Rhapsody For The Tempest (The Braintrust Book 3)

by Marc Stiegler

  The woman had an odd style of salesmanship. Of course, she could always ask Joshua to lean on him. Technically, Joshua had no power over him at this point. But the way things seemed to go around here, best not to get Joshua—or this professor—angry with him. “Writing these modules, am I going to have to do any programming?”

  At this implicit acceptance of the job, the professor’s voice turned cheery. “Not a problem. I’ll have my associate Dr. Caplan, who was one of the inventors of the Accel platform, come over and help you with the mechanics.”

  Dmitri sighed. “I’ll look into it.”

  “Excellent. And thank you, Mr. Mikhailov. I think you’ll find it’s fun, in the end.”

  Dmitri doubted that very much, but he’d see.

  On the Chinese mainland people generally thought of Chen Ying first as a Red Princeling. Here on the Fuxing archipelago of the BrainTrust, he found it refreshing to be thought of first as an alpha geek.

  He finished the module on linear differential equations and gave it a four-star rating. The module had been pretty easy to follow, given the complexity of the material. Still, he thought he could do better.

  He was contemplating writing an alternative differential equation module and submitting it to Accel just to see what it was like to submit a module and to see if he could really do better. He thought it might be fun.

  Which explained, he thought sourly, why he could never get a girlfriend. Being an alpha geek might be less stressful, but this was one of its drawbacks. He thought he could probably use his father’s name to shock and awe one of the peasant girls into dating him, but that did not feel quite right.

  A shadow fell across his right side, and he could just detect the hint of Professor Thornhill’s perfume. He looked up questioningly.

  “Congratulations,” the professor told him. “You’re now way ahead of the other students.”

  Chen Ying grimaced. “It’s hardly impressive to be ahead of Guang. Has he completed even one module since he arrived?” Since he’d arrived on the Fuxing and had to team up with Guang Jian on a number of team projects, he’d developed a considerable dislike for the person who would, because of his father, be forever his superior.

  Professor Thornhill chuckled. “He’s actually done pretty well. We suspect Fan is doing over half the work for him and bribing or blackmailing him into doing the rest, but we’re letting that go.” Professor Thornhill’s voice took on a lower, darker tone. “For the moment.”

  So, the professor didn’t like Guang anymore than he did. But Guang was still getting away with it, just like always. Still, the professor’s last words suggested that, just perhaps, this was going to be another Cambridge for the blasted jerk.

  The professor moved on to the topic she wished to discuss. “It’s time for you to have a new experience. I want you, as part of your education, to become a tutor.” She shifted her head back and forth. “Really, you’ll be acting like a full-fledged Accel professor, helping students with their hands-on projects.” She paused. “One particular student, anyway.”

  Chen gave her a sideways smile. “So you’re going to use me as free labor. Do I get a discount on my tuition?”

  The professor just shook her head with a smile. “Not a chance. But you will get a very fine commendation in your school record.”

  Chen sighed. “Well, I guess that’s something…” He slouched and stared at her. “So which student am I your slave for?”

  Thornhill slid her finger across her tablet, tossing data on to Chen’s machine. “Jun Laquan. He’s one of our brightest.” She hesitated. “He’s on a par with you.”

  Chen sat up a little straighter, no longer slouching. “I’m one of your best, huh?”

  The professor ignored this. “He’s become fascinated with scuba diving. Since he’s too young to scuba dive himself, I think he’s trying to build a robot to go diving for him.”

  Chen raised an eyebrow. “Really? I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard, with the underwater reef-maintenance bots to start with.”

  “Perhaps. Regardless, I want you to help him. And any other problems he has with his modules, you’ll be his first line of help.”

  Chen rolled his eyes. “There’s no way I can get out of this, can I?”

  The professor beamed at him. “I knew you’d volunteer.”

