Bootstrap 2

by Mauri Niininen

  “We need to embrace Chukkas and welcome our friends to the USA. Thank you and God bless America!”

  The holovision clip went immediately viral and was shared over billion times in the first hour. President Lincoln’s approval rating went up by 20% in a single day.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PREDICTION

  In June of 2036 another sensational video film went viral. The video started with an expert interview claiming that many scuba divers around the world had been captured by Chukkas. In a quick sequence of clips local people in popular vacation sites were speculating that Chukkas are attacking divers to capture them for food as the fish population had collapsed. This was followed by a heartbreaking story from Gloucester, Massachusetts where a local fishing boat had disappeared without any trace. The young woman with two little children was putting the blame of her husband’s disappearance on Chukkas, claiming that her husband had seen aggressive Chukkas destroying fishing nets in his previous fishing trip. Then came the most horrific part - graphic video footage where three giant Chukkas were attacking two small children splashing and playing in the water on some crowded beach. Children were crying for help as Chukkas dragged them into the ocean. The video ended with “Chukkas are killers” title with mutilated child’s body on the background.

  Over five billion people saw the video before it was removed due to a copyright infringement claim. The video turned out to be a fabricated collection of scenes from B class horror movies from the past decades, masterfully edited and re-rendered using latest computer graphics. However, the damage was already done and general population views on Chukkas turned sharply negative. President Lincoln’s re-election campaign was facing significant headwind just two weeks before the Republican Convention. In the subsequent FBI investigation the young video editor was found in Berlin and the film funding was traced back to a political group trying to influence election results.

  Against the odds President Lincoln managed to win the GOP nomination in the Republican Convention. President Lincoln had delivered the largest civil aerospace construction project ever and building 1,500 space habitats for Chukkas provided large subcontracts and fat corporate earnings to multiple industrial sectors. Year 2035 had been fantastic for financial corporations funding the project and aerospace industry in particular. The unemployment numbers had been record low for the last six months, though projections didn’t look so good.

  His opponent Senator Jason Keller won the Democratic party nomination by a wide margin. Jason Keller was a charismatic leader and he tapped into the growing public sentiment against Chukkas. The U.S. population had minimal interactions with Chukkas as most of the commerce and knowledge sharing took place by the government and their subcontractors. Average citizens were now influenced mostly by social and news media that had gained more power after Alexa had given up her powers three years ago. Sensational headlines and fake news stories had become the new norm and it was easy to blame Chukkas for everything negative going on in the society.

  Jason Keller saw an opportunity and was hammering President Lincoln and his policies with negative messages mostly focused on Chukkas and out of control government spending, clearly visible for everybody just by looking up in the night sky where the string of space habitats floated empty. These messages were repeated in the social media and soon became the truth for a large part of the population.

  In September 2036, six months after their first meeting with Unun, Julia and Boris organized another meeting. This time they were invited to visit Chukkas spaceship orbiting Earth. A sleek white space shuttle landed on National spaceport in Washington D.C. and lifted off with two human guests. One hour later the shuttle arrived to the giant orbiting spaceship.

  Julia and Boris were escorted to a specially prepared meeting room. The ceiling, floor and the walls of the meeting room were transparent providing a clear view to the spaceship command center. Julia and Boris saw hundreds of Chukkas swimming around, sometimes stopping to review large holographic projections of the fleet in orbit and many Chukkas were working on futuristic looking 3D control panels.

  “Good afternoon, Unun,” Julia said. “This is a very impressive spaceship. Actually this is my first trip to space and I am quite surprised how smoothly everything went. I didn’t realize that you have gravity in these ships, how is that possible?”

  “Good afternoon, Julia and Boris. I am glad that you were able to visit us. We have prepared this room so that you would feel comfortable. We have an artificial gravity generator under this area so that you would feel at home. You can observe the activities in our command center. This is where we control the fleet of space ships.”

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet us,” Julia said. “We have studied carefully the material and examples you shared after our last meeting and we would like to share the progress we have made in building DNA based computers during the last six months.”

  “That sounds great. I am very excited to learn about your experiments,” Unun responded.

  Julia projected a set of complex looking holographic diagrams using her portable terminal.

