Arlow Tsai is a great guy (really). Around the time space aliens became known to the human race, Arlow was informed about something strange. Copies of him were appearing around the multiverse. When he found out that he was in line for huge inherit...
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The elLan back from Planet Wroug arrived at the Lan Security Head's office. She was the student to Security Head. That relationship is still in effect. He and she sit down on a doublewide chair.
Her Lan ID was roughly 300 characters long. No one would use that identifier. Automatic ID linking would permit them to have all types of information about others that they had initially met.
That was all going to disappear, everything she knew. She could remember, but centuries pass with a reliance on the hard data. Memories were always uncertain.
Data access to those people and events would be irrevocably gone.
He asked her if she was prepared.
She had endured many training sessions. Data files locked for hours at a time.
This was no test. It would actually be gone forever. She shivered, and the Security Head hugged her. When she said yes, he had many years of experience to compare to.
He was sure she was ready. Her ID was blanked. None of her systems would respond. All systems needed a valid ID to work and would not accept invalid IDs (to prevent override hacks). That really was an unexpected feeling; to have no control.
She had practiced a lot with those systems; especially the special ones. They were like extensions of herself. She knew those would be gone. There was no need for me to have them. They were in many ways dangerously powerful.
Security Head: "Do you have any requests?"
elLan: "I want you to take personal charge of my student, and also something I will ask later."
Security Head: "I expected that. I might not be able to make that promise. She has started something which might be a problem. Your new ID is going be entered. Are you ready?"
elLan nods. It is painless, but she knows that she will have to prove stability before she can start systems. The hugs help as they always did. That was why it worked this way. Her health systems were authorized first, and she engaged it reasonably soon; followed by her protection systems. She ran diagnostics on both, but just once. She needed to prove stability, restraint in face of change.
Security Head: "What was your other request?"
elLan: "That Wroug Area Security Chief.... If he shows true; tell me when the timing is right for us to meet. If it was just a ploy, never tell me."
The Security Head turned on a video screen. The flash fans of the missing kiss were spreading all over Lan territory. There were some crushes where large numbers of Lan fell over and some minor trampling. Healing systems took care of most issues. The second-link kissers created some more third-link kissers and sent them to targeted trouble spots.
The turnaround point happened a good time. A Lan researcher, using just the written documentation, created a body swap field for one minute. He was off on the edge of Lan territory.
The kissing fad had serious competition; real engineering. Application engineers would wait for the researcher to post eventual results, but this was going too big. The researcher wanted to be very methodical; he was not ready to accept any harm in validating the technology too soon. He would wait months and extend the duration of swap and publically offer all of his health reading. To him, this was simple cross plane field technology. It needed to stable and provable controllable.
The kissing fans sent kissers to Lan outposts. They kissed them and promised that "where Lans were (anywhere in the universe); they were part of the community".
Quickly then, they announced a change to the kissing rules. Kissers with long link counts, when they kissed someone, would assign to the other person a kiss count one longer than theirs. Those at the ends were now the leaders in the game.
The student and other two elLans took kisses and disappeared. It played itself out that night (for the most part). There were some social groups that engaged in kiss sniper fun for many years.
With the Wroug Admin, elLan safely provided with income and a fresh life.
The Security Head took her student under his wing. Not as the student. Her goal to make the fad die out proved her worth. She would run missions after she had spent some time as a teacher of alLans for her team.
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