3

Sal Grimone had a serious problem. He glanced nervously through his programming interface. It had not worked. It should have worked. He checked the code again. Everything was as it was supposed to be. The object invocation was correct. The logic was perfect. The mesh topology was bent precisely according to the specified parameters. Yet, when Sal looked directly in front of him where the object should be appearing from the holonosphere, he saw nothing. Nothing at all.

Sal had never been formally educated. Formal education had disappeared when the holonosphere appeared. A few elitist people would, once in a while, attend a structured academic setting, but it was more for prestige than utility. Before the old society had fallen, nearly everyone got a degree. The problem was that the degree had become separate from the concept of having an education. Instead, the degree was mostly useful to show prospective companies that one could jump through enough hoops to obtain the degree. This information was useful to companies because it signified the willingness of the potential employee to be led with a carrot-and-stick approach. The degree was dangled before students for four years--at extensive amounts of pain and cost--and yet students would seek it out due to the perception that it would help their careers. The degree was mostly pointless. The students were only striving for the promise represented by the degree--the possibility. If a student was willing to work long and hard for a piece of paper because of the promise it signified, just think of what they would be willing to do if the company could make their safety and prosperity have the appearance that it was tied directly to the quality of their work. The potential was endless. Employees might work longer and harder on the mere pretense that someday they might have "made it" and could have enough money to finally do what they wanted. Of course, by then they were typically old and their health had left them. The only people who really got to do what they wanted were those who owned the companies. Only they could afford leisure.

When Protean science brought forth the holonosphere, there were suddenly no barriers to education. One did not need an internet connection, because the holonosphere was ubiquitous in its presence. The holonosphere contained more information in it than the entirety of humanity had published in the duration of its existence. It was telling that the shift that had taken place in society no longer valued people who KNEW a lot, but rather it valued people who could USE knowledge well. Stories of ancient polymaths who memorized vast amounts of information or competed in games arranged to showcase their memorized knowledge were now seen to be foolhardy. Why would you memorize the number of feet in a mile when it was possible to simply look it up? How often did one really need the knowledge concerning a mile such that it took up valuable space in a person's memory? After the explosion of Protean science and the discovery that distance is all relative and a matter of scale, arbitrary measurements and mathematical truths were seen in the appropriate light--that is to say that they were used as mere conveniences to achieve an end as opposed to a starting place of conceptualization.

One's reputation as a knowledge worker relied less on word-of-mouth proclamations such as degrees and relied instead on results. The utility of knowledge had value. Arbitrary rote memorization of knowledge was worthless.

Since the holonosphere had merged with reality, it was possible to manipulate the appearance of reality more than ever before. If one knew the appropriate code to construct an object in the holonosphere, one could sometimes fool another into believing that the object was there. In a sense, it was true the object WAS there, but what was untrue about the thing was that its nature was more ephemeral. The holonosphere was more like quick-silver since it changed at the rate of thought, whereas the "old world" or "physical world" was a lot slower to change due to thought. The two were rather like yin and yang. The old world was dull and plodding, and the new one was fleet-of-foot and constantly changing.

One such famous example of hacking reality has come in the form of real estate fraud. The Pitt Preserve had once been a tract of land with picturesque beauty. The surrounding land framed a shimmering lake and provided an abundant canvas for forests and creatures. People would often go there to re-attune themselves to nature and forget about the incessant honking and clanging of metropolitan life. With the development of cities, the grandeur of nature at the Pitt Preserve was valuable because of its rapid disappearance.

One summer, the Pitt Preserve experienced a drought. By August the land was so thirsty that locals had taken to asserting the only thing keeping the place watered at all was the sweat rolling off those who lived and worked there.

Everyone praised the heavens when an ominous black cloud drifted across the horizon late in the summer afternoon. Pitt Preserve would finally get rain.

The problem with nature, though, is that sometimes when she redresses imbalances--particularly ones of immense disproportion--she often solves one problem by creating an excess of another. Since Pitt Preserve was so dry, all the rain that fell was instantly absorbed by the ground. With the amount of rain that fell, one expected there to be standing puddles. No puddles remained, though. Since this was the early era of the holonosphere, people were not certain whether what they were seeing was "true reality". They thought perhaps someone was playing a practical joke by making the land so dry.

