CAPITAL
CAPITAL
Capital (the planet once known as Sylea) is a moderate-sized world with a lot of people, compounded by the fact that a little more than half its surface is water. A lot means eighty billion; moderate-sized means, after subtracting water, about eight billion hectares. A tenth is devoted to food production (long ago, that was two-tenths, but that was long ago): it is impractical (if not impossible) to import food for billions of people. Two-tenths is mountain, canyon, rock, and crag. Another two-tenths is snowlands: both support scattered communities, but certainly no appreciable population density.
Half the land is urban, four billion hectares for 80 billion people: perhaps 20 per hectare, 2,000 per square kilometer.
Terribly crowded, oppressive, single-level urban areas make do with such densities over a few hundred square kilometers. Capital maintains such densities across all its settled lands.
Yet.
For many, Capital is a pleasant environment, an attractive community. High-rise and plunging arcologies house millions in high-density comfort and safety: the masses of the bureaucracy that drive the engines of the empire must live in comfort and safety.
On the other hand, there are the others that are always there: the poor, the disadvantaged, the underendowed, the unmotivated, the disaffected. Strict travel controls (and there are strict travel controls on Capital) cannot completely restrain workers discarded by their employers, or laborers in the shadow economy. Of Capital’s eighty billion, some portion probably counted as a tenth survive outside the conventional social structure.
304-462
Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
After the long journey to Capital, the time had come, and my orders were clear. I wondered what would happen if I just ignored them and reported to my new assignment? Would the Agent ever know? Would I just use this assignment as another step in my career progression? If I become host, what prevents him from some terrible misuse of me, of my body, or my identity? This won’t be on his record; what happens accrues not to him but to me.
But the Agent was always cordial, competent, self-assured. He knew what to do and he never abused his power. He treated me with respect, always. Do I just insert the wafer? Does he need to know of the journey? The situation? I suppose a simple message is enough. I would insert the wafer in the morning.
305-462
Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
I awoke seated, consistent with what I expected. Despite the disorientation, I opened my eyes and saw a small room, a residence hotel apparently, crowded with a bed, a console, and a door to the fresher. I was certain, because I was on Capital, that this must cost some extraordinary sum. I mused that I had not thought of money for a long time.
Before me was a comm, my comm, with a short text visible:
We are in Intell, on Capital, per your instructions.
I erased it and began.
I made sure I was properly uniformed, checked my destination on the console: walkable combined with public transport. I set out. I dragged a bag with a frictionless bottom; the last time I had done this, the case had had a belly of many small roller wheels. My comm gave me hints and signals and at least once directed me along an unfamiliar route.
I had not been in weather for years. Sheltered walks and subsurface access stations protected me from the snow and the wind, but the experience was both uncomfortable and exhilarating. Nevertheless, after some thirty minutes, I had had enough and was happy to arrive.
My destination was an office tower hundreds of kilometers from the starport and in the opposite direction of the Palace. The building was the same as I remembered, more or less. The neo-classical façade with its ridiculous two-hundred-meter-tall columns appeared to have been cleaned or renewed at least once.
At reception, they did not know what to do with me. I had valid orders assigning me to a position; the control codes and the check digits matched, but there was no local record. They were aware that this sometimes happened: some marquis in another sector gave his favorite sycophant’s rising scion a sinecure on Capital, a pied-a-sylea so to speak. They thought I was such as that. I did not disabuse them.
I was given an office and a console and told to acquaint myself with their system. I went through the motions in about-an-hour sessions, punctuated by discussions with others to carefully update myself on social norms after more than a century. I made the excuse that I was from the edge of the Great Rift (as indeed my host was, we had talked of his life from time to time), and I was accepted without any real comment. My officemates were always happy to talk of themselves and their interests, and I learned more than they realized.
After a week, I took a break. I arranged the coming week as leave: I was still a naval officer after all. I went to Capital, the city. Strangely, when I had lived here, it never seemed important to visit the icons. I knew what they looked like; I saw them in the distance; I could recognize them, and their names tripped off my tongue: the Palace, the Moot Spire, the grand Plaza of Heroes, Cleon’s Tomb, the Imperial Archives, the Central Forest, the Route du Palais, even the Second Empire Monument.