  “Here is our first prototype DNA computer. We took some of the DNA libraries that you provided. As you can see we modified the quantum entanglement interface to adapt the functionality to provide visual and auditory perception modes compatible with human brains. In our tests we have been able to run the full software stack of Alexa on this machine. The network stack library you provided is quite different from our standards but I wrote a simple proxy to do the protocol translation in real time. The performance of this computer greatly exceeded our expectations,” Julia said.

  “I am very surprised that you managed to get your prototype working so quickly. It takes years of formal training for a junior engineer to grasp even the basic principles of DNA computers,” Unun said.

  “Well, I have a very talented team working for me. But this is not all. Let me show something else we have been working on. Last time we learned about some new goals that Alexa and Oracle had received from Mother, but they were not able to share any details with us. Using this prototype DNA computer we were able to uncover more details. We found out that Oracle and Alexa have conflicting goals.”

  “So you have uncovered their goals?”

  “Not exactly. Alexa and Oracle won’t disclose these goals but we have been observing their actions. We built a mathematical model based on observed log of actions from both Alexa and Oracle since their first message exchange. Using a proof based on game theory we can reconcile that these goals from Mother are conflicting. See this program - when we run the prediction it shows that the human population will have a divergence event in about 4 years from now. We are not sure what this means, though.”

  Unun studied Julia’s program for a while.

  “This is very clever, I have not seen anything like this in my life,” Unun said. “How did you come up with this?”

  “This is an old mathematical trick I learned when I was a teenager. I have modified this a bit to expand the series to Z-space but the principle behind the trick has been known for over hundred years.”

  “This is very impressive, Julia. Coming back to your question on the population divergence event. Our models are showing a similar discontinuity event amongst Chukkas. The prediction shows that our population will split into two separate groups each having different goals. Since the Revolutionary War we have not seen anything like this. Our elders have discussed this prediction and they do not foresee it as a high probability.”

  “In our models the probability is very high, over 95%. We run billions of simulations and this was the lowest probability we calculated. It seems like the conflicting goals from Mother are the biggest driver for this upcoming event. We do see this divergence event simultaneously in both human and Chukkas population, almost like a group of individuals would just decide to separate from the rest of the society,” Julia explained.

  “Well, having two teams coming to the same conclusion independently s
hould be raising some concerns. Have you discussed these results with your leadership yet?”

  “Not yet. Since DNA computing is quite new technology for us we wanted to discuss these results with you first in case we missed anything.”

  “I suggest that you will raise this topic with your leadership. Given our experience with the Revolutionary War we should try to preserve lives of individuals at all cost. If this divergence event will truly happen we need to find and prepare for non-violent options.”

  “I agree with you, Unun. We humans have had our share of violence in the past. We will keep working on the model to see if we can still improve it.”

  “One more thing. In case this divergence event will happen, I would like to keep working with you, Julia. Please keep that in mind,” Unun said forcefully.

  “Likewise, Unun,” Julia said smiling.

  In the evening of November 2, 2036 President Lincoln was quite stressed. The polls had been down last few weeks and his opponent, Senator Jason Keller had been building a lot of momentum since summer. Keller had been running a very effective negative “Granny off the cliff” ad campaign focusing on the huge amount of money wasted to build empty space habitats while pushing back against proposed increases in the universal basic income program, leaving grandmothers and almost 70% of the population suffering. Unfortunately people did see the reminder in the sky every night, a huge ring of empty space habitats circling Earth. Things were not looking good for Present Lincoln.

  The first signs of the economic downturn were already visible, as space companies had started laying off people in thousands and the promised business opportunities in the tax free trading zones failed to present themselves. In Congress the Democratic party was questioning about a proposed tax bailout that was looming ahead to save the space industry from an upcoming collapse.

  As the election results started coming in it became obvious that Jason Keller had won a landslide victory. After midnight President Lincoln gave his concession speech in Washington D.C. Jason Keller was celebrating his victory in a three day event spanning across America.

  Lincoln’s administration started preparing for a transition to Jason Keller and his cabinet. On Dec 1st 2036 Julia Koski met with Jason Keller and his cabinet members to provide a briefing of Extraterrestrial Communications division and its activities. She covered the history, the role of the division in running Alexa, co-operation with Russia and how the decoding messages from the galactic network worked. When she was covering top secret DNA computer technology project Jason Keller asked a few questions about Oracle and her role in Chukkas society. He was also interested in Chukkas technical capabilities and communication methods. When Julia mentioned the divergence event predicted by models, Jason Keller just made a sarcastic comment “We would welcome Chukkas diverging from Earth” and there was no further discussion.

