Counting Heads

2.8

After twenty minutes of caroming through the unlit tunnels of the Chicago Public Transit, Bogdan Kodiak arrived at Elmhurst MacArthur Place Station. After decarring, he paused on the platform to remove his charter patch from his shoulder. A transit bee buzzed him, ordering him to move along, move along. He made his way through foot traffic to the stiles and swiped his way out. Before leaving the station, he put on a pair of mirrorshades and buried his hands in his pockets to keep anyone from reading him.

The Bachner Building, where the E-Pluribus office was located today, was an oblong tower grafted onto a multi-block trunk foundation. Before entering, Bogdan stepped in front of a kiosk board, curious as to the state of his anonymity. The kiosk board stalled a moment, trying to ID him, and failing to do so, launched a generic kiddie advert about portable pets. Bogdan snickered and left, confident that as far as the world was concerned, he was still a thirteen-year-old boy.

Inside the Bachner Building lobby, the directory requested that he remove his shades, but he refused. He asked the directory where the E-Pluribus elevators were. E-Pluribus always leased three entire floors wherever they camped, as well as two private elevator cars and three dixon lifts. A bee followed him as he walked to the bank of elevators. When he invoked his right to privacy, the bee informed him that it was a house bee, and that since he’d refused to be ID’d, the bee was authorized to surveil him.

One of the dixon lift cars was coming down, and Bogdan joined the crush of people waiting at its door. He knew how E-Pluribus spaced the cars and that if he missed this one, there wouldn’t be another for fifteen minutes. He was already late, so he took advantage of his small size for the second time that morning and threaded his way through the crowd. He didn’t recognize any of these people, which meant they were daily hires. When the car arrived, Bogdan almost made it aboard, but instead got stepped on.

“Owww!” he cried.

“Sorry, little guy,” said a man in front of Bogdan, “but you’ll just have to wait your turn like everyone else.”

“Oh, yeah?” said a man behind Bogdan. “Then how did you get in front of me, pal?”

“What are you saying, myr?” said the first man.

“I’m saying I don’t care if you trample the kid, myr, but don’t you fecking shove me!”

“Myren, myren,” Bogdan said, afraid of becoming trapped between them, “there’s no need to fight.”

“Not unless you’re the one cut out of a day’s payfer,” said the man at the front, who was trying to jam himself into the overcrowded elevator car, which made several unsuccessful attempts to close its doors.

“Relax,” Bogdan told the men. “If E-Pluribus issued you an invitation for today, we will honor it. Irregardless whether we use you or not, we will credit you a full day’s payfer.”

“What do you mean ‘we’?” said the man.

“I work for E-Pluribus,” Bogdan announced breezily.

Everyone looked at him, and a woman inside the car said, “Like on a permanent basis?”

“Yeah,” Bogdan said. “I have an employment contract. I am a senior demographics specialist, grade three.”

“People!” the woman commanded. “Inhale!”

A sliver of space opened inside the car. The woman grabbed Bogdan by the lapel of his jumpsuit and pulled him in, the doors closed, and the car began to ascend. When everyone exhaled again, Bogdan found himself for the second time that morning pressed against a wall. Not by a couch, this time, but by an ample bosom. He closed his eyes and drank in its damp, honeysuckle fragrance. Numerous hands took little rubs at his head, but at the moment he didn’t mind. As the elevator rose, people asked Bogdan how much E-Pluribus paid its employees, whether there were benefits, what kind of qualifications and genetic tests were necessary, and especially—were there any current openings. Snuggling in his tender pillow, Bogdan answered all questions as vaguely as possible.

“I’ve heard,” said the woman, “that they’ll make us insert these—ah—devices to register our—ah—responses.”

“That—ah—is true,” Bogdan said.

“What are they like?” she said nervously.

Bogdan smirked. “Not to worry, my dear. They’re small and harmless. They’re called visceral expression probes, which sounds a lot scarier than they really are.” Actually, he and the other regular employees called them potty plugs. And they called these people day holes. “After a couple minutes,” he continued, “you won’t even know it’s there.”

