27th March 2013
07:10 GMT +2
Dr. Roquette looks up as I pull out the chair opposite her.
"You're looking better.
"
I sit down as she
looks down, nodding self-consciously.
"Y-eah. Between those tablets you gave me and… Actually seeing my nanobots actually help people, I…" She breathes in deeply and then breathes out again. "I haven't even wanted to drink again." She picks up her glass of orange juice. "Juice only."
"I'm glad to hear it. But are you
feeling better? Or are you just changing your behaviour?
"
She takes a sip. "No, no, I
do actually feel better." She frowns mildly. "What was in those tablets, anyway? Some sort of space addiction-suppressant? Because I think I had some sort of reaction-."
"Psilocybin.
"
She looks up from her yoghurt, eyes widening slightly as she watches me for a sign that I'm joking. "Oh. That explains the hallucinations and why you told me not to operate machinery for four hours."
"The League developed several psychoactive chemicals to try and fight off the Anti-Life, but… Unless you're being continuously exposed, psilocybin works just as well and has less risk of causing brain or liver damage.
"
"Do you want to have the tablets I've got left over back-?" She blinks. "Are these illegal in Greece?"
"If they
are, then I doubt that they're enforcing it.
"
She breathes in slowly and then snorts the air out through her nostrils before taking another spoonful of honey-drizzled yoghurt.
"No problems with your co-workers or with the government?
"
She thinks for a moment, then swallows. "No, everyone's… Doing their best. If.. anything, the Finance Ministry is being
too accommodating."
"How do you mean?
"
"Usually, applying for funding is a lot more
adversarial. Here, they say they'll give anything for a miracle…" She frowns a little. "And I actually
can. I guess I just sort of assumed it would be in testing forever."
"Under normal circumstances it might well. But whatever-.
"
Wait. Wait just a-.
Did-? Anti-Lifeing the Earth do something to Boss Smiley? We found that people with strong morals and a strong sense of purpose managed to cope better than people who
didn't. People most in tune with
him would have been hit the hardest, and… Been Justified? Would
he feel that? There's a certain logic to the thought, but… Ugh, I don't even know if he actually exists, much less have any way to work out what could hurt him.
She's looking at me.
"Is something-?"
"Whatever unfortunate events conspire to prevent that sort of thing don't appear to apply when people are this desperate. It's something that I never managed to understand, how this Earth could have so much highly advanced technology and yet use it so little.
"
She nods. "I remember that talk you gave. So, what, Mannheim beat the special interests?"
"Could
be. Or they actually want this to succeed because there won't be a civilisation for them to run from the shadows unless things change.
"
He did say that he didn't mind a
little change. But once this becomes part of the new normal
anywhere, then it won't be possible to dislodge it. Even if they embargo Greece completely… Greece won't need to import anything.
It's not
true post-scarcity, due to the throughput limits and the fact that most manufacturing is still better done with dedicated machines and operators. But it's starting to look a little more like that than what we had before.
"How's the rest of the world?"
"China's pretty interesting. Who knew that a civilisation of a billion people could coast on pure inertia like that?
"
"Shouldn't their currency have collapsed?"
"It did, but they didn't notice. Currency collapses hurt the middle class. China… Does
have a middle class, but it's relatively small. They've… Basically put as many people as they can on public works programs-. Did you know that the Chinese construction industry is massively corrupt?
"
"It doesn't surprise me."
"And I don't mean a few back-handers to get a contract corrupt. I mean full-on Victorian 'this tunnel was supposed to have five layers of brick, it's got half of one and now it's collapsed and killed hundreds of people' corrupt. There's
plenty of work to do fixing it and just about enough transportation and food production to prevent mass starvation. Good old communist community spirit.
"
"How can they afford that?"
"Who needs currency when you have commissars?
"
She frowns. "And people are just.. accepting that?"
I shrug.
"There's no locus for opposition. With the Communist Party being the only political party and having representatives on the board of every company of any size, there's no avenue for counterargument. Everyone's pretty much
trying to keep things as normal as possible, doing their best to follow whatever orders there are… The fact that all the deaths have left holes in the political structure doesn't matter. If someone tried that in America, they'd be shot. In China, it-.
" Hm.
"What do you know about the
Battle of Kursk?
"
"It was a battle in World War Two.. between the Nazis and the Soviet Union. But that's about all."
"The Russians built huge earthworks to defend the city, with almost the entire population of the city joining in with the digging. The Chinese are doing that for the entire country until someone has a better idea, or until they've got a functioning country. Probably… Reorganise the national government while regional governments keep everyone too tired to complain, then… Issue a new currency?
"
"I haven't really kept up… What's America doing?"
"Barter, digital currency or Justice League tokens. The government tried printing more dollars while they were
already in a period of hyperinflation, then tried to pass a law to force businesses to accept the dollar.
" I shake my head.
"We were
this close-
" I hold up my right hand with thumb and forefinger close together.
"-to seeing the return of state nullification, and it looks like a couple might reinstate precious metal currency. Honestly, they're probably going to have to knock a couple of zeroes off the dollar too when things settle down.
"
"No public works programs?"
"Americans won't tolerate being treated in the way that the Chinese expect to be treated. The Federal Government can't
pay for a public works program with anything that anyone who could supply one would
take. If they had any sense they'd butt out and let the American people fix things from the ground up.
"
"And how's… Ah, England doing?"
"The British government is too incompetent to do as much damage as the US government is. And as a result, small scale solutions are sort of
emerging. They've turned a lot of areas of grassland into allotments, put farms back into production now that all of the fallowing and tree subsidies have vanished. Thanks to that and my portals the country can just about feed itself, though there are a lot fewer cars on the roads.
"
LexCorp managed to pull an ultra-density battery out of its collective bottom, which combined with the improved power generation systems most advanced countries have been setting up means that cost-effective long-range electric vehicles are now a reality. The Justice League is paying for a lot of them for goods transportation with League-currency, which… Means that LexCorp is the most stable financial concern on the planet. But… That's definitely a problem for another day.
"What about the rest of Europe?"
"Where do I
start?
"
