More than one week later, Zax was admiring the seventh and final template of his compensation. It had been a close thing; there barely was any visible outside effect.
It had taken longer than expected, but it had been… surprisingly smooth sailing. A cynical man would call it suspicious. Not every subject brought to him had fit the bill, but the selection had quickly improved. The dotter suspected the one-horned woman had found a specific place to find them, and she had merely refined her criteria. A half-glimpsed smirk, after one of his last rejects, made him speculate he had been used to spot someone with less advanced mutations than they claimed, but he didn’t call it out.
Living above your level was a great way to improve, but also extremely dangerous.
No rare or rule-bending mutations in the mix, but Zax wasn’t disappointed. One in seven was already excellent.
The only suspicious part was how peaceful his test subjects had been. No ‘accidental’ activation, petty sabotage, major outburst for his rebuttals, or need to call the Enforcers – which he kept his nanites ready to at any second. Not-that-strong words and storming out had been the worst reactions. One the other hand, no small talk either. It might have to do with Bathor never bringing more than two people at a time. It could have been a requirement to get whatever they had been promised.
Zax could only guess, but his nanites had not been tampered with, and his templates were complete and accurate. That was the most important.
His proposition to the compound-eye girl had been surprisingly fruitful too. One day after he took her nanites out, she had brought another person, who had brought another the following day. Four people had come so far, and others were on the way. Zax didn’t keep physical units and they didn’t have a bracelet, so they had to contrive a payment arrangement, but everybody had what they wanted in the end.
Their mutations were not particularly advanced; some less so than the average dotter their age, but they were all over the place. They didn’t mind small talk either, which gave him some idea of their lifestyle. Exactly what he needed to establish a database.
Incidentally, he was already aware that social rank in the Circle was more heavily affected by the advancement of one’s mutations. It was normal and obvious, and he had seen it first-hand. Mutations being generally more advanced or coming earlier, they had more effect on daily life and gave better marketable skills. It was why advanced enough mutations were required to move in from the dot, otherwise carving an existence wouldn’t be worth the effort.
However, he would have never guessed how difficult the natives Residents could have it. Once it was time to join the workforce, they better be mutated enough, or they’d be lucky to get the lowest paying, most unwanted tasks. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around what was done to help.
Meaning, nothing at all.
Closer to the opposite, even.
Even if they were numerous enough to have their own para-society.
Although to be fair, no one could give him an actual number of people. Which was another concern on its own; a census wasn’t hard to do.
Disowning your less fortunate children was encouraged. Cutting ties with your parents was expected, else you dragged them down with you. Not doing so was not illegal per se, but it had serious social consequences. Even helping the ‘rejects’ was ground for losing a promotion, public scorn, ostracization, and so on.
He would have never imagined that part of the First Circle, and it was obviously not advertised. He truly had dodged a bad strain, being born as he had.
Still, as bewildering as it was, they would be a great source of common templates. Better than the dot had ever been, ironically, and he had a few ideas that would make things better for everybody.
His personal studies and the database for free-running neural patterns were progressing smoothly too, although he had yet to acquire lab mice. There was a potential supplier in the dot, but he was not in a hurry. Recording SG as she demonstrated all her moves, one after the other, as she thought about them, wasn’t exactly fast or effective, but they didn’t have a better idea. Relations started to appear though, hinting at the possibility of filling blanks without all the pieces. It would speed things up, once reliability was proven. Translation would be a hurdle though.
“There’s… something I’d like to ask before we start.”
Bathor’s hesitation pulled Zax out of his musings.
“I investigated on the number you gave me.” She fidgeted on her stool, a recent addition for all the extended visits he expected.
“You did?” He blinked.
She had asked for it, but he hadn’t believed she would actually follow through. Not only doing her homework, but facultative questions she had asked on her own. That earned her some respect.
“Hm.” She lightly nodded. “It was a mess. I don’t know what to think.”
What is there to think about?
She quickly lost way more respect than she had earned.
[ Warning : Significant behavioural deviation ]
His nanites pointed him to something he had missed: she was putting herself in a vulnerable position, willingly, on her own. She had never displayed her discomfort so openly, either.
Her body language had gradually shifted through the week, becoming more subdued. Something was wrong. He should have noticed before, honestly:
“Law is supposed to be a structured affair. That mess feels, wrong, somehow. I could only get this.”
