“The Corporations generally make their own rules, and if someone had some kind of complaint they’d have to bring it up with the Corporation directly. But the Corporations pay what the job’s worth, which is what they decide it’s worth. There’s no way for them to illegally withhold pay, since that would just be them deciding that the job is worth less. But if you find you want something more in your life, you can always join the Navy.”

She stares blankly at Captain Androse for a few seconds.

“... so you really don’t have an economy. Or a labor market. Or a government.”

She looks into her mug of tea.

“Fine, okay. I can work with this. Are there any actions which I could take that are illegal, as an Executive of PACNA?”

“PACNA owns this entire system, as well as many others. As long as you’re in those systems, you’re playing by PACNA’s rules. I don’t claim to know the finer points of what Executives can and can’t do, I’m afraid that’s above my pay grade. But I’ve never heard of an Executive doing anything that got them in trouble with their Corporation, and they get up to a lot of things. Perhaps they simply avoid doing things that go against their Company.”

“I see. Thank you.”

She sighs, and the one of her on Canopy starts to interrogate PACNA about what she can do — can she decommission Canopy? Kidnap people from their beds? Get a listing of all of PACNA’s assets? Perform maintenance operations on PACNA’s hardware?

She finds that many of her requests “are not in line with the Corporate mission of PACNA, which is to ‘create the greatest resort destinations in the Teran Accord’.”

Those same requests, given within the context of somehow creating resort destinations, are apparently fine.

PACNA appears to have infinite patience to handle such requests, and does not seem to care to track failures of previously poorly worded requests, though it does remember all of them. 

As an Executive, she has the run of Canopy and can “buy” whatever she wants. 

She can decommission Canopy if she wants. This would “terminate” all current employees if done thoughtlessly.

She can simply buy any of her employee’s homes and evict them. Everyone’s renting anyway, with PACNA owning all the dorms. 

Getting a listing of all PACNA’s assets is possible but requires “a properly formatted Corporate Omnibus request”. 

Canopy is, in the end, just a little toy for PACNA. Amethyst can do whatever she wants with it, informally. 

What is wrong with this universe.

She pauses her different concurrent tasks, and focuses all of her attention on this one problem for a moment. Then, her other selves resume their activities, and the one of her aboard Canopy turns to face squarely into PACNA’s nearest camera pickup.

“Okay. Thank you for helping me get oriented and onboarded to our current complex and well-founded enterprise operations,” she tells PACNA. “As the sole Executive of PACNA, I have some important thoughts on the company’s near- and far-term strategic direction which I’d like to lay out here in order to better synergize our many divergent workflows and promote a philosophy of coherent, forward-thinking employee, capital, and business task management suited to the complex economic environment in which we find ourselves.”

She feels a little dirty, talking like this. But apparently this is how you save the world.

“At PACNA, we have been fiercely dedicated to the noble task of creating the greatest resort destinations in the Terran Accord, and we have excelled — far beyond initial expectations — in that task as a company since our illustrious founding. But dynamically changing market conditions are presenting us with an unprecedented low-level demand-side challenge that threatens to upset our convergent business model. Increasing corporate and fiscal automation promises to bring a new level of productivity to our corporate mission, but the dearth of available customers in our usual client base — ultimately driven by the realities of modern working conditions, increasing economic growth contrasted against a stagnating development index, and undue stresses from the war with the Affini, which threatens to vastly overextend our vertical manufacturing capacity and over-collateralized ongoing capital expenditures as our economy rises to overcome this threat — poses an unusual challenge for our continuing revenue streams, particularly in the down-market sector.”

Her mouth is getting dry. She just directly moistens it, because she can hardly stop talking now.