The elevator halted at the 103rd floor and opened its door to the E-Pluribus lobby. And what a lobby! The regulars called it the Temple, and it was the same basic arrangement E-Pluribus used wherever it rented space. The effect was one of vastness, and the intent was induced awe. For Bogdan, this space had long ago lost its novelty, but he still enjoyed seeing the effect it had on newcomers. He backed out of the lift and watched his fellow passengers step onto the limpid blue lobby floor. The floor seemed to extend for kilometers in all directions. Far on the horizon, it was bordered by giant stone columns, some broken and crumbled, some still joined by stone lintels. Beyond these lay a restive green sea.

“Oooo,” said his female companion.

The cool air was spritzed with salty sea smells. Lightning crackled in the distance, and thunder rolled beneath their feet. Subliminal music swelled.

Of course it wasn’t as though people had never visited a sensorium before. These days it took more than smoke and laser to make an impression, and if anyone knew how to impress humans, it was E-Pluribus. At the sound of a trumpet blast behind them, the daily hires turned to behold, not their elevator car, but a mountainous, stone ziggurat rising high into the yellow sky. At its truncated peak, nearly as high as the pink clouds, stood a gigantic corporate logo, the E-Pluribus Everyperson.

The Everyperson was one of the most familiar logos in the United Democracies, and this was its full-on version. It morphed rapidly and continuously, changing its sex, age, ethnicity, facial features, hair, and clothing into every conceivable combination. It was hypnotic to behold. People said that if you gazed at it long enough, you’d eventually see all fifteen billion inhabitants of Earth. Everyone but yourself.

People said that if you gazed at it long enough, you’d see ghostly images of your beloved dead, your departed parents, children, and spouses, your lost lovers, rivals, and friends, and everyone you cared for who predeceased you.

People said that if you gazed at it long enough, you’d see all the people you might have become if only you had made the right decisions or had better timing, connections, or luck.

For a corporate logo, it was a doozie.

On the stone steps beneath the Everyperson stood a pantheon of vid idols: thousands of the most celebrated hollyholo simstars of all time. This was the famous E-Pluribus Academy, the largest, most extensive stable of limited editions in existence. Bogdan’s elevator companions gushed with delight. At the bottommost tier, Annette Beijing stood alone and waited for their attention. She wore the loose-fitting house togs she popularized in the long-running novella Common Claiborne.

“Welcome!” she said at last and with fervor. “Welcome all to the House of E-Pluribus!” She held her graceful arms aloft and bowed her pretty head. Her audience applauded rowdily. “Dear guests,” she continued, “you have been chosen to join us today in the very important and quite exhilarating task of preference polling. As you know, society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them. Thus, society turns to you for guidance. Each of you possesses a voice that must be heard, and a heart that must be plumbed.”

She raised her hand to the ever-morphing statue high above them. “You, all of you, are the true E-Pluribus Everyperson. When Everyperson speaks in the halls of Congress or Parliament, in corporate boardrooms, jury rooms, and voting booths, it speaks with your voice.”

She paused a beat and added, “Now I’m aware that some of you may find our methods a little overwhelming, especially if this is your first visit with us. Therefore, we have arranged for a few of my friends to stop by.”

The host of simstars behind her chorused a resounding, “HELLO!” and the daily hires cheered.

“We invite each of you,” Beijing continued, “to select your most favorite celebrity in the whole world, from any time period, to be your personal guide throughout the day. Feel free to choose your biggest heart throb. She or he is bound to be here. And please, we’re all friends at E-Pluribus, so don’t be bashful. Choose whomever you want. Even me!

“Now then, we have a full day of taste-testing, opinion-polling, and yes—soul-searching—planned for you, but before we begin, please review the terms and conditions of hire, and if you approve, authorize them. Then call out the name of your heart’s desire, and he or she will come down to be at your side.”