  3

  Hitting Bottom

  Confirmation Bias: A well-known flaw of the human thinking apparatus is its willingness to accept, without critical thought, a claim that fits neatly with the mind’s pre-existing belief system. Below is a short questionnaire to assess your belief system. Based on that profile, a readily absorbed claim will be presented. The student is required to dissect the claim and identify at least two reasons why it is wrong…

  —Accel Topic: Critical Thinking. Module: Failure Modes

  Jun Laquan marveled as he started tinkering with the robots made available to the older students for experiments. His new tutor, Chen Ying, seemed interested in helping and apparently stole them for him. Chen had held his finger to his lips in a shushing motion. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  So with Chen’s help, Jun took the body of the reef tending bot and gave it the head from a butler bot. He attached the remote-controlled arms and hands from a remote-controlled nuclear reactor bot, incorporating its haptic feedback systems. Now he had a human-looking scuba-diving bot. The least humanoid part was the propulsion impellers where the legs should have been.

  Very late one night, he and Chen Ying took the new bot, which they named Jacques, to the swimming pool on the Gilligan deck and threw it in. It sank swiftly to hit the bottom with a thud. Fortunately, no cracks in the concrete radiated from the point of impact.

  Jun muttered, “Buoyancy compensators need reprogramming.” He pulled on his gloves. “I can still test it, give it a little thrust to get off the bottom.” He pushed his hands down and they saw the bot do a push-up, lifting off the bottom. Jun applied a little more power, and the bot started moving. “Yes!” Jun cried, then started the bot spinning in the water, a graceful movement. He used his right hand to sweep water underneath, reversing the spin. Jun’s glove reached his chest at the end of the sweep.

  The bot’s hand continued to sweep, and its hand plunged into its chest where, on a human, the heart would have been.

  Jacques did not, of course, have a heart, but the equipment buried in the left side of the chest was critical enough that it might as well have been a heart. The bot spun lazily as it crashed into the bottom. It sputtered and jerked as if being electrocuted, which, in a sense, was a correct interpretation.

  Chen Ying sighed. “The limiter failed open.”

  Jun winced. “Limiters are supposed to be very reliable.” The limiter was the mechanism, attached to a movable part like a limb, that stopped the limb before it crashed into other parts of the bot. When a limiter “failed open” it stopped limiting.

  Chen said gently. “They may not be as reliable if they get wet. Looks like the seal failed.”

  Jun shook his head. “It’s going to be really hard to retrieve it now.”

  Chen frowned. “You need to add something that will automatically inflate the ballast tanks and bring it back to the surface if something goes wrong.”

  Jun Laquan nodded, then jumped into the pool to struggle with the bot to bring it back to the surface. Eventually, Chen brought in a cargo carrying bot and the three of them together were able to retrieve poor Jacques.

  “Here are the keys, Mr. Toscano.” Ted Simpson held out a pair of simple black dongles for him.

  Matt Toscano, CEO of SpaceR, took the keys and looked at the latest, greatest copter brought forth from the creative genius of Ted Simpson. Sleek and graceful, the copter practically screamed its need for speed. “She’s beautiful, Ted. You matched the colors perfectly.” The red and gold paint job looked just like the suit of armor in the reception area of the SpaceR HQ on board the Argus, the manufacturing ship in the original BrainTrust archipelago that was still manufac
turing rockets for SpaceR while SpaceR’s Helios isle ship was still under construction.

  “Thank you, Mr. Toscano.” His enthusiasm rose. “But even better, it has the extended range you asked for.” He paused. “Though I’m not quite sure where you’re planning to go.”

  Matt laughed. “I’m not sure where I’m going either, but now I’m more confident I’ll be able to get there.” That was not quite true. He had a specific goal in mind: he needed to be able to fly all the way from the BrainTrust to Reno, Nevada without stopping. The BrainTrust had no airport. The copters were the only way of flying in or out, and he was persona non grata throughout the Great State of California. Getting back and forth to SpaceR’s launch facility in Boca Chica Texas currently required traveling by ferry to Mexico, then getting from Mexico into Texas through the customs bureaucrats at the border. Even with pale white skin and an American passport, the border checkpoint was a brutal lesson in regulatory stupidity.

