[X] The Configuration for Progress and the Communion's new government are both revolutionaries, so it's no surprise they found common ground. Not quite a union, but a strong alliance that might, one day become a human-alien state. Echo Chamber and the People-of-the-Shallows are now the Chrysanthemum's bailiwick against alien powers. It's a little bitter to see this conflict still exist, if only at a low level, but it might be the best thing for the People-of-the-Shallows, who will now receive all the aid that the Chrysanthemum can give them to hold against the Communion and the Nereidi, two sets of similarly temporary beings now joined together.
The cafe sits at the top of a slope, amid massive stands of cleyra and beech trees. You can smell flowers and the thick scent of sap. From the cafe's awning, you look down over a sunny valley of white rock and dark ruins.
The nine of you sit around a large wooden table with a silver cake stand in the middle. Rainbow-cored sponges, glazed fruit tarts that glitter in the light and heavy brown muffins stand atop it in profusion, together with small sandwiches and other savouries. Beside the food there are gleaming china plates, silverware and a pair of ornate carafes with a fussy crystal gleam.
"So this is what Hera is like, huh? Everyone always has fancy parties to eat?" Luyu still hasn't completely come off Nereidi fashion and has been wandering around the ships in short shorts and bikini tops. Currently she's occupying a pair of couches, draping over herself like big cats in the sun.
"It's really high up." Shenla says. "I always wanted to go to the mountains back home but they're mostly pretty unstable." The Communion insisted on joining you. Practically invited herself along, and managed to convince the others. You're still not totally sure about it. If she's killed, she'll die for real. On the other hand, she wants to, and that kind of courage could be useful. As could the ability to derail a firefight by shouting out her status.
"This is the countryside." Mirareki says. "I wanted to show off something that's not the Conurbation because that's all anyone ever thinks about."
The space you're in isn't actually that large.If you were to walk more than fifty metres in most directions you'd hit a wall, but the screens and airflow and acoustics have been carefully calibrated to yield the precise feel of this alpine cafe on Hera. Mirareki may dislike her homeworld but she's gone hard on replicating it.
The situation you have left behind on Nereid is tense but promising. The Communion-Nereidi axis was predicted by very few observers but has rapidly advanced into retrospective common sense the way shocking political developments so often do, and granted you the singular pleasure of a visibly irritated Mara in the aftermath of the revelation that the planet was moving away from, rather than into, Chrysanthemum influence. She and her colleagues have been reduced to the astropolitical consolation prize of becoming the protectors of the Shallowers - but while they're unhappy with that, it might be one of the better results the Shallowers themselves could have hoped for, surrounded as they are by far stronger local powers.But you didn't go to Nereid to get involved in Nereidi politics. You're now briefing on Hera. Chalita was seen there. Either she's still there, or something associated with her was there, and she left somehow. Either way it brings you closer to your old self. Closer to the confrontation that's been building up, sometimes unnoticed, since you came out of the tank.
Mirareki, Heran native, is the centre of all this. Her usual jacket and one piece ensemble has been replaced by an elaborate confection that made you stop and spend several seconds taking a mental inventory when she walked in wearing it.
The outfit has a long train of white cloth and a high collar of living flowers, ornamenting a bikini-esque core with a short bustier and insubstantial lacy drapes. Everything is white but decorated with colourful jewels. She wears an opera glove on one arm and a thigh high on the opposite leg, both hooked over a digit rather than actually covering them. Her feet are suffering in vertiginous gladiator heels. Small bands and pieces of jewellery, flowers and lace decorate strategically exposed skin to fetching effect, even if it does seem like it's an attempt to see how you can wear the most technically separate pieces of clothing as possible. Certainly you couldn't really manoeuvre in it without losing the train or having your breasts pop out of the top.
It's not like anything you've seen Mirareki wear before. She even has full-body makeup subtly (the only subtle thing) shaded to play her skin into the outfit. You wonder what toolkit she used to apply it so elegantly.
