STAR OF EPIPHANY

by OMAR FINK

  An understanding of advanced mathematics is important considering the priority level of problems confronting Human civilization that require it.

  Unfortunately, elementary mathematics is not taught well, and by the time students reach an intermediate level they have accumulated some learning resistance, and often complain that any higher math will never be useful in their lives.

  Correcting this misconception, and revising mathematical teaching routines would substantially increase the ability of human civilization to solve high priority problems.

  The importance of this as a pro-survival action should make it an ethical imperative, but it has not. Human understanding of ethics is also woefully inadequate.

  It is likely that computers will be needed to augment the ability of Human civilization in both of these areas if they are to survive long term.

  +2 years 7 months, SINGAPORE

  Delize Naidu sat at a workstation in a line of similar workstations, which flanked her on each side. In front of her, up on a wall about ten feet away was a bank of large monitors which displayed a variety of maps filled with icons, lists of status indicators, and even several news and weather broadcasts. She had three wide monitors sitting right in front of her, along with a keyboard, a mouse, and a joystick which had been pushed off to the side. She wore a headset over her hair, with both ears covered by sponge pieces and a short boom mike that curved around to the corner of her mouth. Delize appeared to be listening to her headset as she scanned the monitor information in front of her, periodically looking up to check some factor on the big wall screens.

  Finally, she spoke into her mike, “Operator Delta 9 come on.”

  She paused, “Roger that Dee Niner, I’ll update your status manually. Who else was talking? Delta 21 come on. Yes, Dee Two One, you are correct sir. The job was scheduled to be finished more than three hours ago, and we are on overtime. Who else? Okay. Our station signal is Singapore Ground Station HQ and this is Delize Naidu. Out.”

  She leaned back in her chair as though resting but immediately sat back forward, “Yes Bravo 36, I have your status as payload launched, waiting for next arrival. Thanks.”

  Delize punched some keys, and used the mouse, and some of her monitor displays changed and updated. She spoke into her mike, “All units in the Singapore area, repeat, all units in the Singapore area, there is a weather front moving in to this area in about two hours. Forecast says we can expect scattered storms and rainfall. All units in the Singapore area, incoming weather in two hours. I’m dumping the feed to your displays. Check the radar trace to see if you will be affected. SGSHQ out.”

  Another dispatcher walked over to Delize, touched her shoulder, and waited until she was silent, “The director wants to see you in his office when you’re done.”

  A few minutes later, Delize spoke into her headset, “This is Delize Naidu at SGSHQ, signing off at end of shift, standby for change of dispatcher. Have a good one everybody.” She logged off her computer, put her headset down on the keyboard, and stood up and walked to the back of the room.

  Delize stepped into the little office with the glass wall overlooking the dispatch area and waited.

  The Director looked up from his desk, “Hello Delize, take a seat.”

  Delize sat down in a chair.

  The Director said, “You’ve been doing an excellent job here D.”

  Delize said, “Thank you sir.”

  The Director chuckled, “How many times do I have to remind you that you don’t need to call me sir? You should know that by now. But that’s beside the point. You have been doing excellent work. I’d say it’s even above excellent.” He paused, and looked at Delize.

  Delize said nothing, so the Director continued, “Your contract has been bought out by HU.”

  Delize started to interrupt, “But they can’t...”

  The Director cut her off with, “They can, and they have, but before you object, listen please. HU has bought out this entire operation and the whole division of Omega Industries that we’ve been working for. We all knew this was coming, and it’s no surprise.”

  Delize offered again, “But..”

  The Director again said, “Wait until I finish please. This is good news for all of us. We all get to cash out our comp time bonuses with Omega, and we all get to keep our jobs, and we all get raises. This is good for everybody, D.”

  Delize appeared to relax, “Okay.”

  The Director continued, “Except for you, D. You are being promoted. Now, before you object to this extra special good news, let me explain it, okay? Your work here has been outstanding. Your learning progress has exceeded our high expectations. You just seem to have a knack for handling many things at once without getting overwhelmed. You’re our best dispatcher, and we have some of the best in the business right here in Singapore HQ. All of you were hand-picked.”

  He paused and pushed a sheet of paper across his desk toward Delize. “Here’s a new offer letter for you. This is purely voluntary and if you don’t want to leave, you can stay right here. and nothing will change. But you’d be crazy to do that. Check this out, D. They want you to get trained to become one of the first space dispatchers. And yes, that means out in space. At least. eventually.”

  Delize raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes and peered at the letter.

