The Other Shoe

This is a really a short story, as opposed to an AAR that describes the progress of a full game. I wrote part of it over a year ago, then banged away at it periodically and finally came up with something worth posting last week. It's based on an early sandbox game; it was a huge galaxy, and by year four, the Iconians' influence area was rapidly taking over the whole map.

I had one planet on the edge of their space that was in and out of influence trouble for the last year of the game before I got to tech victory. Watching that planet's vacillations got me thinking about just how one technologically advanced society might try to go about subverting another society from within.

I decided to explore the problem from the point of view of one of my planet's residents rather than a more remote perspective. Here's the first part. I'll add more as I get a chance to edit it.

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The Other Shoe


The culvert was freezing and it stank, but Rain needed a quiet place to hole up and wait for the story to break. He leaned against the filthy plastumen wall and worked to get his breathing under control. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feel of sweat freezing to the back of his neck. It had been too close, and probably for nothing.

The Nosers would spend hours tearing up Humie Slums before they started looking for him in the Bruise. He didn't think they would go after his parents; the Nosers weren't powerful enough to challenge SciSphere, even contractors like ma and da. His friends would get the worst of it, though, especially since he hadn't let them in on the details of the plan.

Once they saw it in the trivvy, he was sure they would forgive him, even if it was from Intensive Care. Rain knew that if he were extremely lucky, he would end up in IC as well. If he wasn't lucky, his folks would wake up a few days from now and find his shoes on the doorstep. Like Zuri's family had, except it had been his three-year-old daughter who made the discovery.

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The day after they found the shoes, the U reqested that Rain take a week off after his Betas negged out his whole lab. He spent part of the afternoon wandering the mallways, but it seemed like every single shop featured more and more of the slick, nasty Iconian goods that had come into fashion in the past year. He had just turned toward the center of the corridor to avoid setting off a SmartRack when he saw the jeweler's cart. On the side facing him, a Noser sigtag flashed proudly above a display of danglies.

He ran straight for the stairwell and didn't stop until he was topside. Just two months before, showing that sig had been a fineable offense. Now it was a Cultural Expression. He spat into the fine orange dust and shivered. TempCon didn't fully extend to this sector; for now, this was really just an emergency exit. One day, open-air mallage would probably occupy most of the valley. Would it sell anything from Earth? Or would all of the Terran-descended shoppers go grayskin and wear Ico drabs?

Da shrugged off the whole culture war as just a normal youth rebellion. "Wait'll they have to get jobs," he had said more than once, "That'll end their speeches and rallies and all the rest of it." He was a pico designer at MiniTec, and was full of retarded old jokes like "I always feel like I'm being micromanaged." His favorite line at social gatherings was "Did you know that MiniTec has gone down to a three-point-three hour workday? It's true, we really CAN miniaturize anything!"

When he brought up Iconian issues with ma, she just gave him her spooky little smile and said, "We all have so much to look forward to. Don't let this stuff get to you." Rain rolled his eyes. "You wish you could tell us more about your work, but if you did, you'd have to kill us, right, ma?"

Ma frowned briefly. "Yes. I would." She brightened again. "But even if I told you everything I know about epihelices and transtheta, and even if you could understand all of it, it's such a small part of The Project that it wouldn't be worth dying for." She placed her hand on the side of his face the way she had since he was a toddler and gave him a real smile. "Your father would probably tell you that these Iconian fashions are just... small potatoes." Then she laughed, and Rain sighed. He loved his parents, but they were hopeless.

Heading back to the dorms after hiking to another exit tower, Rain took a shortcut through the cans. Six giant cylinders had dropped from the first colony transport and landed in a cluster here. Fully automated, they dug out living space for the first colonists and set up autofactories and atmosphere exchangers. Compared to later stages of building, this original habitat was a dump.

Every section except Manufacturing had moved out of the cans as soon as possible. Most of the SciSphere techs and the higher-ups from other sections settled in Rain's subdiv, Hubie Syms. It was fairly exclusive, and it was the only sector that hadn't really gotten the Iconian craze. The Nosers (they called themselves the Grayshirts) and other Ico-fanatics had taken to calling it Humie Slums, and some out-of-work Nosers began hanging around the entrances and surface parks to harrass non-confs.

