by Tom Germann
I take a sip of water from the bottle at the podium. This last one is going to be harder to cover.
“Finally, there is conflict coming. Previously you were not aware, but raids and pirate activity have gone up for all known species in the last five years. Something is stirring the pot, and our analysis indicates that there is a very good chance that the alien race that sent in the invasion is coming back.
“To win this, we are estimating we will need almost a thousand Marines operating in sections across the space that we control.”
They are just staring at me in total shock. Three of them have their mouths hanging open. They didn’t expect this degree of honesty or openness. “That’s the reality of what you have come into. We do not have the luxury of putting it nicely to you. You are both the spear and the shield that will protect humanity.”
The blonde doesn’t even put her hand up. “So why are you telling us this? It sounds like this wasn’t passed on before to other groups.”
“You are correct. I did say we had made changes in the assessment criteria, which has introduced more candidates to our training, and with modifications, the number of successful candidates will increase as well over time. One of the recommendations was that I let new candidates know up front what they face.”
“But what does that do for us? What’s the purpose of telling us?”
This is excellent; they are thinking. Now if they would only buy in.
“We will do anything to keep humanity free and alive. Given who you are, and how you think, you are all going to work toward success. You will all pull together. Later, you may see new recruits that have ‘questionable’ backgrounds, at least according to what public information you have. Be aware that the Corporation usually can get more detailed information than you would have access to.”
Our candidate knows that I’m talking about him. Or at least he thinks I am.
“We recently had a potential with a very high score. It was proposed that she be brought into the system. That proposal was denied. She was a serial killer, and analysis indicates that with training and a self-centred focus, her aim would be criminal. She would be a destabilizing force within the overall formation. We need everyone to pull together for the common goals.”
“Wait, what happened to her? Is she being kept on the side in reserve in case it gets desperate later?” Blonde kept going.
“No, of course not. She was executed shortly before the start of your course. Every government is autonomous. The Corporation has interceded before in special circumstances and will again. But only if the match is a good one.”
They are all digesting this. It’s going to take them a while. Perhaps I am done and can head off and plan a quiet dinner?
A different hand goes up. Interesting; it’s him. I wave my hand in a “come on” gesture.
“Sir, how did this all come about? Why is our course unique and the new number so high? We have all seen the reports about how well we are doing, and I remember watching reruns of the parades for the first Marines all those years ago. How did we get here?”
The best question so far, and one I can’t fully answer for them.
“Very well. Sit back; this is going to take a while. Be aware that some of this is supposition. I do not have access to all the documents of what came before. But this started several years ago, when I was much younger. I was not concerned about work, but having fun. As near as I can figure…”
Chapter 4
The smell of cigarette smoke in the conference room was strong, as was the strong odour of coffee percolating from the two machines to the side of the double doors. The room was large and opulent. With muted lighting, thick shag carpet, inlaid hardwood and floor to ceiling tinted windows. Those windows look out from the top floor of the North American regional office and were armoured. The seats are large and plush so that decision makers do not think about how they feel as they sit. The only focus of this room is for clear discussion. This is a room of power where powerful people meet and make decisions that affect Earth and the solar system. This is a stressful room as well. Mistakes can cost billions of dollars and lives.
There were only three people sitting in this conference room even though it could hold twenty comfortably. The seats were still warm and the elevator at the end of the hall is silent as everyone else had left. The doors had been closed and security devices activated to ensure that whatever happened or was said within this room would stay within this room. A top-of-the-line AI with backup processing could not get into the room without the use of a heavy assault team. Most of the members of that heavy assault team wouldn’t be leaving unless they were Marines.
While the three people that stayed behind topped up their coffee cups and pulled ashtrays closer to their seats, large screens evenly spaced out at head height on the walls came on. Every screen had a symbol or picture that represented someone within the hierarchy of the Glentol Corporation that started glowing as they came online.
The three in the room were not really that important in the big picture but every region had representation during corporate meetings. The Glentol Corporation had never had all its senior leadership in one location. The Corporation was involved on every planet in the solar system and had people everywhere. Of course the risk of an attack of some sort was also real if not likely. Over two thirds of the leadership were on Earth but separated by continents.
The thought of the alien race finding them all together and somehow dropping a large rock to kill them all was ludicrous. Yet they still took the precaution. There were humans who wanted the Corporation to go down in flames. Those humans were short-sighted but they still existed.
The board encouraged a sense of humour and “unique expressiveness”. The screen with the image of a rainbow coloured unicorn lit up as the senior vice president of solar development called the meeting to order. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s call this meeting to order so that we can carry on with our day or evenings. I will be chairing this meeting. AI, are you recording?” Her screen darkened.
