by Ken Kroes
The large screen behind Richard displayed a number of bulleted points:
Guidelines for the Percipience Way of Life
1. Other than for hunting wildlife, no weapons will be made or built.
2. Population control will be implemented once a sustainable population has been reached (roughly 2,000).
3. Allow expansion only if resources are available and if it will cause no stress to the environment.
4. Selective genetic pairing will be done and will be overseen by the elders.
5. Everyone must rotate through all routine tasks in the village for a set amount of time as specified by the elders.
6. Everyone must assist in large tasks such as planting, harvesting, building huts, and repairs.
7. No currency.
8. No livestock.
9. No personal possessions other than clothes and what can be carried in a backpack.
10. No elected officials.
11. No attempts to communicate with the outside world.
12. Environment is on equal terms with humans.
13. Each hut will have one elder, and the elder’s word is law for the hut. Each elder will select a successor who cannot be a direct descendant.
14. One of the elders will also be the leader for the village and his or her word will be law. The leader will select his or her successor, again which cannot be a direct descendant
15. An elder or the village leader can be replaced only if the vast majority of the other elders agree.
He paused to give his audience time to read and then continued. “I’m expecting that during the years ahead, you’ll figure out the best way to run your village, but these are the basic rules that should be followed. With no currency, possessions, weapons and no real privileges for the leaders I suspect that many of the problems that are in today’s society will simply disappear, but not all of them. It’ll be up to all of you to make this work.”
After he finished answering a surprisingly small number of questions, the crowd dispersed and he left the stage to join Mikhail.
“How’d you think it went?” he asked.
“It was a slam-dunk,” Mikhail said. “Everyone here is fully on board with the program, and I’d be very surprised if anyone boards a bus tomorrow.”
“I’m getting that impression. We’ll finish up here with a meeting with the elders in a few days. Then I’m off to repeat this whole exercise three more times at the other villages.”
That evening Mikhail was nearly asleep in his bunk when he heard knocking on the door of his private trailer. He stumbled out of bed, put on his robe, and opened the door.
“Richard! What’s wrong?”
“We seem to have had an issue at one of the colonies. A computer has been tampered with, and the security team has a man in custody. They suspect he was trying to break into the foundation’s network with some very sophisticated hardware.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I’ve had him sedated and flown up to headquarters. I was going to talk to him myself after this trip, but I think perhaps you may have a better way of getting information out of him.”
Mikhail smiled confidently. “Sure, I know a few ways to do that. I’ll have a full report to you in a day or so.”
“Thank-you, Mikhail. I appreciate all that you’re doing.” Richard said without asking how the information would be obtained.
“No problem. Let me make a quick phone call,” Mikhail said. He picked up his cell phone and punched one of the speed-dial numbers.
“Sorry to bother you at this late hour, Hope, but duty calls—can you please come to my trailer for a few minutes?”
She appeared almost immediately. Mikhail was impressed; he knew he had woken her, yet she was fully dressed and appeared alert. He explained Richard’s problem and that the person apprehended at the colony had been flown to headquarters.
“Could you fly up there and see what he has to say?”
“Of course—I assume since you’re asking me that you want the full story from him?”
“Do what’s necessary. And if it’s possible, please return by tomorrow evening. I’ll make sure the helicopter is ready within fifteen minutes.”
Hope returned to her trailer to gather the few things she would need and headed to the helipad. Despite it being late in the evening she was in a bright mood. This was the first time Mikhail had asked her to interrogate someone, and she was looking forward to it.
********************
Spencer woke in complete darkness with a salty taste in his mouth and no idea of how long he had been unconscious. He lay on a cot; after a moment, he determined that the room was not completely dark but had a dim light coming from the baseboards. His eyes adjusted, and it appeared that the room was quite small, having only a sink and toilet aside from the cot and no windows. Though he listened intently, no sounds could be heard.
The back of his head hurt severely, and he felt nauseous. He managed to lift himself off the cot and reached the toilet before retching uncontrollably until there was nothing left but dry heaves. He lay down on the cement floor, which was cool and felt good. After dozing for a few minutes, he felt strong enough to stand and moved to the sink where he washed his face with cold water and took a drink.
God—how’d I end up here? He remembered entering the colony and talking to the building leader, but after that remembered nothing. He found his way back to the cot and fell asleep immediately.
He awoke again, this time with a clearer head. The room was somewhat lighter now, and the door was open. He saw two people in the room with him. Wordlessly, and without much care, they picked him up, and with one on either side led him down a hallway.
They entered a room containing only a simple wooden chair with armrests and strapped him in tightly enough to restrain any movement. Then they attached electrodes to various parts of his body, and when they were finished, left without saying a word. He looked into the mirror on the wall in front of him and saw that besides a machine behind him, he was alone. At least he thought he was alone; he was unable to see the far walls with only the dim lightbulb hanging over him.