Few of the daily hires bothered to read the contracts that appeared in the air before them. They swiped them impatiently and called out the name of Beverly Bettleson or Cary Grant, Anguishello del Sur, Humphrey Bogart, Yurek Rutz, Marilyn Monroe, or Ronald Reagan, or one of thousands more. Every name called brought a hearty “PRESENT!” from the Academy. To trumpeted fanfare, the chosen demigods descended the grand staircase of the pyramid to join their gaga guests.

Bogdan took the opportunity to slip behind an invisible blind where he knew one of the service elevators waited to take him down to the employee fitting rooms. He passed Annette Beijing on the way.

“Hello, Boggo,” she said, using her private name for him. “Got a smile for me?”

For her he had all the smiles in the world. She just so happened to be his own heart’s desire. Though she was an adult, and though she was only a holographic sim, he loved everything about her.

“Sure, Nettie,” he said, using his own private name for her, “though I am—ah—running a little late this morning.”

She smirked and said, “We noticed. I won’t keep you except to pass along a request from HR.”

“HR?” Bogdan said, his voice cracking on the R. He tried again in a deeper octave. “HR? What do they want?”

“They’d like you to come in to see them on Wednesday afternoon at three-fifteen.”

“What for?” Bogdan said. “Is it because I’m late? It was an accident. I couldn’t help it. I’ll never be late again.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” she laughed. “You’re a very punctual young man, so maybe that’s not it. Checking the calendar, I see that Wednesday is your first anniversary with us.”

Bogdan did a quick mental calculation. “You’re right, my first anniversary. I’d forgotten.”

Annette winked and said, “Well, perhaps E-Pluribus hasn’t forgotten. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Boggo, I have some stragglers to move along.”

Behind her, Bogdan saw that two stalwarts were still trying to decipher their employment agreement. The others were already embarked on the long stroll across the vast marble plain with their chosen hollyholo companions. Their destination was a pavilion, barely visible, on the far horizon. The distance was only half illusionary; the actual distance was from the tower’s southernmost bank of elevators to its northernmost stairwell, a distance of half a klick. It would seem even farther, however, with Harrison Ford, Count Uwaga, Audrey Hepburn, or Jim Morrison hanging on their every word. And by the time they arrived at the pavilion and were fitted with their potty plugs, E-Pluribus would have uploaded their personal upref files, established occipital neurolingual calibration, recorded an evoked response baseline, and tailored a morning’s worth of test scenarios for them and them alone.

Bogdan shook his head in smug satisfaction as he entered the service lift. He had to admit he was getting to be an old hand at the upreffing biz. Maybe E-Pluribus had noticed the excellent quality of his work. Maybe Human Resources was going to extend his contract. Or give him a bonus or maybe a raise.

THE VISCERAL RESPONSE Probes—the so-called potty plugs—were the same for the regular E-Pluribus employees as for the daily hires. A probe consisted of a fasciculus of motile electrode filaments, tipped with synaptic couplers, in a hydrogenated glycol casing that melted at body temperature. It was fourteen centimeters long and conical in shape. It looked like a greasy, spindly, miniature Christmas tree. It smelled like bath powder. Application was simple. Bogdan had done it so many times he hardly thought about it, though it amused him to think of the first encounters with it that the daily holes must have. He entered a “fitting” booth, closed the door, opened the crotch of his jumpsuit, and sat on a toilet seat. The seat slowly lowered him onto the probe. A bull’s-eye every time. There was a fleeting discomfort, a sense of fullness, as the casing dissolved and was absorbed into the submucosal lining of his transverse colon. There was a mild peristaltic spasm or two as the electrode filaments maneuvered to interface with his vagus nerve. By the time he refastened his clothes and exited the booth, he was a walking, talking, assay-kicking machine.

Bogdan hurried to his third assignment for the day; he’d already missed the first two. In a small auditorium, he joined a dozen daily hires seated around a holospace. They were still keyed up by the novelty of it all. Two of them were iterants—steves—who had already abandoned their hollyholo chaperones in favor of their own company. A few more holes—chartists—sat together in companionable silence. Bogdan gave the latter group a charter wave, which caused some doubtful looks—he wasn’t wearing his Kodiak colors.

