Growth (GAIA Trilogy Book 2)

by Morton Chalfy

  "Indeed," he said. "Interesting."

  The Director began pointing out specific areas, "That group is tending the oxygen producing equipment, that group is growing food, on that far platform is an array of object printers where all the items needed can be produced."

  "What about water?" asked Harrison.

  "Ah yes, water, the necessity of life. There is a group that mines it from a glacier and pipes it underground."

  "A glacier?" asked Harrison perplexed.

  "Yes. That's how it will be done in space so we want to test the process here."

  Harrison tried to take in as much detail as he could and asked the Director, "Where are the men? I only see women at work."

  The Director looked very pleased at this observation. "Where are the men indeed. Not here, not necessary."

  Harrison tried to digest this information silently and at the same time wondered why no one had come to greet them or acknowledge their presence.

  "Time to go back," said the Director and the robo-car returned them to the elevator. Back in his office the Director showed Harrison an audio-visual presentation titled "Exploring the Universe". It opened with shots of Earth in space and a basso voice-over intoning that Humanity's role as an exploring species needed to continue outward to explore the cosmos. "But how can a species with a short life span explore the cosmos?" it asked rhetorically.

  "By living on their spaceship for generations."

  The video went on to show graphically how they planned to capture an asteroid, modify it with robot mining machines to make it suitable for people to live within, attach an ion engine to its surface and nudge it into a new orbit and eventually into a path to explore new worlds.

  At the end of the presentation Harrison was non-plussed. "You mean to send off a colony of female explorers on an endless trip through the universe?"

  "Exactly!" said the Director. "Explorers who can live quite comfortably for generations. Explorers who can colonize any suitable planet they find." He paused and looked at Harrison, "What do you think?"

  Harrison tried to keep the bewilderment he was feeling from his face. "Incredible," he said, "I'm in awe of what you've accomplished already."

  The Director beamed at him. "Then you'll help us? The Gaians I mean."

  Harrison retreated from the direct question. "I would have to confer. That wouldn't be my decision." He thought rapidly, "But we can start by giving you access to our network. Any further help would have to be vetted."

  The Director beamed again. "That will certainly do to begin with. Thank you."

  Harrison was returned to their suite where Helene's questioning look was met with a wave that signaled "no questions" and a bland remark about how interesting his trip had been. On his communicator using their private encrypted channel he tersely gave Helene the gist of what he had seen and his promise to tie them to the network. She agreed and sent a message to Lucas.

  During the next week, the last of their recuperative stay, the President visited again and Harrison helped the technical officer get hooked up to Lucas so the opening to the network could be set up. It wasn't until they were back in their apartment in New York that Harrison felt able to speak openly about what he'd seen and heard, "You won't believe this," he said.

  Chapter 7

  Helene was at her desk in the Global Gaia headquarters in New York at six a.m. Her work days began with a review of the overnight messages and a series of memos to her staff. Her aim was to complete her tasks before noon when she would open the visual link with Maeve and then Lucas at the ranch. The time difference gave her the space to do what amounted to two days work in one as her second shift, as she called it, often extended well into the night.

  Her work ethic was legendary throughout the Gaian organization and set the tone for the level of effort and commitment throughout its ranks. Helene had taken the job when Moms offered it and since that moment had become the most effective proponent of the cause. She attended to every detail and wanted to be apprised of any dangers or shortcomings that affected the work.

  When Maeve reported the anti-Gaian bullying actions of the school board in Detroit Helene quickly dispatched one of her legal team to research the situation and seek ways to defense it, including of course suing the pants off everyone involved. With Maeve she was a whole-hearted supporter of the idea that getting through to the children was the most important part of the work. "Change happens generationally," was their mantra and the Gaian's support of education around the globe was its most important and effective component.

  To that end most of Maeve's outreach trips, all recorded and distributed world wide, were to schools. She spoke at graduations and commencements throughout the country, very often at grade schools and middle schools. With her own children in tow serving as unofficial ambassadors she was in constant demand. The children were old hands at the sort of mingling that worked best and each maintained a social network site where they fielded questions from their peers.

  The questions were appropriate for their age group and often centered on homey details. A salacious one that popped up periodically was what the High Priestess wore under her robes.

  By six in the evening Helene took a break for food and then spent several hours debriefing her staff on the day's developments. The period just after their return from Rejuvenao still left her sore and aching but the surge of energy she felt boded well for the next decades.

  Harrison joined her for a meal and afterward went over his visit with the Director.

  "Do you think he's creating a new species?" she asked, "all female, all small, all dedicated to space exploration?"

  "Well, he did write Directed Evolution after all, so yes, that's what I think."

  "Is it as mad a plan as it appears? Even if the technical parts can happen wouldn't it take dozens and dozens of generations to get anywhere? How is that expected to work?"

