A Visitor to the Future - 31 - The Peeping Tom
"I've heard people mention auditing, but what exactly does it involve?" I asked.
Blaise replied casually as he focused on the task of flying, "There's no set formula, mate. Reality is, the Consortium's a complicated piece of machinery. Makes this craft you're sitting in look like a paper airplane! And when something's complicated then something's bound to go wrong eventually - that's a fact of both engineering and life! Some Auditors spend their entire lives looking at the Consortium's schematics to look for those things. Others try and find holes in the core programming, or in the change control processes that support it. Me and the others on the Tom prefer to spend our time out in the physical world looking at the actual processes. Ah, here we are! Eyes front now!"
I scanned the horizon, finding that what I'd taken for a low-lying cloud was actually anything but. A large, squashed white oval shape hovered in the air - an airship. Though the word hardly seemed fitting - in my time airships had been blimps, large non-rigid balloons for gas which had a tiny cabin suspended below them. As Sarkona had told me, airships in the Consortium were more like floating buildings - a rigid body, squat body contained both the ship's lifting gas and a series of rooms inside. The only protrusions were a combination of both propellers and turbofan engines.
"That's the Peeping Tom!" said Blaise, "Isn't she a beaut?"
I took the opportunity to ask Blaise, figuring that he might know more about the subject, "I've seen quite a few airships about Anchor - are they popular?"
"Yeah! There's a lot of appeal to them. Move your home or equipment pretty much anywhere on the Earth that you want to - when were you frozen again?"
"2021," I said.
"So you won't be used to them! Started getting popular in the 2200s as cargo drones - that's when they started trying to phase out some of the planes and container ships. 'course, for those early prototypes they were using hydrogen as the lifting gas."
"Hydrogen?" I asked, "Isn't that highly explosive?"
"The safety margins were pretty good, but you're spot on! The odd explosion caused some property damage, which is why they were remote piloted and loaded to begin with," replied Blaise, "But then the lunar economy started up, and that ended the global helium shortage, and pretty soon they were everywhere. 'course, these days the Consortium sees that we've got more than enough helium to go around. The great thing now is you don't even need much power on board - the Consortium can beam that to the engines wirelessly. Saves a lot of weight! Mind you, you still have to watch the weather but the Consortium is pretty damn good at letting people know about that sort of thing."
As we got closer I could see a number of windows positioned around the outsides, and a particularly impressive hemisphere observation deck built into the bottom of the craft. We approached the top of the ship, where a marked landing pad was visible. Blaise carefully switched the craft into vertical flight, and positioned us over the pad. I looked to the right, and saw that the drone that had been shadowing the craft was now alongside us, hovering in mid-air.
"No, not today, you git," said Blaise, glancing at the drone, "I've been flying longer than you, I've got this."
We touched down gently on the landing pad, which then began to retract into the white surface of the vessel. A covering retracted over our heads leaving us inside a sealed hangar unit. Disembarking from the craft, I stood on the floor of the hangar - surprised to find that the surface was perfectly stable, just like standing on the surface. Blaise seemed to sense my surprise.
"You could balance a playing card on that floor. Stabilization tech has come a long way, I'll say that much! Now come on, let's head inside and get you a drink."
The corridors of the Peeping Tom were clearly designed for function over comfort - they were mostly plain white halls with the occasional door. The room that Blaise led me to, however, was an exception to this. It seemed to be a fully furnished bar area, complete with barstools, a wooden counter stacked with various bottles in transparent cabinets, and even what looked like a pool or snooker table at one side of the room - but with pucks instead of pool balls. The lighting was warm, helping the room to seem homely and relaxed.
"So," said Blaise, heading behind the counter, "What can I get you? We've got pretty much anything you could want here - Martini, Phobos Twist, Balerift Bane?" He was already fixing himself a drink. "Anyone explained the advances in alcohol to you yet?"
I shook my head.
"Well, fantastic news for you mate - some scientists came up with replacements for the old stuff some time back. Way less taxing on the old liver and the body breaks it down quickly. I don't pretend to know how it all works, but it means you can enjoy a good drink and still fly in about an hour or so. 'Course, if you're not feeling adventurous I've got soft drinks by the dozen too."
I opted for a drink called Mintleet, which Blaise provided to me in a can very reminiscent of the branding of my own time, though I couldn't read the label. It was a fizzy mint-like cola that had a very refreshing aftertaste. I wasn't really comfortable with anything else just yet.
"Classic choice," said Blaise, "You know, it took me a while to track down the recipe for that one, they changed it before they went out of business and it wasn't right since. Another pre-Consortium relic."
I heard the tapping of footsteps behind me, and twisted around on my stool to see one of the most interesting looking CIs I'd yet seen in the Consortium. He stood six feet tall, but looked heavy, with a wide, armoured neck which supported an angular head. Three camera lenses served him for eyes, and the rest of the head was completely featureless. The rest of his body did seem to look somewhat more organic in shape if not in colour and texture - midnight black fibres seemed to weave around his arms and joints, making it look a bit like he was weaved out of rope. He was wearing a large V-necked brown shirt and a pair of three-quarter length trousers. I was so distracted by him that I almost missed Tungsten walking in behind him, now wearing a neat-looking suit jacket. The two were in mid-conversation.
"And there weren't any difficulties?" asked Tungsten, who then noticed me and gave a jovial wave.
"Yes," said the new CI in a gruff, low voice, "There were numerous setbacks. When constructing a ship like this, though we require instruments that are as independent from the Consortium itself as possible."
"Hello!" said Tungsten to me and Blaise, "I was just discussing how they built this ship with Regolith. Did you know that they constructed it themselves?"