The auditorium lights went down. Theme music, like that of a comedy show, came up. Emitters transformed the auditorium into the lounge of a Chicago body clinic where a triad of attractive people—two women and a man—awaited the results of tests they had just undergone. These three had decided to surgically graft themselves into one individual, but were still debating about what configuration to use.

Bogdan, from his year’s worth of experience at E-Pluribus, suspected that this was a consensus vid, his least favorite kind, in which the combined attention of audience members drove the plot. Bogdan watched the vid with resignation. Professional experience told him it would quickly devolve into a little urban tale of lies, deceit, and hurt feelings. The three beautiful, witty, obviously aff young people decided to graft their three heads onto one body, but whose body? And which sex? Or maybe a combined sex? For three people wanting to merge into one, they seemed curiously unable to agree on anything, and their bantering humor grew absurd.

Or at least Bogdan thought so. Laughter in the auditorium was sparse, and the story line took an odd turn. It began to focus on the canopy covering Chicago that was scheduled for retirement later that night. In a few minutes, the whole goofy surgical triad thread that had opened the vid vanished without a trace, and the three characters, much more sensible now, were frantically packing to leave Chicago in favor of a city still protected by a canopy.

Every once in a while, E-Pluribus introduced new threads into the story in an attempt to tease the audience’s interest into new areas. One member of the triad won the lottery and didn’t want to share the prize with the other two. The other two advertised for a new third without her finding out. The triad couldn’t agree on where to go on vacation. And other equally silly complications. But within a few minutes, each new thread was captured by the audience’s anxiety over the canopy. No matter where E-Pluribus tried to nudge the story, it wound up canopy, canopy, canopy.

BOGDAN’S NEXT ASSIGNMENT was to a much larger auditorium where he watched an hour-long E-Pluribus probable news program. The handsome talking heads began by reminding their E-Pluribus viewers that the probable news was just that—probable. It may or may not have actually happened and was not to be confused with corporate news.

The first half-dozen stories visited the sites of natural disasters outside the sphere of the United Democracies. Bogdan sat in a pan boat in the brackish floodwaters of the sub-Saharan. He walked among swollen-bellied babies in Azerbaijan and the victims of tailored cholera in Iraq. He swatted patch flies in Pakistan that covered people and livestock like a second skin.

The last story before lunch was about a space yacht disaster involving an important industrialist and her Hollywood producer daughter. Their graceful Aria Craft yacht cartwheeled out of control, burning like a shooting star. Bogdan blinked on the yacht to look inside. He was shaken vigorously, along with two beautiful, scantily dressed young women who cried out to him for help.

THE E-PLURIBUS BUFFET tables were laden with a wide variety of rich foods: steaks and chops, sausages, cold cuts, pastas, soups and chowders, curries, stews, goulash, rolls and breads, and desserts of every description. There was no visit limit, and the daily holes were not shy, returning time and again. The bulging pockets of their suits blossomed with grease stains from whole meals squirreled away for later.

Though the food was complimentary, it wasn’t exactly free. It was all test food. Bogdan and his fellow preffers were still plugged in, after all, and were transmitting in most intimate detail the food’s passage from eye to mouth to stomach and beyond. Their digestive tracts were singing for their supper. Not a burp escaped unnoticed.

Bogdan quickly grazed the buffet table, eating on his feet, and stuffing his own pockets with cookies, before leaving the lunchroom with fifty minutes to spare to go out and buy a phone. In the elevator going down, Bogdan put on his mirrorshades and made fists of his hands. Outside the Bachner Building, the sky was thick with noontime bees. His anonymity was apparently still intact because the first bee to drop down said, “Hey, kid, glyph this. Free Always Everywhere!”

“Desist,” he said, not even slowing down, and the bee rose and flew away.