A smaller screen in the corner that had been lit up with a purple glow from the beginning pulsed as the voice started speaking. An artificial voice that sounded robotic immediately responded. “Yes, Senior VP Solar Development. All verbal and text discussion will be recorded. As per contractual requirement, everyone is informed that the information you discussed will not be destroyed, but the meeting minutes will be locked and only senior Corporate leadership can unlock these minutes.” The screen stopped pulsing as the voice finished speaking and went back to its purple glow.
The senior vice president of solar development continued. “Everyone, for ease we are going to be unofficial. Top up your coffees, and first names only. Sir, with your permission, we will simply tackle the list one item at a time.”
The president’s screen flashed. “That’s fine, Owen.”
Owen continued. “Very well, everyone. We need to review, quickly, the situation.”
Over the conference table a three-dimensional representation of the solar system came online. “Humanity had expanded off of Earth and was starting to develop the resources located throughout the solar system. We were starting to consider how to terraform Mars and possibly some of the other planets while mining away. There was even some progress on developing a true star drive that would take us out to other star systems. Then the first alien race came along and gave us an early star drive. They also explained the realities of star travel. It was hard and resource-intensive.”
The image had changed to the alien starship arriving and the schematics for the star drive that had been handed off to humanity. The image moved back to the solar system and there were icons moving toward the Earth at high speed. Five of them struck the Earth, causing large, red, glowing wounds, while more icons moved slower toward North Am. “Then as humanity recovered from that, we were invaded by an unknown alien race using large rocks as kinet
ic weapons for shock and damage, and then they sent in an army of robots to take and hold our planet. Something went wrong, as only five landers came in. All analysis for over eighty years has shown that something went wrong.”
Footage scrolled of the landers touching down, disgorging thousands of robots. A flash forward to an image of robots lying blown apart in the street, and then the slow rebuilding of the damaged areas. “Humanity recovered from that attack, with over seven hundred million dead because of the invasion and subsequent starvation and diseases. Humanity at that point joined together and a unified government set forth tasks and established a charter. It took three years for that charter to be written up and the decision was made to put the Glentol Corporation in charge of fulfilling that charter. Only a few people outside of the Corporation are aware of the secret directions. A good thing, too. The unified Earth government, while it still exists, is badly fractured today. National and regional armies are back in vogue and some of the client states are trying to push us out. Additionally, there has always been a strong isolationist movement on Earth, to fortify the solar system and build up so that when the enemy comes back, we can destroy them. That position is flawed, as we know.” The Earth slowly rotated in three dimensions, and different parts of the globe glowed different colors based on what they supported, isolationist or pro-Corporation. Most of the old third-world leaned toward isolation, while most of the first- and second-world were pro-Corporation.
“The enemy will come back one day. If we isolate ourselves, then we will not be able to trade or steal technology from other civilizations. Without the advances we have acquired, we would not have stable Level 4 AIs or the more advanced models that we currently have. We are now on the third generation of the star drive, which has extended our reach by 50 percent. We know that other races are more advanced than us in this technology, and we should be able to at least double our range again. The Corporation is all that stands between humanity and the enemy that is out there somewhere, preparing for another try at us.”
Owen took a breath and everyone could hear him sipping something. “Everyone, we will now address recruiting. Corporate and then Special Projects. Slith, could you please cover those numbers for us?”
Slith, the senior vice president of recruiting and training, began. “Corporate recruiting is on track and we have no shortage of volunteers and people in the pipe. Skilled and specialized trades will always be a bit of a choke point, but with the wages we are paying, over the next five years that should be less of a factor.”
He paused and everyone could hear him take a deep breath. “Special Projects recruiting is much more difficult. The main focus here is the Marines, so I will address that. We have had many applicants for the last few decades thanks to the constant advertising. That has lost effectiveness now. That, along with the public scare over the early implants and the life-shortening element of them, have cut our recruiting numbers in half. I have eighty-four Marines on the books right now that can fight. Marine sections are always deployed in units of ten. So I would suggest that we can realistically deploy eight sections right now and have four troops as replacements.” Another sip and a pause. “We are slowly growing. Early estimates of one or two Marines available out of a population base of a million may be wrong. The technology has improved, and with further improvements we may be able to decrease that to one or two successful candidates out of a population base of fifty thousand. I have been over these numbers and the evaluations repeatedly. The best answer is to increase the number of people being tested. Suggestions have been put forward and need to be reviewed. That’s what I have now, sir.”
“Thank you for that, Slith. If no one has any questions?” No one interrupted. “Very well, the next topic is the isolationist movement and developments. That would be VP Europe. Alina, can you update us on what is happening?”