When the fire came, though, all ideas that this was some sort of joke diminished. The lightning from the storm had set some nearby fallen timber ablaze. The fire spread throughout the preserve and destroyed many acres and facilities. So extensive was the damage that it was estimated that it would take the Preserve at least a century to recover from the destruction. Consequently, the holders of the Preserve sold the land to Mr. Prizer who was known for his investments in real estate. He would buy property low, make some improvements, then sell it again for a profit. He had done exceptionally well for himself, and everyone began scratching their heads when Mr. Prizer bought the Preserve. More than a few savvy businessmen accused him of being eccentric. Perhaps though, Mr. Prizer had plans to develop the area.

Instead, Mr. Prizer wrote a press release declaring his intention to form a partnership with the company Progressive Hydroponics. Progressive Hydroponics, it was suggested in the press release, had an impressive record when it came to applying technology to nature to produce results. One achievement that the press release seized upon was that Progressive Hydroponics had produced a Sequoia tree in a year that was the same height compared to some of the trees which had taken thousands of years to achieve their extreme size. Mr. Prizer felt confident that within a relatively short amount of time--probably five years at most--the Preserve would be back to its former grandeur with the aid of Progressive Hydroponics. Since the issue of time had still not been settled, people were not sure what to make of this estimate, but since the emergence of the holonosphere was still fresh, their sense of time from the older era remained sharp. Mr. Prizer's five-year estimate seemed optimistically short and more like a miracle.

When people would glance toward Pitt Preserve during the coming years, they would see the signs of this recovery underway. At first, they saw what appeared to be small shrubs covered by a white plastic material that fluttered went the wind blew. Then, they saw what appeared to be a subterranean complex of hoses near a tree nursery. Flowers abounded and the lake began to teem once again with wildlife. When two years had elapsed, Pitt Preserve looked to be on track to its five-year recovery. The saplings were now large adolescents, and though the canopy of what would be the forest permitted more light than it ought to, it blocked the sun significantly. People began to wonder what Mr. Prizer was going to do with this miracle he was manufacturing.

When the former owners of Pitt Preserve expressed interest in purchasing the land back, Mr. Prizer magnanimously agreed to allow them to purchase it once again--and what's more--in a gesture of his goodwill toward them, he would allow them to buy it back for a fraction of the cost that the newly developed land ought to be priced. Prizer would still clear millions of profit, but the Pitt Preserve people would get their land back fully reinvigorated for far cheaper than it should have cost them. The scenario was a win/win, and the press quickly seized on what a humanitarian Mr. Prizer was.

Interestingly, however, when some biologists from Pitt Preserve came in to examine the development of the land, they made notes in their reports of how marvelous a recovery had taken place, but also most of them privately expressed some inner revulsion or aversion they could not identify. The people who were most bothered by this sense of revulsion were those who were closest to the land and nature--people who were landscapers, gardeners, and park rangers. To their eyes, all indications were that the park was as pristine and recovered as possible, but in their hearts something was amiss. They just were not sure what.

When the deal finally closed and the Pitt Preserve people returned, almost everyone in the park was thrilled right up until they began vomiting. All the former staff who had worked the preserve for years began to feel violently ill. There were a few exceptions. Visitors could come seemingly without affliction for the most part, but anyone who had a strong tie to nature was immediately ill.

Pitt Preserve was completely baffled by what was happening. It was not until one of the few remaining Native Americans came to visit the preserve that the answer to their predicament was finally revealed.

When Chief Otawanaga of the former nation of the Nez Pierce arrived, he cast his gaze panoramically from left to right. His eyes were slow, discerning, and deliberate. After finishing his scan, he turned to the park ranger nearby.

"Why are you here?" Otawanaga inquired.

"Because I need the credits and being a Park Ranger pays well," the ranger replied.

"There is no park here," said the chief.

"What do you mean?" asked the ranger clearly confused by the statement.

"I mean there is no park here, only charred rubble."

The ranger stammered as he looked out over Pitt Preserve. Where seconds before he had seen bountiful trees and greenery, he could now see a layer of ash with sparse grass dotting the ruin. The newly built facilities of Pitt Preserve were surrounded by absolute desolation.

The court decision involving Pitt Preserve was a landmark case. Mr. Prizer did not admit to fraud. The court could not accuse him of fraud, because the holonosphere had proven itself to be a real thing. When the organization that re-purchased Pitt Preserve had bought the land, they had bought a real thing. They bought both the actual land and the holonospheric representation placed upon it. The distinction could not be made such that the court could say that the holonospheric representation was imaginary.

