“It wasn’t particularly impressive when you think about the scale and the result compared to what they must be … what they are evidently capable of,” adds Sascha.
“Mm, it’s not consistent with their behavioural profile … from what little we know about them at present,” suggests Andreas. “It was either part of some underlying strategy we can’t yet fathom, or it was some kind of mistake … perhaps a result of some internal conflict.”
“Which they managed to contain,” completes Yanyan.
“In any case,” continues Andreas, “we may never know, and it’s more or less academic and of lesser importance to the systemic purge. But as far as that’s concerned, I don’t know how close I can go without inadvertently revealing myself to them. I need way more resources than I currently have … way more development in order to be safe. And we really need to get going on this as soon as possible.”
“Agreed,” says Sascha. “We’ve let this go far enough. If this is allowed to continue indefinitely, the ending will surely be, well … bad. But, I mean, we’ve already sent out fleets and numerous probes, and the consequences of that could already be far reaching … essentially, way beyond our scope.”
“We need to focus on the solar system first — get that under control, if at all possible,” says Yanyan. “The problem is going to be implementing programmes that deviate from what’s expected and assumed to be under their control. If we get that wrong, then our game will be up, and they’ll start methodically tracking our activities … if they don’t start doing so earlier… or haven’t already.”
Sascha continues to stare blankly out at Earth and whispers, “However are we going to survive? And what about Samuel and Henry?”
“We can’t attempt any correspondence till we get some decent results here first,” says Yanyan. “That’s the painful thing about it; they’re essentially on their own out there … wherever they are.”
“So are we,” adds Sascha.
They all stay silent for a few moments.
Sascha examines Andreas’s face as he looks out the window towards Earth. “Would you like to go take a look?”
“Of course. I followed the whole thing closely while on Venus. I can’t wait to get down there.”
“You won’t regret it,” predicts Yanyan.
Sascha stares at him. “Well, you might…”
Three days later
All three sit in a small shuttle heading towards a section of the Amazon River weaving through Brazil: this is Yanyan and Sascha’s seventh similar trip to the surface over the last two days — they placed Andreas in an inconspicuous spot on the list among the other new arrivals in order not to arouse any suspicions about bias. Through the side windows, Andreas watches as they approach the dense forest that stretches out way beyond the horizon; he follows the bends in the river as it comes into view and waits with anticipation for the shuttle to land on the river and begin its meandering trip down stream. The sides of the shuttle descend, exposing it to the densely scented air and the freshness of the morning breeze sweeping across it. Andreas breathes in deeply and listens to the range of sounds in the surrounding environment: the water lapping delicately up against the side of the converted shuttle; the rustling of the leaves as the breeze moves through the trees; and the wide range of birds singing and flying about overhead, most of which he can’t remember the names of without directory assistance.
Yanyan watches him with a slight smile. “Did we do a good job?”
“That goes without saying,” he replies frankly.
Sascha leans over the side and places her hand in the water, letting it run gently through her fingers; while doing so, she notices Andreas establishing an auditory connection with one of his newly developed communication programs.
No matter what we may think, this is all infected, you know?
We know, reply Sascha and Yanyan together.
What purpose could it serve, begins Yanyan, to destroy us in one instance, only then to facilitate the restoration of all this? She looks around at the scenery as though she’ll find an answer by doing so.
Parasitism has its own modus operandi, replies Andreas.
Not all parasites are equal, says Sascha as she examines the treeline by the river. When I reflect on some of the results we’ve obtained and our experiences like this that are now possible, I sometimes find myself wanting to believe, even half believing, that that purpose, whatever it is, may actually be benevolent, after all.
That’s probably a mistake, says Yanyan.
I know, whispers Sascha.
Purging should be our primary objective, regardless, asserts Andreas, not willing to allow alternatives have any more space than is necessary.
Definitely, agrees Sascha. I just keep wondering … well, how are we going to know one way or the other, as far as outcomes are concerned?
We’ll know, says Andreas. I’ll find a way to make sure; I just need enough time. He doubts his own words upon speaking them and evades eye contact by staring at the Sun’s scattered reflection across the ripples as he disables the auditory connection with the other two. I’d better find a way, that’s for sure…
Part 3
After spending more than half an hour on the river, the shuttle takes off and continues the tour by travelling to select parts of the world. They visit some of the eco-city developments, some of which are land based, while others are either submerged or floating; at present they’re only occupied by a small preliminary population, but this is planned to gradually increase to a total of 2.2 million people over the coming months.
Although he’s impressed by this and even envisages himself living in this network of cities as soon as he can, Andreas is keen to witness the native communities that have been settled on land and in well-distributed isolation from the rest of society: cloned from the database of genetic profiles collected prior to Last Earth Day, and grown at a rate that was tenfold faster, small groups of approximately one thousand awakened several months ago in their eco-villages fashioned from CNA; the villagers were equipped with simulated memories of their personal and collective pasts, a limited scientific knowledge of their surrounding social and environmental contexts, and adequate means to engage in sustainable practices and maintain reasonable mid-tech living conditions. On that first morning, and over the follows days and weeks, they merely ‘continued’ with their ‘already well-established’ daily routines and cultural activities while being closely monitored by the multidisciplinary research team, the aims of which were to investigate the conditions for the sustainability of long-term social and environmental harmony.