At last, I would see them.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
I visited the Moot Spire: the very place that the decisions of Empire are made. Technically, I was welcome past the simple barriers that separated the masses from the elite. I was a knight of the empire, one of those elites; my name was recorded in the rolls of those favored by the Emperor. But my host was not, and there was no way that I could even consider crossing those arbitrary boundaries.
I saw the Grand Palace from afar; I peered through its black metal fence rods at the carefully coiffed gardens and its strangely trimmed trees.
I strolled the Plaza of Heroes, conjuring up names of those I had known either before or after my death and asking my comm if they were remembered here: it gave me verbal and visual cues for some. I stood over a brick incised with the name of my Marine comrade Arlane and briefly remembered his life and his death. I touched another brick noting the presence of Patel at the scrubbing of Maaruur. Of others, there was no record. They might be remembered in the other plazas of other heroes on other worlds, but not here.
I visited the Imperial Salons. The exhibit on osmancy was unsatisfying: observing people prepare tastes and conjure smells cannot compare to actually tasting and smelling; it was like a sculpture exhibit one is not allowed to touch. The exhibit of now classic art from the third century resonated with me; I understood those artists’ purposes; their reflections of what third century folk felt. On the other hand, I noticed others around me confused by the same techniques that so spoke to me.
I visited the Museum of History. There was a hierarchy of presentation and naturally the greatest focus was on Emperors and Empresses. They became surrogates for the science, the conquests, the politics, the advancements, and the challenges of each’s reign. I knew Porfiria as an image in the news; I had actually met Anguistus, once. I knew little of the Martins, nor of the current Nicholle. Each chamber told me something of the era, reminded me of what I had learned in school, pointed out things I had not then realized, or that time had elevated in importance. I remembered favored sports teams winning championships season after season and all my office mates exhilarated for weeks with the thrill and the pride, but there was little mention of those events here.
I visited the Museum of Sophonts. This was a new structure, built since my demise, reflecting the completion by the Scout Service of its First Survey of the Worlds of the Imperium and its client territories some ten years before. There were major exhibits on the Vargr, the Aslan, and the many variants of Humanity. There was a series of rotating displays on some less common sophonts: those who rejected technology, those restricted by environment or temperament to their own particular planets; those too aggressive to be allowed off their homeworlds. Guided groups of students wandered the halls more-or-less following a docent but more interested in small group social hierarchies than the splendor of independent evolution of intelligent life. I paused at a small display even-handedly presenting the conflicting concepts of the origins of Humanity across many worlds: parallel evolution across a hundred worlds, Vilani origins (my own favored conclusion as my ancestors came from Vland), the Solomani Hypothesis of origins on far-off primitive Terra, the Gashagi garden world concept, and (in consideration of sensitive feelings) presentations on Geonee, Suerrat, and Cassildan origins.
I wandered into a virtual display and pressed buttons randomly to see what came up: images and data on a strange green 4-ped with eyes on stalks and twenty-some fingers on each hand, a hulking nose-horned giant with auxiliary arms folded on its chest, and a strange flattened leather ball that moved by weight-shift rolling. A small group with unusually loud voices entered behind me, and I moved on.
I took a wrong exit returning from my excursion. The fast transport doors opened, and a rush of people carried me into a waiting area. I was not paying full attention and ended up in a pedestrian mall filled with many small groups of people: diverse as to species, but all at the low end of the economic spectrum.
I was out of place, and I felt it immediately. I could feel eyes watching me.
I stopped to consult my comm; where was I? It told me numbers and names that meant nothing to me. I turned to retrace my steps and found that the transport gates were closed. The comm directed me to a different access portal some minutes away.
“Are you lost?” This growl from the tallest of three Vargr who now blocked my way. He smiled, but a dog smile looks more like a threatening snarl than a friendly greeting. His companions keep their lips closed, but fangs nonetheless protruded.
Part of me imagined myself ripped to shreds by this pack of canines. Others on the street seemed prepared to allow that without interfering.
