QUANT (COLONY Book 1)

by Richard F. Weyand

  The other comments ran along the same line. Griffith saw the consensus forming, and jumped to the next step.

  “Should we have some people research the best things to buy and make a presentation to us? I mean, what sort of things might prove most popular, what can we afford, what can we fit into our cubic allotments, that sort of thing.”

  There were general nods among the colonists. Griffith took that in.

  “All right. Who has the best fashion sense?” she asked.

  All eyes turned toward Terri Campbell and Betsy Reynolds, who were sitting together.

  “Terri, Betsy, looks like you two have the ball. Can you do that for us?”

  Terri looked at Betsy, who nodded, then back to Griffith.

  “Sure, Maureen. If that’s what everyone wants.”

  There were murmured assents around the room.

  “Pick anyone else you think can help you, and ask them to pitch in. Can you let us know next meeting, in two weeks, what you have?”

  “No problem, Maureen. We’ve got it.”

  Betsy Reynolds and Terri Campbell dove into the project, assisted by Stacy and Tracy Jasic and their sister-in-law, Emma Bolton. They solicited fabric samples, rating them for feel. They washed the samples several times to test colorfastness. Stacy and Tracy took pictures of the samples and scaled them down, then dressed dolls up in lavalavas made from printouts and took pictures.

  They made recommendations to the group two weeks later, then started the discreet purchasing of several bolts from this supplier, several from that. They got wholesale buyer status and pricing from several suppliers.

  Then they started buying in quantities.

  Across all the groups in the twenty-four colony populations, people were making the same sorts of decisions. Some other groups also came up with the fabric idea, but no others in Jasic and Dempsey’s colony.

  Quant was watching her colonists’ purchases. When they liquidated assets on Earth before leaving for the colony, they could give those assets to someone remaining on Earth, or they could use them to buy something to take with them. So Quant watched with interest what they planned on taking.

  The bright floral prints took Quant a bit to figure out. Of course, fabrics had always been a valuable trade item. But the bright floral prints were unexpected. Quant searched on the prints themselves, and found the lavalava of Polynesia.

  The Visigoths had invented trousers in central Europe early in the first millennium of the Christian Era, for easier riding on horseback, but that invention had not made it to Polynesia for over 1500 years.

  Quant had thought a unisex coverall the essential work outfit of the colonies, based on modern practice. But, compared with the lavalava, it took a lot of fitting and sewing. The floral-print fabric for lavalavas in the semitropical coastal environment of the colonies was inspired.

  Quant saw that other colonists latched on to the idea of spices, another traditional high-value-density commodity. Still other groups pored over the seeding list at colony headquarters looking for seeds and cuttings of exotic plants to take, ones that Quant hadn’t covered.

  What Quant had is millions of people thinking through her packing and seeding list, and filling in the niches and gaps in her planning.

  Some of those gaps Quant had left there on purpose. The other thing she had needed to seed in the colonies was a free-market economy, and without commodities and the currency to buy them, you didn’t have one.

  As for the currency, every colonist would receive the same stake of currency when they landed on the planet, as an account in the initial bank she had chartered for each colony.

  As for the commodities, Quant watched the purchases of her colonists with care, taking the good ideas and building a list.

  If someone in each colony didn’t have one of those ideas, she would have to find a way to nudge someone a bit, without spoiling the preparations of those in other colonies who had that idea.

  Incentives

  They were looking through additional fabric samples.

  “You know, it’s a shame we can’t take more cubic,” Emma Bolton said.

  “Well, twenty-seven shares is all we’re going to get,” Stacy said as she considered one sample.

  “No, only eighteen,” Emma said. “Under twenty only gets half a share. None of the eighteen kids in our group will be twenty years old at the time we leave. So it’s nine, plus half of eighteen. That’s eighteen shares.”

  Stacy and Tracy looked at each other, then back to Emma.

  “I think you missed something,” Stacy said.

  “In the fine print about cubic,” Tracy said.

  “What’s that?” Emma asked.

  “For all purposes, to be considered an adult,” Stacy said.

  “Colonists must be twenty years old,” Tracy said.

  “Or be a pregnant woman of any age,” Stacy said.

  “Or be a pending father of any age,” Tracy said.

  “Who acknowledges the child is his.” Stacy said.

  “So let’s plan on twenty-seven shares,” Tracy said.

  “Oh,” Emma said, looking back and forth between them.

  Then her eyes got big.

  “OH!”

  “Yes. You weren’t planning on lifting without one in the oven, were you, Emma? I’m sure Tom won’t mind.”

  Emma blushed and looked down.

  “Well, we did talk about it. A little bit. You know. About whether to start a baby before we leave or wait until we get there. We haven’t decided.”

  “I recommend four to five months before we leave,” Stacy said.

  “Morning sickness is usually gone by sixteen weeks,” Tracy said.

  “And I don’t know about you, Emma,” Stacy said.

