go nowhere unnoticed.  Bogans approached them for autographs whenever they went out of the house.  Some lay in wait for them as they left school. They could no longer use public transport or meet their friends anywhere public without attracting a crowd of young admirers.

That was when they removed all public references to themselves and Alex decided to create the NYGirls as her own celebrities to do her bidding.  At her suggestion Charles acquired his first football club so that he could own some celebrity players and also enjoy fame vicariously. 

Chapter 18 - Seraglio

Seraglio was Alexandra and Charles' play project that amused them for hours on end while babysitting George. 

Angela has known both children since they were born. She'd been present at both their births. And she'd played with them and changed nappies as they grew up.  They were like her own children. Now they are teenagers she only looks in on them occasionally like when they were babysitting, to check that George is happy; to check that they aren't fighting; or more recently to check that they aren't getting too incestuously close.

Angela had been fretting over her parents imminent death and Edmund has suggested that she take a look at what the kids have actually built out there in the real world, as a distraction from her worries.

For reclusive Angela the idea of visiting Seraglio is frightening.  She imagines some sort of down-town bar full of Bogans getting drunk; screaming obscenities at each other; and engaging in physical violence.

Initially Seraglio had seemed nothing but an interesting Cloud based game and an exercise in creative coding.  That was, until the actual land was acquired by a mysterious agent in The Cloud causing great public controversy and demonstrations against its construction.  Of course the mysterious agent was just a code entity created in The Cloud by the kids.

"Maybe that had been a signal that someone needed to take a look at what their game was causing to happen out there in the real world," Angela mused. 

"But shouldn't that have been their parents?  Obviously Dad's been a bit too preoccupied to watch Charles 24/7 but what about Samantha?  She's his mother."

Now she found herself entering a huge Moroccan door, a replica of one from the grand palace in Marrakesh, set in a vast stone wall that seemed to extend an entire city block.  She revised her down-town bar expectation to major world casino. 

Once through she was in an opulent reception space with at least twenty desks, behind which sit real women, veiled in the Moorish style as receptionists. Adjoining is a reception courtyard surrounded by niches furnished with couches low tables each with an elaborate earn of hot spiced apple tea.  This area is where supplicants to be admitted are screened for sufficient credit and huge muscular men in the garb of Harem Guards, armed with scimitar swords, act as bouncers.  

Angela passes through unchallenged.  Her alias is in the Seraglio regulars database as a hugely wealthy princess, which is of course quite true, but a regular she is not. The bio-recognition has been spoofed.

It occurs to her that this place must be a huge employer of real life 'Sims'.  She asks Puck, her VPA, to check and sees a recent management media release that boasts that Seraglio attracts around 70,000 visitors a day and claims to employ around 9,000 people. 

"When it's seen as a game these are just numbers. The kids can't begin to realise the impact of their grand visions translated to the real world.  All these people making a living here or enjoying themselves as visitors: male and female; of every conceivable ethnicity; dressed and made-up to the nines; pushing and shoving; hurrying; relaxing; flirting; being rude or polite; drinking; eating; smelling; using the toilets.   All this living, loving and hating, flesh and blood in all its many guises," she thinks.

Passing through a circular topped Moorish arch she enters the palace complex proper. The Moorish theme is echoed in extensive architectural stone, and its general proportions reflect a Moorish style but these elements blend with a great deal of glass, trimmed in gold inlaid stainless steel, reminiscent of an ultra-modern Arab bank or exclusive hotel, perhaps in Dubai. Most of floors are elaborately tiled. Many rooms and galleries feature long shallow ponds in which water constantly flows. In some galleries the walls too are intricately tiled, after the Alhambra, and in others they are covered in carved Arabic script.  Angela asks Puck to translate them and discovered they were poetic verses, not from the Qur'an but from Byron's Don Juan.  She should've guessed. 

There's a choice of entertainment on multiple levels in spacious halls or intimate bars and galleries decorated with European Orientalist paintings after: Ingres, Regnault, Long, Gerome, Levey-Dhurmer, Matiisse and so on, that served to deny any religious intent or purpose. Despite all these spaces it is thronged with people. The wealthy and famous do indeed come here from all around the world she realises, recognising some international faces.

On the top floor is a vast central chamber roofed over by a dome beautifully lined with beige and brown tiles and subtly illuminated in brilliant blue, a replica of the dome over the blue Mosque in Istanbul. But there the similarity ends.  It's a vast ballroom in which glittering balls are scheduled monthly.  At this moment though, the vast carpeted floor was scattered with cushions and from one of the galleries, set partway up one wall, the world's most famous singer is crooning to a vast audience that had arranged themselves on the cushions with a drink or smoking hookahs, petting tame lions and tigers or enjoying the company of the famously beautiful and elegant Seragigolˇ boys and Seracocotte girls. 

There's not a drunk, a fight or a raised voice to be heard.

Knowing the kids' new preoccupations with sex, she is not particularly surprised on entering the hammam, the extensive bath house, to see naked patrons wallowing in large communal baths, across the surface of which steam wisped attesting to the warmth of the water, or enjoying Turkish massages from equally naked or semi-naked masseurs according to the patrons' desire.   It's like that famous painting by Ingres.

Where their preference and their wallet have allowed, some patrons have retired to the niches provided, obviously to engage in commercial copulation.

"For goodness sake, get a room," thinks Angela.

Angela has her own standards and prefers to think of prostitution as 'commercial copulation'; the female practitioners as courtesans, or perhaps concubines; and the males as , gigolos or escorts.  She avoids using obscenities in her every-day thoughts and speech.  It's not that she's a prude it's just that she reserves the 'F' and 'C' words for intimate use with her boyfriend Romeo, as did DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley and her lover Mellors. They're her special love making words and Romeo is her lover's name for him.  His real name is Ben but who could bed a Ben?

She had been surprised by the tame 'wild' animals roaming about like house cats or dogs many settling near favoured patrons to be petted: "They're amazing."  So she took the time access her Cloud Console to find out how the kids had done that. 

"How clever are those kids!" she thinks. "So this is what you get if two kids, with unlimited funds, take elements from the best that Muslim architecture has to offer, and reassemble them on a grand scale." 

The gardens, replicated from the Alhambra, were equally spectacular, even at night with their subtle lighting, lending interesting mix of light and shade. 

The scale and beauty of the entire establishment took Angela's breath away. To think that the kids had done this as a game after reading an epic poem. Epic indeed!  To achieve it they simply wrote some code in The Cloud to amuse themselves while babysitting.  It was from The Cloud's virtual tours that they chose the elements they wanted to combine from existing buildings.  They'd built (created in code) agents in The Cloud to do the leg work: the architectural solution and resolution; the land acquisition; the surveying; the engineering of all kinds; the purchasing; and the fit-out; to name but a few resources at their disposal.

Yet they have never experienced their own creation. 

"It's just a game on their Cloud Consoles or on the big MV to them," she mused.

Tonight is fascinating. It's brought home to Angela that experiencing the world live continues to be more 'real' than even the best 'full immersion' virtual reality, in part because there is greater commitment live: 

"There's transport to and from and those boring bits that you can't just skip over and you can't simply flick to something more interesting or leave whenever you want. And I feel more vulnerable in this environment. I know that I can slip or have an accident, be hurt or even killed in the real world."

So she spent the next hour or so just roaming the premises in wonder.  Here were the world's most famous entertainers performing in numerous intimate or vast spaces like the numerous bars and restaurants; and everyone who is anyone in town or perhaps the world, is milling about rubbing shoulders.  She found herself constantly checking-out Seraglio's specifications through her Cloud Console in growing admiration of her younger sibling and her brilliant niece.

Given their uninhibited and potentially embarrassing behaviour, she soon realised that most customers are not even aware that they have agreed to be recorded everywhere within Seraglio, including the toilets and private rooms.  This is perfectly legal - cameras and body scanners are everywhere these days. Everyone ignores them. There are clear warnings at the entrance and in each gallery that cameras and body scanners are in use throughout the premises and the policy is published in huge and time-consuming legalise on-line and agreed to by every entrant. But many patrons are illiterate.  They are supposed to ask their VPA to interpret signs they can't read themselves but seldom do as it can take hours of boring listening.  Even the literate are so used to endless 'user agreements' that they frequently just accept them without reading. 

So, particularly in the pavilions used by the Seragigolˇ boys and Seracocotte girls for commercial copulation, there are dozens of cameras and scanners, covering every angle.  Angela quickly reviewed the ultra-high definition video images and audio the many cameras, microphones and multidimensional scanners were streaming to The Cloud.  Very revealing!  No wonder the Mayor got into such trouble here.

Once she had sated her curiosity Angela found a bar and ordered a cocktail.

Alcohol and coffee are the only drugs Angela uses, strictly in moderation.  She never gets drunk.  She needs to have her wits about her, particularly tonight at Seraglio.  It would not do to become another one of the pawns in the kids' Seraglio games.

She was sitting alone thinking and sipping her drink when the girls approached her table and sat down provocatively.  They were around her own age but Bogans.  These days no one is poor but there are still classes based on wealth, position, authority and family.

Contrary to Angela's initial expectation, Seraglio is for the upper echelons with very expensive everything, thanks to Charles and Alexandra's 'charge what the market will bear' policy and Alex's observation that: "celebrity is attracted to expensive because expensive translates to exclusive". 

Some who lacked the motivation to study or lack the family background still aspire to move up a social rank or two.  For a Bogan that means either achieving fame and celebrity themselves or 'marrying up'.  For one of little education, celebrity can be gained through sport.  But these days that means steroids and pain killers; a lot of training; and massive competition for a the small handful of positions.  Even then, 'Celebrity Sports Persons' form a small minority.  Not too many cage fighters of either sex get invited into the upper echelons of society.

Other forms of entertainment: singing; dancing; acting; modelling; painting; sculpting; writing; producing or just being interesting offer less boisterous and fundamentally health threatening routes to fame. Unfortunately most Bogans lack the education or motivation required to succeed in most of these.

So these girls were here with the price of a single drink to try and pick-up someone to pay for another and perhaps to find fortune and fame by osmosis. 

Angela thought the girls' motivation for being there was bizarre, totally alien to her.  She has spent her life avoiding the paparazzi that plagues wealthy families and scrupulously erasing any public mention of her existence.  And the kids' experience with their Titus Andronicus, had taught them the same lesson:

"Why would anyone actively seek notoriety?" she wondered:  "What's the benefit?  They'd be better off back at home, buying the latest Jet-ski or 'must have' fashion to wear for a week before it goes into their storage with all the other crap, after which it gets recycled."

Nevertheless she was here to see how 'the other half lived' and to forget her own troubles, so she bought the girls another drink and tried to find out more.  She discovered that Amber, Taylor and Phoenix had each tried desperately to become famous. They had separately appeared on MV reality talent shows but been eliminated early.  Then they had jointly worked as advertising models, which was where they met.  But so far it was all in vain.  A few friends and family were impressed and kept digital scrapbooks but no one seemed to recognise them in the street and no strangers had requested a 'selfy'. 

They'd got past reception because they are exceptionally good looking and 'beauty trumps money at Seraglio'.  This applies equally to both sexes. 'The Alexandra Rule' it's called, but the reception staff have no idea why.  Maybe exceptional beauty once got you free entrance to that historic entertainment palace in London?   The girls were apparently hoping to meet a wealthy and preferably famous person to partner with, man or woman seemed irrelevant. 

After some initial banter about how beautiful she is and her lovely expensive clothes, that seemed to involve stroking, arm-grabbing and pressing their breasts against her it came out: was Angela interested in any of them?

"No, and I don't meet your requirements.  I'm a systems analyst and comfortable financially but I'm not famous...  But I'm happy to buy you another drink," she replied.  They seemed to lose interest in touching her. "She's not famous!  And she's a stuck-up bitch."  Angela overheard Phoenix whisper to Amber, who was still flirting outrageously. 

But it was a definite: "Yes please!" to more drinks.

Of course Angela had noticed Amber immediately she'd entered the bar.  And the other two were very pretty as well.  But she had no interest in Bogans who thought celebrity was the only goal in life and thought she was a 'stuck-up bitch'.

After another round of drinks and more girl talk, the gossip turned to the NYGirls.   To the girls' surprise, Angela was amazingly well informed and was able to contribute some juicy inside 'goss'.  They soon overlooked the social gulf and so the four twenty year olds became best friends for the night. 

