With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

27th March 2013
07:10 GMT +2

Dr. Roquette looks up as I pull out the chair opposite her.

"You're looking better."

I sit down as she looks down, nodding self-consciously.

"Y-eah. Between those tablets you gave me and… Actually seeing my nanobots actually help people, I…" She breathes in deeply and then breathes out again. "I haven't even wanted to drink again." She picks up her glass of orange juice. "Juice only."

"I'm glad to hear it. But are you feeling better? Or are you just changing your behaviour?"

She takes a sip. "No, no, I do actually feel better." She frowns mildly. "What was in those tablets, anyway? Some sort of space addiction-suppressant? Because I think I had some sort of reaction-."

"Psilocybin."

She looks up from her yoghurt, eyes widening slightly as she watches me for a sign that I'm joking. "Oh. That explains the hallucinations and why you told me not to operate machinery for four hours."

"The League developed several psychoactive chemicals to try and fight off the Anti-Life, but… Unless you're being continuously exposed, psilocybin works just as well and has less risk of causing brain or liver damage."

"Do you want to have the tablets I've got left over back-?" She blinks. "Are these illegal in Greece?"

"If they are, then I doubt that they're enforcing it."

She breathes in slowly and then snorts the air out through her nostrils before taking another spoonful of honey-drizzled yoghurt.

"No problems with your co-workers or with the government?"

She thinks for a moment, then swallows. "No, everyone's… Doing their best. If.. anything, the Finance Ministry is being too accommodating."

"How do you mean?"

"Usually, applying for funding is a lot more adversarial. Here, they say they'll give anything for a miracle…" She frowns a little. "And I actually can. I guess I just sort of assumed it would be in testing forever."

"Under normal circumstances it might well. But whatever-."

Wait. Wait just a-.

Did-? Anti-Lifeing the Earth do something to Boss Smiley? We found that people with strong morals and a strong sense of purpose managed to cope better than people who didn't. People most in tune with him would have been hit the hardest, and… Been Justified? Would he feel that? There's a certain logic to the thought, but… Ugh, I don't even know if he actually exists, much less have any way to work out what could hurt him.

She's looking at me.

"Is something-?"

"Whatever unfortunate events conspire to prevent that sort of thing don't appear to apply when people are this desperate. It's something that I never managed to understand, how this Earth could have so much highly advanced technology and yet use it so little."

She nods. "I remember that talk you gave. So, what, Mannheim beat the special interests?"

"Could be. Or they actually want this to succeed because there won't be a civilisation for them to run from the shadows unless things change."

He did say that he didn't mind a little change. But once this becomes part of the new normal anywhere, then it won't be possible to dislodge it. Even if they embargo Greece completely… Greece won't need to import anything.

It's not true post-scarcity, due to the throughput limits and the fact that most manufacturing is still better done with dedicated machines and operators. But it's starting to look a little more like that than what we had before.

"How's the rest of the world?"

"China's pretty interesting. Who knew that a civilisation of a billion people could coast on pure inertia like that?"

"Shouldn't their currency have collapsed?"

"It did, but they didn't notice. Currency collapses hurt the middle class. China… Does have a middle class, but it's relatively small. They've… Basically put as many people as they can on public works programs-. Did you know that the Chinese construction industry is massively corrupt?"

"It doesn't surprise me."

"And I don't mean a few back-handers to get a contract corrupt. I mean full-on Victorian 'this tunnel was supposed to have five layers of brick, it's got half of one and now it's collapsed and killed hundreds of people' corrupt. There's plenty of work to do fixing it and just about enough transportation and food production to prevent mass starvation. Good old communist community spirit."

"How can they afford that?"

"Who needs currency when you have commissars?"

She frowns. "And people are just.. accepting that?"

I shrug. "There's no locus for opposition. With the Communist Party being the only political party and having representatives on the board of every company of any size, there's no avenue for counterargument. Everyone's pretty much trying to keep things as normal as possible, doing their best to follow whatever orders there are… The fact that all the deaths have left holes in the political structure doesn’t matter. If someone tried that in America, they'd be shot. In China, it-." Hm. "What do you know about the Battle of Kursk?"

"It was a battle in World War Two.. between the Nazis and the Soviet Union. But that's about all."

"The Russians built huge earthworks to defend the city, with almost the entire population of the city joining in with the digging. The Chinese are doing that for the entire country until someone has a better idea, or until they've got a functioning country. Probably… Reorganise the national government while regional governments keep everyone too tired to complain, then… Issue a new currency?"

"I haven't really kept up… What's America doing?"

"Barter, digital currency or Justice League tokens. The government tried printing more dollars while they were already in a period of hyperinflation, then tried to pass a law to force businesses to accept the dollar." I shake my head. "We were this close-" I hold up my right hand with thumb and forefinger close together. "-to seeing the return of state nullification, and it looks like a couple might reinstate precious metal currency. Honestly, they're probably going to have to knock a couple of zeroes off the dollar too when things settle down."

"No public works programs?"

"Americans won't tolerate being treated in the way that the Chinese expect to be treated. The Federal Government can't pay for a public works program with anything that anyone who could supply one would take. If they had any sense they'd butt out and let the American people fix things from the ground up."

"And how's… Ah, England doing?"

"The British government is too incompetent to do as much damage as the US government is. And as a result, small scale solutions are sort of emerging. They've turned a lot of areas of grassland into allotments, put farms back into production now that all of the fallowing and tree subsidies have vanished. Thanks to that and my portals the country can just about feed itself, though there are a lot fewer cars on the roads."