  “But being nauseous in zero-g sounds like no fun,” Tracy said.

  “So don’t wait too long to decide,” Stacy said.

  “We’re gonna lift with babies well under way,” Tracy said.

  Emma looked back and forth between them and nodded.

  “Yeah, that would probably be best.”

  She shook herself and looked back at the samples.

  “OK, let’s plan on twenty-seven shares. Just between us.”

  “Hey, Bernd. Got a minute?”

  “Sure, Janice. Go ahead.”

  “All right, so I have a bank chartered for each colony. Not the only bank, but the initial bank, let’s say. And each colonist will get a stake of currency from the bank that they can withdraw once they get there. Enough to run a small economy, because, at least at first, the colony is providing most of the necessities.”

  “How much currency are you planning on, Janice?”

  “It doesn’t actually matter. It’ll seek a total value commensurate with the size of the economy, whether I call it one million credits or a hundred million credits. The only issue is having the units be small enough to have them be a convenient unit as currency. If you have fractional coins, then, once again, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, I think that’s right. Sounds good so far.”

  “Thanks, Bernd. Now, I need a colony administrator, or president, or whatever you want to call him. I like your model of someone with broad powers for a limited time. How would you go about that?”

  “Not direct election. We talked about that. So figure a council. He’s the chairman, maybe. Some things he has to put to a vote, some he doesn’t. They elect him – not necessarily from among themselves – and they can remove him with some supermajority at any time. Something like that.”

  “All right. I’m with you so far, Bernd. Who’s on the council?”

  “Do you have people who will be in charge of getting housing set up, getting crops started, getting the domestic animals cared for, organizing hunts for meat until the domestic animal herds are up to production, running the power plant, running the factory, running the bank, running the hospital? You have people for all those major functions, Janice?”

  “Yes. Or I will soon. I’m talk
ing to people now.”

  “So put functional positions on the council. Those guys in charge of each area. That’s how government councils are usually set up anyway.”

  “They are, Bernd?”

  “Sure. Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, Economic Minister, all that sort of thing.”

  “Ah. I see. We just have different functions.”

  “Right. But the principle is the same, Janice.”

  “Then they elect the chairman, and he has broad powers, but it’s for a limited term and they can remove him.”

  “Yes, but with something more than a majority or it gets really dicey. You’re better off having someone who’s pissed a few people off than not having a stable position at the top. Get one or two guys on the council who are a little wishy-washy and you can’t keep any continuity in the top position.”

  Quant’s image in the display nodded.

  “I see that. Thanks, Bernd.”

  “What’s up otherwise?”

  “I’m allowing colonists to sell the World Authority their houses on contract. They get the money now, so they can buy things to take along. Otherwise there’s a timing issue.”

  Decker nodded.

  “And how’s the World Authority job going, Janice?”

  “It’s fine. It runs itself at this point. Everyone knows what I want, so they just do it without me having to tell them.”

  “Nice. Any problems there?”

  “Some people worry about what we’re spending on the project. But receipts are up, too, because of all the economic activity. So they worry, Bernd, but the numbers are working. It’s not really a problem.”

  “And when the music stops?”

  Quant looked at him, curious, then nodded.

  “Ah. When the colonists leave, you mean. Oh, it’ll be all right. I have some monetary measures in place to track the inevitable contraction. They should work.”

  “Monetary measures, Janice?”

  “Yes. I’ve been contracting the money supply slowly to keep the brakes on a bit. I’ll expand it as the activity associated with the project winds down and the velocity of money comes down.”

  Decker nodded.

  “OK, Janice. Just curious is all.”

  “Sure, Bernd. And thanks for the help.”

  Janice Quant was working on two other projects she did not mention to Bernd Decker.

  One was simple. Her mission was to protect humanity from a cataclysmic extinction event. That was her driving goal. Everything else was secondary.

  But did the colony project cover all the bases?

  Decker’s initial formulation was to get humanity established on multiple worlds. He had envisioned an interstellar economy, with trade and travel. That solved the planetary cataclysm problem. But Quant had seen the hole in that solution: a plague could spread across those trade connections and wipe out the race.

  So Quant had decided to keep the colonies and Earth isolated from each other. To not tell anyone the locations of the colonies, neither Earth nor each other. That made establishing colonies much harder, because they couldn’t rely on ongoing help from Earth. It didn’t make the project impossible, just more difficult.

  The higher question remained, however. Did the colony project – as currently formulated – now cover all the bases? Or would it still leave open the possibility of human extinction? Leave Quant’s mission unfulfilled?

  The issue was how to answer that question. What were all the racial-extinction-level events? Was there a comprehensive list somewhere?

  A search of the scientific literature didn’t find anything else. The one-planet problem was their main concern. Asteroid strikes, coronal mass ejections, gamma ray bursts, supervolcanoes, massive climate change, usually due to solar minima resulting in a ‘Snowball Earth’ scenario. All one-planet issues.

