Itty Bitty Bigger World: Suntan Lotion
Dec. 25th, 2014 02:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkitty"Ittle Bitty Bigger World: Suntan Lotion"
Amy was already waiting in the capsule when I bicycled up. I glanced at my ware, noted that San San had kindly reimbursed the owner for my incidental theft, and decided to keep the bike for the moment. I boarded, the capsule doors closed, and the capsule smoothly accelerated elsewhere. Presumably off UC Stanford property by the fastest possible route.
I dragged myself to and sat heavily down on a foam bench. One of the capsule bots - the ceiling bot - made whirring noises. The bot equivalent of "Can I help you, sir, because you look like you could use some." I subvocalized, took control of it, and made it drag over to me a first aid kit. I also strapped myself in with four-point webbing, carefully using only my off hand.
Amy hadn't bothered with a bench. She was lying sprawled on one side on the floor of the capsule, gesturing with one hand. The other capsule bot - the floor bot - smoothly moved over to her and started a head to toe assessment.
Neither of us was any prize. I was covered head to toe with quickfoam bits over my usual smartcloth long-sleeve shirt and many pocketed pants. Amy, while attractive in any other context, was turning a convenient shade of red all over her face, neck and upper back; and her legs as well; any place that hadn't been covered by the skimpy hospital gown when she'd slid down a laundry chute in a tearing hurry.
I recognized acute UV exposure. So did her bot - it changed heads three times, whirred a little, and sprayed her exposed skin with something I could smell from here. She winced, so apparently not the contact analgesic that a hospital would typically provide.
We had just left a hospital and going to another one any time soon would not be healthy. For the hospital.
My ware took the info from the bot and displayed it. Yup, great time to break an arm. I'd managed a nice greenstick fracture of my lower right arm when the elevator had slammed into me the second time. The bot, under my shaky subvocalized direction, in turn managed to splint and then sling the injury.
It hurt quite a bit of course, but I preferred it to the numb limp weight that would result from a medical stunning.
The capsule produced a bottle of water for me, and another for Amy. "Her" bot held it for her as she drank; emptied it; then got a second bottle.
I blinked tears out of my eyes.
"Now what," I rasped. I'd gotten a touch of smoke from the shrubbery and grass fires at UC Stanford. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and you can't use orbital lasers to sanitize an airborne pathogen without a lot of collateral damage.
"Normally I'd suggest going somewhere safe, like UC Stanford."
We both laughed. Briefly.
"Any fixed location is right out. CHP Barracks in Vallejo, the Federal Building in San Francisco, Kaiser Oakland... all would normally be good choices."
But not against someone who could launch an actual suborbital strike. Threat Trackers would be hopping, figuring out who had the wherewithal and ruthlessness to maintain illegal spacecraft, put them in a position to attack without prior detection, and launch multiple WMDs at civil targets, . Not least of which was finding pilots, who were willing to risk nearly certain death and utterly certain blacklisting. Never flying again is worse than death for most pilots.
I'd flown a hang glider once. I remembered it because I'd just broken an arm. I am not a pilot. I hate heights, with a passion because San San has so very many of them.
All CHP officers (as opposed to troopers) are qualified aerodyne pilots. Without looking her record over, I knew somehow that Amy was a very, very good pilot. Then I knew how I knew. When I'd first met her, she'd been in full uniform. Field uniform, not dress uniform, suitable for use as a flight suit and respirator in a pouch at her left side.
For the moment, she was content to allow the capsule to putter along. Good enough for her, therefore good enough for me.
Unlike either flight or ancient roadways, there was no real way to "escort" a capsule. You could pick a parallel routing and San San would do its level best to keep you within thrity seconds of another capsule, but you could not maintain close contact. Too many constant routing changes, too fast.
Our best protection was anonymity, not firepower, at least for the moment. One disadvantage of a post-military world - any sufficiently malevolent individual could play Army, briefly, before everyone else disposed of him for mutual protection.
Thus Threat Trackers - nothing more than what used to be called in the Usenet days a "newsgroup" or a list of people who paid attention to dangerous things.
