Lungfish Alpha
Episode 1
By Michael Beck

"And that was the beginning"
 Wynona Judd, *Girls with Guitars*


 "And *done*."  Itsuko Kaiu said with satisfaction, putting in the last
piece of the jigsaw puzzle.  The nanos activated and the piece fused
with the rest of the puzzle, forming a single unit.  4,000 pieces,
upside down, two months of work, and it was done.
 She turned it over, eager to finally see the front.  It was a picture
of sunset over some alien world, the pine green sun and the neon orange
clouds showing over the purple beach and vomit-brown ocean.  Geez, if
the whole planet was like that she’d hate to be a landscaper.  Well,
that was why Itsuko had chosen economics and cliology as her majors, so
she wouldn’t have to make decisions like that.  Except, of course, on
this small scale.  Itsuko scanned the walls, looking for a place where
it would go well with her other completed puzzles.  Once she found one,
she sent a mental command to the puzzle-organism and it shrunk in
dimension.  Stopping it at the desired size, Itsuko got up on her bed
and pressed it against the wall, sending another command.  The puzzle
made its back sticky, gluing itself to the wall.
 "Gods, you intend to *look* at that?"  her suitemate Sally said in
disbelief.  "YVVH Itsuko, that thing is *ugly*."
 "You just can’t see it’s inner beauty." Itsuko retorted.
 "What inner beauty?"  Sally almost screamed.  "It’s *ugly*."
 "It represents the culmination of weeks of effort."
 "It’s *ugly*."
 "It’s an expression of man’s ability to overcome obstacles.  A single
moment of wonder, captured in film and transported across who knows how
many lightyears, to be encapsulated in this puzzle."
 "I’m sorry, but it’s still ugly."
 "I know,"  Itsuko admitted in defeat.  "But what can I say, it’s my
hobby."
 "Well, you might want to get a different one."  Sally suggested.  "At
least *my* hobby’s sane."
 Itsuko shook her head.  "Sally, playing Rifts is not sane.  What
sourcebook are you reading right now, may I ask?"  Sally quickly moved
to hide it, but that didn’t do any good where Itsuko was concerned.  She
played back the memory, freezing it at the appropriate moment to read
the title.  Two of Itsuko’s parents were otkau, worshippers of some
obscure art form from way back in the 19th century or thereabouts.
They’d geneered their daughter to resemble the characters they loved:
ridiculously colored hair, extended legs and arms, a tiny mouth and eyes
that took up 70 percent of the face.  She’d done great at track in high
school, and her vision was second to none which had been great for
cheating on tests, but ever since her teens Itsuko had wished her
parents had made her for something *practical*.  But at times like this,
it came in handy.
 "Hmmm, Foot Diseases of the Vampire Kingdoms.  Yep, that’s logical."
 (Authors note: face it people, Rifts is going to last *forever*)
 Sally blushed and turned away, mumbling.  Itsuko activated her
headware, surfing the Link and heading to
rec.games.puzzles.fanatics.jigsaws.huge.ridiculously-complex.marketplace
to find her next challenge.
 Cthulhu jigsaw.  Boring.
 A jigsaw of that boring US president who’d come after what’s his face
with the sex scandal, boring.
 A Springtime for Hitler puzzle.  Something told her that this was
foredoomed to failure.
 A jigsaw of an old biorock group, Rashamon.  The caption claimed that
they’d been huge before they’d died in that overly-hyped-space
accident.  Itsuko snorted.  Rashamon, famous?  That wasn’t how she
remembered them.
 Wait, now this looked interesting.  A crosspost, but she ignored that.
Something called "Lungfish Alpha".  There was a mention to over 10,000
components, and the picture looked great, some kind of giant orange ball
with pieces of metal sticking out.  And only one yen, even better.  She
immediately p-mailed the seller.  The response was almost instantaneous,
a strangely eager yes.
 Da-dum, da-dum, dum dum.
 Itsuko glared at her roommate.  "Sally, do you always have to play that
ominous music when I’m in the room?  Download it to your headware and
play it in your head, it disturbs me and fills me with this terrible
feeling I’ve just done something horrible which will become the source
of laughter for hundreds of people I don’t even know."
 Sneering, Sally just turned the volume up higher.

TWO WEEKS LATER
 The dean’s face was utterly placid as he ushered Itsuko into his
office.  He motioned for her to sit down, and she did so.  This had to
be pretty important for him to call her here in person instead of just
meeting in a virtual office, and she was afraid she already knew why.
In fact, she was certain she already knew why.
 "Itsuko Kaui, me and the other members of the board of this university
have been discussing the matter of your recent, ah, purchase."
 Itsuko wasn’t surprised in the least, this was all she’d been hearing
about for the last two weeks.  The Times had carried a headline
"Sophomore Student Snatches Screwed-Up Station for Song."  What the
Daily News had put on *its* front page didn’t bear thinking about.  The
looks in class, Sally’s "I told you so"s , the offers from "Impulse
Buyers Anonymous" to be a guest speaker, the holonews stories—just plain
hell.
  "Listen," she protested.  "I didn’t know what I was buying.  I thought
it was a picture of Lungfish Alpha, not Lungfish Alpha itself."
The man nodded.  "I understand your position, Itsuko.  In fact, I became
Dean of Students in much the same manner.  However, such an utter lack
of knowledge about the universe, such little awareness of current
events, such a small level of control over one’s base impulses, such—"
 "Okay, okay".  Itsuko interrupted.
 "Ah, yes well, you see, all these reflect badly upon the school.  And
to be honest, paying such a large amount for Lungfish Alpha makes us
feel you aren’t quite suited for the economics track.  Also, there are
certain legal concerns about students owning sovereign nations."
 "I know, I know."  Itsuko pleaded.  "You have to believe me, I’m trying
to get rid of the thing.  But no one will buy.  I’ve offered it on
P-Bay, in ads, phoned all my friends, but no luck.  I’ve even hired some
lawyers to try and invalidate the purchase."
 He perked up his eyebrows.  "Really, which law firm?"
 "Um, Bellom, Booker and Crandle.  But listen, I just need a little more
time . . ."
 "Which I’m afraid you don’t have.  Hiring *that* law firm, well this
clinches it.  Have your stuff out of your room in 22 hours."