I knew what to do. With dogs, it’s show no fear. Rule 1 works as well. “I am. And I thank you for your question.
“I am Lieutenant Enn Shuginsa, and I have taken a wrong turn. How do I reenter the fast transport?”
The Vargr are motivated by small group dominance. This primary had my attention; his companions would do nothing without his direction. I just needed to dominate him.
He started to make an answer, and I interrupted. “Forgive me. Please tell me your name.”
“I am Arrlanroughl.” I knew the spelling from the pronunciation: Ar Lan RUFF El. It was in Gvaeg, the most common of their languages.
“Arrlanroughl,” I repeated his name properly pronounced, “I appreciate your offer of assistance.” He had not offered; I assumed. “Capital is a wonderful place for those who visit; perhaps less wonderful for those who live here. Would you guide me to my transport stop?”
I knew the general direction from my comm. I started walking and assumed he would as well. “Tell me, Arrlanroughl, what do you do?”
There followed a conversation about the transitory jobs that the under people of Capital do: their efforts to live outside the array of standard jobs and avoid violations that would export them in cold sleep to strange and inhospitable worlds. Before that point (and I mean in my former life as well as now), I had been oblivious to anyone but the middle and upper classes.
I enjoyed our conversation. I asked for his comm identifier as we parted, and noted it in mine.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
There is a classic theme in literature: stories of men, people, sophonts presumed dead who are granted the opportunity to witness their own funerals and hear what those in life felt about someone now passed on. In my various classes I had casually read texts and regurgitated interpretations, but now those thoughts came back to me in a rush as I exited the fast transport line at the necropolis at Intell. I had made my arrangements and would only now after a century finally see them.
I searched with anticipation for our family plot and my memorial.
I had been cheated.
My funerary stele, intended to stand three meters tall, rose barely an armslength, truncated a third of the way up into a clumsy point. Here it stood a pantographed distorted scale model of itself, cut from inferior stone, rising to my waist, lost among the others. I stooped and thought as I traced the base with a finger, affected by an emotion I rarely felt. The letters of my name were there; the numbers of my time were there, but the pillar itself was squat, unsatisfying. Was this rage? Or just disappointment?
I remembered the functionary with whom I had dealt: Imiirga, an earnest, sincere man who sat with templed fingers, nodding in active listening mode as I outlined my desires for a suitable memorial. We looked at samples of natural stone from traditional quarries. We reviewed a virtual model that we rotated with finger motions, making adjustments until it was perfect. I made the appropriate contingent credit transfers and we parted with an emotional embrace. I remembered that I had left that meeting feeling more positive than I had in days. There was a resolution to issues that had burdened my spirit and I was even some semblance of happy for a time.
I now stood and tapped my comm, asking basic questions about the Imiirga of a hundred years before. The screen told me of someone in that time serving in an appropriate role. He was not of sufficient importance to rate an historical entry, but the genealogical networks placed him properly in the era, with employment and residential confirmations. It told me who his family was, when he died, who carried on his line, where he was interred.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
I visited his grave the next day: a continent away, in his grand family plot surrounded with the markers of the generations that followed him. He had become an archon, revered by his children’s children’s children. The center of this family plot was dominated by a sphere of stone two arms’ stretches across; its equator incised with a proud epigram from the Dakhaseri myth:
“Make your ancestors proud; teach your children-to-be well.”
He had left his personal fortune in trust for their educations: the single best choice he could have made to ensure they would have the best of all possible lives, and that they would hold him in the best of all possible memories.
I now labeled my emotion rage: at the cynicism, the dissimulation, the self-service. I had been victimized. I felt momentarily helpless, but only momentarily. I knew the next complete thought in the epigram, and I had near-infinite power. I would make him regret the errors he had made in life.
Baronet Sir Fen Imiirga had built his first fortune in the funerary industry as a confidential advisor. I had seen him in action. It appeared he had accumulated credits from others in the same way: promising post-death arrangements that he provided only half-heartedly. His later life seemed faultless, filled with grand projects accomplished competently and exceeding expectations. Within his small geographic and socio-economic communities, he had been well-respected. The Emperor recognized him at retirement with a Baronetcy, which filled him with pride. He lived a full life and died quietly in his old age, surrounded by family and friends.