She took a paper from her inner pocket, showing an addendum to a decade old NDA, allowing her to discuss about the solved case. Even as she did so, she radiated hesitation, but she had spent too much effort to stop now.
Zax read the whole paper, looking for loopholes and retroactive inconsistencies, found none, and saved it digitally without external signs.
“That should be enough to let me tell you everything, but first, what do you already know?”
“Only what you said last time, and what’s written here. It was you versus KGT studios, one of the biggest software companies of the Shelter, and it was nearly ten years ago. I contacted their legal department, but they have yet to answer. Normal, they have a long queue. I tried looking in the general archives. That was the messy part. Convoluted procedures, departments who don’t communicate between each other, overworked, understaffed services… At first, I thought it was related to some top-secret business, but everyone confirmed it was always like that.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Zax was aware of the seemingly useless complexity of legal tasks in the Circle, but he thought it was just how their system was, that he was lost because he was thirteen at the time. Knowing even trained adults were lost, and only dot related cases were affected, didn’t feel better.
“Did you investigate in the dot?”
“Er, no? Why?”
“It was a case involving a company in the First Circle and a dotter. You looked at one side and didn’t find much. Looking on the other side seems a logical next step to me. We have laws, legal procedures and archives too, you know? Nevermind.” He sighed. “You actually tried, so I’ll give you a summary, as I recall it. You can look for the exact details later. Just put the ID I gave you in a general search engine, it should be enough. Do you still remember how to do that? Good, here it comes.”
Zax closed his eyes and took a deep breath to gather his thoughts. He opened them and began his story:
“I already mentioned the mixed groups of dotters and Residents, put together to work on different projects. Details of the event are easy to find, I’ll skip that. I ended up in a group of four, one of the smallest, with the goal of making a flash game from scratch. None of us had any experience, but we had skills adjacent to the ones we needed, so we all started at the same level, without being totally blind. It happened like any group project; I don’t imagine that being very different between dot and Circle.” He counted on his fingers: “Brainstorming a concept, refining it in a realisable game, making a general schedule of what needed to be done and how long it was expected to take, assigning tasks, with regular meetings to keep everyone up to date on advancement and adapt the team schedule. We all learnt a lot, and after many ups and downs, we eventually succeeded. It was a simple thing, just the bare bones of a game with a lot of room for improvement, but it worked as intended, it was a great proof of concept, and it could be upgraded.”
Zax allowed himself a smile at the memory; their collective elation when it was completed, barely in time. The beaming expression of his friends as they had fun together.
“We kept in touch after the event. Being friends was part of the point for it all, and we wanted to see how far we could take our baby. Then our main tester activated during a try-out. She ended up with enhancements related to the game, and strong enough to earn her a place in the Circle. That caught a lot of attention. Including from a large game company in the Circle. They wanted to buy the game. Our game! It was awesome. Long term contracts, royalties, a guaranteed future for the young ones, a better life for the others... The dream. Almost too good to be true. Then, one day, the rest of the group went no contact. The main computer assured they were fine, but I couldn’t access to their whereabouts. No goodbye or explanation, they just cut me off and stopped answering my calls. My messages to our contact point in the company went unanswered. I could only speak to the company’s PR team, then the legal team when I didn’t “have the decency of fading away”. I even went to the Circle with my guardians, to look for my friends directly, but I didn’t have their address, and you have nothing to send a personal message with only an outdated name.”
He paused to catch his breath. Bathor stayed silent, which he appreciated. He might have been a bit incensed in the end there.
“Then the game came out. A big hit, in the dot and the Circle. No mention of me or the team anywhere in the credits, only KGT studio’s team something. So, as a last resort, I sued. There were grounds for it, and I thought it would at least make the rest of the team come and testify. How naive. Just knowing what needed to be done was an uphill battle, let alone actually doing it. You saw how.” She nodded. “And when we finally reached the point where they had to do something, even if just acknowledging the process we had started, the company denied everything entirely. My involvement in the development, my contacting them many times, even hiring the rest of the team and buying or selling our product. Just a big “nope, nothing to do with us”. My proofs were dismissed as inadmissible, for reasons that still don’t make sense, one after the other. There was always something, no matter how perfectly I followed their instructions. We never even reached to point of going to court.”
