The Braintrust: A Harmony of Enemies

by Marc Stiegler

  Jerry waved the objection away. “I know, I know, you expected us to hit the clinic in Needles, but that’s not where our womenfolk go for abortions. The clinics in California are even more expensive than ours if you’re out of state, and you have to be a resident for five years to get the free in-state healthcare.” He guffawed. “Besides, you know the old joke about healthcare in the Blue states: it may be free, but the waiting line is so long you have to schedule an abortion ten months in advance.”

  Drew thought it was kind of a dumb joke, but he laughed along with everyone else.

  Jerry continued, “No, when our women want an abortion, they go all the way to the BrainTrust. Once you get to San Francisco it’s quick and easy: you take the day ferry out to the ships at seven in the morning, they work on you before lunch using the damned surgical robots that aren’t certified here so it’s real cheap, and take the ferry back that evening. Maybe the boyfriend buys her a nice dinner before leaving, if he’s along in the first place.” He shook his head. “The lengths evil people will go.”

  Chuck spoke for the first time. He didn’t speak often, but when he did, it was always smart to listen. “Jerry, that all sounds good, but those isle ships in the Brain Trust are all wired with so many video cams they’re like holes in a prairie dog town. You can’t move an inch without getting recorded.”

  Jerry leaned forward. “You’re too right, Chuck. I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we won’t get caught, but that’s where the good news starts. The BrainTrust doesn’t have jails or anything—they just send criminals back to the state or country they came from. Now, if they dumped us in California or Oregon and we got tried there, we’d be in trouble. But we’re Texas residents, boys. They’ll have to send us back here for the trial. I know; I checked.” He smiled. “And I think we all know how that’ll go.”

  Everybody else sat back in their chairs and smiled with Jerry. The discussion turned to details of the plan.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sights to See

  Cardwell's Law: Over time, entrenched interests destroy innovation.

  Everyone from the ferry, minus the new mother and her newborn daughter, was escorted to the auditorium. Dash, as was her nature, chose to sit in the front row. Ping and Jam muttered about it, but came with her. They had the first three rows to themselves.

  A tall man in a dark blue suit stood at the podium. He had silver hair and a face weathered by age. Ping whispered, “Wow, did they get him from a museum?”

  “Shush,” Dash whispered back. “He looks very distinguished.”

  “Dinosaurs look distinguished. He looks old.”

  The lights dimmed as the first slide of the man’s presentation appeared on the screen. “Welcome, everyone. My name is Colin Wheeler, and this conglomeration of fourteen isle ships is the BrainTrust. The ship hosting this meeting is the GPlex I, one of the first ships built by GPlex and FB for the autonomous mobile archipelago we have today.” The screen behind him transitioned to the next slide, an image of all four of the original BrainTrust ships, GPlex I and II, and FB Alpha and Beta.

  “As most of you know, the first BrainTrust ships were built in haste sixteen years ago, just before Deportation Phase II, when the American national government sent the 101st Airborne Division to Silicon Valley to round up and expel all the foreign engineers. GPlex and FB, having seen the writing on the wall a year earlier, had been rushing to complete the first isle ships and get them into international waters two hundred miles offshore so their foreign employees could go there and still be maximally productive. By the time the troops arrived the GPlex and FB headquarters had only half as many people as they had hosted the year before; only American citizens remained. Copters and ferries could easily shuttle back and forth between the BrainTrust and the Valley, so engineering teams could still have frequent face to face meetings. The President—who had not yet been named President-for-Life—sent a Navy frigate to drive the isle ships all the way across the ocean, but it was met by the newly-formed California Coastal Patrol. The California governor had realized that GPlex and FB—along with lots of other companies in the Valley—would move their operations out to the BrainTrust if they had to, and if that were to happen, the subsequent loss of jobs, increase in welfare rolls, and destruction of the tax base would drive the state into bankruptcy.” Colin paused. “The Coastal Patrol would have been quite overmatched by the Navy frigate sent to force the BrainTrust to leave, but the steadfastness of the Patrol was never put to the test. Quite by coincidence a Chinese cruiser showed up, asserting that if the Americans were going to stick their noses into China’s business in the South China Sea, it was only fitting for the Chinese to help ensure that the Law of the Sea was enforced in international waters off the coast of the United States as well.”