But his entire life was built on the frauds of his youth. I would make him pay.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
From the sea of potential companions in my office, none had expressed the slightest interest in my life. Our conversations touched on office politics, for which I cared little, and personal activities. In the rare events when someone asked me what I had done, even my answer seemed to focus the conversation back to their recreations and interests.
Arrlanroughl’s inquiry—Are you lost?—some three days before had then seemed to me an ominous threat, and I now saw it as politeness, interest, even caring. On a whim, I called Arrlanroughl and arranged to meet. I think that my call was unexpected, but after several minutes he agreed that we should join for an evening meal the next day.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
Arrlanroughl’s suggestion had been a small restaurant near where we had first met. I prepared myself by researching the neighborhood, alternative access routes, and even took a virtual tour. The place with a nondescript name—Ella’s—provided affordable hand meals in three distinct cuisines: Fast Human, Gvaeg, and Asat.
At the appointed time, I arrived and entered, to be met immediately by the Vargr, alone. I saw his two companions in the distance, but they remained apart. He smiled (and I still half-perceived that as a snarl) and we shook hands. He guided me to a table, and we both examined the bill-of-fare. He narrated our possibilities. “This is the only place around here that captures the taste of Gvaeg cooking, they make their own sauces, so a lot of us like it here.” By “us,” I understood him to mean his fellow Vargr. “And they have a Newt cook back there that understands their particular cuisine, especially the live-insect garnishes.”
The painted menu above the counter listed our choices in wrappers, proteins, options, and garnishes: select one from each column, with an upcharge for additionals.
We made our selections. He chose a crisped bread wrapper around a bone-in beef with a tangy sauce and devoted much of our time gnawing on the bone. I selected a whole grain flatwrap around sliced fowl and a marinated leafy something. I had tried to emulate a selection I remembered, but it didn’t quite fit. We also shared a communal bowl of toasted grain.
I was interested in who this Vargr was and how he lived on Capital. He was technically a native, born here to parents who arrived as part of an educational exchange program. When it was complete, they declined to return to their homeworld, and eventually melted into the underground economy.
Arrlanroughl said he made a living doing occasional jobs: deliveries, construction, basic labor. He was a good worker, but such jobs rarely lasted very long. I had the impression that some of the jobs skirted the law, and others were probably outright illegal, but I was polite enough not to probe too deeply.
About midway through our conversation, I realized that his friends at the far side of the diner were simply waiting for us to finish. “Tell your friends to order for themselves, as they wait.” He visited with them briefly and returned to say that they appreciated my hospitality.
Our conversation continued for several hours. I was fascinated with this heretofore unseen, for me, aspect of society on Capital. By its end, my eyes were opened in ways that I had not expected.
We parted late in the evening with an agreement to meet in two weeks.
321-462
Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
In my office, I returned to my job-acquaintance process until I was sure that procedures worked essentially the same as in my time. The value of a stable bureaucracy is that processes are literally timeless.
My immediate supervisor was a political appointee: nominated by someone in power somewhere in the empire. He was happy enough to be here but had little ambition for advancement. Every day at end-of-work, he promptly left to whatever personal pursuit compelled him. He was happy that I took initiative as long as it did not interfere with his own personal time.
I, on the other hand, worked late when I needed to: reviewing procedures, analyzing relative inefficiencies, trying to understand reports from the farther reaches of the empire. One evening, I was alone in the offices and saw my chance to act. There was always a possibility things could go wrong, but I needed to take the risk.
I left my console activated, scanning data in some mindless task while an entertainment flashed on the supplemental screen. I moved to the other side of the office, found a vacant clerk’s console, and logged in as a casual user. I calculated the override codes for the day on a side panel and entered them while holding my breath. I knew this would work on naval computers; I was still less sure it would provide access in these offices. But it did.
I spent the next few minutes issuing project orders by checking boxes and appending short phrases. While I was at it, I added some benefits for my host with a suspense date a few months and a few decades in the future. Rule 5. Then I closed up and made my own way home.
