(3) Day 7 Remembering back 18 months ago
“My heart hasn’t pounded like that since the last Augmented Reality (AR) Games race – I really thought it was going to hit us,” he said to himself as he and Radius walked toward the City to make the delivery.
The residual effects of the adrenaline filled sprint to the shelter reminded him of the chain of events that brought him to Mars.
Back on Earth he’d been a globally ranked Augmented Reality Games competitor. The Augmented Reality (AR) Games combined Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, the Decathlon and triathlons with augmented reality. The actual physical movements performed by the athletes were instantly rendered as unreal physical feats in an immersive virtual reality environment for spectators. The AR Games, by embedding the lift and physical challenges in a rich, extremely dynamic synthetic environment had created one of the most popular sports on Earth. The number of professional sports was difficult to keep track of, but the Games had a good ranking in the global ratings across all media platforms.
In the AR Games a synthetic environment is rendered and displayed over the stairclimbing machine, for example, serving as the platform upon which that component of the competition took place. While the athlete sees the actual steps (in order to climb them effectively) the viewer sees a complex mountain or exterior of a skyscraper on which the athlete appears to move.
He thought back to the conversation he’d had with his dad after his final international race on Oahu.
“Dad, it was great, I was behind going up the Stairway to Heaven, but not too far behind. As I paused to catch my breath and check out Kanehoe Bay to the north, I counted only about 10 people ahead of me – no problem, because I knew what was at the top,” Dirk explained.
“The drones accompanying the athletes fed unaltered live feeds to viewers who watched us climb the narrow stairs up the side of the Ko’olau Range. The Pterosaurs, added for visual interest, distracted me with their swooping, but for the most part it was a WYSIWG (What You See Is What You Get) situation. The AR Games organizers had added some obstacles and bars on and around the old Navy radar station at the top of the mountain. The course ran over the radar station, and then onto the second of the electrical towers, disconnected of course, with enough holds and bars added to make climbing them possible. I passed four of the people while doing parkour around the radar station, three on the run to the tower, they had not paced themselves adequately up the Stairway to Heaven, but I was a little surprised by a challenge hidden in a little valley right before the second transmission tower. The event consisted of a serious of thrusters - you know, the squat to overhead with a 95 pound barbell - plus muscle ups.”
“Thrusters are not your best event,” his dad said, concerned.
“No, they are not, and two of the people I passed caught up to me before I finished. But I reached the final muscle up station –“
“Your best event!” his dad interrupted.
“Yeah,” Dirk smiled into the phone, “and thanks to the muscle ups I was able to pass the two people in front of me and start on the final climb of the tower first.”
“Outstanding!” said his dad.
“Both passed me though,” Dirk said.
“Oh,” said his dad.
“But,” Dirk continued excitedly, “They were in the 20-25 age group, so I still won my division!”
“Wow! I’m so glad to hear it. Congratulations!” his dad said. Dirk waited for him to say something else, but there was only silence on the line.
To fill the void, Dirk said, “Yeah, it was great. Wish you could have been here.”
“Yeah, I wish I could have been too – the thing is, I had to go to the New Mexico spaceport unexpectedly.”
“Why?” Dirk asked.
“This is hard to say, but due to circumstances beyond my control, really anyone’s control, the timeline for Mars has been accelerated.”
“What does that mean?” Dirk asked.
“I’m heading to Mars much earlier than expected…” his dad said.
“Oh. When?” asked Dirk, his thoughts still predominately focused on the race.
“Tomorrow,” his dad said, “And I want you to come with me.”
Dirk didn’t know what to say. He’d known that his dad might go to Mars, in the next few years, maybe, but it had always been something in the far future – not tomorrow.
“Uh,” Dirk mumbled.
“You won’t leave tomorrow – there isn’t enough time to get you to the spaceport and I need to get things ready on Mars anyway. So you won’t follow for about a year, but I wanted to talk to you now because after tomorrow our conversations are subject to a 14 minute delay due to the distance.”
“Uh,” was still the best Dirk could come up with.
“I know this is a lot to spring on you, and you don’t have to decide now.” His dad stopped and turned away from the phone to talk to somebody – from the mummer of voices Dirk could hear it sounded like something had gone wrong.
“Sorry about that, son. I hate that it has all come about this way. We’ve got to go. There is a bit of an emergency. Congratulations on the race, and I love you. I’ll try to call you again later, if I can break away. Bye.”
Stumbling over a rock brought his attention back to Mars. “Why?” he said to himself, looking at Radius who walked along unconcerned with such problems. “Why did I choose to come here?”
He stared out into the cold desert, the angle of the sun hitting the dust in the atmosphere making everything look vaguely blue.
