Simon Morden: _The Petrovitch Trilogy/Metrozone Series_ ISBN:9780316242592, _TheCurve Of The Earth_ ISBN:031622006X then the (free) prequel stories collection _Thy Kingdom Come_ * takes place in 2030s https://bookofmorden.co.uk/books/the-petrovitch-trilogy/ https://www.orbitbooks.net/2013/03/01/the-samuil-petrovitch-guide-to-swearing-violently-in-russian/ # FreeZone as Adhocracy Relevant excerpts from _The Curve of the Earth_ Spec: _I want you to go and design me a human society. Not a utopia: one that acknowledges its faults and includes mechanisms to correct itself. One that’s better than the one we have now. Info-rich. Post-scarcity. Knowledge as currency._ _Petrovitch wanted to be alone, to worry and to brood, but he was part of the Freezone collective and that meant never having to be alone again. Company was built in, through the links they wore_ _[How many of our protocols are we going to break this time?] asked Michael. “As a point of reference? More than the Baku incident?” [More than Beirut. We’re going to break them all if we have to. Assemble an ad-hoc. They can decide.]_ _Michael polled the Freezone collective and selected five names with the required expertise and wisdom. There was no need to wait for them to assemble, exchange pleasantries, enquire about the kids; that wasn’t what an ad-hoc was about. He’d been in enough to know the score_ _[We need to decide what assets we dedicate to the search, and how they are best deployed.]_ _[I will pass on a request to the US State Department,] said Michael. [You must decide whether we ask, or whether we insist. And if we insist, how forcefully we put our demands.]_ _[That is a good question,] noted Michael, and Moltzman’s pregnant rep birthed another point. [I can suggest some possible answers, but assigning probabilities to them will take time if I am to be accurate.]_ _I said she shouldn’t go.” [An ad-hoc said she should accept.] “They were wrong!” [Samuil Petrovitch was on that ad-hoc,] Michael reminded her, reminded them all. [He agreed with the decision made then.]_ _There was another protocol surrounding the ad-hocs, that the petitioner wasn’t supposed to speak on their own initiative: they could answer questions, clarify positions, discuss motivations. But not be an advocate, and certainly not grandstand. The committee members weren’t a jury, and an ad-hoc wasn’t a court._ _[...this is the way we decided we would conduct our decision-making, and if you do not come to a consensus, I will dismiss you and convene another ad-hoc.]_ _we want nothing less than someone on the ground, up on the North Slope, directing local assets.” “One of us or one of them?” asked Moltzman. “Both,”_ _[Does everyone agree to this course of action?] Michael tabulated the votes, and reported back the result. [The committee is unanimous. The question remains, who do we send?]_ _“And why would my whole country be wrong?” “Because you’re lying to yourselves. You can think we’re all foul-mouthed drunks and our women dress like whores, but you’re missing the point. Underneath the veneer of Reconstruction, you’re all monsters. In the Freezone, no one ever goes hungry. If they fall sick, we cure them if we can and look after them if we can’t. No one’s lonely, because there’s always someone listening. We take care of each other, and we all have a say in the big decisions. Which is pretty much how we got to this point.”_ _Are we going to have to break her privacy seal and find out what she’s really been up to?” “I’m surprised you haven’t asked for that before,” said Marcus. “In fact, I’ll take matters out of your hands: Michael will call an ad-hoc, and if they agree, a counsellor will pick over what information there is. Michael will tell you if anything relevant comes up.”_ _If you want to go off the reservation, talk to Michael, and we’ll have an ad-hoc. And you’ll behave yourself if the decision goes against you.”_ _The Freezone’s bigger than you, Sam_ _“if it’s a choice between me following the rules and me getting Lucy back, you know which way it’s going to go, don’t you?” “I know. Everybody knows._ _There can be terabytes of data on each card. It all needs to be sorted and checked.” “By you?” “By a committee. It’s private information. If I need to know any of it, they’ll pass the relevant files to me.” He sighed and put the card reader next to him on the rock. “We value privacy much more than you do.” “You have an all-seeing artificial intelligence monitoring everything you do and everywhere you go.” “That’s because Michael is an infovore. That’s what he does. It doesn’t follow that he passes that information on to everybody else. Or even anyone at all.” “So you’re happy that this machine knows everything about you?”