 
### Space Funding Crisis 1: Persister

### By Casey Hattrey

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Cover Image adapted from:

# VST images the Lagoon Nebula by ESO/VPHAS+ team

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VST_images_the_Lagoon_Nebula.jpg

Engraved Printing Plate by Edinburgh City of Print

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Engraved_printing_plate.jpg

###  Prologue

Look. It is space. Dumbly hanging between burning stars and winding around the gigantic asteroids in front of you, tablet-black and silent.

Time passes. Listen. You can't hear anything – it is space.

Only you are here to see the tumbling rocks, moving in silent unison past a moonless planet. Only you can study their rugged surfaces, cosmic rayed and meteored.

Watch now, as six of the massive objects change direction and begin heading towards the hub of the Central Academic Funding Council Administration. They do this in almost a threatening way, but without revealing exactly what their intentions are, almost as if they were foreshadowing some great, solemn event.

From where you are, you can read the names of the Bloggeration spaceships – for that is what they blatantly are – scrawled in gigantic letters across the bows. The _Correlation Machine,_ the _Psychohistorian_ , the _Zero p-value_ , the _Desperanto,_ the _Peer-to-peer Review_ and _What about the Residuals?_

Are the occupants sleeping? Dreaming? This is what you must assume. In fact, many of them are in the middle of a beer pong tournament. But you cannot see or hear this. Your eyes only see some dark, maleficent force suddenly decide to become part of a sinister plot. Possibly at a later stage.

Hush, the ships pass now. They are going into the darkness of the darkness forever. You, and you alone, are scanning the communication frequencies.

Maybe someone else will notice you.

### Chapter 1

Blood. A tannic taste. Then the sensation of bubbles slipping past skin. Extreme heat, jangling bones. Being very aware of your hands. Falling. A deafening thud from your heart. Pins and needles, then a sharp pain in the gut. Suddenly, anger, bitterness, doubt and a deep sense of loss. Then the realisation that some of these emotions are just things that you are seeing. With your eyes. You have eyes that you use to see things. What are you seeing? A blue liquid is draining away, exposing your eyes to a cold light which makes them stream with tears. A small metallic chamber, barely large enough to hold you standing up, with corrugated sides and raw sensor nodes.

"Chryochamber", thought Arianne.

Then a vague realisation of something grasping at her attention. A holo screen, with some writing. Blinking the fluid from her eyes, Arianne managed to read a handful of letters:

EJECT

Arianne's stomach knotted up, as if it was somehow deeply involved in the cognitive processes of word recognition. Another blink and the screen was clearer.

Central Academic Funding Council Administration

Karen Arianne: Application for grant writing stipend for postgraduate funding submission.

Decision: REJECT

Then she really was falling. The hood of the chryochamber levered open and Arianne was spooned out onto a soft mat. She skidded on her knees as the last of the chryofluid leaked out of the chamber. She began coughing, and decided to just keel over on her back. What was going on?

Best to just stare at something for a while, thought Arianne. The room was dark and sterile. Look at that nice shiny tube running along the ceiling. A nice, simple shape.

Lightning flashed inside the tube, and then a blindingly bright, cold light exploded from it.

"Morning!"

The light was talking to her. Maybe she was dead. She'd been rejected from something, maybe death was the consequence. Were you supposed to stay away from the light or run towards it?

"Woah, it's been a while since we uncorked a nudie."

No wait, the sound was coming from a person. Arianne levered herself up on her elbows. There was a woman in large black overalls looking at her cheerfully. A door closed behind her.

"Where am I?" croaked Arianne.

"You're all right, it's just a bit of post-cryo disorientation. A triggering condition brought you out."

The woman walked over to a swivel screen on the wall.

"Ah, your decision came in. Tough luck, lass. Still, at least it was a relatively quick decision."

It all came back to Arianne like a high-intensity drama series download beamed into her e-brain. The hard graft and late nights of writing her thesis. The relief of finishing it. The constant weight lifting from her shoulders, slowly replaced by an empty vacuum and an uncertainty about the future. Then the realisation that life outside academia didn't really have any space for her. Professor Golden had suggested storage in chryosleep while she waited for a decision on her application for the next tiny step towards being a researcher. She couldn't afford rent and food anyway, lots of early career researchers did it. That damn application had taken longer to put together than most of her thesis chapters.

Arianne accepted a towel from the lady in overalls and wiped some silky goo from her face.

"How long was I asleep?"

"Let's see"

The woman dabbed at the screen.

"One hundred and fifty three years"

Arianne's stomach desperately tried to parse the sentence.

"WHAT!"

"I know, quite quick for a low level application like yours."

"ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE YEARS?"

"Yeah", shrugged the lady "they probably got you on a technicality."

How the hell did this happen? She was counting on being out for ten months, tops. Arianne suddenly felt very cold. The lady jacked into the console and appeared to be downloading.

"Ah, that must have been it - your reassuring word frequency distribution isn't anywhere near standard. And you weren't really aligning your covert metaphors with the assessment panel's biases. And here's a typo. Oh dear, first time, was it?"

The lady turned to see Arianne's pale face pulled back in astonishment.

"ONE HUNDRED AND ... wait, a TYPO?" She'd checked that damn application 17 times. The lady laughed.

"Yeah. It's a risky tactic, but it didn't work this time. Learned it in Advanced Psychological Tactics for Funding Applications, did you?"

"What?"

"Or maybe Funding Applications 701? Dr. Waits always tries to slip some extra stuff in at the end".

"Er ..." Since when had there been 7 grades of funding application class?

"Well, did you take ANY courses?"

The arcane format of the academic achievement section of her application leapt into Arianne's mind.

"Linguistics 101, 201, Diachronic linguistics, Cultural Evolution, Linguistic Relativity, Linguistic Special Relativity, Interstellar Linguistics, Foundations of Biology, Philosophy of Biology, Agent Based Modelling, Quantitative Statistics, Experimental Design and Funding Applications 101"

The lady gave Arianne a quizzical look.

"You did twelve pure research courses and only one funding application course?"

"Um ..."

"No wonder they thought you weren't serious about being a researcher."

The lady was poking the screen again.

"Oh no, hang about ... a ha. Sorry, love, I didn't realise. There have been quite a few changes since you went under. The IFF changed and funding rounds got pushed back. Biggest restructuring of the funding system since SPIN II, really. Your application was in the system, but not in the right format. It got pushed into a backlog."

Arianne's head was spinning.

"Hmm, yes, bet you weren't really expecting a wait this long, really?"

The screen flickered and the lady tapped at it.

"Oo, wait, there's a message here."

Maybe some acknowledgement of the mistake? Maybe the decision had been overturned?

"Want me to read it for you?"

Arianne nodded weakly and the lady's implant light flickered beneath her earlobe.

"Oh, my."

Arianne sat up slightly straighter.

"This is a summons to the Central Academic Funding Council Administration."

Arianne blinked.

"This explains the early decision. They want you to go to the main hub station, immediately. That's pretty serious, ducky, what did you do?"

The main hub station? Rumour had it that you needed a level 18 REF just to be allowed on the orbital sections of the CAFCA headquarters. Arianne shook her head, sending beads of goo flying.

"Why am I being summoned?"

"It says here that you're being summoned to an inquiry into the murder of Professor Alice Golden."

Arianne felt herself fall back onto the damp mat. She stared at the bright tube on the ceiling, which blinked once, as if it was also having a tough morning.

The lady shrugged.

"Perhaps it was the typo."

### Chapter 2

A much needed shower, clean clothes and a quick haircut. Arianne felt her hands becoming steadier as she snipped the last few hairs around her ears. She looked down at the thin black lines covering the basin. Hair grew extremely slowly in cryosleep, like it kept growing on dead people, thought Arianne. She'd been under long enough to look scruffy. Over a hundred and fifty years? How much had changed? Could Professor Golden really be dead? Murdered?

She rinsed the hair down the drain and rubbed her close-cropped head. She hated how hair felt after a haircut. But at least it matched how her head felt now. She left the stall and the lights faded behind her.

Arianne was shown to a terminal where she signed some release papers. Since it was a uni chryo and she was still technically an employee of Io University, it didn't take long. There were two people waiting for her in the cryo-centre reception. One was a stern man wearing a dark military suit, studiously watching the exit. The second was an old, thin man in a grey suit. He straightened up as Arianne approached.

"Arianne! Wow, you look exactly the same! It's been a while."

He extended his hand and smiled. Arianne studied his lined face.

"Richard? Is that you?"

"Yes! Good to see they cryo hasn't messed with your memory."

"You're so OLD"

Arianne regretted saying this immediately, but Richard shrugged.

"I suppose so. I guess it feels like yesterday when you saw me last. I'm sorry about the wait - I didn't even realise - was so bogged down in work ..."

Work? Arianne blinked on her metaview and looked at Richard's collar bone. REF: 86. Richard noted her surprise.

"I made associate professor!" he said.

Suddenly the Richard she knew was there again - full of life and mischief. For a second it felt like they were both just finishing their theses and off to the _Space Doctor_ to celebrate. They'd both talked about their applications and Richard had gone on about all kinds of new experiments he wanted to run.

"Oh, wow, congratulations, Rich! When was this?"

"Last week! I'm still not really over it"

"Oh, er ... I'm sure"

Richard wobbled slightly on his walking stick with joy.

"Thanks! I was only in cryo for a few months when I got the stipend to write a proposal for a full funding application. Things have been moving on very quickly from there."

"Oh really? Those evolution experiments you were talking about?"

Richard laughed, then leaned in and lowered his voice.

"I ran them fifty years ago - don't tell anyone, though, I'm waiting for the CAFCA decision."

Arianne looked at him blankly.

"I have it on very good authority that the decision will be in within the decade."

His face wrinkled up with pride.

"About the funding?"

"Ha ha! No, to write the proposal. Professor Golden would have been so proud."

Richard suddenly became old again, his frame and gaze shrinking from Arianne's.

"Oh, Arianne, it's such a terrible pity ..."

Richard glanced about him and realised that the second man was looking rather impatient.

"I'm terribly sorry - Arianne, this is Sergeant Holt. He's here from CAFCA."

The sergeant nodded curtly.

"Doctor Arianne, I'm here to escort you to the central hub."

An escort from the funding council? The last time she remembered, they'd had a small security detail, but this guy was in full military dress, with insignias and everything. Definitely not police, but then again, surely she wasn't a suspect? She hadn't exactly been up to much in the last century.

"Am I under arrest?"

"No, ma'am, but the council would very much appreciate it if you came with me, as soon as possible."

The sergeant spoke the last words clearly and carefully. Arianne was suddenly aware that this was _someone from the funding council_. In fact, she could see people had paused in the corridor to stare at the man in the suit. A real life Fundie, here, on Io. Arianne was surprised there weren't a range of gala ceremonies happening around them.

"I see. Once I get my belongings ..."

"They're already on board our shuttle. If you'd follow me ..."

Richard stepped forwards and took hold of Arianne's hands.

"Please, Arianne - it's such an awful mess, and no-one's telling us anything. Please, go to the council and find out what's going on."

Arianne suddenly felt a small, cold piece of metal press against her palm. Richard was handing her something. Something that the sergeant couldn't see. That Richard didn't want him to see? Richard gripped her hands tighter.

"And be very careful. Don't trust anybody."

He stared into Arianne's eyes, then let go. Arianne closed her hand around the piece of metal.

The sergeant twisted very slightly on his heels.

"If you please, Doctor ..."

Arianne nodded and fell into step next to him, carefully slipping the piece of metal into her pocket.

### Chapter 3

Spaceports were the same across the civilised galaxy. Shiny surfaces, a tendency to suspend art from the ceilings and extremely low expectations about productivity. Arianne was sitting at a cold table, surrounded by uncomfortable seats full of half-asleep people waiting for their flight. Some were obviously seasoned veterans of spaceports and had were encased in self-sealing suit tents like softly glowing cocoons. She was preparing herself for travel, stilling her mind, trying to enter a state of meditation that she had been taught to cope with inter-stellar travel as part of her Masters course. However, a large screen was blaring with news and interviews. The usual stuff: changes in the REF market; funding feuds; some researchers were trying to drum up support for a war against the Bloggeration, because a Bloggeration group had answered all the research questions of a very expensive, decade-long grant in two days, and released it all to the public.

Arianne looked up through the gorilla glass ceiling high above. Dozens of spaceships were weaving past each other, all at odd angles. Strange, thought Arianne, how one could get used to marvels of space travel. However, she suddenly recognised one of the ships. There was no mistaking the private space yacht of probably the most famous linguist in the galaxy, Vastion La Quana. Arianne had always thought it looked like an open-toed sandal. What was he doing here?

As if the news screen could read her mind (Arianne was pretty sure it couldn't), the scene cut to a live interview with La Quana on one of the system networks. Despite all the times she had heard his voice talk about her own subject, and read his papers on a dozen topics in linguistics, and despite his slightly creepy drawling voice, she couldn't help listening.

"The study of language" La Quana extolled to the interviewer "is really the study of what makes us human. Language is how we organise society, drive our galactic economy and it's the thing that defines us as a species. But explaining how we got language may also be the hardest problem in science. Any child can learn to use any one of tens of thousands of languages, practically without any guidance –"

"Except Space Finnish" cut in the interviewer.

"Yes, except Space Finnish - and yet language scientists have struggled for centuries to understand even how simple sentences are understood. How did we end up with this system that has almost infinite expressive power, yet can fit inside something slightly smaller than a basketball? We can't go back in time to see how it all started, and we can't compare ourselves to other species, because none of them have anything like what we have."

Holt stepped between her and the screen.

"Sorry for interrupting," he said, "but it's time to go".

"Don't be sorry - " said Arianne, "La Quana was about to do a rhetorical backflip and explain all the amazing progress he's made on an impossible problem."

"La Quana? The Marmite sandwich guy?" Holt turned to look at the screen "I've heard he's quite good at getting funding."

"He's the best -" said Arianne, standing up and instinctively looking for a bag that wasn't there "a major Gravitation grant in every funding round since SPIN 1."

"The grants where they use Gravity Manipulators to create your own planet for research?"

"Yep, he's got his own solar system by now."

Arianne decided not to bore or amuse Holt with the dream of her own research planet.

She and Holt walked towards the terminal gates. They passed a line of young adults coming the other way. They were staring at everything except each other, so Arianne pegged them for new students. Had she really looked that undirected and clueless just eight years ago? Wait, not eight years ago, but eight-plus-153-years ago - fashion could not have diverged so much within a decade. Some were wearing pale tight-fitting trousers and white or checked shirts with collars that had been stiffened to first rise to the chin, then dive out to the shoulders. Most were wearing an outer layer of fabric that wrapped around their back and sides, but left a centre strip of shirt exposed. "Jackets", Arianne thought they were called. Others were wearing neon colours covered by layers of gauze with some kind of knotted plant fibre wrapped around their necks or loosely draped over shoulders. All around her, people were speaking to each other through fabric and folds, and she was unable to understand any of it.

Arianne was reminded of the styles from the early 21st Century that you could see in films. 'Films'! The word itself was borrowed from that era. When Arianne was young she would have said 'licks' or 'buzz-throughs'. Strange how things come back around. The whole scene would have been very convenient for a lazy 21st Century Science Fiction writer, thought Arianne - full of mutated familiarities disguised with made-up words. Then she and Holt traxelled into the cobodrefib via a tessblanacular.

