Inktober #5: Build (Patreon)

Build

The Diwar are famed throughout the galaxy (well, to be pedantic, the general area of the Local Arm) as engineers and inventors. They are well known for the quality of their work, their scientific advancements, and the skill with which they implement theory into practical reality. (Also, their great love of beer, which has led to an unlikely friendship between the Diwar and the newest species to develop spaceflight in the Local Arm, Humans.) Their interest in engineering and creation is so great that, where Humans, Kai, Luffen and other species celebrate competitions of physical skill, the Diwar’s great planetary competition is The Great Build, an engineering competition.

Remember that the person at the bottom of the medical school graduating class is called “doctor”, and you will have some idea what the Proud-Crested Hyperpurples are like. Every competition has a large number of teams involved, and someone’s got to be on the bottom.

The Hyperpurples are the team of Fillit Province, a northern, rather chilly and rocky demesne on the homeworld which is primarily known for fishing. Yes, this is not a bad Human speculative fiction where all the people of a planet have the same professions and behave the same way. Not all Humans work in the fiction industry, not all Kai are warriors, and not all Diwar are great engineers. The people of Fillit Province are proud of their Build team, though; despite the fact that the Hyperpurples have literally come in last in the last four competitions, Fillito are loyal. After all, for a tiny fishing province without even a great university to be able to field a team at all, let alone one that even made it into The Great Build, is an amazing accomplishment. The accomplishment is not that the fisher-Diwar are great engineers in comparison to the rest of their people, but that they are engineers at all.

The problem is that the competition keeps itself from getting stale by kicking out any team that is in the bottom 10th percentile for five competitions in a row. If the Hyperpurples don’t perform better than at least ten percent of the other teams this year, they’re dead in the water. Loyal followers in their hometowns will be deeply disappointed. (Diwar are known for their passion as much as for their love of engineering. Disappointing a Diwar usually results in unpleasant consequences, such as finding that your personal conveyance has been disassembled and its parts strewn about your property.) Family members will declaim at length about the tragedy… and how members of the team who scraped and saved to leave Fillito Province to get a good education at a decent engineering school should have stayed home and caught fish for a living. Funds that were flowing into the Hyperpurples’ bank accounts from the sales of merchandise to their loyal fans will dry up.

“We could try to do something safe. Something respectable,” Irta said, nervously pulling at the feathers along the shoulder of his large-arm. There weren’t many left. Irta, like all of them, had been under a lot of stress lately. “Maybe a conveyance for a non-standard environment? Something that would work in, I don’t know, 20 g?”

“Boring!” Bakoon declared, with a wide wave of his own large-arm and a fluff of his crest. “We need to capture the imaginations of the public! To come in 11th percentile or higher, we can’t do something mean and pedestrian; beyond a contest of engineering skill, this is a contest of ideas!”

“Besides, it’s not as if we can win on our engineering skill,” Rikwaal said sardonically, her small-arms busily occupied with inputting because Rikwaal liked to look as if she was so important to the team, her work never stopped. She was actually a project manager, so the truth was, without a project to engage in, she didn’t have anything to do either.

“Speak for yourself,” the team’s other female, Enshru, snapped. “You can’t win on engineering skill because you are not an engineer.”

“Judging from our performance the last four years, neither are the rest of you,” Rikwaal said.

“Guys, could we stop arguing? This isn’t getting us any closer to the prize,” Le’ir said. He was young, and very earnest, but well-respected for his comportment, his friendliness, his alcohol tolerance, and his ability to go for three days without sleep at crunch time and still have his work come out as competition-quality. “We need a really new idea. Something to shake things up.”

“I agree!” Bakoon said. “Regardless of our skill at engineering, one of our metrics is viewership. Get enough Diwar to follow us and it won’t matter if we fail spectacularly and blow something up. We’d at least come in higher than 11th percentile, if everyone following the competition followed us as a focus-team.” 

Enshru snorted. “It sounds like you think this competition is one of those Human things where the Humans with big muscles pretend to wrestle each other! This isn’t about show business, it’s about making something that makes people take notice of us!”

“Which we have never accomplished before,” Rikwaal said, “and therefore, it really seems implausible that we’d manage it this time.”

“I like the idea of making a conveyance,” Irta complained. “We could make it a really sleek one. Give it some real power and maneuverability.”

“We’re not manufacturers of conveyances, dear boy,” Bakoon said in the most patronizing tone imaginable. “We’re manufacturers of spectacle. We’re here to impress! To have audacious ideas that no Diwar has had before – or has succeeded at, or has done as well at – and then to implement them in a tremendous way!” Every time he spoke with emphasis, Bakoon’s crest fluffed. His large-arms gesticulated wildly as he strutted. “We need something fantastic, something spectacular!”

“So that, even if we fail miserably, everyone tunes in to watch us blow ourselves up?” Enshru said.

“Well, by preference I would rather not explode, but yes, that’s the idea.”

“Can I make a suggestion?” Le’ir said. “This may sound like a stupid idea…”

“Oh, go ahead,” Enshru said. “It can’t be worse than Irta’s conveyances.”

“Hey!”

“I think we should bring in a Human.”

