Episode 10 – April 30th 2212

Back from Luna - not the best break I’d ever had (see episodes 8 and 9) but change is as good as a rest, and I did have a healthy orange glow from the Luna sun (some wag had left a bunch of satsumas on my desk)
 

Trying in vain to get through a week’s missed iPear messages, a flashing reminder holo to the right of my vision told me I had a meeting any minute with Miris Kaufmann from Emulife. I’d never heard of him, I didn’t know about the meeting, and knew I’d have to blag it.
 

Nepty’s Vface holo appeared in the air a moment later. “Welcome back Art, your 10 o’clock is here, Miris and Luca Kaufmann. Not a Vmeet™, I'm afraid, it's live and I’ve…err… shown them to the boardroom.” I thought she looked a little strange.
 

Miris was a tall, stern, intimidating old man in a dark suit, long grey hair and beard, dark eyes, yellow fingers. His companion was very short, younger, better dressed, but pale, with a weird glazed expression, and he moved awkwardly. He also ignored me when I reached down to shake his hand.
 

I started talking, a little uncertain of my ground. “So, err…Miris. Obviously I know about Emulife. How do you think Artlie-Saturn can help you?”
 

He looked mildly pleased that I knew of his company – I didn’t really. His small companion slowly turned to look up at me. Miris sat down, Luca remained standing, his eyes just above the boardroom table. 

“Well," said Miris in a deep, slightly accented whisper, "I am glad you appreciate the work we do at Emulife, and I am looking for an agency to help me further our cause and develop our programme. But let me start at ze beginning…”
 

He tented his long fingers and composed his thoughts for a minute. Luca just gazed fixedly up at me – it was a little disturbing.
 

“Time was that people framed 2D images, called photographs, as a memory of loved ones after zey had passed on, sometimes they erected statues that had been fashioned to look like ze deceased. Then with the advent of holograms, you could have your loved one preserved as a 3D image, you could sit zem in their favourite chair. You could even play a 3D record of zem talking and moving, recorded from when they were alive.”
 

“That’s right,” I interjected “ And then they developed a way to programme the holo’s to move and respond to stimuli. So you could basically feel that you were communicating with the deceased. But didn’t CHEC have a problem with that?”
 

“The Clinical Health and Ethics Committee are fools,” Miris spat bitterly, his face clouding over.
 

He recovered his composure, coughed, sat back and spread his hands. “Anyway, the principle of interaction with images of the deceased was established, and largely accepted by forward-thinking people.”
 

“But some people called them Zomb…”
 

He silenced me with a quick chopping gesture, “Ve don’t use that word.”
 

I'd touched a nerve, Miris’ companion slowly shook his head once, still staring up at me. He made me feel a little scared, in fact I wanted to get away. Miris continued as if nothing had happened.
 

“Now. Let’s go back to ze late twentieth century. In that time a great visionary called Gunter von Hagens invented a technique for preserving biological tissue, called plastination. On their death, willing subjects could be frozen in time and perfectly preserved. Unable to decay, impervious to time itself, ” He had a strange light in his eyes, his voice rose…
 

“I realised that, with CHEC’s reluctant acceptance of the animation of a deceased persona, the way was clear for me to take Von Hagen’s brilliance a stage further,”
 

I didn’t like the way this was going. Luca nodded once and continued to stare up at me unblinking, Miris carried on like he was in a trance, talking to himself, looking right through me…
 

“The problem with the polymer zat Von Hagen created was that it was inflexible, brittle. I, however, was able to pioneer a technique to re-nature the polymer using a special neutron bath, making it pliable, yet self-repairing, strong, supple and beautiful.”
 

He was breathing heavily, his eyes shining…
 

“So we saturate the recently deceased tissue with the polymer, subject it to my neutron bath and let it reform. Then we apply ze animatronics, the sensors, the servos, we re-engineer the cadaver to respond to instructions and stimuli, to simulate breathing, to move. In short we give it life. Life.”
 

So my worst fears were justified. I looked down at Luca… Miris focused on me again, he leaned forward, his voice rose to a crescendo…
 

“Yes my agency friend, you finally see Luca Kaufmann here for what he is! An example of the pinnacle of my art. The apotheosis! He is my deceased cousin, dead for over 12 months, yet there is no longer any smell, and you see how real he looks, how he moves..?”
 