_ _He came back out with a sealed plastic bag containing three pieces of equipment: an earpiece, a screen-reader, and a slim, curved rectangle in white. He tore the plastic with his teeth and sorted out the components on his lap. “This is a Freezone thing, and you’re the first person not in the collective to ever be offered one.” He glanced up at Newcomen’s sceptical expression. “It’s not because you’re special or anything. This is a purely practical decision_ _the Freezone had been raising kids with this technology for almost a decade now, a whole generation coming through who’d known nothing else but their own personal mentor, guardian, friend being no more than a breath away_ _Michael: call an ad-hoc. I want to go after the house computer.” Half a world away, a committee was formed, told of the reason, and asked to come to a decision. They did. It wasn’t quite what he expected._ _one ear to the news reports from around the world that his agents had selected. Each one came with a commentary from Freezone analysts, whether they could confirm or debunk it, and if the Freezone collective was involved in any way_ _He felt compelled to keep himself informed, especially at a time like this. It was a truism that the one connecting fact that linked together everything he was doing could appear half a world away. He wasn’t the only one watching, reading, collating and sifting, but he was a link in the chain_ _There are plenty of suggestions. Some are mutually exclusive. Others could be joined together to form a more-or-less coherent strategy. But there is no unanimity_ _[Sasha, you are not authorised to do any deals with the Chinese. There will have to be, at the very least, an ad-hoc. Possibly more.] “We don’t have the time.” [We have to make the time.]_ _[The choice is not yours.] “Well, it should be.” [Every time you rail against having to consult someone else about a course of action that affects the Freezone as a whole and not just you, I have to remind you that you designed the decisionmaking process, you consciously and deliberately eschewed any special exception for yourself, and you told me that if you were to ever change your mind, I was to have you shot.]_ _[Shall I convene an ad-hoc while you explain your idea?]_ _What I want to do is sell a share of the artefact. To the Chinese. For a dollar. Are you with me so far?”_ _I don’t want to run the risk of having to ask Zhao if he wants to buy a pile of melted crap that could have come from anywhere. He commits his government to the purchase now, while neither of us have a clue what it is_ _“We don’t actually own this whatever-it-is, do we now? So how can we be selling it?” [Technically, Lucy Petrovitch has a claim of ownership, since she found the material abandoned. There is no immediate prospect of finding the original owner.]_ _“So it is the girl’s?” [Yes.] “Just not the Freezone’s.” [The concept of individual versus corporate ownership temporarily escaped me. Apologies.]_ _[And yet wait we must. Lucy’s rights as finder cannot be violated simply because you find it expedient. The Freezone holds much in common for its members, yet we still maintain a separation between communal and personal property. She can gift the artefact to whoever she wishes; it is her choice.]_ _If you want, I can show you a graph that predicts your complete replacement with cybernetics within thirty years. I would, however, like to discuss my earlier offer of reconstituting your personality as a virtual construct at some point._

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Chennai: The Metrozone mission in Koyambedu has joined the lengthy checklist of initiatives beneath the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) scanner for suspected violation of the subvention scheme and dishonest of homebuyers by the bank-developer nexus.The financial offences wing of the CBI, Delhi, has registered a case in opposition to Ozone Projects Pvt Ltd, the developer of Metrozone, its promoters, administrators, in addition to unknown officers of Axis Bank Ltd and Axis Finance Ltd, on prices of fraud and corruption as per the instructions of the Supreme Court.According to the FIR, the administrators of Ozone Projects Pvt Ltd, which is at the moment beneath the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP), entered right into a felony conspiracy with the banks and monetary establishments to avail themselves of complete residence loans within the names of potential homebuyers in violation of RBI and National Housing Bank laws and defaulted on the pre-EMIs in violation of the subvention schemes of the tripartite agreements.