  Quiet laughter bubbled around the auditorium, but Ping squirmed in her seat. “Was this before or after World War II?” she whispered. Dash and Jam both glared her into silence.

  The history lesson was brief. Colin moved on to the layout of the ships in the archipelago, showing how one could go from any ship to anyplace else in the BrainTrust, especially the cafeterias, the shopping areas, and medical stations. He finished within half an hour. “Good news! Our time is up. As you look around the auditorium, you’ll see a number of guides sent by your various employers to take you on customized tours.” He gestured around the auditorium at men and women—all much younger than Colin, Dash noticed—who stood with glowing signs. “If each of you looks at your phone, you’ll find an email specifying which guide you should join.”

  Dash, Jam, and Ping looked at their cells. “I don’t have an email,” Dash muttered.

  “Me either!” Ping cried.

  “Neither do I,” Jam added softly.

  “Nor do you need one.” Colin smiled as he stepped in front of them. “You’re with me.”

  ***

  In the passageway outside the auditorium, a four-seat vehicle awaited them. It reminded Dash of the bumper cars she’d seen in Hong Kong’s Disneyland, though this one had no steering wheel. Colin stepped around it and climbed into the far side. “All aboard!” he called. Once everyone was settled, the vehicle glided silently away.

  Ping pounded the back of Dash’s seat in a quick rhythm. “I guess you never really get to go very fast here, do you?”

  “Nope,” Colin answered. “These arvees—Archipelago Electric Vehicles—are limited to thirty kilometers per hour, which is plenty for cruising across the isle ships. You can order one from your phone, and you can get from any point on the archipelago to any other point in seven or eight minutes.” The arvee whizzed around a corner, utilizing its collision-avoidance system to weave past a green-and-purple bicycle with a nearly-erect rider. Another bicycle, a streamlined triathlon bike in lustrous black-and-red with the rider bent far over the handlebars, surged past them. “There are a lot of people packed in here, but it’s a three-dimensional world—the ships are twenty-five decks tall, so a lot of distance is covered by going up and down elevators, as we are about to do now.” The arvee entered a huge elevator, large enough to hold four arvees, and they exited a few decks up.

  They emerged next to a passage that led outside through automatic doors. A crisp fresh ocean breeze swirled past them and Jam pulled the scarf covering her head tighter. Her scarf, a swirling rainbow of rich pure colors, gleamed in the sunlight.

  As their arvee turned left and glided to the stern, the next isle ship along the eastern edge of the rough rectangle of ships came into view around the towering bulk of GPlex I. Dash looked up…and up, and up. From here, the ship looked to be as tall as the sky.

  Colin coughed. “Before we start the tour, I need to thank you, Dash, for your work on the ferry coming here. Amanda—Dr. Copeland—said you saved a pregnant woman’s life. Despite Amanda’s help, as she tells the story. I guess there was a rare but fatal complication?”

  Dash nodded. “Eighty percent fatal.”

  Ping, sitting behind Dash, punched her s
houlder. “Our own super-genius, and she’s a life-saving heroine, too.”

  Dash slid down in the seat to protect her shoulders from additional compliments. She noticed that Colin was shaking with silent laughter. Dash asked, “So you know Dr. Copeland well?”

  Colin nodded. “We have worked together for many years.”

  Dash leaned forward and turned to look him in the eye. “You are not a typical tour guide.”

  Colin scrunched his eyebrows as he considered his reply. “Well, giving the tour from time to time is one of my duties.”

  Ping was the first to notice the evasion in the answer and deduce the reason. “Oooh, we’re special.”

  This time Jam punched Ping in the shoulder. “We are not special, foolish one. Dash is special.”

  “Of course,” Ping acknowledged contritely. “That’s what I meant.”