Don't worry, I'm not going to go into rant about "When I was a lad, we had to haul packets by hand, acoustically, uphill both ways, in driven snow, with network protocols that supported homing pigeons and portable storage media..."
Well, perhaps I am. Threat Trackers came out of an unholy alliance between open-source intelligence, non-government organizations (yes, I know, that's the only kind these days, but this is history we're talking about) and ordinary folks who got sick of being spied on without being able to spy back. Sousveillance as opposed to surveillance. If the "professionals" couldn't stop terrorists, perhaps the amateurs could.
Well, they did. It turns out that even rather nasty totalitarian governments and wealthy criminal organizations also have a shared interest in keeping large numbers of people from being turned suddenly into chunky salsa. Who knew?
Subgroups of Threat Trackers pay attention to even the most unlikely threats. Are you worried that grass will become sentient and take over the world? Threat Trackers has a forum for you. Biothreats, AI emergent, by phyle.
One of the joys of having thirty billion people in San San. Someone is among the world's leading experts in any field, no mater how obnoxious or esoteric or just plain weird.
Peaceful uses of space are legion. Warlike uses of space are rare, unlikely and ruthlessly punished. For example, the air strike by ISI and the Jeffersonians and the Mormon Protectorate had been filed as a legitimate police action. If it hadn't, all three organizations would have been outlawed -- and yes, the Jeffersonians own an awful lot of orbital lasers, but they do not own anywhere near all of them. Cairo Protocol allows for brief secrecy for tactical surprise at the discretion of registered law enforcement organizations, but in exchange those organizations have to submit to frequent external auditing.
Does CHP have a space capability? Duh. Could CHP launch such an attack as we had experienced at UC Stanford? Two strike craft, twenty missiles? Yes. Briefly. Because everything from the capabilities of their hardware, the psychological profiles of their pilots, the nuances of their command and control structure, the vagaries of local law (and local law always looks parochial and naive to any outsider), was fair game for external audit by similar organizations throughout the Solar System.
I knew in passing that Captain Amy had been an auditor for the CHP inspection of MarsCorp. So she had some significant time in space as well as atmosphere.
Target an orbital laser anywhere near people? There's protocols for that. Deviate from them and someone else's expert system (not quite AI, but close enough for this limited purpose) might just decide to blow up your hardware on the off chance. If they're wrong, they pay for it. If they're right, they collect a Henchman Prize and you don't get to play with LAY-ZEERZZ any more. Sorry, cultural reference.
That's why I'd felt perfectly safe standing in the open with many, many gigawatts of laser power flashing down all around.
But if someone had the ability to discreetly start exploding brains, in ways that were not traceable and not trackable and did not result in utter retaliation -- they could start subverting all of the trust-based and mutual assured destruction-based and contract-based and equity-based and deterrence-based and legal and other frameworks that held our civilization together.
I don't like it when monkeys start banging on the furniture.
I also don't like it when a friend and I are in pain and not much we can do about it. Despite the many survival arrangements of capsules, chemical painkillers were not among them. In theory someone in that much pain could be stunned instead.
I also wanted a smartgun. Actually, I wanted powered battle armor - but I was rusty on exoskeletal skills. I'd settle for a smart rifle with gyrostabilized intercept rockets.
Amazingly, despite the pain and nausea from my broken arm and a near brush with a serious biotoxin, I was also hungry for solid food.
I knew where I could obtain all three, without waiting in line for days, filling out forms and dealing with well meaning interviews. I could even have them delivered.
So I called Bao and ordered take-out.
"Hey! Alan! You are in much trouble, young man! Not every day people shoot missiles at you! You starting up a government or something? Oh yeah, Secretary of Defense of nothing. Silly Feds can't even give you aspirin without San San breathing down their necks. Food I can do. Doctor I can do. Weapons, no can do. Everything so traceable nowadays. So sorry. But you Police Captain now. Perhaps no more Hormel-ish meats for you? No worry, I have many law enforcement customers. CalFire owe me favor. They owe you several favors, but you never collect, so I collect for you. Good thing you no sell hot dogs, yes? Get you exoskeleton. Orbital rated, very highly powered. Gauss system for instant recharging. Do not switch polarity! Would be very dangerous to anyone downrange."