Instead, the court proposed that the nature of the qualities of what was purchased were not distinguished clearly enough. The point was made that if a customer purchased a banana that in purchasing this banana, they were aware of the qualities of a banana. If the banana should happen to spoil in a week, one could not blame the store. Bananas can reasonably be expected to spoil. In contrast to the process of purchasing a house, one could see the difference. The house did not spoil in two weeks.

The question was then posed as to what qualities could be attributed to the holonosphere. The holonosphere did not spoil. However, where the holonosphere was used to deceive others involving the actual land, it had caused revulsion in everyone besides Chief Otawanaga who saw the truth of the situation immediately.

Expert witnesses were called to explain why so many had become ill. Most of these witnesses were psychologists and psychiatrists, and their studies had indicated that the holonosphere had displayed one thing and the physical reality another that the subconscious was aware of the difference even if the conscious mind was not. This induced a dissonant state, particularly for those most aware of nature. The dissonance had caused sickness because the conscious mind would not allow the truth of the physical world to enter. Chief Otawanaga, they contended, had expected to see nothing when he arrived. He had no stake in whether the preserve was back to normal or not. Since he had no expectations, he saw what was and had no need for any form of denial. When asked how he knew that what he was seeing as represented by the holonosphere was not real, the Chief remarked that though the representation was visually impressive, the land it showed did not speak. This puzzled the researchers, and they pressed the Chief on the point. After a protracted amount of questioning of the Chief, researchers were completely shocked when he reached across the table and slapped his interrogator across the face. The researcher, understandably, wanted to understand why he had been slapped.

"I did not slap you," replied the Chief.

"Yes you did!" the researcher said while holding his face.

"How do you know?" asked the Chief.

"Because my face stings."

"Exactly," said the Chief. "The land is just like that. Your face speaks in response to my slap, even if I deny it."

"But how did you sense what the land had to say?" asked the researcher.

"My people have been on this land for generations. Yours for a relatively shorter amount of time. We have heard the songs of the ocean and the melodies of the land. Where we have sought to act in harmony with nature, your people have tried to exploit her. You had no need to listen to her songs, for you were only concerned with raping her. Even in this case, you worry not about the land, but about the purchasing of her, as though she were a whore. The problem with your people is you treat your mother as you would a whore. The holonosphere has no song. It is the land you have inherited--the land your people have made."

"But some of our people got sick," replied the researcher indignantly.

"Some of your people yet still remember their mother, but dimly," replied the Chief.

The court did not pay much heed to the Chief's explanation of songs and melodies, but it did distinguish that the holonosphere had different properties than physical land. Mr. Prizer initially disputed this claim, but when the court suggested that perhaps it ought to use the holonosphere to render some of his better property a desolate wasteland, he seemed to suddenly find the proposed system completely satisfactory.

The system the court devised had what were termed various R ratings. The R stood for reality. So a piece of old-world physical land would have an R-value of 1 indicating that it was an object with durable properties that one should expect from pre-holonosphere time. A value of 3 indicated some kind of hybrid--a situation where the old-world properties and new-world properties came together more symbiotically. An R rating of five, the highest number, indicated that the reality value of the object in question was purely holonospheric, and should be regarded as having the properties associated with such a construct. In matters of real estate and where applicable other situations, users were required to have an R ranking indicating what properties the person who might be interested in purchasing something should expect.

Though Prizer was not convicted of fraud, no one trusted him when it came to purchasing real estate after Pitt Preserve. He had proven himself entirely too opportunistic.

The Pitt Preserve fiasco was ancient history to Sal. The findings directly influenced his line of work, however. The holonosphereic community had taken to policing itself. As users became accustomed to the new reality, they began to become better able to understand when the holonosphereic reality and old reality had been bent. Where a user felt suspicion, they would flag it so that other users would be aware of potential deception. If other users similarly flagged an item, it was sufficient for a given user to be very cautious where the item in question was concerned.

Sal, though, was a talented deceiver. In fact, Sal prided himself on his reputation of being able to fool anyone, anytime. Sal had worked for corporations wishing to change their image, to terrorist organizations wishing to use his skill set to kill those they regarded as enemies. His latest employer was known as the Telray mafia.

Sal didn't know much about Telray, and he liked to keep it that way. The less he knew, the easier it was to do whatever his job was so he could get paid, and then he could get out. What Sal wanted to avoid more than anything else was getting tangled up with an underworld contact such that they had reason to suspect he owned them. Sal had dirt on everyone because he was the one who had shoveled it. If an organization really pushed him, he could use his skill set against that organization and make them wish they had never tried to strong-arm him.

