“What exactly would we have to do?” Anuta asked.
“Just steward some effectuators where and how we tell you. Nothing more than you’re doing now at school. You won’t necessarily get to know the ultimate goal of your work right from the start—we have to keep some things secret—but when it’s over, I can guarantee you’ll be mega-stoked.”
We all snickered at Adan’s archaic slang.
“And what do we get in return?” I said.
Adan practically leered. “FarmEarth Master status, under untraceable proxies, to use however you want—in your spare time.”
Williedell said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to keep up our regular FarmEarth assignments, plus yours.… When will we ever
Adan shrugged. “Not my problem. If you really want Master status, you’ll give up something else and manage to carve out some time. If not—well, I’ve got plenty of other potential stewards lined up. I’m only doing this as a favor to my little bro’ after all.…”
“No, no, we want to sign up!” “Yeah, I’m in!” “Me too!”
Adan smiled. “All right. In the next day or two, you’ll find a FarmEarth key in your CitizenSpace. When you use it, you’ll get instructions on your assignment. Good luck. I gotta go now.”
After Adan left, we all looked at each other a little sheepishly, wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. But then Mallory raised her glass and said, “To the Secret Masters of FarmEarth!”
We clinked rims, sipped, and imagined what we could do with our new powers.
* * * *
The mystery project the six of us were given was called “Angry Sister,” and it proved to be just as boring as our regular FarmEarth tasks.
Three years later, I think this qualifies as some kind of yotta-ironic joke. But none of us found it too funny at the time.
We were tasked with running rugged subterranean effectuators—John Deere Molebots—somewhere in the world, carving out a largish tubular tunnel from Point A to Point B. We didn’t know where we were, because the GPS feed from the molebots had been deactivated. We guided our cutting route instead by triangulation via encrypted signals from some surface radio beacons and reference to an engineering schematic. The molebots were small and slow: the six of us barely managed to chew up two cubic meters of stone in a three-hour shift. A lot of time was spent ferrying the detritus back to the surface and disposing of it in the nearby anonymous ocean.
The mental strain of stewarding the machines grew very tiresome.
“Why can’t these stupid machines run themselves?” Vernice complained over our secure communications channel. “Isn’t that why weak AI was invented?”
Cheo answered, “You know that AI is forbidden in FarmEarth. Don’t you remember the lesson Mumphs gave us about Detroit?”
“Oh, right.”
A flock of macro-effectuators had been set loose demolishing smart-tagged derelict buildings in that city. But then Detroit’s Highwaymen motorcycle outlaws, having a grudge against the mayor, had cracked the tags and affixed them to Manoogian Mansion, the official mayoral residence.
Once the pajama-clad mayor and his half-naked shrieking family were removed from their perch on a teetering fragment of Manoogian Mansion roof, it took only twenty-four hours for both houses of Congress to forbid use of AI in FarmEarth.
“Besides,” Mallory chimed in, “with nine billion people on the planet, human intelligence is the cheapest commodity.”
“And,” said Anuta, “having people steward the effectuators encourages responsible behavior, social bonding, repentance and contrition for mankind’s sins.”
Williedell made a rude noise at this bit of righteous FarmEarth catechism, and I felt compelled to stand up for Anuta by banging my drill bit into Williedell’s machine.
Vernice said, “All right, all right, I give up! We’re stuck here, so let’s just do it. And you two, quit your pissing contest!”
The six of us went back to moodily chewing up strata.
After a month of this, our little set had begun to unravel a tad. Each day, when our secret shift of moonlighting was over, none of us wanted to hang together. We were all sick of each other, and just wanted to get away to play with our Master status.
And that supreme privilege did indeed almost make up for all the boredom and tedium of the scut work.
Maybe you’ve played FarmEarth as a Master yourself. (But I bet you didn’t have to worry, like us six fakes did, about giving yourself away to the real Masters with some misplaced comment. The paranoia was mild but constant.) If so, you know what I’m talking about.
You’ve guided a flock of aerostatic effectuators through gaudy polar stratospheric clouds, sequestering CFCs.
You’ve guarded nesting mama Kemp’s Ridley turtles from feral dogs.
You’ve quarried the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for materials that artists riding ships have turned on the spot into found sculptures that sell for
You’ve draped skyscrapers with vertical farms.
You’ve channeled freshets into the nearly dead Aral Sea, and restocked those reborn waters.
You’ve midwifed at the birth of a hundred species of animals: tranked mamas in the wild whose embryos were mispositioned for easy birth, and would have otherwise died.
That last item reminds me of something kinda embarrassing.
Playing FarmEarth with big mammals can be tricky, as I found out one day. They’re too much like humans.
I was out in Winnemucca, Nevada, among a herd of wild horses. The FarmEarth assignment I had picked off a duty roster was to provide the herd with its annual Encephalomyelitis vaccinations. That always happened in the spring, and now it was time.
My effectuator was a little rolligon that barreled across the prairie disguised as tumbleweed. When I got near a horse, I would spring up with my onboard folded legs, grab its mane, give the injection, then drop off quickly.
But after a while, I got bored a little, and so I hung on to this one horse to enjoy the ride. The stallion got real freaky, dashing this way and that, but then it settled down a bit, still galloping. I was having some real thrills.
And that was when my ride encountered a mare.
I hadn’t realized that spring was breeding time for the mustangs.
Before I could disengage amidst the excitement and confusion, the stallion was sporting a boner the size of Rhode Island, and was covering the mare.
I noticed now that the mare wore a vaccinating effectuator too.
The haptic feedback, even though it didn’t go direct to my crotch, was still having its effect on my own dick. It felt weird and creepy—but too good to give up.
Before I could quite climax in my pants, the titanic horsey sex was over, and the male and female broke apart.
Very cautiously, I pinged the other FarmEarth player. They could always refuse to respond.
Anuta answered.
Back home in my bedroom, my face burned a thousand degrees hot. I was sure hers was burning too. We couldn’t even say a word to each other. In another minute, she had broken the communications link.
When we next met in the flesh, we didn’t refer to the incident in so many words. But we felt compelled to get away from the others and make out a little.
After a while, by mutual consent, we just sort of dribbled to a stop, without having done much more than snog and grope.
“I guess,” said Anuta, “that unless we mean to go all the way, we won’t get to where we were the other day.”
“Yeah, I suppose. And even then….”
She nodded her head in silent agreement. Regular people sex was going to have to be pretty special to live
