Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

“I’m not surprised,” Steve said. “Does he have any divided loyalties?”

“He’d probably have something to say about it if we moved against Japan,” Kevin said. “Other than that, he will be loyal enough to us, as long as he isn’t mistreated. I explained the rules on working for us and he accepted them.”

Steve blinked. “We have rules?”

“He’s the first employee of our new State Department,” Kevin reminded him. “I would prefer not to start building a monster like the old State Department, one full of bureaucrats, leakers and people who know nothing taking the lead.”

He shrugged. “Anyway, most of the Western Governments are prepared to recognise us as being an independent state provided we share fusion technology and a handful of other technological advances with them,” he continued. “They’ve also agreed not to stand in our way as we recruit, but they’ve requested that we don’t go after serving military personnel. And they want us to buy supplies from them in bulk.”

“We’d have to do that anyway,” Steve pointed out, as he took a cup of coffee from the food producer. It tasted just right for him, but he knew there had already been plenty of complaints from civilians who were not used to military coffee. “Don’t they know that?”

“Of course they do,” Kevin said. “This is just their way of saving face. They can’t stop us from doing whatever the hell we like, so they ask us for concessions we intend to give them anyway…”

Steve rolled his eyes. “So it’s all playacting for the media,” he said. “Wonderful.”

“I seem to recall mom smacking you for deciding you didn’t need manners any longer,” Kevin said, snidely. “Or have you forgotten her lecture?”

Steve felt his cheeks heat. Their mother had been strict, homeschooling her children in-between the hours they worked on the farm. Steve still recalled the thrashing she’d given him after he’d been unjustifiably rude to one of her guests… and how she’d explained, afterwards, that manners were the lubricant that kept society together. If everyone said what they meant, all the time, society would break down. Or so she’d said. It hadn’t been until he’d joined the Marines that Steve had truly understood what she’d meant.

“It’s the same basic idea,” Kevin explained. “They ask for concessions, we grant them… and it looks as though they got something out of the deal. It will soothe their pride.”

He paused. “I did have a set of private conversations with the President,” he added. “He’s having problems with the Senate. None of them are very happy about us just… taking the starship and setting up on our own. A few have even threatened to revoke our citizenships.”

“Fuck them,” Steve said, sharply.

“It’s a valid point,” Kevin said. “You might want to consider renouncing yours anyway, along with the rest of us. Just by being American, we cause problems for the American government, which gets the blame for our existence.”

Steve snorted. “I’m sure the British didn’t get the blame for anything George Washington did after independence,” he countered.

“Washington was President of an independent America,” Kevin said. “He was no longer even remotely connected to Britain.”

He sighed. “Overall, the President thinks we’ll get recognition, as long as the US clearly benefits from the arrangement, but he would like a couple of other concessions.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “What does he want?”

“First, he wants us to continue the antiterrorist program,” Kevin said. “We would have done that anyway, I think, but this will make it official. Second, he wants us to send medics to the United States, armed with alien medical technology. If we helped people who needed it, we would build up a lot of goodwill.”

Steve made a mental note to check who the President wanted them to help, then nodded. “I think Mariko would chop off my balls if I refused,” he said. “Very well. We will give the President his bones.”

“An excellent decision,” Kevin said.

Steve eyed him darkly.

“The bad news,” Kevin continued, “is that almost all of the non-democratic states have been less keen to recognise us. China and Russia are taking the lead, but much of the Middle East is united in its disapproval and, between them, they might be able to delay formal UN recognition. The bigger nations are worried about the effects of the dongles, the smaller nations are worried about losing oil revenues. And then there’s the request for asylum we received.”

Steve blinked. “Asylum?”

“There’s a Christian in Egypt who is facing official displeasure,” Kevin said. “He wants out. And he won’t be the last one, either. There are millions of people around the world who would want to get out of non-democratic states.”

“I see,” Steve said. “And they won’t let them go?”

“Not without being pushed,” Kevin agreed. “You will need to worry about that, Steve.”

They both looked up as the hatch hissed open, revealing a tired-looking Wilhelm.

“Good news,” Wilhelm said. “We’re in business.”

Steve smiled. “We are?”

“So far, we’ve got over two hundred companies, mainly small technological and computing companies like my own, applying to set up shop on the lunar surface,” Wilhelm said. “Some of them are actually quite big, really; placing their factories on the moon would give us a growing industrial base. A number of bigger corporations have also expressed interest in moving some of their operations to the moon, but they want more details of what we can offer them first. I think they’ll expect first glance at any unlocked alien technology.”

He paused. “But many of the smaller companies have hundreds of brilliant people working for them,” he added. “Some of those people are even on the list of people I want to recruit.”

Steve had to smile. “It will still take months to get them to the moon,” he pointed out. “And what about their personnel?”

“Oh, nothing is finalised yet,” Wilhelm said. “But they’re quite keen to move ahead.”

He hesitated, noticeably. “We’ve also had literally thousands of requests for server space,” he continued. “As the alien servers are capable of holding billions upon billions of terabytes, this isn’t a problem. But it’s raised a whole new problem — two of them, in fact.”

Kevin smirked. “How many of those requests come from pornographic sites?”

“I’m shocked you could imagine using the internet for porn,” Wilhelm said. He looked down at the deck, irked. “Half of them, as it happens.”

Kevin’s smirk grew wider. “We could have some fun sampling it.”

Steve had a more practical concern. “Is this likely to prove a problem?”

“We have become, to all intents and purposes, a data haven,” Wilhelm said. “Quite apart from the porn, what happens when someone stores criminal or terrorist information on our servers?”

He shrugged. “I’ve copied the user guidelines from the servers I used to run in Switzerland,” he added. “Child pornography is completely banned. All other pornographic material is to be stored in one particular subset of the servers, so they can be excluded from search results fairly easily. Some of what we’ve been offered is… sickening.”

Steve wasn’t surprised. He’d served in Iraq and seen Iraqi businessmen offering American and British soldiers pornography that would have been shocking in America, let alone in what was meant to be a strictly Islamic country. There hadn’t been anything remotely tasteful about it, insofar as porn could ever be tasteful. He’d never been sure if the Iraqis genuinely did like watching men having sex with animals or if someone was trying to sneer at the outsiders by selling them disgusting porn.