1.3??????Making a Splash
1.3.2????An Allotropic Realignment
1.3.2.34 Metastability
She sat up and roused Nicolo, then enjoyed the sight of dancing orphans being taught by Bulgaria how to celebrate by performing a crowd wave. Unlike most venues she’d seen, there were no slackers or people opting out. Every single child threw themselves into it without reservation, joy at being part of something filling even the most starved or hard worn faces.
Wellington updated the scores:
Kafana: “The Phantoms haven’t given up hope of winning, have they?”
Nicolo’s voice was scornful.
Nicolo: “Course not.”
She looked at the taller Juvenile players, now carefully arranged in one of Bungo’s formations, spread out ready to receive passes and probing for gaps in the defence.
Kafana: “Your opponents are taller, faster, stronger, equally coached, still ahead in score, and determined to keep up the pressure. Time is on their side - they can win just by stopping you from scoring.”
Nicolo: “So? You can’t crumple when a gang turns up the pressure. Do that, and they’ll never stop bullying you. You can give a little, retreat somewhere safer, but you have to make ‘em pay a price. If they get a little more determined, then you get a lot more determined. You give it your all, even if you have to change or make sacrifices. At least you’ll keep something.”
Or if not you, then your surviving kin? Hard choices for anyone to make, let alone a kid. Could innocence ever be restored, once torn away?
Kafana: “But football is just a game. Is winning it that important?”
Nicolo: “It isn’t just any old game. It’s our game. It is so new that most guilds and noble houses don’t even have a ball, let alone a team. But we do. Thanks to you we’re the first, and nobody can ever take that away from us. This is the first proper match and every player in the Phantoms knows they might get a title if they win it, like my being a ‘Lord of the Dance’. I mean, me? I’ll never be a noble, but that title, that’s something to brag on, that’s worth some respect.”
Nicolo sounded sold on the prospect, and she wondered what the team captain had been telling his players. She remembered his pride in the lunch queue and the respect he’d been given. What could he have achieved with that sort of talent for leadership, if he’d been born a noble? Then again, if he’d had an easy life, would he have turned out the same way? Was power something he even aspired to? Only System knew.
That gave her an idea for something she could do; not to help him win, but perhaps to increase the chances he’d gain a title. She brought up her orglife overlay, and muttered to System, adding an annotation to each of the players on the Womble’s shared map: “Indomitable”.
Feeling better, she watched the game. Both sides had changed noticeably, when compared to their play during the first half. The ball sped between players now, with barely time to control the bouncing and look around before being passed on - Bungo’s animation come alive. Had the players leveled in a skill? Acquired a group formation? The midday sun was strong enough now that reflections off the shiny ball left streaks of after image as she stared at it, almost like sticks connecting the blobs on Bungo’s diagram, or the olives Bulgaria had used. What did that remind her of?
Oh yes, Alderney explaining about allotropes this morning, and how their structure could change under pressure. Was that similar to a team changing their passing pattern when the going got tough? Or was it more like the people in a community changing who they talked to and formed business partnerships with, when contained by walls and squashed in by prejudiced laws? She searched her mind for other alternatives, vaguely aware she was still affected by the buffs she’d cast.
What about the paths that could be used for free travel in Tickton getting suddenly restricted during a hue and cry? Alderney’s domed arcologies, with high arched walkways that changed which neighbours they connected to when surrounded by enemies? Groups of children who, pressured by dire circumstances, became less likely to trust outsiders? Poets and thinkers who, pressed by censors, turned from lazily sharing erotica to those around them, into a crafty driven force with plans to broadcast ideas that could topple nations?
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Her examples didn’t feel identical. Some changes, like the arcology walkways, would reverse as soon as the pressure was released. Others would freeze in place, like quenched metal, like orphans permanently toughened by the experience, with irreversible alterations to their character, values, allegiances and self-identity. Was there a third option, between totally stable and totally unstable? She searched her memory for the word Alderney had used.
Metastable. Take a group of objects connected in a pattern that’s efficient for a particular environment. If you change the environment sufficiently, a different pattern becomes a better match and, when the advantage is great enough, or you supply a sharp knock, the connections are broken then reformed in the new pattern. A pattern which may persist for a while, even if the environment changes again. A temporary haven, like Camillo’s one-night earthen bunker template; not perfect, but somewhere you can survive and pause to plan - a compressed defensive state, heavy with an air of potential actions that might burst forth if discovered or once plans to reach a better state are devised.
