Join the new world

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I read an article today (see here:http://tinyurl.com/AutoPlato) that made me realize that we are experiencing a massive levelling-off of competition and game physics. Currencies are pegged, prices are equalizing across nations, products have only slight variations of value across the New World.

Taxes mean little, since there is no way to influence the value of a nation’s currency. What do trade embargoes matter when all prices are the same and Plato will buy the excess anyhow? The Money Market has been dumped into the giant melting pot that consumed work skill and profitable Q1-Q4 companies.

Forget about making a little extra Gold profit by trading currencies, or even speculating between country markets with WRM (since now it is all about the same price wherever you go).

The only thing left to do is compete for bonus regions in order to affect the economy of the nation. Tinkering with tax rates and embargoes will have less impact. Forget about even paying attention to the currency like the Ministry of Finance once did to control Gold prices.

Yup, we’re running on Auto-Plato and there’s not much left to do but dance and click our mousewheels to the tune of whatever Gold discount comes out next.

With the Great Equalization of eRepublik in mind, I decided to retell Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” with a New World twist. Most of the character names were chosen because they are similar to the one’s in the real story and have little purpose beyond that, except for one related to a major player in eRep who went into hibernation.

Or for those who want moving pictures, here’s a clip that captures the general message of eRep Tomorrow:
Moving Minutes - 2081 - "Harrison Bergeron"

And so it goes….



The Day was 2081, and every player and all nations were finally equal. They weren't only equal before Plato and his Terms of Service. They were equal every which way. Nobody was a higher level than anybody else. Nobody had a better avatar than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or a quicker clicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the eRepublik Laws, and to the unceasing vigilance of the Handicapper General for the Completely and Utterly United eRepublik.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. Money Markets for instance, still drove people crazy by not always being equal the 0.00001 decimal point. And it was on one handicap clampdown/maintenance update that the H-G men took George and Ethel eBergeron's fourteen-year-old eRep phenom, Romper, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Ethel couldn't think about it very hard. Ethel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap comment-maker on his keyboard. He was required by law to use it at all times. It was also tuned to an eRepublik transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would broadcast stupid shouts to distract players and keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains to impress people on their friends list or earn extra Gold through some intelligent manner.

George and Ethel were watching battles. There were tears on Ethel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the computer screen was a battle raging.

A buzzer sounded on George's computer. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from an illegal impeachment.

"That was a real pretty battle, that timed-strike they just did," said Ethel.

"Huh" said George.

"That battle--it was nice," said Ethel.

"Yup," said George. He tried to think a little about the soldiers. They weren't really very good--no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with strength limiters and stocks of general issue tanks everyone used, and their avatars were all grey outlines, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful expression or a pretty…er…face, would feel like something was unfair. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe players shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another inane noise for his shout box scattered his thoughts.

George winced. So did two out of the eight other eRep citizens online pondering the same thing.

Ethel saw him wince. Having no enforced handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.

"Sounded like somebody hitting a monitor with their forehead," said George.

"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different shouts," said Ethel a little envious. "All the pointless things they think up."

"Um," said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said Ethel. Ethel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Assistant of the Handicapper General, a woman named Donna Rush whose figure was as becoming as a rusted-out boxcar. "If I was Donna Rush," said Ethel, "I'd have chimes to announce the start of every mini-battle-just chimes. Kind of in honour of the old ‘You’ve Got Battles’."

"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Ethel. "I think I'd make a good Handicapper General."

"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better than I do what normal is?" said Ethel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now tempbanned, about Romper, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.

"Boy!" said Ethel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight other players online had collapsed to the living room floor, and were holding their temples.

"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Ethel. "Why don't you stretch out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap on the pillows, honeybunch." She was referring to the paypal collar, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest the collar for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal to me for a while."

George weighed the collar with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I don't notice it any more. It's just a part of the game."

"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Ethel. "If there was just some way we could make a little adjustment in the collar, and just take out a little restriction off. Just a few notches off to release the clamp’s tightness."