  Ted shifted uneasily. “If there’s nothing else you need, I gotta go. I’m doing a rush job for Dr. Dash.” His eyes gleamed. “I think you’ll like the next generation copter. If you’re still on the outs with the California government, it’ll be useful to you.”

  Matt raised an eyebrow. “That sounds interesting. Though honestly, now that you’ve built this for me, I doubt the governor will be much of an issue.”

  Ted looked doubtful. He obviously knew all the different ways California had tried to hurt his number one investor. “Ok. See ya.”

  Ted started to walk away but stopped, half-bowing to someone coming toward Matt. “Mrs. Toscano! Good to see you.”

  Matt heard his wife’s throaty laugh. “You too, Ted.”

  Once she was sure Ted was gone and Matt’s eyes were locked on her, Gina started swaying her hips. She unbuttoned her coat, beneath which she wore only a metallic yellow bikini. “Hey, lover,” she breathed.

  Dropping the coat, she poured herself across the new copter. Her bikini matched the yellow paint accents of the vehicle.

  As she slithered through a half-dozen positions, Matt murmured, “Never saw you pose like that while you were modeling for Vogue.”

  She slunk over to him. “Just for my husband.”

  Matt shook his head to clear his mind. He dangled his keys side to side as if trying to hypnotize her. “I figured I’d take the new copter for a test drive.”

  She whispered in his ear. “Thank you for inviting me.” She scooped up her coat and wrapped it back around her.

  As they departed the Haven, Matt headed into the Southwest.

  Gina gurgled, “Field trip!”

  Matt explained. “The new reef.”

  “Natch.” She looked over her shoulder at the rapidly-dwindling cluster of isle ships. “Fast.”

  “Mine.”

  Gina pouted briefly, then pointed out the front toward a tiny white dot on the horizon.

  Matt answered her question. “The methane tank where they store our fuel before offloading to the tankers.”

  As they approached, an ugly gray cylinder and a two-story building came into view, separated by a beach of hard-packed sand.

  Finally, they could see an enormous ring, miles in diameter, kelp green on each edge with a center band of dull black sheets.

  Gina looked at the black sheets in surprise. “Solar panels? No nukes?”

  “Surprised me too. Surely cost effective. The BrainTrust isn’t religious about power generation.”

  Gina smiled. “Pure pragmatism.”

  “Thank heavens.”

  Matt dropped the copter down to the beach next to the two-story building. At the other end of the beach a soccer match of deadly earnestness, involving four children, progressed apace.

  Matt considered landing in the water. Ted had assured him the copter floated quite reliably. But unlike Gina with her bikini, Matt was improperly dressed to go splashing in the water.

  A middle-aged couple holding hands and wearing Hawaiian shirts approached them. The man spoke in heavily accented but understandable English. “Mr. Toscano? I’m Pedro, this is my wife Marta.”

  After a short round of introductions, Gina pointed at the soccer players. “You have beautiful children.”

  Marta beamed at her. “Thank you. They are hard to keep up with, but they are worth it.”

  Matt looked at them in puzzlement. “Dash told me you didn’t speak a lick of English. I expected we’d have to run our whole conversation through our cell-phone translators. Your language skills are amazing.”

  Pedro laughed. “The kids have to learn English if they’re going to go to the BrainTrust for college, so we have to learn it too.” He pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and tapped it. “Dr. Dash gave us the latest in educational programs. Accel.”

  Gina eyed the children thoughtfully. “BrainTrust University is awfully hard to get into.”

  Marta answered. “Very hard.” She puffed up proudly. “But Accel says our eldest son is progressing fast enough, he may qualify.”

  Pedro added. “And with university extensions opening in both the Fuxing and Prometheus archipelagos, perhaps it will be easier for our younger ones.” He pointed at the building nearest them. “Can we give you a tour?”

  Matt rubbed his hands together. “By all means.”

