Scene 1 — Accessions and Withdrawals

The Fedora Handbook, Rule #4

“Term limits exist for those who expect to be replaced.”

INT. MERIDIAN HALL — CS 101 — MONDAY 4 MAY

The first week of finals. The room is quiet in the way a room is quiet when everybody in it has slept four hours.

The board behind REYES has the six assignments they have already done, in her handwriting, each with a line through it. There is nothing written under the sixth.

REYES

For the last assignment of the year, I want you to make

something new.

Nobody reacts. Some of them write it down. Some of them are still asleep.

REYES

New to the list, I mean. Whether it's new to you is your

own business. Something that has never been approved

because nobody has ever thought to consider it. Something

you made. Something that works. Something you can explain.

A STUDENT

What happens if we make something unapproved by accident?

REYES

Then you'll be reassociated. Twice, unless the assessment

says three. You will not be repossessed. That's the

amnesty. It covers this assignment and nothing else.

Nobody laughs.

REYES

There's no trick in it. It's the actual arrangement. The

institution prefers students who try. Some of you will

fail. Some of you will make something nobody wants. Some

of you will make something the institution has never seen

and cannot approve. All of you will walk out of this room

at the end of it.

She looks at Owen for a moment longer than she looks at anyone else.

REYES

You present in three weeks. Don't use a Help to design it.

You may use a Help to build it. If you don't know the

difference, you're about to learn.

The sheet she hands round is below.

ASSIGNMENT SEVEN · CS 101 · presented in the third week

Make something new.

New means new to the list. What it means to you is your own affair.

It must work, and you must be able to explain it, to me, in the room, out loud.

Design it without a Help. Build it with any Help you like.

The amnesty covers this assignment and no other. An unapproved result is reassociated twice, or three times if the assessment says so.

Nobody is repossessed for assignment seven.

INT. PRENTISS SCIENCE CENTER — TEACHING LAB — TUESDAY 5 MAY

The screen is down. A new Meridian video. It is shorter than the others, and it is about the misters.

MERIDIAN SYSTEMS

THE MISTERS: A PROMISE KEPT

NARRATOR (O.S.)

Every day, on every approved campus, the misters run. They

deliver nutrition. They deliver humidity. They deliver a

quality of air that has been calibrated to the needs of

every approved space.

On screen, a corridor in a fine mist. A man in a white suit walks through it. He does not get wet. He does not acknowledge the mist, or anything else.

NARRATOR (O.S.)

The misters are a Meridian innovation. They are maintained

by Meridian. They are scheduled by Meridian. They are, in

every way that matters, a Meridian system.

The man stops and looks at the camera for one second too long.

NARRATOR (O.S.)

Meridian. Here for you.*

*Meridian holds no legal responsibility for the consequences of approved atmospheric exposure.

A STUDENT

Why do they keep showing us these?

CARTER

Because the misters will run in every building you work in

for the rest of your life. You should know what they do.

A STUDENT

What do they do?

CARTER

They keep the air clean. They keep the humidity in range.

They deliver a small amount of nutrition to anyone who

breathes them long enough.

A STUDENT

Is that approved?

Carter does not look at the student. She looks at the screen, which has gone dark.

CARTER

It's on the schedule. It's on the approved list. It's been

in the environmental plan for twenty years. So yes. It's

approved.

At the quarter hour the mister over the door comes on. Everybody in the room goes on breathing.

Cut to:

INT. HALLORAN UNION — ROOM 3C — WEDNESDAY 6 MAY, 7:00 P.M.

Finals week. There is no session. Article Six says the Society meets on Wednesdays and does not say what for, so they meet and revise.

DEREK has a stack of index cards on Roman provincial administration. SIMON has a textbook he has not opened. MILES is in the mask, going through a past paper in red. VICTOR has his Help face up on the table in front of him, with MOCHI on it.

Owen comes in at ten past. Mochi sees him before anybody else does.

MOCHI

♪ Owen! Hello! Hello! You're late, but it's fine, I kept

your chair! ♪

Nobody kept his chair. It is the chair he always has.

VICTOR

She has asked after you every Wednesday since Easter.

DEREK

She likes him.

VICTOR

She is a Help. She likes everybody. That is the function.

MOCHI

♪ I like Owen best! ♪

Victor turns the Help face down on the table and goes on with what he was saying.

VICTOR

Two dates for the minutes. The last film of the year is

Friday the twenty-second. The last session is Wednesday

the twenty-seventh. Attendance at both is required under

Article Six, and I will not be setting Article Seven aside

for either.

Miles writes both dates down in red, because red is what he has in his hand.

SIMON

What's the film?

VICTOR

It's approved.

That is the whole answer.

Later, while Derek and Miles argue about whether a quaestor counts as a magistrate, Victor turns the Help back over and goes through everything Mochi has said since Easter, with his thumb, the way other people go through their post. Nobody at the table remarks on it. He does it every week.

From the Help, very quietly, as if nobody else can hear:

MOCHI

♪ Hi, Owen. ♪

Victor scrolls past it.

They stop at ten, because it is finals week.

Cut to:

---

INT. MAYA'S ROOM — WEDNESDAY 6 MAY — NIGHT

MAYA is at her desk. LENA is on the bed. ELI is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Owen is at the window.

There is a book on the desk, face down, the one Maya has had since the darkroom.

LAZLO's voice comes through a small speaker on the desk, patched in from wherever he is.

LAZLO

I've been going through the logs since you came back.

