"I understand."
"If you do, you know what will happen."
"Yes."
"What will happen Mama?" asked Yosri, loudly.
"Be quiet and behave," she steadied herself against a box.
The truck began to move.
It went ten meters and then the helicopter changed course.
"It's coming at us," said the driver.
"Just a few more meters, do it," said the radio.
The helicopter stopped over the road, and faced the truck head on. Aida looked over her shoulder as the guard stepped behind her. She looked back, and noticed the red laser dot on her chest.
She closed her eyes.
"What's it doing?" asked the radio.
The driver didn't reply.
After a few moments, Aida opened her eyes. The helicopter was still there, judging her.
"Fuck this," she gave it the finger.
"Stop! What are you doing?" said the guard.
"Fuck you!" Aida glared at him. "If I die today, it won't be as a coward!"
"Get her under control," said the driver.
"Don't touch me!" she held up her finger. "I'll grab my son and jump out of this truck."
"I'll shoot you," said the guard.
"And then it will shoot you," she smiled.
"What's going on over there?" said the radio.
"Fuck this!" offered Yosri from the floor. "Fuck you!"
The helicopter turned and resumed its earlier path.
"Go!" said the radio, "Don't stop till Sana'a!"
The vehicle began moving, picking up speed. Aida sank to the truck floor and muttered a prayer.
"You're not supposed to sit till I say," said the guard.
"Shut up," she put her arm around Yosri, "and give us some water."
Yosri giggled. "Mama said bad words! Lots of bad words!"
"Be quiet and behave."
"Alright, get the next truck moving!"
Another truck pushed forward, crammed with loaf-sized, Japanese, super computers and a kid with a cleft palate. The helicopter moved back to challenge it, did the standoff, and lost again.
"Alright, third truck!"
"Wait," a man using binoculars, on the roof.
"What do you see?" asked Keffiyeh.
"Two more aircraft. They look - "
His head exploded, corpse flopping backwards. Gore pattered down like the start of a rainstorm.
Someone screamed, everyone swore. The AA teams grabbed their launchers, kneeling behind sand bags, micro-radars pulsing. A gunner on a technical swung his weapon about, and fired at the growing dots. Two more heavy machine guns joined it.
"Hold your fire!" Faisal pulled the keffiyeh down around his neck. "You fucking idiots!"
"They're shooting at us!" whined the gunner.
"They're trying to provoke us, to see what we have! I need a drone jammer, now!"
A zipping sound - another man was exploded on the roof, an arm landed in front of Faisal.
"They're picking us off!"
"We have to do something!"
"They killed Kerrim, you bastard!"
"Faisal," Kareem crackled on the radio, "Get the trucks out."
"Third truck, go!" Faisal waved the vehicle on. "Go on Khatim. Go on, go!"
The vehicle pulled into the dirt road. Three laser sights pinned the dazed grandmother through her headscarf. The truck kept moving; the red dots finally grew bored and vanished.
A man stood on the roof holding what looked like a 1980s TV aerial, fitted to a gun stock. He tracked one of the helicopter dots with it.
"Is it working?" asked the crouching man beside him.
"It's working!" said the jammer. "It's - "
The anti-material round punched him in half, and exploded through the roof. Men screamed, some starting jumping off the roof.
"Kareem, we can't take much more of this!"
"I'll deal with it. You just keep those trucks moving."
Across the little fields of Khat and Sorghum, were old oil barrels wrapped in solar panel, cling film. Their lids whirred and slid off, and Ali Baba.com-sourced quadcopters rose out. They flocked into a circle, welded together by beams of infra-red.
Four floors down, the screen flashed "READY."
"Three targets. Do you see them?" Kareem asked.
"YES." the screen replied.
"Destroy them. You may use all units."
"UNDERSTOOD."
The drones charged a helicopter.
Its anti-projectile laser lanced one, two, three of them. The fourth got within ten meters and exploded. The shockwave shoved the helicopter like a sumo wrestler, ball-bearings sparking off sloped armor. Then the fifth drone detonated, right under the fuel tank. Men saw the fireball and cheered. The sixth and seventh drone brought it down.
It took twelve drones to bring down the second helicopter. The third retreated. The defenders' jeering dancing could be seen all the way from space (and was).
"How many trucks so far?"
"Nine," Faisal told his radio. "I can't see the helicopter anymore."
"It's four kilometers out on radar, and still going. Get all the vehicles out; they can stagger themselves on the road, once they're clear of here."
"Understood. What about us?"
"We're coming up now, so save the last truck for us. Get everyone on the trucks, and out of here."
The last four trucks of critical supplies, pulled on to the dirt road. Behind them, men were swarming onto technicals, cheering and shooting into the air.
"There's nothing else?" said the driver of the lead truck.
"Nothing," said Faisal on the radio. "Praise God, we survived a drone strike!"
"They weren't so tough!" the driver laughed. "Next time they should send - "
The bullet shattered the safety glass, and pinned him through the forehead. The truck drifted to the side, slowly stopping. The gunmen in the back jumped out, one squeezing a child to his chest. The gunman jerked and crashed, as if punched in the head. The child sat up on the corpse, bloodied and screaming.