 Lungfish Alpha.  Built just after the square-cube law that limited the
size of geneered living organisms had been cracked, but just before the
technology to simply grow self-repairing devices into the life form
itself as it matured.  So, after growing a two-hundred mile in diameter
kumquat, the corporation who had grown Lungfish Alpha solely for the
tax-breaks being offered had "dug" tunnels, installed weaponry and
propulsion and living quarters and computers, and abandoned the thing.
Two weeks ago, Itsuko Kaui had never even heard of the thing.  Now she
knew all too much about it.  She knew its currency, the fnord, was the
lowest valued monetary unit in the known universe.  Itsuko had done a
comparison: pound for pound, thousand-fnord notes were less valuable
than toilet paper and much less colorful.  The bond rating didn’t even
bear thinking about—though knowing there actually existed a ZZZZ rating
was intellectually interesting, it didn’t fill her with confidence.  She
knew it had been the trigger point for the Third Galactic War, as both
sides constantly claimed it belonged to the other.  She knew that,
according to Fodor’s Travel Guide, it was a good place to spend short
vacations because after two days there, anyplace seemed like a
vacation.  She’d checked out its Linksite, sss.Lungfishalpha.com—after
two hours of waiting for it to load, she’d just given up.
 All this and more went through her mind as the shuttle left
overly-hyped space.  It was an old-crop Macrosponge Twister, needing a
human pilot to navigate through the warp fields it was so old.  The
pale-skinned man tapped a button—tapped, manual controls for YWVH’s
sake—opening a channel.
 "Shuttle 298374, coming in." he said.  His job temporarily done, he
turned to her.
 "So, you’re the girl who bought this junkpile?" he asked.
 It took Itsuko a moment to answer him, as she was looking out a
viewscreen and studying her new possession.  It looked like a
spectacularly ugly orange globe, with all kinds of metallic and
crystalline protrusions beyond counting sticking out.  She focussed her
telescopic vision on some of the more interesting features—that was
probably a darklaser port, a pharton torpedo bay, and a very old
tachyonic communications array.  Only one dish, though, bandwidth would
suck.  Not all of it was so easily quantifiable, of course.  Like what
the hell was a *clock* doing there?  And that was just a few hundred
square feet of the outer surface.  This was the single largest
artificial construct ever made, she knew.  Suddenly she felt a chill.
There could be *anything* in there.  Like what the hell was that *thing*
sticking out the side?  To be visible without using enhanced vision—she
didn’t even want to think about the scale involved.
 "Uh, yeah." she said.
 He nodded.  "Hmph.  Not a smart idea.  By the way, I’ve put you down
for two days on the pool, try to stay around that long."
 "I may not be able to unload this piece of shit for a long time." she
said with a sigh.
 He shook his head.  "No.  I meant just survive for two days.  You’ll do
better than most owners."
 The comm beeped, indicating that whoever was in control of this bizarre
construct had finally gotten around to answering.  "What if we don’t
want you to come in?"
 The pilot sighed, and pushed the send button.  "Shuttle 298374, coming
in." he repeated.
 "It’s always the same." said the voice on the other end.  "Coming in,
coming in.  What’s wrong with "arriving", or "stopping by", or . . ."
 Zing let out a low "Zing" of dissapointment.  Itsuko looked towards
him, her only friend out here.  For her sixth birthday present, she’d
been allowed to make a pet and had created Zing.  Like most children
she’d thought that a perfect pet would combine all kinds of fun
qualities, so she’d checked pretty much everything on the order form.
Unlike most children, she hadn’t sent her pet back the vats once the
novelty had worn off but had kept him.  Zing was a mixture of cabbit,
cephlapod, cockatoo and crystal, and had been her best friend ever
since.
 "This doesn’t bode well, does it boy?" she asked.
 "Zing." Zing zinged in reply, reaching up one of his tentacles and
scratching her knee.  She reached down and massaged Zing an inch below
his leftmost neck, just the way he liked it.
 "Well, enter if you must." said the grumbling voice on the other end.

