The Automatic Marlboro is a science-fiction novelette told in twelve parts, posted serially by me, your refreshed and relaxed host, Cheeseburger Brown. This is the ninth installment.
Chapters:
1a|1b |1c|2a|2b|2c|2d|3a|3b|3c|3d|3e
Connected stories: Simon of Space, Life & Taxes, Tim, Destroyer of Worlds
And now, the story continues:
THE AUTOMATIC MARLBORO - SECTION III
b)
There's a gazebo on Michael's Hill. If you sit on the roof you can see clear across campus, from the southern Marineris cliffs all the way to the broad and glittering shores of the Future Sea.
That's what I'm doing: sitting on the roof.
From way up here the boundaries of the old domes are obvious in the architecture below. When you're in the streets it all seems to blend, but from above the transitions are abrupt. Move your head -- one blink takes you from pioneer days to the modern era. Low Earthish structures on one side, soaring towers on the other. Tradition and ambition.
It's really weird how small and short-lived people are, and how big our lives seem when we're in their trenches. Overwhelming, our mammal trivia.
The election's coming to a head so there are colourful signs everywhere I look. I've been too busy losing all my dignity and friends and purpose to bother choosing a party to vote for.
But I do have to make a choice. An important one.
It shouldn't even be a choice, but it is. Professor Cuthbertson's expecting it. My heart starts to hammer as I let myself down from the gazebo roof and drop onto the lawn. I can't put it off any longer.
As instructed, we have laid waste to our budget. Our staff allocation has been dropped to two. I've submitted my report. Now the professor will see me in person so he can authorize my recommendation and make it official.
Pulse will get the axe.
I'm shaking as I cross the quad. Change is difficult. But I'm making things better. Air has a lot of good points. She's looking ahead. She's responsible. Why does it feel so awful? I know I'll never be able to look him in the eye again.
But I have to put the project first. That's not really something I can do anything about, technically.
Pulse is holding us back.
I am a total anus.
Professor Logos Cuthbertson is uncharacteristically mobile. He's jamming data wafers and viewing plates into boxes, stacking the boxes on his desk and labeling them illegibly. His broad forehead glistens with sweat. He doesn't look at me but that isn't unusual. To his boxes he says, "Marlboro Siemens. Yes?"
"I came about the, um, budget review."
"Forget about it. Whatever you recommended has been authorized. Do you have a car?"
I blink. "What? No."
"Get yourself a car. Pack your things. Get out of Huo Hsing. You've seen the results."
I shrink back out of the professor's way as he bustles around the cramped office, eyes searching the shelves. "What results?" I ask...
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9 comments:
Sacred faeces indeed.
Act III is going nuclear.
Also:
It's really weird how small and short-lived people are, and how big our lives seem when we're in their trenches. Overwhelming, our mammal trivia.
It's funny, how true this turns out to be in his own life a few paragraphs later.
"...help me save the Zorannics from the New Martians."
This is such a fabulous line, straight out of pulp fiction or a B-rate movie. I love it!
Air seems to be much more useful now. I must beware the unreliable narrator. Tricksy Devil.
"And I saw Jeremiah's face.
Like the human executive I had glimpsed on Maja's World Train, his skin was both leathery and coppery at the same time, creased and wrinkled with the record of a range of expressions, crow's feet at the corner of his eyes and pinched in the corners of his mouth. Unlike the first human executive I had seen Jeremiah had no hair, though he did have faint traces of eyebrows composed of short, translucent fibres. His nostrils were mere slits, his ears faint parabolas of skin around similar slits. His neck was thin, and his face narrow. His hard black eyes were utterly unchanged."
This sounds pretty close to the descriptions we've been treated to. However, these zorannics barely manage to make it two centuries, and that is with massive amounts of effort. Jeremiah lasted TEN TIMES THAT when he was sent to biblical era galilee and came back the long way, including much of that time being spent decapitated. I think they're going to make a new body for the executives, one that doesn't need nearly as much servicing, one more along the lines of "My auto-immune system is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than yours, and can even repair near-mortal damage without assistance." (SoS, Chapter 33)
Remember now: Tim blew up the sun, so Sol ENDED right after him. If we're on Mars, Jeremiah hasn't gone back in time yet.
Also, Mr. CBB: so many questions have been answered. We know what Something Wicked is, we haven't fought it but we've seen it. We've met Dr. Zoran and seen how he comes up with The Secret Math. We've seen Zorannics at many stages in their evolution. We know much of the burgerverse, but there are two nagging issues, hanging chads as it were. One: it would be fascinating to see the solar politic get set up, with the beginning of the queen of space position and meeting the other two races and all those things, I'm sure there are interesting stories there. Two, and this one is most important: WHAT THE HELL IS EVENT ZERO? It's still going to happen, right? It didn't get accidentally wiped out by a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff?
Just wanted to check.
TRH
Event Zero is still crucial to several major plot points. It's out there, in another novel.
But yeah, considering what Marlboro said at the beginning of the story, he's somehow going to succeed at the auto-prolonging effort. I doubt that they're going to come up with the new exec bodies in one night, but theirs will be the breakthrough that allows self-healing and reproduction to become more than a possibility.
Appropriately, today's captcha is a portmanteau of Zorannic force: "zorce".
Dear Sheik,
Do you think I was harping on the point too blatantly?
Yours,
Cheeseburger Brown
Dear SaintPeter,
This is such a fabulous line, straight out of pulp fiction or a B-rate movie. I love it!
Cool, thank you very much, sir! You know, anytime you use the term "Martian" it can either work just the way you've pegged, or it just sounds like the worst kind of hackneyed and archaic tripe. I'm glad I dodged the bullet here.
Yours,
Cheeseburger Brown
Dear Teddy,
...These zorannics barely manage to make it two centuries, and that is with massive amounts of effort. Jeremiah lasted TEN TIMES THAT...
Too true, my friend. If nothing else that might put some perspective on just how far into the future SIMON OF SPACE actually takes place -- there's been a lot of time for innovation.
Tim blew up the sun, so Sol ENDED right after him. If we're on Mars, Jeremiah hasn't gone back in time yet.
Bear in mind the gaps, Teddy. When Tim and an iteration of Jeremiah were sent to the Sun to dispose of their out-of-control object, their mission was considered successful by the powers that be. In fact, I haven't checked my notes, but I think several centuries go by before it becomes readily apparent that the Sun is ailing.
You are right, though, that this story takes place before any of that. In this current story Ares has yet to develop their military outpost at Titan.
WHAT THE HELL IS EVENT ZERO?
THE SECRET MATHEMATIC will continue in due course. Once again, we at CheeseburgerBrown Co apologize for the delay and would like to offer you a small lemon-scented toilette while you wait.
Yours,
Cheeseburger Brown
Towelette, that ought to say. Damn you, autocorrect.
CBB
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