Binary Uplift

by Locutus


Episode 9

"Decisions and Deceptions"

(Episode 2 in the plotline "Shelby's Ark")

Thomas West let his view graze, absorbed in thought, over the people that were sitting with him at the large table in conference room A113. The illustrious round of important persons and the fact that the conference was being held at the BnL Head Office, he thought grimly, at least implied that his concerns and warnings were being taken seriously.

Alan Derring was there, the head of the Agricultural Survey Institute and West's boss, and also Rick Talon from the Analytics and Statistics department. The CASE institute was represented by its director Alex Mendez, and West recognized Carl Landry from their robotics department.

But most notable of course were the three officials from BnL itself. One was Ralf Peterson, the person in charge for agricultural affairs; the next was Barnaby Serkis, a rather mysterious and powerful person from the inner circle of Forthright's personal advisors. Some claimed that only Richard Wells, the Chief Secretary himself, was closer to Shelby than him. The third official was not known to him, but it appeared to be some kind of secretary, wielding a datapad. He was obviously quite apt for this position, since he was already busy taking notes, despite so far no one had said a word.

That situation changed as Serkis raised his voice. "Alright then. Good day, Gentlemen. I trust you've all been informed about the situation at hand, anyway I'd like to ask Mr. West to reiterate his findings, maybe some new details will be revealed that have been overseen so far."

With a little lump in his throat, since he was not really expecting to be asked for a speech, West stood up. He gave an outline of how the state of affairs presented itself in his view, of the evaluation results he had come to at the farms and of the discovery he had made on the Desalinator platform.

"So in my view," he summed up, "some process must have set in that adversely influences plant life on a large scale, both on the land and in the sea, and which might even have caused these fish to perish. Although the latter part is not yet proven, it would be quite an odd coincidence."

"And so far, none of your examinations have turned up a possible reason for this? Something biological or chemical in both the farm soil and the seafloor?" asked Peterson who still seemed convinced that something as huge as this just had to be openly and obviously lying there on the ground.

"No, Sir, nothing yet. Whatever it is, it's so subtle - or sophisticated - that our analysis methods cannot reveal it," West replied. Or maybe we're looking in the wrong place, he thought.

And as if he had read West's mind, Talon suddenly piped up. "What if it's nothing in the ground at all? What if it is in the air? I'm wondering why nobody from Operation Cleanup is here. I'd not be surprised if their trash incinerators had something to do with the problem."

"You seem to be forgetting though," Carl Landry interjected, "that since the Fermilab folks came up with the Transducer technology, there are no more incinerators. Thus, no more toxic exhaust."

Talon pondered for a moment, seemingly trying to come up with a counter-argument, but in the end he kept quiet. West on the other hand pondered if it was possible that Talon's thought did have some merit.

"Gentlemen, please. The purpose of our meeting here in fact is not to assign blame for the crisis or to find its definite cause, but to think of possible alternatives should we not find a way to reverse the damage that has been done," Serkis said in a calm voice that yet permitted no contradiction. "If anyone of you has any idea, feel free to utter them."

An embarrassed silence spread among the conference table. West could see the strained faces of his colleagues, juggling thoughts and ideas in their minds, but obviously resulting in nothing mature enough to be openly presented. That is, until Alex Mendez from the CASE institute broke the quietness.

"I might have an idea. It's not fully thought-out yet, it would comprise a huge effort on many levels, and I'm quite sure you're not going to like it. But it might be our only option if push comes to shove."

"For heaven's sake, Jim, can't you take care of this yourself for a change? I got this documentary to finish, you know the deadline is in three days, and I still haven't gotten appointments with some key people at the Head Office."

Kimberly Wells was quite angry with her colleague who obviously needed her okay and amen for every article he wrote. As if she was his babysitter. Before he could continue bothering her, she closed the door to her office and shook her head. Sheesh, she though as she sat down at her desk to continue reviewing her essay.

The episode with the white robot at the CASE outpost had been quite a distraction as well, but a very positive one at that. Kim's mind wandered back to the little interview she had done with the robot. After she had let the probe win at hide-and-seek, she thought with a smile.

It had not only been the first time that she had played such a game with a robot, but also the first time that she had done an actual interview with one. And her replies has been so well-thought-out and sophisticated that Kim almost had forgotten that she was not talking to an actual person. Prompting her host to admit that the robot was in fact remote-controlled had not changed anything about that, she snickered. Okay, the robot's speech synthesis system had seemed to still be in beta stadium, but luckily the roboticist McCrow had shown Kim how to use his computer console to access the probe's internal communication messages.

