April 6: And What Goes Around (2 page)

The
down side was that three of the expensive vehicles and their loads had vanished
without a trace after their tracking systems indicated they were safely at dock
and shutting down. It should have been impossible to start them up and drive
them away on manual without the tracking starting. Obviously there were
work-arounds. The Teamsters union said, "We told you so."

Something didn't smell right about the story to April.
Weren't there private security cameras all over the city? Especially when there
were only so many ways on and off of the island. She'd ask Gunny later.

In Singapore a new regulation required all jewelry with gold
content over a half gram to be registered and a photograph filed with police.
This was part of a new wave of capital controls which included limits on funds
travelers could carry abroad and new tariffs and taxes. Police announced the
breakup of a gang avoiding export fees by smuggling bespoke suits to Japan on
body doubles. The ploy came to light when customs officials noted a man wearing
two pairs of pants.

An aged widower in Belgium died alone at home and the
family in going through the house and sorting out his things found an alcove in
the basement they didn't understand. Upon being inspected by workmen from the
local utilities it was discovered that the man had some decades earlier tapped
into a pipeline which had an easement along the edge of his property. It ran
between two nearby industrial sites separated by about a kilometer. The
pipeline carried beer from a brew house to a bottling facility. What made April
smile were his relatives' memories about what a happy man he'd always been.

The
New Jersey legislature passed a bill making the possession of a program for
instructing automated machine tools or 3D printing devices to create a firearm
legally the same as possession of the weapon. A simple paper blueprint was
still considered legal 'speech'.

 The same bill also outlawed possession of arrows with
broadhead hunting points and bows or crossbows with a pull in excess of 133
Newtons or 30 pounds. New Jersey joined the same standard in effect in
California, Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, Mississippi, New York,  Connecticut
, New Jersey, Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

USNA trade regulators accused Australia of dumping
graphene coated glassy metal foil on the market below cost. Australian trade
ministers in turn accused the USNA of doing the same with diamond whiskers and
DW composites. April still didn't see how anybody thought subsidizing an
industry was an advantage. It was like the old joke about selling at a loss but
making it up on volume. The first time she'd heard that one she hadn't thought
it funny. She still didn't.

 Designs by Daniel had to rethink their decision to
display his rack line on a robotic mannequin in front of the fashion house. NYC
police called to the address on reports of a woman acting strangely ordered the
mannequin to the sidewalk and when she didn't respond to commands shot the 1.6
Million dollar machine to junk. "She didn't comply when ordered," the
department spox insisted.

Natural
clover honey reached an average wholesale price of $150USNA/lb, aided by a ban
on imported honey due to persistent adulteration and contamination. Indoor
producers of honey from human supplied sugar  feed stocks and flavorings were
heavily promoting its consistency, lack of pollens and pesticides and much
lower cost in targeted advertising.  The traditional producers held that the
pollen was an advantage not a defect and claimed their flavor was superior.
They had a strong advantage in a trademarked bee mascot that the public
recognized positively.

April made a note in her collection of things to research
to see if that industrial sort of honey production would be suitable for
tunnels in the moon. She hadn't realized bees would make honey from anything
but flowers.

Permit fees for photographing various government
buildings, monuments and government property  such as the reflecting pool in
Washington DC were consolidated into a single day pass for the entire Federal
district with a graduated fee structure for students, residents, tourists,
professional photographers and news journalists. Virginia declined to join the
program for historic sites and battlefields outside the district.

The city of Berkeley California raised the bond necessary
to license a dog or cat to $200,000USNA because of the increases in medical costs
and insurance for companion animals. The ordinance was also changed to require
the naming of three willing custodians in the event of death or inability to
care for the animal. The use of the word pet was discouraged before, but the
new ordinance made its use grounds for refusing a license application. Objections
to the word animal were put aside for now due to lack of agreement on a
suitable substitute. Companion animals with any gene modification beyond traditional
breeding selection were strictly prohibited.

Proposals to return aspirin to the prescription drug list
by regulation in the USNA were defeated by a bill run through both House and
Senate in record time before the regulation could take effect.

An artificial fiber with microscopic barbs that mimicked
the felting behavior of wool and displayed the same insulating characteristics
was being marketed as NuWool by a German company. It was totally unattractive
to moths and other insects. Besides being about one tenth the cost of the
natural fiber it could be made significantly stronger and permanently colored.
The cost of clothing made with it was expected to go down considerably, but the
price of lamb and mutton to increase as a consequence. April was pretty sure
she'd never tasted mutton.

China continued to export little nuclear fuel due to
internal conflict and the higher safety standards imposed before their civil
war. Legacy fission systems declined everywhere as fusion generating systems
improved and decentralized generation reduced distribution complexity. England
had not suffered a significant power outage in three years.

Hans Holderman, 23 years old, won the World Championship
of Magic: The Gathering. He collected a purse of Fifty Million EuroMarks and
other prizes, retired to Switzerland, and entered a luxury rehabilitation
facility for the treatment of game addictions.

April flicked down through more headlines. Unrest in Kenya
again, and Korea and Sri Lanka. A container ship missing in the Indian Ocean,
soccer riots, a new treatment for a tropical disease, a breeding pair of
extinct rhinoceros birthed from elephants using frozen gametes. The European
Union banned natural leather in sports balls and decreased the size of bananas
which could be sold legally.

What
did any of it mean? Why was most of this even considered news? She frowned at a
sudden suspicion.  Maybe it was really entertainment disguised as news to avoid
dealing with the real thing. It seemed beyond integrating to usefulness.
Perhaps the intelligence snippets Chen and Eddie sent her through Jeff would be
more useful. She flopped the pad on her stomach again though, and looked out
the port first, weary of focusing so long on the screen for such little return.