A voice came from a speaker located somewhere in the ceiling. It was deep in tone but had a mechanical sound.
“I’ll get straight to the point. One way or another, you’ll answer all my questions. The measure of pain and your survival will be entirely up to you. Your answers will be verified, and if you don’t tell the truth, you will die.”
“Who are you? If you think you’re scaring me, you’re mistaken.”
There was a soft, deep laugh from the speaker. “Brave words but the electrodes attached to you are telling me that you’re already afraid. Now, although I do enjoy this, I don’t have the time that I’d like to completely break you down. So I’m going to have to cheat a little.”
The door opened and the same two men returned. One wrapped a rubber hose around Spencer’s arm while the other prodded to find a good vein. After a moment, he injected him clear liquid from a large syringe and removed the hose.
“This is my own special blend of truth serum that I’ve found to be very effective,” the voice said. “I’ll give it a while to take effect.”
The men left the room and the voice was replaced by a slow, steady drum beat.
Spencer broke out in sweat and could feel his heart starting to race. He quickly lost track of time and tried hard to concentrate when he heard the voice again.
“Let’s begin.” The voice proceeded to ask a series of question that Spencer felt compelled to answer. He gave them his name, information about his family, education, the DIR, and the people he worked with. Sometimes he offered too much detail or went off of the topic of the question and was given a small electric jolt to get him to stop.
The questions, drugs and steady drum beat left him dazed, and he was unaware everything had ended until he felt himself being untied and led back to his cell. He couldn’t recall what he had said during the interrogation and
hoped he hadn’t revealed too much. His biggest concern though was what was going to happen to him next.
********************
Hope felt pleased as she analyzed the results of the questioning. Although some of the readings from the electrodes were slightly higher than she liked, the young man was no match for her questioning skills and had provided answers without hesitation. She validated several answers through a friend in the DIR and felt confident that she now had what Mikhail wanted. She looked at the clock and realized she had been up for thirty-six hours. She gathered her things and headed to the helipad with the plan to be in Percipience in time for supper.
9 - Discovery
Sue entered the director’s office and collapsed into the chair across from his desk. “You wanted an update on the Pleasant Belief Foundation and ties it may have to CURE?” she asked with a sigh.
“You look exhausted. It can wait until tomorrow,” the director replied.
“If I go to sleep now I’m not sure when I will wake up,” Sue said, “Besides, I don’t have too much to report. The foundation is very secretive and have their own computer network that must be physically separate from the internet. This makes it nearly impossible to find out much. I’m working a couple of angles to break into it and should have more on that soon. As a charity, they are required to file tax returns and all of those are legit as far as I can tell, but they don’t tell the whole story.”
“They don’t?”
“Not even close. For instance, they must’ve spent a ton of money setting up the Colonies, yet they only claimed a small fraction of that, just enough to cover the donations they’ve received. The philanthropist who runs the foundation, Richard, must be spending a pile of his own money and I checked his tax returns and he’s not claiming it either.”
“Strange.”
“Indeed, I will keep digging and report out when I finally break into their network.”
“How about ties to CURE?”
“Other than starting at roughly the same time, being secretive, and working towards the same cause of saving the planet, I can’t find any correlation.”
The director nodded, “I figured as much. So without data to go through, why are you so tired?”
“I don’t know if I’m tired or just depressed. I found a link to a white paper on the Foundation’s public website. The document paints a dreary picture of what the planet is going to be like in thirty years. At first I just thought it was propaganda, but I’ve spent the last few days using our resources to validate their data and it’s on the level. If anything, it’s probably painting an optimistic view.”
“But we regularly report out tons of environmental information,” the director said, “None of it looks pretty, but it doesn’t paint a catastrophic picture either.”
“The information we publish is all historical and current data, they’ve taken the next step and done analysis to project where things are going. Something that we don’t do.”
“So, it’s just their opinion then. The problems are too complex to be certain of any kind of outcome. Heck, the statisticians can’t even agree on the world’s population in the next twenty-five years with estimates varying between one and three billion.”
Sue gave a tired smile. “That’s one of their main points. The problems are complex and we need more time to figure things out, but we may have already run out of time. In fact, they are saying that we’ve probably already blown by a couple of environmental tipping points with respect to our atmosphere and oceans. The sad part is that one of their core assumptions is the most people really don’t give a damn and after looking at a bunch of data, I am starting to agree with them.”
“That’s not true! Everyone I know is concerned about the environment.”