Kim nodded to herself; she was for sure going to put the material she collected during this excursion to good use later. But for now there was the pressing deadline for the BnL documentary, so she picked up her review where she had left off.

BnL had become large and strong enough to once more come to the rescue when another crisis arose, shortly before the new century began. Severe mismanagement in several cities had led to increasing discontent, especially among the workers directly or indirectly employed by the administration. Wages were not paid, work hours were increased and social security reduced. Before long the first strikes were conducted and public services began breaking down. Transportation and postal services were the first to go, followed by construction, upkeep and trash pickup. Since they did not know where else to put it, people started dumping their garbage in the streets.

Crime rate increased, and the inhabitants of the quarters where it became too bad fled to other parts of the city, slowly causing overpopulation there. The whole process was a downward spiral. The government was unable to cope with the situation, so it spread to more and more city quarters, finally leading to a complete failure of public order.

The cities were - more or less officially - evacuated, although most people had already left on their own long before. The only ones left were groups of renegades who naturally welcomed the situation. They rampaged in the mostly depopulated and run-down city, turning it into something not far from a battlefield.

But, of course the evacuated people had to go somewhere, so the overcrowding moved on to the next city...

Nobody understood how the situation could get so badly out of control, or how exactly it had started in the first place. But everybody remembered that BnL, for the second time during its existence, came to the great rescue. With their sheer unlimited money and manpower they promised to get everything back under control, but of course to be able to do that they needed extensive political power in addition to their economic wealth.

So it was done, and the rest was history. BnL had kept to their promise; they stopped the ongoing rampage before it could spread to every city, restored public order in those that had not yet been given up and initiated "Operation Cleanup" in those that had become totally overrun by trash and filth.

The downside of course, if one wanted to speak of a downside when talking about mankind having been saved twice, from extinction, or at least from collapse of society, was that BnL was now virtually almighty and omnipresent. And that not just on the holographic billboards that lined every street. Commerce and politics had become one and the same. Where there was the President, there was now a CEO. The Senate now was the Board of Management, and the voters had become shareholders.

The President's counselors now were what they mysteriously called the "inner circle of the CEO's personal advisors". Kim assumed that such an enigmatic composition of words was necessary to appropriately increase the aura of secrecy which shrouded what was probably just a bunch of people, sitting at a conference table, pondering what to label their newest brand of oat meal.

Kim chuckled inwardly. The notion of personal advisors had triggered the thought that she badly needed to get these appointments with at least two specific people at the BnL Head Office. Without these her documentary just would not be complete.

So she decided to phone them up again and this time keep bugging them until they agreed to see her.

West was just as baffled as the other members of the conference. He looked into incredulous, partly whitened faces, and even the arduous secretary had stopped taking notes. It took a while until someone spoke up.

"You... you can't be serious," Peterson stammered. "Do you have any idea what that would mean?"

"I tend not to make jokes when facing the possible demise of our race, Mr. Peterson," Mendez responded. "And I'm very much aware of the implications. You surely know what the S and the E in our institute's name stand for."

"But... but how do you suppose we should pull this off? I mean, there's a hundred million people to feed, and we don't have..."

"We got the technology and the resources, the effort will be putting them to the right use for once. Look at the luxury cruise starliners your company is sending out on a daily basis. Don't tell me there's no way to build and use ships for more productive purposes. We need to start thinking not just of the wealthy, but of everyone. We need to start thinking not in terms of sales and surplus, but of survival."

Peterson stared in pondering silence. He knew that Mendez was right, but he was not willing to give up on his company's creed so easily.

"But if you can't bring yourself to see the bigger picture here," Mendez added, "you might consider this: your company has, almost literally, all the money in the world. If you use it to provide what is needed to pull through with this plan, you'll have saved mankind, again. For the third time inside a century, if my count was correct. I don't think any other company in history can claim that for itself."

Peterson's face lit up. Mendez had a point there, and he liked that point much better than simply having to play the Good Samaritan. Although he was not fully convinced yet, he nodded towards Mendez.

"Alright then," the head of the CASE Institute continued. "As I said, the idea is not fully thought-out. It will require lots of planning, starting with exact figures how much food is needed, and estimations how long our supplies will last, given the current plant decay rate." He looked at Derring and Talon from the Agricultural Survey. Talon nodded, though still a little white-faced.