  "Megalomania sees no obstacles," said Harrison, "and I think that's what we're seeing here. He has plans for everything. The Ark, as he calls it, would be outfitted with an enormous computing capacity that would serve as educator, problem solver and institutional memory. The people would spend their lives in its metaphorical embrace."

  "How will a team of all women reproduce?"

  "Ah, they will take off with half the team impregnated and enough frozen sperm to last for generations. I think that much of the sperm will be the Director's."

  "So boys would be born in space?"

  "Yes, that's his plan. He thinks that growing up in a female dominated closed society will counteract any propensities for violence."

  Helene shook her head. "What time line does he envision?"

  It was Harrison's turn to shake his head. "An incredible one. He thinks they'll be ready to put the next phase - landing on an asteroid and digging out a suitable living space - within the next ten years. He thinks it will take another fifty years to get it ready and then they would ferry the crew and equipment there to start the voyage."

  "Who's going to oversee such a long range plan after the Director is gone?"

  "I don't think he's planning to go. After all, if the Director of Rejuvenao' can't live for centuries who can?"

  Helene looked startled and then thoughtful. "You have to be crazy to think this up. And where will all the money come from? Space travel isn't cheap."

  Harrison nodded, "I asked Lucas to look into their set-up and some of what he uncovered is startling. Based on the amount of traffic into Rejuvenation City every year and the amounts they charge for their services he calculates that half of Brasil's GDP comes from that one source. Their profits from Rejuvenao are large enough to buy anything they want. The Director is sitting on an ocean of money and more comes in every day."

  Helene grimaced, "And what does he want from us?"

  "Access to the network. They do a lot of collaborative work that needs to stay confidential. They also want to head hunt among our users."

  "Make sure we charge them commensurate with the
ir ability to play."

  "That's a good idea. And Lucas said that he's putting one person dedicated to monitoring their traffic on the job."

  "Do you think there's any danger in them?"

  Harrison looked grim. "Yes I do. Their main technological breakthrough is the ability to identify and exchange minute bits of DNA to achieve their desired result. His example was changing nose shape in the developing fetus by exchanging the code for large and beaky, for instance, to small and shapely."

  "Designer children."

  "Right. So what happens when he decides to redesign the species, to "improve" humanity by a few well chosen snips? When the DNA is modified it breeds true. That's a power that worries me and its in the hands of a madman."

  "Any action to take?"

  "Stay on his good side and watch carefully."

  Chapter 8

  When Mai Ling heard of the Detroit School Board's actions she quickly called upon the Episcopal Archbishop and the Imam of New York's largest mosque to record short sermons which said, "Since all of creation flows from God's hand a belief in the unity and sanctity of all life on Earth is clearly correct. One may be a committed Gaian without violating any of God's principles."

  She then arranged for both sermonettes to run as part of the next weekly missive from Maeve. In the beginning Moms had always delivered the Saturday Sermon and for a short while after her death Maeve continued that practice but at Mai Ling's suggestion that practice morphed into the present one where other speakers recorded a message which was then bracketed by remarks from Maeve.

  Speakers had been scientists from all sorts of disciplines, field workers in conservation, representatives of many independent settlements and clergy who shared their views.

  "Do you think it will help any?" Maeve asked her chief PR representative.

  "Who knows?" answered Mai Ling "but not responding would be worse. We can't ever leave the field to the bigots. It just emboldens them."

  "Well, I'll leave this battle for you to fight," said Maeve, "but call on me whenever you have to."

  Mai Ling nodded and left to let Maeve get back to her work. She had already asked Lucas to get reports on the main players suspecting that they were being financed from the outside. "Find something I can blackmail them into silence with," she said. "I want to quash this as soon as possible." Lucas looked at her in a way he had that expressed "How can anyone so beautiful be so bloody minded," but nodded and said he would give her a report as soon as he had one.

  Maeve had gone back in conference with Helene and Robin from the Anarchic Artists. The Gaians had endowed a media lab at the Artist's cube under Robin's direction and had received a steady stream of presentations teaching Gaian principles, the unity of life on Earth, care for the environment and basic science. Maeve told them about the clergy's sermonettes and what occasioned them and asked, "Can we do something that draws the sting of the irrational religions?"

  Robin's strong voice came back saying "Nothing stops the nuts but we can sure blunt their message. I'll put the word out."

  Helene discussed the preparations for the next Gaian convention. It was still three months away but the logistics always consumed a great deal of time. They expected over a hundred thousand visitors this year and wanted to use the opportunity to launch a few new projects and update people on the ongoing efforts.

  "Try not to over-schedule me," said Maeve by way of signing off.

  She sat back in her chair going over her schedule in her mind. With the tele-conference out of the way she had just time enough for coffee and planning with Cindy before the day's visitors were to be met. Cindy went over the list with her in a general way to rank the personages in order of their importance to Gaia. She also ranked them in terms of self-importance as a guide to how they expected to be treated.

  The screen built into Maeve's desk, visible only to her when she sat behind it, would show a short bio of the visitor, what they wanted and any pertinent facts about them. Between visitors Maeve would refresh herself and consult the precis before Cindy ushered in the next guest.

