The spaceball field came with a present I didn’t ask for. It knocks on my door at 04:30, a little less than an hour after I collapsed into bed. So, I’m not exactly in a receiving frame of mind when I haul myself to my feet and stalk over to the door. I slap my hand on the open switch, and suck in a breath to scream obscenities at the person on the other side of it.
The bowler hat stops me.
It has a gold buckle on it. Shiny. The man under it is wearing a three-piece suit with polished black shoes, a red vest, and a pocket watch. In one hand he grips a peculiar baggish pole made of nylon and what looks like the top half of a cane, and a black briefcase with another shiny gold buckle. The other thing I notice right away is this man has no laugh lines. He isn’t smiling, either.
Oh, shit. “Are you an accountant?” I ask. “Did Chippers send you?”
He bows at the waist in a quick, bird-like motion. “You may call me Maurice,” he says.
I groan. This is worse than I thought. Maurice has the sharp accent of a graduate cum laude from Terrance’s School of Proper Manners and Formal Etiquette. He sounds exactly like the guy in the commercial. Wait, he might be that guy.
Maurice says, “I was commissioned by Mr. Chippers to serve as your executive assistant, Mr. Stern.” He extends his free hand in another speedy movement, so fast that I tense as if under attack. A quick nod of his head indicates that I’m taking too long to grasp it.
I shake his hand. “What can you do that my AI assistant can’t?” I ask.
Maurice sniffs in a manner eerily similar to my wife’s. “An AI assistant is a sad substitute for a first-year Terrance boy,” he says. “I have already taken the liberty of retiring the poor thing from your software library. Now all it has to do is remember to turn on the air recyclers in the maintenance tubes. I will handle your appointments and reminders from now on. As well as schedule your day around your many responsibilities.”
I gawk at him.
“You’re staring at me, Mr. Stern.”
“Um. I don’t really follow any set schedule–”
“I am aware. You have missed many important meetings with the Shipping Guild, Freehaven’s Board of Commerce, the SeeYou Advertising Conglomerate, and several hundred other organizations requiring your attention. Running a spaceball team is quite different from coaching, Mr. Stern. The relationships must be maintained.”
“Now, wait just a minute–”
Maurice waves his hand at me, already dismissing me. “I know you are busy with the tryouts, so I have kept the appointments to a minimum. I will deal with most of the requests for your time, but there will be some every day which require your presence. As such, you have a lunch appointment with the Shipping Guild, and another meeting with the FBC at 15:00. You will have dinner with the local SeeYou representative. I will come by to collect you 15 minutes before each meeting to ensure you arrive on time.”
“How will you know where I am?”
He regards me like I’m an idiot. “I always know where you are, Mr. Stern. It’s my job.” He looks me up and down. “I will send a tailor to see you. The clothes you wear are unbefitting–”
I poke him in the chest. Hard. And leave my finger there. “You are not dressing me.”
The world spins. Something impacts my shoulder, butt, the side of my head, and the heels of my feet. Something soft, then hard. I realize that I’m on the floor on the other side of the room. I have no idea how I got here. The soft thing must have been me bouncing off of the bed. How come Jint can sail across the room and land like a cat, and I turn into a sack of rocks?
I look up and Maurice is dusting imaginary flecks from his immaculate lapels. He’s still standing in the doorway, five meters away. “As I said, a tailor will be here in an hour. You represent Chipper Industries, Mr. Stern. I will instruct the tailor to follow your style, but with finer attention to detail than your current clothing applications. If you had let me finish, I would have also told you that your manner of dress is important not only to the public, but to your team. I am fully aware that your players will not respond well to a man in a pink track suit.”
Please, god, not a tailor. Nobody makes clothes anymore, not in the traditional sense. There are trillions of available patterns. Tailors are just human search engines with strong opinions. They are the epitome of fussy. I can’t do fussy right now. Not without sleep.
Since I’m right there, I clamber onto the bed. “An hour? Then go away. I need sleep.”
I try to close my eyes and they snap back open. The lethargic sensation I’ve been feeling for the past three days vanishes. I feel as rested as if I’d slept for twelve hours. “What the hell–”
“I have taken liberty and installed biologic monitoring applications into your software library,” Maurice says. “Among them is the GoGoGo add-on, the effects of which you are experiencing right now. It will allow you to forgo sleep, but still remain alert and responsive. I will warn you, however, that it is not a replacement for sleep. Do not use it more than 48 hours at a time.”
I bounce out of bed. “I feel amazing. What happens if I go longer than 48 hours?”