 "We’re really sorry about that little delay you understand, really
really sorry."  The woman’s unctuousness was starting to grate on her.
She was homo spacius, geneered for zero gravity.  Three eyes, one each
at 120 degree angles around the head.  The same for her arms.  No legs,
just more arms there.  Right now she was floating in a zero-gee bubble,
probably generated by one of the multitude of devices on her belt.
 Itsuko was too busy sneezing to make a reply.  The landing bay reeked
of incense, not a bad smell but a very strong one, and one she was
apparently somewhat allergic to.  She’d have to get herself an immunity
factor as soon as possible, some tourist shop would probably have one.
What really got Itsuko, though, were the mirrors.  She *thought* that
the hangar bay was perhaps about fifty by eighty yards, but she couldn’t
be sure.  The designers had put mirrors all over the place, in some of
the corners, occasional patches of floor, walls and ceiling, and various
geometrical shapes that jutted out from the surfaces.  Everything seemed
reflected a hundred times over, and it was hard to tell where the real
people were standing.
 "I’m Amelia Bayushi." The floater continued.  "Before we go any
further, there’s a matter we need to take care of.  She took out a
datapad.  "If you would just spit here, please."  Itsuko complied, and
the words "DNA check confirmed, Itsuko Kaiu" appeared on the screen.
The spacius nodded.  "Thank you.  This is the terms of your ownership of
Lungfish Alpha, please read them over and tell me if you have any
questions."
 Itsuko had already read the contract over and over, trying to find a
loophole.  She was officially the Sole Manager of Lungfish Alpha, with
"all powers and privileges associated thereof".  Basically she owned
everything on the station that wasn’t private property, including the
air people breathed.  She could pass and enforce laws (if you can was
the subtext), design budgets (with practically no money), command the
military (what little of one there was), make treaties (not that she had
anything to offer), issue patents and copyrights (most people with
talent in art or invention moved off of Lungfish Alpha as soon as
possible), and a lot of other stuff.  She spat in the appropriate spots,
serving notice that she understood all of this.  The spacius popped a
wormcan out of the side, putting it in her d-pocket.  Now, things were
official.
 Amelia nodded, a bit less formal now.  She extended a lower arm, and
shook Itsuko’s hand.  It took Itsuko a moment to figure out which hand
was real and which were reflections.  "I’m your second-in-command so to
speak.Amelia continued.  She tapped a button, and her pack propelled her
to the next person in line.  Most of them looked like this was some
arduous but necessary duty, sort of like teachers at finals.
 "This is Daniel Blutbild, our medical officer."  A shortish blonde man,
his left arm was grossly oversized and had no hand, while his right was
thin but had nine fingers for ultra-fine manipulation.   "That had
better be antiseptic I smell,"  Itsuko said, scenting the familiar
honey-suckle odor.  It was probably best to get who was in charge
straightened out right away.
 He nodded.  "Don’t worry, it is."  He reached into his d-pocket and
pulled out a bottle.  "Want any?" he asked, taking a swig.
 "Ah, moving on."  Amelia said hastily and moving to the next person in
line, "This is Em, commander of our security."  More like a police
force, Itsuko remembered.  He was wearing a ridiculously loud plaid suit
that fitted him very badly.  Contracted out to MiP Security Services.
Itsuko decided to satisfy curiousity.
 "Tell me Em, what does MiP stand for?"
 "Men In Plaid." he responded with pride.
 "Shouldn’t that be Men In Black?"  Itsuko asked.
 "Nooo, it’s Men in Plaid."  Em let out a long sigh.  "One stupid cough,
and next thing you know its gospel," he muttered.
 The next man was a patchwork reanimate.  "I’m Arnold Lee." he said.
"I’m the head of the Lungfish Alpha Citizens Council."  There was hard
glint in his eyes: a person to watch.  Itsuko could in theory overrule
anything the Council voted, but she was sure that if she did they’d find
a way to get back at her.
 Next in line was a drunken-looking man with the nodules on his head
indicating a psi-and a powerful one, judging by the size of the lumps.
"And this is, OH SHIT!!!"  Amelia’s face took on an abstracted look—she
was accessing her headware.  The others did the same.  Itsuko
frantically scanned the tachyonic vibrations, trying to find the level
they were using here.  She did *not* want to be out of the loop.
 There was a flicker, and suddenly Itsuko was standing in a cavernous
room filled with holoprojected monitors.  The psi had teleported them,
apparently.  A *very* powerful psychic, then.  The mirrors were here as
well, and made it hard to get a fix on just how big the room was.  And
so was the stink.  And there was so help her YVVH a *waterfall* along
the side of room, which produced a stream that meandered its way across
the room until disappearing through a hole in the wall.
 "Hey baby, wanna party?" the mentalist said, making a suggestive
gesture with his fingers.  Itsuko stomped on his feet and bashed him
over the head.
 "You’ll" first voice.
 "have" second voice.
 "to" third voice.
 "excuse" fourth voice
 "him." first voice.
 "He’s" second voice.
 "had" third voice
 "too" fourth voice.
 "much" first voice
 "to" second voice
 "drink". third voice
 "As usual." In unision.
 Itsuko turned to the speakers.  Four identical armadillo morphs, female
judging by snout length.  At a guess . . .
 "Hive mind." Itsuko hazarded.
 "Yes." In unison.
 "We’re Jane." leftmost one.
 "Jean" next to the right.
 "Joan" next one.
 "and June" rightmost one.
 "Quadrango." in unison.
 "We’re" Jane.
 "eighty" Jean.
 "percent" Joan.
 "of" June.
 "your military." in unison.
 "And where’s the other twenty percent?" Itsuko asked.  She vaguely
recalled that Lungfish Alpha had a flight of four military mecha
*somewhere*, these were probably the pilots and the last was the
commander.
 "In hiding." in unison.
 "From whom?"
 "The" Jane.
 "Mossad." Jean.
 "He" Joan.
 "used" June.
 "to" Jane
 "be" Jean
 "on" Joan
 "Hitler’s" June
 "general staff." in unison.
 Itsuko’s mind gibbered for half a second, before getting oriented.
Assuming the person in question had been young, he might *just* have
lived long enough to catch the very first Leonization treatments.
As a part of her mind expounded on the odd animen, Itsuko's attention
shifted to the rapidly approaching form of the, no *her*, commander of
security. Sighing, she grabbed Em as he shot by.  "What’s happening?"
she demanded.
 "Out of control block party.  It’s already spread all over divisions
489 and 490, and 491-492 are just holding on.  We were able to set up a
party break in 488, and give us a bit of time and we’ll manage to start
some back parties to take the steam out of it.  Excuse me, I’m BUSY."
He shoved her away, and ran off screaming at a man with a cyberhand that
had too few fingers and too many joints.
 Suddenly tired, Itsuko sat down at a convenient chair, ignoring the
farting sound that emanated from it as she did so.  Zing flutted up to
her, landing on her lap.  She absently scratched him, listening to his
long, drawn out "Zzzzzziiiiiinnggggg" of contentment.
 Well, at least one of us is happy, she reflected.
 "Hey, that’s my chair." A voice behind her protested.  Itsuko didn’t
even turn around.  "Listen," she snapped.  "I paid good money for this
space station, and that means I own it.  That means that I own
everything on it that’s not private property, and since this is a crisis
center it *isn’t* private property, which means that this is *my*
chair.  Got it?"
 "Ooookaaayyyy." said the voice, beating a hasty retreat.
 There was a food dispenser a few yards away.  Itsuko got up and went to
it.  "Menu." she sent through her headware.
 "This unit has fried kumquat, barbecued kumquat, kumquat sandwiches,
kumquat fricassee, diced kumquat, General Tso’s kumquat, kumquatini,
kumquatade. . ."
 "Hold.  List all dishes that do not involve kumquats."
 "Spam."
 "Anything else?" she asked desperately.  She’d already had enough
kumquat stink to last her a lifetime.
 "No."
 "I’ll take the Spam." Itsuko decided.  The port opened, revealing
Spam.  Itsuko ate it wearily.  "Hey, what’s this red stuff on it?" she
asked the machine.
 "Kumquat sauce."
 Itsuko finished the "meal", hoping desperately that kumquat was an
acquired taste.  Gradually the party was brought under control, and Em
came back over to her.  "Sorry about that.  These things just happen
sometimes, you know."
 Itsuko nodded in what she hoped was a knowing manner.  Suddenly she
felt something wrap around her leg.  She looked down to see a tentacle
growing out of the floor.  Em swiftly zapped the appendage with a
darklaser pistol, incinerating it.
 "Sorry." he said.  "The kumquat doesn’t have a very stable genematrix,
and with the reactors and solar radiation and whatnot we tend to have
things like that happen."
 "We’ve set up a place for you to stay.  Your predecessor had another
place, but there was a toilet overflow and he drowned and we still
haven’t managed to drain the room, but in any case, if you’ll just come
with me . . ."