"You'll get everything you need from us," Derring said. "But in my opinion we should consider this plan only as a last resort should our attempts to fix the problem here fail. And if we go ahead with this, I strongly suggest that we keep it secret. I don't dare imagine what would happen if it became public."

"I quite agree," Peterson interjected. "It's also important to spread the necessary work as widely as possible. We need to involve as many subsidiaries as we can get, and have each one do just a small portion of the overall project. The 'bigger picture', as you called it, needs to stay with us."

Noticing nods of common consent, Peterson added towards Mendez, "Given that we'll manage to build or retrofit all the necessary ships, what about the robotic crews? As you know, long-distance hyperspace travel is not yet possible for humans. And most importantly, are there suitable planets? Has your 'extraterrestrial vegetation' project made sufficient progress?"

Mendez looked back at Peterson as if he had found the one weak spot in his plan. "To be frank, not yet. But I'm all confident that we'll get there in time. We found a good number of planets that look promising through our telescopes, and our robotics department is making progress with the training of an evaluator probe to determine their suitability on location."

Noticing the questioning look from the BnL conference participants, Landry took over and gave them a little outline of A.I. training methods. "To answer the question about robotic crews: We're working on several new models that should, together with retrofitted existing models, well be able to run a spaceship mission of such dimensions without a human crew.

"Especially for this purpose we're constructing a robotic autopilot with a highly advanced A.I. It will be capable of controlling almost all functions of a spaceship and of operating even on complex mission plans and sets of directives, without any human intervention. If it checks out okay, and I'm quite positive it will, you might even consider installing it on your starliners, it'd sure gonna be a great help for the human captains."

The hovercar was gliding smoothly along a road that had seen better days. It was of rather rural makeup, not at all like the large highways one would find in or connecting cities, but was just wide enough to serve its purpose: accommodating food transports. A frown of surprise appeared on the face of Kimberly Wells who was sitting in the passenger's seat. Harry Trevis, her colleague and camera operator, also noticed something unusual as they approached the perimeter of the Shelbington Central Farm. The entrance passage which usually allowed visitors to pass the huge fence surrounding the area was obviously closed shut. And their astonishment even increased as they noticed the "Area Is Off Limits" sign next to the entrance, together with the armed security post whose job obviously was to enforce the sign's inscription.

They parked their car and approached the guard who was regarding them with suspicious eyes. A little BnL logo was decorating his uniform.

"Uuhm, hello, I'm Kimberly Wells from the BnL Network News. I have an appointment with the farmers, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Daley, for an interview. Also I'm kinda wondering what an armed post is doing here?"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Wells, but the Shelbington Farm is closed off until further notice."

Regarding the fence and sign, Kim returned, "Yes, I can quite see that. I'm not sure if you know who I am, or that the documentary for which we are here is being produced on behalf of your employer. Considering that, I find it a little odd that we're denied access?"

"I know who you are, Mrs. Wells, but I'm afraid my orders are to make no exceptions. Nobody is to enter the farm area until the investigations are complete."

Kim felt the familiar stir of her journalistic senses that awakened at the word "investigation". Instinctively, she resorted to reverse psychology. "Oh.. well. That's too bad really." She turned to Trevis, "When was the deadline for the documentary?"

Trevis immediately picked up the act. "Tomorrow already. Not enough time to travel to another farm I suppose."

"Damnit. Well, the documentary needs to be cancelled then. Sir, could I please have your name and badge number? I need to file a report why we could not finish this job."

The security agent became a little uneasy, seemingly pondering if his instructions applied to someone who was under orders from his superiors. "Well.. yes, sure. Look, I'm sorry, M'am, but I can't let you in. They'd have my head if I did."

"Huh? It's just a farm, what could possibly be going on there that deserves such a commotion?"

"I can't tell you that either, it's been declared top secret. I'm really sorry."

No need to be, Kim pondered. The guard obviously was not too experienced in dealing with journalists, otherwise he would have known that admitting to one that something was a secret did not at all help to keep it secret. And even more so when it was labeled top secret.

Kim sighed, smiling only on the inside. "Okay then, we won't bother you further." Looking at Trevis she noticed the little smirk on his face. "Let's go, we'll surely find some worthwhile replacement for the documentary. Reporting about "BnL Food - Adequate or Adiposis?" didn't sound overly interesting anyway."

Back in the car, Trevis was still smirking. "Top secret, huh?"

"Riiight," Kim snickered and pulled out a little datapad. She pressed a few buttons and pulled up a map of the region which indicated, in a dangerously red color, where the fence around the farm was located. She picked a spot, pointed at it and showed the pad to Trevis. "What do you say, right there, 10 PM today?"