The sun was much closer to the moon, the crescent of
bright moon narrower, but the Earth still hadn't made its appearance from
behind the other edge of the moon. At least not the bright part. It was busy up
by the new ring. Shift change was near and there were guys from both shifts
present. April picked the pad back up and changed to the files Jeff's
intelligence people sent along. It wasn't their primary mission. But they'd
been told to look for items of economic interest and pass them along.

T.R. in North America, she didn't really know who that
was, said that quite a few grocery stores were now not just limiting the number
of sale items you could buy but putting signage on the shelf to limit the
number of regular items in stock one could buy. He noted this was something he
saw while doing his own grocery shopping. If you took too many items to the
checkout the computer refused them.

Chen's contacts in China informed him black market doctors
were becoming very common in all of Asia. The official systems were backlogged
to the point appointments were too far out to do you any good. By the time you
could see a doctor you were either well on your own or dead. Unless of course
you had political pull or the funds to bribe your way up the list. The breakdown
in government meant many doctors turned to this when they weren't paid. Since
government snoops were good at finding unregistered businesses from observing
walk in traffic most illicit docs did house calls only.

Trade items widely recognized as black market currencies
shifted with scarcity. A piece of old 14 gauge wire a quarter meter long was a
common item called a 'twist' acceptable in trade. People wore them as a
bracelet to a flea market or grey market to signal they would trade without
cash. That was better not to say out loud. It court it was almost an admission
of intent to commit tax fraud.

A common soft drink container full of rice as a trade item
was popular in Japan. It was an easy  standard way to sell by volume and
approximate weight. One man took to spraying contact adhesive inside the bottle
and filling it with rice. Then he poured out the loose rice in the middle and
filled it with wood chips and sand. However, he went to a market that wasn't
distant enough and was recognized. Worse he had one of the fake bottles on him.
The crowd was not amused. He survived however.

Liquid laundry detergent in the smaller sizes continued to
be a staple of barter in North America, particularly in the large cities. It
was stolen so often some stores kept it behind the counter.

At the very bottom of the economic system returnable beer
bottles were still used in parts of Africa and the Philippines. The bottles had
stable recognized values far from the larger towns.

This was more interesting than the usual news channels. It
spoke to the official currency not serving its function. That and chronic
shortages. She had to talk to Jeff about making Solars in fractional
denominations. If people were hungry enough for money they could trust they might
give a premium for money from outside their government's control. There were
more reports but she was ready for supper.

* * *

April met Jeff for
supper. That was one way to make sure he ate. Sometimes she worried about him.
He'd always been thin, but he'd get involved in a project and visibly lose
weight until the work was done. He was always slow to gain it back. On the
other hand his dad was the same way and it hadn't seemed to hurt him yet.

She'd asked Jeff
what his dad was doing and was told it was proprietary company work he couldn't
discuss with his son. April could understand the need for security, but could
not imagine putting rules ahead of her relationship with Jeff. She trusted him
absolutely not to make improper use of information. It was hard for her to
understand how his own father wouldn't feel the same way. In her mind rules
were never perfect and there always had to be exceptions.

April followed
Jeff in line, observing what he got, and added an extra small plate of high
calorie items for him on her tray. When they sat he went to fill their mugs and
she put it on his side. He didn't argue when he returned. In fact he speared
one of her gift appetizers first thing and ate it, which made her feel better.

"How are the
Chinese in Camelot adjusting to having a ruler instead of a People's
Republic?" April asked him.

"I retained
one fellow who was an administrator. It was more of an adjustment for him than
the other workers. He was used to having goals imposed on him, sometimes all
the way from Earth, by people who had never been to the moon. When I wanted to
just sit and chat and get a sense of what was possible he was all flustered. He
might have thought it was a trick at first. In the end I had to caution him not
to set impossible goals for himself, that I didn't expect that. When we brought
in Annette to be the crown representative on site I think he was shocked again.
It wasn't customary to have a female, at least such a young one in such a
responsible position. No matter what their revolutionary philosophy claims."

"What do you
think of Annette? I got to meet her mom, Dakota, but I haven't met her. I haven't
even had reason to do a video call with her. You must think she can handle it
or you wouldn't be back to Home."

"She would
have begged off if she could. She felt she wasn't experienced enough. I'd
rather she be that way than full of herself and ready to make changes right and
left. But she's smart and she has been around Heather enough to have a good
idea what Heather's mind would be on things. I predict she will be a professor
if Heather eventually has the university for which she set aside land. Heather
gave her a good bit of advice and she seemed to take it to heart. I don't want
to leave her there too long. I think she'll grow weary of it and resentful if
we force her to stay more than a year or so. She's still young enough a year is
a long time. But fleeing Armstrong with her family is the sort of thing that
makes you grow up in a hurry."

"Just like
us," April pointed out.

"Yes,
similar," Jeff agreed. "She was in an even smaller community but more
limited too. Armstrong didn't have the foreign workers and visitors we got here
and the lunar colonies didn't visit back and forth and do business like we did
with the other habitats. They rarely had anyone that wasn't a USNA citizen, and
they really hid how tightly they would be controlled until they got there. They
didn't send people back to Earth for having kids, but it wasn't encouraged
either. They probably
would
have shipped them back if somebody hadn't
latched onto the kids as propaganda props. She was forced to make nice-nice for
the videographer quite a bit growing up and wasn't sure this job wasn't more of
the same. Which she regarded as foolishness. They usually made her do hops in
the low gravity and other tricks for the camera that were pretty silly. I was
told the kids learned to keep a low profile and avoid the Director because he
didn't like them."