LexCorp managed to pull an ultra-density battery out of its collective bottom, which combined with the improved power generation systems most advanced countries have been setting up means that cost-effective long-range electric vehicles are now a reality. The Justice League is paying for a lot of them for goods transportation with League-currency, which… Means that LexCorp is the most stable financial concern on the planet. But… That's definitely a problem for another day.

"What about the rest of Europe?"

"Where do I start?"

 

Day 22
28th March 2013
06:53 GMT

Aaah-hhhaaa-haaa-aaaaah…

"…soul futures, which naturally requires an extensive network of information brokers for the participants to predict market fluctuations."

First came the First, cast beyond God's sight.

Huuh. Ah-aaaaah…

Then came the Second and Third, to counterbalance the First.

No-no… Come on. Focus.

Then came the Lightbringer, seeking escape and knowledge. He was a part of Creation, and brought Creation with him.

I try… Pushing what Mammon told me from my mind, but it's… It's not working. It's worming into my soul. It's not the Anti-Life, it's…

It's personal.

From the bridge emerged Demonkind, forever apart from and yet a part of Creation.

I try focusing on my surroundings. This part of the… Exchange, is more modern than most of Hell. A bit… Eighties stock exchange, simple computer screens and chunky mobile telephones. Demons in shirts cluster in various places, and the screens are showing… Images and bar charts that don't… Don't mean much to me.

The demons are… Cooperating. I don't see any sign that they actually like each other, but files and minor coins are being exchanged… Peacefully. Neither party is reluctant. And I can see demons who are clearly female and not succubae, which is interesting. Male and female alike look like thinner versions of Blathoxi, but… Hungrier.

The Nature of Demonkind is not the Nature of Mankind, for Mankind is part of Creation and Demonkind is apart from Creation.

It's like a… Like something's pushing my soul away from the world. And if I had to guess why… My goal is to unify all peoples in a perfect society, even though I know that is impossible. But here the Source itself is telling me to take a hike! Why?

Nggh.

Blathoxi regards me curiously. Yes, regardless of my spiritual defences he's almost certainly picking up on the fact that something is wrong with me.

"What… Ah, what's the payout? How are their investments realised?"

"If the investor owns an asset when the debtor exits the market, then their assets pass to the investor."

"They take their soul."

Blathoxi rolls his eyes. "By default, a standard position involves all assets, material and immaterial. Naturally, taking possession of worldly goods has the benefit of reducing energy wastage in satisfying future infernal public offerings, but we also have a sales department."

H-rg-uh.

It nearly fits. Nearly. There shouldn't be anything eldritch about providing a service, but it… Still…

"I'm… I'm sorry, I thought that you answered requests using magic. Are you saying that you buy solutions to requests using previously acquired assets?"

"Lord Mammon encourages us to multi-vector product delivery. So long as the requested service is rendered, it hardly matters how."

"Can external parties make investments?"

"Certainly. This is a free market, after all."

"And can the initial party buy their…" Ah, I can't come up with the investor-speak word. "Their soul back?"

"Again, certainly. It's actually quite common with our senior clients."

"Cult-leaders offer sacrifices?"

"Among other techniques. While the seller sets the price, souls which acquire… Certain resonances, accumulate value. It may well be in an investor's long-term interest to liquidate their position and re-enter the market at a later stage."

"And… If a cult-leader buys himself out of all outstanding contracts and then dies..?"

"We do have a sin-eating department. It's a specialist market, since it doesn't help with people who want to reach the Silver City."

"So cult-leaders wound end up here anyway."

"Not here. Having purchased their own stock the Exchange has no hold on them. Usually they would end up in Err, and thus are no longer our proper concern."

"So… If a Hindu magician wanted to ensure a more advantageous reincarnation…"

"I believe that you understand the service."

"And what do the Hindu gods think of that?"

"We haven't had any complaints so far. It only allows them to escape the consequences of their vices. It does not help them achieve nirvana." He stops, smiling faintly. "In fact, I rather suspect that it works against it."

"Do such mortals ever come here?"

"Only very occasionally. Quite a collectors item."

It's… So… Logical. But the rest…

"I don't suppose that we can offer you a deal of some sort, can we?"

"My soul goes to the Source when I die. I wouldn't want to cheat you."

"We do broker other sorts of deal, Mister Grayven. We can acquire almost anything."

I raise my eyebrows. "The bones of my grandfather?"

"For a fee, we could investigate."

"My grandfather is on the Source Wall. And he was alive when he went on there."

"For a large fee, we could investigate."

"I appreciate the offer, but I have nearly everything I want, and what's left I'll get from the First."

"That would be out of character for him."

"We have an agreement, and everything that you and Mammon… And my general demonology reading says is that the letter of the agreement is binding. If the First wants to pay the penalty on a contract solemnised with his own magic… Sure, he could, but I just don't see how it's worth it. I don’t think I've angered him enough."

"Then the gain will be in some other area of his operations."

I shrug. "Sure, I assumed that. But that's the point of capitalism, isn't it? A series of voluntary exchanges where each gains something they value more than what they give up?"

He nods. "We use that phrase extensively in our advertising literature and sales spiels."

"Come on now. Everyone knows that you shouldn't trust advertisements." Or demons. "That's barely even lying. I-."

I look around as a door slams open and a demon in a state of some distress rushes in, a bundle of paper clutched in one hand. He heads over to a cluster of investors and… Starts talking. We're too far away for me to easily hear-.

Numbers on the screens start to move a lot.

"Excuse me, Mister Grayven. We've finished our tour, and I believe this needs my personal attention. One of my aides can show you out."