The Truth About Santa

by Gregory Mone

  This alien technology is tremendously reliable, but the turbines are also serviced by autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs. When the performance of a particular turbine degrades, one of these Jet Ski–sized robotic submarines is dispatched to inspect the machinery. In recent years, companies like Chevron have funded the development of highly capable underwater robots in hopes that they could be used to service deep-sea oil wells. In some cases, future wells, which lie at the top of an oil pipe, may sit more than a mile below sea level, down at the very bottom of the ocean. Sending repairmen down wouldn’t make sense, and accessing the wells via remote-controlled submarines would be too costly. Independent robotic submarines would be an ideal alternative, as they’d be able to inform engineers when or if real repairs are needed.

  In Santa’s system, the AUV navigates to its target using a form of sonar. It attaches itself to the turbine with a mechanical arm, then uses a series of scanners to check the surface of the machinery for dings, dents, or other flaws. With its manipulating arms and tools, the AUV can repair a range of defects itself, but in rare instances, when the needed work is beyond the robot’s abilities, the faulty turbine is simply left to run until it degrades completely. A replacement self-assembles and comes online shortly thereafter.

  The tragedy of Santa’s green power system is that nobody knows about it. Alternative-energy companies pursuing the development of similar technologies down here in our alien-upgrade-free world would benefit hugely if people were aware of the fact that this technology really can work. A company called Verdant Power, for example, recently launched a pilot project in New York that hinged on underwater turbines. Initially, Verdant installed eight turbines in the river, and the devices did produce electricity. But the company also had a few setbacks—several turbine blades snapped in the river’s strong currents, and skeptics said that the technology would never generate the kind of power promised. Now, if governments and investors only knew how many megawatts Santa draws from his turbines, and that he powers a small city primarily by borrowing energy from the ocean, they’d be only too happy to endure these little technological speed bumps and give Verdant and companies like it the funding they need to perfect their devices.

  But don’t blame Santa and Mrs. Claus. They’re in the gift business. They don’t have time to get involved with energy politics.

  15

  Why All Elves Are Clones

  ALIEN-SPONSORED EUGENICS, WORKPLACE EFFICIENCY, AND SEXUAL POLITICS AT THE NORTH POLE

  Industrious, relatively obedient, supremely resilient, and, best of all, small, elves are the ideal North Pole workers. They can live on only candy canes and water for weeks at a time. They don’t have great entertainment needs; early Nora Roberts novels keep them happy. They require only a fraction of the living space of full-sized humans, and they love bunk beds. This is an added bonus, from a space-saving angle. At the Pole, five or six of them often live in a room no bigger than the average West Village studio apartment.

  They don’t complain about the food, the lack of natural light in the North Pole’s underground dormitories, or the sixteen-hour days they spend staring at computer monitors, analyzing the data gathered by Santa’s intelligence network (the specifics of which will be detailed in part 4). Yet there are still variations in their skill levels. Some elves are, quite simply, better at their job than others. And that’s why they’re allowed to reproduce only through cloning.

  Let’s step back a bit. The elf population started small, with fifty-seven pointy-eared individuals reporting for the first year’s work. (We don’t know where they came from; it may be that they are aliens themselves. Vulcans, perhaps. Mr. Allen, would you care to respond?) In the beginning, though, Santa’s operation was also relatively tiny. That number of elves was totally sufficient. When he began hiring lieutenants, though, and slowly expanded his reach across the globe, the number of children he had to keep an eye on throughout the year expanded, too. The flow of surveillance data became too great for fifty-seven elves to manage.

  The engineering work increased exponentially, too. More homes to visit meant more wormhole time machines to install and maintain. Thankfully, though, Santa’s operation was designed to be scalable. Santa’s aliens predicted growth and built in a computerized management system that expands the elfish population in anticipation of increased workflow.

  Each elf is constantly rated and ranked in terms of productivity and efficiency, and only the top workers are cloned. If the system estimates that Santa’s operation will require, say, ten new workers a year for a given period, in a given discipline, then ten clones of the year’s most efficient elf in that area will be created. They won’t be ready to work right away, though. There’s no growth acceleration technique, as in the cloning films The Island and The Sixth Day, so there is a waiting period. That said, child labor laws do not apply at the North Pole, so elf kids can start working as early as age nine.

  Is this eugenics-style approach deplorable? Absolutely. Morally vacuous? Without a doubt. Yet we must not blame Santa himself, as he is completely unaware of how it works. He only knows that he always has the right number of capable, efficient workers every year. The aliens did it, so if you wish to protest, direct your outrage at the cosmos. And do so at night, since it will be hard for them to notice you during the day, because the sun gets in the way. If you’re going to use signs, they should probably be really big. And well lit.

  Contemporary scientists have adopted a similar approach to cloning canines. In early 2008, the Korea Customs Service announced that it had commissioned a group of scientists to clone an accomplished drug-sniffing dog, to test whether the technique would produce better crime busters. In the end, three different surrogate mothers gave birth to a total of seven cloned puppies. When these clones were put through a series of tests designed to determine a dog’s potential fitness as a drug detector, all seven of them passed. In comparison, eight normal dogs took the test, and only one of them was identified as a potential candidate.

