Liquid computers and Skoolya (fiction from 'Spirit and the Martian Art')

 As they walked down the street they could not miss the fact that the buildings occupied just one side and the opposite was vacant giving a vista of a great valley with mountains beyond. Reaching the restaurant a sign proclaimed it the Good Shit Cafe. They sat down at a table and a waiter appeared with a menu for each.

  “Good morning travelers” the waiter said.

“Good morning; just water and croissants for us with vita-spread. Let us have a bottle of liquid computer too” Loren replied.

  The water left and returned quickly with their order. Victor opened the large clear bottle with swirling images inside and poured the viscous liquid onto the tables’ surface.

  Liquid computers were powered solar photon collecting intelligent and self ordering liquid crystals with their own implicit memories capable of forming their own structure internally and externally; usefully adaptive to angles of solar power input and operating criterion for the shape of being. Able to adapt their viscosity across a full range of solid to liquid they were interpreters of broad band frequencies.

  The computer became a full circle angled toward the sunlight from a star over the valley and began displaying an advertisement for world conquering software.

   Skoolya systems offered a plan for a pittance that detailed the way a criminal minority could concentrate wealth and takeover political power from a majority on a frontier planet by setting restive internal proletariats and political minorities against the majority; dividing and conquering while sympathizing with the minorities against the majority political power that was a rival to the upwardly mobile criminal minority seeking to concentrate wealth for-itself. The advertisement claimed that a tiny criminal minority of less than one percent of the population could control ninety-nine percent of a planet’s wealth by appealing to and unifying a numerical majority of the populous against a power majority that is the rival to the criminal minority.

  The ad explained criminal imperialism can draw in broad allegiance against democracy politically, eliminate taxation of the rich and downgrade the former majority political power rivals; apparently the newly empowered political classes that replace the previous founding class of a democracy would have no concern politically beyond trading places with the former majority political power that had repressed the concentration of wealth through taxation and democratic means of governing. The satisfaction of being the perceived new majority political power would blind the new political power to their role as minions of their sponsoring and coordinating political overlords that own the public media, planetary business and finance political campaigns. The way to own a world politically could be purchased from Skoolya for just five easy payments of some paltry sum such as a tenth of a planet’s gross space output and the marriage of an heir to one of the junior executives of Skoolya.

  “Skoolya’s got an interesting, feasible plan for orchestrating takeover of a world economy by a criminal gang non-violently. The there is the additional lesson plan for manipulating elites to support the imperial control for environmental reasons of ostensible necessity of reducing global population to sustainable environmental levels; social engineering methods applying solid criminal enterprises of mind altering drugs, sop jobs with good pay instead of ubiquitous robotics and the elimination of morals to lead the populace into a withering yet contented condition of population decrease. Ancient Earth’s population drop from ten billion to a sustainable two billion (before final elimination of the non-criminal rich) was held as a prototype proof of concept”. Victor looked a little worried about the ad.

  “Well Victor”, Loren said; that is a Cherybdis or Scylla approach to a kit for building a Criminal Imperial Empire; the home grown non violently coerce of subtle and constant coercion of a population leading itself to destruction or the main stream just establish a base and blast the population away with neutron bombs approach your planet of Mars experienced. It is remarkable that populations groomed by criminal imperialist gangs to takeover democracies never see the criminals as threats to democracy in-themselves. Propaganda through public communications media obfuscates the simple fact that free enterprise democracy with high progressive taxation can defend democracy from both criminal imperialism and authoritarian communism” Loren suggested.

   “Sure Loren, free enterprise and democracy with high progressive taxation keeps wealth concentration below half of planets total wealth resources and democracy alive. With function free enterprise democracy the flourishes a marketplace of ideas that find solutions to environmental challenges. Mars was moving that way to a limited extent in the decades before the arrival of Serenity and the N.T.S.A. Some democracy activists sought to be as free as the main sequence economies of the Dwindling Worlds before the attrition there began.” Victor finished and took a deep swig from the bottle of ice water.

  The liquid computer advertisement concluded and the main menu appeared.

  “Solving the environment and biospheric decline challenges while adapting a planetary economy to realistic challenges of population increase, and natural resource limits can be done with free enterprise democracies if the delusions of the masses concerning functions of democracies and economic systems as self-regulating without need for intelligent human design can be enfiladed.