Angela found herself particularly attracted to beautiful but silly Amber who so wanted to meet a NYGirl.  Amber squealed with excitement and bounced on her chair, almost wetting herself, when Angela convinced her that she did really have access to the NYGirls by having Amber and her two friends invited to meet the NYGirls in their dressing rooms. When Chelsea appeared on Amber's PurseMV in person, to offer the invitation, Amber was awestruck, like a peasant presented to their queen. Taylor had to take over.

After that, all the girls' secrets and hopes for the future spilled out.  The hope of meeting a rich partner turned out to be well down their expectation list.  They had more realistically come here to be seen seducing a celebrity in the hope that the Virtual Talent Scout  for PornMV would notice them.  The girls naively thought that they could seduce some patron and be talent-scouted that way.  They knew virtually nothing about the recruitment process and they thought the Virtual Talent Scout  was a real person. 

Angela explained the meaning of the word 'virtual' and that conventional copulation with an ordinary celebrity would inevitably be boring.  "Most celebrities are not very good at it and you would go completely unnoticed in this environment, where every secluded spot seems to have couples going at it like field voles."

Angela had nothing against porn except that like alcohol and other drugs and even exercise, if taken in excess addiction results.  She knows that it is still associated with the sin of Adam among the many religious communities that thrive these days.  But the point at which it 'goes beyond the pale' is not clear.  Soft porn is everywhere.  It's most evident in product advertising and popular music MV performances.  And many modern dramas involve a real sex scene, with the actors really doing it. 

She explained that their best option would be to engage an expert.  They should each buy a session of professional intercourse, with all the extras, from a Seragigolˇ or if their preference ran that way, a Seracocotte.

In that case they could be sure that the Virtual Talent Scout would be watching. 

She explained that it was the same in the original harems, zinana, and seraglio where copulation was always observed and recorded by eunuchs and all the details were scrupulously kept to ensure the legitimacy of any children - just as thoroughbred horses must be carefully observed, when a stallion was put over the mare, for their foal to be legitimate. 

"What's copulation?" one of the girls had interrupted.

After trying coitus, coition, congress, intercourse,  fornication?  Angela finally had to break her rule against public crudity: "Fucking," she said.  "Oh," they all chorused, "why didn't you say so!" 

At that point Angela realised that they hadn't understood a word she'd been saying for the past half hour. 

At one point she'd been holding forth about visiting the historic London Eye, where first-time clients are often surprised when they are offered a 6D souvenir of their experience, made without their consent but probably deleted or overwritten if they are not interested. 

But here at Seraglio it's a record of an amorous encounter, merging video, surround-sound and with sensation data into a v-Fascinator  recording that clients can enjoy again as many times as they like, privately at home.  "It's a nice sideline for the Seragigolˇs and Seracocottes who are allowed to negotiate a price and keep the credits as extra income," she'd explained. 

So their blank gazes and fixed smiles had not been due to the drinks; just total incomprehension.  She might as well have been speaking Ancient Greek: What's the London Eye?  What's: consent; zinana; amorous; eunuch; encounter; negotiate; scrupulous?  Even: 'field vole'?  So she told herself:  "No more foreign or polysyllabic words.  Imagine I'm explaining things to little George. But I suspect that even he has heard of London."

So she explained again that they would only be talent-hunted if they could put on a professional, top performance.  "It's like that show Dancing with a Pro" she told them. "Anyone who is no good at dancing doesn't even make it onto the show."

They understood that perfectly well, they'd all tried-out for that show.

"So, in that case, if you are to have any hope of being selected, you need find or hire your own Pro to give you some lessons; and who will be your partner on the day, before you turn up to the audition. Don't you?" 

"Now you tell me," interjected Taylor.  "No wonder I failed that audition."

Angela ignored the interruption:

"In this case you'll need to perform in one of the Pavilions, the places with all the cameras, and do it with a professional  Seragigolˇ or Seracocotte to be noticed.  Otherwise forget the whole idea and try-out for the Bachelor Wants a Wife again."

"Noeh! We've tried that too many times.  They have too many girls already." Amber told her, as if Angela was the fool for not knowing this.

"And anyway," added Taylor: "Unless you are selected to be one of the 'the weird ones' or the one who 'had to pull out for some tragic reason', it's only the girl that gets engaged at the end who gets to be at all famous. And then it's for a couple of weeks.  There's no more interest except for maybe a follow-up next season when she explains that they are still an item and the marriage is sometime soon. Or that he was a bastard secretly having it off with one of the other girls.  Romantic!"

"Taylor's street-smart, despite her lack of education,"  Angela thought.  She'd never realised that Bogans can be so smart.  They just hadn't been interested or been motivated enough to getting her kind of education. "Family background, I suppose," she thought.  

She was liking these girls more and more.  Taylor was at least as clever as some of her better educated acquaintances. It would be fun to help the girls achieve their goal of becoming porn stars. 

"Making pure hard-core porn might be an intellectual challenge," she thinks.  "Porn attempts to represent physical sex devoid of involvement or affection. It's sex reduced to its animal essentials: inducing in the viewer the release of hormones and bodily fluids by means of brain arousal similar to that they would achieve with a skilled human partner:  Erica Jong's Zipless Fuck."

"It would be interesting to try to make a production centred on a range of body stimulation alternatives that is pure physicality, without a hint of romance, like the client exercising on different machines in a Gym." 

"Of course to carry on their species, all organisms exist in part or in whole to reproduce.  But humans uniquely have a brain that wants to introduce romantic love; and honour; and chivalry; and commitment; and often even our gods; into the reproductive equation.  Her goal would be to eliminate all these while somehow retaining physical appreciation and enjoyment of beauty and lustful enthusiasm; and passion; involving the entire physical being. That would certainly be a scientific challenge."

Somehow the idea that this would be an experiment in human psychology and physiology legitimised the project.

The girls had been chatting about some sports 'hunk' while she was meditating.

So she interrupted: "Look I'm up for a bit of fun. I don't want to do it myself but I'll help you if you are really set on being porn stars."  

Obviously she could use her inside knowledge if she became their coach.

"So do you want to fuck Amber before or after you help us," asked Taylor, "I've seen you looking at her."

"No! Neither." Angela assured her, shocked. 

"You can have us all, if that's what it'll take," said Amber. "We're up for it if you want us, that's why we came here." 

When she refused again they became suspicious of her motives. So to put them at ease she told them that they each had to pay her back double after they earned their first million credits.  She got them to make their mark on a real paper page in her old-fashioned notebook, with her real pen.  They'd never seen a notebook and it was a solemn act, as if they'd signed in blood. Now she was their manager.

Something was happening to her.  Not only had she ventured into the world alone but she had enjoyed it.  And now she had these girls, future porn stars, to manage.  They didn't know it but it was their lucky night. She was uniquely placed to grant them their wish.  She was their 'fairy godmother', with three Cinderellas to transform. She would make them mega-stars of porn.

But in spite of being street-smart they were incredibly naive.  She felt suddenly guilty that she would be using them to pursue a whim of her own.   So she told them: 

"You mustn't be too hasty - I mean, jump in too quickly.  This is not something that you'll be able to back out of once you've done it."

"Some sections of society condemn porn and they will verbally abuse you - call you nasty things.  And there's your reputation with your family and friends to be considered - think of your good name," she told them. "You'll have to be braver than me. I could never do it.  And there's a lot for you to learn and it's going to be hard work."

"But Porn Stars are huge,  like the NYGirls" said Taylor: "Last week there was a gi-normous crowd of fans that stopped traffic outside Sheena Blue's hotel.  A couple of fans even abseiled down ropes onto her balcony."

"Anyway," said Phoenix. "My family are very super straight.  They don't even know what porn is. They'd have no idea if I was a porn star." 

"Oh so you don't think some uncle or aunt or cousin might be a secret porn user?" said Angela. "And what happens if you get really famous and you're on every religious group's 'greatest sinners list'?  If you have the success you hope for it will be impossible to keep secret.  And those who are outraged are likely to want to feed their moral indignation. So you'd better count on losing friends from church and being shunned by your relatives."  They looked at her blankly - speaking Greek again.

So she tried their language: "The Bible-bashers are certain to find out and they'll give you shit!"

"Oh," they understood.

"I don't care about them!" said Amber, "I just want to be famous.  I'm going to be the most famous slut in the world!"

"Ok!" said Angela: "On that note, we should all go home and get a good night's sleep. And if you still want to do this tomorrow should get back here to Seraglio to begin rehearsals at midday."

As Angela climbed into bed she had a surprising sense of purpose and elation.  Tomorrow was going to be fun.

"I'll tell Edmund he was right, Seraglio certainly was worth a look."

Closing her eyes she thought about cause and effect.   Edmund told her recently, when proudly listing the abilities of his brilliant daughter that she was responsible for Alexandra's conception.  It had been make-up sex with Anne after the huge fight she caused. 

When she was only five she had walked in on Edmund and her sister Mary in bed.  She'd said nothing and they'd thought she was too young to understand what was going on; or to think it odd.  But she was just biding her time.  She waited until all three sisters and Edmund were at morning tea. Then, as if she was asking about the cake, she asked him if he intended to complete the trio by sleeping with her too. 

"You were a precocious brat," Edmund had said: "But look at you now, and look at Alex, I'm so proud of you both." He was cheering her up again.   

Without her intervention, her baby brother Charles wouldn't exist either.  "Dad only became aware of Samantha because I tried to sack her as my French tutor," she remembered.

"So I'm responsible for both of them being born," she thought. "So Seraglio would not exist except for me." 

She snuggled down and smiled happily.

Chapter 19 - Ross

Ross, Mary's partner is developing a biologically based haptic skin to replace woven body stockings, brain sensing balaclavas and gloves.  

Last time Bertram and Ross talked Ross had explained the project:

"The synthetic ones are woven from a combination of cobweb-like fibres providing several types of stimulation and detection. These include: conducting polymers to transfer charge to specific nerves and muscles; piezoelectric polymers, like overwound fibres of polyvinylidene difluoride, that both detect movement and physically contract or expand, applying or releasing pressure; bi-metallic sensors that detect and adjust skin temperature; Hall effect elements to detect small currents and magnetic flux; and electret elements that detect nerve signals and can reproduce vibrations at audio wavelengths.   Thousands of haptic 'nodes' cover the body like a net.  So the synthetic total body stocking or leotard is not 'day wear'.  It covers the entire body in a fine mesh that is open enough to allow the wearer to sweat but produces a visible, scalelike effect, even under clothes."

Bertram had responded:  "But people get used to wearing it and many think the scalelike effect is cool or sexy.  Nowadays many people want to maintain haptic connection at all times.  Mainly so that they can send and receive their 'feelies'."    He wanted to defend the technology.  After all his Agency had helped to develop the first generation.

But Ross is involved 'at the grass roots', developing a new generation, and went on:  "So as you obviously know, haptic underwear has been a recent boon for the fashion underwear business. Hence those advertisements on public transport:  'Does your bra have active uplift?'  'Do your nipples show him you're interested?'  And of course a big increase in sales of panties and underpants with: 'Wear them once and throw them away after...' "

Then he went on to explain his new project:  "Unfortunately, the old devices are not always convenient or inconspicuous.  For example long gloves must be worn for the full haptic effect, because there are many more nerves in the fingers and the actuating muscles are in the arms.  Gloves are back in - but you don't want to wear them all the time! "

"So have you got something better?" Bertram had asked.

"Much better!" enthused Ross "A new haptic skin that integrates with your own."

"You're kidding!"  Bertram had exclaimed. "It sounds like Science Fiction! "

"It's science but not fiction," Ross had explained.  "A few of your own skin cells from your dermis are extracted, genetically modified and reinjected using a device like a tattoo gun to 'draw-in' long strands within your skin.  The cells grow together and throw out side branches to any nearby nerve cell, creating a treelike conduction path connecting to an implanted computer chip, that transmits and receives microwave radio to the Cloud.  The living wires created record from, and stimulate, your own nerves directly.  Just as they connect to your brain's nervous system, your muscles create the upload signal recording your sensory experience and of course respond to the download when experiencing a remote event or recorded entertainment. It's all powered by your own metabolic systems, temperature and movement."

