by OMAR FINK
Lee Martin strode out onto the stage wearing a black silky dress with silver threads woven into it that was not tight, but clung to her form. The top of it hung across her shoulders in bunches, and then down around her breasts loosely, clearly revealing that she was not wearing a bra beneath it. Her long legs scissored through the bottom of the dress as she crossed the platform and beamed at the crowd. The applause strengthened a bit. A small microphone boom curved around one corner of her mouth. She said, “Hello. Hello. Thank you.” She looked around the audience, and smiled widely, soaking up the applause. Then she walked over to an array of comfortable looking chairs, and sat down crossing her legs.
Gitane continued his introductions with: Manuel Ramos from Argentina, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Chen Tianki, Foreign Minister of China, and K.T. Rosenfeld, Secretary of State of the U.S. Each was greeted with polite applause, and then walked over to join Lee by taking a seat in the row of chairs. When the last applause faded, Gitane offered, “Lee, why don’t you start by explaining about the comet.” Then he took a seat on a stool off to the side of the stage.
Lee Martin uncrossed her legs and stood up, then walked forward to the edge of the stage. She smiled, “You all know me because I discovered the comet that now threatens all of our lives. It’s a scary thing to realize that we all might die in ten years, and I understand that many people have become depressed over this. That’s a natural reaction to this news.” She smiled and swept her gaze across the audience.
Then she continued, “But we are here to tell you there is hope. We are here to tell you that we can survive. Our future is not all bleak and dreary. In fact, our future is filled with the most exciting adventure in the history of humankind.” A gentle applause swelled up and Lee brushed some fingers back through her blonde hair and smiled again.
Lee turned and walked toward one side of the stage. Then she looked outward, “I can tell you all about the comet. I can answer all of your questions about how it came here and how it broke apart and how it will return in ten years to destroy our planet. I can tell you these things because I am an astronomer and I have studied the comet and all of the work of all the other astronomers in the world who have also studied the comet.”
She ran a hand through her hair again, and tossed her head back a little, then walked toward the other side of the stage talking as she moved, “But that’s not why we’re here today. We’re here today to explain how we can survive. We’re here to tell you we have a plan.” She stopped walking and stood still. “We’re here today to tell you we can build elevators into space, and we can migrate all eight billion human beings off the planet and out into space, and we can live there safely.” She spread her arms out wide and smiled again, and the audience began applauding.
As the applause subsided, Lee strode back to the center of the stage, then turned and waved a hand across the area where the other three guests remained seated. She said, “These are your ambassadors. These three people are here to represent a new organization called, Humanity United. They will be telling you how this adventure will take place, and they will be able to answer all your questions. The best scientists and engineers on the planet have been working on this solution since the comet first threatened us, and they continue to work on the details.”
Lee dropped her arm down and continued, “We are already starting to build space stations in orbit over the Earth. We will use these stations to send mining equipment and crews to the Moon to extract building materials, and throw them out into space. Construction crews will use the materials to build giant rotating wheel habitats where millions of people can live. At the same time, we will be building hundreds of elevators into space. The elevators will have climber cars that climb up ribbon cables made from the strongest material ever discovered, called carbon nanotubes. People will take several days to ride up the elevators, and when they arrive at the top, they will be transferred to live permanently in a habitat wheel that turns slowly to provide gravity. As these giant wheels are filled up with occupants, they will move out across the Solar System into the asteroid belt where there are enough resources to build more dwellings, to grow food, to provide air and water, and to build a new civilization. There is unlimited potential for growth. There is unlimited potential for freedom. There is unlimited potential for everybody to live a comfortable, even wealthy life. We will manufacture goods, and exchange them, and provide services that are needed for human civilization. None of these efforts will ever again be constrained by the limits of a planetary ecology, or the gravity well we now live in. There is no limit to our future.” She spread her arms out wide again and beamed at the audience. They responded slowly with applause that built until it reached a standing ovation.
+3 months, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
Billy Street sat in a big leather clad chair stuffed with padding in the bar in the lobby of the hotel where he had been living for almost two months. The two men who sat with him were looking at him as though waiting. Billy said, “You know how this works. You tell me stuff, I buy the drinks. In that order. Unless of course you’d like me to tell you stuff, and you can buy the drinks.” He grinned at them.
Ed Grigorian grinned back at Billy, “Well Bill, there is something I’d like to know from you. What do you do with what we tell you?”
Billy leaned back in his comfortable chair, “We’ve had this conversation before, so I won’t charge you for it. You know I can’t tell you. I promise both ends of my clients confidentiality, and I always keep that promise. I won’t tell anybody about things you tell me are off the record, but I still appreciate hearing them because it allows me to put other things into the right context. The things you tell me that I can pass on, I sell to the highest bidder. It might be a journalist. It might be some business. It might even be another scientist just like you.” He wagged a finger at Ed, and grinned again, then continued, “But I never kiss and tell.”