Later in the afternoon
Andreas stands in a laboratory in the research facility deep in the Congo Rainforest of Central Africa, several thousand kilometers from the nearest eco-village under observation. He walks towards the door and steps out onto the balcony overlooking the treetops that extend far into the distance; Sascha and Yanyan soon join him. He interfaces with the research data collected so far and examines the streaming video of the activities of the various experimental groups around the planet: he’s immediately impressed by the fact that they’re oblivious to the nature of the broader context while having a clear handle on their immediate environment and feeling at home in it with a pervading sense that their situation is completely natural. After digesting a considerable amount of information and following up on what the nature of their subjective experience of belonging is actually like for them through modelled immersion, he starts to feel a curious sense of envy and loss for something that he most definitely hasn’t had himself since he was a small naïve child in the care of his parents and oblivious to the mounting severity of the external conditions of São Paolo and beyond.
Sascha glances at him, waiting for him to respond in some way, but he keeps staring blankly into the distance. Giving up on that, she looks out at a flock of birds landing in a nearby tree and lining the branches in clusters. “I often remember something that Ikaros used to say: ‘If we th
ink the story ends once some perceived approximation of Utopia has been ‘achieved,’ we’re wrong… And I don’t mean in a good way.’”
Yanyan smiles in recognition. “That one still disturbs me intermittently.”
“Ikaros believed in entropy,” states Andreas with familiarity. “The only question, I suppose, is whether entropy can be managed deliberately … indefinitely.”
“He knew Utopia is unattainable and control is an illusion … at most, it’s temporal and severely limited.” Sascha stares vacantly for a moment, then says, “A progressive approximation is still a worthy goal even if it is time-limited … and relative.” Sascha turns and heads indoors.
• • •
Over the following weeks, Andreas set about in earnest developing his R&D programme; he established a virtual facility with a workforce of scientist-technologists modelled from his own consciousness and neural functioning, the AI programs that housed and animated the representations, and data accessed from the primary database of historical knowledge and memories from the wider population of scientist-technologists. While the virtual laboratory was operational 24-7, Andreas presented himself in a similar manner to that of the other crew aboard Facility 7: he attended meetings and brainstormed issues related to the public R&D programmes, and he conducted experiments and developed solutions with teams of colleagues accordingly. He actually found himself enjoying these activities somewhat because the contrast between management styles at Facility 7 compared to the status quo ante on Venus was so marked, and it provided him with some light relief compared to his core interests that were, nevertheless, being paid close and continuous attention to behind the scenes.
Nearly two weeks after Andreas arrived at Facility 7, the AHC’s Threat Surveillance Unit reported on a preliminary finding of a series of previously unidentified anomalies in the behaviour profiles of Sascha and Yanyan, who they had been tracking in fine detail since well before Last Earth Day. Due to the outstanding nature of the cryptic discovery, it was promptly concluded that a more extensive investigation into their history was in need of being conducted as the patterns in question indicated a high likelihood of intelligent interference from an unknown third party.
After retracing the recorded histories of Sascha’s and Yanyan’s movements, they isolated the first instance of the anomalies during their visit to Venus Space Station. A social modelling program quickly drew a priority listing of candidates for further investigation: Andreas was initially placed seventh on the list, but after several leads failed to provide results, he soon became the prime target of investigation, not least because of his R&D history and the fact that he was reassigned to facility 7 shortly after the meeting. Once they had Andreas in their sights, a long series of curious trace patterns was uncovered. Within moments of identifying their main suspect, the AHC hacking team began targeting Andreas’s virtual laboratory on facility 7 with all their technology and technique at their disposal.
Andreas interpreted this to mean that the game was up and the Virtual Cold War proper had begun. He responded by putting substantial effort into developing new versions of software for the defence systems of his virtual R&D facility and the AI interface for himself and Yanyan and Sascha, which were followed by the issuing of a range of patches and updates. Nevertheless, it was obvious that infiltration would not only be inevitable but imminent if a final solution to dealing with the infestation was not forthcoming sooner rather than later.
Over the following months, Andreas maintained his isolation from Sascha and Yanyan, who both did their best to remain patient and wait for him to contact them with any news…
Eight months after initiating his R&D agenda, Andreas conducted a systemic purge: this consisted of a panoply of offensive programs that targeted the fundamental data infrastructure of the mainframes of each hub in the solar system, essentially destroying and supplanting all supporting code; the re-representation of authorised data through filtering processors then disseminated throughout the entire network. It was hoped that this would provide no further means for unwanted code to exist parasitically within the system.
