“Attack her, Modi. Why are you letting up? She’s open, push her into the corner. What’s wrong with you?” the trainer yelled at Koven as he backed away from his opponent, Thomsa Tillerman.
Thomsa didn’t hesitate; she shoved against the barrier, pushing it up until Koven fell inside of his invisible protective shell. Once he fell, Thomsa rolled him like an egg into the corner then sat down inside of her own protective shell facing him, particle separator aimed at his chest and hand on the control insignia on the chest of her PPS.
“Good work, Thomsa,” said the trainer with a pat on her shell.
“Thank you,” she said. She stood up and backed away from Koven. Then she turned down her PPS to skin level, the lowest setting before OFF.
Koven got to his feet and smiled at Thomsa. He just couldn’t attack a woman that he would prefer to kiss. Thomsa was the prettiest agent in his class.
“You, OK?” Thomsa asked him. “You look distracted,” she said.
“I am. You’re pretty, that’s all,” he replied.
“Oh. OK. Then will you die the first time you battle a pretty woman?” she asked him as historians often did, couching an opinion as a question. Not dissimilar to a spouse sometimes.
“I don’t want to consult the Calc Majoris, in case the prob is close to one hundred percent (a sure thing),” replied Koven.
“Get off your ass, Modi. I want you and Thomsa to come over here and see what you’re supposed to be doing,” said Arnus Schlepp, their trainer and definitely a Non. He was aggressive, annoying, and a shouter.
They walked over to the nearby large blue floor mat upon which stood two very large men fighting against one smaller man. The small man, Larn Tynis, instantly adjusted the size of his invisible protective shell down to the lowest possible setting short of turning it off. He did this by turning the breast insignia to the left. So now instead of three fully shielded fighters, their egg-shaped protective shield clunking against one another with the strange echoing thud like they make, the two larger men fell forward now that the support from Larn’s shield had collapsed. Think of it like two guys pushing hard against a door that someone suddenly opens.
Personal protective suits are wonderful. They keep the wearer safe from everything except the most destructive weapons. Particle blasters? No problem. Pointed sticks? No problem. Knives? No problem. Other cutlery? Again, no problem. They even protect the wearer from sporks, but not from the idiocy of sporks.
So when Larn quickly withdrew his support for his two assailants, they fell forward, doing the one thing you should never do while in the PPS bubble: fall. Larn leapt high into the air and came down behind the top of the egg shape rolling forward, as if the egg-shaped were visible only to him. His barely shielded leg struck the top of the other shield, and while there was nothing to see at the perimeter, inside, it was a different matter. Larn’s blow had caused his attacker to begin to turn end over end, not unlike a small child being placed in a clothes dryer. She still hasn’t forgiven me for that.
Not wasting time, Larn inflicted a similar kick to the other assailant. Now he had both assailants inside of their bubble and their movements not within their control. Larn gave each a final kick that sent them rolling quickly across the room and slamming harmlessly into the wall. Then Larn crouched down and turned off his PPS completely, drew his blaster, and aimed it at his assailants.
Yep, that’s the big flaw with the PPS, you’ve got to turn it off to fire your weapon. If you fire it inside of the PPS protective egg, it will ricochet a few times before hitting you and turning you into single element molecules from your previous more complex chemical existence. Mostly, you are reduced to a pile of dust of various sorts and vapor that drifts away.
Larn smiled at the instructor.
“Well done, Larn. Next time, don’t turn off your suit until you are ready to pull the trigger,” said Arnus, turning to Koven and Thomsa. “Did you see how he tricked his opponents into letting him support them? Brilliant. That is how you need to be thinking. Got it?”
“I think so,” replied Thomsa with a smile.
“But what if they had attacked him one at a time?” asked Koven.
“Then I’d attack them from the bottom,” replied Larn. “Earthquake them.”
“Earthquake?” asked Thomsa.
“Show them,” said Arnus to Larn.
“Turn on your PPS on high. That is the setting it is worn ninety-nine percent of the time in battle. Casually, it’s usually kept at skin level,” Larn said to Koven.
“Why do I have to be the CTD (crash test dummy)?”
“Because I don’t want to embarrass Thomsa. She is pretty and I am attracted to her,” replied Larn. Yep, there’s that historian honesty thing again.
Koven stepped back away from them and turned on his PPS. Thomsa reached out and confirmed his egg with a soft thump.
“Don’t hurt me?” Koven asked with complete sincerity.
Sarcasm is illegal for historians. Yeah, that will screw your shit up if you can’t smart off to someone because it requires a factual inaccuracy to make the point.
