Joacim & L'ielit (7 of 10) - Vandergast

The arrival of the Sergeant Pepper at Vandergast was very unspectacular. They entered the system on a standard vector and had to travel another day before the ship reached orbit. The AI of the ship transmitted the configurations of the colonists' pods to the colony's AI. Empty pods were then reconfigured for the newcomers. The colonists simply had to collect their meager private luggage and walk through a transporter. A PDA led them to their new pod that was already configured like their pod on the ship. Since they arrived in the tunnels of the colony at three o'clock in the morning local time, they didn't see much of a difference compared to the ship.

Joacim was wakened by the AI "There is a call request from Staff Sergeant Astrid Bose. Would you like to accept the call?"

"Yeah sure, what time is it?" Joacim asked.

"It is 8:40 in the morning, local time"

"Hello Joacim! Don't sleep, it's a beautiful morning on a beautiful planet," Astrid's voice boomed in Joacim's head.

"I suffer from jet lag it seems." Joacim answered. "Where are you?"

"I don't know, but my PDA says I'm no more than 300 meters from your pod. I'm wandering through knee-deep red alien weed and there's a beautiful clear sky above me. God, I have to add windows to my pod."

"Is your family with you?"

"Ramirez and Annette are with me, the others were still asleep when I left the pod."

When Joacim rolled out of the bed, Anita and L'ielit woke up.

"What's up love? Is there another early briefing?" Anita asked sleepy.

L'ielit sat up jerkily. "We are at the planet..."

"Astrid said the weather is beautiful. Do you want to join me walking outside?"

"Sure!" both women said simultaneously.

Ten minutes later they were on their way to the nearest exit of the tunnels. When the tunnel exit door opened it gave way to a beautiful sight of a red weed covered hilly landscape sprinkled with lodges. Far-off they saw some snow covered mountains. The air was filled with a strange fresh smell, like a mixture of hay and lemon. A network of paved paths connected the houses. The sky showed a light green with a bright yellow sun warming their faces.

"This is a fantastic place!" Anita took a deep breath and sighed. "I won't miss the sterile air of the ship."

L'ielit closed her eyes and inhaled the odor. "This is so strange and yet familiar at the same time." She opened her eyes. "It reminds me of the savannah of Africa. I would not be surprised if some kind of gnu herd would pass by."

"It's overwhelming," Joacim said. After a minute, he took his concubines by their hands and dragged them out of the tunnel entrance.

Astrid stood on a hill behind the tunnel entrance and waved at them. "Hallo, here we are!" After they approached, she hugged Joacim and his concubines. Joacim hadn't seen her for a while, and so he had missed it when she transformed from a slender mid-aged professor to a heavily muscled valkyrie Marine.

"I'm a little surprised you called me, but I thank you for doing it. We haven't met for nearly four weeks now?" Joacim smiled.

Astrid looked at Joacim and answered the unasked question "I've made lots of good comrades during Marine training, but for some reason I don't see any of them happily hopping around on grassy hills. Some of them are on a power trip and have lost their sense for beauty and charm."

"We have drawn the attention of a spectator," L'ielit mentioned.

"What? Where?" Astrid asked, looking around.

"One middle-aged man on a balcony over there, about five-hundred meters," L'ielit pointed the direction.

"Damn you are good. I wish I had someone with your observation skills in my platoon." Astrid commented.

"I'm just a concubine, happy with my new life. I hope to carry my master's child soon. He's a good master."

"I knew him as a highly intelligent, polite young man. The gossip says he hasn't changed much." Astrid mentioned.

"Hello? I'm here. It's kind of humiliating to speak about me when I'm here." Joacim noted.

"Can you walk away then? We want to praise our master without humiliating him," Anita smirked.

"Oh my, where do all these cocky concubines come from? I think I have to discipline you when we are back at the pod." Joacim laughed.

"Oh yeah! Spank me, whip me..." Anita chanted.

L'ielit hissed.

Anita stopped. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake bad memories."

"Did you recognize that about one-fifth of the pods are in their initial shape, while all others look like cozy houses?" Joacim changed the topic. "There must have been a major impact on the population lately."

"That's the reason why we are here," Astrid said. "The Sergeant Pepper dropped forty-two sponsors at Vandergast. I don't think that was enough for a total replacement. Maybe it's enough to build a new platoon under the lead of some experienced officers."