  Colin cleared his throat. “So, the first things you should all notice are the bots on cleaning duty.” He pointed at a couple machines scrubbing the endless line of Plexiglas panels comprising the transparent gunwales that separated them from a multi-story plunge into the sea. The bots looked like oversize breadboxes with insect legs.

  The bots toiled ceaselessly. The panels were so transparent they were mostly invisible, except where the bots washed them. “You’ll see bots throughout the ship, twenty-four hours a day. They’re an important part of how we can maintain so many residents on the ship. Unlike cruise ships that have hundreds of crewmen working to keep things shipshape and provide services, we have a very small crew, many of whom work as wranglers for the bots that do the maintenance.” They rolled around a corner to see a large gray structure floating in the distance. The hull of the vessel was barge-like. In that respect it was similar in design to the isle ships, very wide with no real prow, but the superstructure was featureless and dull, an ungainly half-breed of a ship that sat lower in the water than an isle ship with its cruise liner-style superstructure. Colin pointed. “That is the factory and manufacturing research ship Hephaestus. That’s where we do all our work with hazardous materials.”

  Dash added, “For example, currently there is a prototype for a new polysilicon factory. Polysilicon is used to make solar cells, but both the hydrogen chloride and the trichlorosilane used in its manufacture are quite toxic. The BrainTrust’s Hephaestus would be an excellent place for a polysilicon factory.”

  Colin looked at her with some surprise. “It’s like Dash said. As the regulatory regime dirtside gets ever more rigid, polysilicon plants are shutting down, leaving an opportunity for us.”

  Dash switched topics. “And of course the Hephaestus is probably where you process spent nuclear fuel from America into new fuel for your own reactors.”

  Colin’s eyes widened and his whole upper body stiffened. “The media generally thinks we just repackage the SNF from the mainland and dump it on the ocean floor.”

  Dash snorted—another un-Balinese habit she’d picked up in Texas. “I am not the media. I can do math.” She pointed out at the bots scrubbing the windows. “You use energy profligately. Washing these transparent sidings takes an enormous amount of fresh water, which means an enormous amount of power.” She pointed at the towering bulkheads beside them. “The newest isle ships have superstructures built primarily with magnesium alloys rather than steel. You import no magnesium, therefore, you are extracting it from the ocean. I cannot even imagine how much energy that requires, even if you have a more efficient process than the known state of the art.”

  Colin was back to laughing silently. “Well, our nuclear reactors are not much of a secret any more anyway. We never actually lied about them, you know. It was just never very politic to mention them in public circles. We let people believe the solar panels and wind turbines on the top decks of Gplex II and FB Beta supplied our power, if they wanted to believe it.” He sighed. “An outraged media storm about our horrific and evil power generation systems has been inevitable for a while now.”

  Dash asked, “When can I see them? The nuclear reactors, I mean.”

  Colin considered the question. “Soon.”

  Ping whispered to Jam in a loud voice, “Did our Dash just score one on the old guy?”

  Jam nodded. “I believe so.”

  ***

  The arvee swerved around the outer edge of the last isle ship in the row, allowing them to look north for the first time.

  Jam pointed to a new sight in the distance. There were several ships, but their courses looked odd. “It looks like two of those ships are going to crash.”

  Dash pushed her glasses up her nose; Colin squinted and chuckled. “That’s the fishermen and the Greens playing chicken.”

  Ping observed, “I like playing chicken.” Her eyes gleamed. “I always win.”

  Colin explained. “The Greens want to prevent that cargo ship from coming through the reef to deliver supplies. You can sort of make out our artificial reef, low and dark green; it completely encircles the BrainTrust except for a couple of shipping channels. The merchant ship is heading for one of those channels. The Greens hope to embargo enough deliveries to make the BrainTrust operationally impractical.” He pointed toward a ship moving to prevent the Greens from blocking the merchant ship. “But we have a deal with some of the California fishermen. They rent our harvester bots to load up with our kahala from the reef, then they take the haul back to the States. Since the bots are ours, are arguably in international waters, and are not aboard the fishing vessels when they return to port, it is not illegal for the fishing vessels to utilize the bots. And since the fish were caught by American vessels, the fish are not subject to the thirty-five percent import tax. So the fishermen want us to stay, maintain the reef, grow the fish, and rent them the bots. The Greens and the fishermen inevitably butt heads from time to time.”

