The Hundred Gram Mission

by Navin Weeraratne

  The room was silent.

  "Right, so that’s an engineering problem," Spektorov finally spoke, "you said you could handle engineering."

  "With the support we need, yes," Henrikson nodded.

  "Daryl that’s illegal – "

  Spektorov held his hand up.

  "So, let's say I say yes. Green light for an antimatter mission. What happens next?"

  "Well, we start. This is a going to be a big program, and I will only be qualified to run my little part of it. You'll need engineers, scientists, support staff. Most of all, you'll need miners. You can’t use AI as you do at your other mines."

  "Why not?"

  The radiation is too high. Think of how compact a modern computer processor is. Quantum effects are a problem. You can shield them, but it would be a huge expense. Human brains are much more robust, and need far less protection. You will need human miners for mid and higher level decision making."

  "I’ll get you your miners," he stood and picked up his coat. "In the meanwhile, you start working out how to get me a Von Neumann machine."

  "Daryl!" Sam flared. "I can’t allow you to do that!"

  "It’s alright, Sam. I’m only going to need one."

  "Did we do the right thing?"

  Henrikson looked out the window as Spetorov's car pulled out and drove away. Still seated, the woman's focus held him to her question. Across from her, a man snorted, ignored the sign, and lit a cigarette.

  "What does it really matter?" asked the smoker. "You can't argue with a client, still less one like that. No one has said 'no' to him, his entire life."

  "We presented facts," said Henrikson, turning around. "We gave him the magnitude of what's needed. The lawyer helped - he underlined how ridiculous the project needs are."

  "And Spektorov didn't bat an eyelid," Smoker shrugged.

  "But, we gave him the idea that all this was possible," said Questioner. "We didn't suggest that this was unrealistic."

  "Ingrid it is possible," said Henrikson. "It's just not practical. We did say this needed a high-energy physics factory, in space. Maybe he just sees such things differently, he is the richest man alive. But no, I don't think it will happen this way."

  "So, how will it happen?" asked Smoker. "Since, you know, we're the ones who are supposed to make it happen."

  "We did not lie to him: the fundamentals are the same," he sat back down and woke his tablet. "Here," a 3d CAD drawing appeared over the table, cut from blue laser lines.

  "What's this?" asked Doctor Ingrid Dethier.

  "Another mission profile. A practical one. Do you see the difference?"

  "It looks just like Pathfinder," said Smoker. "With an optimistic fuel tank. What does it use for propellant? Prayers?"

  "Look again, Evrim."

  "The scale!" Ingrid's eyes became saucers. "This is tiny!"

  Henrikson grinned. "The diagram is 1:1 scale. You can carry this ship under your arm."

  "A probe?" Doctor Evrim Uzun ashed his cigarette, the blue glow lit his face as he came closer. "Even Kuiper Navigator's landers were bigger than this."

  "Kuiper Navigator was what got me thinking about this. Remember Francoise Laplace?"

  "Was she the engineer they called the 'Shrinking Queen'?"

  "That was her. Her team's entire job was to make Navigator's components as small and light as possible. Save fuel at launch, save fuel during the mission."

  "I've worked with her," Dethier nodded. "She once told me they were going about things all wrong. That they shouldn't be building tiny parts for Navigator, but getting Navigator, to build tiny parts."

  "Exactly! Why should the mission be constrained by what you can carry? Here, the mission is to deliver a payload of nanomachines. On arrival, they construct the rest of the mission. Your propellant is just two liters of water, stored as ice. You just need 35 grams of antimatter. The payload is only a hundred grams."

  "A hundred gram mission profile?" Uzun's jaw dropped. "No wonder you kept hammering on about Von Neumann machines!"

  "Now Ingrid, this is a practical mission profile. And it is no different from what we just presented - except in scale."

  "I don't understand," Dethier shook her head. "Why didn't you present this in the first place? Why didn't you tell us about it?"

  "Because the client doesn't want this," said Uzun. "Am I right?"