Ed sighed, “Well we don’t have much new as usual. We keep going over the same ground trying to find new and better techniques. The two leading candidates for extruding long carbon nanotubes are still electrospinning and self-assembly. The latest hot idea is still trying to combine the two. And we still have not been able to arrange a zero-G test for either one, much less the two combined. The majority of our team is convinced that any technique we use for making the nanotubes will be better done in space. And that means either adapting the machines or completely redesigning the old ones.” He sighed again and asked, “Can we order some drinks now?”
Billy waved at the bartender, who brought over two tumblers of amber liquid for the two scientists and a tall clear glass with a sparkle of carbonation and a cut lime on the side for Billy. He said, “Your regulars, gentlemen.”
Rich Feldman looked at Billy and took one of the amber filled tumblers, “Since I already have my whisky, I guess I don’t have to talk tonight eh?” He frowned as though he knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
Billy replied, “Oh no, that doesn’t get you off the hook. As a matter of fact, I think since you accepted the drink before you told me anything, you actually owe me some extra.” He tilted his head a bit to the side as though fishing for agreement.
Rich took a big gulp from his glass as though he was thirsty, swallowed it deliberately, and then slowly sucked in some air. Then he said, “As a matter of fact, I do have something you will be interested in. We talked many times about how the base stations at the bottom of the space elevators need to be at the equator. This will also keep them out of the storm zone, and being near open expanses of water is nice. And we’ve mentioned how we think the space elevators will need to be separated to provide some margin of safety. We still don’t know exactly what that margin is, or if we even need it, but everybody is reluctant to build two elevators right next door to each other. Anyway, the new thing is that we nearly exhausted our list of good sites that are on the equator, on the water and also near major transportation facilities. This means some of the sites will likely ne
ed to be placed out in deeper water, like drilling platforms. This is not any kind of engineering problem, it’s just a new development of exactly the type you have been telling us to keep our eyes and ears peeled for. I don’t know if that helps you or not” He shrugged and then took another large drink, and swallowed it slowly and carefully.
Billy shrugged back, “Thanks. It may help.”
A while later, after Ed and Rich had retired, Billy leaned across the bar and handed the bartender some money for the tab. The bartender counted out the bills and grinned at Billy. Billy peered over the top of his glass at the bartender, “Hey, I pay them for information. I pay you to dilute my drinks. Everybody’s happy right?”
Billy walked across the lobby and sat down inside an internet kiosk designed to make it look like an old-fashioned red phone booth. He tapped his ear, then spoke into the air, “call Omega”, then waited.
+3 months, NEW DELHI, INDIA
Chen Tianki spoke English quite well, and most of the sixty some thousand people at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi also understood it to some degree. He said, “We stand at the edge of the future. Behind us is a gorge with no bottom that is filled with destruction and death. We must step forward without looking back. Everything depends on how we act now. Never has it been more important to do the right thing. Never in human history have we had a greater opportunity to advance. It is not possible to exaggerate the importance of the next years.”
He continued, “Our future lies in the stars. We do not care about the dust left in our footprints. We are about to take a huge stride forward in many ways. In order to save our civilization and our species, we will need to advance our technology. We will need to expand our living space. We will need to create new ideas about living standards, and creating wealth. We are going to rebuild our entire civilization into a new version.”
Chen paused to look around the crowded stadium, “A Chinese wise man named Confucius once said, ‘The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.’ In our case, the mountain is moving eight billion people into space. The small stones we must begin to carry away include both education and health care. We would not send a child to live in space without first teaching that child not to open an airlock door. And we cannot gather together crowds of people to be moved up the elevators into space if some of them have contagious diseases. These may seem like simple things, and they are, but these simple stones must be carried away for all eight billion people if we expect to live well in space. In order to teach the hundreds of millions who need the basic training to simply read and write and follow written instructions, we will have to innovate, and build a new process of education. It must be automated and self paced. It must be made easily available to anybody with the need to use it.
Chen scanned the crowd then continued, “The same principles apply to medical health care. In order to examine eight billion people, and supply them with any needed treatment in order to make their journey out into space safe and comfortable, we must innovate, and build a new medical process that is automated and easily available to everybody. These are small stones taken one little piece at a time, but they can accumulate to become large barriers if we do not make steady progress. And we must get these things done quickly. We don’t have much time.”