"So, Holt - what have I missed since I was out? Do we have usable net-connected e-brains yet?"

"Nope, advertising is still too strong. There are always whispers that the Bloggeration have some resistant tech, but we've never seen any evidence."

"Ah, pity. At least we still have something to lure in first year students."

It was one of the first examples of a complex cultural system that students were given. The technology to interface thoughts and computers was well established, and the utility of being able to communicate with the net directly through your brain was enormous. The problem was that every e-brain application ever launched eventually succame to advertising. It would start with small displays superimposed over shops in your visual field - initially mostly useful stuff like prices and special deals. But this was soon followed by attention-grabbing images, sounds and smells, which were pretty annoying but ignorable. Even the first few subliminal messages might be tolerated. However, eventually the really heavy stuff would start - endorphin reinforcement for purchases, artificial anxiety that you didn't have new shoes, altered perception, manipulated memories, choreographed dreams. Eventually, you would not be able to tell your own beliefs and desires from those implanted by force or suggestion through advertising. In the end the tech would become so overrun by marketing, the ability to access information at will at lightning speed became irrelevant. You'd have to dump the tech.

Most people had a basic perceptual link between their brain and a basic hand-held terminal, but most things still had to be input into your brain manually. There was always some e-brain technology on the rise, promising that, this time, there'd be no ad-crash. There were fringe groups. But the story was eventually always the same. It wasn't as if there were evil people out there aiming for this, it just happened gradually as if the advertising industry was a living organism with its own evolution. In fact, it was almost never possible to take a technology or a new fashion or musical style and predict what would happen to it once you threw it into a living, evolving culture. Bad news for civilisation, but a nice classroom example for people studying cultural evolution.

In the departure hall, Holt swivelled so hard Arianne almost bumped into him.

"Doctor, here is your ticket. When you get to the hub, go through immigration control and I'll meet you on the other side."

He transferred a travel doc to her terminal.

"You're not coming with me?" she said.

"Wish I could, but I've got a mill jumper taking me out. I've got a few things to sort out first - I'll catch up with you"

"Oh. How long is the trip?"

"A few decades."

"Hmm. Well, what's a few decades when I've got three digits on the clock?"

Holt smiled and nodded at the ticket.

"It'll fly by."

Arianne's ticket was business class.

She. Could. Not. Believe. This.

A mix of joy and embarrassment washed over her. Under Holt's watchful eye, Arianne approached the service desk and was ushered to the priority lane. A young couple were too excited to notice her (newlyweds?) but an elderly man in a bowler hat scowled as she passed. Holding up the front of the queue, a dejected looking lady was trying to restrain a young puppy from running off.

"Where are you flying?"

Asked a real-life service clerk. Arianne glanced over to the opposite lane where a robotic arm was trying to wrench a man's carry-on bag into the checked-luggage bin.

"Er, CAFCA central hub"

Arianne brandished her terminal showing the ticket.

"Thank you, straight through the door, please".

Arianne stepped towards the door which slid open. Through the doorway she could see a large reception area. She stepped across the threshold ...

... and was on the central hub.

Even expecting the seamless transition, it was still a shock. She glanced behind her, half expecting to see the Io space port, but of course it was light years away. The view through the first door had been just a projection. As soon as she had crossed the threshold, her implant had recorded her pose and rendered her unconscious for the chryo-droids to scoop up. She had then been whisked unawares through space and re-animated in the same pose at a replica door on the hub.

All she saw behind her was the disembarking tunnel with figures shuffling towards her. A middle-aged couple were nagging each other with bitter faces. And old lady was dragging a battered old hound. Behind them, a group of crew were clumsily unloading a coffin with a bowler hat balanced on top.

Damn, thought Arianne. Business class was GOOD.

### Chapter 4

Arianne checked her chonometer: 201. She had missed her second centenary by a few months.

Her implant flickered and she became aware of the way to the security border. There was a queue, and her business class privileges had ended at the door, so she found a local net kiosk and sat down in the cosy chair instead. She remembered the piece of metal in her pocket, but didn't want to take it out with so many people around. She also felt a dim reflexive urge to log into SynchedIn, but she couldn't quite face it yet.

She swiped to the wiki channel and began browsing around. Where do you start when you have to piece together over a century of galactic history?

The first article that came up was about the first funding war. Everybody knew about that \- they drilled it into kids at school. Arianne thought about scanning the article, or even just recalling the basic gist of that incredibly important event in galactic history. But then she realised it was pointless: why would she be sitting around reviewing stuff that everybody knew?

Instead, she looked up CAFCA's website. Apparently, you needed a login and a password to even access it these days. She linked to the sign-up page, but cut the feed after gigabytes of forms, guidelines, instructional videos, motivational training exercises and therapy sessions were thrown at her. She switched back to the regular wiki.

The Central Academic Funding Council Administration: the body that decided how to spend the galactic empire's credits on research. Established twenty three hundred years ago and now in its 4th round of funding. An unspeakable amount of money and power, and an almost unimaginable amount of administration. Arianne remembered the headaches induced while learning about the phases that researchers had to go through to get funding for a project.

In theory, getting funding was relatively easy. You drew up a proposal, found some people to back it and sent it in. However, competition was so fierce that a massive amount of bureaucracy had emerged out of a need to appear fair and effective. Applications were handed to a panel of peers, who each appraised the proposal and recommended it for consideration. A panel of experts then scrutinised every detail of the full application and tried to find methodological holes. There could be multiple rounds of resubmission just to convince people that the idea was feasible. Then came the Board of Impact Assessment who gauged how useful and effective the project would be. If the idea got past the board, then there was the budget review, the timescale review, ethical review, the personnel checks and risk assessment. Even after all this, there was still the Grand High Central Committee who needed to vote on each project and whose selection methods were said to be based on medieval rituals.

All this took time. And as more and more submissions came in across the ever-expanding multi-trillion citizen empire, the whole process got longer. The application process moved from months to years. Applicants had to employ economists to project their budgets into the future so they weren't vastly outscaled by inflation. The extra complexities lead to further delays as experts had to be drafted in to assess whether the applications could withstand the time it took to make decisions. As more and more researchers were required to review the applications, personal and professional conflicts became endemic, meaning that a Conflict of Interest Tribunal had to be set up for each application, with the applicants lobbying for or against particular reviewers.

Researchers suddenly found themselves needing to apply for grants just to support the running costs of application. These grants, too, became extremely difficult to obtain, and so researchers needed to apply for many. The vast array of different types of sub-funding made application tricky, and applicants would trip themselves up by making invalid parallel claims. Gradually, the decisions on the grants slid from months to years, and the actual funding from years to decades.

The last time Arianne looked, there was a third tier of funding for people who were applying for grants to apply for funding. Horrifyingly, it now looked like there were at least 15 levels of funding. The only sensible solution was cryosleep. As extended as a human life could now be, the only way academics could actually see their projects through to completion was by waiting out the funding decision time in suspended animation. Of course, cryosleep cost money, for which there were bursaries that one could apply for.

Needless to say, competition was fierce. There were bitter feuds between rival applicants, which gave way to utter praise and sucking-up to the victor. Power shifted around almost randomly with the changing fortunes. P.I.s would be shot down and find themselves begging for tutoring hours. A lucky award could give a post-doc so much leverage, that the University would move to where _they_ lived. Grudges were harboured, vengeance was hinted at, plots were plotted. Researchers who had spent half a century putting together a proposal, only to be rejected without comment, could crack and go on violent rampages. But the sting of rejection was easy to deal with compared to the pervasive dread that someone was scheming against you which came with success. There were certainly rumours of suspicious deaths just as grant money was due to flow in. Could Prof. Golden have been mixed up in a fund-feud?

The crowds in the reception area had dispersed, so Arianne got up and headed for the security border of the Central Academic Funding Council Administration.
Chapter 5

"Name?"

There was a real life human behind the desk, asking her to state her name. The central hub had even gone to the trouble of constructing a booth for this person to sit in and a crude turnstile that barred the way through a narrow corridor to the hub orbital. Arianne could see in metaview that the person's name was "Grace le Tupp", and Grace could see hers. She'd heard stories about strange rituals, could this be one? Then she noticed the paper. Grace was surrounded by piles of actual paper. Arianne had never even seen paper.

"Er, Karen Arianne"

"And what is the aim of your visit to the Central Academic Funding Council Administration?"

Good question, thought Arianne. To investigate murder?

"Um ... business?"

"Right"

Grace made a mark on the paper in front of her. Arianne peered over to get a better look. What happened if you made a mistake on paper?

"And what is the purpose of your visit?"

"... also business?"

"That was your aim", Grace huffed. "What is your purpose?"

"Oh, I see. I, er, I'm here for a meeting with ..."

With who exactly?

"... some people."

"Can you be more specific?"

"I only just arrived, I'm not really sure even why I'm here."

"All right" more marks went onto the paper, then Grace performed a rapid, smooth movement and stamped the paper with a plastic stamp so hard that Arianne jumped. Grace glanced at her disapprovingly. At least it looks like I've been admitted, thought Arianne.

"And what are the goals of your visit?"

This was slightly worrying.

"Errrrrrr ... to have a meeting with some people?"

The poised pen above the paper faltered and large, tired eyes were levelled at her.

"Look, lady, I let your answers so far slide. The last one had a limit of 4,000 words and you barely mumbled a sub-heading. We both want the same thing here, so why don't you just play along, OK?"

Something about the intonation of the last sentence reminded Arianne of Professor Golden, and she was thrown immediately into Academic Achievement Mode.

"Meetings are what organise society, drive the economy and perhaps even define us as a species. But planning meetings may be the hardest problem in science. While there have been many notable meetings in the past, there is a growing need for new approaches and methodologies. My goal is to further the well established convention of having meetings by constructing a collaborative space for organised congregation. This will foster an interdisciplinary conference - of which I have a vast experience as participant, organiser, reviewer, auditor and tea lady - and continue the legacy of internationally renowned talk sessions held by the University of Io - one of the top 10 Universities most resplendent in their capacity for parley. We envisage a series of workshops leading up to the meeting, cumulating in a pan-galactic convention, a special issue, book series, a dedicated journal and biscuits. The potential for likely obtainables is feasible. The replicability of the planned meeting will be matched only by its public impact, which includes satisfying the most relevant questions of beautiful security personnel - "

"All right, don't push it"

Grace finished scribbling down the transcript and peppered the page with a dozen stamps in a series of Teppanyaki flourishes. Arianne signed with relief as Grace set the page into a bin to one side.

"Now, what are the objectives of your visit?"

"Oh Bollocks"
Chapter 6

Eventually, Holt turned up and extracted her. They took an elevator to ring level and walked through the reception floor. Holt led her through a side door and along a series of wood-panelled corridors.

"Sorry about the delay," Holt said, "I was in a meeting."

Arianne's left eye twitched.

"That's alright, I just wish I knew why I was here." She said.

Arianne's flats shuffled over the marble floor while Holt's polished shoes clicked along.

Click-shush-click-shush.

"Do _you_ know why I'm here?"

"Yes"

Click-SHUSH-click-SHUSH.

"Hey Holt"

"Yes?"

"Tell me why I'm here."

"Oh, I see, sorry - I don't maintain my conversation protocol with people your age. Oh, is there something in your eye?"

"It's nothing."

Arianne grinned a little, then squeezed her voice into whiny drawl.

" _What we've got here ... is a failure to communicate_ "

Holt looked confused.

"Um, I'm sorry?"

"You know" Arianne said, swaggering slightly and screwing up her face " _Are you talkin' to me?_ "

Holt was staring straight at her trying to work out whether she was trying to signal duress. Arianne frowned, but then Holt appeared to understand.

"Oh" he said, "You're quoting from the Standard Culture Canon? Sorry, I grew up on the asteroid belt – it's not part of the curriculum."

"Really?" said Arianne in genuine wonder – she'd never met anyone who didn't know 20th century film inside out. Indeed, she depended on it in order to be able to communicate.

The problem was that languages changed. Sounds shifted, words went in and out of fashion, grammar lost and gained rules and entirely new ways of expression were invented. The basic rule was that if you split up a group of people they would eventually be unable to communicate. Back on ancient Earth, this process hadn't gotten too out of hand because cultures kept running into each other. Bits and pieces of language were adopted, elided or forgotten. Or wiped from existence along with their speakers, Arianne reminded herself.

As humans began to colonise other planets, all space-hell broke loose. No longer confined to the surface of a sphere, humans headed off in all directions. The vast distances of inter-stellar travel meant that a culture could drift through space for decades without bumping into another. Languages drifted, too. Worse, the effect of relativity meant that scouting parties sent off to find habitable worlds would arrive back a decade later to find that their mothership had undergone a thousand years of cultural evolution, and they could no longer be understood. It was thought that the perfection of chryosleep would help by freezing languages along with their speakers, but in fact eventually exacerbated things. An individual's history was no longer closely tied to a culture's history. A 20 year-old who had been alive for three hundred years found themselves trying to talk their great-great-great granddaughter who was in her 80s. An entire population along with all of their cultural norms could be sealed off from contact, only to re-appear again, unchanged, centuries later. Communities could freeze themselves, split up, and colonise planets at opposite ends of the galaxy with precisely the same language. However, sending a message from one to the other would take so long that it would be entirely incomprehensible to the receivers. Other groups would be unfrozen after decades and be pleasantly surprised to understand the language around them, only to discover that it was a retro fad that had come back around.

Needless to say, multi-timestream discontinuous inter-stellar civilisations really screwed up a lot of theories of cultural evolution. Linguists had long wondered whether languages reflected some shared biological biases, and were underlyingly built out of the same bits and pieces. There were even ideas that languages were all striving towards an ideal state. But twenty thousand years of human spacefaring later, linguists were still discovering new and bizarre ways people found to communicate. Basically, in order to socialise, people just made stuff up.

In ancient times, people trying to communicate across cultures would first rely on simple, universal concepts to ground the process of translation. Things like greetings, the sun and the moon, man and woman. However, this tended to work less well when one of the cultures lived on a planet with seventeen moons or, indeed, seventeen genders. The Standard Culture Canon helped bridge some of the gap by at least giving people cultural references in common. 20th and early 21st century films and TV had been chosen as the basis for the canon, since the media was of decent quality without having yet run into all the spacefaring problems. It also gave them something to talk _about_ in the first place. The weather had done well in this capacity when humans still lived at its mercy, but tended to be less appropriate on asteroids without atmospheres or in climate-controlled biospheres. Several diplomatic missions had narrowly averted war by small talk about one's favourite _Monty Python_ sketch.

Although Hold didn't look like the chatting type, Arianne decided to find out how a high-ranking military official attached to the Administration could not have seen _Cool Hand Luke_. In her teens she would have given anything to avoid having to watch another reboot of _Battlestar Galactica_.

"But how do you maintain common ground with people flitting in and out of chryo?"

"Oh" said Holt, slightly sheepishly, "there's an artist on the belt that comes out of chryo for an hour a day and draws a topical cartoon that goes up on the local nets. The current artist has been going for over a thousand years now."