  "Yes," Henrikson nodded. "This is not what we were asked to do. Spektorov wants a giant mission, a hundred, smiling, engineer-colonist, heroes. He's not interested in our literally small-thinking. He's also from a class of business men who believe in thinking big. A giant mission is a challenge to him, not a shutting door."

  "So, we pandered to him?" asked Dethier.

  "Why are you so worried about this?" Uzun scowled. "The man he has more ego than sense. But, unlike ESA, he wants to pay us. Would you prefer academia? Getting stuck at parties with social scientists running their dumbass mouths? You are on a paycheck rocket. It'll crash, but not before going up."

  "We're not pandering to him, we're doing our jobs. He wants a Pulp Scifi space colonization mission profile, and we gave him one. And I intend to deliver it to the best of my ability. And I need the same, from you two. What this is," he jabbed at the hologram, "is a back-up. A way to succeed, if we find we're a hundred years too early."

  "We are a hundred years too early."

  "Well, let's test that."

  Two Months later, Louisiana, Route 61

  "What you think it’s going to be today, huh?" Jose grinned. The orange jumpsuit was a size too large for him. "Working GM rice again?"

  Ken Brown reached over his cuff and scratched the back of his hand. All the other shaved heads on the bus were quiet. The guards up front sat motionless by the driverless compartment. Even if they could get past them, thought Ken, they’d need a mechanic to bypass the self-driving unit.

  "The weather is great," Jose said while studying the passing world. "We should be doing rice."

  "We’ll know when we get to Baton Rouge. If we get on to 190, then we’re going to farm rice. If we get on to I-10, then its mending dykes."

  "Man, I fucking hate working dykes. They should all just bust up and drown all these mothers."

  "You know some of us have mothers out here."

  "You know what we call you people?" the young man grinned, showing a faux-gold tooth.

  "You mean white people?"

  "No , I mean you people. Louisiana refugees. We call you Campamentos Mexicanos. The Camp Mexicans."

  "Why is that?"

  "Because when you put a white person in refugee camp, the other white people can’t recognize him no more."

  An hour later the bus hit morning traffic coming into Baton Rouge. They were self-driving electrics and LPGs mostly, but also biodiesel container rigs.

  "Fewer and fewer gas guzzlers every day," Jose shook his head.

  "You seem nostalgic."

  "I had a ’35 Buick man, she was sweet. Never gave me no trouble or nothing. Just 50,000 miles on her when I sold her."

  "Why did you sell early?"

  "I couldn’t afford the gas no more."

  Right before Southern U and A&M, they took the on ramp to I-10. Groans broke out from the other inmates. Soon the billboards weren’t lit up anymore, and many showed rust stains. They passed abandoned towns and flooded fields. The highway climbed an embankment –on either side stretched the sea.

  In the distance were the lights of New Orleans.

  They were back at Dyke CB-17. It was a big job this time – several other buses had arrived and some National Guard engineers. CB-17 was leaking swimming pools, orange jumpsuits waded behind it, knee-deep.

  The surprise sunshine quickly turned back to squalls. They slipped and soaked with sand bags for the next six hours.

  Lunch was vitamin enriched rice, reconstituted scrambled eggs, and some hot sauce. At least the hot sauce was good, thought Ken. A day like this he could have gone for some Jambalaya.

  "F
uck man, that was like what, a whole day?" Jose’s face was drained. Men rested their heads against windows or on shoulders. They were too tired to care if they looked gay. Outside, the sky was black with promises of storm.

  "Three dollars," replied Ken.

  "What? Fuck that shit, you got to be wrong."

  "Three – dollars – kid. Six hours, and fifty cents per hour. You can do the math."

  "I don’t even."

  "What? You don’t even what? I love how young people say that, because they can’t think of anything to actually say."

  "Hey fuck you man, don’t take your shitty day out on me. It was my shitty day too, and all I got," he banged his cuffed fists against the seat in front of him, "all I got is fucking three measly dollars!"

  A guard stood up and walked to their row. Men looked up, watching it pass.

  "Is something wrong, Jose Jimenez?" it asked. Its visor was stained with dust and rain splotching.