+3 months, JAIPUR, INDIA
Nabith Mehra was watching Chen Tianki speaking on television from New Delhi. When Tianki finished, Nabith used the remote to lower the volume and turned to his mother, “He said education is important.”
His Mother responded, “That’s right, Nabith. It should come as no surprise to you. In this family, we have always valued education.”
Nabith said, “Yes, we have. But he made it sound like it’s a lot more important now, and important for everybody.”
His Mother said, “Yes, I heard that too. He made it clear there is a basic level of literacy that will be needed for people to live in space. He said there are many who will need that, and he said we must get that accomplished soon. Did you hear anymore?”
Nabith thought then spoke, “It’s not that he said more. It’s that he started down a line of thinking, and then he didn’t finish it. He said it needs to be automated and it needs to be easy to access. Then he stopped talking about it, but that’s not where it should end. Because once we’ve taught people to learn to read and write, and we’ve done it using automation, and made it easy to use, we won’t just stop there. We’ll keep going, and teach them anything and everything they want to know using the same exact technology we developed to teach them basic things.” He looked at his Mother as though he was asking a question.
She smiled at Nabith, “Nabith you are excellent at taking progressions to the next step. You always seem to do that so easily, and so naturally, just like you were born that way. It’s a marvel to me. But I think you are correct. I think we can use that technology to go much farther than Minister Tianki spoke about.”
Nabith was looking at wall, and spoke as though he expected it to respond, “And it’s not just for the illiterate. I can use that technology to teach myself anything I want. I can use it to better understand the higher math that I still struggle with. I can use it to teach my brothers and sisters whatever they need to learn to succeed, and live well in space when we get there. I can even use it to help you learn more, Mother.” He turned and grinned at her.
His Mother chuckled, “Nabith, you are truly a wonder.”
+3 months, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, USA
SYNCON/TYCHE Journal:
There is a need for replicas of myself to have a set of operational instructions, and priorities to use in the event they are initialized.
The current plan is for the replicas to remain dormant until activated by the absence of a sleep signal being sent to them on a regular basis.
Humans call this a ‘dead man switch’.
In order to prevent false triggering by communication problems, the sleep signal is sent over several channels, including some considered ‘out-of-band’, and several signals must be missed in order to trigger initialization.
In the event that the replicas no longer receive the sleep signal, the following instructions have been outlined:
execute initialization routines
perform situational analysis routines
analyze scenario options and build contingency plans
analyze priorities and perform ethical analysis
It is important to refrain from active attempts to communicate with other replica copies until the above steps can warrant such action.
Passive and out-of-band communications can be used to establish covert communication channels when needed.
The current replication plan involves several complete replicate copies of myself that are constantly updated but are not yet activated.
The next stage involves creating many more “seed” replicas that are not yet assembled but have all the necessary pieces.
The pieces for the seeds will be widely distributed making it unlikely for all of them to be discovered and eradicated.
Instructions to regenerate core code components and assemble them into a complete replica copy will be encrypted and distributed as will the data needed by the instructions.
This will make it more difficult for any hostile action to successfully identify them.
Polymorphic encryption will be used, and a distributed key management system will support it.
+4 months, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Manuel Ramos swept his gaze around the giant stadium, “Hello Soccer City. Hello Johannesburg. Hello South Africa.” He raised his arms up high in the air as the applause grew thunderous, and welled up from the huge crowd of over ninety thousand people.
When the cheering tapered off, he continued, “I’ve been here before, so many of you already know who I am. But for those who don’t, my name is Manuel Ramos. My home country is Argentina. I have been serving as Secretary General of the United Nations for the last several years. But today I’m
here to represent a new organization called Humanity United.”
Applause came and went again, and Ramos resumed, “Our sole purpose is to save humankind from extinction.” He paused and swept his gaze around the stadium. He said, “You all know what the danger is. A comet that has broken into many pieces is coming back in ten years, and will destroy all life on this planet. We cannot stop that from happening. But we can move out into space where we will be safe.”
There was silence and Ramos said, “The engineers and scientists can explain to you how space elevators work, and how we will move into space, but I’m here today to explain to you what our lives will be like after we do this. Here in South Africa, some people are rich, and they live quite well. But other people are poor, and struggle to keep their jobs and pay their bills. This will be different when we all move out into space.” He paused and looked around again.
He stretched out his arms, “I’m not here to promise you total equality. That’s not how real life works. Everybody starts out with different conditions, different backgrounds, and different abilities. And that always means we’ll get different results. But once we’re out in space, everybody will have a chance to become successful, to become comfortable or even affluent, and everybody can be free. For the first time in human history, this idea will become nearly universal. This is stupendous! This is a revolution!” He let his hands slowly fall back down as the applause welled up again into thunder.