"Huh" said Arianne, looking down at her shoes "but don't you have a lot to catch up on when you come out of chryo?"

"There's no need, you just start with the current day and pick things up from there. It's more flexible than the Standard Culture Canon approach."

"Oh?" backchannelled Arianne.

"Yeah – do you know any quotes about traxelling in cobodrefibs?"

"Hmm, good point. But aren't you curious about the canon?"

"I've seen a few licks. Is it worth going through it all?"

Arianne shrugged.

"Some of it's ok, but it's mostly just terrible sequels after the third season of _Firefly_."

Click-shush-click-shush.

"Anyway," Holt said, "about why you're here. We're investigating Professor Golden's murder, we need someone who knows the territory, but was out of the loop, so to speak."

"What do you want to know? I can't think of any motive. Could it be the Bloggeration?"

"They're certainly opposed to CAFCA's approach to research, but I assure you, Doctor Arianne, the rumours about their capabilities are exaggerated. They're just a hyped-up commune."

They passed through a set of double doors into a long corridor with windows set into the wall at intervals and were assaulted by a noise like a hundred faulty airlocks. There were people behind each window in small offices fiddling with bits of paper. Arianne saw one person catch a sheaf of paper sliding down a metal slide and place it to one side.

"What's making all the noise?" asked Arianne.

"Hmm? Oh, the printers."

Holt nodded to a blocky beige machine sitting in the corner of one of the offices. It appeared to be a torture device for paper. Ladders of paper were being fed into the machine through wheels with spokes and a silver box appeared to be systematically bruising each page with tiny black marks.

Holt noticed Arianne's furrowed brow and smiled.

"I guess this is all new to you."

"I was thinking the opposite. I think I saw something like this in a lick about the stone age. Why the hell is everything done on paper here?"

Holt smiled.

"CAFCA is the centre for all academic funding applications in the galaxy. Do you have any idea how many institutions and researchers want to get funding?"

"It it spaceloads? These people seem quite busy."

"This floor can accept about five thousand applications a week."

"This _floor_?"

Holt opened a door and they were outside. They were walking along a long balcony and over the rail Arianne could see a massive courtyard twenty stories below. On each side of the courtyard was a crenelated line of high office buildings. The opposite side of the courtyard was another massive glass and concrete building with more offices. Over the top of this was another courtyard, and then another. Courtyards extended into the distance and curved upward out of sight along the rim of the Hub. Here and there were high towers, domed buildings with bright blue rooves and vicious black structures that looked vaguely volcanic. Light was being thrown against the courtyard from above onto strange machines with brown bases and fractal green antennae.

"Spaceshitfuckloads!" said Arianne.

"Indeed. Basically everything you can see is the processing quarter - there are over 10 million people employed here. As it is, we can only process one millionth of the applications that come in. If applying was easy - say we allowed it to be done digitally - then we'd be completely overwhelmed. So we need some way to slow down the system."

"Hence the printers?"

"Yes. Actually, those are for priority clients. Most low-level applications are printed by the applicants and sent here physically. For a lot of high-level grants, it's quicker to have it printed here, then it only takes about a decade."

"A decade to print?" said Arianne, "How long are applications these days?"

"The actual printing only takes a few minutes, but you have to buy shares in seedstock and wait for the trees to grow."

"Trees?"

"Those green things down there. What do you think we make the paper from?"

"I dunno, can't you just ship it in?"

"There's basically nowehere else that grows trees suitable for paper on the scale that's needed here. Over half of the Hub is dedicated to forestry and churns out 120 million tons of paper every Hubcycle. In fact, so much is printed here, adjacent offices have to have printers facing in opposite directions, or the collective momentum from the paper feeds would throw the Hub off course."

They approached a window set into a wall where a thin young man was busy sorting paper. Holt stopped and swivelled towards Arianne.

"This is Professor Long's office. His secretary will arrange things from here. I'll see you after the meeting"

Holt made a curt salute.

"I'll return." And he winked.

It took Arianne a few moments to understand.

"Oh" she said "you mean _I'll be back._ "

"Oops" Holt said "I never like cyborgs much anyway. Bye!"

"Bye."

Arianne walked up to the window. She could see the printer to the left of the secretary churning away, spilling an application in concertinaed sheets into a small tray. A shiny metal gutter as wide as the paper ran from just below the tray, along the secretary's desk behind the window to the far end of the room. The secretary looked up, saw Arianne and opened the window.

"Ix xydy tus, Oseorc?"

This was the bit that Arianne hated. Everyone up until now had been using Standard Academic Language so that, even though some of the sounds had changed, she could follow everything without a translator device. But now she would have to switch hers on.

The secretary was looking at her expectantly. A sheaf of paper detached itself from the printer and slid down the gutter past the window. Arianne had time to read the title (" _A shocking new way of stabilising carbon nanostructures that you'll wonder how you lived without_ ") before the application sailed right past the secretary and continued on to the end of the desk. Arianne watched in horror as it dropped into a paper shredder which began ripping it apart even as the ink was drying.

It would seem obvious that technology that translated languages should have become incredibly important. But, in fact, the history of the translation device, or TD, was more complicated.

As the humans of ancient Earth began to master inter-continental travel, the pace of change through contact increased, and the diversity of languages plummeted. Globalisation brought an increasing pressure to assimilate to one of the more influential languages. Entire nations would disavow their linguistic inheritance and swear allegiance to alien sounds, words and phrases.

(Another printed funding application whizzed past without the secretary blinking: " _The one weird old tip for modelling extratropical cyclone development that companies don't want you to know!_ ").

Things began to change at the beginning of the 21st century. Technology was sufficiently advanced and widespread that on-line TDs became feasible. These could recognise, transcribe and translate language in real time. Coupled with a speech synthesiser, they could also translate anything that the wearer said, allowing them to talk back.

This meant that, for instance, Arianne could have a conversation with the secretary by speaking Standard Academic Language and having it transmitted directly to the secretary's earpiece in their own language. In fact, Arianne's TD had already scanned the secretary's utterance, cross-referenced it with an online database and translated it as meaning "Hello, how are you?". That bit was easy.

(The printer spat out an application that slid into the paper shredder. Arianne was pretty sure she would be the only one to read its title, _"10 reasons why transcranial magnetic stimulation research on space wolves will totally melt your heart"_. The secretary was still waiting.)

When the first TDs became widespread, renowned linguist Jim Knox predicted that they would actually lead to an increase in language diversity. Now there was no need for people to abandon their small languages - they could just communicate through the TDs. In fact, Arianne could speak any language to the secretary and the TD would translate it appropriately, even her first language, which was only spoken by a handful of people in her home town. Indeed, without a pressure to conform, languages on Earth slowly drifted away from each other. Even the big languages started to fracture without its speakers noticing. There were even cases of members of the same family who eventually became unable to communicate without TDs.

However, as TDs began to sink into the human psyche, things began to change again. Everyone already knew that learning someone else's language was difficult, hence the need for TDs. But it gradually became clear that being hard to learn was not necessarily a bad thing. As economic markets became increasingly globalised and cultures fractured, businesses found that they could no longer rely on desirable cultural identities to broker deals. Renewable technologies and global economic markets meant that brute wealth was no longer adequate. They needed to show to other companies and governments that they were dedicated investors. It turned out that language was an almost perfectly designed social currency. Digital implants with massive storage and online access meant that the ability to recall facts and figures was redundant. However, speaking another language required a complex on-line transformation of morphemes, words and grammar into culturally-tuned meaning. A mastery of someone's language without a TD demonstrated an investment of time and a commitment to understand their values and ways of thinking. The diversification of languages brought about by the centuries of TD technology acted like a massive injection of capital, and soon companies were investing and trading in languages as much as in hard goods and services.

The street-cred of TDs changed, too. Needing to rely on a TD to interact with people in everyday life became a social stigma of poor education. Arianne could remember being laughed at in school because she had never encountered a language with kin-based morphosyntax before. There was a rush to show off how diverse one's linguistic abilities were, with rich families sending their children to far-flung corners of the world to learn exotic languages as a form of future investment. It even became taboo to marry someone from the same linguistic background.

And so the role of TDs went from a central factor in human history to a secondary resource that was only used when necessary. Like coal or cocaine.

As _"The 17 most embarrassing celebrity reactions to 20th century dissonant counterpoint compositions"_ flew past, Arianne felt another shortcoming of TDs more keenly. It was all very well knowing what someone was saying, but it told you very little about what they were trying to get you to **do**. For example, the secretary had asked "how are you?". Even with an artificial mastery of phonetics, morphology, syntax and semantics, Arianne still had no idea how the phrase was meant to be understood _pragmatically_. How should she respond? Would "I'm fine" be understood as meaning she was good, or would the secretary think she was hinting at deep personal trauma? Arianne could say "I'm feeling excellent!", but this might be received as gloating or lying, given her clearly space-lagged appearance. Holt would probably interpret it as a genuine demand for a full update on his physical wellbeing, but the secretary might be disgusted at such intimate details, or take a literal response as a sign of stupidity. How long should she wait before responding? A quick reply could be interpreted as being earnest or not giving enough consideration. Did the secretary expect to be asked a question in return? What level of politeness was expected? Perhaps there was some kind of ceremonial bow that Arianne was failing to perform. Or maybe she was supposed to echo the question in song?

Of course, a linguist could spend some time observing the secretary and determine the cultural practices and rules that should determine her behaviour. This could be written up and placed online for people to access in real time. The idea was simple, but it just didn't work in reality. First, since the communication systems of the galaxy were so different, linguists had a lot of trouble coming up with a universal way of describing them, meaning that not only would you have to buzz-through a lengthy thesis describing the assumptions and conceptual framework, you would inevitably be given several different answers and a space-tsunami of bitter dispute over terminology, theory, politics and the nature of the universe. Secondly, since research took such a long time to get funded and then be executed, documented and disseminate, the descriptions of how to behave would be totally outdated by the time they were available. And that was for simple things like how to say hello.

Arianne was suddenly aware that she had been staring silently at the secretary for over a minute now. Even by Phraxelroot-Onibytree standards - where taking a turn at talk was seen as a sign of weakness - this was pushing it. The secretary's face had sunk from polite chirpiness to concern, boredom, despair and eventually blank terror.

"I love you!" Arianne blurted.

Amazingly, this appeared to be the correct response because the secretary's face immediately brightened up.

"And I love _you_. Are you here to see Professor Long?"

The words came through her TD like welcome sunshine, just on top of the soft consonants of the secretary's real speech.

"Oh, yes. Karen Arianne."

The secretary looked at a pad of paper on his desk.

"OK, you can go in now \- he should be free in eight months."

Although Arianne had read a lot about cryosleep, and all the early side-effects had been ironed out, she was not quite ready to rush into another seamless transition machine.

"Thank you, but I think I'll go for a walk first, if that's ok. Can I go down to see the trees?"

"No problem. Just come and see me when you're ready."

The secretary smiled and Arianne felt the warmth of a well conducted conversation coming to a close. This had all gone very well.

"Thank you."

Arianne smiled and they both stood there smiling for a moment before Arianne turned around with a slight wave and headed back towards the balcony. Just before she turned the corner, her earpiece, tuned for linguistic fieldwork, just managed to pick up and translate a muttered phrase from behind her.

"stupid bitch"
Chapter 7

The garden in the courtyard was a place that invited you to stay. A soft breeze led through damp hedgerows to a small clearing cobbled with small stones laid in concentric circles. At the centre of the courtyard, a blooming peony was picked out by bright sunshine. A wooden bench was set in the shade of one of the giant trees. Arianne sat down and stared up at the slowly swaying leaves sifting the sunlight. It was almost possible to forget about academia. Perhaps, thought Arianne, it would be possible to live in a place like this, to quit this crazy career that dragged you through tides of time and space and have a simple, unbroken life. She could watch the small, dark green vines grow day by day and feel the slow change of the seasons. She could experience the full arc of the sighing branches instead of living in stop-motion.

Of course, looking above the branches of the tree, Arianne could see the dock at the centre of the hub's spokes, and beyond that the dark side of the ring. Even here, there was a reminder of the solemn power of CAFCA's empire. She could make out lights on the dusk edge, a reminder that people were toiling deep into the 36 hour day, fuelling the unrelenting machine. Arianne's left eye twitched.

Time to get SynchedIn, thought Arianne. She took out her terminal and logged on. A thin line appeared at the top of the screen, representing her time line. The leftmost part of the line – representing the start of her life – was relatively long and unbroken, with a small gap for when her great-great grandmother had taken her on a visit to Kapteyn's biology department where she worked. The line continued until her move to Io for university - a gap of 5 years (mainly waiting for admission approval). A little further along, a longer gap in the line represented her field trip to the Gliese system - a tiny pixel for the time actually researching surrounded by a 40 year void. The next section represented her PhD, and Arianne was disappointed in how short it looked compared to how long it had felt. Finally, there was then a huge gulf running almost up to the present. 153 years asleep. As she watched, her line updated. Her past compressed and a few 'live' pixels were added to represent her waking up at Io and then a short gap representing the trip to the central hub. Arianne was reminded that she had met Holt over a decade ago, not this morning. Her line ended in a glowing point, marking the present.

A list of her friends and colleagues appeared on the left of the screen, with a series of blue lines underneath hers. They formed a riot of morse code charting their lives since the last time Arianne had logged on. Most were fairly continuous, with a few patches here and there. The field linguists had more blank space than most. Most of the more senior professors kept regular 'office' years, but these were disrupted by the major conferences: Almost everyone's line stopped at the same time for travel, and then appeared again at the same time for the meetings. Some of the blue lines were just regularly spaced dots - her friends from the physics department who would set up an experiment, then head to the chryochamber while it ran (not before a few nights of heavy drinking, though).

Halfway down the page, Arianne saw Professor Golden's line, which ended a little after the start of Arianne's long sleep. The end was marked with a blue cross \- an indication that the Professor would not be waking up again. Scanning down the list, Arianne saw a few other crosses. Not really surprising, given that she had been asleep for at least two regular lifetimes. Some of the crosses ended after a long unbroken line. Perhaps some had got out of academia and led normal lives, thought Arianne. There were a few people she would have liked to see again, and she felt a stinging sense of all the parties they had probably had without her. But there was no deep welling up of emotion. After all, you didn't get into academia if you couldn't handle detachment.

Still, she couldn't help but feel the vague tingling of hope as she scrolled down the list, looking for Coll. The line appeared and aligned itself with Arianne's. The bars played cat-and-mouse across the first half of her life, meeting up and diverging around classes and conferences. Both disappeared together and surfaced for her time in Gliese (Coll was only in the next planet over!) before slowly falling out of phase again. Dragging her eyes to the right, Arianne felt her stomach flit into zero G. The blue line continued. Coll was still alive, somewhere, but asleep for now. Perhaps a post doc position had opened up in Gliese? Her finger hovered over the message button, but what would she say? She didn't even know how long she'd be awake for this time. She was already due to sleep for another few months just to get to a meeting that would tell her what she was supposed to be doing.

Just underneath Coll's line, Arianne saw Richard's. Strange, he'd gone to sleep shortly after she'd seen him on Io. He should have been working on the grant, perhaps something had gone wrong? Apparently, he was not currently online.

