Requiem

1. Crashing Down-2

Meanwhile, on the far side of the crowd, another platoon of troops was led by another major Drew recognized, a jackass who’d never learned to do anything except kiss ass and obey the stupidest order in the stupidest way possible.

And none of this included the possible ways a lesser disaster could be amplified into a giant catastrophe by the helicopter gunships circling overhead, loaded with Gatling guns and Rockeye bomblets that could wipe out the entire crowd in about three seconds.

The number of ways this could devolve into a clusterfuck simply boggled the mind.

When the floodlights came up and illuminated the President climbing the stairs to give his monthly address, Drew breathed an immense sigh of relief. Perhaps nothing disastrous would happen after all.

But if the President’s arrival meant the situation would soon calm down, why did Darron look more anxious and worried?

The main auditorium of the isle ship BrainTrust University resided on the Avatar deck. The passages of every deck of every isle ship were rendered with a unique theme. This one was done in the opalescent blues and greens of the long-ago movie, an endless lush forest in which, at the moment, one could see a black beast faintly similar to a saber-tooth cat hunting a creature with a colorful triceratops look to it.

Micky Palermo was walking past the auditorium, keeping an eye on the saber-tooth despite knowing it could not enter the passage, when his best friend Jerry Rutger snagged his arm. Jerry spoke urgently as large numbers of students swept past them into the auditorium. “Aren’t you coming to the talk?”

Micky shrugged his friend’s hand off. “A talk about the Oracle problem? I don’t even know what that is. Why would I care?”

Jerry frowned in exasperation. “In order to prevent boom/busts, you have to adjust the currency availability in response to inflation and deflation. The ‘Oracle Problem’ is the task of measuring the inflation/deflation so you can respond to it correctly. Dr. Everest is the one who solved it.” He held up his tablet so Jerry could see the notification about the presentation.

Micky rolled his eyes. “I just can’t…” His voice faded as his eyes wandered to the image of the speaker. “She’s a looker, isn’t she?”

It was Jerry’s turn to roll his eyes. “Yeah, Micky. Now will you come along? You’re the math geek, not me, so you’ll probably get more out of the presentation than I will.”

Tearing his eyes away from the screen, Micky allowed Jerry to herd him into the room.

Micky watched Dr. Everest, mesmerized, until she started talking about the basic SmartCoin algorithm. “As many of you hopefully already know, when the servers running the blockchain detect deflation, they manufacture additional coin and disperse it to all the current holdings of currency. Some of you have probably noticed, when you’ve saved a SmartCoin for a while, your account might show an extra ten-thousandth of a coin.”

Micky nodded and whispered, “Yeah, I’ve seen that.”

Erika continued, “We increase the amount of currency every time we see a thousandth of a percent of deflation, so the increase is gradual enough to be unnoticed in most circumstances. The important thing about the SmartCoin deflation algorithm is, it is fair in a strict sense: the newly minted money goes to the people holding the currency.” She paused to sip some water. “This is distinct from the way wealth is redistributed by an organization like the American Fed, which takes wealth from those people trying to save money and gives it to the government.”

Micky whispered to Jerry, “I can see how SmartCoin works for deflation, but what about when there’s inflation? They can’t remove currency, can they? People would stop using SmartCoin if the system took money away from them.”

Jerry whispered back, “True but not relevant. I’ll explain later.”

Micky nodded.

Erika had moved on. “The difficulty with these adjustments is, of course, knowing about the deflation or inflation in the first place.” She continued to explain, patiently answering a number of questions from the audience.

After checking the crowd for additional questions, she clapped louder, her eyes gleaming. “Okay, then! Let’s dive into the math!”

The entire riot-ready crowd held its breath as the President reached the podium. Blues watched in despair while Reds started pumping their placards in excitement while chanting, “Speech! Speech!”

Darron craned his neck over his shoulder to watch as the speaker started to address the waiting multitudes. Darron was one of no more than a dozen people who knew the truth of what was happening here. He rubbed his forehead, although sweat had not yet broken out. He had argued with the Chief Advisor at great length about being put between the crowd and the speaker. This was not his thing, Darron had explained. The Advisor had insisted it was his thing, that Darron enjoyed violence more than anyone else he knew. Darron had agreed, but then pointed out that he only used violence on people who were tied up, and only on one person at a time. It was different.

In the end, the Chief Advisor had explained that Darron was the only person he trusted to protect him if things went suddenly south.

From Darron’s perspective, this made perfect sense. Darron was necessarily loyal to the Chief Advisor, far beyond the call of duty. If anyone did an audit of the strict interrogations he’d been running… He shuddered. If he were lucky, they’d throw him in jail forever. If he was not, well, his personal nightmare saw him locked in a torture room, worked over by the best of his men as part of their plea bargain.

So here Darron stood with the members of his interrogation team by his side, swinging a machine gun he’d just spent half an hour learning to use.

Miraculously, it looked like the speech was going to go off without a hitch. He started to relax. Then the speaker paused dramatically before saying, “Listen carefully, now. I have important news.”

