The Alien Among Us

Hello. My name is Kitalia. Amazingly, I am the only extraterrestrial with a significant role in Spak’s universe. I live among humans, appearing to them as a girl of about eight who wears her REGs a few shades darker than most. The truth of it is, I’m about 40 years old and my eyes are… unusual in appearance, hence the shading. There’s no need to freak out the natives.

I am in exile here, banished from the myriad of worlds my civilization has colonized, all for seeking to learn more about humans. The fear among my people is that if humans managed to destroy their own world, what chance would ours have if we let them in? So interaction with humans or even entering human space has be forbidden almost since we first found out about their existence. But I live to learn about other cultures. I worked for several ambassadors prior to my exile, visiting worlds at various levels of cultural and technological advancement. Each new world merely added to my eagerness to see others, to know how much the intelligent species of the universe had in common, as well as how different they could truly be. These humans had survived a calamity our civilizations had never known. What kind of being could be so short sighted as to destroy their own world, yet intelligent and tenacious enough to survive the aftermath? I had to meet one. So I ventured into forbidden space, looking to quench my curiosity.

The story between then and now is worth recording elsewhere at another time. Suffice to say, I am here now. Though I sometimes wonder if the cost to my family has been worth the price, I have good and true friends here who would and have put there lives on the line for me. And a light is emerging in the darkness that may mean my family can be reunited both in spite of and because of my past actions.

Don’t let my presentation here fool you into thinking me a humorless ‘bot as aliens so often tend to be in your fiction. I share the humor of Spak’s primary four (Jade, Destiny, Artemis, and Jo), and have enjoyed many silly and nearly nonsensical conversations with them. But the humor is tempered by a lifetime filled with far more pain if only because it is more than twice as long as any of theirs.

Oh, and I speak Kathra as well, though I am a late learner. Of course, I'm a late learner of English as well, so I suppose the difference in skill is minimal. Not that you'd notice if I mixed up zim and zin (think and know).

Next?

The Voices Take Over!

SpakKadi’s been a bad, bad girlie. She’s been neglecting her fiction for the real world. For shame! So I (Jade Sharpe) and the other voices in her head will be taking over this blog. It’s truly a shame she can’t draw, otherwise we’d post our pics (well, some of us would). I think we should start with introductions, then. Who is to be first?

Don’t all volunteer at once. Okay, me first, then. I be Jade Sharpe, linguist, artists, and bubbly freak. I make a habit of embarrassing my friends in public and twisting the English language (and other languages) in ways unseen ante za, and por guen reason. In case the guess hasn’t entered your head yet, I’m one of the speakers of SpakKadi’s home grown language, Kathra. In fact, in all likeliness, I was a prime mover in its creation within the confines of this fictional unive. Hmmm, per and haps for reference, I should explain some pronouncings for Kathra.

Vowels are like Spanish – a (ah), e (eh), i (eee), o (oh), and u (ooo).
Again, like Spanish, the second to last syllable is emphasized when the word ends in a vowel and the last syllable is emphasized when the word ends in a consonant.
Adding “ai” (pronounced like “eye”) to the end of a word is like adding “er” in English.
Expect some words to seem familiar and still others to look made up (‘cause they is).

None too fancy. Words should make sense in context (as well as anything I say makes sense). You’ll probably hear much from me (especially if Spak consumes much and plenty caffeine), so I won’t prattle on about meself. Next?

Advertising in the Future: A Primer

For young children, users who choose to block all advertising, and those not wearing their Reality Enhancement Glasses, one dimensional advertising is still the only way of finding out about new products arriving in the marketplace and even rediscovering the products they have already come to know and love. One-dimensional ads must attract the user through their physical appearance since they contain no enhanced components. However, because people who see these ads are either making an effort to avoid intrusive advertising or are by law protected from aggressive advertising, such ads are generally straight forward and contain little extraneous information. In fact, many one-d ads these days tend to be still shots of enhanced ad campaigns. These are less likely to influence children who have not been exposed to the ads but still have the effect of reminding a higher level user of the larger campaign.

Two-dimensional ads are essentially one-d ads with minimal enhanced features. For instance, a two dimensional version of an ad containing a picture of a ball may cause the ball to spin or even bounce around inside the ad space. People in an ad may move around or even speak. Two- ads may even contain a link leading you to more information about the product, but they are rarely, if ever, interactive in that user behaviour cannot alter the ad’s behaviour.

Three-dimensional ads are becoming increasingly popular in the highly competitive world of marketing. A three-d ad either overlaps an enhanced appearance over a real-world object (for example, by making a plain, concrete building look like a medieval castle), or it creates a noncorporeal object that looks real to any enhanced user (such as a person standing in from of a store). Some three-d ads are obvious, making no effort to integrate itself seamlessly into the user’s experience. Most three-d ads, however, are much subtler. Instead of telling a user directly that they should use a product, use a service, or visit a location, an ad may place characters into a user’s environment to inform them indirectly of their availability.