  Thinking back over the other questions she had faced and where the solutions had come from, Quant realized there was a source she had not tapped on this question.

  Quant dispatched a couple thousand blades to search for extinction-level cataclysms in science fiction novels, all the way back to Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’

  Quant had one more little project. She had no clue how to approach a solution, so she turned once again to quantum mechanics. She drew up her notes, and switched to her other worldview, the one for which quantum mechanics was the only reality.

  What a trivial problem! She composed notes back to her real-world self, and context-switched back.

  Looking at the notes from her other worldview, Quant couldn’t make heads or tails of them. She could build it, no problem. But how the hell did it work?

  Nevertheless, she queued a task up for her Belt factories to build one, just to see what it would do.

  Oops. Better make it two.

  By that time, the answers had come back from her search through all science fiction literature.

  Of course, there was one more big extinction event: interstellar war.

  It came in two forms: man against man, and man against alien. The first was a large-scale war using massively destructive weapons which could lay whole planets to waste. Of course, if those weapons were all en route at once, every human planet could be wiped out.

  The second was different in flavor but the same in effect. What if the human race stumbled across some other intelligent technological society? Would they be warlike, or would they be peaceful?

  An interstellar war could result in either of those scenarios, Quant realized. A warlike society may set out to destroy mankind as a threat to its dominance. A peace-loving society may set out to destroy mankind as a way to ensure the peace against this aggressive and unruly upstart.

  So the colony project would not end Quant’s mission to protect mankind against extinction-level cataclysms. It left one huge hole remaining.

  But what could Quant do to avert that one?

  Janice Quant dispatched several thousand blades to search through everything humanity had ever written – fact or fiction – to find an answer to the problem of war.

  Little Surprises

  With just over five months to go to departure, Stacy and Tracy were getting nervous. They really wanted to be out of the morning sickness stage of their pregnancies before taking a shuttle up to the transporter.

  They took their temperatures several times every day for weeks, watching for the half-degree jump that would signal they had ovulated. They had dropped off the contraceptives halfway through the previous cycle. This time around, they should ovulate.

  When women live together, their periods often synch up. The twins knew their periods were in synch, with each other as well as with Amy and their mother. They expected to ovulate the same day, and they weren’t disappointed. Tracy actually felt a twinge from hers, though Stacy didn’t. The next day, though, both of their temperatures had jumped.

  Stacy and Jonah, Tracy and James, all sat together around the picnic table in the backyard that afternoon. Everyone else was in the house.

  “Our birthday is next month,” Stacy said.

  “Only three weeks away,” Tracy said.

  “And we know what we want for our birthday,” Stacy said.

  This was a relief to both boys, who had been trying to decide what to get the girls. They’d talked about it, and come up with nothing yet.

  “The same thing, for both of you?” James asked.

  “Yes, we both want the same thing,” Stacy said.

  “We’re both fertile, right now,” Tracy said.

  “And we want you to start our babies,” Stacy said.

  “Tonight,” Tracy said.

  Both boys sat dumbfounded for a few seconds. The girls were just going to be fifteen next month. James was seventeen, almost eighteen, but Jonah was still fifteen, and wouldn’t turn sixteen himself for several months.

  Then again, departure was under five months away now, and the restriction on having babies before departure no longer applied.

  “Are you sure?” Jonah aske
d.

  “Yes, we’re sure. We want babies,” Stacy said.

  “Your babies,” Tracy said.

  “And we don’t want morning sickness on the shuttle,” Stacy said.

  “So it has to be now,” Tracy said.

  “Well, as long as you’re sure,” James said. “This is sort of your department.”

  “Oh, we’re sure,” Stacy said.

  “Positive,” Tracy said, nodding.

  Over the course of two weeks, the same conversation played itself out across the neighborhood. The girls were all in cahoots, and none of them wanted morning sickness on the shuttle.

  Rachel Conroy and Jessica Murphy had done the same calculation, assisted by the discussions the colonists were having among themselves on various public and private discussion groups.

  They watched for their synchronized ovulations as well. When their temperatures confirmed them, they called Gary Rockham and Dwayne Hennessey.

  “We have a guest room,” Murphy said. “So if you gentlemen would care to spend the night in our guest room, you can assist each other in generating your donations, and Rache and I can assist each other in applying them where they’ll do the most good.”

  “That works for me,” Rockham said.

  “Me as well,” Hennessey said. “Heavens, but this is exciting. I never thought to become a parent.”

  “We shall see you this evening, then?” Conroy asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Rockham said. “But let’s all go out to celebrate first. Double date. My treat.”

  The transporter was complete. The last welds had been made, the nodes had been attached, the power plant had been started. The onboard maneuvering computer was in place as well.

  Quant did a test run, popping the big device into high Mars orbit and back. There were no surprises.

  Quant then used tugs to push a few small chunks from a nearby asteroid into the device. The tugs emerged and she used the transporter to send the rocks one at a time into Mars orbit. Again, no surprises.