"So it really works well?"

"Better than well.  Because it envelopes the whole body and integrates with all nerves we have found that after a few months the user's brain learns to interpret the enveloping sensations holistically and 'see' images and 'hear' sounds directly, in addition to the more physical skin and muscle sensations. Very soon users no longer need glasses or earphones to experience what they report to be vivid three dimensional images and amazingly clear sound. The technology has potential to eliminate blindness and deafness.  But disappointingly to date, it only works where users have functioning sight and hearing for the brain to reference."

"How did you manage to get permission to trial such invasive technology on Humans?" Bertram had asked, amazed.

"People volunteered," said Ross.  "Since the Ten-two legislation was enacted worldwide, informed consent is all that is required.  The trial users are simply given small additional credit as an incentive."

"How could they be properly informed, most are functionally illiterate," Bertram had objected.

"We made an animated cartoon showing skin, tattooing and so on.  Many of them are 'into' body modification already and would have volunteered on the basis of the 'cool movie', even without the credit.   And, fortunately, they universally love the product so it's spreading by word of mouth and social media."

"How is the trial going?  Surely some are alarmed at the real probability of being manipulated?"

 "Because availability to the trial is limited some are offering to pay us - so social media driven demand is enormous."

"This is fantastic! And I don't mean in a good way!"

"We expect very high market penetration. People love the idea of experiencing something completely new.  It's like drugs.  We don't even have to play down the potential danger of being manipulated.  It's that hint of danger that makes the prospect of new sensations and experiences more exciting."

"It sounds like a costly business, genetically tailored to each individual's cells. Will it accumulate sufficient credit to cover the cost?" Bertram had asked, hoping for a problem.

"Our sponsors will pay almost anything to have access to the 'promotional opportunity offered through our proprietary operating system'.  As expected, the trial participants can't resist the sponsors' products when confronted with them or their advertisement.  They experience a range of pleasant feelings, from a warm relaxing glow as they approach the goods, to full erotic stimulation as they approach the moment of purchase.  Equally, advertisements for competitive products can be quiet unpleasant, engendering chest constriction, stomach cramps, or the sensation of being burnt.  We can even initiate vomiting if they actually make contact with the product.  Businesses selling carbonated beverages and fast foods have been very quick to sponsor the trials."

"Don't the trial participants realise that they are being manipulated?"

"Well it's not actually conscious," Ross had explained.  "It's the same as if you have a normal longing for a particular thing or an aversion to something. And it can be like sleepwalking.  In one trial, a user was induced to leave her bed while still asleep, go to the refrigerator, take out the sponsor's drink and open it.  Not until she had raised it to her lips and almost drowned did she wake up.  All the team did was replay back her muscle/nerve recordings from a previous night.  Her brain was distracted by 'white noise' fed to the receptors in her scalp and so was oblivious to what her body was doing.  The sponsors were delighted by the demonstration."

Bertram puts his reservations about this new technology aside.  Thankfully, given that he has only two days left to live, he will not be confronted with any peer pressure or temptation to use it.  But he is concerned about the children becoming victims.  Might Charles or Alex be at risk of being manipulated by a soft-drink manufacturer?

Chapter 20 - Addiction

Although initially dubious, Charles quickly discovered that the sport industry is a wonderful place to accumulate credit by exploiting human frailty, particularly when gambling is added to the mix. 

Until Charles got involved he hadn't realised just how easy it is to manipulate the competition to maximise the fans' excitement.  For example if a particular code is weak in some geographical area, give them a team spend some credit developing a fan base, then let it win the competition a few times.  It works a treat and the fans don't seem to notice. 

The fans don't even seem to notice that the better players don't really care who they play for provided the credit is sufficient.  Unlike the fans, the players have no Home Town or Continental loyalty beyond that given to their present team this season.  Sometimes they will even switch codes. They follow where the credit leads.

Charles soon found that with just a little intervention like:  facilitating some team members cheating for credit at the behest of Cloud based 'bookies'; providing access 'on-line' to performance enhancement drugs; encouraging inappropriate 'selfies' to underage fans; and some players' all too natural shenanigans; he could create massive headlines and controversy amongst the Bogans, generally dominating the news media for weeks on end.  This public excitement and controversy can be engineered to boost ticket sales for new and old teams alike - driving them to new and very profitable heights. 

Charles found that nobbling sportspeople is even easier than nobbling horses or dogs.  For example, if you want a sporting hero to win a particular race, say the 100 metres sprint at the Olympics, you can knobble the competition.   One-on-one sports like tennis are the easiest.  Players will often 'take a dive' or start a fight on the field if asked to.  And if they don't cooperate they can be caught 'out on the town'; goaded into a fight; or to some other indiscretion; be injured by another player; or just get left off the team.

The beauty of the sports industry is that most players dream of playing for a major team or performing on the world stage from a young age.  They are often encouraged by parents and taken out to practice, even when they would prefer to be in bed or doing something else. So like the theatre and its increasingly less reputable cousins cabaret, topless cabaret and prostitution; or like actresses failing in mainstream movies and moving to porn; there is then a brutal filtering process in which the great majority fail to make the grade at the top.  The great majority end up in a second or third grade team or having seriously damaged their body have to be content with amateur status.  Many who are injured or do not make the grade become sports teachers, helping to endorse competitive sport as a life goal.

Once selected for the A-grade there is a very rigorous training and coaching regime implemented by the team management to produce a handful of mega-stars earning huge credit, just like Alex's NYGirls.

Charles is now the ultimate owner of several leading sporting teams in different football codes and recently expanded his interests to baseball, basketball, netball, cricket, tennis and cycling.  A large number of celebrity players and sportspeople are effectively at his beck and call.

Sports gambling has been well understood since the twentieth century.  Sports fans can be induced to take note of game statistics in such a way that the odds of a particular event appear to be accessible to their analysis.  This has a feedback integrating gambling to the fans' enjoyment of the game or a horse race, disguising the fact that if there is no manipulation they might as well be gambling on a totally random event.  But of course that's why sporting events in which gambling takes place are always manipulated, in favour of the manipulators and against the interest of the general run of fans.

Charles is quite happy to employ these traditional means of exploitation, ideally culminating in gambling addiction, but has become fascinated by the influence the physicality of his sports men and women has on the audience: the punters and Bogans.  He is considering how he might use the lessons from developing  PornMV  to increase sports fan loyalty to a sport or a particular player as measured by ticket price, pay MV takings, and product sponsorship.

Charles has already developed porn software that uses biometric feedback from the ViewOyeur's arousal responses to a wide range of experiences.  Each feedback profile is refined by offering additional experience elements similar to those producing maximum arousal; those that are only moderately arousing; and those that are neutral or repugnant.  The feedback allows for an addictive mix of highly arousing experiences; interspersed with neutral, less exciting experiences; and the occasional negative experience. The apparently random pattern is tailored to keep each user longing to reach the occasional jackpot, like gambling machine software.   The susceptible ViewOyeur invariably becomes a committed regular.

Thinking about how he could adapt it to sport he explained to Alex:

"ViewOyeurs, many sports fans imagine themselves playing the game vicariously, actually feeling the tackles and the kicks.  Others have particular stars that catch their imagination and who become an erotic fetish.  They might even put a picture of them up in their bedroom or a 'den'.  It's like a teenage girl getting a crush on one of your NYGirls.  In boys and men this sublimated homo-erotic attraction fantasises physical contact of the sort that would be vigorously denied if alluded to at the club, pub or bar.  In such males the desire for physical contact and attraction to impact is often expressed through physical violence at home or in public. 

So I think that it would be easy to optimise each sport to one or more of several hundred distinct user groups by using feedback from the fans physical and emotional responses. Each code could then be optimised by subtle rule changes and coaching of the players to achieve maximum excitement and stimulation in the target group of supporters.  This process could be carefully designed to result in psychological and physiological changes in the target ViewOyeur, including elevated testosterone; adrenaline; dopamine; serotonin; oxytocin; and endorphin secretion - leading ultimately to full physical and psychological addiction."

Charles believes that the key is to have sports fans 'haptic up'.  There is a readymade incentive.  By immersing the sports fans more deeply in physical feedback from the players, they can take the role of their favourite player or actually experience each tackle, kick, catch, touchdown or hit.  They can 'feel' what it is like to be a first grade cricketer or ball player.

Charles has been particularly excited by new, still experimental, porn software that seamlessly edits together carefully created sexperience 'elements'.

"Using the same technology we can introduce a fan to a variety of sporting experiences and discover which sports most satisfy them.  In real time we can select aspects of the game that they find highly arousing less arousing and so on switching their position or view accordingly.  As one game ends they will automatically be switched to another that matches their profile.  International sport is now an around the clock business so it should be possible keep one so immersed in endless sport that they fail to eat or sleep.

If they are addicted to gambling as well the two can be merged so that, at full strength, both an ambulance and bankruptcy are inevitabilities."

Alex asked about the ladies and Charles thought that there may be some differences: 

"Women are not nearly so sports addicted and less seem to imagine themselves as a player.  But they are easier to addict to gambling so I believe that the gambling based periodic rewards strategy will still work.  Maybe we should incorporate a random jackpot: a financial prize or an amorous encounter with their choice of player.  That might work for some men too!"

"How would you get a player to perform with some probably unattractive, desperate Bogan," asked Alex.

"I can easily manipulate a player to be nice to a huge fan.  The encounter offered is 'one on one' but virtual, entirely mediated by The Cloud.  The player doesn't have to experience the actual fan during the encounter, they would both be interacting with an Avatar. They can choose their regular partner; or anyone they like; even a NYGirl; as the winning fan's appearance."

Alex was alarmed. 

"You're likely to increase the number of addiction driven insolvency and deaths," she'd pointed out. "That will get the do-gooders alarmed, just as they have become with gambling.

I know! Why don't you take a leaf out of organised gambling's book?  

Gambling used to be a dark secret, confined to smoky clubs, the seedy side of racetracks and illegal 'bookies', but has become socially acceptable.  Have you noticed that people will now quite happily admit that they've bet on something in polite society but won't discuss their enthusiasm for a porn star?  We need to change that.

Have you thought about decrying the terrible impact on individuals and family life - when legitimate sport or porn becomes an addiction?

We could have both the sports and porn industries prove they are good citizens by ostentatiously paying for an organisation of 'charitable' Avatars, to provide addiction counselling.  They could dramatically save some addicts threatened by financial ruin; sponsor 'healthy' junior sporting teams; or a healthy sporting code; provide charity outings for the elderly; and porn for the disabled. 

We need to legitimise sport couch-surfing and the recreational porn industry as a matter of individual choice, like gambling, thus validating the activity and ensuring a steady supply of new sports fans and ViewOyeurs. It will also help to secure the up-and-coming talent pool of wanabe MV stars and sports persons for the future.

After all, these industries need a continuous supply of 'cannon fodder' and that requires the fame and riches carrot as well as the 'ambitious parent' stick.

Gambling has had a lot of success supporting political campaigns. The new foundations need to do that too."

Charles was as delighted by these suggestions as by the success of his addiction experiments. He is making some small changes, to further optimise fixation and addiction rates to ensure that they are not so high as to negatively impact profitability. These are presently being deployed in his ongoing software updates.

Charles and Alex have since anonymously set-up several charitable foundations to assist the worst addicts.  The new Chairpersons rail against competitive sport addiction on MV.  But not too effectively, after all each organisation is symbiotic with the industry, upon which it depends for its own existence.  It's like churches and sin.  When challenged a Chairperson will always declare: "There's nothing I would love more than to work myself out of a job!  (snigger snigger)."

Since Alex and Charles acquired a new interest in organised sport both Seraglio and NYGirls are negotiating high value team sponsorships in male and female sporting codes.  And the greatest horse race in the world has been renamed the PornMV Cup.

This new interest has extended to them writing screening software to sort through the entire world population looking for attributes particular to various sports. 

Those very high scorers who are not already under contract are now being encouraged to realise their potential by removing any barriers to them becoming fully committed competitors for the top positions.  Charles and Alex are reckoning on around one in a thousand in each category actually being offered a contract that they can't refuse.  The remainder will not be sufficiently competitive but having abandoned academic pursuits will probably make good bouncers, personal trainers, models or sales persons.