"When does your planetary training start?" Joacim asked.

"Tomorrow at 8:00. By then we should be acclimatized. When do you see your new workplace?"

"Tomorrow at 10:00. Privilege of the scientists, it seems," Joacim grinned. They heard a growl from near Annette.

Annette blushed. "Sorry, the fresh air makes my stomach demand for a good breakfast now, it seems."

They all laughed and then walked toward the tunnel entrance, discussing how to reconfigure their pods.

Joacim knew that he could not allow his concubines to handle the reconfiguration of the pod. He remembered too well the weekly discussions about the color schemes. The last one lasted for over a day and he finally had to tell them "Time's over. You lost it for this week". First they were disappointed, but they agreed that weekly color schemes shouldn't be a total rework and they shouldn't be that time consuming. They promised to work out a solution.

So Joacim knew he had to make the main changes for himself. After a quick breakfast he entered his office and closed the door. His concubines knew that this meant 'do not disturb'. Joacim asked the AI to show him a hologram of the pod including the tunnel connection and several meters of the surrounding grass field.

"My basic idea is a house with a basement, ground floor and upper floor. The basement is connected to the tunnels and therefore I want it designed like a temporary main floor with recreation area, two offices and a tea kitchen. My family wants to enter the fashion business, so they'll need space for tailoring. Add a catwalk to the recreation area that also can be used as a low living room table.

"The ground floor is the main floor. I'd like to leave it almost untouched, except for a large glass front for the living room and windows for all other rooms. I want a patio in front of the living room, with a fire pit and raw wooden garden furniture. Face the whole house except for the basement to place the patio at the sunny side of the house. I thought of rotating it along the elevator axis. Add sunshades for the south-side windows and the glass front.

"Add windows to all the rooms of the upper floor. Add two nurseries, we will need them soon. Use some of the playing room space for it.

"Now I want you to turn the flat roof into a roof terrace with a bar and loungers. Add an awning to protect the bar and about half of the terrace. Very nice so far. Now connect the patio, the gaming room and the roof terrace with an external staircase. I want it to look almost floating. Use transparent material for everything except for the treads and the handrail."

"May I ask you why you want a staircase instead of an elevator? This is just for my curiosity." The AI asked.

"First, we humans are used to using staircases. I am thinking of replacing the indoor elevator too, but for now I leave it like it is. Second, a staircase is good for all day physical training and it helps with draining energy from the kids."

"These are very interesting reasons. I have to share them with the other pod AI's for making better suggestions of house design."

"Do that," Joacim laughed. "For now I'm satisfied with the layout. Please store it."

"Acknowledged. The changes on the inside will need eight hours to be processed. The patio, roof terrace and staircase will need another two hours but the pod will be usable."

"I plan to take the whole family on an exploration day to our new home town. Start reconfiguration as soon as we leave the pod."

"Confirmed".

"One last thing. Show me a hologram of a female."

"Please be more specific. What female?" The AI asked.

"Can you generate a model that is based on average measures of every female in the pod?" After five seconds, the picture of a woman appeared. She was not the absolute beauty queen but looked very nice. "Now make her thirty centimeters high"

"This is not within the limits of body modifications..." the AI started to protest.

"It's not for any of my concubines, it's for you. I want you to appear as a pixie when you talk to anybody. I want you to animate the hologram and move around when you talk. Use body language. Use a squeaky female voice."

"Voice adjustments are common, but no AI was ever asked to project a physical presence or a hologram for communication. I am not sure if I have the capacity and the proper knowledge to mimic a living being." The AI clearly showed signs of uncertainty for the first time.

"I don't want you to mimic human behavior exactly. Study the 'Peter Pan' movies and the 'I dream of Jeannie' series. That might give you an impression of what I have in mind. You will know that you do it right when you get more attention from the kids than the entertainment system."

"That will need some time…"

"I don't expect you to meet my expectations from the beginning. I expect you to learn and modify the behavior of your avatar to best fit my whole family and to your role for us. Tell me if you come to the conclusion that your capacity is insufficient for this task. But for now I want you to try it."

"Acknowledged."

"So for the model, add some dragonfly wings that have the size of a full arm length. Add a green tank top and mini-skirt for now. You are free to change clothes for whatever you think that would suit a given social setting. Start using this avatar when the main pod modifications are done. And I want you to react on the names Tin, Tinker and Tinkerbelle in addition to AI."