  The dog doubles were produced via the most popular cloning technique, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. On a surface level this method seems pretty simple. Take a female egg; remove its genetic material. Next, pull the nucleus out of a cell derived from the dog, or elf, to be cloned, and pop that into the egg. Then cultivate the combination in the lab until it’s a viable embryo. Finally, when everything looks good and healthy, implant it into the womb of an adult female of the same species. See? Easy as 1-2-3. And from that point, Mother Nature takes over.

  But it doesn’t always work. The group that produced those drug-sniffing dogs previously turned out the world’s first canine clone, but they burned through 1,095 embryos along the way. They implanted embryos in 123 surrogate mothers but produced only three pregnancies and a single success. The scientists did witness two births, but one of the pups died after just twenty-two days.

  The specifics aren’t available in this case, but if we assume that the North Pole uses a similar though more efficient cloning technique, then it would be a fairly simple setup, and one that neither Santa nor his elves would even need to be cognizant of. The male elves would have to be sterilized at birth, and it’s likely that representatives of both genders would be forced to take and adhere to a vow of celibacy. Santa needs them to be resting in their off-hours, not jumping from bunk to bunk. Which makes you wonder why he allows them to read so many Nora Roberts novels. But that’s another matter; elfish sexual behavior is a topic for a different book.

  Santa’s robotic surgeons could remove and store sample cells from each elf and maintain a supply of eggs removed from female elves. This way, they’d be able to initiate cloning when prompted by the population-management software. Healthy embryos would likely be cultivated in artificial wombs, since popping them into supposedly celibate lady elves would surely stir up some controversy and, in turn, have a negative effect on productivity. (Undoubtedly the elves would suspect Santa, since all the males are sterilized and the big chief has be
en caught staring at the little ladies on occasion.)

  Post-birth, the cloned elf children would be reared like normal kids. Sure, growing up trapped inside an underground facility, destined to become a constantly monitored drone chained to a computer at the age of nine, might not sound like a normal childhood. But remember: They get candy canes. As many as they want.

  PART IV

  Surveillance

  16

  Kringle’s Eyes in the Skies

  UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES, MINIATURE FLYING ROBOTS, AND WHY THE CHRISTMAS ALIENS MAY HAVE UNWITTINGLY ADVANCED MILITARY SURVEILLANCE

  December twenty-third. Santa’s lieutenants are well rested and ready for another round of deliveries, thanks to their annual pre-Christmas stay in Hawaii. A few too many chilled, golden Kona Longboard Lagers and some extra time in the sun haven’t hurt; a little redness in the face and an extra inch or two around the waist enhance a lieutenant’s Kringle-ness.

  Santa and Mrs. Claus are refreshed, too. The elves have been working hard, as usual, but the onset of the holiday season gives them an added burst. They no longer mind the hours, the glow of their OLED screens, the repetitive stress injuries.

  But what have they been doing while Santa and his crew relaxed? Not manufacturing toys, as we’ve all been taught to believe. Nearly every gift Santa delivers assembles itself, on-site, from a collection of micro-and nano-scale components (see chapter 32). Yes, there is maintenance work. Wormhole-based time machines require frequent tuning and need to be resupplied with fuel to generate the necessary amounts of negative energy, the stuff that actually keeps the wormholes open. A sizable population of elves stays busy fixing chimneys and windows and conducting tests to ensure that the surveillance equipment Santa has deployed over the years is all still working properly.

  Generally, though, the period from February through mid-December is focused on intelligence gathering. Santa taps into phone conversations, e-mails, text messages, and more. On occasion, he takes advantage of the highly sensitive listening devices embedded in many Christmas ornaments. These “bugs” can pick up arguments in the basement even when the decorative trinkets themselves are tucked away in a box in the attic. They can identify a back-talking child from a hundred feet.

  But Santa is very much from the actions-speak-louder-than-words school of morality, so he’s far more interested in what children do than what they say or write. He believes it’s more important to monitor their actions than their speech, so most of his surveillance efforts are focused on video. And although he does tap into security cameras in schools, malls, and, if they’re digital, even homes, he captures most of his data independently, with the help of an enormous fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. In less technical terms: Santa’s got flying robot spies.

  In the non-Christmas world, UAVs monitor borders for illegal crossings, scope out battlefields, and drop bombs. The military’s Predator UAV can identify the heat signature of a person from ten thousand feet. And although the people who develop these robots like to comfort themselves by pointing out how they can be used for good causes like studying the atmosphere and helping scientists better understand the spread of aerial pollution and other large-scale climate-related phenomena, UAVs are basically war machines.