The cans also had the freight terminal, and it was the first place offworld goods landed after LOPo inspection. It was here that the whole Iconian craze had started. During their last expansion, Ico freighters had saturated the whole system with their goods, all sold at bargain basement "friendship pricings". Knockoffs of their famous designers' weird fashions, cheap trivvy sets, cheaper toys, and cubes and cubes of junk software. Their advatars used to res up all grainy and say things like "You buy two softwares, get three for free, okay, mister? How about four? Take one now, you pay me later, how you beat that kind of dealings?!"

Soon after these things showed up in the markets, every digimed on the planet that wasn't on SecurNet was littered with buggy software and infested with Workspace Iconians; stupid talking icons that only a system wipe could completely erase. But to Rain and most of his friends, the absolute worst thing to come out of the "Iconian invasion" was the danglies.

Designed to mimic the small appendages at the end of an Iconian's snout, these pseudoorganic "jewelries" actually self-grafted into the skin around the wearer's nostrils. They seemed to have a life of their own, sometimes pressing themselves to the face, sometimes turning and waving slowly about. When they were first introduced, people were disgusted with the whole idea. Nobody was buying them, and the advertising image of the smiling man and woman with their danglies (Idasix was their actual Iconian brand name) became a big joke.

Then one day some wag hacked the Idasix advatar node and replaced the bland advertising text with a version of the ancient joke; "All your face are belong to us!" It immediately went live to the whole planet, and people went apeshit. It seemed like overnight, half of the youth population and many adults, too, had gotten danglies. "Out of Stock" signs went up in store after store as they sold out everywhere.

Rain had been eighteen at the time. He had indulged in a few fads before, but the more he heard and read about the danglies, the more disturbed he became. For instance, after a certain attunement period, some people learned to control the things' motions, and a few could even make theirs change colors. Naturally, these folks were practically worshipped by other wearers. They could be used to absorb stimulants and intoxicants in gaseous form, and there were rumored to be clubs where they were used in other ways.

The bottom line for most Humie Slums residents was the fact that danglies were prohibited in SciSphere facilities, including the university labs. For Rain, the fact that they looked stupid was right up there, along with his conviction that they made wearers act stupid. His last girlfriend, Magnolia, had showed up in his dorm one day, her nose bright red and swollen from the graft.

"I know you don't like them, Rain, but come on, it's fun! You should try it! It still kind of hurts, but they feel amazing at the same time." Rain was silent, his mouth hanging open. Magnolia continued, "I can feel things with them already, you know? Like currents moving in the air and stuff. And I think..." she began to tear up a little. "I think I'm communicating with them already! Rain, I really feel that they are saying something to me!"

That broke the spell. Rain lowered his head so he wouldn't have to look at her face. "Well, Maggie, they're definitely saying something to everybody else."

"Really?" Rain looked up. Her oblivious delight made him a little sick. "What do you think they say?"

"They say, LOOK AT ME I'M A FRAKTARDED MORON!" There had been more, but it didn't matter. She had a huge row with her family, too, and switched her focus to AgTec the next day because they didn't forbid danglies. He hadn't seen her since. That was before groups of Nosers started roaming around together and hassling others. Some of those groups were made up of students who'd gotten danglies and then dropped out of the university.

For safety, Rain, Missouri, and other "untainted" (their term) students also took to going out in groups, but they did their best to avoid confrontation. Like most things, that worked until it didn't. Being jumped one time was enough to keep them out of most parts of the Infotainment Complex for good. Still, when the Noser muggings started in the surface parks, Rain and his friends were more than willing to go out and do what they could. Their studies suffered somewhat, but they carried their bruises as proudly as the Nosers wore their danglies.

Things went on that way for weeks - a fairly even exchange of taunts and fights where both sides ended up carrying people away. The thing that troubled the Humie Slummers most was the fact that Security seemed to tacitly ignore what was going on. Occasionally they would break up a big fight and arrest everyone for "public drunkenness", but they didn't usually show up until things were over. And then it was only to make sure that the med techs could do their job.