Bakoon, who’d been dipping his beak-like snout into his wine glass, spat out everything that was in his mouth. “What?”

“You’re right,” Irta said. “That does sound like a stupid idea.”

“Hate to agree with Irta,” Enshru said, “but when he’s right…”

“Please share with me the name of your supplier,” Bakoon said. “It’s evident that your drugs are of the highest quality.”

Rikwaal cocked her head to the side. “Well, now. You wanted spectacle, and let’s be honest; it’s not as if adding a Human could make this team any worse.”

“Hear me out,” Le’ir said. “All sarcasm aside, we know our skills aren’t up to 11th percentile; we’ve come in last for four years.”

“We did better five years ago,” Enshru said.

“That was five years ago. Either the competitors are getting tougher or we’re getting weaker. Not the point. Now, the metrics are based on three factors, right? The creativity of the idea, the skill of the implementation, and the degree to which the audience is following us specifically.”

“Thank you for explaining things we all already know.” Enshru lifted her head and tilted it sideways, her sharp eyes focusing on Le’ir. “I am sure none of us had any idea how this competition we’ve been performing in for nearly a decade now works.”

Le’ir huffed. “Let me talk, Enshru.” He glared back at her. She reached her left small-arm over to her left large-arm and began grooming the feathers there, backing down while pretending not to have lost face. “So. Skill of implementation’s worth the most, obviously, and that’s where we have our greatest weakness. But if we could do really well on the other two, we’d have a chance. And Humans are well known to take shortcuts, and use, mm, creative means of getting around limitations.”

“You mean human-rigging their stuff?” Irta smirked.

“That’s racist, Irta,” Rikwaal said coolly, making it clear that she didn’t care but as the project manager she had to pretend to.

“Oh, come on, they’re so known for it we named it for them.”

“Yes, that would be the racist part.”

“So they’d be a focus of interest just for that. What crazy idea will the Human come up with? What stupid and yet feasible methods will they implement? Will they go the long way around in a really entertaining way? Will they use nonsensical materials and overengineer it so they work? Or is it going to blow up in their, and our, faces?”

“Hmm,” Bakoon said. “I’m beginning to see where you’re going with this.”

“Plus, a Human has never been on one of our teams before. I think we’ve only ever had two aliens, ever, and neither of them were Human. So they’ll be interesting for that reason.”

“Do you think we can possibly get enough points just from views that it’ll compensate for poor skill and lack of creative ideas?” Rikwaal asked – not sarcastically, but as if she genuinely thought he was considering that idea, and wondering if she should too.

“No, because lack of creative ideas won’t be a problem. We’ll have a Human. Creative ideas are what they’re known for.”

“Creative, completely impractical ideas,” Enshru said.

“But gloriously impractical!” Bakoon said. “Yes, I see what you’re thinking, Le’ir. A Human’s creativity, plus the engineering skills of a team of Diwar… even if our implementation fails spectacularly, we’ll gain enough from creativity and from the curiosity value of a Human competing that we’ll stand a chance! And if we should not fail at implementation, because the Human gives us ridiculous ideas that work nonetheless and then we work them out with Diwar rigor, we may enter the 20th or 30th percentile. Comfortably.”

“I don’t like it! It’s making a mockery of the whole competition!” Irta complained.

“Well, let’s vote on it,” Le’ir said reasonably.

Le’ir, Bakoon and Rikwaal all voted yes. Irta and Enshru voted no.

“That settles that, then,” Rikwaal said.

“Wait!” Irta said. “We never asked Mip! For something like this? Working with a human? Having to make sure they have the right food and the right bathroom facilities available? We have to give Mip a vote!”

Mip was an engineer of a completely different type – he was the facilities guy, managing the computational arrays, the food service, the cleanliness of the workspace. Irta had a good point – Mip would be one of the ones most impacted by the presence of an alien.

However, when they brought him upstairs to vote and explained the situation to him, he said, “You dragged me away from my work for this? Unbelievable.”

“But you get a vote,” Irta said. “You’d be the one to have to do all the extra work if we bring on a human!”

“I’d be doing extra work if you expanded the team to add another Diwar, too,” Mip said, “and don’t pretend you care about my workload, Mr. I’m-going-to-shed-my-feathers-all-over-the-arrays. Do whatever you guys want, I don’t care if you want a Human or a giant frog.” (Technically he did not say frog; the creature he was referring to was an aquatic reptile rather than an amphibian, and usually the size of a Human head, but in most other respects it strongly resembled a frog.) “Just let me get back to my work.” 

As he stomped off, making sure they could hear every clatter of his talons on the deck plating, Bakoon said, “So, Le’ir, my boy. Let’s talk. How were you planning to recruit your Human?”

“I hadn’t really thought that far,” Le’ir said. “I wasn’t sure you guys would agree.”

“And personally, I don’t,” Enshru said.

“Yes, yes, we know, Enshru. You’ve made your opinion abundantly clear,” Bakoon said. “Well. My family has trade dealings with Humans; I’ve dealt with them often. Let me be the one to find a Human for the team.”

“This is a bad idea,” Irta said, “and it’ll probably end badly.”

Rikwaal smirked. “But it’ll be such fun to watch before it does.”