“Of course I can, thank you, Owen. We have a small increase in the number of pro-isolationists. We are working at modifying current advertising and are looking at releasing some historical documentaries on the invasion, along with the benefits that we have received from trading with the different alien races we have met. The first world still provides most mandated funding and there is no one stopping that. The same small fringe groups keep pushing to pull out with no effect as of right now. It has been brought up that if the movement grows, it will gain regional political power and may impact us. Russia is still die-hard protect humanity and on side. Asia as a whole remembers and is still pushing to expand because they are aware that space and resources will be at a premium. Africa is progressing and goes back and forth regularly. They were not hurt in the invasion, and it is old news for them. South Am is the same way.”
There was a short pause and then she continued. “Working against us is the fact that the Projects are still in use. All the people that were displaced after the invasion were put in prefab and rapidly assembled housing. Decades later those are still occupied. Three generations have lived there, and most of those are not getting up and going to work. The Projects have turned into ghettos, and different groups keep pointing to the people who live there and asking if we shouldn’t be developing jobs and work in our system by armaments and more. They keep pointing to our expenditures out-system and, incorrectly, commenting how much better everyone’s life here would be if the Corporation spent the money here.” She took another quiet sip of her coffee. “Offsetting that, we have the first of the new developments coming online. The underwater research stations and experimental cities have created many specialized jobs, and is directly related to our out-system developments. We also have the first sea city, or ‘floating city,’ in development. The real concern there, of course, is that while we estimate that every one of those cities can house up to ten million people to harvest and work the oceans, the problem will be getting colonists to go there. Special trades? Absolutely, they understand the amount of warning that would exist if something happened. The general public, though, while saying they don’t think the enemy will return ever, do not want to live on the ocean in case someone does drop a sizeable meteor anywhere in the area. We will continue working on promoting the positive. Human nature being what it is, the best way to get rid of the isolationist movement, to really destroy its power base, is unfortunately another attack.”
There was dead silence after that statement until the president spoke up. “All right, everyone, that is the reality that we deal with every day. Let’s move on. Kashif, can you give us your update on the different projects that are in development through the system, please?”
“Of course, sir.” The senior vice president of solar system development’s icon was a tall tower against the backdrop of a park. “The Mars terraforming project is starting and will be an excellent practice for other planets in future. Given our current level of technology and understanding of what we wish to do, all personnel involved with the project know we will progress slowly and make no catastrophic mistakes. Estimated time to successfully terraform Mars to be habitable for humans is no more than two hundred years. If certain advancements are made, then that number could drop substantially. However, we will not take less than one hundred years for safety’s sake. Theoretical plans to terraform Venus, Jupiter and Saturn have not advanced any further than our last meeting, and will not be truly pursued as anything other than a theoretical training exercise until some major breakthroughs occur. Our resources would be stretched too far if we did attempt to take that project on at this time.”
There was a scratching noise and then a puffing as the VP lit a cigar. “The next two issues that I am dealing with are system defense and the energy projects. Both are closely related, which is why I mention them. We are currently projecting 10 percent of the energy we use on Earth down using the solar collectors that we have established in space. We have had some advancements, which means that we can advance the timetable. By this time next year, we will likely have doubled that power. We are forecast to be at 40-plus p
ercent of our current energy demand on Earth within four years.” There were some gasps from the junior members present. Power was one of the chokepoints for development. Everyone present recognized the importance of increasing the system’s energy output that much. Kashif plowed through the gasps. “The defensive issues we have are always related to tech and power as well. The tech advances are slow, and our researchers are never fully closing down any avenue of research they have found as unusable for the simple fact that a future advancement may open new options to a perceived dead end. But powering most of the defensive systems that we are looking at is a problem. Everyone seems to believe that as we expand our energy transmission project for Earth, that we could tap that for our assorted defensive projects.”
The sound of Kashif drawing heavily on his cigar came through quite clearly. He puffed for a while before continuing. “Any current energy projects we are working on are civilian in nature. The effectiveness of this method means that it can’t be hardened. Any attacking force would automatically target that power-generation capability immediately, meaning that Earth would lose all that energy and we would face blackouts across the planet while priority services stayed powered. Any defensive systems that are powered by the solar collectors would then become inert. Before anyone asks, we have looked at creating hardened facilities, but then the energy produced is almost nothing. We have no workarounds, but we continue to look at it. If anyone wants to see the specifics, I have the assorted team summaries for review. We will continue to work on this. I realize that no one likes the ‘but’ argument. Any defensive systems that are successfully created and deployed will need a tremendous amount of power. We need the solar energy at this point to have a real chance at powering them. That is all that I have now, sir.”