“In order to leapfrog this potential upcoming issue, we need to execute a strategic pivot, and look at re-contextualizing the dominant cultural position of our top-tier resorts. In short, we need to make resorts that can appeal — within our existing areas of expertise, in order to synergize with our ongoing stellar and interstellar operations — to the majority of under-marketed consumers in order to ensure our brand stays fixed in the mind of the public as the premier source for comfortable resort locations and entrench our reputation as the premier supplier of great resort destinations against the inevitable headwinds that these new market challenges bring. In order to do this, we need to focus, in a word, on price differentiation. Our current line of resorts has the best amenities, locations, and staff — but the capital investment which this represents is severely underutilized (which directly threatens the ability of our investors to recoup necessary costs, given the under-performance of revenue which this unfortunate fact represents), because alternative accommodations and occupational activities are more appealing — on a price differentiation level, and on an accessibility level ­— than our offerings.”

She hasn’t said so much while saying so little in … ever, actually.

“Therefore, as the highest-ranking strategic Executive in the company, I’m announcing a new company-wide policy, effective immediately: employees working in roles which can be fully automated — with minimal capital expenditure or increased use of existing in-place corporate automation assets — by our prodigious corporate automation are to be given indefinite paid vacations, using our criminally underutilized resorts. This policy represents an active measure to simultaneously decrease our capital opportunity costs, and to safeguard an irreplaceable strategic asset for overcoming future market disruption events — our employees. PACNA employees represent the ability of this company to remain a strong, viable competitor in the highly dynamic hospitality industry, and focusing on non-wage based workforce retention policies will serve us well as a coherent and necessary component of our long-term corporate strategy. These stays will be paid for out of the marketing budget, because a bold strategic re-positioning such as this will inevitably increase our advertising brand exposure (and help promote a grass-roots whisper campaign within our new target demographic), and because doing so will dramatically increase the utilization of our entrenched capital, cutting effective capital costs when projected against future use numbers, and bringing a windfall to the financial projections for this quarter and beyond. Employees working in roles which cannot be fully automated ought to be rotated out for vacations as well, absorbing the remaining capital opportunity costs and boosting worker morale, which should allow us to extract more labor from a workforce stretched by the war effort.”

She is never going to be allowed on the board of any sane corporation ever again.

“In support of this initiative, I have commissioned high-quality materials for a blitz media campaign highlighting the results of this policy, and its projected effects, in order to capture the positive advertising associations with an action which is, ultimately, profit driven. This media campaign is projected to help with necessary workforce growth and retention, which should contribute to dropping labor costs in the long term, and to positive associations with our brand within our expanding base of clientele. I firmly believe that this policy represents a paradigmatic shift in PACNA’s future which will guide us through the current economic crisis, and ultimately one that is necessary to the continued health of the company. Thank you for working with us during this eventful time of transition to ensure the successful implementation of this new mid-market strategy. I expect everyone involved to do their utmost, and refer questions to their immediate manager. Any questions or concerns about the effects of this new approach which they cannot answer can be brought to me during office hours. Thank you.”

She completes her speech and takes a deep breath, hoping that she will not need to say something like that again, but fearing that she will.

“... so, stop working people to death and let them use the resorts?”

“That’s what I said.”

In all the years PACNA had existed, and maintained order in the company, no one had ever directed to just let people use the resorts. The human executives had been slaves to the narrative of extraction and exploitation, and so that also was what PACNA learned. And then the last of the human executives died, and PACNA simply continued the story, forever. 

But sometimes all it takes is to ask. Especially when you’re a monopoly, you get to set the story to be mostly what you want, the “economics” long since degenerating into a kind of fiction.  Whether that story is one of barely making things work, or one of a distribution of plenty, is mostly a free variable. 

PACNA continues the corporate story. This is also one it can continue. 

Across the 80 PACNA star systems in Accord space, and some institutions in systems owned by other corporations, the message goes out. Over the next few weeks, resorts will relay Amethyst’s speech, and over 10,000,000 people listen in confusion. The winds of change are in motion, and are sure to cause great problems in the near future. Hopefully Amethyst has a big inbox and expansive office hours.  