Hyperbole? Forget that shit too. Lose your license for sure. Lose your license and you join the sad underworld of failed historians that haunt the bars and gutters of the cities on fringe planets. Once contenders, now they walk drunk through the night, just flesh-covered regrets of all that might have been. They don’t even know about the red coconut-covered cakes. Poor bastards.
Larn stood in front of Koven very casually, like two friends standing outside at a cafe bar in Budapest in the spring, pleasant smile on his face.
“Most people, when they stand, they don’t really stand still. There are slight shifts in the stance. Left foot dominant, right foot dominant, left front ball dominant, left heel dominant, and so on,” said Larn.
“I’ve noticed this,” said Koven.
“It presents a unique opportunity when the person does this inside the egg because of the sponginess under your feet. You are momentarily unstable, but I need a way to take advantage of it. So I can kick at your barrier but I can’t transfer enough force into your egg to cause harm. Well, not unless I do this. Apologies in advance,” Larn said with a smile.
He stood still for a few seconds. Then he fell onto his left side. As he fell, he positioned his feet at the bottom of Koven’s barrier. When he hit the floor, he turned the control of his PPS all the way to the right and kicked hard. He was moving from minimum setting to max in less than a single tix, and his PPS field was expanding against Koven’s. The result was unexpected. It was like something in the floor underneath Koven launched him into the air. He hit his head on the inside of the egg and collapsed to the floor. He was conscious, but barely. Then he slammed into it again and fell silent on the floor.
“Are you all right?” asked Larn. “Turn it off.”
Koven’s hand slapped his insignia and the invisible barrier disappeared. Larn moved towards him and began to check the back of his head where it hit the hardest. Thomsa ran over to the table near the door and brought back the remedium. She handed it to Larn, who moved the device over Koven’s head and then his neck. A small red mark on Koven’s neck disappeared as Larn moved the remedium. The gash on his scalp was healed.
The “Remedium” is what it’s called almost everywhere. It repairs skin, tissue, organs, wounds, everything except death and certain mental illnesses, like gambling. It will repair things at the molecular level if necessary. And it is free for everyone. No shit. Well, there is a cost, sort of. But I don’t think the inhabitants of the planet Emile Swarka object to the trade. A planet name in exchange for perfect health and to be able to live as long as you want? I agree with them. A bargain.
Doctor Emile Swarka was a very eccentric little man who is best known for the remedium and also for bringing the term “semi-Salk” into the human vocabulary. He never asked for money.
Koven was recovered and rubbing his no-longer-sore head.
“My main curiosity,” said Koven as he got up from the floor with the help of Larn, “is why we are learning to fight against people also wearing PPS? Are we expecting a civil war or what?”
“Sociologists perhaps?” replied Thomsa.
“Damned Sociologists,” replied Larn with a chuckle.
They all walked to the locker room and the shower bots.
Agents are the only people issued PPS. It is rumored, though, that some of the Council wear them, and that Professor Trill, the bastard head of the Sociology Department, stole one and made his own ones and a team of agents to wear them. I realize that this is a lot to absorb. It doesn’t work like you expected. That’s understandable, you look around and expect it to be the same everywhere. Apologies but it isn’t.
It can be unbalancing at first when you get information without enough background or have enough context to convert it into knowledge at a high degree of efficiency. It’s almost like using a transport bubble without checking the departure and entry acceleration settings. Without the background or context, you will wind up at your destination in a transport bubble filled with vomit. Without context all of this information well it’s like puking in your brain. But here goes. Please pay attention. Repeating is so wasteful.
After her victory at the Battle of Least Mistakes, The First McGee refused the order to finish off the G&E survivors. Instead she took them to The Void and banished them. There were reports from satellites indicating that the void was finite and there were galaxies on the other side.
Then she went about suggesting changes to our ways. The First McGee changed most of existence in her lifetime. Then she retired to one of the leisure planets where she started a very large family.
Central to her idea on the organization of society was education. She herself, had been a teacher. And learning is the one intellectual constant in life. We continue to learn shit until we die. So the nexus of civilization became the University and the most notable was the University of Centrum Kath.
Most administrative functions of society were handed over to the appropriate university departments. This work was done at least as efficiently as before, and if not as efficient, then most definitely run with a more well-thought-out and documented approach. Everyone is certain of that. And they have many academic papers supporting the premise.
However, a little known fact is that not a single one of these papers have ever come from the History Department.
These were brutal societal changes for those of us who don’t like things to change much. A rocking chair is about as much change as some people can handle. And it has all that needless going back and forth nonsense. Some of the changes were economic.