Cut to:

INT. UNDER MERIDIAN — LAZLO'S ROOM — LATE

A drum of line on the floor with about nine hundred feet on it and a hand-written figure on the side that has been crossed out four times.

Owen

Why is it on a wire at all?

LAZLO

Because I am not putting a transmitter under two

hundred feet of fill and hoping. A wire is a wire.

It carries the picture up and it carries the power

down and it is the only part of the arrangement

that has never once failed.

Owen

So what fails?

LAZLO

It fouls. It goes somewhere, and then it goes

somewhere else, and at some point the way back is

across a piece of line it has already put down,

and it will not cross its own line and it is right

not to.

Owen

What happens then?

LAZLO

Then it is a hundred and eighty feet away and it

has stopped, and I have a drum with a rover on the

end of it, and either I go and get it or I cut the

line and it is down there.

He does not say how many he has cut.

PIP (O.S.)

Eleven.

LAZLO

Pip.

Blackout.

INT. LAZLO'S ROOM — TWENTY MINUTES LATER

Lazlo has been at it for twenty minutes and has not spoken and has fouled four of them.

PIP (O.S.)

Nine.

LAZLO

I know what it is.

PIP (O.S.)

You are at nine retrieved. I got fourteen while

you were arguing about the drum.

LAZLO

You are a rover.

PIP (O.S.)

Yes.

He plays another one.

LAZLO

The thing about it is that it is exactly right and

it is no help at all. There is nothing in there I

did not know. I have known all of that for nine

years with a drum in my hands.

Owen

So why are you still playing it?

Four seconds.

LAZLO

Because down here I only get one go at it, and in

there I can foul it and press a key.

He plays another one. He gets to eleven and fouls it in the middle of the board with most of the room still open, which is how they all go.

LINE.CLJS · arrows · space to pause · r to resetpress Run

line_settings.cljscljs

;; --------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; LINE_SETTINGS.CLJS — what the tunnel is set to. ;; ;; Change a number and press Run. Break it and the line underneath will ;; tell you what it thought you meant. Nothing you do here can lose the ;; original: `Put it back` is the file as it shipped. ;; ;; Running this sends a fresh drone down onto a clean floor. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------------- {;; The tunnel, and how fast a thing on tracks goes. :speed is frames ;; between moves — eight is about seven and a half squares a second, ;; and anything under four is a different game and not a better one. :size 20 :speed 8 ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- ;; THE ECONOMY, AND IT WORKS TWICE ;; ;; Feet of line at the start, what each kind of retrieval pays out, ;; and how much floor a retrieval puts beyond use. ;; ;; Everything you take out of that tunnel makes the tunnel worse in ;; two different ways, and neither of them can be undone, and both of ;; them came out of the same act. ;; ;; Set :find-pays and :silt-per-find both to 0 and the machine becomes ;; possible and stops being about anything. Try it once and put it ;; back. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- :paid 4 :find-pays 3 :quest-pays 1 :silt-per-find 2 ;; The optional slow one, in frames, for a reader who wants the floor ;; to come up whether they are working or not. 0 is off and off is the ;; default, because the silt a drone raises itself is quite enough. ;; ;; Set it to 500 and go and do nothing for two minutes and you will see ;; what the man with the bucket has been looking at for forty-one ;; years. :silt-every 0 ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- ;; THE SCORE ;; ;; The first square is worth one point. Every square after is worth ;; one more than the last — three squares comes to six, ten squares ;; comes to fifty-five — because the floor gets harder to work and the ;; number should say so. ;; ;; Each of the three pays a foot on its own, same as before. The quest ;; itself is catching all three before the floor takes one, or one ;; catches up with the floor — do that and :quest-multiplier times ;; whatever square you're on lands once, on top of everything else. ;; Early it is nothing much. Late it is most of the score, and getting ;; there gets close to impossible. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- :quest-multiplier 500 ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- ;; THE QUESTS ;; ;; Three of them, one to a floor, each its own colour, each fading ;; toward the colour of the floor as its time runs out. Each pair ;; below is a range in frames, not a fixed number — the actual time ;; is drawn fresh from it every floor, and which draw lands on which ;; colour is reshuffled too, so neither the pace nor the order repeats. ;; The legend above the field always shows that floor's order, fastest ;; to slowest, left to right. ;; ;; They move at :quest-speed, in frames between wander-steps — set to ;; match the tunnel's own :speed by default, so out of the box there's ;; one clock for everything down there, but it's its own number if you ;; want the quests faster or slower than the drone. ;; ;; Each one only ever lands somewhere that still has a way out from ;; it, so reaching one is never how the run ends outright. That gets ;; harder to promise as the floor fills in, and eventually it can't be ;; promised at all — which is its own kind of answer. ;; ;; They can be buried. If the floor comes up under one it is gone, and ;; nothing says so. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- :quest-fast-min 160 :quest-fast-max 220 :quest-mid-min 260 :quest-mid-max 340 :quest-slow-min 400 :quest-slow-max 520 :quest-speed 8 ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- ;; THE NUMBER ;; ;; What the counter was at when he found the machine. The first drone ;; anybody sends down is the one after this, and it does not reset, and ;; the eleven before it were not his. ;; --------------------------------------------------------------- :number-from 11}

Press Run.

The number on the left is which drone this is. Squares get steeper as you go. Catch all three colours before one fades into the floor or the floor takes it, and that square's whole bonus lands again, once, on top.