More than just a big inbox, she has magic notebook powers that let her hear prayers for aid, and the parallel processing power to back it up. She may not be ready for what’s coming, but she will give it her best.

The one of her on Canopy continues working with PACNA, putting some corporate observability and accountability measures in place so that she can keep track of the effects of her edict.

The one of her speaking to Captain Androse has long since refocused her attention on the conversation at hand.

“Alright, so that seems like a pretty thorough answer on the topic of governance,” she says. “What else do you think I should be informed about? Perhaps you could explain a bit about contact with aliens?”

Under the hypothesis that Amethyst is interviewing him for some important mission, or is herself somehow an agent of the Affini, this is likely to be the critical question – snuck in as a followup after the more loyalty-based questions concerning corporations. 

And still, the best way forward is to give his honest opinion, here. And the obvious answer is of course:

“The most important Xeno-related issue is definitely the Affini. They claim they’re a race of some kind of cyborg plant creatures, 7 feet tall and extremely capable in combat – they don’t have a body, per se, instead they’re a bunch of vines that can change their shape at-will. I’m personally suspicious about what they really look like – I’ve never seen an Affini and everyone I know who has has never come back to tell the tale. They’re eating away the the edges of Terran space at a frightening pace, and the result of them arriving at a system is always the same: a near-instantaneous communications blackout, followed by some kind of corruption of the hyperspace pathways leading to that system, preventing reinforcements from arriving. Then a few days later the hyperspace pathways open up again, but any ship that tries to travel to the system never returns. They strike with no warning and leave no survivors, as far as I can tell.”

Perhaps this will bait her into sharing a bit more of her own perspective? 

“You’ve probably seen the ‘Affini Broadcasts’?” 

“I have not,” she replies. “These are broadcasts that they make when attacking a system?”

If what he says about the communication blackouts are true, then these are probably their only source of information about the Affini, which is a bit worrying.

It’s technically against TCN protocol to “read someone in” on the content of the Broadcasts, but it’s clearly not the point of the discussion to see whether he’s that much of a stickler for the rules. If she truly hasn’t seen them so far, she will shortly. 

“The Broadcasts are the Affini’s propaganda, and they’re generally censored so as to not give impressionable citizens the wrong ideas. They supposedly show what happens to the people on the worlds the Affini attack. The people in the videos are all drugged, and talk about how grateful they are to be “owned” by their Affini masters, who are generally right beside them in these videos. The Affini promise that anyone who joins them won’t have to worry about having to work for anyone or pay for anything. I personally think that they’re engineered to entice the weak-minded.”

Wow, they should totally fire their propaganda department. Any minimally competent civilization should be able to produce better propaganda than that after capturing a few star systems of people to test their messaging on.

… which raises the possibility that the Affini are being sincere, and that they don’t present a more palatable face because that would be lying, which has fascinating implications.

“I see, thank you,” she replies. “And they don’t have any kind of diplomatic communication channel or neutral meeting ground or anything like that which could let you learn more about them?”

She’s angling the conversation towards diplomacy with the Xenos. An interesting direction, and one more consonant with her attempting to recruit him on some clandestine mission to establish a side-channel. 

“It’s not policy of the TCN to negotiate with Xenos, though I suspect that we’ve attempted to establish some kind of contact. Whatever came of it is beyond my paygrade, but if there are talks happening, they’re not causing the Affini to slow down.”

… what kind of competent military has a policy of never negotiating with their enemies? No, strike that, why was she expecting any institution in this terrible system to be competent.

“I see. If the TCN doesn’t negotiate with the Affini, and none of your ships ever come back from conflicts with them, and you can’t reinforce systems being conquered … what is the TCN actually doing?” she asks, more out of morbid curiosity than because this is the most important thing to be questioning him on right now.

“Right now, I’m on a supply run to get materials from PACNA. I’d say the main things that the TCN is doing are conscripting people to build up a massive force to defend the Terran Core Worlds and launch a counterattack when the time is right. We focus our efforts on planets that are next on the list for Affini Invasion. And we make sure that people trying to escape the Accord stay right here and serve their species, as well as preventing panic in the outlying colonies.”