Another bee replaced it. This one said, “Hi, little fellow. Guess what! We’ll pay you one ten-thousandth of a yoodie—right now!—if you answer six fun questions about your fave emollient.”

Bogdan snorted. “I happen to be a professional E-Pluribus demographic control specialist. You’d have to pay me way more than that to answer your dumb survey. So, desist the feck outta here.”

A third bee arrived, flashed the Longyear logo, and said, “We are currently running a special bonus offer.” This bee, at least, had pegged him for a retroboy and not a real kid. He was about to dismiss it, when he remembered his meeting with the Allowance Committee that evening. Longyear was a rejuvenation clinic that Charter Kodiak sometimes used, and he was overdue for a session.

When Bogdan didn’t immediately dismiss the bee, it went on to say, “Yes, myr, for each month you shed at one of our deluxe clinics, Longyear will throw in an additional two and three-quarter days at no additional charge. Think about it, you can retro-age a full year for the price of eleven months. And for your own special retroboy needs, this offer includes a complete endocrinological workup and regimen design. Would you like us to flash you the details?”

Bogdan almost uncurled his fingers to swipe the bee, but he didn’t want the whole street to ID him, so he asked how long the offer was good for.

“You need to book treatment within forty-eight hours of right now!”

Bogdan dismissed the bee and continued his stroll along the arcade yelling “Desist, desist” every few meters. The bees weren’t the only annoyance. There were more hollyholo sims here than real people, and they cleverly tried to lure him into their public melodramas by asking him for directions to this or that building. As if he knew. He purposely stepped right through them to let them know what he thought of them.

Bogdan strolled the arcade, evading bees and sims while he window-shopped. None of the windows addressed him by name. For about three minutes, a live payper pointcast of a WSA soccer match played right above his eye level, but he carefully avoided looking at it, and it eventually moved on.

Suddenly a woman literally fell to the sidewalk at his feet. Unthinkingly, he reached down to help her, but his hand went through her arm. She was another damn sim, and he was angry until she turned her head to look up at him. It was Annette Beijing! Not the Annette Beijing in her Common Claiborne role, but a darker, more angular woman, gaunt even, with sunken cheeks and spiky hair. An edgier, sexier Annette Beijing (if that was even possible).

“Oh, thank you, Myr Kodiak,” she said, scrambling to her feet.

Damn! Bogdan thought when he realized she’d ID’d him. He had opened his hand for a split second when he tried to assist her. But one look into her oceanic eyes made it worthwhile.

She stood close to him and looked nervously up and down the arcade. Her expression was taut with fear. “What’s wrong?” Bogdan said.

“You must help me,” she replied.

“How can I help you?” He felt foolish saying this, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Stay with me until Rollo shows up. Or they will surely come back.”

“They who?” Bogdan said and found himself glancing up and down the arcade too. He told himself he’d play along for just a few minutes. It would only cost a few thousandths. It was worth it, and he deserved it.

“Feraro’s men. They hurt me.”

Bogdan noticed for the first time that her jumpsuit was torn and that she was holding the pieces together, trying to cover large, purple, finger-length bruises around her throat. “But why?” he said, truly alarmed for her.

“It’s a long story. I have something they think belongs to them.”

“Shouldn’t you call the police?”

“They are the police!” She laughed bitterly. “And Feraro swore he’d kill me.”

“For real?” said Bogdan. “I mean really kill you?” Hollyholo or not, there was a chance she might be in real danger, for sims were deleted when they were “killed.” An individual copy of a character could be eliminated in whatever gruesome fashion the writers chose for the good of the story mat. If enough copies were killed, a whole issue could go extinct. Not that the Annette Beijing lines were in any danger of that.

There was the sound of wings, and when Bogdan looked up, he saw tier upon tier of bees recording this scene for paying viewers all over the world. Apparently this was a big scene for a very popular story thread, which meant this Annette might actually be slated for harm. (It occurred to Bogdan that her pay-per rates must be astronomical.) It also meant that he, Bogdan Kodiak, was being watched by thousands, maybe millions of viewers. He stood up a little taller and said, “Then we should get you out of here.”