Trevis' smile became even wider as he quickly looked at the map and then nodded to Kim.

"Well, Mr. West, what do you say? You've been very quiet."

Thomas West jumped a little as Serkis, after having himself quietly listened to the discussion for a long while, abruptly addressed him.

"What do you think," Serkis added, "from your viewpoint, is the plan that your colleagues are suggesting doable in the first place?"

West pondered for a while. "Well. This is something completely new, surely has never been done or even been considered before. But I suppose, if you indeed find planets with comparable conditions as we have here, like temperature, atmospheric and soil composition, precipitation, well you know, all the things that contribute to successful growth... If you actually manage that and to bring a fleet of harvesting robots there, I don't see why not. But be aware that planetary conditions are a very delicate matter. I don't dare estimate what the chances are to find such a world, but I suppose they're not very high."

Mendez nodded. "Yes of course, that's correct. But I'd say if we don't try it at all, the chances are exactly zero. What do we have to lose? I mean, except someone has any further propositions?"

There was silence again, and people shook their heads as Mendez looked into the round. This was undoubtedly going to be mankind's biggest endeavor to date, West pondered. It dwarfed even the fight against the sterility problem in comparison.

"Well then," Peterson said, "we need to set some things in motion here. I'll contact Kranz from the Forthright Space Center and inform him that we'll need a pretty large fleet of transport ships. Mr. Derring, your department will conduct the necessary research concerning botanical aspects? And Mr. Mendez, your responsibility is the robotic crews and finding us some homesteads away from home."

"We're already on it," Landry replied instead of Mendez. "Our robots will be ready in time. And as for spaceships, there is one other important thing. Even before we can think about sending out fleets of harvester ships, we need a single, small and very fast scout ship. You see, it's impossible to determine from here if a planet is actually suitable. We need to get a robotic probe on location, that's what we're building the plant evaluator prototype for."

"Very true," Mendez continued. "We'll travel to our outpost base in L.A. right after we're finished here, to inform them about the change of plans. While we're doing that, you need to tell Kranz that this scout ship has top priority."

"I'll pass on your request," Peterson said after Mendez had finished giving a quick explanation of the calculations involved in determining how much time they might have left for the overall project.

"I think I'll come along with Mr. Mendez to the CASE outpost," Derring announced. "And maybe Mr. West should come as well? He's probably best suited to answer any botanical questions."

West nodded, and Serkis, who had once more quietly listened, looked into the round and found mostly agitated, but hopefully confident faces. Now at least they had a plan by which to go. "Alright gentlemen, that shall be it all..."

A little beeping noise from a tabletop communication device interrupted him. "Please excuse me." He operated the device and quickly flew over the words that appeared on its screen. "Alright, thank you gentlemen, that shall be all for now. You know what to do, so let us get to work to make Operation Homestead a success."

A little smile crossed Peterson's face as the conference participants rose and turned towards the exit. Obviously his little remark had unwittingly become the project's official designation.

As they were about to leave the room, Serkis added, "May I please ask the BnL representatives to remain? Mr. Wells himself has requested an additional internal conversation with us."

"Anything else, Kim?" the shopkeeper asked Kimberly Wells with a smile.

"Ahm, yeah, I'll also need some strong personal searchlights, a number 5 wire cutter, and then..." The journalist leaned forward a bit and lowered her voice, although there were no other customers in the hardware shop at the time. "I'll need to borrow two thermosuits. And most importantly, I need no questions asked, Frankie."

The smile got wider, turning into a smirk. "Thermosuits, eh? Has been quite a while since I last sold one of those," he said, marking the word "sold" with air quotes. "I think the guy was going on an expedition to the Antarctic. Mmh, not easy to come by these days. But you got lucky, I just happen to have some in stock. Just a sec."

Kim chuckled. Got lucky, yeah right. She knew Frankie better than that. There was barely any semi-legal merchandise that he could not get his hands on. This was not the first time that he had provided Trevis and her with some unusual tools for similarly unusual assignments. Or rather, ventures, since most of them her superiors knew nothing about, and also chose not to ask her about, as long as she came home with a good story.

Kim looked around nervously, hoping that she was going to stay the only customer, since she really could not afford any questions asked. Although it was common knowledge that journalists tended to resort to, well, creative means from time to time, what they were planning to do was not exactly legal.

