Glasshouse - Charles Stross [16]
“How’s the experiment meant to work, then?” I ask, puzzling over it.
“Well, I don’t know all the details,” Linn temporizes. “But what happens . . . well, if you volunteer, they put you through a battery of tests. You’re not supposed to go in if you’ve got close family attachments and friends, by the way; it’s strictly for singletons.” Kay’s grasp tightens around me for a moment. “Anyway, they back you up and your copy wakes up inside.
“What they’ve prepared for the experiment is a complete polity—the briefing says there are over a hundred million cubic meters of accommodation space and a complete shortjump network inside. It’s not totally uncivilized, like a raw planetary biome or anything. There are a couple of catches, though. There are no free assemblers, you can’t simply request any structure you want. If you need food or clothing or tools or whatever, you’re supposed to use these special restricted fabricators that’ll only give you what you’re entitled to within the experiment. They run a money system and provide work, so you have to work and pay for what you consume; it’s intended to emulate a pre-Acceleration scarcity economy. Not too scarce, of course—they don’t want people starving. The other catch is, well, they assign you a new orthohuman body and a history to play-act with. During the experiment, you’re stuck in your assigned role. No netlink, no backups, no editing—if you hurt yourself, you have to wait for your body to repair itself. I mean, they didn’t have A-gates back before the Acceleration, did they? Billions of people lived there, it can’t be that bad, you just have to be prudent and take care not to mutilate yourself.”
“But what’s the experiment about?” I repeat. There’s something missing; I can’t quite put my finger on it . . .
“Well, it’s supposed to represent a dark ages society,” Linn explains. “We just live in it and follow the rules, and they watch us. Then it ends, and we leave. What more do you need?”
“What are the rules?” asks Kay.
“How should I know?” Linn smiles dreamily as she leans against Vhora, fondling the meso’s horn, which is glowing softly pink and pulsing in time to her hand motions. “They’re just trying to reinvent a microcosm of the polymorphic society that’s ancestral to our own. A lot of our history comes out of the dark ages—it was when the Acceleration took hold—but we know so little about it. Maybe they think trying to understand how dark ages society worked will explain how we got where we are? Or something else. Something to do with the origins of the cognitive dictatorships and the early colonies.”
“But the rules—”
“They’re discretionary,” says Vhora. “To prod the subjects toward behaving in character, they get points for behaving in ways in keeping with what we know about dark ages society, and they lose points for behaving wildly out of character. Points are convertible into extra bonus money when the experiment ends. That’s all.”
I stare at the meso. “How do you know that?” I ask.
“I read the protocol.” Vhora manages an impish smirk. “They want to make people cooperate and behave consistently without being prescriptive. After all, in every society people transgress whatever rules there are, don’t they? It’s a matter of balancing costs with benefits.”
“But it’s just a points system,” I say.
“Yes. So you can tell if you’re doing well or badly, I suppose.”
“That’s a relief,” Kay murmurs. She holds me tight. The afternoon sunlight in the forest glade is soft and yellow, and while there’s a buzzing and rasping of insects in the background, the biome leaves us alone. Linn smiles at us again, a remarkably fey expression, and strokes that spot on top of Vhora’s head. There’s something unselfconsciously erotic about her gesture, but it’s not an eroticism I share. “Shall we be going?” Kay asks me.
“Yes, I think so.” I help her to her feet, and she in turn helps me up.
“Nice of you to visit,” purrs Vhora, shivering visibly as Linn tickles the base of the horn again. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”