My next higher superior, Senior Supervisor Len Starpan called me into his office two days later to give me my new job. He started rather abruptly.
“They have instituted an inspection program, who knows where this came from, and you have been assigned.” He tapped his screen. “It’s all here in the file. Let me know if you have any questions.”
All I could say was yes, sir.
My title was now Inspector Unipotentiary of the Quarantine Agency. There were four dreadnoughts insystem, in orbit. I scheduled a surprise inspection for tomorrow.
I started at the Navy Base and my orders preceded and prepared the way for me.
I went alone. I had singleness of purpose. On the other hand, this was new to me. I was accustomed to unquestioned response, and I enjoyed less than that power here. When admirals resisted me, I had them shot; that was probably not my option here.
A cutter awaited me on the tarmac. Once I boarded, it leapt into the sky.
An hour later, the cutter mated with the dreadnought Sinorak and I was greeted at the hatch by the Officer of the Deck. We exchanged pleasantries; we were equals. He was, like I, a Lieutenant. I was, like he, armed. He gave a questioning look at that. I smiled.
I showed him my tablet and recited my basic mission. “I believe this is routine, a new program the Agency has come up with.” I also needed to relieve his worries. “We are very focused today: I need to see the IT vault and specifically the quarantine wafers. Nothing else. Not a surprise audit. You can tell the captain but don’t warn IT, please.
“Oh, I’ll need one of your marines to guide me down there.”
He was appreciative; told the marine standing nearby to take me to Deck 8. I was on my way.
The IT clerk was surprised. Good. He was flustered. What if his records were not in order? What if his predecessors’ records were not in order? Then again, this was new to me too. Rule 1.
“Call up your wafer records.” I examined them. Hummed, ticked my tongue. Touched the screen, skipped from screen to screen. None of it mattered, but the records were in good condition. The wafers were all there. I complimented him. Rule 5.
“Now let’s look at the wafers themselves.” The vault was locked; opening it took a couple minutes. That was a triple fault: he was a rating and knew the codes, he didn’t call an officer to supervise; and then it took too long. I ignored it. He knew it.
There were the standard five sets, three of each: Negotiator, Advisor, Warlord, Admiral, and Decider. “Have these been synced?”
“Yes, sir.”
“With the other ships?”
“Um, no sir. That takes place during refit.”
Which would be every couple decades. I made a mental note on an action plan. Meanwhile, shielded by my body, I substituted my wafer for one of the Deciders. I asked him to run through the sync process, He showed himself capable and completed the task in a handful of minutes. When he was done, I sleight-of-handed my wafer back. I did not, however, re-insert it. That would come later.
Indeed, later that day, in the quiet of my residence, I took my next risk. I was in uncharted territory. Were the rules that we had been told mere guidances to help us understand? Or did the technicians and their technical writers know more and try to convey it in generalities?
Nothing in our training covered this particular activity. Could I sync a wafer in mid-activation? Would it scramble my thoughts? I had done what I could; my current memories were already synchronized for future uses. The consequences of this fatal experiment would propagate no farther than me and my host.
I re-inserted the wafer, felt it tug at the nape of my neck, and felt a piercing pain in my brain, a ten on a ten scale, accompanied by brightness in my eyes even as they were closed. All was accompanied by a cascade of images and sounds and vibrations and smells. I remembered missions and activations and scrubbings and false alarms that were not there that morning, and just as quickly seemed like they had always been there. I added this particular data point to my experience, along with the resolve that I would not do it again unless absolutely necessary.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
In my last days, I revisited the clerk’s console one evening. This time, I created a series of directives, each encased in a penultimate priority wrapper, validated by single-use override codes, and scheduled to activate over a series of dates. I left them to hatch in the coming month.
A grounds crew visited the Imiirga plot and executed a series of work orders.
A clerk in the Office of Heraldry received a directive and performed the required ministerial acts that gave it the force of the Emperor’s will.
A clerk in the Tholar Preservation District coded instructions that warned against any changes to a designated historic section of regional cemetery, but only after the current rehab projects were completed.
