Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.1      Finding her Feet

1.1.3    An Eventful Journey

1.1.3.2  Missing member

Alderney was busy fixing what looked like two squashed cannon balls onto either end of a 3 meter length of chain. Tomsk was watching closely, and talking animatedly with a tall figure next to him that looked a bit like Dolph Lundgren. All three of them were wearing matching travelling clothes; presumably the ones granted to Alderney as part of her boon. Looking down at herself, Kafana noted that she too was wearing tough leather boots and breeches, a linen shirt and a fur lined cape. Her hair was tucked down her back in a practical braid, and she felt the weight on her head of what, judging from the others, must be a fur lined helm with a rain brim and neck coif. It was surprisingly comfortable.

She approached the group, meaning to hail them, then stopped in total surprise. The name above the tall man’s head read “Bungo”. Her movement drew Tomsk’s attention.

“Hey Kafana, look who’s turned up!”

“What? How? Why?”

Alderney replied, not turning around: “He’s in love with me! He couldn’t live without my sparkling wit and hazel eyes.”

Bungo retorted: “Your eyes are blue, your wit stinks, and I hate cats.”

Alderney: “You hate me and you’re here to kill me. Tomsk, protect me big brother.”

Tomsk gave a long suffering look towards Kafana: “They’ve been like that for the last 20 minutes. Alderney never could resist teasing him, and Bungo always rises to it. I feel like nothing’s changed. How are you this morning?”

“I’m feeling really positive, raring to get going. Where’s Wellington? I wanted to ask him something. Maybe you can tell me. What was the final bit of last night’s plan?”

Tomsk looked embarrassed. {The plan was that, when Lord Landi rewarded you for singing, Wellington would be merged in as one of the guests, and stand forwards saying that your singing had moved him so much that he too wanted to reward you, and then lay all the blue or green jewels on him reverentially at your feet, triggering a game of one upmanship by the other guests to see who could gift and praise you the most.}

{I’m not sure how to feel about that. Bulgaria taught us a lot about manipulation, but it is a tool that can be used for evil or for good. For selfish ends, or to help others. What I liked about being a Womble was not just that what we did was outrageous and astounding, but the ethos: "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish". Leaving the world a better place than we found it. Thinking outside the box to find better ways to resolve things than violent opposition. We cared about the means as well as about the ends.}

Wellington responded: {Bulgaria logged in yesterday to level up with Bungo, but he can’t make it this morning, so we’ll be acting as an escort for his corporeal vessel, on the journey to the city. But if he thinks playing this game together is the right thing to do, I trust he’ll give a good reason when he’s ready to talk. This game is about getting ahead, so that’s what I planned for. Money gives us maximum flexibility.}

Kafana said, thoughtfully: {Is it? About getting ahead, I mean. No matter what the game company announces is the overt purpose, people actually play games for many different reasons. Are people who play to enjoy the scenery and talk with friends, rather than to end up being the strongest, wrong to do so? I want to help Bulgaria too, but not at any price. Not if that price is making this a worse place for others.}

Wellington said, gently: {Those nobles were computer programs, Kafana. Just as much as orcs we kill for loot. I was nice to the players. I asked Tomsk to stop hunting when we reached level 5, so level 1 players helping us would still level up a bit from their share of the reward. If we’d gone up to level 6, the anti-speed-levelling provisions would have given them no experience points at all.}

What would Bulgaria have done, in that sort of situation?

She thought of the lecture theatre at UCL, with Dr. Sharpe standing at the front with a picture of the world’s continents showing on the projector screen behind him.

“Hands up, who can see the cat?”

Five hands went up. He clicked onto the next slide, which was similar to the previous one, except for a red circle around Australia, and another red line following the contour of the remaining continents, in such a way as to resemble the outline of a cat.

“The world is a cat, playing with a ball. Hands up, who can see the cat?”

Most of the hands raised. He clicked again, bringing up a slide identical to the first.

“Hands up, who can see the cat?”

Again, most of the hands raised.

“What is once seen, cannot be unseen. And the reason for that lies in how the human brain works. It is easier to make connections than to break them. If you keep feeding someone raw data, they soon reach the limit of what they can remember accurately. Instead they remember summaries: their impressions, their conclusions, the first bits of data, and the most recent bits of data. If they later learn that a specific piece of data is inaccurate, they no longer retain the ability to accurately modify their conclusion by an appropriate amount. It is hard work even to try, so we don’t like doing it. The natural tendency is, once we’ve settled on a conclusion, to try to defend against any attempt to alter it. This leads to a bias in how we think that’s known as ‘anchoring’, whereby we pay more attention than is justified to the first piece of information we learn about something, compared to later information.”

“On the benches in front of you is a piece of paper with some pictures on the other side. Turn it over and take a minute to look at them. Ok, turn it face down again. Now look at the picture on the screen.”

“Hands up everyone who thinks this person is physically ugly?”

“Hands up everyone who thinks this person is not physically ugly?”

“I note that most of the people on my left said ugly, and most on the right said not. Yet you were looking at the same picture. Why? The answer is that I changed your perception of that picture, by making it impossible for you to not concentrate on certain aspects of the picture. I exposed those on my left to 8 morphed versions of the picture that emphasised negative features, or made those features negative by comparing them to a known repulsive image, such as deformed witch. I exposed those on my right to 8 pictures of that same person in different settings, including settings where they were obviously being good or kind or brave, or which contrasted them to an opponent who was looking physically ugly and acting morally ugly at the same time.”

“Over the next two weeks we are going to carry out an exercise. I’ve picked two historical figures: Genghis Khan and Louis Raemaekers. Those on my left are going to try to boost the reputation of Genghis and trash the reputation of Louis. Those on my right are going to try to trash the reputation of Genghis and boost the reputation of Louis. Each half row is a team. As a team you’ll pick an image and a tagline (such as a nickname for the person, an assertion about the person, or a title for the image) for both figures and then spend the week spreading them by any legal means you choose. On the screen is the address of a page on the university’s secure website that you can use to register your team and your selected pair of memes. At the end of the first week, I’ll measure your memes’ penetration on social media. During the second week we’ll stop doing any spreading ourselves, and leave it to natural propagation by non-students exposed to the memes and deciding off their own bat to spread them. At the end of the second week I’ll measure how much the penetration has increased by.”

She’d learned quite a bit about Louis Raemaekers and his editorial cartoons during the exercise, and had never been entirely easy with the possibility of his reputation being harmed, even though he was long dead.