  The boy looked away, sullen. The guard remained still a few moments, then turned and walked back to the front.

  "Fucking guards," Jose muttered. "Can’t even send a real man to stare me down."

  "You can’t shank a robot," said Ken. "You can’t harass it. You can’t threaten it. It gives no fucks in a riot, and it’s faster than all of us."

  "Fucking gets paid more than all of us."

  "They do."

  "They do?"

  "Yeah. The security company keeps all the money. You want to know how much? Fifteen thirty. An hour."

  "That’s bullshit man, why pay a robot more than you have to pay a person?"

  "State law. You can only use an AI worker if there’s a chronic lack of humans in the industry, and you’ve got to pay above minimum wage. That creates an incentive to hire warm bodies instead. But nobody wants to be a prison guard, Jose. Department of Corrections employs more robots than the US Army."

  "They’re paying robots fifteen thirty an hour, and we get paid fifty cents?"

  "That’s not new, Jose. Prisons have been cheap labor for big corporations for the past seventy years.[xxx] No unions, no strikes. Say no and you end up in solitary. Only the irony has changed."

  "I don’t know what that word means."

  "It’s when you fall and hit your head, in a pillow factory."

  "Pillow factory," Jose yawned. "I don’t mind fifty cents an hour working there. Sign me up man."

  Dawn the next morning, they left their cell to go to work.

  "What gives?" asked Jose, squeezing between two huge African-Americans. "Where is everyone going today?"

  "Some kind of big job," said one the African-Americans. He had a curling dragon tattoo on his head.

  "Did a dyke burst?" asked Ken.

  "What do I look like white boy, fucking CNN?"

  They made their way out through the stream of orange. The guards were out in force, mace cannons and taser batons ready. The two cellmates stepped out into the yard.

  "What the hell man, is this like the whole prison?" Jose pointed beyond the chain-linked fences that bound their world. "What’s with the big ass plane?"

  Ken followed his finger, his face suddenly unreadable.

  "What? You know something about that airline? Their food no good?"

  "That’s not an airline, Jose. Sun Star is a company. This is one of their planes."

  "Nice!" Jose punched the air. "I told you I ain’t doing no fucking dykes no more."

  Ken kept his eyes on the plane. The first group of prisoners had already begun boarding. "Yeah. There aren’t any dykes in space."

  "This is outrageous! How could something like this even happen? This is legal in this country?"

  Maeve in HR knew everyone else at Sun Star looked down on her.

  She was in HR you see, and you know what people say about MBAs who go into HR. Why not go into teaching while you're at it? Look at those smug assholes in Sales and Operations. Yeah, whatever. Someone hired you once. Someone in HR.

  "No I'm sorry, I can't accept that. I insist on seeing these men, and I insist on having a final say in the hiring."

  Unless, the boss hired you. The Big Boss. The one who made rules, and then broke them at his convenience. Ah, privilege.

  "Madam, are you even listening to me?"

  "I'm sorry Doctor Henrikson, that's completely unacceptable. We have a lot of respect for you Sir, but this is not your business."

  "Don't tell me what my business is! How can you even do this?"

  "Do what, Sir?" asked Maeve. The man could have at least shut the door. Outside, Tammy and Clyde from Benefits, were staring. "I understand it was you that required we hire a large mining staff. We've done exactly that."

  "You've conscripted prisoners from a private prison!"

  "We did what we had to do, with the budget that we were given. Did you think Sun Star was going to create full time jobs with benefits?"

  Henrikson stared at her.

  "Oh, so you did! That's not how this works."

  "But we have the money."

  "Oh Honey, we do not have the money. I don't know about you, but I have no money. Mr. Spektorov has the money, and he is not spending it on 401ks for miners. If you want him to spend more on this, then you best ax him yourself."

  "I'll do that."

  "You know what he's going to say."

  Henrikson clenched his fists and looked around, as if an answer may have been about.

  "Look, you just have a problem with these people being forced to do something, they don't want to do?"

  "That's putting this mildly."

  "Then how about this? You can do a final interview with these people. Anyone who doesn't want to go, you can reject. Just say they didn't meet your specs and I'll sign against it."