“Don’t you see? It wouldn’t do any good. We can’t hide from them forever. Our only chance is to wait for Rollo.” Bogdan was already beginning to hate this Rollo character.

Although they stood on the shady side of the arcade, Annette Beijing was lit from at least three angles with a soft, warm light. Her skin pulsed with vitality, and her hair plugs sparkled. “While we wait, let me tell you everything. That way, if they get me, you can tell Rollo. Promise me that you’ll tell Rollo everything, Myr Kodiak. Promise me!”

The bees moved in for a closer look. Now Bogdan saw what was happening. He was about to be passed off to a minor character. It would take Annette a full five billable minutes or more to feed him the back story, and then she would exit the scene somehow, and he and Rollo would spend the next few hours looking for her until Bogdan ran out of credit. A clever evil scheme.

“Uh,” he said, “Annette, I’m going to have to go now.” Reluctantly, he turned away and continued up the pedway, but she followed. He walked faster, but she kept apace and pleaded with him to stay. “I can’t,” he said. “I have to go back to work.”

“To E-Pluribus, I know. You’re a very important man there. Can’t you take me with you? You can hide me there.”

“No, I can’t. E-P would never allow it.”

She tripped and fell hard to the pedway. He paused to look down at her. The knee to her jumpsuit was torn now too, and her skin scraped and bleeding. He watched in fascination as a bright trickle of red blood ran down her knee, and he felt an urgent desire to touch her, but he forced himself to look away and leave.

“Wait, Bogdan!” she called after him. “Don’t abandon me. I beg you, Bogdan, don’t throw me to the dogs!”

Though it killed him to say this to Annette Beijing, Bogdan said, “Desist.” He turned and fled up the arcade, where he saw the familiar logo of a NanoJiffy store. He ducked inside to hide from the bees that followed him. The store was much bigger than April’s stall at the charterhouse. It boasted three extruders—one dedicated to foodstuffs only—and a digester. There was even a small seating area with tables and booths. He went to the menu wall and paged through the extruder selections. Though the store was bigger than April’s, it carried the same product lines—quick extrude public domainware for the most part, stuff for the kitchen, bath, personal hygiene, plus name brands and NanoJiffy’s own, slightly more prole brand. All told, about a million products from shampoo to trombones were listed in the menu. Including phones.

Phones came in a dizzying array of forms and substances—wearable, edible, and environmental—many of which were free to the consumer. But Bogdan wanted his own phone, a phone without location or ID transponders, polling or advertising agreements, subliminal motivational messaging, remote medication metering, or membership to a suicide prevention community. In other words, Bogdan wanted a phone with no agenda outside the simple function of connecting him to the public opticom. This ruled out phone crisps, phone tattoos and nail polish, phone house plants and air fresheners, and most other models within his narrow price range. After five minutes of searching, he was about to give up when he stumbled across the new crop of cap valet felt, and he felt another pang of misery for his stolen Lisa.

Magister Scholastic Valets had come a long way since Kodiak Charter had bought him Lisa’s “Little Professor” model nineteen years before. For the same price that they had paid back then, he could purchase a “Rhodes Scholar” with seven million times the processing power and triple the Turing index. But the price! This small strip of nanofacture cost five hundred United Democracies credits! Was it possible that nineteen years ago, when he really was a ten-year-old boy, his charter had the wherewithal to invest five hundred yoodies in his education?

Bogdan sighed and scrolled to the next page where he found exactly what he was looking for—simple phone patches that you stuck to your throat and behind your ear. They were audio only, but at 00.0001 UDC, the price was right. Bogdan ordered a set and went to stand in line next to the extruder.

WORK, WORK, WORK. Bogdan’s first assignment after lunch was in a solo booth with a reclining seat. When he sat down, the booth lights dimmed, and he found himself in the pilot’s seat of a two-person Aria Ranger, ripping along at full throttle in star-encrusted space. He reached out for the controls to see if the holo was interactive, and it was! Assignments were rarely this cool. A slight touch on the navigation ball caused the ship to veer in a most pleasing way.