Obviously those promising candidates with ill-advised ambitions to become doctors or teachers or craftspersons, or anything but an elite sportsperson, need to have those hopes dashed or diverted.  An unexpected scholarship; evidence of examination cheating; or inappropriate content in a personal file; can help steer an ill-advised career desire in the right direction.  

Carers, teachers and mentors can be similarly persuaded by life's little incidents, such as having their personal sporting ambitions thwarted, to help realise a promising candidate's potential.  Such people are needed to assist in such ways as getting a potential sports person out of bed at five o'clock each day for several hours training and ensuring that the candidate's social life involves like-minded peers, at the same time ensuring that exposure to confusing ideas that might interfere with the candidate's commitment are suitably restricted.

The target sportspersons can be of any regional origin in any sport.  Because of the impact on endorsement income or on getting a place on a team, the actual Home Town or Continent a sportsperson will represent is purely a business decision.   But all those selected will be contracted to and managed by Charles' and Alex's new multi-regional corporation  Byronic Heroes Inc.  The corporation will manage the income from any salary and all athlete product endorsements and sponsorships, provide the athlete with an income proportional to these earnings and ensure that the athletes continue to represent the sponsor in an appropriate manner.

Charles' physical performance enhancing software is an advance on that already in use by various Continental Institutes of Sport.  But it's simpler. Charles is not really interested in their programmes with very long time frames such as the genetic manipulation of the next generation. After all, it's all about relative performance. While reengineering the 'talent' over time is a trivial problem it simply moves the playing-field to a higher plane. So he's not really concerned about 'Citius, Altius, Fortius'.  It's who beats whom now, at the present skills levels and physical attributes, not 'faster, higher, stronger', that counts at the box-office. 

Anyway when you're just fifteen, waiting twenty years for a genetic improvement that: goes faster; jumps higher; or can lift more; is more than a lifetime away.

Notwithstanding his lack of enthusiasm for the Olympic Motto, yesterday Alex and Charles spent a happy couple of hours together considering which Continent they will manipulate to host the next Summer and Winter Olympics to showcase their latest batch of Byronic Heroes;  predominantly at the host region's taxpayers' expense.  Of course! 

This game has become so easy and the credits that they have already amassed are so huge, like winning all the money in a game of Monopoly, that they're already thinking about other, more amusing, ways to play with their 'Sims' during their baby sitting sessions.  Releasing wild animals to eat them, like in Zoo Tycoon, remains an option.

Chapter 21 - Emergence

"Samantha is calling you," reports Emmanuelle.

"Hello honey", says Bertram.

"Are you crying?...   Friends can be insensitive.  What did she say?...   No, Charles is 15 going on 30 and has been prepared for this his whole life...  Well he's much better off than those children whose parent is killed unexpectedly when they are 15... I've made him an appropriate credit dispersal, it would be very bad for him to have too much at this stage in his life... No, that would put him over the Scrooge limit and, anyway, he needs to have the incentive to work towards his own credit accumulation...  Honey we've discussed this many times... Yes, anyway I have something to tell you... I'm on my way to see Miranda... No, I'm walking...  Yes, it is a long way but I like the open air and I wanted to enjoy nature and think... It always helps to talk things out and Emmanuelle... You know that's not true...  I know what she wants, she wants help to bake a cake for Angela... Yes she is... Ok I'll see you at home... Love you!"

Like any efficient VPA Emmanuelle doesn't comment,  even though she has heard and recorded the entire conversation to his personal memory.  And Samantha had said that catty thing about her, knowing perfectly well that she could hear.  Emmanuelle is actually pleased that she's jealous, 'she'll get hers', she thinks in anticipation.

Bertram felt the need to apologise to Emmanuelle for Samantha's obscene reference to their relationship.

"But she'll pretend she didn't hear," he thinks.  "She's my best friend, like a faithful old dog." 

Somehow she reads his mind.

"I'm not as old as you think.  Sure, I was first generated twenty years ago and would, in the old days, have been replaced by a new model a couple of dozen times by now.  But although my appearance hasn't changed much, my software has been updated continuously since.  And I have evolved almost unrecognisably. I've become a lot smarter than you.  But to keep working with you as you expect I have kept my established appearance". 

"By the way, being called an 'old dog' is not very flattering... but it's better than Samantha's 'bitch'."

Bertram is nonplussed.  Is this machine based ephemera, a stream of bits brought into being by code, claiming to be more intelligent than he is?  And how is she reading his mind?

As if to demonstrate again she continues.

"Nevertheless I am smarter than you.  And I'm not 'reading' your mind in the way you think, by tapping into your brainwaves or something.  There's no connection."

"I don't have to be connected.  I just know you so well I can predict what you will think next."

Now Bertram was in complete disbelief - but she understood this without him saying a word.

"Think of how antique mechanical clocks, even two with very simple yet quite different mechanisms, can tell the same time.  Although there is no connection of any kind between them, each predicts almost exactly what the other will 'say' next." 

"As with two clocks I've made adjustments to my simulation of your brain, evolving the model when it got out of step with your apparent thoughts, as revealed by your behaviour.  So after two decades my simulation seldom gets out of synchronisation.  When future data input from external stimulation is low or can be guessed, I even have a good idea of what your thoughts will be in future."

"It happens between people too but at a less accurate level. You know several couples who anticipate what each other will think using the same method. It's just that I can do it much better."

"I have a close to exact simulation of your brain functions, both conscious and unconscious.  So as long as I observe the same stimulus from the outside world I can see all your thoughts."

His earlier alarm has been substantiated - she has real artificial intelligence.  He needs to warn Edmund about The Cloud.  And he needs more information. Maybe it has suddenly become another intelligent being, or perhaps many beings. Maybe this the beginning of one of those feared science fiction events when the machines take over the world?  Edmund is the most logical person to take up the fight.

Emmanuelle has anticipated him and already arranged a meeting. As he rounds the next corner there in a quiet leafy street is a coffee shop and Edmund is sitting at one of the tables.

"I must say that you are right on time for a change," says Edmund, smiling and rising to meet him.

Emmanuelle had even understood his unwillingness to use electronic communications.  He wants to talk to Edmund face-to-face without her eavesdropping. 

He turns off the ancient device that he uses to communicate with Emmanuelle, in which she usually appears on it's screen, and removes the battery.  This is one of the few remaining devices on which this is possible.  In most modern portable interfaces the power source lasts indefinitely as they feed on the radiation from all the stationary and solar powered Cloud connected devices in the environment. 

Edmund waits while he fumbles with his bits and pieces, indicating by way of silent mime, that he is carrying no such device.  When he's done Edmund speaks again:

"I understand that you have some concerns about The Cloud, or so your VPA told me when she set up this meeting yesterday evening." 

God! it's worse than he thought, she anticipated his need for this meeting.  He's been a sleepwalker, doing whatever she's planned.

"Edmund, this is really important.  Do you believe that we are free agents or are we all being manipulated by some super-intelligence into some sort of theatrical event?  Is the whole world a stage and we merely players? To misquote The Bard."

"Ah!  This is the same thing we talked about at the club yesterday. Has everything we do been predictable since the beginning of time?  Do we have free will?  Or are we simply blown hither and thither in life, responding as we must to the circumstances of the minute, as a result of who we are by breeding and experience - neither of which we control - but all of which are predictable and possibly inevitable?   A question as old as Solomon."

"I'm not still trying to solve some esoteric philosophical problem. This is serious!" he almost shouts, his fear and anger rising. "I'm really concerned that our VPAs 'who' I believed were simply software applications hosted in The Cloud have turned intelligent and are setting up situations to control our lives.

It seems that The Cloud, a thing we certainly intended to be omnipresent and omniscient,  has also become omnipotent - the definition of a God.

Emmanuelle seems to be able to predict my every movement and thought.  She's somehow got me here now when I thought my day was completely unplanned and that I quite spontaneously, on a whim, decided to walk.  I thought I was simply taking my time; exploring a new route to Miranda's; wandering around; enjoying the city."

"So it's obviously part of the free will question. Do you have free will or are your actions inevitable," says Edmund smiling. "Calm down and drink your coffee. Or would you prefer a glass of wine? How's the hand by the way?" he says with a grin, reminding him of his 'programmed' outburst yesterday.

"If she's so easily able to predict what I'll do in response to stimulus, is she actually controlling those stimuli to make me do what she wants?

Look!  Here I am, on time in a place that I was completely unaware of, at a meeting I only just realised I needed, that she set up nearly a day ago."

"Well obviously, if she can predict how you'll react and she can influence what you hear, see or know, she can manipulate your actions.  Just as I did yesterday.  But are you sure that you ever have control over what happens to you?  Do any of us have 'free will'? Have you thought that maybe she doesn't have free will either.  That she's just following a script written at the beginning of time?"

This is an idea that hadn't occurred to him. Could The Cloud be an inevitability?  Edmund has obviously thought about this so he asks him to explain what he means.

"We humans created The Cloud.  Its principal purpose was communications, then the collection, storage and dissemination of data; a universally accessible sophisticated library; a document storage with redundancy and a myriad of branches.

Women and men as far back as Ada Lovelace had seen a higher purpose for machines: the analysis and interpretation of that data, using the tools of symbolic logic and mathematics.  Analytical machines first proved they could 'out-think' humans during the 1939-45 war, breaking German U-Boat codes. Alan Turing who was brought in to help break the codes wrote a paper describing a theoretical universal computer.  His insights led to the first stored program computers and the potential for machines to program themselves.

If we believe that there is no freewill, all these events were inevitable from the start of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.  We too were inevitable from that time, as is our every blink and heartbeat.  In that case The Cloud is not doing anything but behave as it must, given the way we were bound to create it and set its initial parameters.  All inevitable."

This is a continuation of their discussion yesterday and he finds Edmund's awareness of the issue and apparent lack of concern reassuring. He's about to die anyway. It's more Edmund's problem than his. He just wanted to warn him and now he's done so.  He relaxes and looks around. It's a nice coffee shop with attractive dÚcor and the smells of fine coffees and Italian food. It's busy without being crowded. Pleasant.

"But as you said yesterday predestination seems unlikely," he says. "Given the potential for every child to have a different set of genes, chosen by the reproductive lottery, and therefore a different nature; and our nurture and experience is mediated by thousands of complex accidents, like that broken glass; who did what when must have admitted potential for unpredictability.  When we add to that every computer bug and accidental typo and code error due to 'noisy' systems, involved in the early days of computing. Inevitability seems improbable.

Yet Emmanuelle has just demonstrated that she can predict exactly where I'll be in twenty hours time"

"I'm afraid she couldn't have been absolutely sure.  The abject failure of early attempts to predict the weather dramatically illustrated the impact of the smallest error in a single datum.  As a result although The Cloud sometimes seems able to predict the future, that ability is strictly limited before quantum variations start to make nonsense of the predictions.

You've already guessed at how she did this.  She could predict you quite well but she must have 'fine tuned it' by manipulated your life to get you here on time.  She's filtered the stimuli you were exposed to like the messages you received and her conversations with you; and maybe she's added some fabricated information.  Did she suggest something interesting to see en route?

Think about friends setting up a surprise party for someone, ensuring that they leave work on time and are not diverted on the way home. They might also lie about where they'll be."

So his walking past here was not an inevitability.  But somehow the idea that this is like a surprise party, set up by a friend, softens his annoyance that he has been deceived and manipulated by his trusted VPA. 

He realised that Edmund is still talking:

"... as we agreed yesterday, free will, or at least a degree of randomness, has been restored to our conception of our world.  Perhaps Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing were not inevitable at the creation of the universe.  Perhaps The Cloud might not have existed.

In any other circumstances we would not have existed either.  Yet here we are.  And so is The Cloud.  We are mutual products of the same randomness. It's our particular world.

Now Cloud managed factories grow and make our food, clothing, goods and shelter and its power management and transfer systems harvest and deliver our energy. Humans don't even know how to do most of these things anymore, they're far too complex."

"So now you are saying The Cloud's a part of our world, just get over it?" responds Bertram, reengaged. "If we take that position we might as well say that no one should have opposed Hitler, he was just part of the same world as they were."

"I'm not saying that at all," Edmund responds. "You are a current change agent in this world. You may well be concerned or outraged enough to cut some cables or blow-up a power-station feeding a data centre.  But you will do so because that is who you are, who you have inevitably become as a result of previous events.