She looked at the tension in Nicolo’s body, as the Phantoms’ striker, #9, gained possession of the ball and her foot wound back, ready to unleash a mighty kick.
A burly Juveniles defender tackled her from behind, not so much aiming for the ball as bashing through her legs in the ball’s general direction. Tomsk, a grim look on his face, halted play with just by raising his hand. It didn’t take more than that. Even players looking in the opposite direction halted their movements as abruptly as a marionette whose strings have been tugged. Even Kafana couldn’t look away. Tomsk wasn’t enraged; it was clear he was in complete control of himself, and exerting iron control to remain calm. A lot of self-control. So much it practically radiated from him as an aura.
In words of ice, cold and clear, he explained to the boy why his behaviour was unacceptable, both as a player and as a person, and then explained about penalty kicks while Melafon raised a red card. You’d have thought, from the boy’s expression as he dragged his feet off the field to face his father, that he’d have preferred an executioner’s sword.
His eyes were lowered, avoiding eye contact with everybody. Shame. Was that another example of metastability? A state of low energy expenditure for people to retreat to when defeated, designed to avoid further losses while they take time to reassess their plans?
Now she’d recognised the pattern, everything around her seemed to match it. What about leadership? Circumstances might require someone to take on that role, changing who they related to and how, but then they tended to hang onto the role, even when circumstances returned to normal. What about loyalty? Members of a besieged community might pick a leader, a krewe or even a football team to support because sides were being drawn up and who you supported in something trivial was a safe way to signal your allegiance. It didn’t matter if the team were good, or even if they never ever won. In fact it was almost better if they didn’t.
It wasn’t rational to show strong support for a bad team, spending energy and hours of time with no enjoyment to gain in return from celebrating wins. Not unless you gained a different sort of return - the trust of those you needed to rely on, that your signaled allegiance was honest because they could see how much it was costing you to maintain. And once the siege was over, and maintaining that reputation wasn’t critically valuable?
People carried on demonstrating their loyalty, of course. To do otherwise would feel like an admission that you’d been mistaken or lying when you shouted how wonderful your team was and how worthy they were of your eternal support. Carrying on provided familiar camaraderie and the nostalgia of shared memories, while change was uncertain and felt like abandoning an investment you’d struggled to build up. Did it apply to remaining loyal to unworkable ideas and incorrect statements? Probably. She felt hemmed in and surrounded. Metastability. Metastability. Metastability.
The crowd held their breath as the penalty kick was taken, and then redoubled their previous celebrations as the ball shot straight between the goalie’s bandy legs.
She felt changed too, and checked her status. The buffs had worn off. She smiled at Nicolo. Why was she spending all her time thinking, instead of chatting with him or teaching him new songs? Still, it should make a useful discussion topic for Bungo to put on the Burrow. She spent a minute dictating a summary of her meanderings and sent it to him: “Everything’s an Allotrope!”
Kafana: “Enjoying the match?”
Nicolo: “So much I want to sing about it. Do they do that in the spirit world? Have the crowds singing great harmonies full of meaning during football matches?”
He sighed, apparently imagining a magnificent splendour she’d never see in arlife. Heh, almost as bad as the way some of her fellow music students at UCL had longed to live in the past, when their favourite classical composer had been alive. Better to be like Etaoin who, for all his faults, hadn’t put questing spirits on a pedestal. She thought about him bravely trying to praise the average terrace chant or, worse, actually altering his sense of taste to really like them
football crazy, football mad.
football has took away
the little sense he had.
He looked up at her, blue eyes wide and trusting, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Kafana: “Bulgaria would be a better person to tell you about what football matches are like in the world we’re from, he knows far more about them than I do. It should be over soon though, and there is something I should ask you while there’s nobody listening.”
standing waves.
crowd wave. :-)
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/2813186b-63e5-4cb7-a849-0dd56b6ea4c0/download (the URL links to a PDF)
DOI:
Costly Signaling and the Function of Denialism