  His face lit up. "You'll do that?"

  "Of course. As long as you don't come barging into my office again, trying to tell me what I can and cannot do."

  "I'm sorry, Madam."

  "We're doing first intake on Wednesday. Why don't you head on down there early, and enjoy New Orleans? I think you'll like it."

  "Thank you Ms. Higgins."

  "Call me Maeve."

  The crazy European scientist disappeared like a quarterly bonus. Tammy smiled at Maeve and looked back down at her filing.

  That's right, keep on smiling, you skinny white bitch.

  Avoyelles Correctional Center, 30 miles South of Alexandria, Louisiana

  "Hi, I'm Ken Brown, Prisoner Number Fourteen B Twelve."

  The room was prison grey, a wide-brimmed light hung low, over the table. The orange-suited man sat opposite the woolen-suited one. He smiled, bags under his eyes.

  "Hello," the other man extended his hand, "I'm Doctor Henrikson. Thank you for your time, Mr. Brown."

  Brown smiled and shrugged, "Time is all I got. At least another seven years. And most of it isn't really mine. Thank you for your time, Sir."

  "What are in for, if you don't mind me asking?"

  "Not at all. Credit card fraud and identity theft. It was my side hustle. Should have stuck to freelance programming."

  "You're a programmer?"

  "A little bit. I was. I try to be useful."

  "And what did you do for fun? Before?"

  Brown let slip a small laugh. "You really are interviewing me, aren't you? I like to make things, still do."

  "Like art?"

  "Like gadgets. You want to turn a toaster into a heater, I'm your man."

  "I think there will be plenty of heat at the facility, but, it would be good to have someone with a knack for machines." Henrikson lost his smile. "So tell me Mr. Brown, do you actually want to go to Space?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Do you want to work on this project?"

  "Sorry I - I understand the question, I just don't understand why you're asking me. Are you trying to give me a choice?"

  "Yes. You have a choice. If you want to decline, I will simply mark that I rejected you. No one will know, but us."

  "That's very kind of
you Sir. I've never been given that choice. Not since I came to Avoyelles. Er, I guess the answer is yes?"

  "Forgive me if I remark that you do not sound enthusiastic, Mr. Brown."

  "Well I mean - it's just that I don't really have a choice, do I? I mean sure, you'll honor my wishes, but what choice do I have otherwise?"

  "I'm sorry I don't follow you."

  "If I'm sent back into the pool, I'll just get picked for something else, right? Something I won't be given any choice over. You can give me this choice, but does that matter, given that I don't actually have 'Choice'."

  The two men said nothing. Elsewhere, someone was yelling to someone else about their mother.

  "You seem a little upset, Doctor."

  "No, it's - it's just that I don't want to work with anyone who is being coerced. I don't want to be part of that system, you know?"

  "I get you," Brown nodded. Then he held up his hands shrugging, "but you are."

  A guard yelled at the yeller. The yeller yelled back. More mothers were invoked.

  "I'll do it. Because I want to do it, it sounds like really cool work."

  "It could be very dangerous."

  "So is being a small, fat, white guy in a prison. This project sounds amazing. I'd go for this even if I was on the outside. I want this job, Doctor. If you'll give it to me."

  Henrikson resolved a smile. "Yes, it is yours Mr. Brown," he extended his hand again.

  "Wow," Brown accepted it and shook. "And you didn't even ask me where I see myself in five years."

  "Well, where do you see yourself in five years?"

  "Somewhere better."

  Lakshmi Rao, II

  Outside Al’lbediyya, Sudan

  "Happy anniversary, Brigadier General."

  Nasri Al-Hamdani of Egypt’s 18th Independent Armoured Brigade, looked up from the battlefield hologram. A colonel and two majors stood before him, smiling like school boy tricksters. One held a combat knife tied with a ribbon made from medical gauze. The other, a steaming, brown, date cake. Headset-wearing operators stopped talking and looked up from their ruggedized computers. Land and air displays of South East Sudan hovered in front of them.