“I guess it’s because I dreaded school more than I dreaded Mars. The prospect of another 5 years of college plus 4 of graduate school - at least - was too boring to contemplate. If leaving school required leaving the planet, leaving the planet is worth it! I can educate myself better without wasting hours a day in school anyway,” he’d said to himself.
“But,” he thought, as he looked at the sand, different colors and craters interrupting the smoothness of the view to the horizon, “Did I make the right choice?”
Leaving the AR Games behind remained one of his biggest regrets – kind of silly considering everything else he’d left - his friends, family and food! The food on Mars was ok, but was like going camping every day – it was good when you were hungry, but was not anything special in itself.
He was on track to get scholarships for college as a Games Athlete, and in addition had been approached by sponsors about going Pro. Indeed, he didn’t have to choose between the two - he could both take the scholarships and go Pro, since the student athletes rules did not forbid, indeed, encouraged creating multiple revenue streams. He wouldn’t have been instantly rich, but he could have had his own apartment (no roommates to hassle with, no family telling him what to do every hour of the day) and with enough money to train and travel to events without sweating every Century ($100).
“Now I’m on Mars delivering packages. Great.”
(4) Day 7 1230 Uncomfortable Delivery to Bureaucrat
Stopping in front of City Hall, they picked the diplomatic pouch up from the wheelbarrow and Radius knocked on the door. It slid open, and they entered the security/weather vestibule and paused while they were searched. Dirk’s dad thought such a scan was pointless, but the Director, the Government official recently arrived on Mars insisted on it to preserve what she called the “sanctity” of the space. “It puts people in the right frame of mind for dealing with their representatives,” the Director said. By that of course she meant to say that it reminded them of the omnipotence of the surveillance state.
She thought people should approach Bureaucrats as if doing so were a privilege, an entering into the presence of someone superior. The citizens on Mars thought they were merely entering the presence of someone in their employ to perform very specific – and in many cases unnecessary - tasks. This attitude differed from those on Earth, where Government was considered, due to the propaganda of the government work organizations, as primary, and the citizens a mere resource
generator to support the governmental apparatus.
In spite of the Company’s best efforts, the Earth government was having some success in exporting their view of the citizen/government relationship. The Director represented the Government bureaucratic order, and the Sergeant, the only other government official (so far) the Government Law.
The inner doors slid open. Dirk and Radius walked in with the heavy package. “Delivery sir,” said Dirk. “Where should we put it?”
The Sergeant looked up from his videos when the inner door opened. The security scan carried out by the building was fully automatic.
Although it did little for his self-esteem, he accepted his function in the system. “I’m basically a tripwire,” he’d said to himself on seeing the setup for the first time. “Someone with ill intentions will attack me. The attack will alert the Building, and the Building will raise the security posture, thus protecting the Director, the high value unit.”
Therefore, although unnecessary from a security perspective, he’d justified his deployment to Mars in two ways. “First, the off world salary increase will dramatically improve my standard of living. Second, let’s be honest. I’ll never promote on Earth due to my lackadaisical attitude toward work. Why work hard if I get paid the same no matter what?”
Since the security system failed to indicate a threat (due to perspiration, heart and breathing rate, or detection of actual weapons) he resented having now to answer the question. “Actually,” he thought to himself, “after months on Mars, I’d love the excitement a real threat - though not too real - would create.”
Unfortunately for him, he’d realized too late that even with his, by Earth standards, astronomical salary, there was 1) little to buy on Mars and 2) even his salary couldn’t cover the shipping costs of the luxuries he could now easily (absent the shipping costs) afford. Therefore, after the pleasure at the “vacation” that was the trip out to Mars faded he had become increasingly miserable. The formulation of various schemes to get back to Earth had begun to compete with video viewing for his attention, but he’d not thought of any and was slowly resigning himself to a life only slightly less miserable (due to the lighter workload) than what he’d left on Earth.
Until two months ago, when the Director had changed his attitude through her broad interpretation of the categories of goods eligible to ship via Diplo pouch. Neither one of them cared that they were as a result of this interpretation delaying, in a not insignificant way, the construction of the Space Elevator. Elevator completion would increase the quality of life of the entire City in the long run. However, they considered increasing their standard of living much more important.
The Director had explained her idea quickly. “Anything a government official wants is by definition for Government use. Therefore, we can use the free shipping of the Diplomatic pouches required by the agreement the Government had imposed on the Company to deliver anything we, the Government representatives, need or want.”
The Sergeant found nothing objectionable in her logic.
It had caused him a minor problem however, a problem he was happy to have. He’d been forced to begin storing his stuff in his office and even the few jail cells– his house was rapidly filling up as a result of the expansion of the “Diplomatic” goods category.