He let out a frustrated sigh and let his head drop on the counter. The cold metal on his cheek helped clear his mind. Bathor opened her mouth, but he had straightened up before she could utter a word.
“If I had been alone, I would’ve given up many times. But I hung on. Did everything I could. I appealed, appealed the appeal, until, finally, I got the answers I wanted. Well, asked for, at least. Off the record, and from a judge, of all people. She made it unmistakably clear; nobody who was someone, and especially not an important company, would buy anything associated to the dot, no matter how awesome it was. They have a whole process to make sure of it, wholeheartedly supported by the law. She didn’t give details, but the rest is not hard to guess. Make sure their suppliers are registered as Residents, as a condition to buy anything in the dot. Forbid them from contacting anyone in the dot, as a condition to be registered. Goes with a new name, so they can easily lose those who come looking. “We don’t have that name in our files, please make sure you have the correct spelling”.” He quoted with a falsetto voice. “They probably reassured my teammates that I had been “fairly compensated” too, which would not be a lie in their mind. Or they claimed I was not interested in joining them.”
The human rubbed his face to dispel the tension in his facial muscles. He was over it now, but it was a long story, and talking about it still drained him emotionally.
“So, there you have it. My first personal experience with the Circle: spoiled of my rightful earnings, cut off from my friends, and battling for year to finally be spoken as and treated as “less than” by ranked officials. And with what you mentioned of your own experience, I’m pretty sure the mess is on purpose. Makes it easy to provide plausible deniability, or to blame someone else if something disappear, goes wrong, or is not filled correctly. The devil is in the details, and he’s perfectly at home in the Circle’s law. Any questions?”
He had asked from sheer habit, after a long-winded presentation, but he didn’t expect this audience to actually follow:
“Who helped you?” He voice was barely above a whisper, her eyes lost in muddy thoughts.
“Sorry?”
“You said you were not alone. Who was with you?”
“My friends supported me emotionally; my guardians supported me emotionally and materially, and made it a pedagogic experience.” Not the first question he expected, but he answered all the same. “They like to make everything in a learning opportunity.”
“Why didn’t you make it public- the NDA.” She realised on her own.
“Yes.” He nodded. “The dispute involved commercial secrets, so we had to sign early in the process. Also, I had no reason to think the First Circle’s public opinion would have helped. Still don’t.”
“What did you do? After… all that?”
“With a lot of help, I moved on. Lived my life.” He shrugged.
“You’re not the type who takes hits without fighting back.” She stated.
Was that a compliment?
“Fighting back? Ah, there’s that.” Something came to Zax’s mind at her words, but it didn’t seem relevant. “Well, I was exhausted after the whole ordeal, so I didn’t really think about revenge. But they got really upset when I uploaded the game for free on the network, and made the source code publicly available. That made it known and let anyone interested to make their own version. It was just our original plan, not meant to harm them. I really enjoyed their reaction though, so I guess it counts?”
“They didn’t do anything about it?” Bathor was sceptical.
“They tried.” He shrugged. “I didn’t understand at the time, but I had made the game and any future version unsellable. Totally worthless to them. They sued, but I still don’t know what their plan was. I had developed something similar to their product, but I couldn’t be tied to it in any way. It was official and irrefutable, and they were the ones who had pushed, hard, for it. Guess there was some miscommunication between their services? I still work on it and update improved versions whenever. Not to brag, but they are still among the most popular.”
“Sounds familiar…” The Resident frowned and muttered under her breath, but followed with her other questions. “What was your contribution? To the game I mean.”
“Equal conceptor, and main programmer.”
“… What does that mean?”
“Right, sorry. We all brainstormed equally to design the concept, and I made the software itself. One member drew the designs and interface, but I made them functional. Tying the buttons to the commands, so to speak.”
“Wait, weren’t you ten years old at the time?”
“Yes, why?” Zax blinked. That question felt different from the others. “It’s not that complicated, the dot has a lot of tools to make it easier. I just needed a direction, something to aim for.”
“… What was the game?” The horned woman had a complicated expression as she asked.
“Quick Hand. The company renamed it The Hand of God (Registered Trademark).”
“You’re Ghost Hand?!” She burst out.
Say what now?