“The monitoring safety protocols engage. You will get a 20-minute window with which to find a place to lie down. Then you will go to sleep until your body has recovered. I will give you more time to sleep tomorrow morning so that you may recover from the use of GoGoGo today.”
“How come I’ve never heard of GoGoGo?”
“It is a military application, not for civilian use. Your relationship with Mr. Chippers has allowed you access to otherwise restricted assets.”
Maurice puts his briefcase on the counter and opens it. I’ve never met anyone who carried an actual, real-life briefcase, so I go over and stick my nose in it. Sure, there might be private things in there, otherwise why carry it around, but I don’t care about any of his stuff. I just want to see what the inside of the case looks like.
“Whoa, what is the liner made out of? Is that velvet?”
“The case is nanocloth, Mr. Stern.”
“Wait, your briefcase can be anything you want it to be? I didn’t know nanocloth could do that.”
“Of course, it can. Do you not know how things work?”
“Not really. I know sports. That’s my thing. I leave the techno mumbo jumbo up to my wife. Is that actual paper?”
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Maurice sighs. “I see no one ever taught you about personal space, Mr. Stern.”
“I know enough about how the ‘Net works to know that if you have anything important, stuff you don’t want other people to see, you keep it in your head.” Although I heard once that Echelon was able to hack people’s brains almost immediately after we started installing apps in our heads. Maybe they’ve done it to me. I could’ve saved them the trouble. There’s not much up there but spaceball, sports injuries, and swearwords in other languages. Okay. There’s a bit of porn up there, too. But just a bit!
I point at the paper. “Carrying that around says you want other people to see it. Me, probably. But there’s a shitload of words on it. Why don’t you just paraphrase it for me?”
“This is the formal contract between you and Mr. Chippers. It outlines–”
“I don’t care what it outlines,” I say. “I’ve got a verbal agreement with him already, and that’s good enough for me. I win the Cup, he pays me a shitload of money.”
“That hardly covers the legal ramifications, the protections, duties, and insurance forms that must be submitted to various parties, not to mention–”
“Great. You do it if you want. I’m not signing any of that shit. Nobody ever reads the fine print, and if nobody reads it, whatever bullshit that’s in it doesn’t matter to anybody other than the weedy monks who put it there. I’m not signing away my firstborn, or my other arm, or anything else other than what I promised Chippers when we talked.”
“If you do not sign, you will not coach.”
“I’m the last person on Chipper’s list. There isn’t anybody else.” I smile at him. “That’s the great thing about being at the bottom, Maurice. You can’t get fired.”
“A person can always be replaced, Mr. Stern.”
I pat him on the cheek. “Let me know how that works out for you.” Then I remember what happened the last time I touched him. I snatch my hand back.
The bit about getting fired or replaced doesn’t really bother me. I can’t count how many times team owners have threatened me for one reason or another. It never happens. All bluster. Maybe it works on other people, which is why they use it as an excuse to get more productivity, but not me. Never with me. Especially now. I’ve got money. I still get royalties from the interview I did after I shot that bee. Residuals are permanent in an intergalactic media economy. Impending destitution can’t persuade me, either. I carry everything I own on my person. Nobody can’t take anything away from you when you don’t have anything. Except my life, I suppose, but I haven’t gotten the impression that Chippers runs that way.
“If you do not sign, you will not be paid.”
“And the residuals I’ll get from doing interviews about how I coached Chippers’ team to a win pro-bono will more than make up for it,” I tell him. “And then he’ll have to explain why his team sucked so bad that I had to take him on as a charity case. Look, Maurice, I can see you come from world where signatures on paper keep things running. That’s not how it works in mine. Words, whether they’re on paper or falling out of someone’s mouth, are just words. And words are bullshit. Deeds are the important thing. Do what you say, not say what you’ll do. The universe doesn’t care about what you say you’ll do. That’s just an idea. If you do it, though, then that’s imprinted on the fabric of time. It’s out there. Floating around, an event. Immutable. You want something set in stone? Do it. Add it to the annals of time. Otherwise, get out of my face.”
I opened the Fast Food bag to see if there was anything left. Ooo! A banana. “Oh, by the way, Maurice.”
“Yes?”
“Do yourself a favor and don’t ask any of the team to sign anything. They probably won’t be as nice as me about it.”
“I am not a moron, Mr. Stern.”
“I didn’t say that you were, Mr. – um, what did you say your last name was?”
“I didn’t, Mr. Stern. Terrance boys don’t have last names. We give up everything from our former lives when we join. I got a new name on my first day.”
Wow. That’s – wait a minute. I look at Maurice again, taking in the intent eyes, the quick motion, the fast blinking. The super smooth skin that makes him look like he’s 20 years old. He hucked me across the room without hurting me. Without displacing so much as a thread of clothing. “Maurice.”