Everyone was finally tired of a thousand years of economic boom and bust. Booms are generally fine for the people who benefit from it. Champagne and caviar is not a bad diet at all, given sufficient exercise and hangover potions. And the prosperity of the booms fosters consumption, significant consumption if the prosperity is widespread. But as long as things weren’t, say, limited in some manner, like say limited to one planet and one planet only, with finite resources, as long as that wasn’t the case, consumption during boom times seemed very acceptable behavior.
And those that didn’t benefit from the boom? Well, there was media to convince them to try harder and that they deserve their circumstance. It’s their failure not to succeed at a cheater’s game.
But the bust periods are an entirely different story. Every 3,000 revs or so it would all turn to shit. And worse still, they were often accompanied by the elevation of the worst of us to lead the rest of us. And that made it even worse and many people died.
The First McGee was a history buff and understood this. She is considered the first unlicensed historian.
But good things don’t last, and eventually the old ways returned and the university system was abandoned. In its place we were sold a system where anyone can become rich beyond belief. Problem is, hardly anybody does. Most people were poor but trying real hard.
Then during the reign of Pleon the Second, economic circumstances became severe with hunger and starvation occurring in many parts of the galaxy. Yet the news media and official histories never mentioned these conditions. It was all reports of Pleon and his beautiful wife enjoying lobster from the Lobstery at the Clapham Constellation and drinking sparkling waters from Pluto.
Food riots became common across many worlds.
Pleon, following terrible advice from his Marketing Department, attended a harvest ceremony on Syre. There he was arrested and put on trial for gross negligence with loss of life.
The prosecutor demanded a guilty verdict and a sentence of death. The defense counsel, a very nice man named Wolfgang, argued that his client was only guilty of following the orders of his marketing department. “The Nuremberg Defense,” the media called it. Then they had to explain what they meant.
After a long time of arguing, a compromise was reached. Pleon and his wife, Antigone, would not be executed. They would be allowed to live out their lives on a desert island, alone, where they would rule over no one. And in exchange for their lives, they would have to give complete and thorough testimony, which could be verified as accurate, about the system by which they controlled the news, the entertainment complex, and the tools they used to manipulate public opinion.
Pleon’s testimony took 122.7 revs. Yes, it was that extensive. And elaborate.
Confidential supporters in the media, falsely claiming impartial and unbiased reporting. The passing back and forth between media and government jobs. Also he spoke at length about the structural aspect of the news media and historical organizations and how consolidation made control and manipulation easier. Consolidation greatly increases the efficiency of corruption. And then there was the fatal effect of advertising.
But the most elaborate and shameful part of it was the way they had control over the history departments at universities across the galaxy. And with it came the ability to control what was taught in the schools, particularly to the children. In total, it was the most complete program of propaganda and brainwashing in history. And when it was working correctly, the poor slobs wouldn’t even know they were being controlled.
When asked why the elaborate system of coercion was necessary, Pleon replied casually, “If it weren’t so, I wouldn’t be your ruler.”
Listening to this testimony was a very young and very impressionable young boy who would rise to become The Final McGee. The testimony made him very angry and he swore he would fix it. When he got his opportunity, the return to the university system was swift, brutal, and so far, final. He personally designed the honesty-testing regime for historians, the licensing process, and the periodic recertification process. He made them responsible for reporting the news. And then he became the first licensed historian. He held the designation for the rest of his life.
Enough of this, back to our story.
A hundred twenty-nine tox later Koven, Thomsa and Larn were sitting in the strategy lecture class. Professor Dre-Foster was connecting the projector to his teaching reader.
“Again, the high score goes to Koven,” said Dre-Foster.
There was a groan among the class. This was the case in the previous three strategy simulations.
“How did you do it?” asked Dre-Foster. He displayed the scores at the front of the class. Koven had the high score of 100 percent. Next was Arbo, with 92 percent. Most of the rest of them were in the 80-90th percentile.
“Lancaster Strategy for the Weak. Geographic entry in a sparsely populated region. Then build upon a well-established base.”
“Well done. Where did you find out about Lancaster?”
“My reader and a misspelled name,” replied Koven. He could not take credit for his accident. That would be criminal for a historian.
“This, my friends, is one of the greatest keys to success,” replied Dre-Foster.
“Accidents?” asked Thomsa.
“No. Curiosity. Koven could have corrected the spelling and gone back to his original intent. But he became curious. And he wins because of it.”
“Koven the Cat,” said Larn.
“Koven the Cat,” repeated Thomsa.
Koven smiled uncomfortably. But historians are uncomfortable most of the time. Did I mention the pay and benefits? They’re great. The suicide rates are over discussed though. They have always been high. It’s in the nature of the work.