Ten minutes later, a capsule docked next to ours in Chinatown San Francisco. Six people dragging what looked like a bot moved swiftly into our capsule. One was Bao himself.
I undid my straps and bowed. He clucked.
"Doctor, look at my good friend here!" Then Bao set up his portable grill - a capsule bot hovered with a fire extinguisher - he chided it and it retreated - the other capsule bot advanced - Bao chided it too, coughed a few syllables, and was cooking with petrocarbons on board a public capsule without triggering the fire suppression system. Neat trick.
Amy stood, bowed, and said gravely, "You have the advantage of me, sir."
He bowed back, fractionally. "I am Bao, humble seller of meats. You are Captain Amy Tsai, California Highway Patrol, famous pilot and analyst. Rated highly by Threat Trackers. Paramedic, forensic pathologist, forcible entry specialist. Also Organized Crime Task Force, yes? How is your dear mother doing these days?"
Amy bowed again. "She is quite well. Grandfather would be proud of the care that has been taken for her. I have my duties. I am also vegetarian and cannot partake."
I blinked.
Bao laughed lightly. "You are no meat-eater, that is true. Behold, Alan, an incorruptible policewoman. Such a rarity in any age, but especially this one! I broke small law, so sorry, obtained a uniform for you. Could not get from Vallejo Barracks. No uniform for you Alan, but you have your bracelets already. Seamstress will fit you both."
He clapped and a petite, short Asian woman stepped forward with a bolt of smartcloth and a large purse of tools. She wordlessly, briskly measured us both - not by eyeball or by computer, but by actual hand with an actual tape measure.
Somehow a wizened older man, by far the shortest person in the capsule, took hold of my injured wrist without it hurting. He numbed the limb briefly, passed a scanner over it, re-splinted and re-slung. I could feel the bone crawl as he did - but it did not hurt. He smiled quickly, snuck in on Amy while she was changing with a spray bottle in his hand, and snuck back without anyone seeming to notice or care.
By the time Bao had meat and soy tacos separately cooked -- the latter a rare concession indeed from him! -- both Amy and myself were dressed properly. I wore a business suit with tie. She wore full CHP uniform including insignia and nameplate. But her smartgun holster was empty.
I picked up a taco with my broken arm without thinking. The arm worked and did not hurt, so I took a bite. Excellent as always.
As we ate, Bao chattered about anything and nothing. The only subject he avoided was Threat Tracking and our current predicament.
The other three people were apparently exoskeleton fitting crew. They fussed and adjusted and stretched and prodded the exosuit until it fit me perfectly.
One whispered in my ear, "Full safeties are engaged. There is just enough offset that you can move normally. But you still have mass. If you bump into someone, you will hurt them. If you step on something, you will crush it. Be careful."
The helmet fitted behind my head, so I didn't even have to carry it in an off hand.
Another fitted something to the left forearm. This technician spoke normally.
"Gauss recharging system. Experimental. Touch to any San San power source, it adapts. Including superconducting cable. Do NOT reverse polarity. If you do, it will bleed off excess electrical energy using a laser waveguide. Much like stunner but much, much higher power levels. Effectively unlimited range. Intended purpose is to allow drain of catastrophic energy surge. Target the area you select for energy dump carefully. Override and Threat Trackers filing required except point self defense. Read. The. Manual."
"Got it," I replied.
I finished my taco. Bao bowed again.
"My work here is done. Your proximity, sad to say, unhealthy. Had to refuse two counter-offers while I cooked. First offer, ten billion credits. Second offer, my brain. Did not like second offer at all. Poor bid, unworthy."
His tone became sober as the capsule came to a stop and his team dismounted before him. He rolled the portable grill out of the capsule, turned, and bowed one last time.
"Good luck, Captains."