"Did you really get to this point just by institutionalising a fashion competition?" asks Shenla, who is having trouble concealing her combination of disbelief and ogling.
"Have you ever read about the evolution of the peacock?"
"What's a peacock?"
"Nevermind. Anyway, not all meals are this fancy, no. Normal day meals are kind of boring. But if you're at a social event you're supposed to put in something like this. Even if it's just a small party. If you're in the day it's supposed to be light and fuel you up for activity. It's either a competition, or it's fuel for one."
"So people never have informal social meals?" Atet is wearing her white medical skinsuit. The silvery diplomat mask still attached to her face gleams in the sun. Your anti-glare system neutralises the shine.
"Not anymore." Mirareki says. "I mean, they claim to, but you're always watching the board."
"So basically." Reizay says. "It's more about positive than negative reinforcement?" She has a deeply thoughtful expression you're unsure about.
Mirareki makes a face. "They come to the same thing in the end, as we all found out quickly enough." she pushes her hair up and sighs. "But we're going to have to live with it if we want to operate there."
"Is it really that important?" Luyu asks. "We've got a deep ship. Our own major production hub. Surely we can just buy our way through any scarcity issues that have been created by the social credit system."
"The system doesn't really let you do that." Mirareki selects a cake and begins to cut it into neat slices. Reizay watches her, her hands twitching through the same motions, perhaps guided by a teaching program. "That'd just lead to unlimited private accumulation and nobody wants that. Things that would be useful to us, like fast public transport are only accessed by fast credit scores or certain diplomatic visas which we won't be able to obtain. High social credit scores are also the only way to buy privacy. Supposedly because if you have a low score you need to bring it up."
Juketta, sitting opposite Luyu, sips at her coffee. She's still wearing her carefully cut robes. They'll probably pass on Hera. "So," she says. "In essence, in order to advance our social credit scores, we either have to appear like we're working towards some great work, or you have to be behaving with formal politeness."
"That's about the size of it." Mirareki looks around.
"And there's no chance of the protests succeeding?" Shenla asks. She's been most into the Heran protests. You get the feeling she is, even more than you, a total news hound. Not that you haven't been watching too. The story of Cerasea, a girl raised in an Outlier commune at the edge of one of Hera's mega cities, rising to triumph and then being denied her prize is simply too good to pass up.
Mirareki shakes her head. "No way."
*****
Hera is, like most of the systems of the paradise zone, a trinary. Three stars looped together in a complicated orbit. It's unclear why the Precursors set things up the way they did, or how they made the orbits and goldilocks zones so stable. Gardenian astronomers have long logged tiny deviations from the predictions of successive theories of gravity and failed to find any explanation for them. The garden was perhaps not a place where the Precursors lived, but a great work of art, which explains why planets are used rather than the far more efficient megastructures.
Hera-B is currently the centre of civilization there. Hera-A is still mostly uninhabited, the Underwater War and subsequent battles with the River saw it heavily irradiated and filled with automated weapons. Hera-C has a population of only about twenty billion spread out across several worlds, including one which was xenoformed by another of the ancient civilizations that once lived in the Garden. It's a centre of development, but not a place where people actually live.
Hera-B, specifically Hera-B3, locally called Magrana is the place that most people think of when they think of Hera. Actually, what they think of is the megacity, old as the exile and partly ruined, which covers more than half of the primary supercontinent. That was where Chalita was seen. Mara's intelligence has her in several places around the Suspension Arcade, the great loop of electromagnetic lift train which structures human civilization in the megacity. She had meetings with local government officials, Chrysanthemum agents and various other assorted people. It all sounds fascinating. You just wish you could get there more quickly.
The Deep Ship journey from Nereid to Hera is about thirty days. The massive old ship is large and very fast over a long distance. Still, you find the wait interminable. Surely Chalita will have concluded her business and departed by the time you actually reach Hera. Will she have left a trail?
