LARP Night on Union Station Read online

  “We do see a little leakage of factory seconds, but that’s figured into the bid cost,” Brinda added. “Our main problem has been with look-alikes as opposed to direct piracy. For example, some of the bazaar sellers on Flower, EarthCent’s circuit ship, have been selling knock-offs of our basic items branded with a ‘581’ tag.”

  “By basic, you mean…”

  “Travel cloaks, hats with ribbons, tube dresses. Styles that aren’t unique to our brand, though we like to think that we do them better.”

  “I know we do,” Dorothy interjected.

  “And the ‘581’ tag?” Tzachan asked.

  “Here are a few images our friends on Flower have forwarded to us,” Brinda continued, and activated the conference room screen. “You see that the ‘5’ is a bit rounded, like the ‘S’ in our logo, the ‘8’ is kind of flattened on the left side, so you could mistake it for a ‘B’, and there’s just enough of a bump on the base of the ‘1’ that you could easily take it as a ‘J’, especially if that’s what you’re expecting.”

  “I see where that would present confusion, especially for non-Humanese readers,” the Frunge attorney concurred. “That bump on the last digit—”

  “They make it look like a sewing glitch,” Dorothy said angrily. “It’s really just one thick piece of thread that gets looped over and stitched down, as if somebody pulled the label out before the machine controller completed the sequence.”

  “Have any of these knock-offs showed up on the stations?”

  “Not yet,” Brinda said. “The boutiques wouldn’t touch them in any case since their business model depends on brands. My father works on the open market deck and he’s been keeping an eye out for us, but it seems like the 581 crowd are avoiding the Stryx stations.”

  “That makes sense,” Tzachan said. “I reviewed the intellectual property treaty to which Earth is a party before coming today, and your protections are limited as contrasted to the other species. This is due in part to your status as probationary members of the tunnel network, and in part because of your failures to meet your obligations under the existing treaty.”

  “Could you give some examples?”

  “Certainly,” the attorney said, and switched screens on his tab. “The numbers involved make me suspicious that Humans are blissfully unaware that the alien home entertainment systems they are purchasing are required by tunnel network law to log viewings of pirated content for reporting. The current tally of pending complaints is in the hundreds of trillions, which is quite impressive for a species that barely numbers ten billion.”

  “Why would the home entertainment systems show pirated content in the first place?’ Dorothy asked. “It’s almost like entrapment.”

  “Precisely,” Tzachan said. “Tunnel network species abandoned encryption for protecting intellectual content many millions of years ago, since it only pushed the problem underground. The bulk of the complaints I’ve seen filed against humanity are coming from the Vergallian Guild of Drama Producers for back-episodes of some of their longer running serials.”

  “So the Vergallians will hardly be in the mood to cooperate if we need their help with trademark dilution,” Brinda concluded.

  “Despite the treaty, intellectual property protection has always been hit-or-miss, even with the advanced species. For example, we have a client who writes a bestselling book about low-temperature welding that has been widely pirated by several species, both on and off the tunnel network. Our most successful enforcement efforts occur where we can offer something in return. While the Hortens have a treaty obligation to cooperate with our enforcement efforts, we didn’t make any headway until one of their publishers of gaming guides approached us for help when they realized how many unauthorized copies were being made by Frunge. In the end, we negotiated a cross-licensing deal, so our client now publishes a local version of the gaming guides and the Horten publisher started a sideline in metal fabrication techniques.”

  “But we don’t want another fashion house producing our clothes,” Dorothy pointed out. “It’s not just about the label, we really do make clothes differently. Our heels have more patents pending than some spaceships.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting cross-licensing agreements for your business, just giving an example,” Tzachan said. “In the light of what Stryx Jeeves told me about his artificially imposed limitations in this matter and the generally poor behavior of Humans vis-a-vis the intellectual property of other species, I would recommend that we concentrate on protecting your brand on the stations. If we start now, we can stay ahead of the curve, and playing catch-up is nearly impossible in these cases. Unless I’m mistaken about the scale of your operations, you have plenty of room to grow on Stryx stations before it becomes an issue.”

  “That’s exactly what Shaina and I have been discussing,” Brinda said. “Our market research shows that we have growing brand recognition on the stations, thanks to a giveaway we staged with InstaSitter a couple of years ago, but the follow-on sales were mainly through our catalog operation. We have a long way to go with getting our full line into boutiques on every station, and we’ve been hesitating over making that investment for fear of wide-spread knock-offs.”

  “Has anybody duplicated these heels you mentioned?” the attorney asked, turning to Dorothy.

  “I’d like to see them try,” she said. “The Verlock scientist who designed—”

  “Verlock?” Tzachan interrupted. “Did he take out the patents?”

  “His name is on all of them, even the gathering mechanism for long dresses that was my idea.”

  “But were the patents filed in Verlock courts or here on the station?”

  “Jeeves?” Brinda asked.

  “Both,” the Stryx replied. “Drilyenth had already filed patents on his homeworld for the basic heel innovations before we acquired them, and he insisted that we continue to file Verlock patents for any technology he licenses to us exclusively.”

