A snippet of April 14. Unedited.

“Did you know all this about Home?” Vic asked.

“Very little of it,” Eileen admitted. “Mostly, I knew that it and the Moon colonies are the only places that have no regulation of life extension therapies.”

“And yet we have the public cameras on the corridors and places like the cafeteria and docks,” Vic said. “Even without regulation I don’t see freaks like China produces.”

“Technically China has regulation, thousands and thousands of pages of it I gave up trying to wade through,” Eileen said. “It doesn’t prohibit stupid modifications like webbed hands and feet. That would be great for Olympic swimmers if any other country would allow them in. But it doesn’t have much to do with extending a normal life.”

“It doesn’t seem like Home has much regulation of anything,” Vic said. “They certainly don’t regulate banking. There are basically two banks, a couple of payday lending companies and some odd little companies, usually individuals, who buy and sell currencies, stocks, jewelry, lift tickets and such sort of like pawn brokers. But pawn brokers aren’t regulated either. On the plus side, I admit the interest rates for those kinds of services aren’t ruinous like here. It’s still scary to have no deposit insurance.”

“Shouldn’t it be just the opposite?” Eileen asked.

Vic opened his mouth, blinked, and shut it.

Eileen looked worried at his reaction. “I mean, the purpose of regulation is to keep unscrupulous people from taking advantage of the public, isn’t it?”

“In theory,” Vic admitted, frowning.

“And in reality?” Eileen asked. “I never learned much about business. I was still in school when The Day so rudely interrupted that. I’ve never even had a job.”

“In reality, it’s often about sucking in more fees for the government creating the regulations. Also for creating a body of merchants beholden to the regulators for keeping the barriers to starting a business high so they have little competition.”

“Oh.”

Think about it,” Vic invited. “How many people do you think died of dirty combs because barbers were once unregulated? They once did minor surgery too. That’s where the red strip running down a barber sign comes form. But that was when a real surgeon hardly existed and you were lucky to have a barber who had the tools and would help you. They were pretty much gone by the end of the nineteenth century. But barbers and hair braiders and nail salons are all regulated. If you can see a shop isn’t clean you can go elsewhere. In truth, under regulation the banks can charge more for credit card debt than just going to a loan shark you know is part of organized crime and paying their vig.

“We’ve spent the past couple of years with no regulation. Instead of everybody being anxious for it to start up again we’re worried about them taking our radio net off the air and finding ways to pay sales and income tax when that starts up again. Maybe the Spacers have the right of it. They just went so completely radical that it was a shock to read about it.”

“I don’t know how you know all this stuff,” Eileen said. “It took me forever and learning how to get past the net censors just to find out about life extension. I’ll be too old to go back to school by the time they open. I’m too busy to go back anyway.”

“I didn’t really learn all that stuff in school,” Vic said. “My head is stuffed full of irrelevant and usually useless facts because I read everything I could in books and so many web sites.”

“Our teachers constantly warned us away from reading the web,” Eileen said. “They told us we didn’t have the tools to know what was right or wrong.”

Did they tell you they had the tools to do so? Or give you any idea when they intended to gift you with these mystery tools?” Vic asked.

“We were kids. I can see that was pretty self-serving, now. It was just a way to say believe me, because I say so. If somebody I trusted hadn’t told me the official view of life extension was a lie I’d have never made the huge effort to investigate it. It does make me wonder what else is a lie. Once somebody lies to me I don’t trust them again.”

“See? You have good instincts,” Vic said. “I’ve seen you immediately not trust somebody right when you meet them. Some people never learn that, skill of identifying a liar or a crook from the subtle signs when you meet them. Just like face to face, there’s all kinds of tells online that somebody is self-serving or lying. I can tell you have the capacity already. You don’t immediately believe gossip and you reasoned out why it was not in our gold refiner’s self interest to cheat us. We’ll do some lessons in the evening. Not dry school subjects. I’ll more formally introduce you to what constitutes critical thinking. Consider it getting ready to live up there. I’m pretty sure Home is short on stupid people to deal with. If you want something like math that isn’t opinion based there’s lots of free university level courses online. We don’t have to be frugal with data now.”

“I’d like that. Maybe you aren’t too old to consider taking some?” Eileen suggested.

“Maybe,” was as far as Vic would go.

A little snippet from April #14

“I think we have a good enough team assembled to return to the second living world we discovered,” Deloris told Heather.

Heather’s brother Barak was with her but stood back silently supportive. The explorers were all equal except for the necessities of command but Deloris was clearly dominant and Heather would be a fool to pretend otherwise. The other team members were absent but one could be sure they were thoroughly briefed what Deloris was going to tell her.

“Why good enough instead of magnificent?” Heather asked. She drew the word out with the sort of breathless wonder used to sell things on the video channels. She had some ideas what limitations Deloris was working with so it was at least partially humor. Some of the experts she’d hired were marginally qualified or rank amateurs. Deloris and her crews hadn’t complained so far and she was inviting her to speak up if they had any serious objections.

“Because the way rank and tenure work among the Earthies the most qualified of the academics are insulted to be offered a berth on our explorer. They want to come based on when they can get a sabbatical rather than our schedule. The idea of quitting their slot at the pig trough of higher education would never occur to them. They expect a private cabin if not a suite, and be allowed to haul along a few graduate students and a secretary to do all their heavy lifting for them.”

“There must be exceptions or you wouldn’t have any support people,” Heather said.

“Oh sure. We have a few round pegs in square holes so smart I think they could do just about anything if we gave them a week or two to read up on it. Maybe even my job. We wanted a botanist and if possible one who specialized in grasses. The survey from orbit saw no large woody plants like trees. The radar returns at different frequencies indicate the height of most ground covering foliage is from three centimeters to a meter. So, there isn’t even anything we’d call a bush.”

Heather just nodded. She’d read the survey report and remembered the details like those numbers better than Deloris would have expected.

“What Jeff got for us was not a botanist but a Nobel Prize winning biochemist. Bobby won the prize for explaining the exact chemical path of cellular differentiation in plants. I’m guessing he isn’t worried about having a job when he returns, given his credentials. There will be plenty of institutions eager to take him if his present employer is dumb enough to let him go. Jeff asked if he was too specialized to conduct a general survey of an entire new biosphere? The fellow said he wouldn’t take offense but that was like asking of the builder of race car engines if he could do an oil change. He didn’t have to be asked if he would do other support duties when not busy with his primary job. Bobby volunteered he was a passable cook and not above scrubbing toilets if that’s what it took to get a ride to another star system. The man got major points with me for asking how many kilograms he was allowed for personal items like clothing and entertainment. I’ll take six more like him, please.”

“In what area are we weakest?” Heather asked.

“Animal biologists,” Deloris said. “We didn’t see an animal from orbit with a three-centimeter resolution survey of several different areas. I suspect they may not exist. There might be insect analogs or life in the ocean, but it’s weird to see all that grass and no herds of herbivores munching on it. In truth we didn’t try to recruit awfully hard because I’m not sure we need one.”

“No birds either?” Heather asked. “I didn’t see that addressed.”

“Not unless they are hummingbird sized. There might be flying insects,” she speculated.

“I accept your analysis we have a workable support crew,” Heather decided. “We three will come along again to see the world for ourselves after we orbit awhile in the Chariot and allow you to establish it is reasonably safe. I suppose eventually these landing will be routine and we won’t always join you. Not yet though.”

“That was my next question,” Deloris said. “I suggest you make a separate landing so one local problem like a storm can’t catch both ships in the same location.”

“With a relay satellite to keep in touch?” Heather asked.

“See, you’re not as dumb as you look,” Deloris praised her sovereign.