 In Macroeconomics, Itsuko had learned about the concept of the law of
supply and demand.  A supply existed, and people demanded it.  As those
needs were supplied, the demand went down but so did the supply.
Eventually an equilibrium was reached, as all the supplies were
exhausted but everyone’s demands had been satisfied.
 Now she was experiencing a whole new aspect.  Those who had the supply,
made the demands.
 "You understand, we can’t simply *give* out quantum tap permits to
anyone who asks," said the State Department official.  Her tone was
oily, smug.  She had power over Itsuko, and she was enjoying it.  It
looked like she was actually in the room, the wallscreen was so
realistic—Itsuko had learned that devices meant to be used by the people
who actually owned Lungfish Alpha were considerably more up-to-date than
the rest of the station.  Still Itsuko would have preferred holo, or
better yet XV.  But the bandwidth things like that needed didn’t exist
out here.
 "You will note that Lungfish Alpha is *not* on the list of proscribed
jurisdictions." Itsuko said, keeping her anger down.  "My administration
has at no point, in any way, financed or abetted any terrorist or
criminal activity.  We have no trade barriers against the United Islands
of Alphacent."
 "But previous "administrations" have supported illegal activites." was
the reply.  "And you *have* no trade with the UIA, so trade barriers
aren’t really very relevant, are they?  Furthermore, how do you intend
to pay for your quantum tap?"
 Itsuko was a bit unprepared for that last question.  She’d been
planning on the tap paying for itself.  Right now the giant kumquat was
powered by a dozen geriatric fusion plants, and Lungfish Alpha paid
through the nose for helium-3 to fuel the things.  Of course, none of
her predecessors had ever bothered to set up an independent source of
fuel.  Plus most of the shielding on the plants had broken down over the
centuries since they were installed, and while Itsuko was no biotech she
was pretty sure the radioactivity wasn’t doing the station’s genematrix
much good.  It fact, while she was a talking a small mouth had appeared
on the floor near her feet, and it was beginning to make noises that
sounded disturbingly like "The Jingle Bell Rock".  She drew her pistol
and surreptitiously beamed it into oblivion.
 "I intend to use the tap to cut energy costs." Itsuko began, launching
into the speech she had prepared for the conclusion.  "It will produce
new jobs, and . .." the woman cut her off.
 "Speaking of jobs, do you have anyone on that junkpile that is capable
of doing the maintenance on the tap?"
 "Maintenance, what are you talking about-"
 The bureaucrat sighed.  "Do you have any plans for a power distribution
network?  Do you have a place to put the tap?  Plus, given Lungfish
Alpha’s notoriously unstable genematrix, too much chance of an accident
blowing the whole station away . . ."  Normally Itsuko would be all for
that, if she didn’t live here.  "I’m afraid that I have no choice but to
deny your application." The screen went back to showing a pleasant
expanse of dull grey from the agrisat where Itsuko had been born, the
sky green from the crops grown on the entire inner surface of the giant
cylinder.  When you lived your whole life surrounded by plants, concrete
made a nice change.  After a moment even that flickered and vanished.
 Itsuko rammed her hand on the desk in frustration.  It sensed the
incoming impact, and momentarily transformed its substance into
something with the consistency of foam rubber to absorb the impact.
Needless to say, this made Itsuko even madder.  Sensing his master’s
discomfort, Zing padded over and began to croon.  It relaxed her—Itsuko
had made Zing so his croons had a tranquilizing effect on her nervous
system.  Plus, it was just nice to have a friend around.
 Sighing, Itsuko paged Maintenance.  An image of a synch—synthetic
chimpanzee—appeared.  He had oddly colored patches on his fur, probably
a synch equivalent of a chromotattoo.  "Hello," she said, "I’ve got a
malfunctioning wallscreen in chamber—" she made a quick check,
"143FP75U98Y55.  How quickly can you have someone here to fix it?"
 "I’ll make it as soon as possible," said the synch’s vocoder.  A
traditionalist then, one whom hadn’t had vocal cords added to the
original geneering that had created the synches.  But that didn’t quite
jibe with the tattoos.  He signed off.
Calling up her checklist, Itsuko reviewed the list she’d made of
improvements Lungfish Alpha needed.  Power source--no joy.  Sobmee
—nothing.  Weaponry worth mentioning—uh-uh.  Those were the top
concerns: lower down came somehow increasing tourism, getting worthwhile
bandwidth, starting a university, and a half-dozen other elements of the
infrastructure that desperately needed repair or installation.  It had
taken a real effort of will to move some kind of agriculture other than
kumquat to the bottom of the queue, but there were other concerns.  She
was also having a few ethical concerns about putting emphasis on
weaponry, but if by some miracle Lungfish Alpha became worth stealing
from she wanted to have might on her side.
 A chime sounded.  Wow, was maintenance here already? A feeling of
gratitude filled her.  She sent a mental command to the door, and it
opened obediently.  It was indeed the synch.  The image from before
hadn’t told the whole tale—his body was simply covered with the colored
patches of fur.  There were dozens of them, maybe more than a hundred,
she resolved to play back the image later and count, no two alike and no
two in the same color.  Judging from his movements he’d had
modifications of some sort made to his joints and nervous system, he
seemed far too well balanced and far to flexible in motion to be
natural.
 "Hi." his vocoder said.  He pulled an eyepiece from his d-pocket and
placed it over his left eye.  It took Itsuko a minute to realize what he
was doing, but then she understood.
 "It’s there." Itsuko said, pointing.  Her enhanced vision could see the
access panel, which looked the same as the rest of the wall in the
normal spectrum so as not to disturb the image, but was a different
shade in the ultraviolet.  The synch needed the specacle, though.
 Smiling, he opened the panel up.  To Itsuko’s surprise, though, he
removed a selection of long needles from his pocket instead of the
familiar tools of cryst aligner, biofilter and others.
 "What are you doing?" she asked.  He made no response, holding a needle
poised as if for attack.  Then he slid it into the delicate if outdated
biotronics, ever so slowly.  Although she hated to admit it, this was an
interesting thing to watch.  Suddenly, the wall flickered back to life.
 "What did you do?" she asked in shock.
 "Ancient Hanese secret," the vocoder replied, somehow managing to sound
smug despite the fact it’s voice had no tone.
 "Well, in that case I won’t pry." Itsuko said.  The synch stared at her
in awe and shock, she had no idea why.  "Say, what’s your name?"
 "I’m George," said the vocoder.  "And what’s your name?"
 "I’m Itsuko," she said.  "Nice to meet you."
 "And you," he replied, bowing. The bow surprised her, but she decided
not to press.  As he left, she decided to ask one more question.  "Say,
how did you reach here so quickly?"
 "I’ve been on Lungfish Alpha a long time.  After a while you learn the
shortcuts.  That’s all I can really say about it."  With that, he left.
 Itsuko hoped she got the needed experience before she had a nervous
breakdown.  Well, at least she had one competent person here.  Thinking
of which—she sent out a headware message to her erstwhile second in
command.  Time to see how *she* was doing.

