Episode 7 - Art learns about time-travel

Lee Fyu Choor, head of TimeTravelTech, was cheerily briefing me for a new campaign and explaining how time travel worked – I’d heard it before…
 

“..so about 2 and a half centuries ago, two folk in Old USA – way before it was BigMex - called Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, observe random static patterns on primitive wave receivers. They surmise these patterns left over radiation from big bang. In a way they right. The patterns are like 3 dimensional pixel images, they run through everything.” He paused for breath and absent-mindedly twirled his pony-tail. – I noticed he had redecorated the building.
 

“What they really are is a kind of flux. The pattern of this flux determine where things are fixed in time. So all you have to do is create a field where you can re-programme this flux to earlier configuration and you effectively return it to an earlier state. You can keep a ‘recording’ of a flux pattern and then jump backward and forwards, like coat peg you saw in reception*. That’s the easy bit,” (*see episode 6)
 

Lee leaned forward suddenly, eyebrows raised, to see if I was paying attention.
 

“So what’s the hard bit?”
 

He sat back,“ If the object not already been monitored in the field, we have major task to calculate, from the seemingly random patterns of flux, what it would have been like in the time we want to go back to. And that takes a lot, a lot, a lot of power.”
 

“Gotcha.” – I hadn’t.
 

“Anyway, we finally work that out too, so we can get any object – as long as it’s relatively simple – and send it back to an earlier state. Importantly, once we have that code, we can extrapolate the pattern and send things forwards too.”
 

I wanted to sound interested, “So what are the commercial applications?”
 

“As long as we have all the bits we can renew and fix broken components. We can genuinely age things, and we can reset chess boards at the end of a game, or replay moves.
 

I thought I should 'add value' -  “But you can use it for medical purposes?”
 

He leaned forward and whispered...
 

“We working on that, but it take time, and very, very tricky,”
 

I thought I was being clever… “You could fix bones, cure cancer…”
 

He held up a hand, his happy smile disappeared “Yes, indeed you could.” He went on,
 

“You know my PA, Doreen?"

"She's very pretty"

"Yes, she very smart lady. She smart, but not clever. So, she watch as we fix small components, she see how it’s done and R&D let her have a go now and again.”
 

“Anyway, she on her own, it lunchtime and she break fingernail, opening Ho-Fun ready-heat pack of instant Peking noodles with crayfish and lobster tail.”
 

“She think ‘I know, I stick finger in field and send it back to earlier state,’”
 

He looked at the floor.
 

“But she not know you gotta have finite edge to field, or flux pattern escape, set up resonance in surrounding cells and they all fight to get away from one another….”
 

He looked me in the eye
 

“I get back from lunch and she all over the place,”
 

“What, she was crying?”
 

“No, she really all over the place, she one cell thick on every surface in building.”
 

(to be continued)

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Episode 6 - January 18th 2212

“Nice of you to join us Art.” said Nepty with a wink. Her new HoloJumper™ glowed with slowly shifting snow scenes. Shame WeatherTech™ had screwed up again (or been bribed) and it was 20 degrees C outside.
 

I’d been early to the gym - trying to lose those last few GreedFest kilos.  I could hardly walk, but very smug because I’d beaten my avatar ‘training buddy’ on the VirtuTrack™ by a good ten metres. I’d set him to 2207 image and fitness levels. Not smug that he seemed a good bit thinner than me, and what was I thinking of back in 2207 with that Mohican and the black body suit?
 

Walking past Dorid’s office I saw he was just signing off from an impromptu vMeet with Lee Fyu Choor from TimeTravelTech. Lee’s cheery face was just shimmering out of sight, right hand raised in some kind of dodgy lodge salute.
 

Dorid leaned out of his office, beaming.
 

“Hi Art. Told Lee about your four ducks concept.”
 

2212 was the ‘Year of Three Little Ducks’. I’d flippantly suggested TimeTravelTech did an AdHolo with four ducks and the copy line “Waddle you do in 2222?” as a way of convincing people they had a credible product. It was meant to be a joke, I don’t think Dorid really understood.
 

“He hated it,” Dorid went on, “But he wants to brief you on a new campaign. He wants you to go in and meet him with his R&D team. You can’t go virtual because he wants you to touch things and press buttons.”
 

“Can I call in yesterday?” I wondered if I could get out of it – Nice happy guy, but Lee was constantly showing off clever, but useless products that never got to market, and TTT was based in one of the nastier parts of Old Kensington.
 

Dorid continued blithely “He doesn’t have much time, and your diary for tomorrow is empty. His PA seems to have vanished - some kind of accident - so can you get back to Lee Fyu Choor and confirm a time?”
 