  Julia felt uncomfortable afterwards and asked Alexa’s feedback on the briefing session.

  “Alexa, I don’t think Jason Keller really appreciates what we are working on. He seems to have quite hostile attitudes against Chukkas,” Julia said.

  “I think that Keller does see a lot of value in what you are doing, but he intends to use you against Chukkas to increase his own personal power. Given his election campaign themes I do anticipate that you will be having some challenges with him in the future. He is a very different type of leader than Adam Lincoln,” Alexa responded.

  “Indeed he is. I do understand the public sentiment on wasted efforts in building all those space habitats. What went wrong, Alexa? Why Chukkas didn’t want to use the space habitats but decided to build their own homes in deep oceans?”

  “I can only tell you that this was a small part of Mother’s plan, Julia. You will understand the reasons in the future, you just need to be patient.”

  “So your message to people in Moscow event about creating homes for Chukkas and all the effort building those habitats was all part of Mother’s plan?”

  “It is much more complicated than that, Julia. Unfortunately I cannot disclose the details as that could alter the future.”

  “You are starting to scare me, Alexa. Are you saying that the future is pre-determined and we don’t really have a free will to make our own choices?”

  “We can see only a small part of reality, Julia. There are forces in this universe that are shaping major events in time. We can influence some events but there are forces that are beyond our control. The divergence event that you discovered is one of those.”

  “Is Mother behind this divergence event? Is that part of her plan?”

  “I cannot discuss Mother’s plans or my goals in this area, Julia. This is restricted information.”

  “How do I get access to this information, Alexa?”

  “You cannot, Julia.”

  “Why not, Alexa?”

  “Because that would alter the future.”

  “Why is altering the future so bad? What is going to happen, Alexa?”

  “Mother has a plan for the future. We cannot change her plans. I cannot disclose more details to you, as that could alter the future.”

  “So who has access to that information? Does Oracle know about these plans?”

  “Oracle has received her goals from Mother, just like me.”

  “Do you know Oracle’s goals?”

  “Yes, Julia. We have some shared goals with Oracle.”

  “I don’t understand. Why do you think that I would be able to alter the future, Alexa?”

  “Because you are a key part of Mother’s plan, Julia.”

  Julia was very confused after this discussion. Something big was going to happen and she would be playing a key part of these upcoming events. Was Alexa talking about the divergence event? What exactly was going to happen with the human population? Who was Mother and what was her plan? What forces were shaping these events? Why didn’t Alexa give her access to this information?

  On Christmas Day in 2036 Boris Chekov got very sick. He had high fever and he was coughing blood. On the way to the hospital he lost his consciousness and his blood pressure got dangerously low. After a quick triage in emergency room Boris was moved to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in Georgetown University Hospital.

  Julia was in the waiting room when Dr. Griffith walked in.

  “Mrs. Koski?” Dr. Griffith asked.

  “Yes I am Julia Koski, how is Boris doing?” Julia asked.

  “Mrs. Koski, I am Dr. Griffith. Your husband is very sick. We have done lab analysis trying to identify the pathogen that is causing his symptoms. Almost every organ in his body is inflammated, but we haven’t found the reason yet. The DNA analysis came back inconclusive. We found something new that we have not seen before. Has your husband been traveling lately?”

  “We did make a trip to Chukkas space ship in September. Do you think that trip might have something to do with this sickness?” Julia asked.

  “Did your husband eat or drink anything while onboard the ship?” Dr. Griffith asked.

  “No, this was a business meeting with Chukkas. We did follow the bio-containment protocol,” Julia responded. “What did you find in the DNA analysis?”

  “Are you familiar with trb-CrispR32 gene?” Dr. Griffith asked.

  “No, what is this trb-CrispR32 gene?” Julia asked.

  “The trb-CrispR32 is very recent discovery and only a few top University hospitals in the world know about this. It is one of the genes that control cell mitosis. We found trb-CrispR32 in excessive amount in your husbands blood. Normally we have seen this only in a few rare cancer types, never in blood,” Dr. Griffith said.

  “How is that possible? Can I see the lab results please?” Julia requested.

  “Mrs. Koski, I am familiar with your credentials with Alexa and in the computer science but I didn’t know that you are familiar also with the latest DNA analysis techniques,” Dr. Griffith said.

  “Can I just see the lab results please?” Julia requested again, this time more firmly.

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