  “That’s fantastic news,” Tzachan told them. “Everybody is afraid of offending the Verlocks, even the Vergallians, so we should be safe on that front. I’d like to draw up a campaign for protecting your brand on the stations, starting with logo education, and if possible, including your personal stories. If you provide customers of your bespoke line with immersive footage of your design process, you add value and piracy protection at the same time.”

  “How will holographic video protect us from piracy?” Flazint asked.

  “Your customers will play back the immersive footage on their home entertainment systems,” the attorney explained. “If the source is copied, we’ll get a report, just as if we were producing dramas.”

  “That’s settled, then,” Jeeves announced. “Brinda will handle your retainer, Tzachan, and I look forward to seeing the details of your campaign when you draw it up.”

  “An honor, Stryx Jeeves,” the attorney replied, and stood while his new client exited the conference room.

  “How about a little privacy while I discuss Tzachan’s billing arrangements with him,” Brinda hinted.

  “Right,” Dorothy said, popping up from her chair. “Come on, Flazint. You don’t want him to think that we’re nosey.”

  “I would never make that error,” the attorney said, bowing slightly in the Frunge girl’s direction as she followed Dorothy out.

  “Well?” the ambassador’s daughter demanded as soon as the door closed behind them. “What do you think?”

  “Everything he said made a great deal of sense to me, and I think it would be neat for our customers to see us working on new designs.”

  “Not that,” Dorothy moaned in frustration. “I mean, what do you think about him?”

  “He seemed very professional.”

  “Are you trying to irritate me? Didn’t I tell you everything about David and Kevin?”

  “I just met him, Dorothy. Well, twice, but I don’t know anything about his family—”

  “His parents buy his suits,” Dorothy interrupted. “How muc
h more do you need to know?”

  “—and my own family doesn’t even know he exists. We don’t rush these things.”

  “Oh, sure. My wedding is only four weeks away, but you just take your time. Maybe you’ll have a date by the time my daughter’s wedding rolls around.”

  Flazint fled into the design room and triggered the door lock, leaving Dorothy standing alone in the hall. A wicked smile crossed the girl’s face, and instead of calling Libby to override the lock, she slipped out of the SBJ Fashions office and began studying the ads on the display panels as if she didn’t have a care in the world. A few minutes later, her patience was rewarded as she heard Brinda bidding the Frunge goodbye at the door. Dorothy intercepted the attorney on his way to the lift tube.

  “So?” she demanded.

  “In reference to?” he asked in reply, obviously puzzled.

  “Flazint,” Dorothy said. “Do you like her?”

  The Frunge stared for a moment, and then looked down at his feet as if he was wondering why they didn’t take him away from the crazy woman, but they betrayed him.

  “She’s very nice,” he admitted.

  “Here,” Dorothy said, pushing a custom-made ticket to her Jack-and-Jill party into his hand. “If any of your overbearing relatives give you grief, you can tell them that I invited all of the attorneys representing SBJ Fashions.”

  “A LARP party?” he asked, impressing Dorothy with his ability to read the invitation, though it was likely that as an inter-species attorney, his implant would be loaded with translation algorithms. “That’s very kind of you, but—”

  “Flazint will be there, guaranteed.”

  “Oh.” He raised his head, really looking Dorothy in the eyes for the first time. “Thank you.”

  Thirteen

  “Phillip. Come in,” Kelly greeted her replacement. “I was just about to make tea, but Joe has coffee brewing if you prefer.”

  “Is that really a dog?” the bench ambassador asked, holding his position in the door of the ice harvester and pointing at Beowulf. “More importantly, has it eaten anybody yet today?”

  “He’s a Cayl hound, but his spirit was reincarnated from a genetically engineered cross with a mastiff, and there are times you could almost mistake him for an Earth dog,” Joe said.

  “Except for being twice the size of the biggest dog I’ve ever seen,” Phillip pointed out without moving from his spot.

  “Just walk around him,” Kelly said. “He doesn’t eat people even when he’s hungry, and I know that for a fact because he’s always hungry.”

  “Welcome to Union Station,” Joe added. “My wife tells me that you’re her ticket to a year’s vacation, and she’s certainly earned it by now. I figure you for a coffee man.”

  “You figure correct,” Phillip confirmed, taking the seat indicated by the ambassador’s husband. “Interesting place you have here.”

  “Thanks, it’s a work in progress. Take anything in your coffee?”

  “Black.”

  “Don’t get up, Joe,” Kelly said. “I’ll bring it in.” She disappeared into the kitchen and returned a minute later with a tray holding two steaming mugs of black coffee, a small tea kettle with a cup and saucer, and a plate of flatbreads with some colorful side dishes. “Try the roti, Phillip. Aisha has been teaching her daughter to cook and they always make too much. There was a giant plateful waiting in the kitchen when I got up this morning.”

  “I had something before I came,” Phillip said, but not wanting to give offense, spread a little of the most familiar-looking substance on a flatbread and took a bite. “Hey, this is pretty good.”

  “Joe and I already ate,” Kelly encouraged him. “The kids were out before I even got up. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying not having to rush to the office every morning.”