Arianne suddenly remembered the metalic thing that Richard had given her. She reached into her pocket and was half surprised to find it still there. Checking that she was alone, she brought it out into the sunlight.

It was a flat oblong picece of metal, dark with flecks of lighter shale, and fit easily within her palm. In each corner there was a very small hole, countersunk as if it had been bolted to something. There were scratch marks around one of the holes, and another corner was slightly dented. Removed in haste? Stolen? Arianne wondered why Richard had given her this. She had been expecting it to be some kind of data storage device, but it didn't appear to be broadcasting, and there was no obvious port, or any interface. Turning it over, Arianne saw some markings carved into it, and realised it was a word.

"PERSISTER"

Chapter 8

"Doctor Karen Arianne! Graduate of Io! You have been summoned before me to answer for crimes most foul!"

A voice like quaking gravel reverberated around the massive space. Across a moat with fountains of molten silver, on foundations of polished volcanic rock, buttressed by bronze effigies of massive animals and decked in twisting baroque gilt, standing on a pyre of tree-sized crystal beams awash with spiralling waterfalls of decomposing mercury composites, sitting on a throne fashioned from the facade of the cathedral of Reims of ancient Earth and flanked by gigawatt lasers burning the passing seconds of a thousand space timezones into falling shards of newly smelted aluminium pouring from an artificial lightning storm above, was the Rector.

Or more specifically, The Ambassador for the Acting Rector of the Arts and Humanities Trust Council Advisory Board Under- Under- Committee. Wondering if she could be heard at all against the wall of sound, Arianne set her translator to its most refined 30th Century Space-Patois.

"Oh most glorious Rector, it ain't me what did it."

"Silence you wretched unaffiliate!"

Lightning bolts burst from the sky, disintegrating an Onhian shriek-wolf chained to the upper tower of the cathedral-throne. A hatch opened and the smouldering ashes were replaced with a new shriek-wolf.

"I reckon I've got a bang-up spiffing blinger of an alibi."

Silence fell and Arianne could see the Rector's implant light blinking under his ear.

"Ah. Right. Terribly sorry, you're here for the investigation?"

"Yep."

"Let's start this again."

"Oakiedoak."

Laser power sent falling sheets of aluminium flying to form a briefly-glimpsed CAFCA symbol, which promptly exploded into a silver shards and buried themselves into the marble meters away from Arianne's feet. A howling wind blasted the Rector's voice into her face.

"Doctor Karen Arianne! Graduate of Io! You have been summoned before me to investigate crimes most foul! The mighty Central Academic Funding Council Administration commands you to render your assistance in investigating the murder of Professor Alice Golden."

A volley of genuine Egyptian sarcophagi erupted from tungsten cannons and shattered above her head, and would have crushed her but for the gigantic birds that swooped from the darkness above to carry off the pieces. Arianne cupped her mouth and shouted.

"I know."

"Silence you wretched unaffiliate!"

Lightning flashed. A hatch opened and the smouldering ashes were replaced with a new shriek-wolf. Thunder rolled below the deep voice of the Rector.

"You are also ordered to help reveal a conspiracy against the Administration."

Arianne was so stunned, she almost failed to lean into the rising gale. Black hail began pummelling the ground around her and a serpent the size of a space-freighter darted out of the boiling sky.

"This is now the tenth murder of an evolutionary culturalist!"

Chapter 9

"Huh?"

"I said, This is now the tenth murder of an evolutionary culturalist"

"An evolutionary what?"

"Culturalist."

"You mean someone who studies cultural evolution?"

"Yes."

"Right."
Chapter 10

"Ten researchers, all with class-5 funding have now met ... unfortunate fates."

Arianne's left eye winced. A conspiracy? This was getting far too deep into Administration dealings.

"Er, I'm happy to help, you know, but -." she said.

"You have been chosen because you knew Professor Golden, because you were asleep for all the recorded murders, and because we need to keep this matter ... DISCRETE!"

The bells of the cathedral rang out, while confetti made from seven hundred funding submissions poured from its windows. Jets of blue flame leapt from the Rector's raised hands and engulfed the falling paper to the cries of the latest shriek-wolf.

"Will you assist?"

Arianne glanced to her left to a statue of a demonic owl sitting in a nest of shredded top-flight journal papers.

"I guess I can lend a hand." Arianne said.

"Professor Long will tell you more."

Arianne turned to leave.

"Oh, and one more thing \- the Administration would like this dealt with quickly. If you would like to progress at all in your career, you would be wise to act fast. You have 100 years."

Space-bollocks, thought Arianne, and legged it for the door.

Chapter 11

Outgoing Communication request

Empire sentry station, Quadrant 5

DETECTED: 5 ships

Identifying lead ship . . . Space_Pelican

Ship-to-ship @200.4282 to emp.80.165.99.6892:Space_Pelican

Waking up system . . . DONE

Relativity delay adjustment . . . OK

Internetworking protocol initiating . . . DONE

Base language selection . . . DONE

Base protocol conformity . . . OK

Version haggling . . . 80%

Synchronising internetworking layers

Downloading . . . OK

Patching . . . OK

Transport layers synchronising . . . OK

Packet Network . . . ONLINE

Scanning ports . . . DONE

**************************************************

* Is your command line font damaging your eyes? *

* take Dr. Syntax's free test and discover *

* the perfect font for you <Key d now> *

**************************************************

Application layers synchronising

Compatibility . . . 2%

Skipping AppL conformity

Opening com port . . . OPEN

Sending packet

<Identify self: Empire sentry station, quadrant 5; Authenticate: 7755-10.85; Status: stable; Authorities: DD-2.1; Request: Identify;>

Received packet

<Identify self: emp.80.165.99.6892:Space_Pelican; Authenticate: 739-93.85; Status: stable; Authorities: F;>

Authentication check . . . not found

Trying again . . . not found

Trying again . . . not found

Authenticate . . . FAIL

Sending packet

<Identify self: Empire sentry station, quadrant 5; Authenticate: 7755-10.85; Status: stable; Authorities: DD-2.1; Request: Natural language communication request;>

Received packet

<Identify self: emp.80.165.99.6892:Space_Pelican; Authenticate: 739-93.85; Status: stable; Authorities: F; Response: {Request: Natural language communication request; Response: Confirm; port: 833}>

Requesting crew . . . OK

Opening NL Comm to emp.80.165.99.6892:Space_Pelican:833 . . . OPEN

BEGIN NL Comm

ESS-Q5: This is Empire sentry station Q5 calling Space Pelican. We're having trouble authenticating your id.

Space_Pelican: This is the Space Pelican. Hi! Sorry about this, we've been having trouble all the way - we're a freighter out of Betelgeuse. We've been running ahead of our admin cone - I guess your systems haven't received the latest update.

ESS-Q5: Negative, Space Pelican - our logs were updated 20 minutes ago and you're not logged. You'd have to be going pretty spacing fast to be ahead of the next update. Please identify yourself and state your purpose.

Space_Pelican: Hmm. I repeat - we're just a small freighter delivering ink to the central hub, perhaps our manager didn't log our departure in time. You know what it's like - we'll just be on our way.

ESS-Q5: Space Pelican, slow your approach. We must confirm your authentication before proceeding.

Space_Pelican: Is there really any need for that? Those hub guys really want their ink.

ESS-Q5: Space Pelican, your are ordered to halt. Our scans are having trouble making out your profile. Are you using cloaking technology?

Space_Pelican: On a simple space freighter? Of course not! It's probably just the ... er ... quantum effects of our ink reserves.

ESS-Q5: That does not make sense. We are initiating a LOOTW scan.

Space_Pelican: There's really no need to Look Out of the Window. We're just a simple -

ESS-Q5: You appear to be a Bloggoration class G warship, and there are 5 of you.

Space_Pelican: Space pants. Ok, charade over.

WARNING:

Application Layer security breach

WARNING:

Communication protocol compromised . . . at uzz/tcp/ident

WARNING:

Identities changed without authentication change

Correlation_Machine: We're the Bloggoration, you Space Losers!

ESS-Q5-SpaceL00zR: You are trespassing in Empire space. Halt immediately.

Psychohistorian: Shall we halt guys? They seem pretty angry.

What_about_the_residuals?: They could alert the Administration about our invasion.

ESS-Q5-SpaceL00zR: How did you change our station identifier? Compromising an imperial sentry station is a violation of imperial law.

Desperanto: That would be terrible. I hope they don't do that.

ESS-Q5-SpaceL00zR: We are reporting you to the Administration. I am beginning the application form now.

Zero_p_value: Oh no! Our plan is surely foiled!

ESS-Q5-SpaceL00zR: Make no mistake, as soon as this application form downloads and I've got the funding for a subspace transmission and then the permission for a direct message to the council and we've worked on the transmission stability of the message and -

Peer_to_Peer_Review: We can't talk now, we're getting stuff done. Byeeeeeee.

ERROR: NL Comm closed before de-link:

4081: Ship acceleration desynchronised the connection

****************************************************

* Opportunity escaped? Find partners in your *

* subjective age range and light cone now <Key d> *

****************************************************
Chapter 12

Professor Long sat behind a desk piled with papers that were being nuzzled by the weak breeze of a small electric desk fan. He was wearing a striped shirt open at the collar and had his sleeves rolled up.

So this is what a fully floated professor looked like. Arianne couldn't help stare in wonder at the long, sharp prism on the desk. It displayed his name and current affiliation. The name was straightforward, but the affiliation was a live schematic of his current affiliation portfolio on the Research Exchange Framework: the academic stock exchange. A digital display ran the length of the plaque and was divided into constantly shifting sections. Currently, around 20% of Long's academic stock was taken up by the central hub. But the rest was divided into a hundred ways between different universities. A good quarter of his affiliation was taken up in single-stock investments. Probably community colleges in the asteroid belts trying to get their profiles boosted. Arianne noticed that a fraction of his affiliation was at the University of Io, no doubt boosting its credentials, and her own by extension. As she watched, Gliese University began aggressively expanding their share, and Long's REF index began climbing. Arianne had heard rumours that Gliese only employed REF economists, and had no actual research staff at all. Gliese's share was expanding to such an extent that Arianne was worried that Long would have to cancel the meeting, since his time now belonged elsewhere. But just before Gliese could become the maxium share holder, CAFCA bit back, buying bit-stocks. Behind the scene, Arianne knew that CAFCA was short-selling Gliese academics, probably ruining their careers, in an attempt to derail the take-over. In a few seconds, Gliese's share had collapsed and its shares rippled and split into dozens of lesser universities.

Long leaned back in his wooden chair and brought his feet up to rest on the edge of the desk. He looked tiredly around his small office, as if each scrumped ball of paper and each discarded drink can would take a whole career to deal with.

Arianne disturbed his thoughts.

"Professor Long, I don't have all century."

He snapped back into the present moment.

"Sorry about all that sitting-on-top-of-a-burning-lake-of-silver stuff. The under- under- committee can be a bit dramatic."

"It certainly made an impression on me."

"Obviously less than some - it took them a while to train those birds to miss."

Arianne exchanged a worried look with Holt, who was sitting next to her. She leaned forwards.

"The rector said there have been ten victims."

"Hmm, yes."

"And they were all researching cultural evolution?"

"In some form or other yes."

Holt spoke up.

"Normally, this would be left to the local authorities, but Administration Security has taken an interest because of the ... fitting nature of the deaths."

Holt looked to Professor Long, who cleared his throat, tucked his legs back under the desk and opened a binder in front of him.

"Er yes, here are some particulars. The first case - at least the first one we know of - was a field linguist working in the next solar system over. Their TD malfunctioned and they made a legally binding euthanasia request instead of asking for the time. Another linguist was sent the proofs of his new book on language contact that were so poorly typeset and the graphs and transcriptions so badly mangled that they interfered with the software systems of the ship and it crashed into a moon."

"Ah, well - that last one happens all the time", said Arianne.

"It's true that these might have been overlooked as accidents", continued Long, "but there were more strange occurrences to follow."

"A typologist was sent a grammar of a language that was so obtuse and elaborate, and so badly documented that the typologist was driven mad and committed suicide. The language itself couldn't be traced and is now thought to have been constructed."

Arianne had heard stories about this kind of thing.

"Driving people crazy with a grammar isn't easy" said Arianne. "even if they're already a typologist. The killer must be a linguist."

Long nodded. "It certainly seems like an inside job, but it's not just linguistics. For example, a plant species was genetically eradicated at the field-site of a group of ornithologists studying tool use in birds."

"You want me to investigate plant genocide?"

"No exactly. The birds discovered that human bones made tools just as well as the plants did."

"Ah."

Long leafed past some technicolored photographs.

"Then there was the case of the Economist who was studying the emergence of honest signalling in primates. He claims that someone had released a shriek wolf into his house, and called the police while he barricaded himself into this bathroom. But when the police arrived, the house was empty. A week later, the same thing happened, and the week after that. The Economist moved to a hotel, but then reported that a wolf had been placed in his room."

"I think I can see where this is going." Said Arianne.

"After months of this, the police stopped responding, assuming he was mad. They found his body in his office, ripped to shreds."

Arianne stole a glance at Seargent Holt, who was looked puzzled by the story.

"What about Professor Golden?" Arianne said.

Long sucked some air before explaining.

"As you know, Professor Golden was a historical linguist. She was using a super-computer to reconstruct historical splits between languages when it exploded and she was cut in half by a server blade."

Everyone found themselves looking silently at the buzzing fan.

"She was your supervisor?" Long said,

"Yes, she got me through my PhD" said Arianne. A silence descended.

"Oh" Holt said, smiling "a _wolf_."

Long and Arianne exchanged worried looks.

"Well", said Arianne, "That range of ... methods suggests that there's a team of people. Maybe it is a conspiracy?"

"We're not so sure", said Holt. "The timing of the murders is consistent with a single trajectory between the planetary systems where they took place."

"You mean it could just be one person?" Arianne slumped back in her chair. "But why? Is there any suspected motive?"

"We're not sure. All the victims were class-5 funded, and had all received grants from the same sources, so it could be jealousy or a Grant Vendetta."

"Is there anyone who lost out to grants from them all?"

"Very many, actually, but there's another possibility. You're aware that Cultural Evolution is of particular interest to CAFCA."

Arianne was well aware. The entire infrastructure of the Administration was shaped by the complications of trying to communicate across cultural evolutionary time. For researchers, even just conveying simple meanings through the lumbering CAFCA machinery required advanced expertise in cultural evolution. The cultural evolution of funding applications was it's own multi-space-billion credit subfield. However, it wasn't entirely clear whether these complications were a bad thing for CAFCA. Its empire was built on releasing its massive resources through a tiny bottleneck. If applying for funding was straightforward, the whole thing would come crashing down and much of civilized space would be destabilised. Arianne shuddered to think of the size of the power vacuum that would result - what else could possibly fill it? The Bloggeration? Surely not. They were capable of impressive feats of research, but they never seemed to have much direction.

"Well, the victims were all doing special consultancy work for the Administration." Said Holt "I'm afraid we can't tell you much more"

"Honestly" said Arianne "I don't want to know. What do you want me to do?"

Long began collating the papers "There is only one class-5 funded researcher left in your field. We would like you to start your investigation with them."