We bowed back, the door closed and our capsule resumed movement.
Oh, dear.
Amy was already waiting in the capsule when I bicycled up. I glanced at my ware, noted that San San had kindly reimbursed the owner for my incidental theft, and decided to keep the bike for the moment. I boarded, the capsule doors closed, and the capsule smoothly accelerated elsewhere. Presumably off UC Stanford property by the fastest possible route.
I dragged myself to and sat heavily down on a foam bench. One of the capsule bots - the ceiling bot - made whirring noises. The bot equivalent of "Can I help you, sir, because you look like you could use some." I subvocalized, took control of it, and made it drag over to me a first aid kit. I also strapped myself in with four-point webbing, carefully using only my off hand.
Amy hadn't bothered with a bench. She was lying sprawled on one side on the floor of the capsule, gesturing with one hand. The other capsule bot - the floor bot - smoothly moved over to her and started a head to toe assessment.
Neither of us was any prize. I was covered head to toe with quickfoam bits over my usual smartcloth long-sleeve shirt and many pocketed pants. Amy, while attractive in any other context, was turning a convenient shade of red all over her face, neck and upper back; and her legs as well; any place that hadn't been covered by the skimpy hospital gown when she'd slid down a laundry chute in a tearing hurry.
I recognized acute UV exposure. So did her bot - it changed heads three times, whirred a little, and sprayed her exposed skin with something I could smell from here. She winced, so apparently not the contact analgesic that a hospital would typically provide.
We had just left a hospital and going to another one any time soon would not be healthy. For the hospital.
My ware took the info from the bot and displayed it. Yup, great time to break an arm. I'd managed a nice greenstick fracture of my lower right arm when the elevator had slammed into me the second time. The bot, under my shaky subvocalized direction, in turn managed to splint and then sling the injury.
It hurt quite a bit of course, but I preferred it to the numb limp weight that would result from a medical stunning.
The capsule produced a bottle of water for me, and another for Amy. "Her" bot held it for her as she drank; emptied it; then got a second bottle.
I blinked tears out of my eyes.
"Now what," I rasped. I'd gotten a touch of smoke from the shrubbery and grass fires at UC Stanford. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and you can't use orbital lasers to sanitize an airborne pathogen without a lot of collateral damage.
"Normally I'd suggest going somewhere safe, like UC Stanford."
We both laughed. Briefly.
"Any fixed location is right out. CHP Barracks in Vallejo, the Federal Building in San Francisco, Kaiser Oakland... all would normally be good choices."
But not against someone who could launch an actual suborbital strike. Threat Trackers would be hopping, figuring out who had the wherewithal and ruthlessness to maintain illegal spacecraft, put them in a position to attack without prior detection, and launch multiple WMDs at civil targets, . Not least of which was finding pilots, who were willing to risk nearly certain death and utterly certain blacklisting. Never flying again is worse than death for most pilots.
I'd flown a hang glider once. I remembered it because I'd just broken an arm. I am not a pilot. I hate heights, with a passion because San San has so very many of them.
All CHP officers (as opposed to troopers) are qualified aerodyne pilots. Without looking her record over, I knew somehow that Amy was a very, very good pilot. Then I knew how I knew. When I'd first met her, she'd been in full uniform. Field uniform, not dress uniform, suitable for use as a flight suit and respirator in a pouch at her left side.
For the moment, she was content to allow the capsule to putter along. Good enough for her, therefore good enough for me.
Unlike either flight or ancient roadways, there was no real way to "escort" a capsule. You could pick a parallel routing and San San would do its level best to keep you within thrity seconds of another capsule, but you could not maintain close contact. Too many constant routing changes, too fast.
Our best protection was anonymity, not firepower, at least for the moment. One disadvantage of a post-military world - any sufficiently malevolent individual could play Army, briefly, before everyone else disposed of him for mutual protection.
Thus Threat Trackers - nothing more than what used to be called in the Usenet days a "newsgroup" or a list of people who paid attention to dangerous things.