“Yes?”
“Are you human?”
“No, Mr. Stern. I was, but now I am not. Now I am a Terrance boy.”
“Wait, did you just … Did you mean—” Holy fuckshit.
People have been trying to make human machines ever since humanity invented machines. It doesn’t work. A few years before the war, scientists used nanomachines to copy a human being at the molecular level. They stepped back to glorify in their creation and – nothing. It was brain dead. Everything worked, but it missed something. The spark of life, some called it. Their creature had no soul, nothing to drive it forward. It just sat there. Inanimate.
I stare at Maurice’s face, where an ever-so-slight smile is forming and wonder if he’s pulling my leg. “Are you fucking with me, Maurice?”
“A little, Mr. Stern. I am a bit more than human, yes, but not what you consider full-blown AI. Terrance boys are enhanced through genetic therapy, biomechanical improvements, implants, and advanced software libraries. These allow us to perform to the best level possible, whenever, wherever. The process consumes my memories, leaving me a blank slate. It is irreversible.”
“That’s sad.”
“You cannot mourn the loss of that which you do not remember, Mr. Stern.”
“It’s still sad.”
“The tailor is due in forty-eight minutes. Please be ready.”
“Did you have anything else for me between now and then?”
“I had allotted forty-three minutes for document signing, which you have made perfectly clear you will not do, three minutes for idle chit-chat such as this, and fourteen minutes for arguing, of which you have consumed eleven.”
“Arguing? Who said I was arguing? I’m not arguing.”
“All clients argue, Mr. Stern. They think they have been doing fine up until this point, and the idea of someone else telling them what to do and where to be can be offensive. You have been remarkably pliant on this subject and have not raised objections to the new schedule, and strangely obstinate on others that should be, as you would say, a no-brainer.”
“I haven’t seen the new schedule yet, so I’m withholding judgement.”
Another look as if I’m an idiot. “It is in your scheduler. It arrived before I did.”
“My what?”
“Your—” He goggled at me. “Are you telling me you have never used your scheduling software? It is one of the default applications in your library.”
I had no idea it was there. Well, that’s not true. I’ve always had the inkling that something like that was available, but to me, a scheduler is just a mechanism for increasing anxiety about bullshit meetings.
“What’s the name of it?” Applications are keyed to names. Think of the name and what it does, and your library fetches it and brings it to the forefront.
Maurice squints at me, as if trying to figure out if I’m kidding. Then he sighs. “TaskIt.”
TaskIt. A brick-like grid of names and times and colors pops into view. I focus on the first one and another pane slides out and shows me the event, times, and who’s attending. That one is for the tailor, somebody named Boris D’sen. There must be close to fifty tiles on here. “Is this for the month, or something?”
“No, Mr. Stern. That is today’s schedule.”
“What? Today? Are you shitting me?”
“No, Mr. Stern. I have estimated that you can be a thousand times more productive than your current abysmal rate.”
I check the next tile. A meeting with the team’s logistics officer. I don’t recognize the name. I didn’t know I had a logistics officer. I whip through the first handful of tiles. All meetings with people I don’t know who apparently work for me. It occurs to me that I’ve been a mighty big bottleneck for a lot of people. Hopefully, they aren’t all pissed at me. Otherwise, today is going to be balls awful. “Did you account for bathroom breaks in here?”
“Are you referring to the eighty-six minutes out of every day that you spend in restrooms?”
“Um, how do you know how long I spend in the bathroom?”
“On my way here, I observed you on the Hercules’ security footage. What do you do in there all the time?”
Whew. So, he only saw me going in and out, not sitting on the can. I feel a little better. Not a lot, but I think I’m going to take what I can get with Maurice. “It’s one of the only quiet places on the ship,” I say. “Definitely quieter than my own quarters at four in the morning.”
“You will be very busy over the next week, Mr. Stern. As soon as things calm down, I will schedule some time for yourself.”
“Maurice?”
“Yes?”
“Part of my arrangement with Chippers is that I would run my team my way.”
“And so you shall.”
“Don’t you think you’re trampling all over that?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Stern. You may run your team however you like. My job is to run you. Completely different.”
“Can’t you take these meetings, then?”
“Not until I see you in them first. After I observe you this first week, I will take over many of your responsibilities. I normally do this for clients. But, as you said, you and Chippers agreed that you would run your team your way. If you had not done that, you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even know I was working for you.”
“I’m getting the impression that it’s the other way around.”
Another ever-so-slight smile from the Terrance boy.
I’m in trouble.