The indifference he had shown Dirk and Radius was an inauthentic pose, a screen behind which he cloaked the (like a kid before his birthday) giddiness with which he was anticipating this pouch – it contained, in addition to the supplies for the Director’s special project, a selection of his favorite foods as a reward to himself for a year on Mars.
The thought of inviting a few friends over (Martian friends) had occurred to him a week ago. However, upon further consideration he decided he’d enjoy the food more free of the pressure to share.
“What if someone selected one of his delicacies and didn’t care for it?” he thought. “They’d be embarrassed to be seen wasting such rare and valuable food (a major sin on Mars but something done habitually on Earth). As a result, they would feel bad, I’d feel bad for them, and the lost opportunities to enjoy the goodies. The others, who did like it, would be angry. The party could therefore actively disrupt the delicate social climate – better to eat it all myself.”
“Hold on,” he said, returning his focus to his glasses mounted screen. “Query Director – where should the diplomatic pouch be placed?” The two possible answers were obvious, but asking this was an easy way of notifying the Director it had arrived while at the same time getting direction so he could tell Dirk where to put it (storage or Director’s office) without having to carry the pouch himself.
“My office,” the Director said and the words appeared across the Sergeant’s screen. He paused and stood – the movie’s climatic scene had begun, but he’d watched it before and would again. Although he’d started sleeping around 9 hours a night since arriving on Mars (a persistent effect of the trip hibernation or a result of boredom he wasn’t sure) a lack of media consumption time was not one of his challenges. With an hour for each meal, and 30 minutes a day for his official record keeping tasks (which included a nightly check), securing the building after hours and opening it before the Director arrived in the morning, he had 11 hours a day for video games, movies and TV. If he only had more people to impress, he’d be very happy. He’d sent videos home to his siblings (who he didn’t like) but couldn’t enjoy their envy from 140,000 miles away. Video calls were asynchronous and expensive and anyway he had no desire to waste his money on calling them.
“Take it to the Director’s office,” he said to Dirk and Radius, without looking up.
Dirk and Radius picked up the package and headed down the passageway to the office without speaking. They’d been there before, and knew getting in and out quickly was the best policy.
The door to the Director’s office was already open and they walked in and stopped, awaiting further instruction. The Director glanced and them and said, ‘Right there is fine. That is all.”
Not waiting for a “Thank you,” Dirk and Radius left hurriedly in order to avoid an unwanted tasking from the Director. She couldn’t officially order them to do things, but tended to ask “favors” of people. As in all frontier communities, people were generous with their helpfulness. However, the Director never provided assistance in return – indeed, the only power to which she had access was punitive and she chose not to develop other sources based on mutual assistance. Both by function and inclination she extracted value for herself from every interaction – never added value to the process, whatever that process was.
“Tom’s place?” Dirk asked Radius as they headed down the street, walking quickly in spite of their unusually active day, away from City Hall.
“Sure,” said Radius.
(5) Day 7 1236 The Director
The Director was pleased – the essential equipment for Phase One of her special project arrived much sooner than anticipated – the Senior Directors must have liked her idea.
“Get in here!” she said over the system to the Sergeant immediately after Dirk exited the building.
The Sergeant knocked at the door to her office and entered. He had to look up slightly at her when he walked in – her desk was on a platform, a dais of sorts. The elevation, a standard design feature of all government officials (of the high ranks of course) was modeled on a courtroom in order to remind citizens that all government officials stood in judgment of their every action.
The Sergeant still remembered the rage with which she exploded when she’d first seen her office.
“What is this!” she’d screamed. “This isn’t a dais, it’s a step!”
The Sergeant admitted the platform was quite low. More a suggestion than a statement, it provided only a nuance of positional authority. She both yearned for, and felt entitled to as only government official on the entire planet, other than the miscellaneous inspections functionaries like the Sergeant who in her eyes barely counted, the v
isual sledgehammer of dominance a large dais generated.
Foolishly, the Sergeant had spoken up. He’d arrived a month before the Director, and had actually signed off for the building.
“The Company claims the low elevation was due to rationing in the building process...”
“I don’t believe that,” the Director snapped back, as if it was his fault. “They could have figured out a way to gain at least another foot or so.”
In truth, she was right, but the Company’s priorities and hers differed.
He wondered if she hadn’t thought of the Diplo pouch idea as a way to get revenge for the inadequate dais.
(6) Day 7 The Sergeant and Director 5 months ago
More “effective” utilization of the requirement the Company pay for 24 Diplo pouches a year was only the first of the Director’s great ideas. She’d called him into her office about a month after she’d arrived.