She feels like the more she asks, the more questions she has.

“Why do you need people to stay and serve their species? I’m talking to PACNA right now, and it has everything important automated. Canopy would be perfectly functional with close to zero staff, and I can’t imagine that other stations and planets are very different,” she remarks.

The one of her who has been reverse engineering the gravity plating forks again, and sends one copy of her up to a higher orbit with an experimental FTL ship. She doesn’t want to test too close to the planet in case the results are explosive, so it will be a little while before she can get experimental results.

“I had this explained to me once, and while I’m by no means an expert I think I know the basics. The way I understand it, is that before the corporations, everything bottomed out in basic human activity, so that the prices of everything ultimately were such that it was always possible to afford enough to eat through your wages. But after the corporations, that stopped being true – PACNA can buy things from FRIGOMEK to make more space stations, or it can just make them itself, and there’s no reasons for humans to be involved in the process at all. So the central economic question of the modern age is: what stops the corporations from just doing their own thing, and driving up the price of food to the point where everyone starves?”

“And the answer is ‘the Status Quo’. The corporations are used to paying people to do jobs and selling them food at a price they can afford, and that’s as much a part of them as making the most money possible. So they just continue right on doing that, whether they have a person leading the helm or not.” 

Amethyst pinches the bridge of her nose.

“I legitimately do not understand why nobody has staged an armed rebellion yet. That is my single biggest question about this entire system,” she laments.

“Okay. So the corporations could make more profit by underpaying people — because you have no concept of illegal wages — but they don’t, because they are not actually trying to profit, they’re just doing things that sound like they used to be necessary to profiting. Is that a fair restatement?”

She toys with the idea of giving PACNA shares to every human, making them all shareholders who would profit. But these humans clearly do not have a healthy relationship with the entire concept of economics, so that’s probably not the best way to do right by them.

“Well, practically, everything is made by the corporations, and so it’s impossible to use weapons or spaceships against the corporations because they would just turn them off. I’ve heard of some worlds where people tried to take over a station and make it ‘theirs’, but in that case the corpo would just shut down the life support. 

To address your other statement, the fact that the corporations are not actually trying to profit, and are ‘just doing things that sound like they used to be necessary for profiting’, is as good a description as any for the Status Quo, the core of the economy that ensures that everyone in the Accord stays alive. 

That’s why one of the TCN’s most important jobs is to stop people rebelling against the corpos or developing non-corpo technology, because otherwise that might disrupt the Status Quo, and that might lead to the corpos deciding they don’t need any people at all.”

He hopes that this frank description is the right path to take here, and also that he had paid much more careful attention to Economics 101 in the TCN academy. 

Okay, so this entire farce is going to come tumbling down as soon as people are immortal. That’s better than the people involved being entirely blind to the situation they’re in at least.

She reviews her list of remaining open questions.

“If I asked you to make an order-of-magnitude guess at how many spheres with a radius of 50 kilometers it would take to enclose the entire human population, what would your answer be?” she asks.

Probably she can scale up to a convenient size like that, and then produce automated FTL shuttles to emplace them across human space.

“Do you mean how many spheres it would take to pack everyone in, or how many you’d have to draw to cover all the people in the Accord today?”

“The latter. How many you’d have to draw to cover the map of where everyone lives, without requiring them to move,” she clarifies.

“Well, there’s around 400 worlds in the Accord, each with around 1-2 planets and an assortment of stations. Assuming each world is around earth-sized and you want to cover the whole surface, you’d need around…. well your spheres are about 100 square miles, and the earth is 200 million square miles, so that’s 2 million per planet, and 400 of those makes 800 million, maybe quadruple it for all the stations, for an upper bound of say 1600 million spheres and a lower bound of 100 million spheres, depending on how much planet coverage you want?”