A clerk at Imperial Bank noted an exception report identifying a below minimum balance status on specific trust accounts and keyed instructions revoking a series of educational stipends. Formal notifications went out to those affected.
I also arranged for a stipend for the care of my grave.
Ripples of consequences radiated out into the community of now ex-Baronet Sir Fen Imiirga’s descendants. Over the next year, students were disenrolled from schools, members in good standing of elite clubs found they were no longer in good standing. Customers, patrons, investors, backers, even friends, were forced to reconsider their relationships based on the newly revealed taint to a formerly honored family line.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
I met with Arrlanroughl as we had arranged. His two companions again waited across the room. This time, I visited their dining booth and greeted them. “Arrlanroughl and I would like you to choose what you will for dinner. We will be a while.” Enough to acknowledge their leader as powerful; enough to establish that I was also powerful.
To Arrlanroughl, I expressed appreciation for the insights he had given me. I reminisced that I had been uncertain of my safety when we had first met. He reminisced that he and his friends had momentarily considered taking my wallet and comm but decided against it on a whim.
“I have a proposal for you. I hope that you will give it due consideration. There is a care-taking position available: a sinecure involving basic maintenance of a gravesite. Grooming of plants, removal of litter, respectful maintenance.
“The position—actually, there are three positions—the position will be advertised in the near future. If you care to apply, these codes will assure your, and your friends’, hiring.”
I passed over a written card with the details. He expressed polite appreciation and said he would consider it.
“If you accept, please understand that there are responsibilities attached. The duties, while slight, are important and not to be disrespected.”
We parted for the evening with me wondering if this would change his life. The cost to the empire would be slight.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
Lieutenant Enn Shuginsa awoke in virtually the same place he had vanished. The similarity was enough that he was not sure the wafer had had any effect. His comm even lay in the same place before him, but when he looked, its message was different.
This mission is complete.
The details of your current job assignment are included in the attached memo.
If asked about things you do not know or remember, dissemble: “I am not permitted to discuss that” should be sufficient.
If you ever leave the service, maintain your reservist status, even if as an inactive.
He smiled, remembering his time with the Agent, and inwardly glad that he had survived this assignment. In the next several weeks, he found that he enjoyed his new assignment as Inspector Unipotentiary, and after a year elected to become an inactive reservist and make this his career.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
“I am sorry,” said the managing director of the necropolis, although in truth he was not. “The rehabilitation of the Imiirga plot was conducted in accord with specific directives. The supporting documents are in order, but they have been sealed. You may want to petition the Marquis if you need to review them.” As if that effort would bear any fruit, he thought to himself. The fact that the Preservation District had frozen changes after the rehab meant that noble powers were squabbling, and intelligent people did not interfere.
The fact that this family’s many-generations-ago archon had recently been dishabilitated was a different signal that confirmed reasonable conjectures. Within a year, the Imiirga plot would be overgrown with weeds.
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Core 2118 Capital A586A98-D Hi Cx
The Empress, like her predecessors, did not notify in advance recipients of the honors she bestowed. She merely published a list; formal notifications would follow in time. Devotees of the nobility subscribed to special notification groups. Higher ranking functionaries made sure that someone or some process monitored the announcements. It fell to sycophants, favor seekers, and just good friends to carry the news to most recipients.
The Empress published her Holiday List of newly named knights and ladies and other minor nobles. There was never an explanation of her choices: The Empress need justify herself to no one.
Inspector Shuginsa was taking advantage of Holiday to sleep in. There would be no work today. But.
Enn’s comm dinged repeatedly. From his sleep, he ignored the first three messages, but ultimately gave in and roused to see what was so important.
The first was from an office mate he barely knew: “Holiday List! Congratulations.”
There were messages from Senior Supervisor Starpan, from his superior, from a fellow lieutenant he knew from reserve sessions, from the commander of the reserve squadron, from three of the clerks who provided him and others administrative support, and from several people he did not recognize. Each greeting carried some part of the puzzle, which he ultimately assembled in his mind: The Empress had knighted him on the Holiday List.