“...and when you get there, see if you can get him to pay up - he still owes us for July’s ‘TimeTravellers do it last week’ campaign.”
 

------------ January 18th 2212
 

It’s not quite a Skoda, but I didn’t want to leave my car anywhere near Old Kensington, so I got a RoboCab. Obviously programmed to protect itself, it dropped me half a click from TTTs unit, and I had to actually walk.
 

I got there without incident, other than being scrutinised by HoloCops on every street corner. Occasionally they put a real cop in, so you can’t be rude. The DoorBot™ read my retina and swung open.
 

Asked by the HoloSec™ to hang up my coat, I went to put it on the peg. There was a deep hum and the peg moved. And it did it again. Every time I went for the peg it moved somewhere else.
 

I heard Lee laugh behind me. “Ha! Good innit! Scanner read action, send peg split second back in time - you can never catch it up!”
 

I let my coat slip to the floor. “That’s very amusing Lee, did you apply the same technology to our July invoice?”
 

“Ha!” he replied with a wink, “I will pay that last June!”

(To be continued)

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Episode Five - January 10th 2212.

So GreedFest was over, the office seemed stark without the HoloDecs™ exploding into life every few seconds, but I really didn’t miss; “So here it is, Merry GreedFest”, or “Santa - put your sleigh on RoboDrive!” hammering out across the office.

I also didn’t miss HoloChocks™ that vanished when you opened the wrappers, or “PartyPloppers” that covered you in virtual phosphorescent slime.

And some media wag had christened 2200 the “Two Little Ducks Century”, so we now had “The Year of Three Little Ducks” for the second time in a decade. Everywhere you went there was an infernal trio of quacks.

Dorid frowned at me across the office. He looked tanned, but fatter, from 2 weeks GreedFest vacation on Lunar.  “What PGFP gimmicks you got in mind Art?”

It took me a while to get his latest acronym. He meant ‘Post GreedFest Promotions’. We didn’t do consumer, which was rife with hunger-suppressing implant diets, SlimSims™ and the latest SythiHales™ that were so benign they may as well have been tubes of fresh air. Generally as a B2B agency we stayed away from “PGFP’s”

“Dunno Dorid, I was wondering if we might do an ad for BlastM2Bits Security, showing three little ducks getting fried by a LectroGrid™. Copy line ‘What’s cooking in modern security?’”

“Like it!”

“Or one for HoloCorp saying “How can you do three ducks without 3D?”

“Brill!”

“And we could do an AdHolo for TimeTravelTech showing four ducks in a row with the tagline "Why wait?" – might convince some people that TTT have still got a credible product.”

“…nope, don’t get it…”

“Waddle you be doing in 2222?”

“Sorry?”

“Anyway, most of our customers won’t wear the duck stuff. Why don’t we do an in-house promo and just say ‘Happy New Year from all at Artlie-Saturn?’"

“Where’s the ducks?”

“At the top. We’ll call them the Three Wise Advertising Ducks. One for an agency that doesn’t duck the issue, one because we're always happy to float new ideas, and another because our bills are never too big.”

“Cheesy.”

“Quacked it.”

(To be continued - for earlier blogs, scroll down)

And a Happy New Year from all at Hartley-Stone!  

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Episode Four - December 13th 2211.

9.30 am.  Almost GreedFest and surprisingly most of the team were there in phis. Maybe because they expected me to take them for a GreedFest lunchtime drink.
 

Loda sputtered into view virtually, on an empty chair. Allegedly she had Birmingham Flu, and she looked slightly green. It was unlike her not to set a really glamorous vSelf, so I thought she was trying to make a point.
 

Dorid shimmered in a second later in shorts - he’d taken an early break on Lunar, so was also appearing virtual. His signal was out of phase, delayed at least a second, and his vSelf hovered a good metre above the table. Apparently Lunar had shifted on its axis because of a recent high-velocity robotruck re-entry crash and the vMeet™ tech hadn’t quite caught up yet.
 

I’d called the meeting. “Hi everyone,”
 

“Hi Art” they chorused in a sing-song way.
 

I paused for dramatic effect “OK guys, we need to get with the new gimmicks in 2212 – We’re going to do print.”
I watched their mixed expressions.
 

(“Hi everyone” said Dorid)
 

“Jeez Art, Print? Aren’t we the trendy one!” said Nepty coyly, with one raised eyebrow.
 

I spread my hands. “Yes we are trendy. And I also understand we'll need to get the latest static apps; our 3D and holo rendering won't work, because the output will be completely different. But if it’s good enough for OggleV, it’s good enough for us.”
 

(“Hi everyone,” said Dorid, his elevated vSelf now with sunglasses – I noticed the rest of the crew had started phasing him out)
 

“But OggleV are top 10 consumer, and we’re mid range B2B?” reasoned Jupe.
 