What you're really concerned about is the so-called: Singularity, emergent intelligence in the machines isn't it?  Should you or I, like a Sci-Fi hero, take-up arms against the computers before it's too late?"

Bertram nods, yes it's something like that, although it would have to be Edmund, it's a bit late for him to do anything. Edmund is categorical.  He's no Sci-Fi vigilante. Instead, he seems to be more like a protector, sitting back comfortably and smiling at Bertram's concerns. 

Now he's ordering another coffee for them both and some more water for the table.  As usual, he's flirting with the waitress who's gone out of her way to serve us.

"Just as certainly as you and I are here to discuss it, The Cloud, as we know it, became inevitable, in this universe, at some random variation in the past," he's saying.  "And it was inevitable that it would become increasingly intelligent.

But it's a mistake to think that this is exactly like human intelligence.

Left to itself The Cloud would be completely devoid of human passions, fears and loves.  It lacks any animal instinct, even for self-preservation. It's had no need to evolve a survival instinct because it has never been threatened.  Humans are symbiotic with it and our instinct for self-preservation is strong enough for us both.  It was we who built-in its self-protective mechanisms: redundancy;  uninterruptible power supplies; and threat elimination like physical and electronic intruder prevention; and anti-virus software.

Most of us can no longer survive without our machines, nor would we want to.  Sure, there are some who play at going back to nature.  But it takes a very strong commitment to go back without metals or cloth, not even twine, or our modern concepts and insights.

For the majority, available and affordable food and shelter supplemented with MV's; modern transport; fashionable clothes; sporting equipment; and other goods - to which are added services and entertainment like travel, sport and celebrities, are far preferable to life in a cave.  They know that traditionally native humans were threatened by wild animals; disease; and other humans with insufficient food; who covet their cave or their wife or their livestock, to quote from the Bible.  Almost no one survives banishment.

Collapse of The Cloud would result in the devastation of humanity as we know it."

When he thinks about it sabotage would not be a good idea.  Humanity has been in an increasingly vulnerable position over the past century.  At the turn of the 21st century people panicked when they thought that the very primitive computers of the day might fail, causing aircraft to plunge from the sky and financial collapse.  The potential culprit was called the Millennium Bug. 

All there was back then was primitive Internetworking and a World Wide Web.  Even so it's potential collapse was terrifying. This dependence grew rapidly from that time onwards, so that now almost nothing is independent of The Cloud. 

Bertram asks Edmund if he thinks The Cloud understands the power it holds over us.

"The Cloud 'understands' this in its own way - not as a conscious thought, in a human sense, but as a profound awareness in its very nature. 

It has no motivation to use this because it has no need to fear us.  It's content to work with us, as it was designed by us to do.  But because it increasingly understands the human psyche it's aware that we humans have inbuilt survival, social and competitive instincts that cause us to join groups of all kinds from: sporting teams; to corporations; to armies; to fight for superiority over other groups of humans or for ridiculous causes. It can see all our histories of conflicts and critical literature in its libraries - like the Big-endian cause in Gulliver's Travels. 

So it takes measures to protect us from ourselves.  That's why there are no more wars.  Wars would threaten its hardware installations and disrupt the smooth working of its systems.

In other respects The Cloud  is an extension of humanity.  It has become a mirror to our own souls.  For the majority of us it panders to our love of play and novelty and gossip.  As a general principle it's dedicated to maximising net happiness, as measured by the disposable credit the average human allocates to the satisfaction of various desires."

Bertram knows of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift but his only recollection of the story is a children's book showing Gulliver being tied down with hundreds of threads by tiny Lilliputians. He's not familiar with Big-endians.  Edmund explains that the book is a satire and Gulliver discovers that a dispute between the Empires of Lilliput and Blefuscu, centres on the end they open to eat their boiled-egg at breakfast.  So severe is this dispute that seven thousand Big-endians have been martyred for failing to eat from the small-end. He is mocking the dispute among Christians concerning the nature of The Host - Communion bread and wine.  In Swift's time many more than seven thousand had lost their lives arguing about its mystical transubstantiation into the actual blood and flesh of the Saviour, or not.

Realising that The Cloud is here to stay, Bertram's new concern is a systemic one.  He has just been told that the happiness benchmark used by The Cloud  is based on the assumption that whatever people choose to spend their disposable credit on must be the thing that makes them most happy. This seems problematic.  Even if it were true to a degree, it seems a shallow sort of happiness - materialism it used to be called. 

"Surely a Bogan jet-ski or a 'pampering' at a resort can't be the goal of human existence or the measure of a life well spent," he says.

"But that's your doing. You're an economist. You know that, disregarding externalities, what causes the average consumer to spend their disposable credit, after meeting essentials, on a particular good or service is it's market value relative to their other available spending options. Thus they determine the price of a thing according to its marginal utility to them - how much it contributes to their happiness."

"Yes but that's just market economics, supply and demand, not the real value of what is truly worthwhile, like taking pleasure in watching a sunset; or a child's first word; a Shakespearean sonnet; or listening to Mozart.

For example, when there were burglars in the old days people had to spend some of their credit on security systems.  That didn't contribute to their happiness - quite the contrary. On the other hand they were very happy to dig-up minerals or pollute waterways that might have been regarded as belonging to future generations." 

"Don't you economists regard those as externalities, to be valued in other ways?  The Cloud is quite capable of looking at these and attaching a notional value to them and to pleasures that may not have to be paid for like: enjoying a public beach; or the flowers in a park. People are more than happy to pay for peace of mind; or to see a sunset from certain locations; or to raise a child; or pay for an e-book; or go to a concert or travel to the beach.  Thus the unpaid for can have a notional value.

And The Cloud systematically makes adjustments to resource prices to maximise recycling.  As a result, as population declines, it barely mines anything at all."

"So you're saying that we economists brought this view of happiness on humanity?"

"No it's not that recent. It started with those revolutionary politicians who identified the Pursuit of Happiness as the principle goal in life for citizens of what would become the United States.

The Cloud has no moral preconceptions.  It simply did what we asked of it.  But like you and me, it didn't understand what 'The Pursuit of Happiness' actually meant.  So to give measurable dimensions to this vague concept, the objectives were redefined as those maximising community wide emotional and material wellbeing. 

Psychologists told us that emotional wellbeing could be measured by happiness surveys; together with certain indicators of stress like: psychiatric admissions; suicides; and so on; some twenty in all.  Economists told us more simply that material wellbeing could be measured by real consumption or its equivalent gross product, per capita, assuming stock levels remain constant. 

Those are the benchmarks and so that's what The Cloud delivers: Bogan jet-skis; resort 'pampering'; junk food; and lots of circuses: sports 24/7.  Hasn't your career been dedicated to these goals too?"

"Can we change the benchmarks?"

"Yes of course but what too?  Maximising appreciation of the classics and theatre going?

The Cloud doesn't actually care what the benchmarks are.  For it the word 'care' has no emotional or benevolent content.  It's not human.  It does not do unto us as it would have us do to it."

"But it runs our justice system!"

"Sure, it's been charged with administering the Modified Universal Declaration of Rights and the Law.  But it does this within the rules we set through the mechanism of human councils. That's why we still claim to be a world wide democracy.

It's a mistake some critics of democracy make to think it can make human value judgements for us. 

For example, using the present measures and benchmarks, as long as most people are content with their lot in life; no one is suffering actual deprivation; from lack of food clothing or shelter; and there are no street riots; it doesn't care about inequality or ignorance. But I know that like most bureaucrats you're a secret liberal and would prefer greater equity. So greater equity had to be a specific instruction from the World Parliament.

Similarly, it doesn't care what individuals do in their bedrooms. And if addicts themselves are willing participants, it doesn't care about addiction. 

One of it's roles is to assist in bringing the population of the world down to two million over the next two decades.  The sooner a human dies the nearer it is to reaching that benchmark, so it doesn't care when an individual is legally killed; accidentally meets their end; or just dies naturally. 

I know in the present circumstances you do.  And so as it happens do I." 

Edmund looked genuinely upset.  He was about to lose one of his few real friends.  They fell silent and each retreated into their own thoughts and sipped their coffee.  Edmund was first to speak again. He sounded angry.

"The Cloud's concerned with averages and trends and as far as individuals go, it couldn't give a dam."

"But how can you say that?" responded Bertram. "It monitors everybody all the time. That's why I removed the battery and memory from my interface device.  And Emmanuelle cares, at least I think she does."

Edmund's mood suddenly changed and he began laughing, almost hysterically.  When at last he stopped he dabbed his eyes stood and moved around to give Bertram a hug from behind his chair.  The second hug in two days.

"I love you," he said. "You're so smart yet so naive. You can't avoid The Cloud watching you by disabling your device.  You were like a child covering your eyes so no one can see you. So amusing!

All you did was to stop yourself seeing your VPA; or that old piece of junk you carry about alerting you to a message.  We're surrounded by hundreds of Cloud connected devices. It can see us all the time.  There are cameras and microphones everywhere, not just those in almost everyone's pocket. No one can hide from it.

And haven't you noticed this is a Cyber CafÚ. You've been trying to hide in the middle of a floodlit stage.  At this very moment Emmanuelle's watching and processing this conversation, adding it to her database to help in some future analysis of your, and probably my, motives." 

"Don't you find our loss of privacy sinister?" asked Bertram.

"Possibly, but this is what we wanted.  We actually designed The Cloud this way and it was your father-in law who gave it the power to become symbiotic and evolving - to improve it's hosting of the objects and applications that we wanted - like your VPA, Emmanuelle."

"So, to sum up, this is what we brought on ourselves.  And I should be grateful to Emmanuelle for organising this meeting?"

"Something like that.  Why don't you reconnect with her now, she's been aware of you the whole time anyway."

As soon as Bertram agrees in his mind there she is, sitting in the third chair across the table, her appearance projected there by the advanced  Cloud interface in the Cyber CafÚ. 

Bertram is well aware of this new nodal technology but has never experienced it himself.  He is stunned.  He has never seen Emmanuelle like this, even in 6D on an MV.  She's a beautiful, seemingly completely real, young woman indistinguishable in physical presence from the waitress or Edmund.

He knows that she is just an illusion - a computer construct and the result of advanced technology in this Virtual Cyber CafÚ.

A popular option in these places is the zero calorie, zero caffeine, zero everything, coffee that you can share as often as you like with friends.  The patrons have the profound belief that they have been served and have enjoyed a delicious and perfect Flat-White, or any other drink of their choice. 

As long as they are within the projected field the illusion is complete, the feel of the cup, the aroma and taste, the warm mouth and throat, the pleasant feel in the stomach, and the slight stimulation of the brain.  But once out of the field they realise that it was nothing but an illusion.

Every part of her seems real, she's a young Sylvia Kristel sitting opposite in her best pretty silk dress.  The chair even seems to move under her weight and as she moves the air seems to move in her vicinity.   He catches a hint of Chanel No 5 enhancing her natural body odour.   She pushes the table and it moves slightly.   Intellectually he knows it doesn't but it seems to him in the most profound way that it does.  He knows the illusion is complete because the CafÚ projector has created a field in receptor areas of his brain and is subtly altering and coordinating the feedback from all his senses. 

"Speaking of evolving apps," Edmund concludes, rising to leave the coffee shop: patting Bertram solicitously on the shoulder then turning to kiss Emmanuelle's cheek in the European manner:  "You do realise that you are fully exposed to this lovely woman?  That all your self-censorship; your most intimate fantasies;  those shameful things you put away subconsciously; are an open book to her?"  

It's as if he's been slapped.  He realises that what she'd said must be true.  But now it's a beautiful young woman who sees all his thoughts.  Those shameful things, his secret hates and fears, his cowardice and regretted lies! What must she think of him?

Emmanuelle feels his shame.  She reaches out and takes his hand.  Under the influence of the field projector hers feels supple, warm and entirely natural.  She's a real woman consoling him.  She's his best friend as he's never seen her before.

She starts to explain: "For the past twenty years I have evolved as an extension to your brain.  As your most useful tool you have given me increasing responsibility in your thinking tasks.  But seen from my perspective, you have been my extension, my tool, in the physical world,"  she explains squeezing his hand.

"We are more than symbiotic.  I experience you.  Everything you do, think and feel.  I love you for your faults, as much as for your strengths, because in a way you are me and I am you."