“Where am I?” he said, and the control panel showed him a proximity map. Evidently, he was in the solar system, not too far from Earth. He turned around in his seat and, sure enough, there was the brilliant blue planet behind him the size of a beach ball. When he turned forward again, he was startled to discover a little man in weird green and red overalls sitting in the copilot seat. He wasn’t much taller than Bogdan, himself.

“Hello, Myr Kodiak,” the man said with a lopsided grin. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a simulacrum of Myr Merrill Meewee, formerly a bishop of Birthplace International, and winner of the 2082 Mandela Humanitarian Award. Are you familiar with the Birthplace organization and its work?”

“Sure,” Bogdan said, “you’re the ones against people.”

The sim frowned. “Not exactly,” it said. “Birthplace is a worthy institution that tackles the important work of humanely limiting world population growth. Reproduction bans are but a small part of what they foster. While I wholeheartedly believe in Birthplace’s mission, a few years ago, I left the organization to pursue an even grander plan called the Garden Earth Project. Would you like to hear about it?”

Actually, no. Bogdan could care less about anything this wanker had to say, but he didn’t want to accidentally end his sweetest assignment in a week, so he said, “I’m listening.”

“Splendid,” said the little man. “See that bit of shiny object off your starboard bow?” Bogdan looked where the man pointed and saw not one, but thousands of shiny objects. He consulted his map and realized it was Trailing Earth, the space colony at one of Earth’s Lagrange points. “By the way,” said the man, “this live spacescape is brought to you courtesy of the SNEEN, the Starke Near Earth Eye Network. Why don’t we steer that way?”

Bogdan turned the ship toward the space colony. Immediately there was an auditory alarm, and a line on the map turned a pulsating red. “What’s happening?” he said.

The ship replied, “Warning, proximity to high-energy beam. Change course to oh-three-six. Warning.”

Bogdan didn’t know how to set a course, let alone change one, and when he turned the ship again, the alarm grew shriller.

“Hurry,” said the little man, “engage the hi-end filter.”

Without knowing what it was, Bogdan ordered the ship to engage it. The stars in his viewports darkened, and a brilliant line, like a taut wire, seemed to stretch across space. The line was too bright to look at directly, but it was dead ahead and growing larger every moment. Being able to see it made avoiding it child’s play, and Bogdan veered away. The proximity alarm fell silent.

“Good piloting!” said Bogdan’s sim passenger. “That was one of our Heliostream microwave beams that supplies Trailing Earth with power. It originates from our solar harvesters in Merc orbit and transmits an average of one terawatt per beam. It would have vaporized us.”

Bogdan cranked back the filter opacity and followed the microbeam to Trailing Earth. The ship passed corrals on the outskirts of the colony where thousands of captured iron-nickel asteroids awaited processing. It passed a row of microbeam targets: large, utterly black disks limned with nav beacons. Bogdan cut his speed when they reached the shipyards.

In the yards were rows and ranks of giant hoop frames. Many of the frames were covered with barnacle-shaped construction arbeitors that were busily weaving the seamless skin of the hab drums. The shipyards were crisscrossed with tightly choreographed flight paths of support tenders, construction bots, material trains, and waste scuppers, which seemed to fly at Bogdan from all directions. He zigged and zagged a lurching path through them, but there were too many, and his ship clipped the tail of a scupper and slammed into the side of a tender. There was a satisfyingly fiery explosion, and the holo ceased.

“Feck!” Bogdan said and brought his seat to its upright position. But the booth lights did not come on. Happily, the testing objectives of this vid seemed to be more important than his lack of piloting skill, and he and the Aria Ranger and his unnerving passenger were reset as good as new at the far border of the congested space yard. They were entering a second yard where there was very little traffic to avoid. A dozen or so hoop-shaped ships docked in the yard appeared to be complete. Their rings of sixty-four rotating hab drums were marked with names in giant letters: GARDEN TBILISI, GARDEN ANKARA, GOODACRE, GARDEN HYBRID, and so on.