 Amelia Bayushi was doing very well, thank you.  She was on a winning
streak as Kizur Kazgodby, Lungfish Alpha’s premiere casino.  It was one
of the few actual rooms on Lungfish Alpha: except for a few basic
installations, the designers had built a lot more windy-twisty corridors
then places people might actually stop to live.  What rooms did exist
were scattered about randomly, and tended to be either cavernous or
closet-sized.  As a result most of the people on Lungfish Alpha lived in
the corridors, setting up shop, renting wall-panel space, making love
and dying and having babies and never actually entering a real room.
The casino had a pseudo-Egyptian decor, with mummy statues lining the
walls and hieroglyphics as decoration.  They hadn’t been able to get rid
of the incense smell, though.  Amelia had once run the symbols through a
translator program, just to see what she got out—the results had been
garbage.  Further investigation had revealed that most of the symbols
had been made up on the spot by decorators because they happened to look
cool, which was true of most of Lungfish Alpha’s design.
 It was common knowledge in the command staff that the games were
rigged, but there was an . . . understanding.  The station employees
didn’t lose too often, and the casino stayed open instead getting shut
down by MiP.  One of the few businesses on Lungfish Alpha that made a
profit in the station’s perpetually stagflated economy, Kizur Kazgodby
offered perverse and sickening games of chance banned in the rest of the
civilized universe, such as body-part poker , Killing Lotto and the
Pokemon Trading Card game.
(Authors note: another thing that’ll be around forever).
 Amelia batted the eye facing the dealer seductively.  He was Jake, a
large-boned afroethnic was a tattoo of a snake on the side of his face
with an open mouth, constantly looking like it was about the devour
you.  A *real* tattoo, done with chromogene injections instead of the
usual subdermal holoprojectors.  Expensive, but someone who worked at
Kizur Kazgodby could afford it.
 Jake smiled back at her, and the homo spacius felt a lurch in her
heart, if you knew what she meant.  She’d been trying to get Jake into
her marriage group for over a year now, and bit she finally had her hand
in the door.  Sending a command to her grav pack, she began to drift
ever-so-slightly towards a privacy booth while making a beckoning
gesture.
 The tingle from her headware was a shock.  Of course, the call came
*now, just when she was about too . . The sender was even more
surprising.  The latest purchaser had been surprisingly quiet since her
arrival, neither giving a few hundred contradictory orders nor
desperately pulling every string imaginable to unload the station on
some other unsuspecting fool.  Instead she’d just demanded the status
reports for the last few years and locked herself in an office with the
data.  The only things that had so far come out were requests for Spam
(without kumquat sauce), a few interstellar communications that had
eaten up half the Link bandwidth, and some message for Amelia that she
hadn’t even bothered to access yet.
 After a quick and regretful good-bye to Jake, Amelia tapped a few
buttons on her belt.  Her zero-gee bubble propelled itself away, heading
for an unoccupied privacy booth.  She activated it, and once the
familiar gray haze and silence had kicked it, Amelia opened up a Link
connection.  She didn’t even wince at the static anymore, she’d gotten
used to it.
 The message was a simple canned video-audio.  Kaui was seated at the
desk she’d taken for her office, her biopet sitting on her lap.  The
message was direct and to the point, much like the person who’d sent
it.  "Have you made any progress on getting that sobmee?  I’d like to
discuss it with you as soon as possible."  The message ended, but Amelia
was a bit alarmed.  Sobmee?  What Sobmee?  Oh shit, the other message.
She quickly opened it.
 "I’ve been considering things, and I think Lungfish Alpha needs an
Sobmee.  It would certainly help things here, and give us more credit
for getting loans and stuff.  Try to see what you can do."  The message
ended, throwing Amelia into a bit of a panic.  Did that girl have any
idea what she’d just asked? You didn’t just *get* a sobmee.  Sure, the
staff had considered hiring a sobmee.  Hell, they’d even considered
doing proper maintenance.  But both remained, for the time being,
unachievable goals.
 On the other hand, she doubted Itsuko was going to take no for an
answer.  Deactivating the privacy booth, Amelia left the casino and
began to speed back and forth along the slidewalks, ignoring the
protests of passersby she bumped into.  Sobmees were expensive to
create, and there was no guarantee that afterwards the result would be
willing to do what you wanted it to, and no legal way to force it.  As a
result there was always more openings for sobmees then there were
sobmees to fill those openings, and there probably wasn’t a single one
of those openings that couldn’t offer more than Lungfish Alpha did.  On
the other hand, if she didn’t at least look like she was trying to find
a sobmee she was out of here.  And on yet another hand, she had no clue
how to do even that.  She needed something underhanded, something
sneaky, something downright unethical.  In other words, she needed Hugh
Diablos.

