The Benefits Of Social Responsibility

Hey Everyone!! :-)

Here's a little bit more of the third installment in the Petri Dish Chronicles! As always, the disclaimer is that this is a draft and, as such, it's unedited and likely full of errors and is subject to revision, revamping, and being completely scrapped and rewritten. But, with that in mind, I'm reasonably satisfied with the basics of it, at least at the moment, or I wouldn't have bothered posting it. Enjoy! :-)

Excerpt from the third Petri Dish book:
If she had thought about it before coming to Zanzibar, Petri would have guessed that having such a soft environment would make people lazy and complacent. But now that she had lived in such a place for a little while, she was coming to realize how wrong she would have been. Since the people on Zanzibar had created a system where society, as a whole, absorbed some of the risk of any venture members of that society decided to attempt, people were far more apt to take those risks than the people in Under City were. The result was a startling amount of innovation that only served to further enrich the planet’s entire population.

The money Petri had received from the Arcanum had made it unnecessary for her or Chessie to work. Her friend had been occupying herself by following Zanzibar’s medical and psychological protocol to prepare to undergo her PGRP. Chessie’s diddling skills were sufficient that she could have chosen to circumvent those protocols if she'd wanted to, but her friend seemed happy and hadn’t succumbed to one of her periodic bouts of depression since they had arrived on this planet, so Petri figured she was doing what was right for her. But that still left Petri at loose ends. She’d been forced to hustle just to survive for her entire life; she didn’t know what to do with all the free time she now had on her hands.

Chessie had suggested Petri use her newfound freedom to broaden her education, since what she’d had access to on Upworld had been so limited. But Petri still didn’t find standard educational programs easy to use. Besides, if what she was learning about was too abstract, she had a hard time forcing herself to pay attention. But money was something Petri understood. She had lived and breathed the pursuit of money since her childhood, and she was acutely aware of the pain of not having enough. Even though she understood that on Zanzibar she, Chessie, and Sadaka would never face the type of poverty that had defined their existence in Under City, she still couldn’t quite rid herself of the occasional moments of panic at the thought of losing what they now had.

With all the innovative advances on this planet, Petri’s drive to increase her wealth had found a natural focus. She had taken to visiting the science and technology expos the city regularly hosted, and she had found several small, start-up companies with products and ideas she thought were solid enough to invest in. The research she had done on both the companies and the concepts they were working with had the side benefit of forcing her to surf the rainbow, and as a result she was slightly more comfortable in that environment than she had been. Though, she doubted she would ever attain Chessie’s level of expertise. But it was an unusual twist in the social contract people on Zanzibar had created for themselves that had ultimately led her to her new hobby.

Residents of Zanzibar were expected to pay back into society in proportion to their success. The tax code for the planet was structured to reflect that, with those at the highest levels of income paying proportionally high marginal rates in taxes. But there was also a social aspect to the expectation. Casual conversation at clubs and parties often centered around what type of work a person was volunteering in support of, what form of political advocacy they engaged in, and what type of investments they had made in what new companies. Petri had run into the game of one-upmanship previously, on Upworld it took the form of “whoever has the most toys wins,” but she had never before encountered such a socially conscious form of it. And she had discovered that people who declined to fulfill society’s expectations in this regard became pariahs.

Though Petri no longer needed to worry about absorbing the emotions of her prey, along with their energy, when she fed, it was still easiest to feed when she was in close physical proximity to the people she drew energy from. And, because she wanted to make sure she didn’t harm anyone by taking too much from any one person, she made it a practice to feed from people in large groups. She had to be careful to hide her eyes since they glowed with her power when she fed, but that had been surprisingly easy for her to manage. No one expected to see an Arcanum at the local club, so no one was looking for one. And the social atmosphere, and consumption of spirits and other party drugs, helped disguise the slight buzz that people experienced when she fed on them.

What Petri had more difficulty doing is acclimating to the culture on Zanzibar, so as to continue to be welcome in places where she was able to feed so easily. The concept of voluntarily giving away some of her money had been so foreign to Petri that, at first, she had been resistant to it. When it became clear that invitations to parties would not be forthcoming, and that even many of the clubs would mysteriously be “at capacity" whenever she sought entry, if she did not participate in the local tradition of giving back, she had discussed the phenomenon with Chessie. Her friend had opined that it was an idiosyncratic form of patriotism, and that Petri would likely have to find some way to accommodate it if she wanted to blend in. Since it was in all of their best interests to avoid excessive scrutiny, Petri decided she would have to find a way to satisfy society’s expectations.

But, though Petri preferred Zanzibar’s relatively gentle method of expressing disapproval to Under City’s lynch mobs, being forced into doing something still rankled. However, when she discovered that she could turn a, small but tidy, profit by investing in small businesses and research projects, and therefore fulfill her obligation, the sting quickly faded, and she found herself warming towards Zanzibar’s quirky penchant for social engagement.