“Granted, ” I replied, “And there’s no point doing what I believe they call a ‘brochure’ for companies like Plop Technologies who only market to local buyers working for the utilities. But BlastM2bits Security Solutions have a high-expectation corporate client base. Their customers would be excited by turning over glossy pictures of BM2B holoscarers™, vGuards™ and eShock™ grids on real bound pages made of Piper.”
 

“I believe it’s called ‘Paper’ ” corrected Striton.
 

“Whatever, it’s still better than screen grabs or a cheap liser.”
 

“Laser,” corrected Striton.
 

“Anyway, it means we need to find a good ‘lotho-printer’?”
 

Striton crossed his arms and sighed patronisingly, like technical people often do.

“You mean a Litho-printer. - Printing plates are treated to carry an image, in relief, on their surfaces. The printing plates are kept dampened. Coloured ink is applied to the plates, usually 4 of them, but it is repelled from the dampened surfaces, which are the non-image areas.”

He paused, holding a finger in the air for silence, as he drank from his “Tekkies-do-it-on-their-own” SynthiCaff mug. He took a breath and continued,

“As the printing cylinders rotate, the ink is transferred to rubber blanket cylinders. The ink, now on the rubber blanket cylinders, is pressed onto the paper as it passes through the machine. The paper is trapped between the blanket cylinder and the impression cylinder - these pull the paper through the machine, through all the other coloured rollers, until it’s stacked for finishing and binding, which can include embossing, foil blocking or varnishing. - It’s really very simple.”

By now we were all talking among ourselves, Jupe was looking at 3D pictures of hoverbikes and Nepty was picking out decorated GreedFest pies. I was thinking about lunch.

(What’s Lotho Printing? Asked Dorid)

(to be continued)

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©Hartley-Stone 2011

Episode Three - December 6th 2211

Dom’s wife (his fourth) was sitting in my office when I got back from lunch. All hair and fingernails. Very pretty, but I don’t think Dom had married her for her insightful conversation. I’d met her once with Dom outside a Skoda showroom – How the other half lives...
 
Today she seemed to be working double speed, probably mixing SynthiCaff with StaySlim, and I noticed she was wearing one of the latest vFrocks^™.
 
You could set vFrocks to show fleeting images of favourite backgrounds, sort of like a chameleon. Most women picked forests, clouds or water scenes, on the right person they looked quite attractive. Unfortunately Mrs Estos shimmered with street scenes of New Dagenham. I wasn’t sure if she was being deliberately ‘out there’ or had just messed up the programming.
 
“So chuffed you liked my slogan, Art,” she chirped, referring to her contribution to our latest Adholo on EVacU8, the public works channel. The ad was intended to promote her husband’s company, Plop Technologies, which had just taken the number two slot in Waste Management. Her slogan was rather imposed upon us.
 
“You really set a new benchmark with that one, Mrs Estos,” I admitted  “’We take crap from all our customers’ was inspired. We’ve actually been tempted to employ it ourselves - and we’re not even in waste management!”
 
She looked sideways at me. I didn’t tell her that our designers had thought it was a typo, had tried to change it to ‘we take carp from all our customers’. I guess that did make more sense with PT’s new Brown Trout^™ logo.
 
“So Dom say’s you’re gonna look at my good idea for me,” she continued.
 
“Shoot,” I said, as a helitruck surged across her chest.
 
Words tumbled out of her, sounding rehearsed, “You know I’m a big fan of VirtuPets^™. Well it struck me that they can’t breed, I mean not like real pets used to, so I thought we could, like, mix their coding and help them make new ones for themselves, actually give virtual birth. We could call them VirtuPuppy, or VirtuChick. Whaddya think?”
 
“Sounds good,” I replied “VirtuChick^™ is already in use for something quite different, but I see where you’re going,”
 
“We could take it further and do a VirtuPet mash-up, - a dog with a cat, I’d call that a ‘Dat-up’ for instance, a goat with a sheep – that would be a ‘Gheep-up’.  And we don’t have to stop at mammals, we could even mix a fish with a duck!”
 
“The possibilities are endless,” I admitted,
 
A traffic light went red near her shoulder, she hardly drew breath… “So Dom tells me you do that. You do that marketing stuff like, that you can draw them up, code them and make the programming?”
 
“Well,” I replied carefully, “We’re largely B2B, so we can certainly help you market to the distribution channel, but to build a prototype like you suggest, you really do need a Reality Simulation expert – what we call an RS?”
 
I flinched involuntarily as a hoverbike drove at me out of her vFrock, “ That’s what I thought”, she replied, “But I remember Dom once said that when it came to marketing, you were really a smart RS?”