 It really wasn’t a mystery how Hugh Diablos had started down the path
to becoming one of the greatest supervillians in the known universe, not
with his name.  It must be like having parents naming you Bruno, you
just *had* to go into bodyguard work.  Or being named Janice, you just
*had* to become a researcher in the field of spontaneous metagenetic
mutation.  Hugh Diablos certainly looked the part—geneered to be a huge
heavily built man, one hundred seventeen years ago he’d had a
misunderstanding with some unsympathetic local authorities on New New
New New New New New Jersey (descendants of people from some place named
Jersey seemed to tend to choose remarkably poor places to live).  The
higher castes had said that the excess transport capacity was better
served moving the industrial base rather than the lower castes away from
the impending nova to New New New New New New New New Jersey. The lower
castes had scraped up money to hire quite a few smugglers who said
otherwise.  The affair had left the whole right side of Hugh’s body
hideously burned from gamma radiation.  Rather than simply opting to
have the affected portions regrown, he had had cybernetic parts grafted
on.  As a result, half his body was some kind of blue-silver metal
Amelia couldn’t identify—a curiously organic looking metal, but metal
none the less.  She’d be lying if she said she didn’t find it
disturbing.  It was common knowledge that there was a encephloscanner
inside that cybernetic half, and he always knew when someone was lying
to him.
 "So, I understand that you require a sobmee," he said villianously.
Before Amelia could even stutter a reply, he added,  "And before you
ask, I quite literally knew before you did."  He was wearing his usual
outfit—skintight neon-orange omnicloth with horns sticking out the top.
His famous whip was coiled on his belt, and the equally famous black
mask covered his mouth and eyes.  Amelia though it made him look like a
jack-o-lantern, but she was wise enough not to say it.
 "Now, sobmees are hard to get." he continued.  "The question is, what
can you offer me for it?"
 That was what was bothering her.  The personnel of Lungfish Alpha were
paid solely depending on the whim of the current owner, and what pay
they did have was in fnords.  That was worse than having no pay at all:
when you weren’t paid people didn’t laugh as hard.  In order to pay the
rest of the personnel at all (on time was a pipe dream), the command
staff had long ago allowed the Diablos family to turn Lungfish Alpha
into the headquarters of their galactic coffee smuggling ring.  Since
then additions had included the largest known eyeball farm, illegal
genelabs for growing unregistered children, and a whole lot of other
stuff that Amelia couldn’t remember right now.  After their first look
at Itsuko the command staff had met and quickly determined that letting
her know about the deal would be a *bad* idea, not if they wanted to
keep their jobs.  Much less about Lungfish Alpha’s other, darker
secrets.  Itsuko had yet to understand, and given her personality
probably never would understand, the true secret of life on Lungfish
Alpha.  In the rest of the universe, things worked on the basis of
working hard to ensure success.  On Lungfish Alpha that was a lost
cause; instead, people worked to make sure that the disasters were as
small as possible.
 Hugh understood this as well, and the business of continuing station
maintenance by other means was something to which he was long
accustomed.  To be honest, few people appreciated how hard it was to be
a supervillain.  Yeah, sure there was the glamorous part: daring
daylight robberies, elaborate extortion schemes, breaking out of jail on
a regular basis. . . but the real reason for that was to get publicity
for his most recent book, or to keep his various goons in trim.  The
real money came from his vast secretly owned business empire in the
field of dairy products.  That was how his family had originally got
into crime: an ancestor in the eighteenth century who had been bored
with waiting for her father to get around and die so she could run the
business had decided that after dealing with yogurt magnates since she
was a toddler the police would be a piece of cake.  She had been
brutally, devastatingly correct.
 But . . . he wanted more for his children.  The yogurt business had
gotten only tougher over the years, and so had the cops, though more
slowly and they’d started at a lower base.  He still wanted them to be
in crime, after all he had *some* family pride.  And he had long ago
decided what the key was.  Civil service, theft on a scale that all his
cheese factories and bank heists couldn’t match.  And what better place
to get a start then right here on Lungfish Alpha, where he could keep an
eye on them?  And if they trained here, once they left to go to a place
where the bureaucracy actually worked . . .

 YVVH, Itsuko thought.  Twenty-eight million channels, and there’s
*still* nothing on.  It had been a pretty average day.  A giant monster
had attempted to eat Edo Sector *again*, but the locals, responding with
the amazing biological intuition and speed of construction only found in
a place regularly attacked by monsters, had quickly divined the enormous
feline’s intentions and the problem had been solved with a two-hundred
foot scratching post.  The Lungfish Alpha Freedom Front (LAFF) had
planted a bomb in her underwear panel, but an agent from the Freedom For
Lungfish Alpha’s People (FFLAP) had had the same idea at the same time,
and had been blown up instead.  Well, that was what you got when
replicating an explosive compound using a molecular structure from the
Anarchist’s Handbook.
 (Authors note: I’m sorry, yet another thing that will be around
forever).
 Still, things were getting better.  There was still problems like those
annoying vigilantes who ran around wearing miniskirts and saying "We’ll
right wrongs and triumph over evil, and that means Hugh!", but she’d
figure something out.  Her first thought had been to cut off miniskirt
flow, but a predecessor had done that with the capes they used to wear
and they’d just switched to miniskirts.  Quite a few of them, of all
sexes, had body types that YVVH had not meant to fit into miniskirts,
but they programmed their clothes that way anyway.  What they’d do
without miniskirts didn’t bear thinking about.
 The door chimed.  She sent a signal, and there was the familiar faint
shimmer as it turned to a gas.  Her command staff came through.
Strange, there wasn’t a meeting scheduled.  There was someone new with
them, a young genderless with green chloroskin they let hir survive off
ambient light and a little water.
 "We’ve managed to get a sobmee."  Amelia said with pride.
 Itsuko perked up.  "Really.  So quickly?  I’m a bit surprised you were
able to get one at all!"  Amelia gritted her teeth on the mouths facing
away from Itsuko, where her current boss couldn’t see.
 "We’ve already downloaded him into the computers, you can talk any time
you like."
 "Are you there?"  Itsuko sent to the network.
 "Yup." It was a whole different feeling than conventional linking, like
her mind was suddenly too large to fit in her head.  And something
things felt more *streamlined*, slicker and cleaner but with whole new
dimensions opening up as well.  She felt as if she could lose herself
forever in the myriad branches of the sobmee’s mind.  "Whatcha doing,
toots?"
 On the other hand, losing herself in his mind might not be something
she wanted to do.
 "What I am *doing* in managing Lungfish Alpha."she tried to restrain
her annoyance from her thoughts, it wouldn’t do to let them show, not
considering how much they needed him.  "What’s your name?"
"My name?  I’m the Federal Aviation Administration Registration and
Tracking System, but you can call me Faarts."
"Have you reviewed our database and system yet?"
 "Huh?  Oh, sure.  Badly done, but things have been getting a bit better
recently from what I can tell.  You wanna go on a date?"
 Itsuko didn’t even dignify that with a response.  Swiftly disengaging,
she glared at her subordinates.  "Where did you get this thing?" she
asked.
 "It was one of the very first ones, before the first old nations were
wiped out the Y2.048K bug." Em admitted.  "I’m afraid it was all we
could manage."
 "Well, good job." Itsuko said.  "Linking into it is certainly an
interesting experience."
"What are you talking about?" Em asked.  "It’s just the same as ever."
What?  That was most certainly *not* true.  After a moment,  Itsuko
decided to drop it.  She turned to the new person.  "And who are you?"
 "I’m Samuelle, and don’t you forget it."
 "She’s our head of civil service." Daniel put in before anyone could
say more.  "She missed the initial meeting because of, er, family
business."  He was a bit too quick about it, Itsuko decided, and the
others were a bit too quick to nod.  But she decided not the press.
 "Well." she said.  "I’m glad you came, because I had an idea..."
Pseudomatter chairs formed from the floor, and they sat down.  Itsuko
was sparing no expense on her own office—one thing her yogurt-magnate
parents had taught her was that impressions were everything.  "I think
we can . . ."

