Keynes... Guess I Live Here Now...
An exercise in worldbuilding
I wrote this as an exercise in worldbuilding. I want to eventually tell a story with many of these facets, so I figured I would just try it. I am not a trained writer, nor am I any sort of great speaker. Just a guy who heard a story in his head that he had to get on paper somehow. I am working on one more associated “vignette” (ugh…) and then I’ll be writing the first season, so enjoy.
“Good morning Keynesians! It’s 0500, your designated elucidation time! Highs of 72PBpS and a low of 43PBpS… the network outlook of Keynes is going to be great today, clients.”
The alarm buzzed, and the cradle started my morning rounds of hormones, electrostatic hypertrophic stimulators went to work, strengthening my muscles from rapid muscular atrophy.
Yeah its a rare condition, especially in a world where Central has all but eradicated it. An old war wound from when Myo-genetic bioweapons were all the rage. The treatments work great, but they happen every day. To afford them, I work a manual labor job. Well, its not really manual labor. Just stuff Central can’t do well.
Its the only way to earn REAL money, unless you’re one of those rockstars in Web4 that draw crowds to see what they create. Either way, I owe Central a lot of dollars for the Gen3 neural stack and cradle for my ailment, so I took a role in building automation I found myself reasonably efficient at, having done the same thing in the OC before I emigrated. Might be why they punched my ticket. The disease I was born with is all but eradicated, like I said, but only if you’re born Keynesian.
I was raised in the region you might have known as Orange County, California years after the Blackout, the Interstate Conflict, and the offshore nuclear event that ended it. Keynes, the city I now reside in, has been reluctant up until the last year or so to bring in immigrants. Strange, I think, as the line to get in would have been very long.
Who wants to live in the slow death spiral of colliding megacities when you can turn on, tune in, and drop out? People didn’t seem to mind, but then again, I didn’t see too many immigrants wearing NSG3 and diving into Web4. Nobody had that kind of money.
Yet here I am, figuring it out, one day at a time.
Part of my contract with the NSG3 and the advanced cradle involved signing away paternity rights and allowing the unlimited use of my “genetic materials”. I assume this means that everyone in Keynes was a test tube baby. That would allow Central to develop ideal gestation conditions and ingredients to create a society free of suffering.
Not sure I would take the trade.
You know how I know? You see anyone walking around with kids out here? Who am i kidding… They wouldn’t tell me if they did know their parents. That kind of talk doesn’t get you far out here.
Today I am going out to look at a structural shell of a building to start laying out the controls installation; The subsystem that allows our fully automated domiciles to serve our needs.
Sensors, cradle connectors, data uplinks, door controllers, lights, climate controls, access, security, the works. If it happens, I handle it. Well, my team does. I was found suitably amenable to lead a crew doing this work, drafting, designing, assisting Central with programming, and the like.
With the day’s network outlook at highs well over 70 Petabytes per second, the data systems will be stressed abnormally. Something somewhere is going to be on the fritz. People like me are going to take care of it, or in my case, probably get a nasty call or two regarding.
I think that is the real reason Central hires us. Just to deal with crappy humans and their incessant calls. Negotiating with humans was never its strong point.
Today I am going more specifically to meet with a Commissioning Agent, or CxA, as they used to be called. Their job is to determine the building is installed correctly and functioning in accordance with Central’s plan.
But that’s just my day job. After work, I spend some limited time before minimum rest period developing games. Same rules apply for me I guess. I don’t have the time, or even the requisite skill to develop these games on my own, so I lead teams that put them together, or at least that is the hope, if our projects ever get completed without getting “claimed” by someone’s jackoff cAI crawler.
My communicator buzzed, it was Notes. That’s how I knew them anyways. Their Web4 handle. I imagine most went by those here in Keynes. I was waking up to go to work, but the majority of Keynesians “worked” in Web4. They made things, chased things… Called them “Pursuits”. Anyways, Notes is ones of the greatest composers on Web4, in my opinion. Usually people just pointed their companion AI at the problem and wham! Music? Not really, in my mind. Notes worked with another colleague of ours to develop a system that took their intentions and allowed them to be arranged directly, note by note, phrase by phrase, instrument by instrument.
Some thought it archaic, but those same people struggle to prove music was ever made without cAI. We certainly see no evidence of that. To me, the imperfections in it, the chaos, helps to define the patterns, and vice versa. Something unique and wonderful about it cemented Notes on my team a long time ago.
“OK Notes, send.”
“Ok Dave, audio is 95. Gated for a license to iterate contemporary works. Claims I duped someone’s cAI dump”
Send. Such a strange greeting. It assumes that someone calling you always has something important to say. Turns out, because its Keynes, that’s mostly true. Inefficiency and small talk are just a waste of compute.
Audio is 95: 95% complete.
Licenses to Iterate are the primary form of income in Keynes, as most pursuits result in some form of digital asset that is desirable to another. Audio is particularly tricky, as most artists task their cAI to scrape Web4 for anything remotely similar to place a claim on their work, preventing replication or utilization until the claim is paid or relinquished. Something like a mechanic’s lien from back in the day.
Rent seeking seemed to be the way life worked here.
A cAI dump is a phrase Notes and I made up to describe something trying to pass as human made while being cAI-gen garbage. We made it up. It’s our thing. It’s also our worst nightmare, as our content is not cAI-gen, so it is not subject to Keynes’ licensure laws. Getting someone’s cAI to let go of something we made is a gargantuan effort, especially since out work is not “directly” sanctioned per se.
“Check. Resolve and proceed. Advise when ready for replication.”
“Check. Thanks. Gotta go. Meeting in 30.”
Notes cut the call.
Time to get out and working. I called for Sirena, my cAI.
Sirena, let’s get this muscle fix done. I gotta jet to the jobsite. CxA is gonna have my ass if I don’t figure out the heat recovery sequencing today. wrap it and download instance to local for transport.
“Hell yeah, Dave. Let’s rock.”
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