"Two weeks in tempban and two thousand dollars fee for every notch I released," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."

"If you could just take a few out when you came home from workclicks," said Ethel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just sit around and eat powerbars, getting flabby in your inflated rank."

"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people'd get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the V1 dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't like that, would you?"

"I'd hate it," said Ethel.

"There you are," said George. The minute people start competing with their minds, what do you think happens to society?"

If Ethel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.

"Reckon it'd fall all apart," said Ethel.

"What would?" said George blankly.

"Society," said Ethel uncertainly. "Wasn't that what you just said?

"Who knows?" said George.

The Daily Order battle was suddenly interrupted for a message from Plato. It wasn't clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcement, like all announcements, had serious grammar issues. In a state of high excitement, the announcement tried to say, "Ladies and Gelatomen."

The Handicapper General's Announcer finally gave up, handed the PM to a new player to read.

"That's all right-" Ethel said of the announcement, "he tried. That's the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what Plato gave himself. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard."

"Ladies and Gentlemen," said the player, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the avatar she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the players, for her handicap collar was as big as those worn by players who were once double their former rank.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. "Excuse me-" she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

"Romper eBergeron, age fourteen," she said in a grackle squawk, "has just escaped from tempban, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow Plato. He is a genius with super-strength, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous."

A police photograph of Romper eBergeron was flashed on the screen-upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Romper against a pixelated background. He was exactly 147 feet tall and a few trillion in rank.

The rest of Romper’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a shout box radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous Paypal collar, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him make accidental gold purchases.

Scrap medals were hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Romper looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Romper carried seventeen hundred pounds of useless medals.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that his avatar be at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.
"If you see this boy," said the girl, "do not - I repeat, do not - try to reason with him."

There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the computer screen.
The photograph of Romper eBergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

Romper eBergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have - for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. "My God-" said George, "that must be Romper!"

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Romper was gone. A living, breathing Romper filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Romper stood - in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Bikini pic ladies, headless chicken rustlers, cross-eyed coders, and admins cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

"I am the Romperor!" he cried. "Do you hear? I am the Romperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!" He stamped his foot and eRep Labs shook.

"Even as I stand here" he bellowed, "crippled, hobbled, sickened - I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!"

Romper tore the medals of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand medals.

Romper's scrap-gold handicaps crashed to the floor.

Romper thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his avatar. The bar snapped like celery. Romper smashed his shoutbox and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

"I shall now select my Rompress!" he said, looking down on the cowering staff. "Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!"

A moment passed, and then the girl announcer arose, swaying like a willow.
Romper plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her ugly grey avatar.

She was blindingly beautiful.

"Now-" said Romper, taking her hand, "shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!" he commanded.

The coders scrambled back into their chairs, and Romper stripped them of their handicaps, too. "Upload your best," he told them, "and I'll make you barons and dukes and earls, richer than Bronte!."

The music began. It was normal at first-cheap, silly, false. But Romper snatched two coders from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.

Romper and his Rompress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weights to their toes.

Romper placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang into battle!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of player stats as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.

eRep Labs’ ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Donna Rush, the Assistant Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Romperor and the Rompress were dead before they hit the floor.

Donna Rush loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the coders and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the eBergerons' computer screen burned out.

Ethel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a platter of 600 loaves of bread.

George came back in with the bread, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. "You been crying" he said to Ethel.

"Yup," she said.

"What about?" he said.

"I forget," she said. "Something real sad in the game."

"What was it?" he said.

"It's all kind of mixed up in my mind," said Ethel.

"Forget sad things," said George.

"I always do," said Ethel.

"That's my girl," said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head.

"Gee - I could tell that one was a doozy," said Ethel.

"You can say that again," said George.

"Gee-" said Ethel, "I could tell that one was a doozy."

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Dedicated to the inner-Romper in all of us that has been waiting to bust loose one day.

The real "Harrison Bergeron" is copyrighted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1961.
Linked here for your pleasure: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html