Building Up - jedcline's 2006 NanoWriMo

Day 19 of 30 2006

Day 19 of 30 Building Up 2006 JEDCline

Their use of their mini-internet computer system to provide "instant education at the point of need" made up for their lack of facilities for higher education and years for everybody to devote exclusively to that schooling, then for them to try to remember what they had learned when they needed to do something new on the job. More that that, their computer network provided linking necessary for community to operate. The shared vision which provided their bonding of community. Yet there were many sub-visions, shared by some but not others. The computers helped identify where those sub-visions required the same resources exclusive use, too, and offered ranges of alternative resources to examine.

The vast majority of the original prison population, sent there as a life sentence without possibility of parole, were politico-corprorate prisoners, people who had opposed the corporate agenda that was causing harm to the masses of employees and consumers. These adapted seamlessly into the community vision sharing via the computer network.

But among the prisoners were a few who really were more ego-driven, whose visions were more of the type motivated by urge to gain by interfering with those who they perceived as rivals among the space station wheel people, seeing others' loss as their gain, and craving to show the girls who was the better man by being able to cause harm to the "rival". Although most of the time they found that their needs were fulfilled by going along with the group's shared goodies, and doing some tasks that supported what needed to be done for all their survival, sometimes their old conditioning kicked in and their egomania took over. The computer network struggled to cope with those erroneous inputs, as did the whole space station population, when that monkeybusiness was expressing somewhere.

Catalie was chatting with Improy during breakfast, pointing at the computer screen. "I have been testing out some pattern filling-in mode software for the computer network, that test for congruency." she began. "It has a hierarchy of shared visions as contributed by each person up here. Yours and mine are in there for all to see, as are each other person's visions. As a check I find that the computer indeed discovers the unanimous visions among us. It has also identified the parallel but inconsistent overall patterns, such as of making life up here very long term, vs exodus back to the ground. And it identifies quite a few sub-visions that disharmoniously overlap in places, such as agriculture's usage of water resources vs industrial's uses of the water. Yet, curiously it has found another pattern, which seems to be that of 'whatever Improy decides, I oppose.' It does not seem to care if it is inconsistent within itself, either. So it looks to me like it is a case of the old egobrain in someone here, attempting to depose the king, in its perception, no doubt per that pattern, to take over the kingship himself." Improy looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked if the computer pattern-filling provided pointers toward probable areas of damage the "rival" might strive to do. Having unnecessary struggles to cope with was not a pleasant prospect for Improy; battle for dominion was just a huge waste of precious resources, in his opinion, and best left to the lower animals to entertain themselves with, and was not fitting for humans to do anymore. Especially up here!

And the thought of someone considering Improy as a "king" was amusing to both of them. They considered themselves simply parts of the great combo of living systems and machine systems that was the space dual-wheel station.

Over in the shaded side wheel of the space station, Stable was thinking over his situation up here. His job was as the long term informer for the prison guards; but when they had all blown themselves out of the picture, he was suddenly all alone. Very sociable and talkative, he fit in fine with any group. Yet he knew of his situation, and the increasing spread of knowledge around up here was risking revealing his background. He had been born into Ownma Management, not of the Employees. But by the time he reached the age of the Testing, it was obvious that he would not pass. At the age of 14, all progeny born of the Ownma Corporation people, were put through the Testing. For one thing, he was short, only 6 foot 5" tall, and the passage minimum height was 6 feet 6 " tall. He was adequately psychic, so he could pick up on test answers in school easy enough from classmates, and guess their intentions before they knew themselves, so that part he passed. But he was only 230 pounds, and just could not get to the minimum weight for passage of 245 pounds of lean muscle and bone. He was from the most influential of Ownma men, however, so when it was time to put down all those who had not passed the test, Stable's parents saved his life by having him put in the position of lifelong informant in the prison system. He was disowned, of course, and all of his classmates who had not passed the Testing had been euthanized, for their genes could not be allowed to contaminate the super race that was Corporate Management, whose impressiveness was enforced by their eugenics program. He had nowhere he could go from here, he was dead as far as Ownma knew. Among the Employees, he was far the most powerful and cunning, aware of the activities and to some extent even the thoughts of those around him, a powerful person indeed, among these inferior species, the Employees. But that computer data gathering system, he feared, was too smart and would figure him out, and then these people would tear him apart in fury, surely. And, despite his superior strength, there were too many of them. Besides, he needed them to provide what he needed. Were they not rightfully his employees now, he the only Ownma Management here? The problem was, that there was no management here, for him to assault and take over their position. It was the computer network, and the leadership of Improy and his mate. He was bred to see his reality in terms of who was hierarchically above and below him, and to ever kick down those under him while striving to take over the position of the one above him, it had ever been that way, in the intensely person oriented world he perceived. "Things" like computers were almost non-existent to his awareness; it was only people that existed, in his kind of mind. So, Improy was his target to prove superiority by vanquishing. Possession of "things" came along with position in the hierarchy. So he set out to dispose with Improy in a way that showed the superiority of Stable. For now, he just observed everything that Improy suggested on the computer network, then Stable just said the opposite. That way he could look like he knew as much as Improy. Eventually he had to "get into" Improy's mind, to cause Improy to have an inner saboteur, weakening him, and knowing what Improy's next moves would be, so Stable could get there ahead of him. This kind of stalking and assault was bred into Stable's genes, that part passed the Testing. It was just that he was not quite big enough to have lived past the Testing. Of course, none of the men here would have passed the Testing; in fact, he sneered, none of them would have even passed the birth measurement criteria, to live another day.

