Mind Over Ship

led her to place him in charge of colonist recruitment. He was a salesman, a trusted spokesperson, not a leader. As a leader he was a big fat failure.

As Meewee stared at the dark sea passing beneath his airplane, he was struck with a sudden idea. When he and Wee Hunk were trying to discover where Ellen’s head had been hidden, Wee Hunk suggested that he ask Arrow to tell him how to tell it, Arrow, to find the head. It was a circular bit of reasoning, but it had spurred the wonky mentar to actually find Ellen. Of course Arrow had flooded the Earth’s atmosphere with nust in the process, setting off the sixth largest hazmat spill in history, breaking innumerable environmental and antiterror laws and treaties, and condemning Meewee to life behind bars if his involvement was ever discovered. But it had worked. Arrow found Ellen in time for them to save her.

“Arrow,” he said, weighing his words carefully, “if Eleanor was still alive, how would she deal with the current GEP crisis?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“If Eleanor was here, how would she preserve the original GEP mission?”

“I do not know.”

Fair enough. How could any artificial mind know the mind of that extraordinary woman?

Meewee’s scramjet was flying much too high for him to distinguish the lights of ships or to gain a sense of movement, so he asked Arrow to drop an overlay over the dark ocean. The meridians of latitude and longitude appeared below like chalk lines on a sports field. A compass rose floated in the corner, and faint outlines traced the topography of the ocean floor. Meewee watched the South Pacific go by and fell into a reverie. After a while, an odd feature came into view and stirred his attention, an outline in roughly the shape and size of the state of Tennessee. “What is that?” he asked.

NATPAC 6, Arrow replied.

Meewee pressed his forehead against his window for a better view. The natpacs were free-floating pens that contained tens of millions of fish and were allowed to drift on the ocean currents. They were fish farming writ large, with no need for artificial feed. One natpac could sustain a small hungry nation.

Slowly, the natpac fell behind, and Meewee closed his eyes and drowsed. The burr of the scramjet engine lulled him deeper, and after a while, Arrow announced <Eleanor Starke has left you an urgent message.>

“Huh?” Meewee said, rousing himself. “Say again?”

<Eleanor Starke has left you an urgent message.>

“Ellen?” Meewee said, thinking she was finally replying to his repeated requests for a meeting. He had tried to contact her numerous times since the disastrous GEP decision.

<Not Ellen. Eleanor.>

Meewee shook the sleep from his head. Eleanor? Suddenly it hit him; she was speaking from beyond the grave. She had left him detailed instructions in case she was murdered — she had always planned for all eventualities — and by asking Arrow how she would handle the current crisis, he had somehow tapped into them.

<An archival message?> he asked, switching to Starkese.

<I have no way of knowing that.>

This was most puzzling. <Tell me the message.>

<The message is, “Leave me alone.”>

Leave me alone? Meewee could not parse any sense out of it, the message or the sender. <It came from Eleanor K. Starke? It was marked urgent?>

<Yes.>

With a chill creeping up his spine, Meewee recalled the daughter’s insistence that the mother was still alive. <Is Eleanor alive?>

<No, she is dead.>

It made no sense. <Well, send her a return message.>

<I cannot.>

<Why not?>

<I wouldn’t know how to address it.>

PART 2

New to the Academy

The elevator halted at the 123rd floor and opened its door to the E-Pluribus lobby. And what a lobby! The regulars called it the Temple, and it was the same basic arrangement E-Pluribus used wherever it rented space. The effect was one of vastness, and the elevator passengers, mostly Applied People iterants, were duly awed as they emerged from the car. The limpid blue lobby floor seemed to extend for kilometers in all directions. Far on the horizon stood giant stone columns, some broken and crumbled, some still joined by stone lintels. Beyond these lay a restive green sea. Lightning flashed in the yellow sky, and thunder rolled underfoot. Subliminal music swelled. At the sound of a trumpet blast, the visitors turned around to behold, not their elevator car, but a mountainous, stone ziggurat rising high into the sky. At its truncated peak, nearly as high as the pink clouds, towered the corporate logo, the quicksilver E-Pluribus Everyperson.

Arrayed on steps beneath the Everyperson was a pantheon of vid idols: thousands of the most celebrated hollyholo simstars of all time. This was the famous E-Pluribus Academy, the largest, most extensive stable of limited editions in existence. The visitors gushed with delight. At the bottommost tier, Annette Beijing stood alone and waited for their attention. She wore the loose-fitting house togs she had popularized in the long- running novela Common Claiborne and held aloft her graceful arms.

“Welcome!” she said at last. “Welcome all to the House of E- Pluribus!” She dropped her arms and bowed. Her audience applauded with fervor. “Dear guests,” she continued, “you have been chosen to join us today in the very important and quite exhilarating task of preference polling. As you know, society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them. Thus, society turns to you for guidance. Each of you possesses a voice that must be heard and a heart that must be plumbed.

“You, all of you, are the true E-Pluribus Everyperson.” She raised her hands to the ever-morphing statue high above them. “When Everyperson speaks in the halls of Congress or Parliament, in corporate boardrooms, jury rooms, and voting booths, it speaks with your voice.”

She paused a beat and added, “Now I’m aware that some of you may find our methods a little overwhelming, especially if this is your first visit with us. Therefore, we have arranged for a few of my friends to stop by.”

The legion of simstars on the ziggurat tiers above her chorused a resounding “HELLO!” and the newcomers cheered again.

“We invite each of you,” Beijing continued, “to select your most favorite celebrity in the whole world to be your personal guide throughout the day. Feel free to choose your biggest heartthrob. She or he is bound to be here. And please, we’re all friends at E-Pluribus, so don’t be bashful. Choose whoever you want. Even me!

“Now then, we have a full day of taste-testing, opinion-polling, and yes — soul-searching — planned for you, but before we can begin, please review the terms and conditions of hire, and if you approve, authorize them. Then call out the name of your heart’s desire, and he or she will come down to be at your