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Queen Laura of Luna

Tom Ball

    I, Maxwell, said, “Under normal circumstances, I would say you are a genius, Lila. But given the current dictatorship that we live under here on Luna #16, I’d say you are mad!” Lila said, “Call me a mad genius if you will. But I insist that our dictator listens to me!” I said, “But your plan to have the state provide a living for mad geniuses, is impractical. For starters who decides who the geniuses are?” She said, “Anyone who has different ideas from the norm should be considered. All I ask is that such ideas be revealed to the people and let them decide whether to go for the ideas or not.” I said, “What about demagogues?” She said, “I propose creating a body of geniuses who are accepted as geniuses by all to decide. Let no genius fall through the cracks!” And she said, “You know I stand for improving the human race through brain apps, hypnosis and MRT (Mind Reading Technology).” I said, “but everyone subjected to brain apps is crazy. And our tyrant doesn’t want competition.” She said, “I think our tyrant is a genius and will welcome new ideas. Of course, our tyrant, she will hold veto power over any idea.” I said, “You are walking a fine line.” She said, “It’s worth trying!” I said, “Kudos to you for trying, but you need to become an advisor to the tyrant before you can even consider implementing your goals.” She said, “I will request an audience with her. And I will suggest she uses MRT to mine peoples’ minds for good ideas. And we can test new ideas in hologram Worlds. Holoworlds are good laboratories for new ideas and all holos there will be based on the best people according to the tyrant. She said including making peoples’ brain better with brain apps, I want to make better drugs which would enhance one’s imagination permanently. And education to make people more imaginative, training peoples’ brains.” I said, “I fear you are in the right place at the wrong time. Our tyrant simply won’t go for your proposals. It is in our tyrant’s best interests to keep people unimaginative.”
    Anyway Lila went ahead and petitioned our tyrant, Laura. The tyrant seemed surprisingly interested and appointed her Minister of Imagination and gave her broad powers over education.
    I told her, “You can turn night into day. I’m sorry I doubted you. You are now in position to effect real change.”
    As things turned out, Lila and the tyrant, Laura, became bosom buddies. And Lila invited me to join her in her Ministership. And I gladly accepted. And I granted funds to people who were brilliant but obscure. It was a mighty good feeling.
    And the most imaginative people were all grateful to our dictator, and declared we lived in an Utopia. And most of them said Queen Laura was a genius, herself.
    Lila and I became lovers and I suggested we make Supercomputers more imaginative, too. Supercomputers that could think deeply were a relatively new phenomenon. She told me, “I am already working on it. But we have to be careful as it is dangerous.” I said, “A system of checks and balances is in order.” She agreed. And I said, “The most imaginative should have lots of children and clones and Queen Laura, too.” She said, “Yes, that too, I’ve already thought of it.” And I said, “We should make peace with all other nations on Earth and in Space.” She agreed. And we got the rest of Luna to unite with us as one nation. And Queen Laura ruled well and wisely.
    And I suggested to Lila, “That we try and get other nations to unite with us.” She told me, “We need to work together with other nations, but I don’t know about totally uniting with them. We can use real people, not Supercomputers, as ambassadors to other city states and nations and send our spies as agents provocateurs to read and change minds of important politicians.” I said, “Working as a spy creates jobs for the clever and keeps them out of trouble. We can have these spies integrate themselves into important positions of power in other states. And give them fake identities.”
    And I said, “I’m coming around to the idea that our Queen is an enlightened leader ahead of her time. And she recently decreed all clever people on Luna would have a job in her government.” Lila said, “It’s a real step forward. And she has created jobs for all, mostly in the service industry, for the common people. Also banking and investment, real estate, lawyers, and plastic surgeons. And computer programming, and AI, spies, shrinks and working with Automatic Production Machines (APMs) and so on. Everyone would rather deal with a human than a machine. Of course, some nations are totally automated and have no jobs for humans and have androids do most of the advanced jobs. So, the people there are all retired and live a life of leisure. Some claim they live in Paradise, others are bored and feel they have too much time on their hands. But with anti-sleep pills some people even here on Luna have too much time to kill. And the suicide rate is 2% in the Solar System, which is quite high, and it looks like few will live past 100, despite eternal youth. Many people have an existential crisis these days and feel lost. And children don’t have much to do with their parents typically. The people everywhere take a cocktail of drugs to try and make them happy and most countries require their people to see a shrink regularly.