Catalie set the computer network to have a threshold of tolerance for disruptive activity, and to signal her when something went past the quite wide threshold. Immediately upon setting this up, its first evaluation signaled an over-threshold event. Did she set the tolerance too low? she thought as she accessed the tagged event. Oh, she realized, it was just the oddity of some frequent differences of opinion with Improy's comments and suggestions. Looking closer, she was surprised that it was a 100% correlation; regardless of Improy's position on a subject, this same person was on the opposite side of the issue, even when Improy had changed his viewpoint then so did this individual change to support Improy's prior position. It made no sense. Was someone just being contrary, argumentative? If so, why?

She decided to do an experiment: she asked Improy to put a viewpoint on the network, that was a test case. Improy then put up an opinion that the shaded wheel should not be vented to space to get rid of any cockroaches that might have gotten over there, even though none had been seen there yet. Bingo, within minutes there was an opinion put on the network that the shaded side wheel should be vented to space to get rid of any cockroaches that might be hiding somewhere there, and to do it immediately, before anything else was done. The source was a man who was even in the shaded side wheel. So, it was someone just being contrary, argumentative. It was one of the former prisoners, although he had not yet been very helpful in volunteering at doing any of he tasks available. The profile on him said his name was Stable and that he was a very popular man in the area, a real people-person. So, why would he be doing the strange opinion activity? he had not shown any prior interest in any activity except being a buddy to everybody he could get near. That was an important function, she and Improy believed, uniting the space station personnel's efforts while enduring such hardships and high risks. But being a buddy was not consistent to being argumentative 100% of the time with someone. Especially someone so well known as a heroic problem solver as Improy was. They decided that Stable was a hypothetical "King de-poser." Trying to pick a fight to get rid of someone, to become "King" himself. He did not understand that there was no place for a king-function here, it would just jam up the works.

What to do about this guy? Improy said that they needed everybody, and that there was bound to be some people who disagreed sometimes; they came from different backgrounds. And a diversity of backgrounds was needed to have the best range of possible solutions when new problems came up. "I think the guy is probably a game-player and bored. Some people like to play chess or card games, and need someone to play with. I will just ignore the bait, and he will get bored with the thing and stop messing around. We are all in this together" Improy said, dismissing the whole thing from his mind.

Catalie decided that maybe the guy could find a sense of accomplishment by setting up a recreation facility for playing card and board games. So she headed over to the shaded side wheel, looking for Stable, guided by the computer occasionally. What she found after a while, is that the guy may not have technical savvy, but he was really good at not being found. Every place she looked that the computer had registered Stable was at, she would find he had just left there. Recalling a game she had played when a bit younger and unattached, she imagined she was attractive and needed a hunk right away; and she stayed put. It was mere seconds before a huge man, more hunk than she had ever seen, casually strutted by, apparently not noticing her while he casually flexed his biceps and adjusted his clothing a bit while in view of her. "Hi! Say, could you tell me if someone might like to set up a game room over here soon?" she asked the hunk. "We need a recreation room like that, so some people can relax and have fun at breaktimes." He turned and walked over to directly in front of her, looking down on her so she had to bend her head up to face him in response.

posted by Unknown @ 8:14 AM