Don't worry, I'm not going to go into rant about "When I was a lad, we had to haul packets by hand, acoustically, uphill both ways, in driven snow, with network protocols that supported homing pigeons and portable storage media..."
Well, perhaps I am. Threat Trackers came out of an unholy alliance between open-source intelligence, non-government organizations (yes, I know, that's the only kind these days, but this is history we're talking about) and ordinary folks who got sick of being spied on without being able to spy back. Sousveillance as opposed to surveillance. If the "professionals" couldn't stop terrorists, perhaps the amateurs could.
Well, they did. It turns out that even rather nasty totalitarian governments and wealthy criminal organizations also have a shared interest in keeping large numbers of people from being turned suddenly into chunky salsa. Who knew?
Subgroups of Threat Trackers pay attention to even the most unlikely threats. Are you worried that grass will become sentient and take over the world? Threat Trackers has a forum for you. Biothreats, AI emergent, by phyle.
One of the joys of having thirty billion people in San San. Someone is among the world's leading experts in any field, no mater how obnoxious or esoteric or just plain weird.
Peaceful uses of space are legion. Warlike uses of space are rare, unlikely and ruthlessly punished. For example, the air strike by ISI and the Jeffersonians and the Mormon Protectorate had been filed as a legitimate police action. If it hadn't, all three organizations would have been outlawed -- and yes, the Jeffersonians own an awful lot of orbital lasers, but they do not own anywhere near all of them. Cairo Protocol allows for brief secrecy for tactical surprise at the discretion of registered law enforcement organizations, but in exchange those organizations have to submit to frequent external auditing.
Does CHP have a space capability? Duh. Could CHP launch such an attack as we had experienced at UC Stanford? Two strike craft, twenty missiles? Yes. Briefly. Because everything from the capabilities of their hardware, the psychological profiles of their pilots, the nuances of their command and control structure, the vagaries of local law (and local law always looks parochial and naive to any outsider), was fair game for external audit by similar organizations throughout the Solar System.
I knew in passing that Captain Amy had been an auditor for the CHP inspection of MarsCorp. So she had some significant time in space as well as atmosphere.
Target an orbital laser anywhere near people? There's protocols for that. Deviate from them and someone else's expert system (not quite AI, but close enough for this limited purpose) might just decide to blow up your hardware on the off chance. If they're wrong, they pay for it. If they're right, they collect a Henchman Prize and you don't get to play with LAY-ZEERZZ any more. Sorry, cultural reference.
That's why I'd felt perfectly safe standing in the open with many, many gigawatts of laser power flashing down all around.
But if someone had the ability to discreetly start exploding brains, in ways that were not traceable and not trackable and did not result in utter retaliation -- they could start subverting all of the trust-based and mutual assured destruction-based and contract-based and equity-based and deterrence-based and legal and other frameworks that held our civilization together.
I don't like it when monkeys start banging on the furniture.
I also don't like it when a friend and I are in pain and not much we can do about it. Despite the many survival arrangements of capsules, chemical painkillers were not among them. In theory someone in that much pain could be stunned instead.
I also wanted a smartgun. Actually, I wanted powered battle armor - but I was rusty on exoskeletal skills. I'd settle for a smart rifle with gyrostabilized intercept rockets.
Amazingly, despite the pain and nausea from my broken arm and a near brush with a serious biotoxin, I was also hungry for solid food.
I knew where I could obtain all three, without waiting in line for days, filling out forms and dealing with well meaning interviews. I could even have them delivered.
So I called Bao and ordered take-out.
"Hey! Alan! You are in much trouble, young man! Not every day people shoot missiles at you! You starting up a government or something? Oh yeah, Secretary of Defense of nothing. Silly Feds can't even give you aspirin without San San breathing down their necks. Food I can do. Doctor I can do. Weapons, no can do. Everything so traceable nowadays. So sorry. But you Police Captain now. Perhaps no more Hormel-ish meats for you? No worry, I have many law enforcement customers. CalFire owe me favor. They owe you several favors, but you never collect, so I collect for you. Good thing you no sell hot dogs, yes? Get you exoskeleton. Orbital rated, very highly powered. Gauss system for instant recharging. Do not switch polarity! Would be very dangerous to anyone downrange."