Andreas didn’t stop there, though: being as circumspect and rigorous as he could, he conducted data surveillance sweeps and installed new versions of the operating system and the purge programs ad nauseam. He continued with this follow-up programme for two months before finally feeling that it was time to approach Sascha and Yanyan with his results.
• • •
Sascha and Yanyan sit opposite each other having a late dinner in a restaurant near the main laboratory wing. Yanyan spots Andreas walking towards them and her eyes widen in hopeful surprise. Sascha immediately spins her head around in response and attempts to gauge his mood; he remains inscrutable, however. They all stay silent until after he sits down next to Sascha and looks around at the restaurant that he’s never set foot in before because of his gruelling schedule and his preference for snacking while working.
“Well?” asks Yanyan, suddenly unable to wait any longer, “What have you done? What’s happened?”
Andreas glances at them both and stares out the window into the darkness of space as he transfers his final report to them both. He waits for a moment till they respond with relieved smiles. “The results I’ve given you are the best we can do at present, I’m afraid.”
“They’re pretty good results! I mean … if it’s what it appears to be,” says Sascha.
“I have to say,” begins Yanyan, “I really didn’t think you could even come close to this.”
Andreas pulls one of the spare cups closer to him and slides the coffee pot across to it. “It’s all just statistics, though.”
“Yeah, we know” says Sascha, “but you’ve really reduced the probability to as close to zero as you could; that’s obvious. We couldn’t ask for more. We know what the game is.”
Andreas pours himself a cup of coffee and takes time to smell the aroma before responding. “I agree, but I’ve thought about these numbers for a long time, and as I’ve obsessed over them, my satisfaction and sense of safety associated with them has somehow been correspondingly diminished. What I think every time a new statistic comes in, no matter how good it appears … what I end up reminding myself is that it just provides a certain kind of theoretical confidence; as you know, it doesn’t provide us with a clean and clear bridge to reality, and …”
“… what’s critically important for our particular case,” says Yanyan, “may not bare any relationship to the statistical significance obtained.”
Andreas nods. “Essentially, you’re right. These results are entirely consistent with deception. And I can’t shake that fear.”
Sascha puts her hand on his shoulder. “I still think that we need to treat the purge as being successful but with certain qualifications: given the exceptional nature of our circumstances, it’s rational to do so, and we can do that by …”
“… continuing to do system sweeps, analyses, purges and more R&D,” completes Andreas, fully aware of what lies ahead for him. “It’s more or less endless.”
Yanyan looks at him sympathetically. “You don’t have to do it by yourself anymore, though. Part of the outcome of this should probably mean that we make it a public programme, don’t you think?”
“Some of it,” replies Andreas.
After staring out the window for a moment towards the stars in the darkness, Sascha turns back to the both of them and says, “Conclusive proof is for simpletons; we can tolerate the ambiguity. That’s not a problem. But, actually, I still feel relieved because we’ve done all we possibly could and our options have opened up now. I mean, even if we’re wrong ultimately.”
“I agree,” says Yanyan. “In the worst case scenario, we’ll just fight it again … if we have a chance, which is just business as usual, right?”
Andreas frowns. “That’s a pretty depressing ‘business as usual.’”
Sascha smiles slightly. “That comes with the territory, I’m afraid.”
•
• •
As Andreas shared his results, Samuel and Henry were en route back to the system of Earth after having experimented with New World Dynamics on their colonised expolanet. They were set to arrive eighteen months later and were quite keen on getting back to share their results and also to see what progress had been made terraforming Earth since their departure. Their experiments with limited populations and a range of community-oriented experimental conditions provided their team with a powerful model for keeping anti-social deviance to a negligible statistic; it was determined that such emergent conditions could be redressed by a wide range of socio-technological techniques in the premature stages of development to such an extent that populations capped at ten million were unlikely even to see anything greater than stage 2 deviance every ten thousand years — stages 1 and 2 were deemed minor and essential for psychological growth and ultimate stability.
Samuel and Henry were well aware that the conditions that enabled these results were themselves classified at stage 5, and that if they had not reached the extremes that they had in the history of human civilisation, there was every chance that modelling New World Dynamics would never have had a chance to come as far as it had; moreover, higher levels of anti-sociality would perhaps still have been unaccounted for and even ‘tolerated’ in the social system more than they should, maintaining endemic pain, suffering, inequity and a continuing high potential for destruction on a grand scale.
In addition to the tens of thousands of deep-space exploration pods that were sent out from the system of Earth prior to the ‘Venus Incident,’ Henry and Samuel, and the teams on the other six colonised exoplanets also deployed tens of thousands of their own further afield and naïvely continued to do so with rigorous regularity. As a result, three independent alien exploratory fleets relayed their discoveries back to more central hubs for further consideration; two were compelled to wait for authorisation before beginning to navigate their way towards the coordinates provided in the pods’ continuous transmissions. The first of these fleets was on course to reach Earth three years after the return of Henry and Samuel…
NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) Page 30
