Pars
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Chapter 1:- Unscheduled Rain
The evening was blessedly quiet, except for the dull murmurs of a small party trickling out of the house. Distant city lights shimmered on the horizon. A cool breeze crossed the hilltop, bringing respite from the oppressive tropical heat. Pars stretched out on the patio lounge chair; this was exactly what he needed after a long, hectic day. Indeed the moment would have been perfect, except he had to share it with his uncle Thed.
Thed droned on, “…so the way I see it, a second crash is not only probable, but in fact inevitable. As soon as the records run out…”
Pars sighed inwardly. Thed could be a real doom-saying crackpot sometimes. “But it’s not like they’ll run out all at once. There’ll be a slow tapering down, as the later artifacts, the ones created just before the Great Crash, are going to be harder to locate and reconstruct. And after that there’ll still be technical journals and so forth pointing the way towards what was coming. There will be enough time for a smooth transition. The Primary…”
“Pars, no offense, but you’re too close to the Primary to see what’s going on. You gotta read Odson’s book, he goes over all this stuff. Check this out,” Thed looked him straight in the eye, as if about to tell him something really important. It made Pars a bit uncomfortable. “So the Great Crash happened at the height of Epoch Civilization, right? Suddenly everything’s reset back to caveman days. But then, for the next eight hundred years, we have tremendous growth as civilization is restored, all fueled by the rediscovery of ancient technology…”
“It wasn’t all progress; the dark centuries of warfare…”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s not important. What is important is that for the last couple hundred years we’ve had tremendous economic and technical growth as old artifacts are dug up, analyzed, recreated, and commercialized. And by learning from their history we’ve avoided all the mistakes they made, like nuclear war, the internet, brain implants, and so on. This has given us a fantastic run that we now take for granted. But what’s going to happen in twenty years when the historical records run out? Do you think things will keep on going this well? Will our economy keep booming without the steady introduction of recovered technologies? Of course not, if we’re lucky it will only stop growing. But Odson predicts we will actually enter a depression as the corporate guilds run out of new rediscoveries. They’ll lay off all the archeologists and reengineers, pretty soon the whole economy’s going down…”
“They could invent new things, like they did back before the Crash…”
“Who’s going to do that? No one knows how to invent anything new anymore; the whole system’s geared to digging up old stuff. Come on Pars, you’re way up in the government, you can’t tell me this isn’t a real concern.”
“Yes, it’s a concern, I won’t deny that. But the Primary is taking active steps to adapt our society. For example, he’s subsidizing pure research programs at all the major universities…”
“Bah, too little too late. Besides, all the good universities are owned by the corporate guilds and the big families; they’ll just take the money and do the bare minimum required by law. The government isn’t strong enough to do what’s really necessary to avoid a crisis because it’s too expensive and painful. Taxes would go up and the people won’t allow it. But even if the government can do what’s necessary, when the historical records run out we’ll be flying blind again. Even if we can develop new technologies we won’t know how dangerous they are until it’s too late. We could make catastrophic mistakes like the ones that led to the Great Crash.”
Pars removed a pouch from a pocket and opened it. He pinched a small amount of powder between finger and thumb and snorted it up his nose. Immediately the tingly rush of Seflon-D ran through his body. It made talking to his uncle bearable, even enjoyable. He held out the pouch, “Want some?”
“No thanks, I’m on ZAX,” said Thed. From the distance came a deep rumbling. “Is that thunder?”
“Can’t be. Weather’s scheduled to be clear all week.” Pars pocketed the pouch. “Anyway, no one even knows what triggered the Great Crash.”
“Odson has some theories on that. Obviously the introduction of brain implants destabilized Epoch society by creating a huge gulf between the rich and the poor…”
Pars dismissed him with a wave of a hand. “Yeah, yeah, and now they’re illegal. Problem solved.”
Thed continued defiantly. “No, my point is we don’t know what negative side-effects future technologies might have.”
Lida stuck her head out the doorway. “Pars, are you watching the meatsacks? Last time they were overcooked.”
“Yeah, I’m on it.” Pars stood up and walked to the charber. He poked a tong into one of the dangling meatsacks, releasing a trickle of milky sauce to sizzle on the coals below. Pars said, “The bottom line is, we’re just going to have to adapt to the situation. Yes, the Primary is having some difficulties getting everything he wants done, but as we approach the end of the records people will be more concerned and the government will act. And yes, it might be scary without the records to guide us, but it might be exciting too. We’d finally be done picking through the garbage of a people long dead.”
“So do you want to know what Odson’s other theories are for the Great Crash? One of them is that it was caused by aliens.”
“Aliens!” laughed Pars. “Who is this Odson guy?”
Suddenly the sky opened up and began dumping torrents of rain on them. Pars and Thed rushed inside. The party gathered at one of the large patio windows and watched the rush of fat droplets splatter onto the patio surface. They stared in disbelief; the science of weather control had been perfected decades ago. Pars could not recall it ever having failed. What the hell did it mean?