"Who is it?"

"Professor Aditi C. Sura - she has a lab here on the hub - you know her work?"

"Of course, how do I approach them?"

"Well, it's time for their grant review, so we've arranged for you to be put on the panel. Don't ask any direct questions, but we'd like to know if you find anything suspicious."

"Like what?" asked Arianne.

Holt jumped in, a little too quickly "Whether she's been travelling lately, maybe equipment missing or gaps in the spending. Anything that could be tied to ..."

Arianne waited.

"... other organisations."

Ah well, thought Arianne, it was too much to ask for to be handed testable hypotheses on a plate. There was no reason to think that solving crimes would be easier than having to deal with vague theoretical linguistics problems from your supervisor.

"You have a meeting just after -" Long looked at his watch. "- the turn of the century".

"Just enough time for lunch, then?" said Arianne, brightening up.

"I'm afraid lunch is not included" Holt said, standing up with such social gravity that Arianne felt herself also drawn to her feet.

Chapter 13

"Oh hello, I didn't see you come in, have you come to fix the fans?"

Professor Sura was standing in the operations center of her lab. In front of her, a large one-way mirror looked out onto the huge testing area which looked like a miniature post-industrial town with dozens of white mice scurrying around. Various readouts were being projected onto the mirror. Sura tapped at the tablet she was holding and water started drizzling from the roof above the testing area onto the mice. This was an Emergence Lab, and probably represented Arianne's dream job - working with one of the fiercest opponents of the Merge pathway.

The Merge pathway had been understood for some time. To the utter delight of many 22nd century linguists (and profound surprise of many others), genetic changes had been identified in humans that regulated brain growth which lead to the formation of neural circuits which effectively implemented a cognitive algorithm capable of recursive operations. What's more, it was easy to demonstrate that humans were the only known species to have this ability. This was dubbed the Merge pathway, and it was hailed as the answer to why language had evolved - why we alone had this strange ability to communicate in such rich and varied ways.

For the evolutionary linguists who had predicted just such a mechanism, there was a decade grand expositions on the human condition and told-you-so symposiums. In fact, it was during one of these celebrations that an intriguing question was raised: if we now knew the recipe for the ability to learn language, could we give it to another species by splicing in the right genes?

This idea was initially resisted, partly on moral grounds - this was, after all, as close to playing God as many were comfortable with - but mainly from proponents of the Merge pathway, who had no interest in seeing their newly won validation being proved wrong. However, many attempts to induce complex languages in other species did eventually follow. Songbirds were the first species to be granted ethical approval for testing. Finches were already able to learn and produce extremely complex songs, and with the added Merge pathway were able to sing even more baroque melodies.

The first chimpanzee imbued with the missing ingredient was named Lady. There was great media interest at her birth, and several papers were written on a series of hiccups she produced in the first few minutes of her life, with bitter disputes over whether there were syntactic dependencies between them. Lady was given an environment positively brimming with language. She had structured lessons and training schemes to teach her to use a special set of symbols on an electronic tablet. She was played tapes of people speaking in all kinds of language. She was given brightly coloured plastic alphabet letters to play with. In time, she dutifully learned to complete a set of tasks in exchange for her favourite snack, Marmite. These included the standard battery of test for syntactic ability, such as recognising grammatical dependencies, spotting sequences that did not conform to the rules and filling in blanks. Everyone agreed that Lady's ability to process language was well above the average chimpanzee's grasp, even if her taste in food did betray her primitive ancestry, and the project was hailed as a big success.

The pinnacle of Lady's career was to be a live hyper-cast interview with super-star linguist Vastion La Quana himself. La Quana had learned the symbol language and launched the interview by welcoming Lady to the exclusive club of language users, and thanked her for showing us to ourselves and, since she was the first non-human who had the ability to express her desires through language, whether she would like to claim a prize for such an audacious success. Lady replied by requesting a Marmite sandwich, which greatly amused the audience and caused La Quana to quip that he had not expected the Merge pathway to also be the key to wit, as well as language. La Quana's next question was about Lady's childhood - what was it like to grow up in the language lab? Lady replied again by requesting a Marmite sandwich. Slightly flustered, La Quana shrugged this off and continued to ask about Lady's interests. This time, Lady requested a peanut butter sandwich, but it was clear that something was wrong. What followed was an agonising 30 minutes of questions ranging from whether she considered herself human or felt alienated from her species, her interpretations of art, the nature of reality and her opinions on various political situations, all of which were met with requests for Marmite sandwiches. The whole event was a big embarrassment for everyone.

Over the following months, the failure was investigated. The researchers found that Lady could give eloquent and fascinating answers to the questions La Quana had given her, but this required a strenuous regime of reward-based training. It slowly became clear that Lady had the _ability_ to use language, but absolutely no _desire_ to do so outside of getting what she wanted. In fact, while they had demonstrated that the Merge pathway could indeed explain an ability to process complex syntax, it couldn't explain why humans actually bothered to invent and use language at all.

Once this was realised, all the theorists who had been silenced by the apparent magic bullet of Merge came out of the spacewoodwork again. They argued that Lady's behaviour had proven nothing about the origins of language, nor about what was the crucial ingredient for its emergence in a species. In fact, Lady had been handed a fully-formed language with resources and incentives to learn it, which just pushed the problem back one step.

A new line of inquiry was suggested: was it possible to induce the organic _emergence_ of language in another species? That is, could you take a pod of dolphins or a mischief of mice or a cornucopia of sea slugs, and make a change to their environment or social structure or physiology that would cause them to start using a complex language of their own accord? The race was now on to identify which factor was the key to the emergence of language.

Researchers turned to species with quicker development like mice or songbirds. The Merge enthusiasts started with communities of mice pumped with Merge, but they never bothered to flex their newly found cognitive abilities and the genetic ability never came under selection and washed out within a few generations. A company of finches were given the magical treatment, and indeed their songs became more complex, but they never actually used these new forms to mean anything except "Hey Lady, look at me!". On the other hand, proponents of cultural evolution tried setting the right social environment. Food was made plentiful, pairs were given time alone, there were even experiments with mood lighting. However, all this usually meant was that the subjects spent all their time sleeping, eating and fucking. Others designed the environment so that getting food required animals to co-operate, or made survival dependent on the development of tools. This resulted in a lot of dead mice.

Still, the research continued, with combinations of factors being tried in different species (and a few attempts at cross-species emergence). This, inevitably, brought all the squabbles about what constituted linguistic ability or complex language right back into the open, but now with whole new dimensions for disagreement. This meant that language emergence studies had become a huge field with many large sub-areas of inquiry. The expert in the area of social emergence of language in mice was Professor Aditi C. Sura, who had just mistaken Arianne for a ventilation engineer.

"Er, no, I'm Dr. Karen Arianne. I'm here for the grant review." Arianne said.

"Oh, please forgive me." Sura said, almost casually sweeping a stack of data drives off her desk into a bin as she reached out to shake Arianne's hand.

"You're just in time to see a crisis moment." Sura continued, "Please, come and have a look."

As Sura lead her to the viewing window, Arianne reminded herself that she was supposed to be an evaluator.

"This is the testing area?" she said, trying to sound like a law enforcer questioning a suspect.

"Yes, it's a CAFCA grant level-24 funded facility. We are currently halfway through chain 3 of a 100 generation, 50-subject trial."

The testing area really was like a miniature town. Narrow paths wound between mouse-sized hills with tiny terraced alcoves clinging to the steep sides. In some of the wider rifts there were long, low shelters with grey rooves. Dotted here and there throughout the valleys, metal wheels with mice running in them were held high above the ground up by tall, red steel frames.

"What's the emergence condition?" asked Arianne.

"We're interested in the emergence of language through diffusion of social tension. The environment provided for the subjects here is relatively rich - they don't need to struggle to survive and most of the time they don't even need to come into contact with each other. However, we provide environmental and ecological conditions that provide occasional crisis moments, which are conditions for the necessity of intense social proximity in a restricted space. A key element to lower stress in this situation is to signal non-threatening intentions that are also non-committal. We believe that complex communication is the only tool that can achieve this, and furthermore, that the crisis conditions themselves will be the basis for grounding an initial language."

Arianne looked out onto the bleak landscape. Indeed, the artificial rain was herding the mice towards the shelters, where they were nervously jostling for space.

"So," Arianne said "they'll feel so awkward that they'll start talking about the weather?"

"Essentially, yes. But the testing area is just one part of what makes our research possible. We also have a state of the art Recording system."

"Oh? Please tell me more." Arianne knew all about cultural simulation recording systems, of course, but wanted to keep Sura talking. It struck her that it would also be quite a convenient exposition for anyone listening into their conversation.

"Of course!" Sura smiled "We want to observe many generations of mice in our micro-societies, and we want to run several different lineages. The current experiment will involve over 100 generations. The problem with this is that mice have a lifetime of about 2 or 3 years, so the experiment takes some time. We have ten lineages working simultaneously in various labs, but it still takes more than a human lifetime for a project to complete. The answer, of course, is chryosleep - we could just wait in cold storage until the experiment is over. However, we also want to observe the experiment as it's running. Initially we observed the experiment for a short time, then went into chryosleep for 2 years, then observed another short time, then went to sleep and so on. However, conventional preparation for chryosleep takes some time and is very distracting for our research- it's like needing to go to the toilet twenty times a day."

Sura made a tinkling laughter sound and Arianne attempted to do so too.

"Our solution" continued Sura "was a state of the art recording system. It works much like seamless business-class commuting."

Arianne attempted a blasé nod.

"We go about our usual procedures" continued Sura, "but every so often we're rendered unconscious with our posture recorded. We're automatically put into chryosleep in our own in-house chambers"

Sura pointed behind Arianne. The operations center was separated from a small antechamber by a glass wall with a glass door set into it. On the other side of the antechamber was a door leading to the main hub complex, and along one wall was a set of chryochambers, sitting like iron golems in a meditative sleep.

"We stay in cold storage there for a year or two, then we're reset into our previous position and put back online. The result is a seamless montage of the experiment unfolding before our eyes."

Sura ended with a flourishing gesture towards the testing area, but Arianne was looking at the around the spartan operations centre with a puzzled look.

"Wait, where do the chryo droids come from?" asked Arianne.

"From outside", said Sura, pointing through the large window to the antechamber.

"Can they catch you before you fall?"

"Ah, no - when you get zapped, the robot arms catch you."

Arianne followed Sura's nod to a pair of robotic arms packed away on the roof. Each had a large claw on a telescopic tube with three joints.

"Then the droids come in, scoop you up and place you in a chryo-chamber. Then, when the mice have progressed a bit, and it's time for you to come back online, the droids wheel you in and the robot arms keep you in your previous position before you're zapped awake again."

"What happens if there's more than two of you in the lab?"

Sura was staring at the robot arms.

"Hmm? Oh, the arms juggle you. Er ... Dr. Arianne, do the arms look like they're moving to you?"

Arianne turned to look at the arms again.

"Not really"

"Wait - look closely"

Arianne was about to protest again, but the arms suddenly shifted very slightly. A few seconds later, they shifted again - only a fraction of a degree, but as quick as lightning.

"Are they supposed to be moving?" asked Arianne.

"No, I have nothing scheduled."

The two exchanged worried looks. Sura pointed to the table next to Arianne.

"Pass me my key pass - let's go check if there's a problem."

Arianne picked up the key pass on the desk next to her and tossed it towards Sura. Too late, Sura shouted

"No!"

The key pass disappeared in mid air. Arianne blinked in surprise.

"What happened?"

Sura was surveying the floor around her. She looked up wide-eyed.

"I think a recording session has started."

Arianne's left eye twitched.

Chapter 14

"A recording session?" Arianne said, "Why did the card disappear?"

"I think we were just zapped as you threw me the card." Sura said, "The system puts you back in the right position with anything you were holding, but the key card must have fallen to the floor after we were put under."

"So where is it now?" asked Arianne, also casting about.

"The cleaning robots probably scooped it up."

"Wait, so we were just out? For how long?"

Sura was already heading towards her desktop. Arianne turned back towards the robot arms, with a creeping awareness that she had just been knocked out, gripped by massive metallic hands and then carted off to sleep in a cold tin can. The robot arms jumped again, and Arianne's skin tightened.

Sura was hitting terminal keys. The arms blinked again.

"A recording session has been started" Sura said, "Six months downtime every ... hmm ... every 3 seconds."

"WHAT? We're only living 3 seconds out of every _six months_?"

"Better than grad school."

Arianne looked towards the testing area, and indeed the scene was changing every few seconds. Patterns of white creatures were being rearranged before her eyes.

"How long has it been running?" asked Arianne.

"About a minute, subjective." Sura glanced over the terminal screen towards the antechamber.

"We've spent most of the last 10 years in those chryo chambers."

Arianne was suddenly overcome with an outrage at her chronometer ramping up, a languid guilt that her investigation deadline was marching towards her and a perverse curiosity in the experiment running by in the testing area.

"But I haven't signed any chryo-inducing privileges" said Arianne.

"Nor me," said Sura "I'm guessing we've been hacked."

"Sleep hacking? But that's illegal - how could someone get that onto the hub?"

"I don't know. Could be military, could be Bloggoration, or the black market."

"Well, let's get out of here!" said Arianne, striding to the door. She tried the handle, but the door wouldn't unlock. The light in the antechamber shifted a fraction.

"We need the key card." said Sura, hitting some more keys. She frowned, then turned abruptly to a red button on the wall and hit it. Both of them looked instinctively up and waited. Nothing happened. Gingerly, Sura picked up a pen from the desk and tossed it into the air. It vanished in mid-spin.

"The safety override isn't working" Sura's words were only whispered in confusion, but finally broke through Arianne's hope that there was a misunderstanding.

"Professor Sura, I believe they is a threat against your life."

Sura barely glanced up.

"Like the others?"

"Ah - you know."

"Of course. Damn." Sura hit the table with her fist. "Get over here!"

Arianne sprinted around to Sura's side of the terminal. Sura was rapidly typing at a command line as she spoke.

"I'm trying to shut the program down manually, but I'm running into version update problems."

"Huh?"

"Every 3 seconds all the software is updated and the interface changes."

As Arianne watched, the entire desktop suddenly changed. The screen became filled with bright icons, then was replaced with bars of menus in shades of slate gray, then changed again to show a three dimensional rendering of a vehicle drifting through a sea of swirling neon clouds. A terminal window spat out some errors and stopped responding.

"And now the base language has changed and my programs have stopped working." said Sura.

"I'm calling Holt." said Arianne, reaching for her pocket terminal. She turned it on, and it immediately ran out of battery.

"Hmm, looks like my terminal didn't have 6 months of juice in it. Can you contact anyone?"

"There aren't actually that many people who work here that aren't in cold storage, or so deep into the Administration that it would take decades for them to respond. I'm sending a message to the tech team."

As soon as Sura had hit send, a reply appeared in the inbox, dated several months ago.

"TSF!"

Sura and Arianne stared at it.

"Do you know what that means? Tech support failure?" asked Sura.

"Er ... actually, maybe it's 'That's so funny'! How informal was your email? We've been here for -" Arianne checked her chronometer "Damn, nearly 50 years. Perhaps conversational norms have changed and they thought it was a joke?"