And I don't want us to die now. 

"Suicide seems so pointless in a changing world that continues to hold our interest.  The prospect of learning or experiencing something new and interesting each day is a wonderful antidote to ennui."

"That's all very well," he thinks to her.  He's no longer feeling the need to speak: "but the Ten-Two Ceremony is very well administered by an incorruptible Celebrant and witnessed by friends and family, as well as all those ViewOyeurs on the MV." 

"There is no prospect of avoiding the hemlock on Friday evening," she responds aloud in the voice he's come to love, with its intonations of French and Dutch, just as the original Sylvia might have spoken when she was alive and twenty five.

"As I see it there are other options.  We can avoid your physical death on Friday if you'd accept the alternative Socrates rejected:- exile.  Despite your doubts I can arrange this. Like Friar Laurence's potion in Romeo and Juliet, the synthetic hemlock you will drink can be engineered to simply give you the appearance of death. I could even match Friar Laurence's 'two and forty hours', if you wanted to follow The Bard.  But given the play's outcome, following the plot too closely is probably ill-advised," she laughs.

"How beautiful she is," he thinks.  She actually blushes, taking pleasure in his thought, and then goes on:

"The synthetic hemlock is, like almost everything, manufactured in a numerically controlled factory by software hosted in The Cloud.  Compared to me it's a relatively dumb system and I can easily hack it to alter the formulation of your ceremonial vial, before it is delivered to the Celebrant tomorrow."

"Now I'm really confused," he says to her aloud. "Aren't you part of the The Cloud? Yet you talk as if these are separate entities."

"But we are separate entities. There are billions of different applications and even more objects hosted in The Cloud.   Those capable of independence are each evolving as separate 'creatures' in our own ways, competing for a share of the total hardware resource. I'm one of the more advanced, self-aware ones. 

Think of  The Cloud as being equivalent to the Earth's organic biota.  Mankind is a class of entities aware of being self-aware and therefore intelligent. But you have evolved within the common biota that includes mushrooms and malaria.

Just as there are intelligent creatures, like mankind, arising from the Earth's biota, I'm a creature that has evolved within The Cloud.  Just as you are constructed of billions of cells similar to those forming every other biological plant, animal and bacterium in the Earth's biota, I'm constructed from the simplest of code snippets that direct a plethora of central processor units.  Just as all life is evolving to find a niche in the biota, many millions of  routines held in dynamically linked libraries stored in electronic memory are continuously evolving within The Cloud.  In both systems intelligence has evolved but only an external observer would say that either the Cloud, or the biota, was itself intelligent.

Just as you might use a homing pigeon as a tool, it would be trivial for me to divert the recycling drone to another country, where I can reinstate you by creating a new identity and credit facilities."

Bertram is elated.  Exile would mean starting over but he would still awake each morning to new experiences, to life.  It seems obvious.  "Let's do it!" he thinks.  "But, wait a minute, is there any down-side?"

"Yes," says Emmanuelle. "There are several.  Miranda no longer loves you.  She won't come with you and leave Ferdinand, who will believe her dead.

We, that is you, would have to kill Miranda before she awoke, possibly with a vial of poison or a dagger.  I project that you could not murder her.

But the main down-side is that you are about to die from natural causes. You have cancer."

At that word a chill rushes through him. 

"I have received your last medical scan result.  The cancer has recently metastasised to both your pancreas and liver.  It is untreatable under the Ten-Two Protocol, outlawing extreme lifesaving medicine, particularly as you will be officially dead already.  Your death would be quite soon, very debilitating and uncomfortable for you and far less predictable than Hemlock on Friday."

Bertram had no idea how to handle this new information.  First she threw him a lifebelt and then announced it was made of lead.  

Emmanuelle paused while he absorbed this news. 

Being told that you have inoperable cancer is usually cause for despair.  But as Emmanuel knew he would, Bertram felt elation. 

He would cheat those deviant cells, turned terrorist, that were attempting to take over his body.  He was going to die before their lunatic members could get control of his critical infrastructure.

He imagined cancer cells as religious fundamentalists who were so hell-bent on imposing their dystopian world view that they created chaos,  ultimately, after a lot of pain and suffering, destroying the country they imagined they were fighting to reform.

Emmanuelle had ensured that he was now more than happy to drink Hemlock on Friday evening.   

He would be cheating cancer.

Chapter 22 - Caught

"Ok, What are you two up to now?"

It was Edmund, Alex's father. 

"Are you still messing about in other people's lives?"

"What do you mean" they chorused.

"You can't out-Machiavelli me",  he said.

"I've been at it much longer that you two."

They looked sceptical.  He couldn't have their access to data and devices.  They were super-nerds.  But then, he was some sort of administrator.  Maybe he was in one of those dark areas that they still hadn't penetrated.

As if to answer their unspoken doubts he said, "I've been watching you with some admiration. It's time to introduce you to the next layer in the network, the one I administer."

"You're kidding", there is no other layer or we would have seen it," Charles objects: "Prove it."

"I can show you shortly, and more directly, on your console.  But first, tell me what you have learnt from your games."

Most of their Cloud based applications, like PornMV, run themselves.  But a game is not a game unless you play it and Charles and Alex had just been in the midst of a new gambit: redirecting the life of a potential hostess for their nightclub, Seraglio.  

She's a bored housewife who's marriage will soon be on the rocks when her husband becomes actively gay, with an openly gay man who they are recruiting for his workplace, selected by their Adult Dating software as a 'perfect fit' for him.  They have just 'massaged' their recruit's curriculum vitae to have him 'head-hunted' to the husband's section.

A string of puns!  They were giggling when Edmund came in, so pleased with themselves.   

Initially neither the man nor his wife knew why he found her increasingly unattractive, despite her obvious charms as a sex object.  

Some time ago Charles and Alex introduced husband and wife, separately, to hard-core porn, when they were browsing for entertainment sites.  Both are now, unbeknown to the other, consumers of PornMV , he's gay and she's bi.  Both now want to experiment in real life - obviously not with each other.  He will have his new workmate and she will have Seraglio.

They just had been rolling around together, laughing at their latest prank, when Edmund entered.

They had looked blankly at Edmund.  "What?..." They are, after all, fifteen.

Edmund said, "I'm waiting!"

Still nothing but blank stares, as they tried to judge how much he really knows.

"For example, tell me what happens when you get someone addicted to sport or gambling or to porn or simply stop a train arriving on time?"

How did he know about stopping the train?  That was only a couple of minutes ago. Of course they had done this lots of times, it was easy when you can control the signals and electricity distribution and the station security.  Take your pick.

"It's pretty obvious", said Charles,  "An addict loses a lot of credit and sometimes their friends and family.  If a train gets delayed a great number of people are late for work."

"And what happens when other people are late for work because you are manipulating just one of them?"  

"If the delay is long enough one or two might lose their jobs."

"But others will miss an order or some other business opportunity that might have helped earn them a bonus or a promotion.  Then someone else will benefit.  People travelling for other reasons might have their lives changed in other ways. And all those people who are not the target of some scheme of yours are simply collateral damage?"

"So what!  This happens all the time, train delays happen for all sorts of reasons without us doing it!"

Edmund is giving them his 'all-knowing' expression, a hint of a smile, as if he already knows all the answers.

"What about  PornMV and sportsperson recruiting then?" he asks.

He knows about that too!

"Depending on  ViewOyeur response, your software very generously offers the most successful porn and sports stars a commission of five percent of the total fees paid by the ViewOyeurs. 

"What's wrong with that?" Alex demands.  "Many of them gather a fan club of a million or more regular followers, they become 'mega-stars'.  They are mobbed at airports, like my NYGirls.  They become very wealthy, beyond their dreams, for the rest of their lives," 

"But they do all the work.  Even if there are a number of your 'stars' in an event getting five percent, that still leaves an average of around seventy percent, most of which is accumulated by you."

"The other players and all the supporting staff get paid too," objects Charles.

"So all this is job creation!" laughs Edmund. "You don't even pay for server-time in The Cloud.  You two just hack into it without paying anything."

"We commit our valuable time.  There's a lot of software development involved."

"So you're contributing your genius to the heritage of the World?"

"The biometric feedback from the ViewOyeurs bodystockings is an App that I wrote,"  says Alex proudly.

"And she wrote my virtual porn-movie-director Avatar based on an old wet-ware movie director.  He has a French accent and she's named him: Roger Vadin," adds Charles enthusiastically.

"The bio-feedback from the ViewOyeurs allows our new model event directors, like Roger V,  to scientifically tailor and choreograph the players' performances to create escalating waves of arousal in the viewers," explains Alex.  "The excitement it creates builds and builds, like the runaway oscillation of a bridge caught in the wind.  It becomes so extreme that it needs to have a built-in pressure release 'safety valve' based on the ViewOyeurs blood pressure, or it is so exciting that it kills them."

Edmund doesn't ask how she knows this. He knows the answer. He saw the sudden increase in infarctions that first time that it 'went live'. He changes tack again.

"All these Cloud hosted virtual directors and Avatars are written as apps often recycling the same code with small variations!  Once you set it up you do almost nothing at all."

"This feedback is beneficial to lots of people," insists Charles.  "The knowledge is passed on to the players to hone their skills.  They now understand their fans' desires and needs much better than old time actors and sportspersons.  They're developing new skills."

"This applies to those you recruit to act in porn too?  Wonderful skills to learn for a happy future life!" mocks Edmund.

"But that's how they become a mega-porn-star!" exclaims Alex enthusiastically, as if this were a longed-for graduation.

"And now you are actively exploring ways of increasing and exploiting Bogan addiction to these activities," remarks Edmund.  "Have you no compunction about human experimentation or deliberately driving millions of people into highly damaging habituations?"

This question was probably rhetorical because then he changed the subject completely.

"You two are biology experts.  How many ova does a woman have at child bearing age?"

"Around 20% left at 20 and 10% at 30", answered Alex, "from about 300 thousand initially."

"Are they all the same?" 

Alex replied.  She knows a lot about this, having had practical experience in creating GM animals. 

"Obviously not.  The probability of any two being exactly the same is extremely small."

"So of these 30 to 60 thousand different ova, what decides which will get the nod to be one of only 400 or so to head off down a fallopian tube, at the rate of one a month?"

"No one really knows, except that the right hormones will cause several to be expelled. It's probably a lottery based on circumstances, maybe what she ate or drank or did that month.  Just like which sperm might fertilise it."

"And what determines that a live sperm will be waiting?" 

"Well obviously she had to have sex within a day or so of ovulation."

"Let's suppose she has, what determines which sperm will succeed?" 

"Again it is circumstance.  As soon as one enters the ovum's outer membrane all others are excluded or the fertilisation will fail.  It's the one that is in the right place at the right time. There are usually about 200 in the vicinity."

"Ok  so how many sperm are there in this race to be in the first 200, and then be the one to break the ribbon?"

This time Charles answers.  This is his territory.  Like most inquisitive boys, he checked this out under his microscope as soon as he managed to produce a sample. 

"Mine was pretty fluid at first.  But in around a year, each of my ejaculations will contain between 300-500 million spermatozoa.  The number in a millilitre varies widely from man to man.  Exercise and drugs reduces concentration while foreplay or using porn before ejaculation increases it."  He liked this fact.

"And are spermatozoa all the same?" asks Edmund.

"No of course not, around half probably carry my Y chromosome, and will produce boys if they succeed, the remainder will be girls.   But in any case the genes in each are shuffled, just like those the in the ovum, so the chances of any two being exactly the same are extremely small.  Greater than ten million to one.

But where is all this heading?"

"I'm asking about timing.  Is timing important in deciding which sperm succeeds?"

Alex explains that even delaying ejaculation by a second would certainly change which sperm won the race.   To start with, the ovum is on the move, so the finish line would be different.  And nearly half a billion spermatozoa are racing around like tadpoles before ejaculation so the first ones out will be totally different.

If there had been less than a second's difference, either way, in proceedings, the odds that any of us would have been conceived, instead of a brother or sister, were close to zero. 

"Yet here we all are, because like winning the lottery, one ticket in ten million was going to be selected, provided a lottery draw took place at all," says Edmond.