"I'll try my very best."

"One last thing. I want you to be individual. That means I don't want to see copies of your avatar floating around in other pods. Others may copy the idea, but not your body. I think you can communicate this to the other pod AI's?"

"Confirmed."

"Ladies! Kids!" Joacim shouted when he left his office. They all came running, unsure what he had in mind. "I have one day before I have to start working. Therefore I want us all to explore this town together, surface and underground. We will have lunch and dinner at public locations. Concubines wear Daisy Dukes, tank tops and slippers, Kids wear your normal clothing." Seeing the expression on Markus' face, he added "Being bored is no excuse. The pod will be busy transforming."

They left their pod at eleven o'clock. The town's tunnel layout looked like six wheels surrounding a seventh wheel in the center. Each hub was a local town center with public buildings of all kind. Every pod and every building was designed to be used both from the surface and from the tunnels. The tunnels that connected two centers were larger than the others. Joacim made everybody memorize their pod's location within the town and ordered the town's AI to answer questions about directions that his concubines and kids might have.

The local town center of their wheel opened to a wide place, sheltered by a segmented, transparent dome. Three ramps led up three meters to ground level, where huge airlocks could protect the tunnels from poisonous gasses. Currently they were open. The place was surrounded by boutiques, bars and public buildings. Most of them had two levels and had their own access to the planet's surface. In the middle of the place lay a little lake with seven small fountains, surrounded by park benches and chess tables.

Currently, there were only few people inside the dome. It was too early for lunch and probably most people would be outside the dome, enjoying the nice weather. One of the few people, a male concubine wearing the gray shift and slippers, approached the newcomers.

"Good morning Sir. My name is Sebastian. May I ask you if you are interested in a personal city guide? The AI told me that you are one of our new citizens."

"That's a good idea," Joacim said. "The township is well structured and the AI is helpful, but talking to someone who lived here for a while sounds even better. When do you need to return to your sponsor? We plan to do a whole day of exploration."

"I'm currently unattached. My sponsor died three months ago, as so many did. Decurion Mark Evans Benish thinks that city guides are a good idea to raise the spirit among the concubines in the pool. It's really boring in the barracks. So I have all day."

"Does this job earn you some points? We've heard of the point system for useful colony activities for concubines at Vandergast." Helga asked.

"Maybe," Sebastian answered. "This job is new. It's not yet decided if it is worth some points."

Sebastian told the newcomers that every local town center was built upon the same basic pattern, but each had its specialties. Yellow Center, the one near their pod, had a school. Green Center had a shopping mall for limited replicator patterns. Blue Center offered an Olympic-sized swimming pool and access to several other training facilities. Purple Center had the bureau of the Civil Service, the barracks of the unattached concubines and the Civil Service brothel. Red Center was dominated by the bars with the worst reputation and by the Marine brothel. Orange Center was the home of the hospital and birth clinic. Central Facility was the address of the governor's bureau and the colony's control center. Every local center had its own set of transporter nexus chambers, children's day-care and restaurants and both the centers and the domes were individually shaped.

At the surface, the local town centers looked like a ring of flat buildings, surrounding a flat dome. A wide promenade surrounded the ring of buildings. Sebastian explained "In times of poisonous atmosphere, the centers and most pods create a force field that holds the nitrogen oxides outside. Sometimes during bad weather periods, weaker force fields are used to keep rain or snow outside. Those force fields can be passed by humans with a little force."

Since the weather was good, they decided to take lunch at a restaurant at Orange that offered open-air seating.

At Purple Center, they witnessed a confrontation between a sponsor who had also arrived yesterday, and Decurion Mark Evans Benish. The Sponsor dragged a badly hurt concubine towards the bureau and declared loudly that he wanted to get rid of that 'frigid bitch'. She had a swollen eye, a bleeding lip, her left arm was obviously broken and her body was covered with bruises. Afterwards, the sponsor found out that unassigned concubines had the right to refuse a sponsor. After ten minutes of loud argument, he left without a new concubine.

"It's sad that some sponsors leave their humanity behind when they leave Earth," Petra said. "Sure concubines are property, but aren't we property of worth?"

L'ielit looked at the scene with a hard glance. "You can find people like him everywhere on Earth. Give them a little power over some people; take away the rules of culture or religion and you get tyrants, torturers, slayers."

