They sat at a huge curving oak table inside a vaulted hall with translucent sides. There was wine and coffee and sweets, and for a very long time now Toby had sat listening to one after another local governmental official give speeches in his honor.
He’d used much of the time to refocus his eyes inside his glasses’ view; he’d been learning how the Thisbe government worked and who these people he was sitting with were. About half the ministers consisted of professional politicians, the rest being made up of randomly chosen citizens like Esperion. To qualify for sortition you had to be a high-ranking player in one of a number of different political or economic games; Esperion must be very good indeed. About half of them were really here—the rest were represented by their avatars. There were political parties, but they were ad hoc and lasted for only one sitting session, which was four years. During that time, the ministers ran sophisticated simulations based on their own or their constituents’ biases and beliefs, and tried to enlist support for initiatives based on the results. Even then, there were no direct votes; the ministers played matching games of the would-fixing-A-improve-B-would-fixing-B-improve-A sort.
All of this was familiar to Toby, because he and Peter had explored these possibilities. The plan was that Sedna would eventually become a full-fledged nation, and Father had emphasized that it would need a well-designed government. This was a major reason their parents had tolerated the many hours Toby and Peter spent in Consensus.
Now, having admitted he could directly control Thisbe’s frequency, Toby tried to gauge the reaction among the politicians. They were all stone-faced or smiling, of course; luckily the political translation layer they’d given him provided a different view through his glasses. Some of the politicos were literally turning green—not with envy but with approval, which subtitles translated in various ways: that fellow over there was happy that Toby was telling the truth, while the woman to the left of him had just had her worst predictions confirmed. Other ministers were yellow, still others crimson, and several had turned black, apparently signifying that they were not psychoculturally capable of actually absorbing the meaning of what he’d just said.
Above them all, the interface was showing a disklike balance-of-power meter, which was currently tilting around like a top. Everything was in play, apparently.
This was all amazing and showed how far government had come since his day. To Toby, though, it just confirmed something that had been obvious since the day he awoke here: the whole Consensus plan had been flawed.
Thisbe could organize its government however it wanted. It didn’t matter, if private individuals like the McGonigals controlled just one critical utility. On Thisbe, they controlled time itself.
“I can change the lockstep frequency,” he continued once the power meter had stabilized a bit. “But I can’t give the power to do that to anyone else. It’s locked to me, somehow.”
They all nodded politely, and orderly waves of change moved through the political model—except that somebody somewhere said sarcastically, “That’s convenient.”
Toby looked for whoever had spoken. Finally, somebody who wasn’t going to be creepily polite! “Probably designed to keep us alive,” he said. “Otherwise, you could torture me into giving you superuser status, then kill me.” Or you could just neuroshackle me. He really hoped they wouldn’t think of that.
“Sound planning.” The speaker was an elderly gentleman with a flat face and high cheekbones, and a dry, sardonic voice. Through the glasses, he appeared amber-colored right now, and his subtitle read LONG SEVILLE, MINISTER OF SECURITY.
“Look, I’d give you all superuser access if I could,” said Toby. “This isn’t where I want to be right now. I just want to get to Destrier and find my mom…”
The entire assembly had turned black and red and green, except for a couple of amber holdouts. One was Long Seville.
Toby appealed to him. “What did I say?”
The old man sighed and sat back, crossing his arms. “You, the Emperor of Time, just announced that you intend to fulfill the ancient prophecy by throwing open the gates of Time itself and awakening the Mother of All. What did you expect to happen?”
“It’s my family,” he said sullenly. “I just want to be reunited with them.”
The old man gestured, and an icon next to his head signaled that he’d turned off his augmented reality implants. Toby frowned, then took off his own glasses. Freed from the intricate political interface, they were now just two people seated at a table. Everybody else was talking, gesturing, looking around inside a shared virtual space. It was as if Toby and this minister were in their own little bubble of reality.
“Not supposed to do this,” Long said, holding up the glasses, “but you’re obviously new to our way of doing things. Listen, kid, most of the room didn’t even hear what you just said, because their translation systems couldn’t figure out a way to have it make sense in their worldview. Thisbe’s a pretty sophisticated world, but everybody here was still raised on the myths and legends about you. For the most part these people don’t believe them, but you just said they were true! What you have to do now is back up and start over, only this time, please try to avoid pushing any religious buttons, would you?”
They put their glasses back on and Toby said, “What I meant was … I don’t want to run the lockstep. Everybody has these ideas about what I’m going to do now that I’m back, but nobody’s thought to consult me about them.”
This got through, largely. Encouraged, he continued, “I know my brother changed your frequency. That was wrong, and I’ll talk to him about it when I see him. I’ll reset it for you.” He turned to smile at Corva, who was watching him stone-faced. “All I ask in return is a little help with…” Was there any way he could say “being reunited with my family” without pressing those “religious buttons”?
“… with settling into my new life.”
They heard that. The interface’s feedback layer flooded him with restatements of his own words: he knew what he’d just said; now the interface was telling him what each minister had heard—what the words he’d said meant to them after being filtered through their stated expectations and hopes, known prejudices and biases, cognitive deficits, and so on. The interface proposed a set of rewordings that it thought would custom-translate his meaning for them, but it was a bewildering jumble that he had no time to review. He signaled yes to it and the rewordings went out.
This politics stuff was harder than it had seemed in Consensus. It still came down to one thing, though. They were haggling.
“Look, I was told Evayne’s on her way here, but then everybody clammed up about it. I need to know. Is she coming? When’s she going to get here? Can I meet with her? Or is that … a bad idea?”
Some of this got through. The political interface swirled through a whole spectrum of colors and the balance of power tipped and swung for a few seconds. Translations and interpretations flew back and forth, and then the whole room stabilized green.
Long Seville nodded and stood up. “Can we get a … yes, thanks,” he added as a set of windows opened in the interface. They were all dark, but if Toby squinted he could make out little points of light in one.
“This,” said Long, “is a telescope view into Sagittarius. Those bright stars there aren’t stars. They’re the engine flares of a whole fleet of ships. They’re aiming for a full stop at Thisbe, and there’s little doubt who’s leading them.”
Toby was unconvinced; he supposed he was giving off subtle body stance and facial cues that would make him look amber right now. “How do you know it’s her?”