Glossary:
Cliology: What history is called.

Fnords: The currency of Lungfish Alpha, if you can use such a term for
something with so little buying power.  There is a lively black market
trade in fnords, as everyone who has them is constantly trying to unload
them for something they can actually use to buy stuff.

Geneering: Genetic modification.  If you can imagine it, geneering can
do it.  It’s an outgrowth of the Human Genome Project, but then again
Cray supercomputers are outgrowths of abaci.  It can be used to create
anything from a simple decomposition friendly bacterium (great when
you’ve just murdered someone) to megascale lifeforms like Lungfish Alpha
which literally grow up with the desired equipment installed.  Many
people geneer their children to conform to their prejudices (as with
Itsuko) or their ambitions (as with Amelia).

Habmees: See Machine Intelligences

Headware: Implanted computers in everybody, not necessarily in the head
but connected to the central nervous system.  Allows connection to the
local Link, replaces phones, personal computers and modems.

Hive minds: Groups of people who use modified headware (q.v.) to link
their thoughts together, thinking as one and accessing all of each
other’s knowledge.  A very recent development, barely twenty years old.
Rumors constantly surface of hives that have not just an expanded
knowledge base but are actually more intelligent than singleton beings.
Certainly a great deal of research is going on in this area, but no
truly useful results have been reported as yet.  Even so, hives can work
together with inhuman coordination.  Some hives become addicted to the
sensation, and there have been reports of hivegangs kidnapping people
and forcibly modifying their headware to bring them into the hive.  The
largest hive on record is on the world of Eintracht: seven million
people, the entire population, in a single hive.

Homo Spacius: One of the first new races created with geneering (q.v.).
Adapted for zero-gravity and orbital work, they suffer no damage from
zero-gee and can survive for roughly an hour in vaccuum with no
protective suit.  They also have modified pores that can send out a
small puff of gas to move them without handholds.  They were very big
for several centuries, until gravity control was developed and their
modifications became superfluous.  Most chose to alter their children to
be regular humans, today only a few remain.

Leonization: Living forever.  It doesn’t actually make you younger,
rather the aging process it temporarily halted through a cocktail of
nanomachines, metabolic treatments and retroviral alterations.  If you
first get it when you’re ninety, you stay ninety but assuming you get it
often enough you can stay ninety pretty much indefinitely.  Most people
get bored after a few centuries and decide to commit suicide, but a few
people who are just to scared (or stubborn) to die have hung on for
millennia.

Lungfish Alpha:  The place where the fanfic occurs, Lungfish Alpha is a
dream given form.  To be specific, a nightmare.  Built to get
agricultural, space expansion, megascale construction and
minority-employment tax credits all at once, the design was done by a
drunk baseline human and is considered to be the worst example of urban
"planning" ever.  The single largest artificial construct ever made by
humankind, no one has ever owned it for more than a year before going
broke.

Machine Intelligences: Artificially created sentient beings.  These come
in two types, hardware and software based.  HArdware Based Machine
Intelligences (habmeess) are usually built into specific systems at the
time of creation.  More idiot savants than actual individuals they do
specific jobs far better than any human, or even any Sobmee.  SOftware
Based Machine Intelligences (sobmees, also referred to as Son of Bitch
Machine Intelligence) are actual computer programs with minds.
Sometimes these evolve spontaneously in Links, but more commonly are
created.  Despite rumors, sobmees are NOT actually smarter than humans,
and many are actually stupider than the majority of people out there.
However they are much *faster* than any human, giving the *impression*
of superior intelligence.  Unlike habmees, sobmees are under law, free
individuals.  They can vote, hold office, leave their jobs, be charged
with crimes and they pay taxes.

Marriage groups:  A Mormon’s dream (or Ranma’s nightmare), marriage
groups are common in almost all of human colonized space.  There is no
limit on the numbers or genders (or lack thereof) in a marriage group.
Love triangles (and other geometric figures) are much easier to resolve
in the Lungfish Alpha universe.  In theory.  In practice, this means
that casual flings end up becoming permanent and everyone gets
miserable.

Omnicloth: A "cloth" made up of nanomachines, can assume almost any
color, texture or size needed.  At need it can form pants, shirts, belt,
shoes or any needed combination thereof, complete with needed
pockets—this is a big plus Lungfish Alpha’s modification happy future.
Some people have versions that change color or configuration based on
the wearer’s mental state.  The command staff on Lungfish Alpha doesn’t
use this feature, as at the levels they need to work in letting everyone
know how you feel about things really isn’t a very good idea.

Overly-hyped space:  The third form of FTL travel discovered, and though
while by no means the fastest it’s still, after all these centuries, the
cheapest and one of the safest.  Many people, at the time of its
development in the 23rd century, were enthusiastic that it would at long
last allow interstellar trade to pay for itself.  They were wrong, as it
turned out.  It had been named hyperspace (warp drive and wormholes were
already taken), but anti-expansionist political cartoonists called it
overly-hyped space as a joke and the name stuck.  Today its used only by
people carrying cargoes that won’t lose any value from a little wait, by
poor people who can’t afford any of the the other forms, and by
paranoids who won’t risk the other forms.