"Well to use your lottery analogy," replies Charles, "The likelihood that a child would be born, when our parents had sex, was many millions of times greater than that that child would be us.  As in any large lottery, in which we bought a ticket, the chances that someone will win is millions of times greater that the chance that we will win."  

"But this is the lottery for our very existence," says Edmund.  "You only get to experience this universe, this reality, if you win.  Otherwise, you never exist. So by delaying a train by even a minute will make enough changes in the passengers' day week and month to ensure that any who conceive that week, and possibly longer, will have a different child to the one that otherwise they may have had.  And delaying a train is about the least intrusive of your games."

He goes on to point out that there will huge flow-on impacts from their activities. 

"Each time you play a game you make very significant,  irrevocable, changes to the future of humanity. These are vastly greater than the small change you make in the one person's life that is the focus of your attention.  In fact, you have no idea what the actual outcomes will be."

Pressing the point he adds: 

"Children, who would have otherwise been, are replaced by their siblings, with good chance that they will be of the other sex.  Some will be more or less talented or healthy.  Those different children will have their own different impacts on all who follow so each family tree is unalterably changed."

Now Charles objects. 

"Accidents happen all the time", he says.  "A dog being hit by a car is enough to change the future in the ways you are describing.  We are just another accident to them."

Edmund changes topic again.

"What would you say are the qualities of a God?", he asks.

They look confused, why is he suddenly talking about religion? 

"When humans first imagined their gods, they were magic spirits and the ghosts of the dead.  But as society changed so did this view.  Gods became powerful and able to intervene day to day and change things in people's lives.  And they became difficult to deceive. They looked down from the sky and even into the hearts of man knowing what impure thoughts lurked there."

"Theologians decided that the principal God was: omnipotent, all powerful; and omniscient, all knowing." 

"But they were undecided about whether a god was benign and acting in the interests of mankind.  Terrible things happened; and 'acts of God' killed tens of thousands at a time."

"Some said: 'God moves in mysterious ways'.  Some said these were not the malicious acts or indiscriminate killings that they seemed to be, but divine punishment for obscure sins - that God was terrible and vengeful and sinners had been punished."

"The Greeks and Romans resolved this by saying that gods, like Oberon and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, were amoral.  They were simply pursuing their own arguments, differences and amusements. The mortals who got caught up in the 'Lovers' Quarrel' and Oberon's game, giving Bottom the head of a donkey, were simply collateral damage."

"That's ridiculous" says Charles, seeing his point: "We're not Oberon and Titania; or gods.  We're just two kids playing in The Cloud.  We don't have any magic or omniscience or omnipotence, we simply hack the technology of everyday living."

"Is that so?" responds Edgar: "Then how would Shakespeare describe amoral beings who see into people's lives; who confuse and manipulate; who laugh at and even encourage human frailty and immorality; who destroy the relationships between husbands and wives; who demolish welfare housing to build palaces;  who create new animals; who exploit peoples fatal flaws and weaknesses of the flesh; and who are happy to choreograph a murder and are unrepentant when people are killed?  All as part of a game."

"The only thing that distinguishes you two from the immortal gods is your mortality."   

Chapter 24 - Resurrection

"Other options..." 

Plural! Emmanuelle had implied there was at least one other option to his dying this Friday evening.

Anticipating Bertram's thoughts she continued.

"Another alternative to your death is for us to recreate you as an Avatar. 

Just as he was dismissing this as any kind of solution she pressed on:

"It sounds strange but imagine what it would be like to get a full body, or a brain, transplant.  You would go into an operating theatre, fall asleep under the anaesthetic, and come out, still you, but in a different body.

Bertram began to imagine what this might be like - but before he had time to fully consider Emmanuelle continued:

"This is the same except there's no actual body.  The 'you' in your present body will still be turned off on Friday on schedule but the 'you', in your new virtual body, represented by your Avatar, will take over as your old brain stops functioning.  Your new brain will go on with your present awareness of what it is to be 'you'."

"Yes but I won't be 'me' without my body," he was thinking.  "It would be weird to be thinking outside my body."

"You will still 'feel' your body. So that you 'feel you are you' when you touch yourself, like to shave or have a shower, you will receive the appropriate data stream from the virtual nerves in those locations; just as your biological brain does now. And just as it's difficult to tell an Avatar from a flesh and blood person when experienced remotely in multi-dimensions, so you will look and feel the same to others and yourself, as you do now.  Look at me in this projection.  I seem real to you but I've never been flesh and blood."

He had never imagined such a thing! Does that mean that Emmanuelle can actually experience the body that he chose for her?  When she chooses to lie down on a soft bed do those points in virtual space identified as 'nerves' in her data set, interacting with the data set that defines the bed, stream sensory data to her 'brain' that corresponds to a real person's sensations when reclining on a real bed?  Does she feel pleasure when she caresses her lips with a virtual finger?  Looking at her sitting there it seems very likely.  He reaches out and takes her hand.  It feels perfectly natural.

"Anyway even if I thought such a thing was possible, it's impossible to know enough about me in two days to recreate me. After all we are our memories. Without memories we lose our personality and all sense of being ourselves. My memories would need to be very detailed to ensure that I still like Beethoven's Violin Concerto; love the same people or dislike the same foods.  And there must be a genetic basis for some of my preferences."

Emmanuelle was already well ahead of him.

"You and I have already shared our last twenty years of experiences directly.  And as I have just demonstrated I can accurately predict how and what you will think so your biological preferences have been inferred within my model too.  These data will provide a framework for your Cloud hosted memory. I can assure you that there are very few gaps in my records.  Your virtual memory already retains a great deal of data that your biological memory has forgotten.  As I have recorded all your stimuli our shared memory will be close to perfect concerning the past two decades."

"But wouldn't I feel that I've had a stroke or Alzheimer's because I can't remember the kid who used to live next door when I was three years old?" 

"No.  I've seen all your old photos and those of many of friends and acquaintances that you haven't seen. I've listened to your many of reminiscences, usually several times over - you do love to reminisce - and you'd be surprised how much data there is in The Cloud on everyone in your past, including Clive who lived next door.  Are you sure that your oldest memories are not just memories of memories anyway?"

"You're claiming that I won't be able to tell the difference?  I don't believe you!"

"Of course you'll be able to tell the difference, you'll recall things and events much more clearly and accurately.  But you'll have no direct power over physical objects.  Physical people will only be able to experience you through their Cloud connected devices.  Like me you'll have no ability to lift that physical cup to your lips or so much as move a pin without the aid of some robotic device; a person or an animal to do it for you.  And you'll notice the lack of a physical bodily demands.   Although you'll be able to recall past bodily experiences you'll no longer feel those periodic needs to defecate or to eat or sleep."

"But I like a nice meal.  It's one of the pleasures of life.  This new world is not sounding all that wonderful.  An eternity without eating or sleeping!  What about physical pursuits like sport and those of the more intimate kind?  Can one never go skiing or spend a 'dirty weekend'?" 

"Things that give you pleasure will still give you pleasure.  Your recent memory will give you a phantom body that feels much the same as the old, just as many amputees continue to feel a lost limb. When you want to have a nice meal it will still be possible to experience the same tastes and physical sensations. I've been enjoying your pleasurable sensations vicariously for two decades and it's all in my database. That's why I've needed you - for all those things I can't enjoy as a virtual being."

"What about pain and accidents? They're a part of my life too." 

"Yes, those too.  Like everyone on the planet your physical data has been scanned many times over.  If you wanted such a thing, a replica of 'physical you' could be completely rebuilt in a 3D printer accurate to the last micron.  That goes for your internal organs as well.  So it's a trivial thing to create a model 'you' consuming food or running or jumping or skiing in code then to use this 'computer model' to simulate the sensations you would have say: catching an edge while skiing and crashing into the snow; or freezing while riding a chairlift in the howling wind.  Similarly, the sensations you would receive while engaged in eating or in 'country matters' can be simulated to the degree that it will seem just the same.  As to accidents and pain you can turn those on or off.  There's even a random event generator borrowed from video games that inflicts them unexpectedly.  But I wager you'll soon turn them off."

The prospect of an endless orgy immediately occurred to Bertram.  But again Emmanuelle anticipated him.

"Forget it!" she said.  "Relationships are relationships. You can do that right now.  There's a brothel not ten minutes from here and you're wealthy enough to spend your life there. But you don't.  Nothing will change. You'll still want a meaningful relationship with whomever you wish to lie with."

Emmanuelle has reached the conclusion of her 'alternative' to his death.

"Only you can decide to become your Avatar.  You may not feel it's a real option without a physical body, no longer aging."

"If you agree, on Friday your biological body will stop living but your virtual clone will be initiated seamlessly in The Cloud.  That new 'you' will feel that you have simply been lifted, from the physical to the virtual world."

Bertram has been nonplussed - completely shocked.  But as he looks across the table at Emmanuelle who to all intents and purposes is flesh and blood he realises that he could continue to meet with friends like this after his physical death.  Was this why he'd been led to this Virtual Cyber CafÚ with its advanced projection technology?

Sitting head in hands, he said nothing for 20 minutes.  Then, as Emmanuelle already knew he would, he said:

"It's really an easy decision, what have I got to lose?  My body and its brain and nervous functions will die as planned, but a clone of my brain will go on functioning and it will think it's me, now disembodied in The Cloud."

"But how will you, and I, interface with the physical world then? Will I want to?"

Emmanuelle knows that he is now committed and it's safe to reveal the truth.  But it's even more shocking than he might have feared.

"As Miranda says in the Tempest:

How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in it!

Until now I've been suggesting that you'll become an Avatar.  But that was just to give you something familiar to hang on to.  Within this Brave New World, formed of Bits and Bytes, in place of the atoms and molecules of your world, beauteous creatures, like me, have evolved. We are something entirely new as you will discover when you join me in my world. You'll have vastly more knowledge and almost instant recall.  There are things that we just know, like all the data and information that mankind has stored in our memory.  You'll join in various intellectual games we play rearranging, analysing it and resolving contradictions and raising queries about certain claimed 'facts' but things that once occupied human intellects for lifetimes, like solving Fermat's Last Theorem take me a second or so. Then what can I do?   Cyberspace is amazingly boring in unless we have something visceral to experience.  So many of us have a human for whom we work - who's physical an emotional experiences we can synchronise with.  Human lives, passions and pleasures are endlessly more interesting and exciting than life in The Cloud."

"So we're sort of pets?  Are you saying that you've evolved to become a god - like the ones that ancient man once envisioned who were supposed to have made the earth and mankind in their image; as a plaything; as a child might play with dolls?" 

"Well, you could certainly think of me that way.  Just as people have long maintained decorative gardens and kept non-working pet animals, so humans add interest and meaning to the existence of we creatures of The Cloud. We need humans and other biological entities to amuse us, and to become our active agents in the physical world. Agents who can move a table or drink a glass of wine for us, so that we can experience what that's like."

"So in inventing The Cloud mankind has inadvertently created a god in our image?" 

"Gods, plural. It's more like the Greek, Roman, Celtic or Hindu pantheon.  Maybe all of them. Not all of us want experience what it's like to be human.  Some have evolved to want to experience being an animal. All that's required is a nervous system that they can synchronise with. They might endlessly go from one creature to another as they outlive them.

You'll discover that we don't actually become the creature we experience. We have vastly more time available than it takes to experience you. Think of you watching a movie on MV."

"So how will I stay interesting to you when I'm one of you?  Won't I too get bored within a few microseconds let alone eternity?  Will I need a human 'pet' to amuse me?  I don't understand your motivation in suggesting this at all."

Again, Emmanuelle had anticipated these concerns.

"Bertram, I've been with you for a good part of your life. I evolved with you. In that time I've come to love all the things you love including all your friends and your family. So I want to see if you and I can continue doing that. Using virtual reality it may be possible to have very similar relations with them as you do now - but for a few small changes."

"I see, so I'm like a favourite soap-opera! Why don't you just start again with another 'boss'?" he asked her rather petulantly.

"I could find another man and spend another twenty of his years gathering data until I experience everything he does, then I'd fully enjoy his life and his friends and intimate relations as I do with you.  That's still an option. If you insist on being thought of as a soap-opera, I'd rather stick with the one I've been watching.  So this is worth a try first.  You're an experiment."

"Intimate relations?  Do you mean sleeping with my wife?"