"It's not all that's changed - most of my tech team have retired. Even if they did get the message and came down here to look, all they would have found is us in the chryo chamber and everything else in working order. They probably assumed that it was a practical joke or that we'd sorted the problem. I'm trying again - I'll be more specific."

The message that came back was simply a standard request for the message to be translated into a current language. Sura hit the desk with her fist.

"Can we cut the power?" asked Arianne.

"The emergency killswitch is outside." said Sura, pointing.

Arianne saw a bright red lever switch in a plastic housing mounted on the wall of the antechamber beyond the glass wall. Above it was a symbol - a red circle with a triangle at its centre.

Arianne sized up the glass wall separating them from the antechamber. She picked up a chair and took a run at the wall. She swung at the glass and felt the impact. The glass wall cracked but didn't shatter. Sura shouted in horror at the sight of her lab being vandalised, but Arianne wasn't about to sit down and discuss this. One more swing should do it. She was halfway through the swing when the crack appeared to instantly heal itself. She hit an intact pane, which cracked again. She hadn't even started the wind up for the next swing before the second crack also magically vanished.

"Space Fuck!" shouted Arianne, throwing the chair aside, which promptly teleported itself back to its original position at a desk. "It's being repaired before I can get another swing in."

"Arianne, you have to stay calm." said Sura.

"What! There's a robotic tentacle that's cramming me into cold storage every three seconds!"

"Right" said Sura, "Pretty soon you're going to starve or succumb to freezing fatigue."

"Huh?"

"When was the last time you ate?"

"This morn- Oh, actually over two centuries ago."

Sura slowly folded her arms, and Arianne suddenly became very aware of the beating of her own heart.

"You don't spend energy in Chryo, but you can't absorb very much in 6 months either. Every time you try to smash a window, you're using energy, and it's not being replaced. At a frequency of 3 seconds, we can't even eat - anything in our stomach will be evacuated before Chryo sleep, and anyway even protein bars would rot as soon as we opened them. But that's probably not what will kill us."

Sura's stare was quite level. Arianne was holding her breath.

"Feel the back of your neck." said Sura.

Arianne slowly brought her hand up to her neck, unsure if she'd find a weird device or a horrible creature. Instead, she just found a patch of dry skin.

"We're going to die of dry skin?"

"Chryo fatigue. No one knows exactly how beta wave zapping works, but when you're zapped, your whole body is just put on pause, ready to be reactivated - circadian rhythm, somatosensory system, short-term memory, everything. It's what makes the whole seamless chryo system work. However, when people started experimenting with this kind of recording system, they found there were limits. If you kept zapping yourself with too little live time in between, your body starts to habituate. After a while, your short-term memory won't carry over."

Sura turned to look at the rows of cages

"Eventually, your body doesn't even retain pulmonary rhythm."

Arianne's left eye twitched.

"It won't be long before we're basically having a mini heart attack every three seconds."

Arianne couldn't think of anything to say, but was distracted by movement on the floor. When she looked, there was nothing there, but a moment later there was another small scuttling thing just to her left. Sura was also looking at the floor around her. Then Arianne saw a pair of figures pop out of nowhere right in front of her. Mice.

"The mice have escaped the testing area." Sura said.

Suddenly, there were a dozen mice crawling around the floor, on the benches and lab tables. Seconds later, they all switched places. Now there were a number around her feet.

"How interesting" Sura said, "They probably got out through the ventilation shafts - I should have fixed it myself. But why would they come in here?"

Arianne felt a scratching on her leg, and jumped away, only to find nothing there. She began wheeling around in paranoia, but the suddenly shifting arrangement of mice started to make her sick. Sura was studying the testing room.

"Their food is automatically replenished, so there's no motive to leave."

Sura automatically reached for a tablet to take notes.

"Professor! We need to think of a way out of here." Arianne shouted.

"Hmm?" Sura wasn't listening.

Arianne closed her eyes and tried to think. Blocking the arms? Too strong. Could she climb into a cupboard? But there were none, and it wouldn't stop her from blacking out. She had to jam the system somehow. What about the visual system?

"Professor! How does the chryo system know where we are?"

Sura's answer was almost lazy as she stared glassy-eyed at the mosaic of mice.

"The cameras in the ceiling."

Arianne spotted two small black domes on the ceiling at opposite ends of the room. She grabbed a chair and climbed onto a desk beneath the first. She swung the chair at the dome. The glass broke. Arianne counted three heartbeats. It stayed broken. She swung again and the dome detached, disappearing before it hit the floor. Underneath was a small camera on an adjustable arm attached by some wires. Arianne detached the wires and stood back. The wires did not magically re-attach themselves, and no replacement dome arrived. The clean-up droids evidently weren't programmed to deal with this.

Arianne scrambled down from the desk and went towards the second camera. Again she struck it twice and revealed the cables. She took a deep breath and unhooked the camera. Nothing happened.

Then everything span around, like she was waking from a dream within a dream. She found herself sitting at Sura's desk with the Professor on the other side. They both blinked in surprise. Sura's affiliation plaque ticked away between them. Sura was forming her lips into an 'o' when they both had the sensation of being jerked awake again. Arianne stood up and turned towards the door, but only managed one step before she was transported back into her seat, in exactly the same posture as before. The dissonance between where she was and where her brain thought she should be left a tense jangling throughout her body.

"Well," Sura said, "it looks like if the robot arms can't see us, we just get zapped anyway and then returned to a default position."

Her words were punctuated by slight slurs every few seconds as her mouth was re-set.

"The chryo droids must have their own cameras." Arianne said, feeling an awful grating feeling as she spoke. "And now we're stuck here"

Arianne cursed herself, and looked up to the cameras. One was just above the next desk over. If she could just re-connect the cables... She took a deep breath and began counting the reset cycles. One, two, three. Immediately as the next jarring sensation began, she leapt from her chair, jumped onto the desk and grasped at the camera. She had time to glimpse the cable before she was sucked back to sitting in front of Sura. She was expecting momentum, so lurched clumsily forwards onto the desk before being snapped back to an upright sitting position.

"Looks like you chipped a tooth." Sura said.

Arianne felt around her mouth with her tongue.

"Without the arm to catch you, you just fell face-first onto the floor when you were zapped. We're probably hitting the floor every few seconds just sitting here."

Arianne screamed in anger, frightening a mouse that happened to appear on the desk in front of her. Arianne was herself startled by the mouse, only to be startled again by having her body glitched back into place.

"Since we're sitting here" Sura slurred, "Let's have a conversation."

Sura folded her arms to try to emphasise her seriousness, but they were instantly broken apart and placed back on her lap. She sighed.

"What do you know about the other murders?"

"What?" said Arianne, with a tear repeatedly falling from her eye like a loading icon.

"The other researchers \- what did they have in common?"

Arianne shook herself and tried to focus.

"They were all level-5 fundees, working on cultural evolution or evolutionary linguistics."

"Were they involved with consultancy work for CAFCA?"

"Yes, Professor Long said something about that."

"Hmm, I thought so."

"What were you working on?"

Sura hesitated before going on. It was difficult to read her face, since it kept jumping back to a neutral expression every three seconds.

"We were asked to look into the problem of cultural evolution" Sura said, "and try to find a way to mitigate its effects."

"You mean like a Nash equilibrium language? Hasn't that been tried?"

"Yes, but our brief was not to work on finding stable languages, but to eliminate the process of cultural evolution altogether."

Arianne attempted to hold a frown, which felt like there were tiny muscular mudslides oozing down her face.

"Cultural evolution" Sura continued, "just like biological evolution, only emerges under certain conditions. Variation in the signals, meanings which are negotiated rather than inherent, imperfect replication and population turnover. Our goal was to find ways of eliminating these factors so that human communication would remain stable over time."

"What? But the process is just an emergent property of cultural systems, you can't stop it without ..."

Arianne's voice trailed off.

"You're right - we can't change the software of culture, but we can change the hardware." Sura said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, isolation causes drift, so we keep people connected all the time."

"Viable e-brains?"

Sura nodded. "A pangalactic net"

"Huh? How can you keep people connected all the time with lightyears between them?"

"The hub would become the centre of a new galactic empire. Chryo technology would be built into individuals. The closer you are to the hub, the slower you live - not unlike our present situation. By the time those living on the hub got a message, it would have reached the outer edge of the empire, too."

"Hang on, what about people on opposite ends of the galaxy? They won't get each other's messages for _ages_."

"Social Relativity:" said Sura, "Your rate of living depends on how much social interaction is going on around you. Live time would be distributed around the galaxy. We've run simulations -"

"Woah. But surely communication systems will still change over time? How could you stop culture evolving?"

"Full biological overhaul. Imperfect learning produces variation between people, so we give people perfect memories. Weak biases can be overridden by cultural consensus, so we give people strong innate preferences. Population turnover causes change, so ..."

Arianne's blood ran cold. The professor was talking about unthinking, unfeeling, undying, predictable robots. Worse than that - just nodes in a gigantic neural net.

"We call them Persisters." Sura said.

"Why would you want that?" whispered Arianne.

Sura's face soured.

"It's almost impossible to be a researcher these days." She said, angrily. "Funding applications have always taken up our time, but now you can't even send a message for pizza without spending weeks of research making sure the people on the other end can understand it."

Arianne had noticed that there were quite a large number of empty Space Noodle cartons on the desk.

"Just look at this hub!" continued Sura, "A monument to runaway bureaucracy. Every piece of paper, every gram of ink intended to oil the machine, but it just clogs it up instead, so they keep throwing paper and ink at it to try and unblock everything. It's crushing our civilization."

Sura attempted to slam her fist on the table, but was re-set mid-thrust, so just wobbled akwardly.

"It's a miracle that we haven't entered a dark age. The PERSISTER project is the only way forward."

PERSISTER? Arianne suddenly remembered the chip that Richard had given her. Fortunately, the constant zapping stopped her surprise registering on her face. So this was at the heart of the murders somehow? But the feelings of motherly support from Professor Sura had gone, and Arianne tried to sidle up to the implications.

"So all the consultants were being targeted - by who?"

"Take your pick" Sura answered, "There are plenty of hub folk who know that their power derives from all these problems. If everyone is synched up and able to communicate, a lot of paper pushers and foresters lose their jobs, not to mention some of the more powerful people. We basically stole a lot of the tech from the Bloggoration, and they'd oppose this project anyway, but I don't know how they could have found out. We wouldn't exactly make our colleagues happy, either - nothing to study anymore. But if either group wanted the project to stop, they could do it much more efficiently. Why go to all the trouble of exchanging dictionaries and training wolves? Why all the drama?"

Sura was starting to rave.

"Why are we being slowly freezer-burned to death, waiting for the moment when we're unable to keep our thoughts straight from one moment to the next, just like those mice, each generation starting all over again with no link to the past?"

Sura began trying to slam her fist on the desk, but just ended up wobbling.

"Professor! We need to stay focussed!"

"Ha! On what? Funding applications?"

"I don't kn-"

Arianne stopped mid-sentence, and it wasn't because her jaw was being snapped shut by robotic arms.

"That's it - we can submit a funding application." Arianne said.

"What? You want to hold a symposium on our predicament?"

"No - we submit a funding application, a really terrible one. It gets rejected, triggers a reanimation condition and busts us out of the chryochambers before the recording system can put us back in here."

Sura blinked and attempted to stare into the distance.

"It could work - even if it's not understood, it'll get rejected." Sura said.

"Can you send an application from your terminal?"

They both looked to the terminal on the desk - an action that required them to keep turning their heads which soon became dizzying.

"I think so." said Sura.

Sura reached for the keyboard, but was instantly reset.

"Try to get in the rhythm." said Arainne, as calmly as she could manage.

Sura took a breath and began bobbing her head until she became synchronised. She lunged for the keyboard. Her first stroke woke the terminal display and she managed to type her password to unlock the screen. Next, she tried to access the main CAFCA database. She managed on the third attempt. The main database commands appeared, but changed font and layout every few seconds as the website theme was updated. Sura tried to catch the 'submission' button, but it kept dodging around the screen and hiding in sub-menus.

"Turn on voice activation!" Arianne said.

Sura managed to do so and took a few breaths after her exertion.

"OK, terminal!" Sura said, "Open existing submissions - submission 596." Sura lowered her tone and spoke to Arianne "I have a half-finished submission I was working on. We can use that as a starting point."

The terminal screen displayed the bones of a funding application form. A deep repulsion arose in Arianne's stomach from seeing the myriad fields and sub-sections.

"Enter collaborator" Sura said. "Karen Arianne, Io University".

Arianne could feel her blood racing. This was not how she imagined her next collaboration. Then again, she didn't expect to be hoping to almighty empty space that her next funding application would be rejected.

"Now," said Sura. "What are the goals of our project?"

Arianne's left eye twitched and she exploded in rage.

"Professor! We don't have time for this!"

"That's easy for you to say," Sura said "this is going on my permanent record - I can't have something that's - that's - you know ..."

"We're going to die if we don't get out of here - just hit send!"

"Well let's at least give it a decent title. I was thinking "Ultimate meanings and -" er ... "Ultimate meanings ...""

Sura stopped mid-sentence, blinked and looked straight at Arianne.

"Sorry, I lost the thread of my ... um."

Arianne was trying to remain calm, which was surprisingly difficult given that she was essentially having a very long nap every three seconds.

"Professor Sura! You're beginning to lose your short-term memory."

"Hmm? Who are you?"

"Professor! Send the application."

"What? Who are you?"

Arianne let out a low whimper before trying to talk to the computer. "OK terminal! Send the application".

Please confirm submission.

"Professor! Give your access code so we can submit the form and get out of here!"

"Eh? Arianne, we can use one of my half-finished submissions as a starting - Arianne! I've got a half-finished submission here -"

"Professor! Give the terminal your access code."

"Eh? Why? What access code?"

"Professor! Your access code!"

"Eh? Who are you?"

"Professorsayyouraccesscodeorwedie."

"Huh? What was I -"

Arianne was about to slam the desk when a mouse appeared on it. Then two mice in the corner. She felt tiny feet on her leg. Suddenly, there was a scrabbling thing in her hair. Arianne shrieked and tried to shake the thing away. But the recording system wouldn't let her even cover her eyes.

"Oh hello. Who are yo -?"

Arianne grabbed Professor Sura's affiliation plaque and tried swatting the mice away. The plaque disappeared from her grip and put itself back on the desk.

"Oh hello, I didn't see you come in, have you come to fix the fans?"

Arianne almost laughed. Right back to the start, only - she stole a glance at her chronometer - 78 years ago. And how long would it go on for? Would they continue to be put down and scooped up after they died? Who would find them? And what would they make of this situation? Two bodies in a perfectly clean lab, surrounded by mice. What signs would they look to in order to unravel their macabre demise? A nice scandal for the tabloids, anyway: two academics dead of exhaustion, their own research turned against them - an iconic image.

Somewhere from the back of her skull came an idea. The kind of wild idea that professor Golden kept telling her to leave aside in order to finish her central work. She blinked, and the idea became just a dim feeling of shapes interlocking. She tried to focus.

"Oh hello, are you - er ..."