You long for the confrontation. To finally have it out with your old self. But until then you just have to carry on. Learning the lessons that Mirareki wants to teach and working on what data Mara gave you. While you travel there's nothing to do but train, and try to relax. The collective meal you're having now under the grey sky of FTL space was supposed to be both of those things but you're finding it excruciating. The dining garden is nice, at the very top of the ship, with the rolling storm of FTL space overhead and the vibrant green of carpet grass under your feet.
"Everyone should make sure to pass things around as much as possible," says Reizay. "Promptly passing dishes during a formal meal gives you social credit points. Actually, it'd be best if we set up the table so that things people wanted were as far from them as possible."
"The main thing is to just avoid being impolite." Mirareki says. She's kitted you all out in fussy frozen fountains like she was wearing before. You have billowy sleeves (not connected to anything else) that it's distracting trying to keep out of the soup. The entire outfit is like dancing in zero-G. It's not too difficult but looking good takes skill. "Don't be clumsy with your food. Imagine that there wasn't a force field between it and the air. Before each meal there's a prayer. It can really be to any goddess you like."
"It should be to Nike," says Reizay. "That gives more points."
"Once food is served, you want to eat each course in a set time and with the right tools. There's a ritual order to placement of cutlery so you need to get that down before you start. You can't just go outside in."
Luyu sighs and looks at her food. "You realise this is crazy right Mirareki? This makes the Sacred Band's ritual feasts look like a workday lunch."
"Why do you think I left?"
"We've got some company on our way," says Shenla. "I was checking ship spotter feeds and cross referenced them with the long range sensors. Both the fleet that was near Nereid and the stuff that was around Scythia have pulled out and are heading for the Chrysanthemum logistical facilities near Hera, to refit and rearm at the Chrysanthemum's expense.
"Huh." Luyu frowns. "Isn't there a big naval exercise going on around Hera too?"
"Yeah. Four Winds 23. One of the big Chrysanthemum combined training ones. A full Multi-system assault drill. There's probably a couple of thousand combat ships in the area right now. I wonder if they're worried about something."
*****
You sit in your bunk at the train station and read. Pretty soon you're going to need to go and start building a wardrobe, but for now, you're still in a period of study, getting used to the history of Hera.
Hera is an old system. It's not the oldest in the central area of Chrysanthemum Space, The first four colonies remain: Themyscira, Lycastia, Chadesia and Libya. Hera was, by all history, one of the second wave. Slightly younger than Haraway or the Nerieae worlds. That ancient history is barely relevant now though. It's been almost six thousand years since the Exile.
But Hera has always been a rich core system. It wasn't quite the first to emerge from the chaos of the end of the Fifth Epoch, but it was among them, and considerable amounts of infrastructure was salvaged.
It was a natural place for something like the Heterarchy to emerge. Top worlds faced with losing status always go a little crazy. In Hera's case, it was the perception loss in the economic and social status compared to nearby worlds such as Athene and Aphrodite, and the growing, semi-Dark Rose aligned power of Thetis. Complacency had to be done away with, vigour and a healthy competitive spirit were needed. The Heptarchy set various parts of society to compete against one another, both at an individual and collective level in order to drive greater innovation and make people work harder. Success wouldn't, its advocates said, of course, create a hierarchy or artificial scarcity. It would just give people perks and esteem, all in the spirit of friendly competitiveness.
This social credit system was operated and judged by the then supposedly neutral church of Nike, which extended a version of the AI systems it used to judge the excellence of soldiers into civilian life.
However, in the century that followed, this method of competition grew increasingly stifling, as people were judged in more and more aspects of their lives. The massive availability of data also led to the growth of other institutions to process and utilise that data, and an increased bureaucratisation of society. Weighted voting power was also brought in, and many considered it to be even more of a corruption of the system. General surveillance, the routine use of data gained from it against dissidents and rivals, and the increasing levels of artificial scarcity imposed by certain prizes led to public disquiet and a gradual loss of trust in the church. But not enough to actually dislodge it. Too many people benefit from the system, or have just structured their habits around it, to go to the bother of actually replacing it, and so it stumbles on.