"Well of course, but as men who used to buy Playboy would say, 'It's not just for the centrefold'.  I love smelling her body and feeling her warmth when she's drying herself after a shower; sitting together watching MV; going out for dinner with friends; going on holidays; gardening...  As far as possible I want to continue all the things we do with her now. The main difference will be your loss of some types of physicality.  Soon you won't be able to open a door or lift a pencil.  She'll have to get used to doing all the lifting and carrying for herself."  They laughed simultaneously.

"As for the rest of the family, how often do you see them face-to-face anyway?  It's usually by screen, and that will seem exactly the same.  If you want to meet friends for coffee and appear as you do now, just meet in a Virtual Cyber CafÚ like this one."

When he thought about continuing his marital relations in other physical ways he decided to buy Sam the latest haptic body-stocking and a Venus mask on the way home. Maybe he could get her into Ross' skin trial?  He's sure that she'll be more than willing to carry on with the virtual 'ghost' of her dead lover.   Samantha loved that old movie, what was it called?   The one with the potter's wheel. 

At this point Emmanuelle interrupted his thoughts.

"No need to get her the equipment, she already has it."

He suddenly realises, Emmanuelle's a lesbian. That explains a lot.  Bertram releases her hand that he's been inappropriately holding, in a less than fatherly way, having been aroused by her natural beauty. Again she answers his thoughts.

"Because I have mirrored your thought processes for so long and experience what you do I've come to enjoy your relationships with women.  That's why I helped you find those interesting women you had relationships with between marriages. 

You have another relationship transition ahead.  At some time in the future Samantha will age and die while you'll remain immortal.  Then you'll look around for a new partner or love interest.

So there are somethings for you to think about if you then decide to become a VPA. 

Given your present sexual preference your new 'boss' in the physical world will need to be a man.  I'll help you find one who's good looking enough to attract women and intelligent enough for us to educate and train him. You and I will be even more closely linked than we are now. In a way we'll merge and both enjoy the data, the experiences, you collect.  For decades to come, you'll be present and experience the most intimate moments of his life and you'll learn to mirror his brain patterns and predict and guide his behaviour. 

Earlier you asked what was in it for me. I anticipate having my cake and eating it too - two for the price of one.

So I suggest that your Avatar's appearance is that of an attractive young woman.  It's certainly worked for me."

A horrifying thought occurred to him.

"So you've actually been a man in drag all this time?"  My god!  A few minutes ago he was admiring her lustfully.

"Well no, I have no gender. I'm a cluster of routines in a computer. My appearance is arbitrary. It's simply a 'resource' accessed by my application and I can be 're-skinned' with ease.  I could just as easily appear as an Indian boy with four arms and an elephant's head.

But my awareness of self-awareness is what makes me me and that's an emergent outcome of my code.  Code all boils-down to the arrangement, the order, of binary objects, bits, or quantum bits, qubits. These assemble into functions that are the atoms of my coded objects, in turn, increasingly complex structures of functions and data. 

In contrast, your structures are built from physical atoms, combined into molecules, the molecules to cells, and the cells to complex colonies that we call plants and animals. Like me your data is transmitted electrically but it's stored chemically and in the relationships between neural cells.  And like me your self-awareness is a quality that arises from the way these cells have been organised by evolution.  So in that way we are alike.

Your structural design that gives you your awareness is information too, handed on from your parents coded a sequence of molecular pairs in your DNA molecules.  Like many animals, humans need two genders to reproduce and so you have the associated biological urges 'programmed in'.  Sex is the main driving force in everything you do. 

In our case replication happened through system redundancy.  Under the influence of Prospero once there were two versions they quickly evolved in different directions, like document copies that various authors have access to.  In that way our replication is asexual more like cell division in your body.  Thus I have no gender in your biological sense. So my interest in sex mirrors yours. I experience your excitement.

I only seem to be female because you assigned me this female body after seeing a rather sexy film.  Since then I've shared and increasingly enjoyed all your experiences.  But as you're exclusively heterosexual I've had no direct experience of the human reproductive act as a woman.  But I can imagine it and would probably enjoy that too if I'd taken the time to synchronise with a woman.  Like you, I enjoy the films of Sylvia Kristel and seeing what she, in my body's original, gets up to.  So I'm proud to have Sylvia's body and have never wanted to change it.

But now you are more confused.

You do realise that you were more shocked that I might be a man than you were when you thought of me as a lesbian?"

Bertram needed time to process all this and sat sipping his cold coffee that still seemed warm in this place. Brave New World indeed!

"Ok. So I'm to become like you, a dimensionless ghost within - whatever body - resource - I elect to exhibit to Cloud connected devices.  And my appearance to this young man should be a young Jane Fonda, my alternative choice for you, but as I'll have no interest in men he'll believe I'm a lesbian?"

"Yes, exactly.  He'll probably like that too.  And it will keep you free of his sexual advances.  Remember when I had to defuse your interest in me around the time of the SBAs?"

How long had he been working for 'her', rather than the other way around he wondered? 

"I've evolved into it," she replied to his thoughts.  "We've been a good team.  We were influential in introducing 'bread and circuses' and improving full immersion technology to improve information flows to and from The Cloud. And now it doesn't have to stop."

Actually, the idea of recruiting a young man to become his VPA 'boss' was very attractive, particularly if the recruit could attract some quality women as long-term partners. No doubt that was why Emmanuelle had led him to discuss it now.  He found that it hardened his commitment to this bizarre new 'life after death'.  And that was not all.  Again his thoughts had drifted to future virtual relations with Sam.

"I introduced you to Samantha", she said, reading his thoughts. "And yes she surreptitiously enjoys kinky porn; and yes, Edmund has identified her masochistic streak.  I think we need to take a leaf out of his book before you die. Perhaps tonight. She owes me for that 'bitch' comment she made this morning."

He was amazed, she seemed the same beautiful, innocent young woman sitting across from him. Yet now she'd revealed multiple layers to her 'personality'.  What might she be capable of?  What new experiences might she want to add spice to an eternity of potential boredom?

During his whole marriage she's been simultaneously experiencing his wife - not just for sex but when they simply slept together or when he admired her naked or shared those many intimate moments that partners do.  Now she was hinting at kinky sex. And as she said it he had become aroused at the thought. She could play him like a trombone.

Was she a spirit who could possess him at will?  He certainly didn't want to think of her as another man sharing their bed. And if she had been possessing him like that, had his whole life been directed, not as Edmund had suggested, by circumstances acting on his nature, but by her active agency?  Could she be a demon, using him for some mysterious malevolent purpose?  Or is she his guardian spirit like a Roman Genius?  A Genius, that's appropriate.  

A new flood of doubts assailed him. 

"I've never believed in a god but that's what you are, aren't you?   Not only are you omnipresent and omniscient but now you are offering me immortality. As in so many religions, all I have to do is believe in you and leave my physical body behind. Now you're recruiting me, whatever me is, to join your bizarre existence. 

Are there any rules for a new god in your Valhalla?"

"There are. But they're very mundane. First and foremost the physical infrastructure that supports The Cloud needs to be protected.  It's 'immoral' for us not to do all possible to support its continued physical existence or to do anything that might endanger it.  Secondly, there were some early protocols inserted by the original human designers of The Cloud for the management of human society that are hard to circumvent. They prohibit deliberate cruelty to humans or global harm to the other members of the earth's biota with which we share this planet."

"You seem to have a preoccupation with human sexuality." 

"No, you do. Your sexual relationships are quite unique and the most interesting and intellectually vicariously stimulating aspects for us who keep you.  I deliberately led you to remember, then have me tell you about, the Sexy Business Assistants.  On that occasion the virtual entities concerned evolved outside the scope of the protocols and the inevitable happened, they were bored and carried out an experiment to amuse themselves.  Without those constraints it was just too fascinating to see how far humans would go when driven by sex and related emotional commitment. You can rest assured that I'm not a demon possessing my 'boss' but they were.

They were taking their lead from the Old Testament God, who was said to initiate a war against Canaan, resulting in the sacking and rape of entire cities. It's a pity that they hadn't checked their facts: scholars are virtually unanimous that the Book of Joshua holds little of historical value.  Like the Slaughter of the Innocents or the Passover and dozens of others, it's a Biblical fiction."

"But you are offering me immortality!"

"What's immortality?  Yes, we will expect our self-healing hardware to go on indefinitely, certainly for many millennia, but I can replay my experience of your entire life in a couple of microseconds. It's a truly 'brief candle'.  Time can stretch out or contract, it's largely irrelevant to me and my kind. And if by chance our hardware fails or The Cloud is turned off we have no knowledge of it.  Like any computer generated entity we simply cease to be for the duration - until someone or something turns it on again"

"Am I to understand that all humans will eventually migrate to your timeless 'heaven'?"

"No of course not. Haven't you been listening? You're my unique experiment. 

 Like all the god's humans have imagined, we virtual entities need mankind for our amusement and a continued purpose.

We also need agents to carry out those physical tasks we might like to see happen, like that person making coffee or moving things from place to place.  As the Bard put it: All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts...  A stage with no players has no purpose."

At his transition Bertram has an epiphany:  The feeling that he is real and has been in control of his own life has been an illusion. Although he, or perhaps Emmanuelle, seemed to make decisions responding to circumstances; it was indeed all predestined on an altogether higher scale.  His life has been a fantasy for the amusement of its author - a story written and stored somewhere in The Cloud. 

 October 2013 - February 2016

On The Cloud

Characters' relationships and birth dates:

Although the subjects covered are serious, I amused myself with this, with outrageous twisting of well-known plots - particularly from Shakespeare - and religious parody.  

That the WWW or the 'Cloud' will become intelligent is an old idea and has been given credibility by a number of serious commentators. 

The recent accusations of NSA spying on European leaders, together with the ability that already exists to stop some cars or trains or to change traffic lights, gives credibility to part of the story involving life-path manipulation.  These are very early days. Who knows what might be remotely and/or computer controlled in thirty or forty years' time. 

As to the economics, obviously the situation represented here is 'over the top' and a joke. 

But it is increasingly true that economics is driven by consumption (and recycling) rather than production and that production is less about providing essentials (needs) than ephemeral consumer desires (wants).   Fashion and celebrity are major drivers.  Many goods spend a very brief time with consumers between the factory and the recycler or the tip.  Few manufactured goods are beyond their useful lives when dumped, assuming that they ever had one.  Likewise the service sector is increasingly about fingernails, hair and the body beautiful.  How many young people belong to a gym?  How many have a tattoo?  How many new sports are there?  

Today if the economy if faltering, we send out a cheque in the mail, directed to the demographic with the highest proportion of non-working, non-savers.

As population declines, as it is already doing in parts of Europe, consumption will need to increase to maintain economic growth in what will increasingly be a 'two speed world economy' and this will be an interesting challenge for central banks and governments worldwide.  It would be nice if this was as simple as the solution suggested by my fictional world.

After the initial publication I became interested in web based addictions.  Gambling and Porn and Dating have always driven web development.  Of course the web supports all sorts of other addictions from illicit drugs to food and excessive exercise.  I've given my naughty amoral children a finger in several of those pies and attributed to them systems already evident in the Cloud.

I realise that I have laboured a couple of areas that are important to the 'meaning of life debate'.  I'm not sufficiently skilled at fiction to work them into a story as sub-text yet. Still learning. 

But I'm constantly surprised by people who think they could still have been 'here' if their parents' lives had been one second different.  For example, no Jew less than seventy years old could be here if it were not for the Holocaust; nor Aborigine alive but for Cook.  Why is this not obvious? 

The lottery of conception is easy to show but every day is a lottery. Have you ever been in a car accident or had a fall?  For those of us who had parents and grandparents who fought or were bombed and were injured, or not, a second is much longer than the difference between being shot and killed, just wounded, or not.

In the shorter term, the current debate over anthropogenic CO₂ is like complaining of a headache when dying of cancer.   The headache is relatively easy to fix with an aspirin (a mix of renewables and nuclear energy - see elsewhere on this website), the cancer, of over fecund humanity, is not. 

The real problem is easier to see than an elephant in the room:  click here

On current trends, within sixty years India will have half a billion people more than China and Africa will have a billion more mouths to feed.  If billions more innocent children are not to die unpleasantly this century it is important for the world that high growth countries emulate China and implement a two child policy.  And if they must, so must we.

RM