Four-dimensional ads are essentially interactive three-d ads. As an example, if an ad consists of two individuals discussing how great Product X is, a user may ask the ad questions about the product and the ad will be able to answer. The most well done of these ads can be difficult to distinguish from corporeal interactions. The subtly of such advertising is extremely in a world with increasingly sophisticated users.

Targeting Your Audience

Because most users make much of their information readily available to make day-to-day tasks simpler and more convenient, advertising is becoming increasingly customized, targeting narrower audiences, even customizing itself to the individual user.

Let’s take the example of a clothing store trying to attract a passerby to come into the store. A man walks by whose REGs identity him as John Smith. The tags in his clothes indicate he is wearing a suit. His schedule indicates that he has a lunch meeting in half an hour. The clothing store can use stored pictures of him or, if the store is so equipped, take a picture and create a three-dimensional image of him dressed in a suit they sell inside. It might go something like this:

Ad: Hey, John. Afraid of ruining a good suit?

Being called by name often attracts people’s attention. This opening line, called a “hook”, will, at the very least, give the user pause. The ad must take this opportunity to introduce its product.

“This suit doesn’t stain. It’s low maintainance, and it looks great on you! Don’t you think?”

If the ad is interactive, the user may inquire further about the product. Or, if he feels he does not have time to go into the store, the ad may ask to add an itme to his to-do list to remind him to come back when he has more time.

As you can see in this example, various pieces of information about a user can be utilized to produce a customized advertisement that is both informative and relevant to the user’s needs.

Ethics

With the wide availability of information both for and about users, the line between acceptable and unacceptable advertising practices is not always clear. For instance, you can find out that a person is taking medication for anxiety. As an advertiser, you can use this information to market alternative treatments for the same condition. You cannot, however, use this knowledge to produce a customized ad that will scare them into using your product if other users not known to have anxiety would not be exposed to similar sales tactics by the same ad space. Some places have laws requiring ad spaces to use milder advertising techniques with high-risk users including children and people with diagnosed medical conditions. Some companies even voluntarily refrain from individualized targeting of these types of ads.

To protect their privacy, users will sometimes categorize information as private for all but group Y. For instance, medical information can be restricted to all entities except hospitals and doctors. Though there are still ways of accessing this information, it is considered extremely unethical and in some cases illegal to violate these restrictions without express user permission.

Summary

Advancing technology is increasing the sophistication and types of tools available to advertisers for reaching their audience. Used correctly, marketers can target only those who are potentially interested in a product without inconveniencing those who have no interest in a product. However, a balance must be found between user privacy and efficient advertising.

Repurposing

I am repurposing this site, since I obviously am not prolific enough to generate more than a couple of short stories, much less an entire novel, in a month. This will now become my general fiction site. Most of my fiction will have some recurring technologies, some of which were introduced in my one and only entry for this novel. I also have characters that I have grown through the years that may appear and reappear. Now that the temporal pressure is off, let the creativity begin!

Intro

My first entry. I've gotten started late, but if I can keep up this pace, I may just finish (yeah, right):

Nathan reread his essay for the third time. He still had twenty minutes until lunch. He wondered briefly if that was enough time to finish another lesson.

Beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!

He reach up and tapped the ear piece on his Reality Enhancement Glasses. “I’m awake,” he mumbled. Finally, he pressed the FINISH button on his console.

“Are you done now?” a little girl’s voice said into his ear.

Nathan rolled his eyes and smiled. He selected “Razelle” in is contact list and typed his response into a chat window.

Nathan: Yes, I’m done.

“Yay!” A chubby three-year-old girl with long brown hair, green eyes, and olive skin appeared in the seat next to him. “Can we play now?”

Nathan: Only for a little bit, and it has to be a quiet game.

“Why?”

Nathan: Because I’m in class and can’t talk out loud.

Razelle blinked rapidly several times. She was thinking. “How about chess?”

Nathan: You always beat me.

“How about a word game?”

Nathan: Okay. Reference string. I’ll say something, then you take a word in what I say and refer to something else. Or find a phrase of the same meaning the start a new string. Ready?

Razelle nodded.

Nathan: A rose by any other name…
Razelle: Roses are red, violets are blue.
Nathan: blue in the face
Razelle: face the music
Nathan: face facts
Razelle: facts of life
Nathan: life as we know it
Razelle: know thyself
Nathan: nosce te ipsum
Razelle: res ipsa loquitur

“Ah, crud. I should’ve known better than to switch to Latin.”

“Hey, Nat! Who you talkin’ to? Your imaginary friend?” Snickering curled the hairs on the back of Nathan’s neck.

He turned around to face the two boys sitting behind him. Ivan, a thirteen-year-old on the slow side of the bell curve, was doing a horrible job of pretending to pay attention to his console. Titus was a year younger but much more dangerous. He wasn’t even pretending to pay attention. “Mind your own, Titus.”

