day 9 of 30

NanoWriMo2005
J E D Cline

day 9 of 30


She spent more and more of her time in the Holovision Presence nook of her office, routinely checking through the progress of her factory literally from the inside out. And she decorated the system with whatever she found that was beautiful and friendly. It became a place almost of escape from the bitter realities of the physical world.

When a month had passed without her having to solve a crisis on the production line, and several full shipments of sliding armature segments had gone to Ecuador and had been incorporated in the latest tracks without a failure, Idealiana suddenly woke up to the thought that she was somewhat expendable again. And a risk to Rationallo that maybe was no longer necessary in his mind. She had a batch of jelly bean stimulants made up with the presence chemical, toxic or no, and she tried some. In her next Holovision Presence system examination session, she discovered she herself was also shown in the system, as were the two implants, including the one in her brain intended to cause her death by stroke if she so much as thought of betraying Rationallo. She was not intending that, but now she had more info on the subject, in case of need.

And over in Tanfl Political Corporation’s main office, Rationallo was indeed worrying. He was not a man who took chances normally, nor dealt with managerial duties where there were any unknowns in the system. The outlawing of innovation had made management quite a bit more predictable, and life had been built around that predictability for over a generation. Now he was into his fourth month of worrying that any minute Idealiana would betray him, and have his world go into ruin around him, the Leroy Brown Society turning on him with their merciless terror that was the technique by which their effectiveness was so powerful, the power behind the Tanfl throne. And it tolerated no traitors. While Rationallo was no traitor, he had far overstepped his mandate by releasing Idealiana, even to get the production line going again for those essential armatures for the 3Musketeers’ space access project.

He was monitoring idealiana by the monitor implant when she was in that Holopresence thing, and again his readings became erratic, as usual when she was in there. It seemed even more erratic for the past week. Did he need Idealiana to get the production line going anymore? He needed clear thinking time to prepare for the next Board meeting, and this distraction had gone on too long. No, he did not need her anymore. He reached over and pressed the Stroke implant activation transmitter button, noted Idealiana’s monitor signs go wild and fade out. It was time for him to go relax;. he felt like his old self again.

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The 3Musketeers sliding armature manufacturing plant’s doctor found he had an emergency on his hands. Their top manager had a stroke, and was now on the operating table. Yet he knew she was too young, too fit, to have had a normal stroke. She was still alive, but what to do now? He took some of the new jelly bean stimulants that she had issued just that morning, he needed extra clarity of thought. and suddenly, he was part of the Holovision Presence system, which included Idealiana on the operating table. And it was obvious she had two brain implants, where did they come from? And one had been a tiny bomb, that had gone off and caused the stroke. Her brain, bone structure all was in full detail there, and rapid operating removed both implants and sealed off the stroke area; the Holovision Presence even showed where to put in a few microtubes to get normal blood flow going to damaged brain areas. The task completed, and now somewhat amazed by the whole thing, the doctor sent Idealiana to the recovery room. And he requested guards to be always present there, and no word get out about her condition.

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Idealiana awoke with a very bad headache. She noticed she was as if in the Holopresence nook of her office, then realized that the chemical she had put in her jellybeans, the same one that was in the armatures and walls, everywhere in the manufacturing plant, when combined with imbibed chemicals, made the whole building a Holopresence terminal. And she saw her physical body here too, headache and all, the surgeon’s work so well done. It had worked, she had managed to get the chemical into the doctor’s jellybean stimulant supply just in time. Rationallo must have decided she was expendable and a nuisance no longer needed. And she was still alive! And she saw that both implants had been removed by the doctor, which meant that Rationallo no longer was getting biological and covert speech data from her anymore; he probably believed her dead. So let him think that.
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With the Idealiana tasks behind him, Rationallo was better able to resume his normal evaluations of the Tanfl Political Corporation’s profits. He found they had been sliding downward an the past several months, not fast, but a trend that would be noticed by the Board, and answers would have to be supplied as to why and how to fix that.

He had watched, via the implant in Idealiana, how innovation was able to provide ways around problems, instead of brute force making them work as in the past. Innovation was outlawed, yes, but his was an old corporation, and engineering had notebooks going back, way back. And the Tanfl law had frozen innovation long after those engineering notebooks had been accumulated. If he kept to technology that existed before the laws against innovation were put into effect, he could have the contents of those old engineering books revised a bit. He could proclaim that solutions had been found in the old records, and put them into effect legally, or so it would seem.

And it worked; by the time the board meeting convened, the profit of Tanfl Political Corporation was fully recovered, even a bit better than had been projected.





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