Brave New Worlds

a slight bow.

Pepper returned it.

Pan smiled. 'I've been waiting for you two for quite a while. I apologize for sending the rover up the exhaust pipe. '

Pepper shrugged. 'No matter. So what now? I have something that can take you out, you have me surrounded by nasty surprises. '

Pan folded its arms. 'I don't do nasty surprises, Pepper. I'm not a monster, contrary to what Stanuel might say. You have an E. M. P device, and if you were to set it off further down the tower, you would shut all Haven down. True, I have backup capabilities that mitigate that, but your device presents a terrible risk to the well being of the citizenry. With the device and you up here, the only risk is to me. '

An easy enough decision, Stanuel thought. Trigger the damn device! But Pepper glanced around the room, maybe seeing traps that Stanuel couldn't. 'If you don't do nasty surprises, what stops me from zapping you out, right here, right now?'

'I would like to make you an offer. If you'd listen. '

Pepper's lips quirked. 'I wouldn't be much of a mercenary if I just accepted the higher bid in the middle of the job. You don't get repeat work very often that way. '

Pan held its hands up. 'I understand. But consider this, I am, indirectly, the one who hired you. '

Stanuel had to object. 'the resistance. '

'I run it,' Pan smiled. 'I know everything it does, who it hires, and in many cases, I give it the orders. '

Stanuel felt like he'd been thrown into a freezing cold vat of water. He lost his breath. 'What do you mean? You infiltrated it?' they had lost, even before they'd started.

Pan turned to the mercenary. 'Stanuel is bewildered, as are many, by what they created, Pepper. I'm merely the amalgamated avatar of the converged will of all the simulations made to run this colony. The voter simulations kept taking up energy, so the master processing program came up with a more elegant solution: me. Why run millions of emulators, when it could fuse them all into a single expression of its will that would run the government?'

'A clever solution,' Pepper said.

'A techno-democracy, even more so than the vanilla kind, is messy. Dangerously so. With study committees and votes on everything, things that needed to be done quickly didn't get done in time.

'So the emulations decided to put forward a bill, buried in the middle of some other obscure administrivia. The vote was that emulations be given command of the government. '

Stanuel stepped forward. 'We woke up and found that in a single moment all of Haven had been disenfranchised. '

'By your own desires and predictive voting algorithms,' Pan said. 'In a way, yes. In a way, no. '

Stanuel spit at the dictatorial hologram in front him. 'then the emulators decided that a single amalgamation, an avatar, and expression of all their wills, would work better. So then even our own voting patterns turned over their power. '

'Not surprising,' Pepper said. 'You didn't have the maturity to keep your own vote, you turned it over to the copies of yourselves. Why be surprised that the copies would do something similar and turn to a benevolent dictator of their own creation?'

Pan looked pleased. 'Dictators aren't so bad, if they're the right dictator. And it's hard coded into my very being to look out for the community. That's why I look like this,' it waved a hand over its face. 'I'm the average of all the faces in Haven. Political poll modeling shows that were I to run for office, if would be almost guaranteed based on physiological responses alone. '

Stanuel looked at Pepper. 'Pan may have infiltrated, but you were still paid to destroy it. Do it. '

'No,' Pan said. 'You might pull that trigger. But if you do, you destroy what the people of Haven really wanted, what they desired, and what they worked very hard to create, Pepper, even if they didn't realize they consciously wanted it. '

'I've heard you get the government you deserve,' Pepper said. 'But this is something else. They created their own tyranny. '

'But Pepper, I'm not a tyrant. If they vote as a whole to oust me, they can do it. '

Pepper moved over to the one of great windows to look out at the inside rim of Haven. Thousands of distant portholes dotted the giant wheel, lit up by the people living inside the rooms across from them.

'Look around you,' Pan implored. 'there are plenty who like what I'm doing. I'm rebuilding parts of Haven that have been neglected for years. I'm improving agriculture as we speak. I've made the choices that were hard, got things into motion that just sat there while people quibbled over them. I am action. I am progress. '

Stanuel kicked forward and Pepper glanced back at him. 'I think Stanuel objects. '

Pan sighed. 'Yes, a few will be disaffected. They will always be disaffected. That was why I created outlets for the disaffected, because they are a part of me as well. But my plea to you, Pepper, is not to break this great experiment. I can offer you more money, a place of safety here whenever you would want it, and Haven as a powerful ally to your needs. '

Pepper nodded and sat in the air, his legs folded. 'I have a question. '

'Proceed. '

'Why do they call you Pan?'

'They call me Pan because it's short for panopticon. An old experiment: if you were to create a round jail with a tower in the center, with open cell walls facing it, and the ability to look into every cell, you would have the ultimate surveillance society. The panopticon. In some ways, Haven is just that, with me at its center. '

Pepper chuckled. 'I'd half expected some insane military dictator wearing a head of antlers calling himself Pan. '

Pan did not laugh. It leaned closer. 'Pepper, understand me. This is not your fight. I'm the naturally elected ruler of Haven. The choice To remove me, that isn't yours. I did not bring you here to destroy me, but for other reasons. '

'The choice?' the word affected Pepper in some way Stanuel could not figure out. He looked over at Stanuel. 'then if you're a benevolent ruler, you will escort me off Haven, leave Stanuel alive, and move on to other things. After all, it was your orders that set Stanuel down this path. '

'Of course. It's that or a sentence in one of Haven's residential rooms. You'll be locked in, but comfortable. There do have to be ways to handle such things. Exile, or confinement. '

'Okay, Mr. Pan. Okay. My work here is done. ' Pepper moved towards Stanuel with a flick of his feet. 'Come on Stanuel, it's time to leave the tower. '

Stanuel could hardly look Pepper in the eye. 'I can't believe you left there. '

'Pan made a good argument. '

'Pan offered to pay you more. That's all. '

'There's that, but I won't take it. ' Pepper scratched his head. 'If I destroyed Pan, what would you do?'

Stanuel frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'You said the emulations wouldn't be allowed to hold direct control, earlier. Does that mean you'd allow the emulations to come back and decide votes for you?'

'One assumes. We might have not gotten them right, but if we can fix that error, things can go back to the way they were. '

Pepper unpacked his suit and stepped into it. It crinkled and cracked as he zipped it up. 'And then I'll be back. Because you'll repeat the same patter all over again. '

'What?'

'For all your assumptions, you're not quite seeing the pattern. Deep down, somewhere, you all want Pan. You don't want the responsibility of voting, you want the easy result. '

'That's not true,' Stanuel objected.

'Oh come on. Think of all the times princes and princesses are adored and feted. Think of all the actors and great people we adore and fawn over. '

'That doesn't make us slavish followers. '

Pepper cocked his head. 'No, but we still can't escape the instincts we carry from being a small band of