The other trucks stopped, their riders ran and crouched behind them for cover.
"What's going on over there?" Kareem asked on the radio. "Faisal?"
Striding abreast down the road, came the drones.
Jansen Henrikson, V
"You know how you always expect us to conduct ourselves at the highest level of ethics?" Evrim Uzun walked into Henrikson's office, and closed the door.
"Yes," Henrikson looked up, eyebrows escalating.
"I have failed you, good Sir," Evrim handed him a file.
"What's this?" Henrikson began leafing through it.
"Some Romanian coders owed me favor. They helped me hack into HR's records."
"You did what?"
"You're very welcome."
Hendrickson began reading.
"What am I looking at?"
"That on top, is Pat Schulte's application for Lowell City Program Director."
It's almost completely blank."
"I know, right? He didn't even bother. Also, look at where he went to graduate school, and when."
"Yale Law School, '31. So?"
"Doesn't that remind you of anyone?"
"No. Wait, Snyder?"
"They were Rowing Team buddies."
"Snyder got HR to hire a personal crony?"
"A career crony, at that. Even the budget for the position, comes from Legal."
Wow. A cut-and-dry scandal."
"Scandal? Ha! I haven't even told you the scandal."
"There's more?"
"Look at the other resumes."
Henrikson's eyes raced to each period.
"These are the other candidates?"
"There are more PhDs in those pages than in some universities. Also, look at their salary requirements."
"More people getting paid better than me."
"A third to half of what Schulte gets. Jansen, this is it. The smoking gun. Lowell City has never
been a serious idea."
The two men were silent for a moment. Unwelcome choices started piling on Henrikson's back.
"I found something myself today," he said at last. "Nothing like this, but it helps show what all this is about."
"What did you learn?
"A third of Lowell City's scientist ASCANs[lix], are biologists."
"Biologists? You mean, like microbiologists?"
"I mean botanists, virologists, marine biologists. Who sends a marine biologist to Mars?"
"Stupid people? They have a lawyer in charge."
"We do ourselves no favors by discounting him. They know exactly what they're doing. You'd only send such varied biologists if you didn't know what to expect. That's not Mars, Evrim."
"They're using Lowell City to train for Alpha Centauri!"
"They're using Canada to train for Alpha Centauri. Spektorov was never sending them to Mars. They'll give it their all, and he'll copy their brain engrams. Once he has what he needs, he'll cancel the program, making it look like someone else's fault."
Evrim eyes became dinner plates. "Such balls! Do you really think he's that audacious? That crooked?"
"I know he never pays for anything if he can help it. Why not use donations from the public and the Mars Pioneers Society, to train his colonists? Even the engram recording team from Boston University, are on an NIH grant. He's getting it all, for free."
Life vented from Evrim's eyes.
"So, what are you going to do?" he asked at last. "Are you going to confront them?"
"Yes."
"They'll just fire you."
"Then I'll go to the Press."
"Jansen, are you sure you want to do that?"
"What do you mean?"
If you blow the whistle, what happens to Pathfinder? The public will never forgive Spektorov for lying like this. Not for this, not for Mars. It'll hurt Pathfinder. It could wreck it."
"We need to do what's right."
"You really think it's still that simple?"
Von Neumann Machines
Daryl Spektorov, Lakshmi Rao, IV
Pathfinder Institute, Alexander Graham Bell Orbital
"You know," Spektorov forked ice into the lunar quartz glasses, "I always thought the FBI would come through that door someday to grill me about something. You know, taxes; large overseas transactions; links to the wrong people. I never thought they'd come in here and accuse me of making weapons of mass destruction."
"They didn't accuse you of anything," Daryl accepted the whiskey.
"No, but we know what that was all about. How does the UN even have pull with the FBI?"
"I don't think pull had anything to do with it. If Shetty told them everything, they have grounds to start investigating."
"But we're not developing Von Neumann technology, period."
"No," he sat on the couch, "but we are very much ready to start."
"I was perfectly honest about that."
"Which was a good move, they weren't expecting that."
"So we should let them inspect everything?"
"Yes, we have nothing to hide. We should act like any other good, law-abiding, organization, because we are one."
"It's going to make a lot of people nervous."
"Let them be nervous. As long as we're not breaking any laws, there's nothing anyone can do about it. If anyone tries, I'll tear them apart. That's what you pay me for."
Spektorov nodded. "Alright, I'm not going to worry about the FBI then. Let's just focus on Plan B."
"We did ask nicely," Snyder shrugged.
"It was a good deal, they should have taken it. I called Sandra Pinto this morning and told her we'd fund her documentary."
"Was hers the one about the drowned Bangladeshi town? The one they could have saved for 1% the cost of the orbital, that they built them instead?"
"No, this is the one about visiting refugee camps and interviewing women, children, and old people."
"That one? She doesn't play up the stupidity enough, and she makes the UNHCR seem evil."
"They are evil. They take resources away from the solution, and block people who are actually trying to come up with one. For an NGO, does it get worse than that?"
"They're incompetent. There's a difference."