Ten minutes later, a capsule docked next to ours in Chinatown San Francisco. Six people dragging what looked like a bot moved swiftly into our capsule. One was Bao himself.
I undid my straps and bowed. He clucked.
"Doctor, look at my good friend here!" Then Bao set up his portable grill - a capsule bot hovered with a fire extinguisher - he chided it and it retreated - the other capsule bot advanced - Bao chided it too, coughed a few syllables, and was cooking with petrocarbons on board a public capsule without triggering the fire suppression system. Neat trick.
Amy stood, bowed, and said gravely, "You have the advantage of me, sir."
He bowed back, fractionally. "I am Bao, humble seller of meats. You are Captain Amy Tsai, California Highway Patrol, famous pilot and analyst. Rated highly by Threat Trackers. Paramedic, forensic pathologist, forcible entry specialist. Also Organized Crime Task Force, yes? How is your dear mother doing these days?"
Amy bowed again. "She is quite well. Grandfather would be proud of the care that has been taken for her. I have my duties. I am also vegetarian and cannot partake."
I blinked.
Bao laughed lightly. "You are no meat-eater, that is true. Behold, Alan, an incorruptible policewoman. Such a rarity in any age, but especially this one! I broke small law, so sorry, obtained a uniform for you. Could not get from Vallejo Barracks. No uniform for you Alan, but you have your bracelets already. Seamstress will fit you both."
He clapped and a petite, short Asian woman stepped forward with a bolt of smartcloth and a large purse of tools. She wordlessly, briskly measured us both - not by eyeball or by computer, but by actual hand with an actual tape measure.
Somehow a wizened older man, by far the shortest person in the capsule, took hold of my injured wrist without it hurting. He numbed the limb briefly, passed a scanner over it, re-splinted and re-slung. I could feel the bone crawl as he did - but it did not hurt. He smiled quickly, snuck in on Amy while she was changing with a spray bottle in his hand, and snuck back without anyone seeming to notice or care.
By the time Bao had meat and soy tacos separately cooked -- the latter a rare concession indeed from him! -- both Amy and myself were dressed properly. I wore a business suit with tie. She wore full CHP uniform including insignia and nameplate. But her smartgun holster was empty.
I picked up a taco with my broken arm without thinking. The arm worked and did not hurt, so I took a bite. Excellent as always.
As we ate, Bao chattered about anything and nothing. The only subject he avoided was Threat Tracking and our current predicament.
The other three people were apparently exoskeleton fitting crew. They fussed and adjusted and stretched and prodded the exosuit until it fit me perfectly.
One whispered in my ear, "Full safeties are engaged. There is just enough offset that you can move normally. But you still have mass. If you bump into someone, you will hurt them. If you step on something, you will crush it. Be careful."
The helmet fitted behind my head, so I didn't even have to carry it in an off hand.
Another fitted something to the left forearm. This technician spoke normally.
"Gauss recharging system. Experimental. Touch to any San San power source, it adapts. Including superconducting cable. Do NOT reverse polarity. If you do, it will bleed off excess electrical energy using a laser waveguide. Much like stunner but much, much higher power levels. Effectively unlimited range. Intended purpose is to allow drain of catastrophic energy surge. Target the area you select for energy dump carefully. Override and Threat Trackers filing required except point self defense. Read. The. Manual."
"Got it," I replied.
I finished my taco. Bao bowed again.
"My work here is done. Your proximity, sad to say, unhealthy. Had to refuse two counter-offers while I cooked. First offer, ten billion credits. Second offer, my brain. Did not like second offer at all. Poor bid, unworthy."
His tone became sober as the capsule came to a stop and his team dismounted before him. He rolled the portable grill out of the capsule, turned, and bowed one last time.
"Good luck, Captains."
We bowed back, the door closed and our capsule resumed movement.
Oh, dear.