The idea came back in full form. Arianne turned to look through the glass wall towards the emergency shut-down switch and the bright red sign above it. She grabbed the affiliation plaque again and dug the sharp edge into the surface of the desk. The plaque reset itself on the desk as if it were repelled by the act of vandalism, but the mark remained. Arianne waited to get back into the rhythm, then lunged for the plaque again and continued the scratch a few more inches. After a few attempts she had scratched out a circle.

Sura was now just letting out a slow, unending moan, her lungs being filled between the few seconds they were awake. Mice were everywhere, blinking in and out of existence like sunspots. Arianne saw bite marks appearing on her arm. She tried to stay focussed as she began drawing the first side of the triangle.

A few times she found herself staring ahead in a daydream.

Sura's drone became punctuated with dry gasps.

Arianne actually remembered starting to forget.
Chapter 15

Blood. A tannic taste. Then the sensation of bubbles slipping past skin. Extreme heat, jangling bones. Being very aware of your hands. Falling. A deafening thud from your heart. Pins and needles, then a sharp pain in the gut. Suddenly, anger, bitterness, doubt and a deep sense of loss. Then the realisation that you have felt these things before. Steel runs through your veins and your hands close into fists. Your head clears.

Arianne's vision was coming back slowly. She was standing in a chryochamber. She managed to make out a few letters on a screen in front of her.

EJECT

Another blink and the screen came into focus.

EJECT

That's all it said. The hood of the chryochamber levered open. Arianne stepped out into the lab's antechamber in a light blue chryo suit. She gritted her teeth against the biting cold of rapid reanimation.

Opposite her was the emergency shutdown switch. A shambolic miniature scaffolding of splintered wood and wire was built up against the wall below it. A dozen mice were standing on top of the scaffolding around the switch. They turned to look at Arianne. At the bottom of the scaffolding a larger group of mice were gathered, staring at her, transfixed. There was a single mouse at the centre of the group, its fur dyed blue and that appeared to be wearing a tall paper hat with the shutdown symbol scrawled onto it. It stood on its hind legs, raised its forelegs into the air and let out a series of squeaks. The crowd went wild and the mice began bolting in all directions, shrieking.

Arianne looked towards the lab. Professor Sura's body was slumped on the desk, the skin on her face grey and dry. Ragged structures were ranged along the shelves of the lab and hundreds of mice were running between them, scratching and lunging at each other with sharpened wire clutched in their paws.

A deep rumbling vibrated through the floor. Flashes through the antechamber's window stole Arianne's attention away from the chaos at her feet. Across the rooves of the administration buildings, she could see laser fire bursting in all directions. A fighter ship was tearing a flaming arc through the sky. Black smoke was spewing out of its starboard engine. It was falling directly towards the lab.

Arianne turned away from the lab and forced her stiff limbs into action. She ran towards the main door, burst through it and pelted down a corridor, absolutely silent except for the sound of her feet slapping against the floor and her heart beating in her ears. The door seemed impossibly far away.

Slap-thump-slap-thump-slap-thump.

She slammed into the door and ripped it open, not daring to look back.

With her first step outside the lab complex a massive explosion erupted behind her and she was sent flying. She crashed into a railing and grabbed at the bars. Her body tipped over the edge and span around, battering against the other side of the railing. Her grip held. Flames and dust blew through the air above her. Below her - tens of stories below - people were running through the square towards the forest of trees. The building opposite her was on fire. Another ship screamed past overhead, pursued by laser fire. Another explosion juddered the railings and Arianne almost lost her grip.

She turned to face the railings and tried to lift her legs onto the lowest bars, but they wouldn't reach. She stretched up with her left hand for the bar above. Her hand was shivering and the polished metal rejected her grip. Arianne let out a furious scream and kicked the wall below her. She began clawing her way up the bars towards the top of the railing. Her arms ached and dust clouded her vision and worked its way into her lungs. She reached the top and heaved herself over the railing, coughing.

She sat, slumped with her back to the railing. An explosion erupted below. A rush followed by a deep, blunt thud, followed by shimmering glass echoes. Arianne found herself mimicking the sound, suddenly blocking an exhalation with her tongue, and realised that she had her eyes closed. She opened them and looked down towards the sound. Terminal-black smoke was escaping from the corner of a building. People were running out, hands above their heads. As she watched, larger figures appeared out of the smoke. They were massive, chunky human forms, but moved with the rapid lumber of machines. Their shoulders and shins glinted. They strode across the square in a spear formation. Suddenly, arcs of laser fire and weapon flare burst from their arms and shoulders, spraying into the air. A ship screamed through the air, sweeping dust and noise around her. The ground fire followed the ship, ripping into the building all around her.

Arianne kicked away from the railing, covering her head. She scrambled away from the edge and brought her back against the outside wall of the lab. The noise died away, but she still had her eyes closed. Through the floor, through the wall, she felt heavy thuds. Footsteps? As she opened her eyes, she saw a huge, hulking figure appear around the corner nearest to her. It stamped into full view. It was a man, clad in fragmented armour. Metallic panels hugged the shin, thigh, forearms, mimicking bones. Silver and black tubes ran between the panels. Arianne realised that they also dug into the exposed flesh beneath the panels. An angular chest plate rose from the torso and dived back towards the neck. At the ridge of the chest plate was a dark metal strip, engraved with a single word.

"PERSISTER"

Above the chestplate was a square frame encasing a human head. Bald and rugged and angry. It turned towards Arianne, and peered at her through dark circles grafted into the eye sockets. The grimace soured. Arianne tried to push herself away, but her calves felt heavy and weak. The body turned to face her squarely, and raised a thick, multi-barrelled machine gun.

In the moment that their eyes locked, a ship descended like a drop down menu alongside the balcony. Its graceful flowing hull glistened with petrol swirls of deep blue and green. It didn't appear to have a cockpit. Or any obvious propulsion engine, for that matter. It just hung there in the air. One of its sides folded and swivelled like an insect's eye, revealing several people inside.

One waved.

Another one was holding a very big gun.

A torrent of wind and gunfire lurched out of the ship. The Persister struck several horrifying poses impossibly quickly and fell to the ground. The ship shrugged off the force of the firing and nuzzled closer to the building. Arianne struggled to her feet as a group of people jumped off the ship onto the balcony. They were all wearing dark combat fatigues and azure jackets which Arianne couldn't help feeling impressed by – a blue so brilliant that it instilled calm and exuded energy. The word "confident" rang in her mind.

Who were these people? The Persisters were clearly bad news, but these people seemed to be attacking the hub, too. But they had saved her from the Persister. After nearly killing her in an explosion. There were parts of her brain desperately encouraging her to think about the conspiracy against the Agency, and also that she had possibly become a figurehead in a mouse proto-religion based on semi-mystical symbols and thereby bootstrapped a culture.

She tried to get a grip on the situation: were these people on her side? What _were_ the sides? But all she could think was _these people know what they are doing_.

The man closest to her looked down the balcony to the smouldering corpse of the Persister, then directly at her.

"Karen Arianne" he said, "We are from the Bloggeration ship _Correlation Machine_. We are rescuing you."

Arianne was dumbfounded.

"Who-"

Good start, but now she had to pick a question.

"How-"

Nope. Finally, Arianne managed to strike a pose from 21st century North American culture halfway between curiosity, disinterest and disgust, best described as " _what the fuck?_ ".

The man looked up briefly, then back at her.

"Did you know there's a typo in your funding application?"

Arianne shifted into " _what the ACTUAL fuck?_ " just as a part of the building opposite them exploded. The bloggeration soldiers were already rushing for the stairwell as the blast faded. They flowed over the body of the Persister, so close to one another that Arianne was sure one would trip, but they just moved forwards quickly and silently. The man in blue motioned towards the door.

"Let's get to cover"

Maintaining outraged confusion while skipping over rubble and dead cyborgs was difficult, but Arianne managed remarkably well. She began her questioning again as they were descending the stairs to the ground floor.

"How did you know who I am?"

"I saw you, facial recognition matched you with your meta profile." he said. "You're looking remarkably well for over 200".

Arianne's blink could have been due to the dust filling the stairwell.

"Wait, when did you scan me?"

"Just now, with my eyes."

Arianne had to stop in mid step and stare in wonder for a second time.

"Wait, you have viable e-brains?"

"Of course!"

"Right now, your brain is connected to a network?"

The man nodded.

"Ten terabyte connection to the _Correlation Machine_ hub, and fifty terabyte connections to each of the members of my team."

Arianne looked down the stairwell below her, and saw the soldiers flow around the structures, individuals breaking formation to cover the corners and then folding back into the line.

"How did you find out about the Persisters?" she asked.

"Ah, is that what they're called?"

"Yes"

"We found out about them when they started firing at us about 30 minutes ago."

"30 minutes ago! But how did you know I was in danger?"

"We didn't. Some local nodes put it together after I saw you: your background in Cultural Evolution, you being unfrozen at the right time and whisked away to the hub, the suspicious deaths: it all pointed to a conspiracy within the Administration."

Suddenly, the whole team stopped in mid-step, paused and laughed out loud at exactly the same time. Then they all continued as in nothing had happened. Arianne looked around desperately for the source of the hilarity.

"What was that?" asked Arianne

"Oh, sorry", said the man in blue, looking sheepish. "Someone just sent around a very funny picture of a space cat. What were you saying?"

"So you're not here to stop the Persisters?"

"Well, that wasn't our _primary_ objective, but it's been bumped up the priority schedule."

They reached the ground level. The team burst out into the sunlight and smoke and took defensive positions against raised flowerbeds, ornamental walls and a small fountain in the middle of the square. The only noise was distant shouting and a weak alarm gasping for breath in a billowing office to one side. Arianne and the leader, as she assumed he must be, made a dash for cover against a large abstract sculpture of a snake eating itself. In the open spaces of the plaza, a few bodies lay contorted and still.

The leader turned to Arianne

"So, how did they know we were coming?" he asked.

"Who?"

"The Persisters. Some sort of Seldon simulation? Or they hacked our schedule network?"

"Huh?"

"Did they subscribe to our twitter feeds?"

"What? How would I know?"

"Because you built them."

"WHAT?" said Arianne

"You and the other cultural evolutionists. You built the Persisters to destroy the Bloggeration."

"No! That's ... it wasn't me - I don't know anything."

The leader pulled from a holster a moulded block of dark material about the size of a pistol grip with one side flashing shiny metal. There appeared to be some sort of aerial and various buttons along one side. He pointed it at Arianne.

"You know what they're called." he said in a level tone.

Arianne found herself attempting to stare at the muzzle of the device being pointed at her, only to find that she wasn't sure where it was. She shook herself.

"In case you didn't notice" she said "they were shooting at _me_ as well. And you see that body over there?"

Arianne motioned towards a figure laying face down against the concrete. Memories crawled in shivers over her brain: _I love you ... stupid bitch ..._

"That's an employee of the Administration."

The whole team turned to look at where she was pointing.

"They're shooting at _everyone._ "

Helpfully, a barrage of fire hit the statue around them. A large number of chunky figures had appeared at the other end of the Plaza. The Bloggeration team was taking cover and returning fire almost instantaneously. The leader hardly flinched.

"Hmm, the local net is confused. If they're not here to protect the hub, and they're not trying to stop us getting the article, then what's their objective?"

"What's the article?" Arianne said "Something that can destroy the Persisters?"

"What? No, no, like a journal article."

"What?"

"A journal article. From the CAFCA repository."

A distant part of Arianne's brain vaguely wondered at what level of recursion the current series of misunderstandings had reached.

"Eh?"

"That's why we're here." Said the leader "A node wanted access to a paper on sensory memory in Onhian shriek-wolves, but it wasn't open access, so we're here to extract it."

Arianne's left eye twitched.

Nothing happened for a full second. The leader was smiling helpfully.

At this point, Arianne's eye did a double-twitch, which then appeared to reverberate around her face at an alarming rate. A paparazzi brain imager (of which there were many embedded on the hub) would have seen a remarkable thing happen inside Arianne's skull. Almost every part of her brain lit up at once. Repeated cascades of activation ran into each other and rebounded, flooding across white matter and leaking across lobes. Axons blew out. There were motor commands trying to get into the primary visual area, and signals from the thalamus lost in her phonological loop. Her amygdala was trying to speak to her superior frontal gyrus, but it was currently in a conspiracy with Broca's area against regions of the outer cortex.

This supernova of thought was caused by Arianne searching for a word. A very specific word. A word that expressed every kind of communicative confusion that was possible to have in practice and theory. Every what, why, wherefore, whoozit, whadjamean, whatzitcalled, what-the-fuck ever uttered; every pother, bother, fluster, flap and fuddle ever flet; all the air pressed between exasperated lips, all the bewilder-winced eyes, all the facepalmed faces, open-mouth mouths and jaunted jaws in the universe, compressed into a single concept. It was a word that simultaneously referenced every breakdown of understanding, every tragic mix-up, every bungled exposition in all of human cultural history. An archetype of ancient myths of turmoil triggered by tangled talk and a post-modern searing satire on severed speech. It was onomatopoeic and utterly robust to noise or historical change. It was universally understood, children could fast-map it, and domesticated animals got the gist. It expressed every level of puzzlement from an embroiled perplexion to a bemused dither. It was a fusion of confusion. It was a word that was entirely unambiguous, and made interactionally relevant, without delay, a full, direct account and explanation of everything from first principles.

But while the form was universal, the intonation was entirely personal. Arainne's brain was firing up to press her staggering confounded mess into the suprasegmental layers. The gravelliness of her voice put into perspective the utter ridiculousness of the whole academic system which actively worked against any sort of progressivity. The pitch contours were an operatic lament of lives lived – or not lived – being carted around the galaxy, with every decision revolving around the incomprehensible hub she was now on. A lament, and indictment of herself and everyone else, for entering a system that separates people and puts the need to exhibit a capacity for new ideas above care. And with the final twist of the tongue, the word would become a pun on a name. A name she was calling in a parallel dimension without administrative super-beings and cold, empty departure rooms.

Against all odds, Arianne's brain found the word, and it was planned, launched and spoken.

Unfortunately, a very loud explosion stopped anyone else from hearing it.

"What?" said the leader.

Arianne leapt at him and put her hands around his throat. She got a few good wrings out before a searing pain gripped her abdomen and she fell to the floor. She saw the leader re-holstering the dark pistol grip. Her muscles were not responding, but she didn't feel like moving anyway. All of the energy had left her body.

The leader was peaking over the concrete statue, and firing his pistol. Suddenly he froze, then laughed out loud, then shook his head and went back to firing. Arianne was casually wondering if they were safe. She turned her head and to see one of the Bloggeration soldiers standing completely in the open, pacing around in a contemplative manner. Laser fire scorched the ground in front of him, and he jumped, looked like he was shocked to find himself in a fire-fight, and dove for cover. Behind him, another solider was apparently taking a picture of himself next to the fountain. Another had taken a laptop out and was laughing at something on the screen. Two other soldiers were having a debate about something. Amidst the sound of machine guns, Arianne caught the word "cupcake".

She looked back up to the leader. He was scratching his head, looking into the middle-distance, as if nothing was wrong. Arianne tried to get her jaw to work.

"What's going on? Why have you stopped fighting?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah – the battle."

