The Pride of Parahumans by Joel Kreissman Read Free Book Online Page B

element under control or to
the weapons we were now openly carrying I do not know. Regardless,
I got the impression that many of the people we asked weren't
telling us everything.
    Eventually, we pieced together the story of
Vesta's controlled anarchy. After the revolution, the inhabitants
of Vesta, which had extensive mines and worker barracks but minimal
supervision, decided to embrace the concept of no rulers. The
nutrient algae vending machines were hacked so that anyone could
add their biometric data to the system and receive a daily
allotment of calories from the machines. The fabricators were open
to use by anyone who felt they needed something. If there was a
shortage of fabricator materials or some of the life support
systems began to malfunction or the algae went bad someone would
fix the problem. If someone went crazy and started killing people
they figured that an angry mob would drag him to the nearest
airlock.
    Inevitably this turned out not to be the
case. Air scrubbers crapped out, leaving entire sectors unlivable
at a rate that overwhelmed the few people who had the initiative to
fix them. Infected algae were ignored until the food became toxic,
and psychopaths found ways to murder people with no witnesses to
form mobs.
    The tipping point came, ironically enough,
when some people who were concerned about the degradation of the
habitat organized and began working to fix the various problems
full time. This group, known as the Repairmen's Guild, initially
suffered from a lack of manpower to resolve all the broken pieces
of the habitat, until they came up with the idea of offering their
members extra food rations. At first, this extra food came from
algae trays and hydroponics farms maintained by the guild itself
and voluntary donations from grateful civilians. But as time
passed, they needed more and more workers, and many Guilders
assigned to collect donations started using physical force to
intimidate people into giving up their food. This led to many
people becoming malnourished, and some resorted to stealing food
from others. During this time, the Protector's Guild formed, and
refused to aid anyone who didn't "donate" to them, and even more
people starved as a result of them taking yet more of the food.
Some people tried to avoid giving away their rations by offering
resources they had mined, items they had fabricated, or services
they could provide. After some initial incidents, the Guilds
decided that they would accept payments other than food rations,
which convinced many people to find things that they could
produce.
    Eventually, so many people were producing
products and performing services that they formed guilds of their
own and began exchanging products or services for those produced by
others besides the Repairmen and Protectors. At some point people
started giving written promises of a future good or service
instead: "This file is redeemable for one kilogram of carbon from
Phil" and such. And then people began to trade these promises
around. Unfortunately they were easy to copy, and there were
disputes as to who had the valid file.
    One group noticed this phenomenon and noticed
that many other asteroids used qcoins that were nigh impossible to
counterfeit. They obtained a set of quantum servers and formed a
guild that began trading promise files for freshly mined qcoins.
The issue of starvation was largely solved. Many people even
started growing plants imported from Earth or raised small animals
for sale, increasing the general food supply, though the algae
vending machines remained open for those who could not afford other
foodstuffs.
    Despite all this, theft remained a bit of a
problem. The focus had just shifted from algae rations to other
products they couldn't afford but still desired. Thus the
Protector's Guild expanded until their organization became unwieldy
and was divided into several smaller guilds.
    As great as the system that had emerged
spontaneously from the chaos was, there were