Darron stiffened: this was off-script. He glanced sideways at the Chief Advisor, who was standing at the bottom of the scaffolding steps. He looked like he’d just been zinged with all the electrical power in the city.

The speaker continued, his voice booming through the microphones. “The President is dead. I’m an actor who was hired by the Chief Advisor to trick you.”

For a moment, you could have heard dandelion seeds waft through the air over Pennsylvania Avenue.

Then the noise began.

Equations flowed from the virtual point of Dr. Everest’s fingertip, explaining the response of the price level algorithm under diverse pressures.

Much against his will, Micky found himself being drawn into the math. As Jerry had pointed out, he was one of the BrainTrust’s premier math geeks, and he couldn’t help being fascinated.

Then the number in the corner of the wallscreen blinked, breaking him from his near-trance. He was the first to raise his hand. “Dr. Everest, the number changed.”

Everyone looked to see the new value of the SmartCoin account. It had grown from 1.0000SC to 1.0001SC.

Erika glanced over. “Excellent. As predicted, the costs of goods bought and sold through the SmartCoin network has fallen enough to trigger the creation of more currency. As you can see, the holder of this coin—me, actually—now has slightly more money. So though the real price of goods has fallen, the nominal price will stay approximately the same.”

Someone in the audience asked, “What caused the deflation?”

Erika shrugged. “There are dozens of reasons we might see deflation. One is if the effective amount of currency in circulation falls so each remaining coin can buy more goods. This can be caused, for example, when people choose to slow their spending, such as if they decide to pay off their credit card debt.” She shrugged. “In the absence of other volatility, however, the tendency in a technological society is for currency to deflate simply because productivity increases. As productivity rises, costs fall, so a single coin can buy more.”

Someone in the audience objected. “But productivity metrics throughout Western civilization show that productivity effectively flattened years ago. There are almost no productivity improvements anymore.”

Dr. Everest pointed at the speaker and smiled. “True, but the SmartCoin network has less exposure to Western civilization than other currencies. SmartCoin is used most heavily in Third World nations, where productivity continues to climb as they adopt basic tech. And of course, the heaviest single user of SmartCoin is the BrainTrust, where productivity continues to rise on an exponential curve.”

Micky raised his hand again, but this time just about everyone in the auditorium raised theirs at the same time. A general cry arose, diverse voices alerting the speaker with variations on one theme. “Look! The number changed again!”

The SmartCoin’s value had gone from 1.0001 to 1.0002.

Dr. Everest stared at the number, and her pale hand rose to her throat as her eyes widened. She swallowed. “Well, that was unexpected.”

Major Drew Moreno stared in horror as the crowd surged, screaming, against the fence separating the North Lawn from Pennsylvania Ave. He spoke with much greater calm than he felt. “Steady, men. Hold your fire.” At least, he thought, hold it until I figure out who the hell to shoot.

He heard muffled sounds scattered through the crowd that might have been gunfire, but in the absence of spotting a person with a gun shooting another person, he was reluctant to engage. He went to his best sniper and pulled him off the line. “If we see someone about to commit murder, I’m depending on you to take them down. Can you do that for me?”

The young man, pale but determined, nodded. “Oorah!”

It didn’t take long to identify the most dangerous prick in the mess. Up on the North Lawn, as the first people managed to climb over the backs of the broken and beaten first line of citizens at the fence, the chief interrogator panicked. He hosed down the intruders and his men followed suit, shooting into the packed crowd with no plan except slaughter.

Drew pointed at the Interrogator. “Kill that bastard!”

His sniper fired, and Darron fell over on his back.

Darron’s men somehow managed to figure out that the shot had come from Drew’s Marines. They raised their guns and started firing through the crowd at him. They were ineffectual as much because they were poor marksmen as because they were panicked, and also, the crowd was soaking up far too many bullets.

Drew had little choice. “Men, you see the line of bastards shooting at us? I was right, the Chief Advisor is attempting a coup! Take them down!”

Even as his team started firing as carefully as they could to minimize civilian casualties, Drew saw the next problem. The i***t in charge of the Marines on the west side of the park had seen the interrogator shooting at him and his men shooting back, and decided that Drew was the one fomenting a rebellion. The i***t’s men raised their rifles and began firing on Drew’s position.

Darron’s team was mostly down, and the survivors were now running. One fell as Drew watched, shot in the back, not by his own men, but by someone in the crowd.

Time to change tactics. Drew commanded, “Check fire! Everybody get down!” As his men went prone, Drew spoke quietly to his sniper. “If you get a clear shot, take out that traitorous major over there. But only if it’s a clear shot.”

His sniper eyed him doubtfully. “Not much chance of a clear shot here.”

Drew nodded. “But those are your orders. Be patient.”

As Drew watched, the situation deteriorated even more. Some of the people the Marines on the west side had shot had armed friends. One Marine went down in the face of fire from the crowd, then another. The hesitation the Marines had felt before evaporated. They fired back in earnest, creating a bloodbath of packed meat that had once been human beings.