  “Does that mean there’s a particular time I should be there?”

  “I’m not sure, really,” Kelly admitted. “Donna was already the embassy manager when I came to Union Station so I just started going in the same hours that she worked. Of course, all of the aliens on the station live by their own clocks, so most of the meetings and functions you’ll attend in my place will take place outside of the embassy’s normal hours.”

  “Do we get paid overtime?” Phillip asked.

  Joe swallowed a gulp of coffee the wrong way and began choking, the only thing that kept Kelly from bursting out in laughter. “Not exactly,” she said, “but then again, the station librarian is the only one who knows how many hours you’re working, and she’s not going to say anything as long as you’re doing your job.”

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you about, uh, Libby.” The bench ambassador didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that his hands were making a sandwich from two pieces of roti and a spoonful of whatever was in each of the dishes. He took a bite and then spent a few seconds chewing before he continued. “The conversation that Janice and I had with President Beyer when we were reassigned here during our stopover was a bit vague at best. Who are we working for, exactly?”

  “For humanity,” Kelly replied. “It’s in the oath.”

  “Yes, I remember the oath,” Phillip said, and interrupted himself with a larger bite of the sandwich and an even longer break from the conversation “Did I already say that this is really good? Anyway, what I meant is, who determines what’s good for humanity?”

  “That’s the question,” Joe told him, casually snagging the last piece of flatbread from the dish while studiously avoiding his wife’s look of disapproval. “As our daughter was fond of saying when she was young, it’s complicated.”

  “It is complicated,” Kelly told the bench ambassador. “In one sense, the Stryx are willing to let us make our own mistakes, but in another sense, they don’t like seeing us wasting a lot of effort and causing ourselves or others needless suffering. The advanced species on the station don’t like talking about how much of our autonomy is real and how much is an illusion, but the one thing everybody agrees on is that there’s no point worrying about it.”

  “Seems a little fatalistic,” Phillip observed.

  “You said you’ve never lived on a station. When you’ve seen the Stryx in action a few times, you’ll realize that a hundred seemingly unrelated decisions taken by dozens of different actors have somehow inevitably led to a pre-determined outcome that you didn’t see coming. The aliens even developed a sort of mathematical philosophy to describe how all of our actions result in the same conclusion, but I can never remember—”

  “Convergence Theory,” Joe contributed.

  “Right, but it rarely comes up unless somebody has had too much to drink at a diplomatic reception.”

  A long whistle sounded from somewhere outside the ice harvester and the Cayl hound unfolded himself from the floor and shot out the door.

  “That’s Paul,” Joe said, rising from his place at the table. “We’re resealing the hull of a Grenouthian yacht and Beowulf is in charge of making sure we get the epoxy mixed consistently every day so it dries the same color. His nose is better than a chemical lab.”

  “Paul is Joe’s adopted son,” Kelly informed Phillip after her husband left. “He’s married to Aisha, and they live in the habitat next door with their daughter Fenna and a new baby boy.”

  “I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m prying, but don’t the Grenouthians pay her enough to live somewhere a little more upscale?”

  “Aisha has gone through enough contract renegotiations by this point to be a wealthy woman, but living here suits them. Paul and Joe are always around working, Dring and Aisha share sprouts from their vegetable gardens, and there’s plenty of space for the children and their friends.” Kelly looked around the room and smiled. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to it when Joe first brought me home after our wedding, but now I couldn’t imagine living any other way.”

  “I guess it is pretty spacious for a space station. Is that how you ended up with the EarthCent Intelligence training camp in your backyard?”
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  “My husband had a career in the mercenaries before coming to Union Station, though he doesn’t like talking about it, and he helped run the training camp until recently. I don’t remember whose idea it was to have the camp here rather than renting space elsewhere, but it’s worked out well. I thought we might run out of space when Aisha bought Paul a fleet of abandoned ships from Stryx long-term parking, but he and Joe can only work on a few projects at a time. Are you ready to meet the staff?”

  Phillip glanced at the plate to confirm the roti was all gone before replying. “Yes, though the truth is, I’m not sure why you’re bringing me into the loop. Do all of our ambassadors work so closely with EarthCent Intelligence?”

  “The cultural attaché is the main intelligence contact at most embassies, but all ambassadors receive regular briefings,” Kelly explained as she led Phillip out of the ice harvester and turned towards the training camp area. “You’ll be seeing more of Judith now that she’s handling some of that work in place of Lynx. I’ll just introduce you and observe until my clients get here.”

  “You’ve already started with the mediation thing?”

  “As soon as I added my name to the list I got swamped with requests. The other ambassadors warned me about holding a session on the home turf of one or the other of the parties, which of course they all requested, so I decided to do it here. Some ambassadors use their embassy office to add gravitas to the process, but that didn’t feel right to me, especially since I’m on sabbatical.”

  “Who are your first clients?”

  “You’ll laugh, but it’s a Sharf used ship dealer and a Dollnick repair facility operator. Who’d have thought that used spaceships would be involved in so much legal wrangling?”