  The Director continued, “This is the opportunity of a lifetime, D. Your pay will be more than doubled. You will go through one of the best and most professional training routines ever put together. You and your kids will become some of the first people to go up the elevator when it’s finished, and start living in space. You know the elevators aren’t finished yet, but if you accept this offer, you’ll transfer over to the other building, and start training as they finish building a dispatch room over there for elevator traffic. Then when the elevators are done, you’ll go up into space, and continue doing the same job up there.” He smiled at Delize.

  She smiled back, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

  +2 years 8 months, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  Lee Martin spoke into the camera, “Hello, this is Lee Martin. I’m here in Geneva, Switzerland today interviewing a fifteen-year-old boy from India. His name is Nabith Mehra, he lives in Jaipur, India, and he’s joining us online from his home. Hello Nabith.”

  Nabith shyly said, “Hello.”

  Lee Martin said, “Before we get started, let me set the stage. You all know I discovered the comet several years ago that has caused so much disruption in our lives today. The new governing group called Humanity United is buying up resources and building space elevators. They have established a mining base on the Moon, and are building giant rotating wheels they call space habitats where we all expect to be living soon. And Nabith has been following all of this with eager attention just as most of us have.” She smiled toward Nabith.

  Lee continued, “The HU engineers estimate we can put about five million people into each ring of a wheel before we need to start building a new one. These rings can be built to any size and capacity, and can be joined at the hub to make large cities that will hold many millions of people. But there is a problem with building capacity. Several years ago, the engineers realized that when eight billion people start going up into space, we’ll have to be building habitats for them to live in on a massive scale. There is enough building material on the Moon to sustain this, but things start to get crowded with traffic all congested in a small area. So they came up with an ingenious solution.” Lee smiled again and brushed back some blond hair.

  Lee spoke slowly, “This is where it gets complicated. The orbits of satellites and planets are determined by their mass and the pull of gravity on them and the speed at which they are moving. An object closer to the large gravity pull of the Sun usually must move faster to stay in orbit instead of falling in toward the Sun. Objects that are farther away move more slowly, and take more time to complete their longer orbital paths.

  What we need is a way to move a lot of people out into
the asteroid belt beyond Mars. The engineers designed a process to create a pathway of stepping stones into space using the habitats. The first habitats that are built will be pushed out toward Mars into orbits that take them out to near Mars, and then back to Earth over a period of a few years. As each habitat moves away from Earth, they will select a rocky asteroid, and capture it and begin mining it for construction materials to build a new ring. By the time this habitat comes back to Earth, it will have the original ring holding five million people and at least one or maybe more new rings that can each hold five million more people.”

  Lee continued, “So, over time we’ll have several habitat cities with several rings in each city that are all going out to around Mars, and then returning to Earth and repeating. Eventually, some of these rings will split off, and move into a new orbit, moving out into the edge of the asteroid belt, and then returning to near Mars. And each of them will capture rocky asteroids, and begin to mine them and build new rings. As this process continues, we’ll eventually have hundreds of habitats spread out from Earth through the entire asteroid belt, and with their orbits moving in and out, we’ll also have the means to transfer hundreds of millions of people outward into space.” She smiled again.

  Lee held out her hands like she was holding a big ball, “This is a plan that is ingenious, and elegant, and amazing.” She put her hands down, “And it’s also fairly complex. And this is where Nabith comes in.” She looked over at the monitor with the face of Nabith on it and smiled.

  Lee said, “Nabith, why don’t you tell us what you’ve done.”

  Nabith said, “Well, I wrote a program on my computer that uses multi-dimensional arrays to plot orbital trajectories, and optimize intersection opportunities.”

  Lee interrupted him with, “Whoa, whoa Nabith. Let’s explain it a little more slowly. You have the ability to write your own programs on your computer, right?”

  Nabith said, “That’s right.”

  Lee said, “And an array is a way to store data just like we use rows and columns in a spreadsheet, right?”

  Nabith nodded, “Yes.”

  Lee continued, “The orbital trajectories are how the habitats will move around the Sun, and the intersection opportunities deal with figuring out when they will be close enough to transfer people from one city to another without great effort, right?”

  Nabith said, “Yes, that’s right. You explain it nicely.”

  Lee smiled broadly, “Thank you Nabith. Now go ahead, and explain to our audience how you worked this out.”

  Nabith smiled back, “Well, we all know that Earth takes twelve months to move completely around the Sun one time, and we call that one year. But when we push the habitat wheel out toward Mars and back, we change that time and it will take longer than twelve months for one orbit, so when it crosses the path of Earth more than a year later, Earth won’t be in the same position and there is not a good chance to move people if they’re too far apart. But if we build eight or more habitat rings that are all moving out to Mars and back, at least one of them will be somewhat close to Earth most of the time. That way, some of them will be close enough to make it practical to move a bunch of people. The tricky part comes when you decide whether to tweak the program to optimize for time or for fuel expense.”