  Pedro started to explain. “This is the building where the bots bring the algae for cooking.” He pointed to a pipe running out of the building. “The methane comes out that pipe, to run into the storage tank further around the reef.”

  He pointed to a secondary pipe much smaller than the first, going to a small tank by the building. “One of the new things we’ve added is this secondary chemical converter that extracts oil and converts it to diesel. So we can refill your copter if you’d like before you depart.”

  Matt nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  The tour continued, though there was not much to see. Marta eventually interrupted. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Gina gushed, “We’d be delighted. I confess I’d love to see your place.” She pointed at the gray cylinder, which was attached to the outer rim of the reef. “I presume that’s your house?”

  Marta’s face lit up. “Yes, it is.” She looked away. “It's probably a bit small compared to what you're used to.”

  Pedro countered. “But it's really cozy. Marta has done a great job on it. It's not just a house,” he said as if fumbling for words, “it's a home.”

  The wind picked up as they moved more briskly to the house. Matt looked around. Aside from the children, as far as the eye could see nothingness stared back, an endless expanse of emptiness save for the dark clouds now moving towards them at a visibly faster clip. “Storm coming,” he observed.

  Pedro eyed the wind whipped storm front. “You still have a little time.”

  As Marta opened the front door, she started the description. “We have four levels. Each is quite tiny, of course, but it's still a very nice space.”

  They entered to find a diminutive kitchen and dinette area. The built-in appliances, like the appliances on the BrainTrust, were top of the line, while the furniture looked rickety from years of exposure to sea mist.

  As Marta turned to make the tea, Pedro pointed up the ladder to the next level. “Up there is our living room. All the windows give us a great view.” He pointed down the ladder going below decks. “And that way we have two bedroom levels. The first one is for the kids, the bottom one is for us. It's a lot more privacy than we had in our place back home.”

  A higher pitched but still male voice, a teenager, piped up. “It's really six levels, but Mom and Dad always forget to mention the two bottom levels with the batteries.” Unlike his parents, he spoke like a native of California.

  “Shush,” Marta said.

  Pedro introduced them. “Mr. and Mrs. Toscano, let me introduce our son Paolo. He wants to be a nuclear engineer.” Pedro shook his head in bemusement. “Very different from his father.”

  It was Matt's turn to laug
h. “They do that sometimes I'm told.”

  Gina looked at the boy appreciatively. “I was surprised to see solar panels covering the reef. I thought the BrainTrust was all about the nukes. I’d guess you’d be happier if you had a nuke here to study.”

  The boy bobbed his head eagerly. “Dr. Dash says the solar panels are the best answer for our needs. We run the processing plant and recharge the bots during the day. Then the bots do the harvesting and reef maintenance at night. We only need enough batteries to keep our home running for a couple of days when there’s a bad storm.”

  Matt saw a problem. “In storms like that, with those winds, don’t the solar panels blow away?”

  Pedro shrugged. “They’re cheap. We always lose a few in the worst storms. Dr. Dash says they figured that into the calculations, and we have spare panels in storage. After a storm, the bots go out and replace any that are damaged.”

  Paolo pursed his lips. “The big problem is that the batteries are so dangerous. Dr. Dash says it’s ok, but we’re living on a bomb.”

  Gina stared at him, baffled.

  Matt laughed. “Batteries sometimes explode, you know.” He shook his head. “Unlike the BrainTrust’s nuclear power plants, as Dash explained to me once, ever so eloquently.”

  Paolo offered, with a teenager’s excitement, “Would you like to see a video of batteries like ours exploding?”

  Marta put teacups down around the table, banging them a little hard. “No! We don’t need to watch any explosions.”

  Matt added, “Honestly, we’ve seen enough explosions lately.”

  Marta shushed Paolo out of the house. When she sat down, the battered old table rocked back and forth once on its uneven legs.

  Marta apologized. “I’m sorry. We really should get a new table. But we’re putting all our money into the college fund.”

  A wicked gleam entered Pedro’s eye. “A fair part of it is invested in SpaceR stock.”