  Dash frowned, “I’m surprised the Greens don’t just bring a boat into the passage and dump it there.”

  Colin nodded. “They tried that.” He pointed farther to the west. “Do you see the lump in the reef out there?”

  The ladies squinted across the water.

  “The passage through the reef used to be there. The Greens plugged it with a ship, so we opened the passage you see now and grew the reef into the Green ship, embedding it. Now it’s part of the reef.” He paused, then continued dryly, “It has become quite a popular tourist attraction.”

  Ping laughed. “So the Greens enhanced your business. I love using the enemy against himself.” She laughed again. “Though that is more Jam’s style than mine. I personally prefer to punch people.” She tried to hit Jam in the shoulder, but Jam swung her arm in a casual block and deflected the blow into the seat behind her. “Ow!” Ping exclaimed. “See what I mean?”

  More silent laughter from Colin. Dash thought he might be enjoying himself too much. He said, “We have plenty of opportunities to use the strength of our enemies. Too many opportunities, actually. Everyone hates us.”

  Dash gave him a skeptical look. “Surely that is an exaggeration. The fishermen like you, apparently.”

  “Some fishermen,” Colin acknowledged, “but most don’t. The shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico hate us because we farm and export shrimp, and since the shrimpers are from a Red state, the President has banned our shrimp outright. So we export our shrimp to Canada and Australia. The lobstermen in Maine hate us since we also farm lobster. But Maine is a Blue state, so the President allows us to ship lobster tax-free to the States.”

  The little arvee had been carrying them from ship to ship around the archipelago across tunnel-like gangways with Plexiglas arches. They came around the northwest corner and could see the first hints of the ship in the southwest corner. The superstructure, instead of being white, was a wild swirl of richly saturated colors.

  Ping bounced up and down in her seat, rocking the arvee. “I’ve been meaning to ask about the ship with all the colors. It’s beautiful!”

  Dash spoke before Colin could answer. “That is the Elysian Fields, also known as
‘the party boat.’ When tourists visit, they stay there. The Elysian Fields has all kinds of entertainment, from roulette wheels to twenty-deck-high water slides.” She paused. Colin tried to speak, but Dash continued. “Whereas the first BrainTrust isle ships had steel superstructures, the newest ones are made with titanium-coated magnesium. They create the colors by stressing the titanium, as is done for titanium jewelry.”

  They continued around the party boat and turned the corner to head east. Colin pointed southeast, beyond the low outline of the reef. A long, lean ship cruised slowly, shadowed by a pair of tiny vessels. The little ships looked like a pair of mice attempting to herd a cat. “The California Coastal Patrol gets into it with the US Navy from time to time. Each organization keeps a ship or two out here to protect their interests. Depending on the day of the week, one or the other of them hates us. The Blue unions as well as the Reds who run the federal government hate us for using general-purpose robots to replace human labor. Blues in general hate us for supplying a handy high-tech tax haven, but currently the California Blues like us because we send them hydrogen-filled dirigibles from which they pump the hydrogen and burn it so San Francisco can have both nighttime electricity and drinking water.”

  Dash muttered, “I have wondered about that. Big as the dirigibles are, do they really supply enough hydrogen fuel to make a difference?”

  Colin shrugged. “Every little bit of water you can produce helps when you’re in the seventh year of a five-year drought. And every little bit of energy you can generate after midnight helps when the dependency of your grid on wind and solar is so high that nighttime power production falls so low you have regular pre-dawn brownouts. The brownouts are the reason GPlex planted a third isle ship out here stuffed with nothing but servers a few years back. They needed reliable power. They considered putting a server farm in Tennessee, where they still burn coal all night for power, but the federal law requiring full continuous government surveillance of all data is rigidly enforced in the Red states. We won the bid.”