  "Anybody fun on the list?" asked Maeve.

  "One possible," said Cindy "a girl from San Francisco who is carrying a petition to have the Principles of Gaia included in the Constitution. She is also the head of a Gaian fan club and wonders if she can meet the kids and interview them. It seems they all have pages on her fan club site and get thousands of hits whenever they do something public. The interviewer said she's a bright girl, maybe fourteen and a bundle of energy."

  "Let's ask the kids if they want to and if so, let's do it."

  The day flowed as usual and Maxine, of the Gaia fanzine as she called herself, was a delight to Maeve. A slender, tallish girl with sparkling brown eyes and a head of untamed black hair she smiled so hard at Maeve it seemed her face would break open.

  "It's you," she said, "it's really you!"

  It took a while before she regained her composure enough to hand Maeve the petition and have photos taken of them together. When she was led from the room to meet the children she executed an old-fashioned curtsy and backed out of Maeve's presence.

  "That girl has been reading old books," observed Maeve.

  "I'll put her and the fanzine on our watch list," said Cindy. That's the kind of energy we can use."

  Chapter 9

  Harrison sat in his office at the headquarters, a smallish room connected to Helene's much larger reception room. He had a separate entrance which allowed him to come and go unseen. His desk was cluttered with papers and tablets and the walls with photos and artwork, mostly from children on the theme of Gaia.

  He was thinking about Rejuvenao and his jumbled thoughts were making him feel jumpy. Resorting to an old habit he left the office to walk the corridors knowing from experience that walking loosened his mind enough to order his thoughts.

  He walked purposefully, striding along with his arms swinging and his head up. He noted his passage past doors and stairs, past elevators and the occasional decorations and routinely waved away the robo cars that patrolled the long corridors. After an hour he realized that he was striding along as energetically as when he started out and thought, "I guess it's working." It was a strange feeling - a new one to him - his mind was the same aged mind he had grown and lived with all his life but his body was vigorous in a way he had felt thirty years before.

  Age had begun to slow him down over five years ago and he had adjusted to the new reality by modifying his actions both consciously and unconsciously. This new reality of renewed vigor would require shedding many of those modifications.

  His thoughts now tended toward action rather than the contemplation he had settled into and his horizons had stopped encroaching and begun receding. The future suddenly seemed limitless and plans that had been put aside came pushing forward. Plans for travel, for projects, for an expanded version of the History of Gaia now jostled for space in his mind.

  He suddenly felt overwhelmed by the changes in his body and their meanings. His historian's mind was struck by the social sea change Rejuvenao heralded and for an instant he was physically staggered by the thought. He found a parklet hung on the side of the building and stepped out into the sunshine. The space was a plastic bubble with table and chairs cantilevered out through the building's skin, suspended a hundred feet over the street and disconcerting in the extreme if a person had any hint of vertigo.

  Harrison sat at the little table and contemplated the scene which spread much of the city out at his feet, visible through the floor of the space, and the buildings towering around him.

  "If the elites continue to extend their working lives we could lose generations of new leadership. We can become even more rigidly structured as a society than we are now."

  His thoughts circled the idea of a world ruled for centuries by the same cohort of leaders. He imagined the frustrations of the younger generations and could only see them as ticking bombs ready to explode in anger. He could see nothing but negatives from the techno
logy into the future but he could also appreciate just how good he felt.

  He knew he wouldn't want to go back to his body before the treatments and he thought he was already seeing younger people differently. "If one wasn't megalomaniacal before," he was thinking of the Director, "this certainly would push you down that road."

  He thought he could understand how a plan that took five hundred years to accomplish could seem reasonable to a man who felt he had the power to live forever. The thoughts made him somber and worried about his future mental state and, importantly for him, Helene's.

  His walk back to his office was at a slower pace while various scenarios played out in his imagination. Would the effects of rejuvenation subtly alter his thinking so that in another twenty-five or thirty years he would convince himself to go through the process again? Who would voluntarily lay down to die if they still felt healthy, vigorous, vital? Would a subtle type of madness infect the rejuvenated so they unconsciously conspired to maintain the world as it was in order that their lives could extend indefinitely?

  He thought that was very likely. The elite had always tried to extend their influence after death, grooming their children to carry on their work and establishing organizations meant to do the same. Harrison knew that would be bad for the mass of humanity but could also feel how strong the impulse to stay alive would be.

  In his office he found a message from Lucas, a short message that immersed his mind in a cold bath and confirmed many of his fears. The message was "Born 2099!!"

  That made the Director one hundred and thirty three years old and counting.

  He walked across to Helene's office and looked in. She was at her desk discussing something with her aides but waved him in while she finished. When they were alone he asked, "Did you see the message from Lucas?"

  "No," she said and scrolled through her messages.

  "Oh my," she said when she saw it. "He didn't look over sixty, did he? Oh my."