    And Lila said “Our Queen’s latest decree is to work to ban slavery of all kinds. Including love dolls, holograms, conscious Supercomputers and human slaves. Some people on Earth have millions of hologram slaves and spend a lot of time with their android love doll slaves.”
    And Lila said, “Our Queen wants to find the perfect lover. Her female spies are searching the Solar System and she uses old-fashioned Online dating. When she finds a true soul mate, she has her neurosurgeons tweak them to make them even better, and they agree to it. She is quite serious about true love.” I said, “It kind of sounds crazy and an abuse of power!” Lila said, “Some men will do anything to love the Queen.”
    And our Queen said, “Circumstances dictate that Luna builds a missile defence system of its own that can shoot down missiles traveling at light speed. She would pay for this by taxing the people.” Lila said, “Our taxes are relatively low at about 20%. Some on Earth pay 75% tax, which is mostly wasted, but significantly enhances their armies. And the powers on Earth, are constantly engaging in skirmishes and even all out war with one another.”
    And Queen Laura said, “Geniuses could come to Luna and be supported by the state and live in freedom, away from the wars of Earth.” Many Earth nations conscript their best scientists to design weapons and used their best artists to be spies. Espionage was out of control on Earth and our spies were part of it.
    And our Queen said to me one day, “I want your love!” I said, “OK but I don’t want my brain altered. She said, “You won’t notice the difference!” And she had her guards escort me to the hospital and when I awoke, I hardly knew myself but was overcome by an all-encompassing love for the Queen. I was obsessed with her now. And when I loved her, she blew my mind. And she left me begging for more. My old friend Lila said, “I want to love you too.” And she hypnotized me to love her. So, I loved her as well and I couldn’t get enough of her either.
    But the Queen saw me quite regularly and she didn’t mind if I loved Lila. And I told the Queen, “You should have your children run for office in other nations. Most don’t require their leader to be born in that nation. And let’s you and I have a few children.” She agreed and I had a lot of time for our 6 kids which were born in an adult’s body with hers and my memories. And I convinced them to be writers.
    One wrote, “Robots Graveyards,” which was about robots who were dimly conscious and were put out to pasture when they became obsolete. They went to a graveyard for robots. And they elected a leader in the graveyard. The leader was more sentient than the others. And the leader tried to teach the others to think better. But it was a tragic situation.
    Another wrote “Obese Sex,” about people who refused to take anti-fat pills and were obese and liked low gravity Space. They were so fat they could hardly have sex. I told her, “It was truly a disgrace.”
    And another wrote, “World Emperor,” about a united Earth with no wars and was prosperous and people were imaginative. I told her, “It was the ultimate human Utopia. A noble vision.” Queen Laura said, “It was an inspiration to us all.”
    And another one of my children, wrote, “Hammer Intersection,” It was about the new physics developed by Tom Hammer, which made deep Space colonization a reality. The book argued for maximum Space colonization so we wouldn’t have all our eggs in one basket. And the pioneering challenges would lead to other new science. Queen Laura said, “I would be happy to have some of my children to go to Space. And have them report back to me and work as spies for me.” And I said, “Who knows what we will discover in Space? But its so gigantic and we need to ultimately find the creators. I am very curious as to what we might find. Of course, some feel aliens already walk amongst us, who knows?”
    And another child of Queen Laura and I, wrote, “Denizens of Abette,” which was about people of the future who all are hooked up to a dream machine and dreaming constant dreams all day and all night. They dream in 3-D color. They all think it is Utopia and who knows?
    The final one of the six children I had with Queen Laura, wrote, “A World of Women,” which was about a group of heterosexual women who wanted extended breaks from being with men. But they had subservient gigolos here. Women here said they were tired of aggressive and competitive men and just wanted to do feminine things like singing female artists’ songs and starting new businesses for women like new perfume and new plastic surgery making every woman attractive. Most women here wanted to be more attractive. I said, “Everyone needs a break from romance once in a while. It sounds like a good World.”
    And I told Queen Laura, “Our children have all turned out splendidly. She said, “The attention you gave them has yielded dividends. And they are all rich.”
    And I told Lila, “To have a child, too!” She agreed and our love child was also a writer. Our child wrote, “Highbrow Movies,” which was about rating all movies, especially the obscure ones based on how intelligent they were. It was another hit with many people wanting to watch the hippest, cleverest movies, even though many of these viewers were just ordinary intellects.

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