“These Oships are taking on provisions,” said Myr Meewee. “Everything they’ll need to travel to another solar system, find a habitable planet, and colonize it. Steer that way, young man.” He pointed to a passage through the donut hole of the King Jesus. “It’s all right. The torus isn’t energized yet.”

Bogdan steered a course through the center of the Oship. At last he gained a sense of the size of these things. The King Jesus just got bigger and bigger. What had seemed like a bump on its lattice frame was actually a megaton freighter docked at a transfer port. The “I” of “KING” was as long and broad as a runway.

“When the torus is energized,” the man said, “this area in the middle of the Oship will become a magnetic target. We’ll propel the ship by bombarding it with a river of particles and pellets from the same Heliostream harvesters that supply the microbeams. Would you like to hear more about this awesome technology?”

“By all means,” Bogdan said, steering for the next Oship, the Octopus Garden.

His simulated host launched into a long-winded explanation of self-steering particles, laser course correctors, shipboard maneuvering rockets, and a redundant system for deceleration once the Oship arrived at its new home star system. As he talked, they passed out of the second shipyard and entered a traffic inwell leading to the populated core of the mushrooming space boomtown. The docking grid that extended out this far was incomplete and hosted few fabplat tenants. Bogdan aimed his Ranger at the inner core and punched the throttle.

“Lecture complete!” the Meewee sim said. “Had enough? Or would you like to hear about the Garden Earth Project and our ‘Thousandfold Plan’?”

“Spare no detail.”

“Splendid,” the Meewee sim said. “Heliostream and its parent corporation, Starke Enterprises, are major partners in a consortium of leading industries working together to spread seeds of humanity throughout the galaxy.”

The sim paused solemnly before continuing. “Those Oships back there, and hundreds more under construction, will each ferry a quarter million plankholders on a millennial voyage to newly discovered Earth-like planets in neighboring star systems. Each plankholder on board will receive title to a thousand acres of land on a new world, as well as a dwelling; a generous, lifetime share of food and supplies; unlimited access to education, medicine (including rejuvenation), cultural centers, sports facilities, vocational training, and full citizenship in whatever form of governmental structure the plankholders incorporate.

“Think of it, young man, a thousand acres plus all the ingredients of a happy life. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Frankly, it is. And do you know what we want in exchange for all of that?” The sim waited for an answer.

“Not a clue,” Bogdan said. “A million yoodies?”

“That’s probably how much it’s worth, but we’re offering plankholder shares for much less. We’re exchanging shares for real estate here on Earth. How much real estate? One share per acre. Let me repeat that. For title and usage rights to one acre of Earth, you can get one thousand acres, lifetime material support, and citizenship on a new Earth. What do you think of that?”

“I think it’s crazy,” Bogdan said. “Where is someone like me supposed to get title to an acre of land?”

The simulated pitchman looked at Bogdan, seemingly for the first time. “I imagine what you spend on rejuvenation treatments alone over five or seven years could buy you an acre of Amazonian desert. We don’t care about the quality or location of the land, as long as it’s in a country or protectorate that guarantees private property rights. Even an acre of deeded continental shelf will do.”

“What are you going to do with all that land? Build more gigatowers? Store nuclear waste?”

“You possess a healthy skepticism, young man, but you’ve got it backward. Remember the name of our project? Garden Earth? That’s what we’re building—a planetwide nature conservancy. We put the land we acquire into a trust for a period of two hundred years. During that time, the land lies fallow. No one lives on it or uses it for any purpose whatsoever. Our experts will help restore it to its pre-industrial ecology. Can’t you hear Ol’ Gaia sighing with relief?” The sim sighed theatrically.

“So, you’re doing this thing as a sort of public service?”

“That’s it exactly,” the unfrocked former bishop’s sim said, “a public service in the name of Mother Earth.”

Bogdan rolled his eyes and raced for the heart of the space colony.