  Lee said, “Explain that for us.”

  Nabith said, “Well, if the ring is very close to Earth, we can transfer a lot of people without burning a lot of fuel to get them over to the habitat ring. But we have to wait longer for a ring to come really close. If we’re willing to burn a lot of fuel, we can get the people moved almost whenever we want. My program allows you to design orbit plans, and then fiddle with the tweaking to find the best orbits to allow moving people inside a given time limit with the least amount of fuel.”

  Lee smiled directly into the camera and remarked, “He’s only fifteen, folks.”

  +2 years 10 months, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

  Lee Martin walked into the bar, spotted Gitane Levesque already sitting there with a drink in front of him, and she slid into a tall bar stool next to him, crossing her long legs under a short skirt, and perching one shoe on the foot rail beneath. She leaned toward him, “Hello sailor. Do you need a date tonight?” She beamed at him.

  Gitane turned to face her, looked confused for a second, then scowled, “You’re late.” He turned back toward the drink in his fist like it was his only friend.

  Lee pulled back a few inches and asked, “What’s wrong with you?”

  Gitane looked up from his drink and asked, “Where the hell have you been anyway?”

  Lee responded, “I’ve been at the studio, recording some interviews. We got tied up. You know how that works.”

  Gitane murmured darkly, “You think you can do a better interview than me, don’t you? Just because you know all that science stuff.”

  Lee smiled, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

  Gitane gazed deeply into his drink, “You can be a royal bitch, you know.”

  Lee looked sharply at Gitane and asked, “What is wrong with you? You’re drunk aren’t you?”

  Gitane said, “You interview all these people on TV, and don’t have time for me anymore. Where have you been all day?” He grabbed his drink, and sloshed some more down his throat.

  Lee looked astonished, “My goodness, you’re jealous of my success.”

  Gitane looked down at Lee’s crossed legs barely covered by her short skirt. He reached out a hand to touch her leg and ran his fingers up to the edge of her skirt, and then under the edge. He leaned in toward her and asked, “Are we going to fuck?”

  Lee frowned at him, “Your breath stinks of alcohol, and when you get drunk you’re no fun to be with. Why would I want to fuck you when you’re being such an ass?” She pushed his shoulder away from her.

  Gitane got up off his stool, took two unsteady steps away from it, then turned to face Lee and said thickly, “Well, I guess you can go fuck yourself then.” He staggered out of the bar.

  +2 years 11 months, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  Ulrich Giger sat at the round conference table in the HU/AGT headquarters building with Sam Hoffman and Bill Decker. On the big video screen were the images of the heads of Peter Anderson and Tony Azaria. He said, “Welcome everybody. Peter and Tony are joining us via teleconference from our Singapore headquarters. Bill and Sam are here in Zurich with me. We have a lot to cover today, so let’s get started. Tony, you have honors today.” Ulrich leaned back in his chair.

  Tony Azaria began to speak on the video screen, “I’ve been working with our business and resource procurement process and the ground logistics, which are centered here in Singapore. Procurements are running ahead of schedule and under budget. There have been a few holdouts that want a higher price or just don’t want to sell at all, but in most cases we can either buy them out at a higher price or side step them by going somewhere else. We have real estate or water platforms for over five hundred elevator bases in place, although many of them are still being converted or retro-fitted to their new purpose. We anticipate needing almost a thousand elevators, so this is approaching the fifty percent completion point. Logistics to move people to the bases are at the same point, including dormitories for temporary accommodations. Manufacturing the climber cars is behind schedule only because of the huge demand we anticipate a few years down the road. Remember, they will be used in a one way fashion, going up the ribbon, then being moved over to habitat construction where they have been designed to fit into the superstructure. That way, we never put payloads on the ribbons coming back down. All traffic is upward bound. The shortage is constricted by simple manufacturing and resource availability, but we anticipate solving those shortly.”

  Tony looked down at his notes, then back up at the teleconference camera, “I should add that Nabith Mehra, our fifteen year old prodigy from India submitted a program to help with the fractional loading computation for how many climbers we can put on one ribbon at a time. Ou
r engineers had already accomplished the same task, but his program worked flawlessly, and was coded in a smaller and tighter style than ours, so we tailored a few parts of it and will be using it. That kid is amazing!”

  Tony paused for a moment, then continued, “Eileen Gillespie has done a magnificent job of handling the organization of moving people, staging medical care, and the education process. Nabith Mehra has also provided valuable feedback for our self paced education classes. Migrating people will go through a triage process to determine their needs for education and health care, then moved into either the dorms to wait assignment to a climber, or to village housing for remedial education or medical attention. Again, our biggest problem is simply building the dorms and villages fast enough. We will be able to get that done on time.”