He paused, not breathing, eyebrows raised, waiting for me to speak, his passion ringing in the air.
 

Shaken, I replied…“But he is a little stiff.”

(to be continued)

Hartley-Stone

Episode 9 – the flight home.

I was flying back from Luna on my own. KB was spending a few cycles with some Luna estate agents.  Loony estate agents more like. Bright orange from the dome-filtered sun, and bulked up with lurid weighted suits to keep their bones and muscles strong through long periods in the reduced gravity.

They looked like a bunch of gaudy teddy bears – kind of ironic, as they were all depressed. They said it was because of the parlous state of the Lunexpat property market. The downturn followed recent studies (which they refuted) about the negative effects of long-term one sixth G on brain function – apparently it led to depression. 

The shuttle from LunaPort3 up to the relay hub was uneventful.  Just the usual periods of weightlessness when the acceleration came off, before you adjusted to the hub’s rotation. A couple of kids were being sick, but I’d had my EasyG™ pills an hour before, which would also see me through the midway spin about 3 hours into the flight, when we reversed the ship for deceleration into Terra.

I was looking forward to the six hour flight back to Borri Syland Spaceport, to catch up on some recent HoloVids™. I’d acquired a set of the latest neural projectors and a hooky copy of ‘MoleWars’. I didn’t hold with science fiction, which was becoming increasingly popular. Too far fetched for me.

Only a one hour delay leaving the hub, caused by RoboZaps vaporising a path through scattered debris from an inbound Aurelian ore freighter. Coming back through the outer rim it had apparently been holed by a lost hundred year old survey drone and it was travelling with a cloud of spilled payload.

There had been a lot of that lately. The tree-huggers were worried that we kept colliding with nomadic aliens. I’d seen a news report that clearly showed a weird green mess mashed into tangled wreckage on the nose of a docked Sportship.

I was shown to my couch and was pleased to see I’d been put next to the most attractive (albeit slightly orange) woman that I’d seen on this trip.

As I settled in, primed the couch to my shape and adjusted my straps, I put on what I hoped was my ‘interesting, clever and approachable’ face. “Hi there,”

“Hi there,” she said boredly, without raising her eyes from her iPear™. I noticed she had the latest iPearV8 - probably a designer.

“Art,” I held out my hand, “I see you have the new iPear8 - any good?” She looked at me for the first time. She really was very nice, quite sophisticated, if a bit snooty.

“I guess." She smiled and shook my hand. Expensive scent. "Wanda."

“Hi Wanda. I understand the V8 lets you create your own holos on the fly?”

“It might well do, Art. I just use it for reading novels – you a designer?”

“That’s right, I run Artlie-Saturn. It’s a B2B agency, so you might not have heard of us. We concentrate on making things like waste management, high-tech and security systems exciting – takes a different skill to other design. We get deep into the products and turn technical features into business benefits.  You might have seen our HoloAds for Plop Technologies, BlastM2Bits and TimeTravelTech?”

“No, I don’t think so,” She looked sad for me, sad that she hadn't heard of our biggest clients. I was running out of material that would interest a non-designer.

We detached from the hub with a jolt and about 30 seconds weightlessness, until we cleared our bay. The thrust cut in and G was restored. Automatic shutters dimmed the incoming sunlight, the moon shrinking behind us, I continued...

“Yes, it’s not like designing clothes or interiors. We need design skills of course, but we have to go further, including our brains in the process – we need to understand the product and the needs of the audience and address those needs with product benefits, presented in an interesting way. Our message needs to strike against customer indifference and open their minds to a dynamic sales message. That takes technical knowledge and copywriting ability. It's more than just design.”

“Ahh,” - I was losing her.

“Take a look at the inside of this cabin – yes, it’s been designed, but on a very basic level. There’s no real skill. Just bright colours, lots of leaf patterns - presumably in the naïve belief it will help people forget there’s a vacuum out there -  and a bit of steel on the edges to make it durable. To be honest my 8 year old kid could do it in her lunchbreak.”

“I see,”

I realised I had been doing all the talking, “Anyway Wanda, that’s enough about me. What’s your line?”

She gestured around us with her hands “I design spaceship interiors,”

(to be continued)

Hartley-Stone