"Tell that to the people paying for it. I also had a long and productive chat with Herrera, about E8."
Snyder frowned. "I can't see the Congressman going after the UNHCR."
"He's not, he's going after Mars. E8 could be set up as an Aldrin Cycler[lx], orbiting between Earth and Mars."
"We already have cyclers between Earth and Mars."
"Not ones that can house two thousand people. E8 would be more than easy Mars access; it would be a permanent outpost - the gateway to Mars. History will remember it, like Jericho, or Rome."
"Using E8 as a cycler isn't what we talked about. We should stick with our plan, Daryl."
"Herrera brought it up, not me. But we should get behind it."
"Everything planned if the UN wouldn't play ball - and did you really think they would? - Is about getting policymakers to retask E8 as a permanent, Martian, space station. We invest in politicians, blogs, and news networks till we win. Till we win. The government retasks E8. We then make our money back on the contracts Sun Star will win, to work on that. If the program somehow succeeds, we go on to buy most of Mars. If the program is cancelled - I suggest we hedge that it will - who cares? All we need is for the engram candidates to take their training seriously, and to make back whatever is spent on all this."
"It's not a huge deal to pitch E8 as a cycler. It requires very minor changes, still pushes for Martian settlement, and hurts none of our goals. A strong cycler program makes a lot of sense for a permanent return to Mars. It's a more compelling offer. It's what we would say if we were serious."
"You seem serious."
"I am actually. What's wrong with that?"
"What's wrong with that? May I remind you," Snyder pointed at Spectorov, "That this is all just a means to an end? Frankly, one that isn't worth all this time!"
"Sam, we have to be true to ourselves."
"Daryl, getting a bunch of idiots to do what we want, for free, is keeping very true to ourselves.
'Plan B' has 950 million earmarked in campaign donations, alone. We're buying 19 senators![lxi] Don't make this anymore complicated than it needs to be."
"I meant being true to ourselves, as Pathfinder. Pathfinder's mission is to go to settle another star. How is settling another world not something that resonates with that?"
"Breathing air, resonates with our mission. Look, training engrams really isn't worth all this. Once the ship leaves, we have Forty-plus years to solve this. By then, won't we have the data we need? Can't we just beam it to Alpha Centauri? And do settlement-ready engrams really matter?"
"What do you mean?"
"They'll be loaded into machine bodies. They can try and fail all they like over there, it doesn't matter. After a few years, they'll have learned everything they need to, in any case. On their own dime, as it were."
"You want to send colonists, unprepared?"
"No, I want to send engrams, who can learn as they go. That way we can focus better on actually sending them. Only once the mission starts printing out flesh-and-blood humans, do we have real stakes in the game. The engrams decide when that happens. After all, that's exactly what they'll do. Once the ship leaves we have no control over them."
Spektorov's reply was to stare out the window. On Earth's night side, cities lit up like a luminescent cancer culture.
"I think you've suddenly fallen in love with an idea," said Snyder slowly, "and will find whatever reason you can, so you can justify seeing it through. Now, you already have an idea you've fallen in love with. You've committed a lot of time and resources to it. You have to see it through, and you can't let side projects distract you. You need to do a cost benefit analysis. Once E8 costs more than it's worth - you must give up on "settlement-read
y" engrams."
Finally, slowly, Spektorov nodded.
"You're right. Let's work out at what point we should walk away from Mars."
"And you need to commit to it."
"I will." he finished his drink, and sat down across from Snyder. "Thanks for helping me keep on track."
"You're welcome. But I know what you're like, we'll have this exact argument again this evening. Then again tomorrow. I find this takes about a week with you."
"No one else does this with me."
"No one else dares to." Snyder got up. "Another drink?"
Spektorov he handed him the glass. In the low gravity the whiskey poured as slow as honey.
"I think I know why I'm so keen on Mars," said Spektorov.
"Because this is all a big game for you, and Mars is a toy you can live to reach?"
"Because it distracts us from what we really need to be doing."
"Oh great. What have you convinced yourself that is?"
"Von Neumann technology."
"What? You just had two federal agents in here."
"But it's what we need. Without it, there's no mission. Period. This will all be for nothing."
"Look, let's not think about it right now."
"I think I'm only going to think about it now."
The ballroom was packed.
Wait staff in penguin colors served foreign wine and locally sourced starters. Suited men greeted each other and laughed at weak jokes. Women brought color through evening dresses, but not diversity.
Have you read his new paper yet?
She's running for Congress next year.
The share went up, which is better than I had hoped.
Those poor people in Florida.
"Our next speaker," the tuxedoed host's smile could be seen from space, "is on our board of advisors, and has been a generous supporter to the Mars Pioneers Society. He's been called the man who unlocked the treasure house of space. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the CEO of the Pathfinder Institute, Mr. Daryl Spektorov!"
He walked on stage. Camera flashes noted his smile, the hand shake, his stance at the podium. Against the podium was a logo - a blue Conestoga wagon on a rising red crescent.
"Thank you all for being here, it's great to see all of you. If this country's privileged elites can make time for space exploration, why can't everybody else?"
The Hundred Gram Mission Page 20