  Santa has no use for bombs or missiles, but surveillance is absolutely critical. Throughout the year, a fleet of Santa’s flying robots constantly canvases suburban and rural neighborhoods. They sweep a predesignated grid, coasting back and forth across a zone that typically covers one or two towns, constantly recording video.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking: How would Santa use a high-flying UAV to monitor a city? Given the height of the buildings, the numerous crisscrossing streets, and the density, is there any way one or even a few of these flying robots could perform effectively from thousands of feet up? That’s a good question. But it’s kind of irrelevant, given that Santa doesn’t use the usual flying robots to spy on urban environments. Instead, he deploys millions of mosquito-and dragonfly-sized micro aerial vehicles, or MAVs.

  These tiny mechanical flying insects peer down alleyways and into elevators and apartments, darkened bars, and exclusive restaurants. Capable of capturing simple pictures or identifying heat signatures that indicate the presence of humans, the robotic flies provide Santa with a comprehensive picture of who is sleeping and who is awake, and, when used in conjunction with other surveillance gear, they can provide him with the data necessary to pick out specific actions or encounters.

  While I’d like to reassure you here that this technology would never, ever be used for anything other than the safe, accurate, and speedy delivery of presents, this may not actually be the case. Numerous rumors have surfaced suggesting that the U.S. government has been using tiny, flying surveillance robots to spy on political gatherings and public protests. Given the status of today’s technology, this seems totally ridiculous and conspiratorial. There are MAVs small enough to fit on the tip of your pinkie finger, and at least one of them actually does fly. But, as of 2008, this particular mechanical marvel had to be attached to a set of guide wires. It also sucked its energy through a tether connected to an external power source. One leading expert in the field has said that he doesn’t expect truly autonomous MAVs to be flying in the lab for at least another five years. Interestingly, he also asked that his name not be included in this book, which strongly suggests that he has ties to Santa Claus, or at least believes in him, and worries that divulging too many technical details could decrease his Christmas-morning haul.

  The point, though, is that today’s MAVs sure don’t sound ready to hover over political events, collecting data on protestors. Yet we know that Santa’s robots could. And based on the incredibly small size of his MAVs, we can assume that they won’t always make it back to the North Pole. Occasionally they’ll make a mistake, confuse a closed window for an open passageway, slam into the glass, and fall apart. They might even look appetizing to a hungry bird and end up in the gut of a sparrow.

  This suggests the possibility that at some point in the past, government researchers collected a few broken, left-behind models of Santa’s MAVs and reverse-engineered them, creating miniature drones of their own. And that they are now using their alien-tech-based creations to spy on us. So, pull your shades, lower your voice, and find yourself a heavy-duty fly swatter.

  17

  Naughty or Nice

  TRACKING AND CATEGORIZING BEHAVIOR VIA INTELLIGENT VIDEO ANALYSIS SOFTWARE

  Santa’s elves are diligent analysts, but even they would find it impossible to scour all the video recorded by his surveillance drones in addition to the material swiped from security and home cameras. Those clips do need to be examined, but the elves couldn’t review them all. Thankfully, Santa’s video analytics software picks out the highlights.

  Today, this technology is poised to revamp the security industry. Think about that classic movie scene of the single underpaid guard watching a bank of screens for hours at a time. The heroes, or villains, always dupe that poor, doughnut-stuffed soul. But what if it wasn’t his job to search for threats? What if a computer did the scanning for him and only asked him to weigh in on real problems?

  In the last few years, companies have begun turning out software programs that can search through video for figures who are lingering too long in one place, unattended packages, or even trespassers hopping a fence or wall. A company called Vidient, for example, has developed a technology called SmartCatch that automatically detects suspicious action at airports, ware houses, and other locations. Smart-Catch is also being used in schools to watch for people hanging around too long where kids are being dropped off. The computers and cameras do all the work, so the security guards don’t turn brain-dead staring at their screens and miss that suspicious loiterer. The software decides what’s important enough to pass back to security or school officials. These people can then choose how to respond.

  This software could soon become far more intelligent. In 2004, while c
onducting his Ph.D. research at the University of Texas–Austin, computer-vision specialist Sangho Park described a system that could track individuals and gauge their behavior toward one another as neutral, aggressive, or friendly. His program, which is still under development, would analyze each image in a video stream and effectively frame different people and their associated body parts—arms, legs, etc. After distinguishing each person, the program would monitor how he or she acts relative to others in the scene. So, if two arms are linked but attached to different bodies and moving in an up-down motion from one frame to the next, this might register as neutral or friendly behavior. The two people are probably shaking hands. But if one of these arms is moving quickly toward and away from the other body, or frame, this could be a sign of aggression. That person could be pushing or punching the other.

  The key step forward here is that a system of this kind wouldn’t just track the motion of individuals. It would try to interpret the meaning of the motion.

  Santa’s video analytics program is fairly similar, though far more robust. With the footage gathered by digital school video cameras and flying robots, his software can easily find bullies, but it also catches kids who are cutting class, passing notes, stealing the Fruit Roll-Ups from a classmate’s lunch box, cheating on tests, and more. His pointy-eared analysts, therefore, aren’t tasked with sifting through infinite hours of useless footage. They’re only asked to make high-level decisions. The software sends them just the important video clips, and, by reviewing them, the elves quickly confirm or deny the conclusion reached by the program itself.