Once when he had worked for some weapons smugglers, his life had been placed under threat. The weapon smugglers apparently felt that Sal was a loose end to their deal. Sal manufactured the impression in the holonosphere that the chief weapon trader was actually interested in the child sex slave trade. If this knowledge went unchallenged, and Sal could make sure it did, the weapons smuggler was as good as dead. Child sex slave traders only existed because they were good at remaining invisible. They tended to be people who had no family and were only concerned about money for themselves. Often they went to extreme measures, re-configuring their faces every three months.

The smuggler backed off of Sal, and the matter was forgotten. Sal knew that one of the few reasons he remained alive was because he was so good at what he did.

Sal checked back through his interface as his eyes scanned frantically to catch any mistakes. The deadline for this job expired in thirty minutes OCT or old central time. If it was not done by then, he would have to explain to Telray why it wasn't. From what he had seen of them, he did not imagine they would be the understanding sort. Sal glanced at the average R rating in the nearby terrain. This was not an area marred by extreme skepticism. His terrain modification ought to be a simple hack.

What made Sal so talented in deception on the holonosphere was his ability to understand what the R ratings in an area meant to the community. In areas of high skepticism, it was much harder to make a change without people doubting the veracity of the change. However, because people doubted the veracity of the change, it was possible to use the truth against them as they began to doubt even that. So, if Sal found himself in a high skepticism area, he found that it was necessary to make whatever modification he made logically believable. Once this was achieved the skeptics were more gullible than the non-skeptics. The skeptics were only skeptical insofar as something did not conform to the rules and logic that they thought the world ought to operate according to. If something happened to conform to those rules, their skepticism was entirely suspended.

A good example of this was when an environmental agency hired him to create the impression of a mudslide. The environmental agency had suggested that the cutting of trees would lead to the soil eroding. Since there were arguing sides, holonosophere users had many R ratings in the nearby terrain because they had more reason to suspect agendas. Sal simply waited for the heaviest rainstorm of the season, and then he simulated the desired mudslide. Despite all the R ratings being so skeptical, few were bold enough to suggest the mudslide had been simulated after the storm. There was a logical reason for the mudslide to be there, and the argument made by the environmental agency provided a reason. For the few who suggested that the mudslide had been simulated, others accused them of believing in conspiracy theories. When those accused of believing in conspiracy theories pointed out that it seemed awfully convenient that the mudslide happened so soon on the heels of the environmental agency's predictions, their opponents pointed out that the only reason it had happened was that the environmental agency had been right. If the conspiracy theorists could not provide evidence that the mudslide had been simulated, then the most reasonable assumption was that the storm had caused the mudslide as reported. Would they go so far as to say the storm was fake too?

During this debacle, Sal hadn't been able to help but smile to himself. People were, by and large, idiots. Groups of people were perhaps larger idiots than individuals. Once an individual felt the pressure from the group to conform, typically they would regardless of how insanely stupid the group in question was. People were social enough that they would rather be stupid in herds than they would to be right and be outcast. Sal took special delight in the fact that so many people had been manipulated so easily into believing the environmental agency had been correct. What people failed to recognize at the public level was that everyone had an agenda and that the credits did not grow on trees. However, if you had enough credits, you could probably gain additional ones by leveraging the ones you had already.

The situation that Sal found himself in currently, then, dumbfounded him. TelRay had asked for a simple hill to appear where a lake had been. They had not asked that the hill be persistent into the future, and if they had Sal would have turned the job down. He specialized in short-term deceptions or one-time events. Sustaining a long-term falsehood was too hard and burned too many resources. There were those who had more credits than he who did the long-term deception line of work anyway, but he had always thought those guys to be foolish. Sure, you might make more credits, but you were always on call. People never became as paranoid as they did when they had to defend a persistent lie. Sal did not have enough time in his day to be part psychologist and part hacker. He'd rather hack, get whatever it was done, and go on to the next job. It provided him with tidy, billable boundaries. If a client could not cope with his last deception, he'd be happy to create another one for them so long as the clock was ticking, and credits were flowing into his account.

Right now, for the first time in his life, Sal looked at the clock and wished it were not ticking. After thirty minutes had elapsed there was still no hill. Almost to the minute at the expiration of time, Sal felt a gloved hand slip around his mouth and the nauseating feeling of point-to-point slipstream travel.