So much for the status quo. What is required is that you blend in, and that first of all means clothing. Mirareki and Reizay have spent a while prepping up one one of the manufacturing bays to produce a whole warehouse of different outfits for you to use. When you arrive you find a huge warehouse style space with hundreds of different outfits of various formality layered on articulated dummies that let their range of movement be tested, and Reizay and Mirareki not quite having an argument.
"I've reverse-engineered some of the algorithms." Reizay says. "You can get a minor boost to your social credit score by having five, twenty one or eleven buttons on your outfit. Then you can add a bit more from having certain ratios between elements, like this one between skirt and stocking hems…"
Miraeki sighs. "All this shit is so minor as to be hardly worth bothering with. We're not trying to win a competition, just be polite."
"Small numbers add up! If you can get the system to assess your clothing more often via route planning it will rapidly become significant."
Mirareki's fraying cool is saved by the arrival of the others. She rounds on them with a deeply pained smile. "Alright, you're here. Let's work this out. So we're going to need at least three outfits each, though I guess we'll have more. The Ettas can just wear their robes, those are always appropriate, but there's strict rules about dress formality on Hera. If you wear the wrong outfit in the wrong situation that's impolite and will cost you, and anyone who doesn't punish your impoliteness points. So you need to make sure to change into the right outfit at the right time. Fortunately there are changing pods in most places, but you should all know the rules so you don't get caught in the wrong outfit at the wrong time.
"Huh." Luyu says. "This might not be so bad after all." You don't know if you agree.
You spend the next thirty minutes getting a lecture on Heran fashion rules to go with the brain download skill package Mirareki has prepared, along with a whole set of optimisation notes from Reizay that you pretend you're going to read later.
It boils down to the fact that there are three "grades" of outfits. Formal, like Mirareki was showing off at the first dinner, semi-formal like Mara on the Yacht, and work outfits, which are mostly just bikinis or tunics.
Formal outfits are so rigid and complex that you only have a few choices, which you'll need to let Mirareki and Reizay game out.
Primary Colour
[ ] Mostly white, implying purity of intention
[ ] Mostly black, implying breadth of vision
Secondary Colour
[ ] Mostly red, implying passion
[ ] Mostly blue, implying reason
Living or not?
[ ] Mostly living flowers
[ ] Mostly smart silk
Semi Formal: For social events, education, and leisure.
[ ] Your cool living flower dress which you haven't been able to wear properly yet and now works only as semi-formal wear
[ ] A Liaison style super multi-piece dress, with two piece top, train, collar and hair flower, like cut down - and considerably more practical - formal wear.
[ ] A fountain dress, a single piece of cloth flowing loosely from collar to thighs. Usually backless.
[ ] A tributary dress, an intricate multi thread flow of cloth that begins at the collar and flares to a skirt at the bottom while showing a lot of skin at the top.
Informal: For informal situations, work and home wear.
[ ] A simple, sporty two piece. It's called a 'dirty pair' for historical reasons you're unclear on.
[ ]
An Exomis, the common default among the Heran public.
[ ] A more skin tight one piece like Mirareki wears.
These will be your main wardrobe, though if the visit goes on for a while you might want to pick again. Wearing the same clothes for too long probably also costs points.
"Huh." Luyu says, looking into the air. "Someone just blew up a session of the Conclave of Nike on Hera with a swarm bomb. That's the second time this week. I bet their security feels like idiots."
Mirareki bites her lip and says nothing.
*****
You and Luyu are stalking one another, unarmed, through one of the ship's main gardens. You've managed to get above her. One of her bodies stalking past under you as you prepare to drop on her like a panther. If you can take one of her out quickly, maybe you can get out before the other three can get you. She's just too good at camouflage to–
A window opens up in the side of your vision. You hit the time out flag as Shenla's image pops up.