Security eventually decided to officially ban danglies from the force, but not before most of the patrol officers had gotten them. On top of that, union negotiators made sure that any officer who had danglies at the time of the ban - and all prospective officers who had gotten them before the ban or had gotten them offworld - would be protected by a grandfather clause.

Then, one day, Missouri stuck his head into Rain's room. "Hey, man, c'mon, we're setting up an ambush." Rain had his shoes on before he even asked where. "Spamburger and his Noser crew are planning to dump a bunch of chemicals in the lake tonight and turn it yellow. If we get there now we can get the jump on them. You got your snoopers?"

"Yeah. You know, being this far in advance, why don't we just tip off USec?"

Missouri squinted at Rain, his huge eyebrows moving together like two blond caterpillars trying to get it on. "Is that you, Rain? Did they get to you already and turn you yellow, too?"

"No, Zuri, I'm with you. I'm just sayin'."

Missouri rolled his eyes. "Be-CAUSE, if USec breaks it up, the entire school will be denied the privilege of seeing those frakkers chained naked to the roof of the boathouse, painted with their own yellow shit. That's why."

That was a good enough reason for Rain. Missouri had the whole thing planned out to the last detail. Spotters, lights, and noisemakers were quickly rigged in strategic spots and everyone was in place before dark. Missouri was in Rain's class, but he had done four in the Marines before coming back and starting as a freshman. He was a better fighter than he was a tactician, but everyone felt better and worked harder with him around. They even called themselves "Zuri's Furies", but Missouri was too modest to use the name himself.

Around 11:00, everything went straight to hell. Knowing what path the Nosers would have to take, they had concentrated on the approach and completely ignored the possibility that the Nosers might already be holed up in the boathouse. A noisemaker went off by the lake, followed by cursing. Someone hit the floods without warning, leaving only those with polarizing snoopers able to see. Unfortunately, this included Missouri, Rain, and Caracas - and all of the Nosers. Everyone started yelling and running around. Rain thought he was under cover until something hard bounced off his head. He rolled away, knocked someone else down, and tried to get up.

He was almost on his feet when he found himself on the ground again. Spamburger himself (nobody remembered his real name, he'd been a student for all of two months) was about to jump on him when Missouri came out of nowhere and flattened him. Spamburger recovered and actually managed to roll on top of Zuri. Rain surged to his feet to help his friend when someone else grabbed him around the waist. He was turned around and was in the act of kneeing his attacker's abdomen when he heard a high-pitched shriek. The shrieker turned out to be Spamburger. Rain watched him topple onto his back, hands covering his face. The shrieking continued, getting even louder.

Everything stopped except Spamburger's howling. Missouri stood up and dropped something small and red onto Spamburger's chest. He pointed at a group of Nosers who had been double-teaming Caracas and Yosemite and said "You. Come pick up this piece of shit and get him out of here. He just had himself an emergency dangliectomy. I see any of you pukes doing anything other than hauling this frakking carcass, I'm going to do the same frakking thing to you. Got that?" Blood dripped from his finger.

The other Nosers were too shocked to do anything other than what they were told. It took six of them to lift Spamburger, and by then he was thrashing. They ended up dragging him up the path and out of sight. The Furies were almost as shocked by the whole thing as the Nosers and barely got out of the area before the USec cars touched down.

For three days, there were no Noser attacks. None of the Furies left campus, either. A rumor went around that Spamburger had died. The next one said he was alive but in a coma, then there was one that had him turning into an Iconian. It turned out that he was hospitalized with massive swelling and a horrific infection in the stumps of his danglies. It was discovered that although the danglies integrate with your blood and nervous systems, they have no immune capacity whatsoever.

Four days after the lake incident, Missouri didn't show up for morning class. Nobody had seen him since the previous evening. Three days after that, his empty shoes turned up outside his front door. This is part of an old Iconian blood-feud ritual. It means that the owner won't be needing shoes any longer.

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end part 1