Privacy booths:  These look much like 20th century phone booths, though
they are large enough to hold up to six unmodified individuals.  They
are almost everywhere, and cost, on Lungfish Alpha, ten thousand fnords
a minute (roughly six cents in terms of 20th century buying power).
Once a person or group enters one and activates it, a scrambler field
kicks in that scrambles  all forms of sonic, electromagnetic and
gravitic scanning techniques (including visible light) to the point of
unusability.  They don’t block the tachyonic vibrations used to for most
communication, however.  Booths are used for Linking (q.v.), private
conversations, and spontaneous sex.

Pseudomatter: Pseudomatter looks like matter, and quacks like matter,
but it isn’t matter.  It’s a complex field interaction that vanishes as
soon as you turn the power off.  Psuedomatter is chemically inert, but
can be any color or state of matter desired.  It’s energy-intensive and
takes up a lot of processor power, right now Itsuko’s the only one on
Lungfish Alpha who can afford it.  Assuming her attempts to improve
succeed, this may change.

Reanimates: Dead people brought back to life through a cocktail of
nanomachines, esoteric forms of radiation and implants.  Many people
find it a more reassuring form of revivification than making a braintape
and downloading it into a clone.  Some reanimates are patchworks,
cobbled together from multiple corpses when there wasn’t enough left of
the person who paid the original contract.

Sobmee:  See Machine Intelligence.

Specacle:  Eyepiece that looks like the monocle, lets the wearer see
into other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum (infrared,
ultraviolet, etc.).

Synch: Synthetic chimpanzee.  On of the several dozen races artificially
given sentience during the Uplift Craze" during the late 2060s, often
looked down on by humans.  And no, they do *not* eat bananas.

Quantum Taps:  These access the zero-point quantum energy of the vacuum
for energy, providing effectively unlimited energy.  Very expensive, far
beyond Lungfish Alpha’s finances.

Wormcans: Write-Once-Read-Many cannisters.  First developed in the 22nd
century, wormcan have been in use, unaltered, longer than any piece of
technology in human history other than fire.  They look like thin green
oblongs the size and thickness of playing cards, and are absolutely
vital for society.  A form of data storage, It is only possible to write
to each wormcan once.  Any further attempts scrambles the whole wormcan,
making the data useless.  Furthermore, due to the extreme sensitivity of
the manufacturing process no two wormcans are exactly alike.  However,
each wormcan can be read an infinite number of times.  This makes them,
in a world of dependence on computers and of uncounted legions of
immensely bored hackers, the only way to verify that legal documents and
official files have not been tampered with.

YVVH: How God is referred to in the time of Lungfish Alpha.

Authors notes:  I see Lungfish Alpha as being arranged as a TV show, but
one with a coherent plot arcs.  Individual episodes, but allow things to
actually change as things go on.  Itsuko should actually succeed in her
attempts to improve Lungfish Alpha, but it should be long, slow going.
Also, make things funny but not truly silly.  Another element I would
like to introduce is a coherent universe, as formed through the
glossary.  Try to, in every episode, introduce some weird societal or
technological elements of this strange future and add it to the
glossary.  We’ll have a database, which will grow and grow and who knows
what we’ll come up with. Another concept I’m introducing is that of the
contest.  In each episode, insert a pop culture reference, the more
obscure the better.  Tell the readers what the reference is to, but not
where in the story.  The first person to e-mail the next person in the
queue with the answer gets a cameo role in their story.  This time, it’s
a reference to Robert N. Charette’s "Secrets of Power" trilogy for the
Shadowrun RPG.  Finally, you’ll have noticed that each character has
some form of enhancement or alteration.  This is for a reason: each one
represents a personality trait of the person who has it.  I'd like some
opinions about how well I expressed each trait in the story.  Here's the
list:

Itsuko:  Itsuko is, one her arrival, an almost two dimensional
character. Thus she's like the two-D world of pictures and cartoons.
Also, Itsuko lives much better than the rest of the people on the space
station do, she’s on a whole different financial level (as is the rest
of a command staff, though to a lesser extent).  Her resemblance to
characters who live lives that we can’t emulate but wish we could in not
coincidental.

Amelia:  She's a subtle one.  She's addicted to the old order of doing
things, which may not work with Itsuko in town.  Note that she's adapted
for zero gee--not particularly useful in the world of Lungfish Alpha,
which has artificial gravity.

Daniel:  This is one I missed out on completely.  He was a minor
character, and I sort of forgot about him when I was drawing out who
would have which quality.  He should  have had more dialogue, but he'll
also have mood shifts, going from violent rage to quiet calmness with
blinding speed. Accordingly one arm will be huge and overgrown, with
three immensely strong fingers, and the other one will be very small
with very long fingers capable of very deft work.

Em:  No alterations here--he's an obstentatiously ordinary individual
who just happens to wear a loud suit.

Arnold Lee: Democracy is dead in the future, so he’s a corpse brought to
life.  Furthermore democracy is lots of viewpoints getting together, so
Arnold is a lot of dead people combined into one.

The psychic:  He needs drink to fuel his powers and it shows a hideous
sign on him in the form of his nodules.  My vision of him is as a
horribly depressed and lonely person.

The Quadrango sisters:  They're very close to each other, and their link
signifies this.

The eex-(?)-Nazi:  He's lived almost forever.  He should never actually
be given a name or even an exact physical description, but when he does
speak it should be with words that seem to signify everything: the
perfect father.

George:  He's a callback to a simpler time, using acupuncture to fix
delicate futuristic machinery and practicing martial arts in a world of
warbots and combat enhancements.  Thus he's an elevated chimpanzee, the
symbol of primal bases brought to a futuristic time.

Jake:  He's a shallow person, attaching great importance to appearances.
Thus, his tattoo.

Hugh:He's of two minds about his life, and he wants the next generation
to have something new and better.  As a result, his second half has been
burned away and renewed, made stronger than ever.

Samuelle:  Samuelle doesn't doesn't need anyone, and she doesn't need to
eat either.  Hir genderlessness further emphasizes this.