Episode 1 - The Beam

East with only a pack and a crossbow. He knew the rewards that came from risk. But that had all ended when he’d arrived at the NAU border and met Isaac, and the other bookend had snapped into place. From rich to rich, from safe to safe. Nicolai’s rewarding reckless was lost in the forever between.
    Still, Nicolai had that seed of adventure and self-determination deep inside him. He wore his black hair too shaggy for a man who could afford follicle-pausing treatments, and wore small, round glasses that had stopped being necessary a hundred years earlier with the advent of Lasik eye surgery. Nicolai could afford eyes that could see through walls, but he wore glasses and instead used his credits for creativity add-ons that were experimental at best and reckless at worst. He had a wetchip in his cortex that scanned his mind when he worked on his books, tried to draw or paint, or touched the keys of his piano. The chip watched the firing patterns that came with creativity, then fired those neurons while tuning down centers that seemed most responsible for internal criticism. “Seemed” was the operative word. Creativity was one of the least understood emergent properties, and tinkering with it was considered pseudoscience at best. Even his dealer, Doc, warned him to proceed slowly lest he do damage that couldn’t be undone, but Nicolai swore that every time he used his creativity chip, he found inspiration more easily. Each time, he got a little bit more out of his own way. Every day, he was inching closer to writing more stories and books… and maybe one day, fewer bullshit political speeches.
    “The NAU, even today, still has the world’s only stable government,” said Isaac, looking earnestly at the glass eyes in front of him. “Our two parties were formed at a time of unrest, as our borders closed, as our enemies tried to storm our gates. And in the midst of that unrest, the Enterprise decided it was more important to fight over the resources we had and let the strongest survive. It was short-sighted then, and it’s short-sighted now. One citizen should not be rewarded if another must suffer. In the Directorate, we are all equal.”
    Nicolai felt his gut tighten. That was the only outright lie in the speech. But it was okay; that particular lie had been told often enough that nobody knew it was a lie. Repetition had turned it true. The spirit of Directorate “equality” said that everyone was taken care of and had a chance to advance. In reality, “equality” meant a ton of low-level managers, number crunchers, data shufflers, and representatives from industries that could easily be automated, all juxtaposed with the highly paid Directorate elite. Nicolai himself was paid well, but there seemed to be a secret club above his pay grade, in the realm of the Isaacs and the Natashas. He’d heard Isaac and Natasha use the term “Beau Monde.” Although Nicolai probably wasn’t supposed to so much as know the phrase (he being merely in the 95 th or so percentile), he suspected it referred to the truly elite — the one percent of the population that possessed 99 percent of the wealth.
    But as Nicolai had written and Isaac had said, no system was perfect. There were a lot of starving artists and failed entrepreneurs in the Enterprise. Maybe the Directorate system was the best that could be done. Nicolai couldn’t make up his mind. In an ideal world, he’d knock down the iron rule that said you chose one party or the other, and would plunk himself squarely in the middle.
    Nicolai looked out across the live audience — a group of several hundred Directorate who’d come to the Orpheum to watch Isaac Ryan speak in person. Their faces were pleased and optimistic, their mouths set in determination. A few nodded along. Part of their fervor was probably due to the add-on Isaac had in his throat — a little gadget that caused his voice to reverberate at the most psychologically persuasive frequencies — but mostly it was Nicolai’s words, coming from Isaac’s mouth. One day Nicolai would finish his novel. One day he’d be known for something other than speeches… if, in fact, he got any credit for the speeches at all.
    Nicolai’s fingers twitched — an unconscious gesture he made when he wanted time to hurry.
    He’d written the speech; he knew it was almost over. When it was, the crowd would applaud (of course; he could see them dying to shower Isaac with praise right now) and for another night, the