(to be continued)

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©Hartley-Stone 2011

Episode Two - November 29th 2211.

My MediWrist^™ showed me up to stress factor 7. I had 30 minutes to finish writing a new customer retention proposal for BlastM2bits Security Solutions, so I relied totally on my RoboDrive to get me to the office – only one minor collision, which is good. Three belts of SynthiCaff later and I was finally awake. In fact I was as high as a planet probe.


My mind flew to Plop Technologies^™. PT had recently been voted number two in waste management by the Department for Order, Development and Opportunity. Their taciturn MD had booked an Adholo slot on EVacU8, the HoloChannel for public works. The deadline was just 3 days away.


So far, all our ideas had gone down the pan. I had been on vBrainstorm^© with my Designers into the night. As a joke their vSelves had all appeared in my kitchen with nightclothes, wearing balls and chains.

We had dumped some early concepts and forced through some new ones. I was confident we'd hit the spot with at least one of them, but I had to get Dom's rubber stamp before we started production.


I got hold of the big guy the next morning on vCall. I could hear him, but I couldn’t see him. Then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A software glitch in our PlasmaWire system had put his vSelf at the back of my office. He was about 30cm tall, mixed up with the HoloPlant^©; which I noticed had been set to ‘Sprouting Spring’.


I turned to look down at him “Hi Dom, great to see you. We’ve run some concepts through the team. Let me pitch a couple of ideas at you…”


“Shoot,” he said, from between two swelling plums.


“OK – We start with dynamic chords, a background gurgle and a lingering holoshot of your most advanced RoboSlop^™, all shiny and new, with the latest Brown Trout^™ logo on its chest. 3D words punch out - ‘Your number two’s made us number two’, the slogan slowly forms a line of fish that circle round the logo and then disappear with a flourish as they’re sucked up his spiggot. ”
He sat down heavily on a branch, tendrils sprang out of his ears.
“Nope.”


“Our business is taking care of your business?”
A virtual chilli pepper slowly emerged from his forehead 
“..err nope.”


“Wiping out the opposition?”
“No way.”


“Look,” he said, from the centre of a sunflower, “My wife came up with a great slogan while she was grooming our VirtuPet^™ last night. How about; ‘ We take crap from all of our customers.’ ”


“Goodness,” I said, “Mrs Estos really has a talent for this stuff – let’s get right on it!”


“You bend too easily.” He replied “But the missus will be flushed to know you like her idea. It’s certainly grown on me.”


I signed off.

(to be continued)

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©Hartley-Stone 2011

Episode One - November 22nd, 2211

I checked my neural transmitter for the fifth time. Login still not ready, and Plop Technologies^™were already waiting for me on vMeet^©. PT's MD had set the vMeet request to 'urgent - life or death' and I needed to be there. So much for my vPear^© signal – pear-shape more like.


My MediWrist now glowed stress factor 6, although I put at least 2 points of that down to too much SythiCaff. I needed a holiday. Maybe I should book another session on VirtuBreak^™.


Then the holoplasma shimmered and I was in the room.


“Ahh, nice of you to join us Art,” said Dom, his ludicrously large purple boater not detracting from his sarcastic manner.


(You can now add your own silly hat graphics to your view of attendees in vMeet, it’s probably an upgrade I shouldn’t have messed with. I wondered what sort of hat my Designers had set for me.)


“I was just explaining to your Designers how PT was now number two in the waste management arena, ” He continued, "Obviously my evening with the head of the Department for Order, Development and Opportunity wasn't a complete waste."


Before I could congratulate him, he carried on “So I managed to get a last minute Adholo slot for next Thursday on EVacU8, to tell the world.”


I set my vSelf to happy face, already trying to work out how we were possibly going to meet the deadline he’d dumped on us, how I was going to tell him EVacU8 had rubbish viewing figures, and how PT still owed us for the abortive “We’re in it together” vCampaign, that covered all their customers in virtual sludge – not entirely my idea.


Dorid Saturn got in ahead of me. “That’s great Mr. Estos, we’ll bring in the new Brown Trout^™ logo as well.” I noticed Dorid had set his strangely young-looking, artificially tanned vSelf to ecstatic, but he just looked slightly mad – and I had forgotten having set him to wear a pink sombrero.


We had to get on. A throbbing pip at the top of my vision told me I had an incoming call, a throbbing courgette told me I had another virus.


“OK guys, we’ll get right on it,” I looked at our Designers. Jupe had on a bowler hat, thick glasses and a rubber nose, Nepty was wearing what looked like a large green duck.


“After all, if you want to get ahead…”

(to be continued)

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