"How can the Darjee tolerate this?" Honi asked. "We learned that they are such a peaceful race that they can't even stand a common conversation eye-to-eye with a human."

"They don't care what some junkyard dogs are doing as long as they don't bite their masters," Markus snorted.

"I don't think so," Joacim said, glaring at Markus. "They tried to force their own lifestyle to the human colonists without being able to imagine that humans could be that cruel to their own kind."

"That's why the planetary government adjusted the rules. Governor Culhane claims not to be interested in anything except military, but he signs everything Decurion Evans or one of his staff comes up with." Sebastian said. "I came here with the very first wave of colonists and in the beginning, there was nothing more than a central control tower and several hundred pods spread around that tower. Sponsors were left alone with their private affairs. We had ten sponsors and over seventy concubines killed within their pods in the first year. Then a solar storm hit Vandergast with the known effects on the planet's atmosphere. We lost another three sponsors and seventeen concubines. They were good people. After that, the staff of general Culhane started some town planning projects and came up with some rule improvements and the general was honored with the title of planetary governor."

"Tell me something about the planetary rules, from your point of view" Joacim asked Sebastian.

"First of all, sponsors are highly encouraged to treat their concubines as people, not just as slaves or property. If a sponsor seriously wounds or kills a concubine, he has to justify his action at a human rights tribunal. The set of human rights for concubines is still short, but we at least have the right to live, here on Vandergast.

Second, we have a social life that's main force is the concubines. Most public facilities you have seen are completely operated by concubines. Only a few are supervised by sponsors like the Decurion. A lot of these facilities are not really necessary. Pods and their replicators could do most of what is offered there. What replicators and pods can't offer is a nice chat with your neighbor.

Third, and that was a real drastic change, sponsors are not allowed to imprison their concubines without serious reasons. When the doors of the pods first were opened by this new rule, there was a rush of concubines heading towards the Civil Service bureau. Decurion Evans suddenly had to deal with over two hundred frightened concubines and upset sponsors. He came up with group therapy seminars. I think there will be another rush from the new colonists until everybody has acclimated to these rules.

Finally, we have that complex score system that allows concubines to proof their worth for the colony. A sponsor can deny permission to single colony activities, but not to all of them. The score system is another stimulation to leave the pods."

"Is there a high score list of concubines?" Markus asked.

"No there isn't. The city's AI keeps track of the scores, but it is not always clear what activity is worth how many points. We know of some activities and their worth. Sometimes, concubines are specially honored by the government for single actions."

"Are you happy living here?" L'ielit asked.

"For what I've heard of some other colonies and what I've seen from some sponsors in transit, I'm very happy to live here," Sebastian nodded.

In the afternoon, they spent two hours playing soccer and street basketball. It was quickly clear that none of them could stand a chance against L'ielit at basketball and she ended up in a match against a Marine Private who was originally just watching the athletic activities of his own concubines. Private Carl Clarkson won three out of five games and he wasn't going easy on L'ielit. Expressing his respect for L'ielit's skills earned him an invitation for dinner from Joacim at one of the restaurants. They talked about colony life and drank some beer while watching the sundown.

Zoe and Honi were really tired when they finally arrived at their pod. Actually they had nothing in mind except going directly to bed, even though Joacim had told them that he had reconfigured the pod. But the tiredness was instantly blown when they were greeted by a tiny glowing female pixie hovering at eye height before them. Somehow the AI managed to project its now tuneful high voice as if the pixie was speaking. "Welcome home at your planetary residence. All changes are completed. I am Tinkerbelle, the new construct of the pod AI. If you call me Tinkerbelle, Tinker or Tin, I'll appear like this and be your servant ghost. If you call me AI, I'll answer in the old way."

Tinkerbelle had no time for further explanations, since Zoe and Honi tried to play tag with her. They vanished into the depths of the pod. While all others entered the pods basement, another image of Tinkerbelle appeared. "I'm very sorry for the interruption. I wanted to show the basement installations to you, but I seem to be instantly popular among the children. They are still trying to catch me on the main floor."

Joacim was impressed by the way the AI mimicked gestures and accentuated speech. His concubines were more interested in the fashion tailoring office, but more than one of them glanced at Tinker again and again.

After a long first day in their new hometown they were all exhausted. The excitement about the changes within the pod didn't keep them up for long. Joacim asked Sabine to join him in the master bedroom, but they quickly fell asleep in each other's arms without much action.