But in this regard she indeed did get lucky. A few minutes later, Frankie returned with a package containing the two thermosuits. "Too bad I'm not allowed to ask, otherwise I'd sure be keen on knowing what you're planning to do with those."

Kim smiled. "Yes, Frankie, you're not. But, as usual, thanks!"

"No biggie," the shopkeeper waved aside. "But when you return them, at least tell me if they did what you wanted them to do."

"Will do," Kim said, and picking up her wares, she turned around to leave the shop.

Jennifer Ivy was sitting at a table in the CASE base's cafeteria, indulging in a piece of cake and a coffee. Normally her weight-related bad conscience used to win over her appetite for sweets, but today she figured she deserved a little treat, since she had just finished the framework design for a new robot model. It had been particularly hard to please her superiors this time. But after many redesign iterations, she had decided to try and give it an interesting and appealing look, and the final shape had turned out to be a resemblance of a ship's steering wheel. She found it was a befitting form for a robotic spaceship autopilot.

And since the robot would be mostly confined to the bridge of the ship in question, it needed no actual locomotion system. It rather would, in addition to radio links, be moved on a system of rails to whatever instrument it needed to reach.

Now that the design was finished, she pondered, it was time for the engineers to build a prototype, and then the robotics people would have a new plaything to test their A.I. programming on.

Just as if that thought had been the cue, Dave McCrow entered the cafeteria and walked to a counter to pick up some refreshment for himself. Then he looked around the room, and Jennifer invitingly waved her arm.

"Hi there, Jenny, may I have a seat?"

"Hi, of course! Taking a break too?"

"Yep. We finished a series of training sessions with the EVE prototype today, and now Jim and me are working on a very interesting piece of software. I heard you completed the design for the robot autopilot?"

"Yeah, finally," Jennifer replied, rolling her eyes with a grin. "I'm gonna do a presentation at our headquarters in a few days, and I hope there won't be any 'unforeseen suggestions' this time."

McCrow grinned. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Well anyway, great that you're finished. Too bad I can't attend the presentation... you know, training duties."

Jennifer smiled. "Yeah, I heard you have great fun with your new probe. I hope you like her design?"

"Hell yeah, she's adorable! I suppose the autopilot will look nowhere as cute."

"Well," Jennifer chuckled, "that'll mostly depend on the level of cuteness you roboticists can put into its A.I. How's that faring by the way?"

"Not sure, another group is working on that. Last time I checked though they were already in an advanced simulation phase. I heard they're planning to use the autopilot for the first SETV exploration missions, so that'll give them a good deal of time still."

"Yep, I'm quite looking forward to that project! Fascinating stuff, trying to find terraformable planets. Just too bad you can't go there yourself and see your probe in action, eh?"

"Indeed I'd quite like to. For now I can't, but I'm sure that will change eventually. I doubt that we already discovered all laws of physics that the universe has to offer."

Jennifer nodded in agreement as they continued eating their cake.

Serkis, Peterson and the secretary with his notepad were still sitting at the conference table, about half an hour after the other participants had left. They were waiting nervously for Richard Wells to join them, and even Serkis, who usually appeared as if nothing in this world could unnerve him, was stirring a little.

As the door opened and the Chief Secretary entered, they half rose and half jumped up from their chairs. They indicated a respectful bow towards Wells, who nodded in return and took his seat at the table, thereby declaring the secret conference opened.

"Good day, gentlemen. I'll cut right to the chase, since I suppose we have no time to lose. I've been following your deliberations before, and I agree with your conclusion that we should go ahead with the suggested plan. Mr. Forthright though requires us not to put all our eggs in one basket. We are to think of a contingency plan, in case the so-called Operation Homestead fails."

Peterson nodded quietly, while a little smirk appeared momentarily on Serkis' face at the mentioning of Shelby Forthright.

"If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears," Wells added and waited, looking into the others' faces.

It had been hard enough to come up with the Homestead plan, Peterson thought, how are we three supposed to figure out any contingency now? Remaining quiet, he was staring into space until Serkis spoke up.

"I might have something," he said. "But just like Mr. Mendez' proposal before, or rather even more so, I am convinced that neither you nor Mr. Forthright are going to like it."

"Well?" Wells prompted him.

"Let us just consider that spaceships, in general, can be used for more than one purpose. And in particular, I am thinking of our considerable fleet of cruise ships."

As he continued outlining his plan, the look on Peterson's face became more and more horrified, while Wells' expression revealed that he was quite convinced that Serkis had to be kidding.

But it turned out that, in fact, he was not.