Titus smiled cruelly. “So tell me. What does she look like? Is she hot?”

“Short out,” Nathan growled as his turned back around.

“Not as hot as you, I’d bet.”

Before Nathan could ask what he was talking about, Gwen, an older student who was the class monitor for the day, screamed. “Nathan! Take that shell off this instant!”

“What shell?” He looked down at himself to find a naked female form juxtaposed onto his own, fully-clothed body. Titus and Ivan burst out laughing. The laughter quickly spread around the room, pressing down on him as he frantically tried to disable the shell they had somehow installed in his PAN. He fell dizzy and ill. The shortcut for his shell escaped his memory and he couldn’t find it in the menus. He could feel himself crumbling under the weight of his classmates’ cruel amusement.

Gwen typed some commands into her console and Nathan’s physical self reappeared. Razelle disappeared.

“Who did that?!” Gwen demanded.

Nathan blushed deeply. “I-I’m finished with my lessons. Can I go?”

“Don’t you want to know who did this?” Gwen looked both angry and concerned.

Titus smiled coldly when Nathan glanced at him. Ivan was biting into his fists to keep from laughing again.

“I’ll just install a block on my system. I’ve been meaning to upgrade my security anyway.”

Gwen glared at Titus who stared innocently up at her. Ivan put his head on his desk, his shoulders heaving up and down.

“Fine. I’m hungry anyway. Why don’t we grab an early lunch? Robert, you’ve got guard duty.” A teenager in the back of the room nodded and took Gwen’s place at the monitor’s desk. Gwen took Nathan’s arm and marched him into the lounge next to the classroom.

“What happened? Why did you disappear?” Razelle was already at Nathan’s side again.

“I didn’t disappear, Razelle. Gwen blocked all inter-PAN communications. Anything that wasn’t corporeal or involved in intra-personal area communications disappeared.”

“You know, you probably shouldn’t let Razelle follow you to school,” Gwen said as she fixed herself a cup of coffee.

“So your console still knew who you were?” Razelle asked.

“Dad wants her to learn. What better place to learn than a school. And, yes, Razelle, my console still knew who I was.”

“Then why didn’t you continue the string?”

Nathan, who had been reaching into the fridge to grab his lunch, stopped. “String? Razelle, weren’t you paying attention?”

“To what?” She looked confused.

Nathan waved his arms in the air, exasperated. “To the shell that Titus uploaded onto my PAN, making me look like a naked woman.”

“Oh, that. Sure, I remember.”

Nathan stopped again. “Wait. You remember? Does that mean you have a record of the file transfer? And the file?”

“Yes.”

Nathan bounced on his heals. “Show me.”

A network activity tag identifying the file, origin, and destination appeared in front of Nathan’s eyes, projected by his REGs. Nathan smiled. “Good puppy.”

“Arf!” Razelle panted.

“Did she catch him?” Gwen stood beside Nathan and stared at the point in space where he seemed to be looking. Nathan let her see the tag. “Excellent! I’ll send it to the Administrator and see to that his network privileges are revoked for at least a week.

Nathan frowned. “A lot of good it’ll do me outside of school.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about the school network.” Gwen winked. “But that doesn’t mean you can put off upgrading your security. I expect you to do that as soon as you finish eating. Those consoles may prevent inter-PAN communicating during lessons, but you really shouldn’t let anyone modify your settings at any time.”
Nathan sighed in relief. He liked Gwen. She was like a big sister to him. It was embarrassing sometimes the way she protected him, but today, he was thankful for it.

Razelle waited until he had finished his lunch to speak again. “I upgraded your security settings for you.”

“Um, thanks.” He noticed she was staring straight ahead. “What’s on your mind?”

“What did Titus mean when he asked if I was ‘hot’?”

Nathan thought carefully about how to answer. Nathan was pretty sure he knew how to explain it to a three-year-old. But Razelle wasn’t really a three-year-old.

“He wants to know if you’re sexually attractive.”

“Am I?”

“If anyone is sexually attracted to you, something is wrong with them, not you.”

Razelle frowned. “Isn’t being attractive good?”

“There’s different kinds of attractive.”

“Like?”

People started to trickle in from the classroom. Nathan brought up a new chat window with Razelle. Instead of appearing on a console, this chat window appeared on the table in front of him.

Nathan: Well, there’s “cute” which is physically attractive but not necessarily sexually attractive.
Razelle: Am I cute?
Nathan: Yes, you’re cute.

“Hooray! I’m cute! I’m cute!” Razelle jumped onto one of the lunch tables and did a dance in Titus’ soup. It was Nathan’s turn to laugh.

Titus’ eyes pierced Razelle’s image. “What’s so funny?”

“Well, you seemed to like that shell, so I gave it to you.” Titus’ eyes went wide and he looked down at himself.
“Made you look!”

“Oh, very creative, Nat. Go bug someone else.”