<<Everyone. Major stuff going down on Hera.>> Shenla says.
<<Is it another protest?>> Mirareki. <<I told you to ignore those.>>
<<Well, they've got the main council building occupied.>>
The picture is from an overhead drone and shows a street full of protestors, waving banners and guns. Flags of unfamiliar political factions snap in the breeze, both in the crowd and from the windows of the ornate building below. A pair of riot control spiders lie outside the entrance, burning merrily as the crowd surge past them.
<<The civil guard will clear them out soon.>> Mirareki sighs. <<I know that this seems big Shenla, but we've– it's been done before. The civil guard are raised in virtual. They don't have anything to stop them fighting to the end. Unless there's something like a general strike, nothing will come of this. Certainly not over them snatching the Feast of Swans from some isolate girl.>>
On the bottom of the video the news ticker scrolls a new message: <<Magrana Commune Association call for a general strike.>>
You hear Mirareki swear and kind of laugh at the same time.
<<Are you okay?>> Shenla asks.
<<Yes,>> she says. <<I'm fine.>> She goes quiet. You're not convinced. Moments later, Shenla also goes silent. Probably, Mirareki needs her..
*****
For the next few days you watch fights. Things get about as bad as things get in situations like this. The civic guard stride around the streets, attacking protestors where they can. They're strange creatures, machine women with gleaming of gleaming carbon and crystal, tall and digitigrade. They seem surprisingly alien to be enforcing order on a deeply Chrysanthemum World. The Protestors who meet them, militias really, are a much more varied bunch. Everything from arrays of pure white and blonde Chrysanthemum Hardliners to squads of cauldron-born, and dark blue Rose immigrants, their cybernetic combat arms gleaming below their flesh ones.
The HeraSec, the army, stays out. Nobody blasts a reincarnation facility, but by the end of the week when the delegate recalls come through and the old councils vote for various loosenings of the voting system and then resign, it's got to electromagnetic artillery and combat swarms.
One week out, the Heran government has collapsed. The civic guard have retreated back to their bases and are negotiating with the patchwork of new committees. Several of the old guard have been arrested for corruption. The seas are a mass of colourfull banners.
You're reassembled in the alpine cafe, watching together as robots bring you strong coffee flavoured with soluble cinnamon.
"Urgh." Luyu sits as a group. "This blows! We missed all the fun."
"You like stuff like this?" Reizay is giving her a vaguely horrified stare.
"Oh this stuff is the best. All the fun of a war but with none of the risk so long as it doesn't escalate. This kind of fighting is the purist strategic game you can ever play." Luyu grins.
"What if it
does escalate?" Mirareki glares at her.
"Nobody on a core world is gonna go to full civil war." Luyu waves airily. "This is the Chrysanthe, not some Stone Cult infested periphery."
"So– all that social credit stuff is gone now?" Reizay looks a little panicked, like something has been ripped from under her.
"Yeah, I guess everything I taught you is useless." Mirareki is tight-lipped and wound like a Nereidi spring-bomb. She doesn't have the affective resources to react to the circumstances, so instead has frozen up. Shenla is kneeling behind her sofa, stroking her hair.
"You can't unlearn years of habit in a day," you say. An odd feeling of reassuring someone that the revolution they clearly supported won't be
too immediately successful. "We do need to figure out how we're going to do this though." You're only a few days from the system and it's time to start formulating a specific plan.
[ ] Try to gain access to general local information services. This used to be a panopticon and the revolution might have made that data less private. Alternatively it might try to shut the whole thing down, in which case you can try some short-term data archaeology.
[ ] Use your semi-fame from Scythia and Nereidi to see about recruiting local allies who can point you in the right direction
[ ] Try contacting people Mirareki knows, such as the local firewall branch.
[ ] Surely Everdancing Flame had a cult here. Perhaps Alex knows someone who can help you.