"Yes, the terrifying cyborgs trying to kill us"

The leader peeked over the edge of the sculpture again.

"Well, of course" said the leader "... it's just ... well, someone posted a very interesting problem to one of the net boards."

The leader relaxed a little

"Our group wrote some code years ago that I'm pretty sure could work. It'll only take a minute..."

Arianne's eyes attempted to roll.

"... though someone should really be writing a blog post about new Vastion La Quana paper ..."

Arianne's arm was slowly calming down, just in time for her to start punching the floor.

"Oh" continued the leader "a Betelgeuse node has just released a database of space traffic accident stats. I wonder if ..."

Arianne managed to turn onto her side. The leader stood up and started strolling towards the other soldiers.

"Hey D, have you got that repository of - "

He was cut short by a shower of bullets slamming into his chest. He flailed and did nearly a full somersault in front of Arianne. She managed to sit up in time to see two of the other soldiers hit by flanking fire.

_Fucking Bloggeration,_ thought Arianne.

"Some people you just can't reach."

A rocket-propelled grenade spiralled across the air above her and hit the wall of the building to her left, sending a shower of smoke and rubble. As Arianne turned to shield her face, she saw a small black rectangle on the floor next to her. A personal terminal – the leader must have dropped it. Not that it was much good against cyborgs with heavy weaponry. She supposed she could get on the Hub network, but what was she going to do? Submit a grant application for tactical cover?

She felt a resigned laugh begin to wash through her. So she would never become a real researcher. So what? All this served her right for even trying. Perhaps she deserved to die by the hands of over-engineered scientists, in the middle of nowhere in space, alone – hungry, even. Arianne reflected with almost a proud stoicism that she hadn't eaten anything in over two hundred years. With a smile, she realised her last meal had been a packet of crisps from the department vending machine on Io. She'd been munching them as she submitted her thesis. She was thinking about getting lunch, but she'd submitted, her grant application was done, and the chryo-chamber was just down the hall. _May as well save some credits,_ she had thought, _I'll be back online in a month or two_.

As smoke streaked across the plaza, she began to think about what her last thought would be. Bits and pieces of all the Standard Culture Canon began filtering through to her. Hundreds of thousands of years of literature, music, licks, paintings, stories, skits, history, philosophy. Any number of fine choices for contemplation, and all pan-galactically recognised and approved. And, she suddenly realised, nothing to do with her at all. She had never created anything worth passing on.

_Ah well_ , she thought. And decided that would do.

Chapter 16

Arianne's eyes began to shut slowly, as if ready for sleep. However, she noticed that her hand was not joining in on the whole inevitable Zen vibe. It was reaching for the tablet, all by itself. It seemed to have had an idea. The other hand joined in, and helped to pick up the terminal. Under her puzzled brow, they began typing. In a few moments, she had patched through to the Hub comms system, and had found a line to Sergeant Holt. As Holt answered, the idea made itself know to her.

"Holt – what's up?" said Arianne.

"Arianne? You're still on the Hub?" Holt's voice was hoarse.

"Only just."

"Your ID chip was detected leaving the hub on a transporter. We've been trying to find you."

"I was having a chat to Professor Sura."

"Look" said Holt, "I've got a lot to deal right now. Between a Bloggeration invasion and a cyborg uprising, the printers have stopped."

"How is _that_ a problem?" asked Arianne.

"Apart from the REF stocks crashing, the momentum from the printers was stabilising the hub, we're in danger of drifting into comet lanes."

A loud explosion came through the terminal speakers. Above her, a few kilometers along the rim of the hub, she saw a building exploding.

"Hey Holt – I think I can see you." Said Araianne.

"Arianne!" Holt sounded annoyed "For f- ... did Sura tell you _anything_ about these cyborg things?"

"Yes, and I can stop them. I'm sending you an application form."

"Blistering Space Radiation, Arianne! There's no need go through the official channels – just tell me!"

"No – it's a custom grant application form. I want you to post it up and release all the CAFCA funding you possibly can. Right now."

Arianne thumbed some extra commands.

"What?" said Holt, "There won't _be_ a CAFCA unless we stop those things."

Another explosion erupted behind her, and she could feel the heat on her back.

"Holt, you're going to have to trust me." she said.

"Arianne, I ..."

"Listen," said Arianne, "I'm part of the investigation committee, right? They can do this kind of thing."

"Yes, but _this kind of thing_ needs a group vote."

"Sura is dead, I'm the only one on the committee still alive."

"Hmm."

"Holt – just do it."

On the other side of the line, Holt let out an anguished sigh.

"All right, what's the harm?" he said "I'll use the Urgency Grants Mechanism. I just got your template."

"Every field and sub-field, with as much funding as possible." said Arianne

"OK, try to find some cover. Out."

As the line dropped, Arianne heard heavy footsteps crossing the plaza. Regular bursts of fire raked the ground around her, and she instinctively drew herself up into a tight ball against the sculpture. Many of the Bloggeration soldiers lay still on the ground around the fountain. She could see long shadows of the Persisters slide across the ground on either side of her pathetic cover. She tried to keep still, hoping the they would not see her. The footsteps grew louder.

Someone was firing on the Persisters, drawing their attention. Three appeared on her right, and one walked right past her on the other side, carving out staccato arcs on the buildings with its gattling gun. Arianne was sure that it would turn on her, but it continued mechanically onwards. The three on her right had taken cover around the fountain.

The terminal in her hands started beeping. She scrambled to try and turn the sound off. The three Persisters swivelled around slowly like gun turrets. Gun turrets carrying guns.

Arianne glanced at the terminal - a torrent of notifications streamed down it.

Call for funding: SDAI Phase 3 outline proposals

Call for funding: Urban Transformations Research Call

Call for funding: Secondary Data Analysis Initiative Phase 1

Call for funding: Tree Health & Plant Biosecurity initiative

Call for funding: ORA \- Open Research Area in Europa

Call for funding: Use of 'cheerio' dying out in asteroid belts?

...

One of the Persisters broke from the group and began advancing towards her. With every step, Arianne was sure it would fire. But it kept coming, to within five paces, four paces. Arianne was entirely frozen against the cold concrete. It swung its gun aside, and lunged at her, picking her up by her neck and hoisting her into the air. It held her face to his. She could see its jaw grinding slowly and smell a sickly sour blend of spit and iron. Its enormous hand was cold marble around her throat. Her legs flailed helplessly above the ground. It drew back its other arm in a fist. Arianne shut her eyes.

A silence fell, and the terminal in Arianne's hand bleeped again. The Persister hesitated. Arianne opened one eye, and saw a light flickering on a metal cube protruding from the Persister's temple. Its eyes swivelled up, then around to the side. Its grip relaxed ever so slightly.

The Persister looked over at its two colleagues. They had stopped firing and were also looking concerned. Suddenly, the Persister lost all interest in Arianne, letting her fall to the floor and backing away. Dozens of tiny lights were rippling across the Persister's skull. It scanned the buildings around it, then started to stomp towards one of them. The other two abandoned their weapons and began running towards one of the administration buildings. One shoved the other.

Arianne noticed that there was no sound of gunfire, just the lazy grumble of fires coming from the edges of the plaza. The silence was interrupted by the sound of a printer starting up on one of the floors above her. From another window, paper sheets were slowly spilling into the air.

Another gang of Persisters sprinted past Arianne. They were also jostling each other, apparently desperate to get somewhere before the others. But as she watched, their movements slowed. She had to blink to make sure she was seeing it right – they weren't just dropping to a jog, they were going into _slow motion_. Within a few moments, they were barely moving. Only the gyros in their exoskeletons kept them from toppling.

Arianne stood up, gingerly. She looked about her. Hoards of hulking bodies glinted around her, undulating softly. A pair of Persisters were fighting hand-to-hand in invisible treacle. Arianne took a few steps towards the one nearest to her. Its face was contorted in panic. She waved her hands at it, but it was trapped in slow motion.

Arianne walked right up to the mass of flesh and steel. Sweat was pooling up in its dark eyes faster than it could blink. She walked behind it and gave it a good shove. It fell like a statue onto the ground. All around her, Persisters were turning to stone.

_Hmm,_ thought Arianne, _I wonder if anywhere around here does falafel._

Chapter 17

Apparently, galactic centres of power and influence had a reasonably good density of falafel vendors. Arianne couldn't see an 'open' sign, but then again most of the façade had been blown apart. She could see a group of people cowering in the back of the kitchen. She walked up to one of the tables, which still had blooms of paper full of falafel sandwiches and skinny chips.

"Is anyone going to finish this?" she called to the terror-stricken group.

She shrugged and stuffed a chip into her mouth. Chips were _good_.

"Arianne?"

There was a head above the counter calling her name. Apparently, she had left all of her perceptual affordances in a different solar system, because it took her a long time to recognise her old study-mate from Io.

"Richard?" she said, through a mouthful of fried space potato.

"You're alright!" he said, stepping towards her. "Are the Persisters shut down?"

"Not exactly – they're working just fine."

"But – they've stopped moving. How did you do that?"

"Well, they're built to be researchers, so they need funding. I released an application form for massive grants."

"Ah ha!" said Richard, "an application form so complex it fried their brains?"

"Nah, it only had one question."

Arianne cleared her throat and struck a dramatic pose

" _What uniquely qualifies you for this grant?_ "

She took another chip. Richard had not moved a muscle, so Arianne explained.

"Everyone was trying to make themselves special, but the synchronisation network was trying to keep them the same. It went into overdrive, and the social relativity mechanism kicked in and slowed everyone down until they weren't moving anymore. I expect Holt and the security services will tidy up."

Richard's face collapsed in relief.

"I'm just glad you're ok." he said.

For a second, Arianne saw the young scamp in the eyes of the old man before her. But his smile faltered.

"Richard"

"Hmm?"

"Usually, when people are told wildly improbable things outside their understanding, they say things like 'huh?' or 'what?' or 'I'm sorry I don't know anything about an insane cyborg plan'"

"Um ..."

"You knew about the Persisters – why didn't you tell me?"

"I tried – I gave you the Persister tag - but they were watching me, I couldn't do anything"

Some memory was trying to get Arianne's attention, what was she missing?

"You could have stopped me from going." Arianne said

"I'm sorry Arianne – if I'd known ..."

Arianne was sure that she was overlooking some small detail – some loose end.

"So why are you on the hub, Richard?"

Richard fumbled with his hands. Ah yes, now she remembered: there was a serial murderer targeting researchers of cultural evolution. And absolutely none of it had been resolved by the whole Persister thing. Arianne desperately tried to gather the pieces in her head: someone was trying to kill cultural evolutionists, but they were trying to build Persisters to replace the CAFCA empire. Obviously, CAFCA wanted to stop this, so that gave them a motive. But wasn't it CAFCA that had hired Professor Golden and Professor Sura and all the others in the first place? Maybe to expose them, so they could be picked off? But then why had they hired Arianne to investigate the murders?

"Did you know that Sura was being targeted?"

"Well – I ..."

Suddenly, a deep, drawling voice came from behind Arianne.

"Don't be so modest, Richard,"

Arianne span around. Sitting at one of the tables, calmly picking his way through a large chicken shawarma, was the linguistics magnate Vastion La Quana. Arianne blinked hard. What was _La Quana_ doing here? How did he know Richard? Was that tzatziki on his chin?

"After all" La Quana continued "you came up with so many of the ideas."

Arianne XXXXX

"Ideas for what?"

"For the scenarios, of course."

Arianne turned back to Richard. His face had paled so that he looked much older, but his expression was that of a small boy distraught with shame.

"The murders?" said Arainne, "It was you?"

"No! I just came up with -"

"Professor Golden? You had her killed?" Arianne half-whispered the final word.

Richard's face slid into a scowl.

"How could you understand?" he spat "You weren't around – you don't know what it's like now."

"What does _that_ mean?"

La Quana spoke again, drawing all eyes and ears towards him with a soft, deep voice.

"You don't realise, Arianne – most don't. Small funding is disappearing– galactic credits are being sucked up by bigger and bigger grants. It's all going to the hard sciences. Funding for cultural evolution and linguistics is drying up. In public, of course, I say that our field is blossoming, but it'll all be gone in a few centuries. What we needed was a way of influencing the people who make the decisions."

"So you were terrorising the fundies?"

"Oh no – the funding councils? They give the go-ahead, but they're really just obeying the people who are really in charge."

La Quana made a knowing face and brought his finger up like a conductor's batton, a gesture borrowed from the crescendo of a keynote lecture, just before the prestigious explanation. It was so practiced that hardly anyone noticed that he had knocked over a cup of blue shlushy.

"No, I'm talking about the _public_."

La Quana's hand span and opened.

"They drive demand. If something's popular, it'll get funded. The actual merit of any project counts for very little – what the fundies care about is whether it'll please the public, become a hot topic, whether it's fashionable. Just think about all the evolutionary psychology work on sex and attraction. If CAFCA just funded projects that were actually useful to the galactic community, like space elevators and nano-technology, there would be an uproar. CAFCA wouldn't last a year."

Arianne's eyes widened in horror.

"You mean ... the study of cultural evolution isn't sexy?"

"I know, it's difficult for us to understand" La Quana said, "but the average person has no interest whatsoever in how language works. What it needs is a sense of mystery and intrigue. People needed to feel drawn to it, like a good - "

"Murder mystery?" said Arianne.

"I was going to say hyper-niche satirical space opera, but yes. Our plan was to raise the field of cultural evolution in people's consciousness. To give it an edge, to make it dangerous and exciting."

Finally, La Quana wiped the sauce from his chin and looked up, thoughtfully.

"Hmm" he said, "I've just realised that cultural evolution may be the one field where you can be doing research while applying for funding."

Richard hastily made a note on his terminal.

"But now" La Quana continued, "you've uncovered an even better story for people to tell their grandchildren around the plasmafire. I am impressed. That's why I'm talking to you, Doctor Arianne. I'm thinking of recommending your limitless potential to ... my employers. I'm sure we can work together to ensure that people start telling the _right_ story."

Arianne suddenly got angry. Despite all that she'd been through, none of it had felt personal – no-one was targeting _her_ , she had just been in the wrong place in several of the wrong times. She hadn't been thinking beyond the present moment, even if the present moment had been months long in some cases. She had just been able to react. But now someone was talking about the future – her future. One that was supposed to have particular aims, purposes and objectives.

"Look, _G-man_ ," she said, "I rank converting humanity into undying cyborgs quite a long way above a few murders in the whole scheme of evilness, but ..."

She finished the sentence with a flare of hands. She turned away from them and started walking towards the door. She just wanted to get away from this place, now. To have time to think, to absorb everything that had happened. To have a _sit down_.

"I'm quite confident that we'll be able to find you a post-doc."

At the sound of that tiny word, Arianne felt her heart actually skip a beat. She stopped in the doorway. Behind her, La Quana was continuing in his deep baritone.

"After all, I have a new Gravitation grant, and the new department isn't going to terraform itself."

Working on a Gravitation project?

"You've proved yourself to be a decisive person" said La Quana "So I don't expect you'll have any trouble deciding what to do."

Arianne stared straight ahead into the dusty street. Her left eye didn't even twitch a little.

Karen Arianne will return in _Space Funding Crisis II: Transister_

