I was Ari. In 2027 I used to work in space. My best friend was named Dsh. He was mostly mechanical. We worked in orbit clearing junk and fixing things. I lost my friend during the Kid Plague in 2021, everyone lost someone. I was one of the few humans to contract the virus. For 6 years after the plague I fluctuated from highly functional to unpredictably violent, then I fell asleep. When I woke up they told me it was now, and now is here in the past. Before I went to sleep, to stay occupied when not being studied I collected, cataloged, and tried to repair bots I found in the woods. For some reason they gathered near rocks and meadows and died there. It always made me sad. Every month I am going to sketch and describe some of the bots I saw. They were my friends, all of them.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

My vacation in Cambodia

I took a week off from work and went to A very popular island that was just built by the Khmer Turkish friendship society; everyones favorite island builders. Most people like to stay in Ankha but I skipped over to the quieter side where the "old" port is. The island was shelved for six years over some kind of artifact dispute when laying under sea infrastructure. In that time a good size group of Kiwi Squat's set up camp there and built an emergence society. The builders decided to let them stay and studied the formation of their society to see if it could be incorporated into future design. The port was also extremely popular with the political class from the ever influential Vietnam empire. On day 4 I managed to lose my sequencer ring which is a shame because it was probably going to hatch in 3 or 4 more days. I had come into contact with various task based societies from the Kiwi camps. I had primarily been observing a group of salvagers that were combing the sand using really ugly left over hacked track bots brought back from Mars. Some poor sap bought them all and paid to have them shipped thinking he could turn a dime on each. These things ended up in a pile floating around the sea. A group from this camp formed a society of scavengers and used them to groom the sand during the early construction of the island. They hacked these bots to rent to tourists to use for various menial tasks. There were at least 7 black market tourist operators using the island before it was done so visitation was quite good. The bots were clunky and old but they could deal with sand well. I approached one of the operators and purchased some coconut candy while we spoke. The bot offered me a free shot of coco juice with it, I accepted. He seemed friendly and I asked him if he could look for my ring. His bot could operate up to 30 centimeters deep into the sand so it shouldn't be a problem.

'However I can not do it now. We have to council first.'
'Another council, why do you need to council?'
'There are strict rules of ownership for each square meter of sand. I am allowed to sell here as I have rented passage but I can not salvage here. Salvage has no passage laws, you perma own salvage plots. Not many salvage owners take requests, you have to go to the auction market to look for your item. I can ask the owner of this plot if you want me to.'
I declined and decided to take my chances at the market. Seems like a good way to support the locals and meet more people from this society. I took a walk to find someone in the middle of a salvage. After walking for 10 minutes I found a woman scraping objects off the magnetic grills that grapple onto larger items that pass through the sand vacuum on the bottom of the chassis. She had platinum teeth and moveable feast tattoos. She showed me a ring she just found, probably from a Russian tourist group that was here all morning. It was also a DNA ring but this one had a husband and wife's DNA in it. Every few minutes it would produce a small hologram of simulated children based on combining the two peoples DNA. Her bot was empty and went back to work detecting metal in the sand and spraying blizzards of dust as it sucked sand up through three chambers. Magnetic cages grabbed onto metallic items and allowed small bits of metallic sand to pass through to the ejection chambers. Hearty little two track robots, so focused and small minded but I was glad to see them out in the world instead of melted down. I remember being so hopeful I would find my ring at the auction party. It was an optimistic place.

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