“Sure, as long as their standard of living doesn’t change too much. People want to push the problem on to the corporations or the government when the root problem is over consumption of stuff. The population on this planet keeps growing, including in the industrialized countries, and the planet cannot handle the standard of living that everyone is used to. Tell your friends that they should live in a much smaller house, not have a new car every four years, ride public transit to work even if it takes longer, eat far less meat, buy used, or pay a higher carbon tax and see their response.”
“But we’ve been reducing emissions like crazy over the past decade. Look at how many coal plants are shut down and the increase in the number of electric cars.”
“The report is showing that it’s not enough. With another billion people on the planet over the last ten years, we’re burning more oil now than we were a decade ago. Changes are in the works, but happening too slowly because people won’t give up their current life styles. Even though they work very hard at raising their children and want them to have a good start, people don’t seem to care too much about the world their kids will be living in a few decades from now. The report is showing that in as little as thirty years those children are going to be dealing with extreme weather, less food for a growing population, coastal flooding and a raft of other problems.”
“Send me this report, I need to read this for myself.”
“I’ll send it, but after reading it, you’ll wish that you hadn’t. Right now, most people think we’re going to have a happy ending to this story because, like you said, we’ve cut back. I’m afraid though the story is far from over. Anyhow, until I can break into that network, I’m kind of at a dead end. I’ve been assigned a few environment information requests due to the CURE threat and I’ll start on those and give a few of them to Spencer. That is when I find him.”
“You’ve lost your puppy already?”
She sighed as she got out of her chair to leave. “I’m sure that he’s all right, but he was supposed to check in yesterday after he arrived at one of the Pleasant Belief colonies, but he hasn’t yet. When he does call in, I’ll roll up a newspaper and give him a few swats.”
The director laughed. “I’m sure you will. Don’t forget to send me that report before you go to sleep!”
“I will,” she said absentmindedly as she left, already deep in thought about Spencer and what could have happened to him.
********************
Diane woke to the sound of movement in the trailer. Following Richard’s speech after her long drive, she had gone back to her trailer and decided to take a much needed sleep. She opened her eyes and saw one of her roommates emerging from the bathroom.
“Good morning, my name is Diane,” she said, sitting up in her cot.
“I’m Olivia. Did I wake you?” she said as she finished drying her hair with a towel and looking in horror at herself in the full-length bathroom door mirror. No makeup and these overalls, I can just imagine what people must think when they see me!
“It’s time for me to get up anyway.” Diane pointed to the cot beside hers with its rumpled blankets. “I see that our other roommate has already gone.”
“Yes—her name is Hope, and she left late last night. Didn’t you wake up when her phone rang? Must have been important, because she shot out of here, and I heard the helicopter take off shortly after. I don’t know much about her. We flew up together yesterday morning, and I think she’s supposed to be helping me.”
“Interesting that it was important enough for her to fly out,” Diane said. “At least we’re guessing it was her on the helicopter.”
“The timing was too perfect. Hey, I’m going to grab some grub—do you want to come along?”
“Sure, if you can wait a few minutes for me to take a shower and get dressed.”
“Take your time. It’ll take me a while to decide what to wear,” Olivia said as she open the closet and saw a rack of pale orange overalls.
Shortly afterward, the two young women headed through the maze of trailers towards the temporary cafeteria. “I so miss my apartment and other things. Living in these trailers, wearing this and eating here is just not me at all. Thankfully, I’m only one of the builders
so I’ll be out of here soon,” Olivia said as they joined the breakfast line. “What kind of work are you going to be doing here?”
“I’m a resident, part of Mario’s clan,” Diane replied. “To be honest, I found out about this whole thing only a few weeks ago, and since then it feels like I’ve been in a whirlwind. What area are you working in?”
“The research lab, setting up equipment, developing instruction guides for stuff, and helping to stock the library with books on biology and chemistry. I’m very interested to see how the whole education thing works out here.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, the plan is pretty different from the standard education system and its current setup. Here, kids will get started on basics like reading, math, etc., but will go through the same training as you are now—learning the fundamentals of all jobs here. After that, they work with their elder to determine an area of specialty and then will spend years working and studying. There’ll be no formal classes for advanced education; it’ll be gradual learning passed down from others specializing in the field.”
“Sounds better than the system I grew up in. I didn’t fit in well at all. Far too many topics I wasn’t at all interested in. At the time, it was all about test grades, not really about how much you knew on the topic.”
After breakfast, Olivia took Diane to the town center. They walked past the entrance that Diane had used yesterday.
“That goes to the auditorium, library, and a few offices,” Olivia said as they turned a corner and came to another entrance. “This is the entrance to the research lab and nursing center.”
Diane was impressed on entering the research lab. There were areas for working, a small lecture hall, and some equipment already set up together with many instruments still waiting to be unpacked. She watched as Olivia started heating up some water with a Bunsen burner and then tore the packing tape off a box.