The Great Empire--Bilingual Edition

by Joaquim Augusto Ferreira Barbosa De Melo

  - Can you confirm when it is possible to include the new meeting with the Rectors on the agenda? It would be desirable next week.

  -Now everything is much simpler, the President’s hyperactive!

  - I know, I’ve already noticed that new attitude!

  - It’s not just attitude, it’s first and foremost a new ability to work! I’m starting to have a lot of trouble responding to so many requests. Just yesterday, one of the security guards commented that he does not understand where the President gets so much energy. According to him, he is now the first to arrive and the last to leave. Even on weekends, the President comes to work! The security guard and I wonder how can he not feel tired.

  - Haven’t you heard that example comes from above?! He wants us to work harder!

  -Yes, but despite all my efforts, the service keeps piling up!

  - You’re overworked and I’m giving you even more work! – Snu said, apprehensive.

  - If all the chores were that easy, I’d have no reason to complain. While we were talking, I booked the meeting! It’s confirmed for Monday at one in the afternoon!

  - Thank you, and see you later!

  With the arrival of the lunch hour the two friends, Snu and the President’s Secretary, resumed the conversation, but with subjects of particular nature. That day promised to turn out to be a little box of surprises for Snu. When she arrived at her office at the end of lunch, she found a sealed envelope on her desk. On the outside it had only one reference inscribed, written in red and with fat letters: “Classified Document”. For Snu there was something strange about it, with no sender or address. By the high security conditions of her office “only an authorized person could have got in to leave the envelope”, she thought. She therefore carefully observed the object without touching it, and decided to contact the Security Service for information on its origin. When the security guard on duty entered the office to confirm the object Snu described on the phone, he also found this to be an unusual situation. He immediately went to the central office to check the latest records of access to the office. And to his surprise, only Dr. Snu’s exit and entry records were listed. A similar situation occurred with the records of the cameras installed inside the office and those mounted along the access corridors. Perplexed, the security guard asked himself the same question Dr. Snu had put to herself before: “how would that object get into the office?” As he had not found an answer, he put the matter to other colleagues and they too had no explanation for that mysterious occurrence. Faced with the perplexity of the security guards, Snu decided to call the Head of the Personnel Department to inform him about the matter. The Director of Personnel had accumulated duties such as Palace Security, so in a few minutes he showed up at Snu’s office. And, to his indignation, he found that none of his men tried to warn him or identify the nature of the object. His first concern was to identify whether the envelope showed signs of including remote electronic detonation equipment. As no such signs were found, the Director, with all the care, evaluated the contents and weight, then destroyed the seal and opened the package. To his amazement and that of everyone present, inside there was only one message: “If this was a bomb, you would all be dead”. Faced with such an unusual message, one of the security guards allowed himself to have a sonorous laugh, soon repressed by the severe look of the Director. Everyone breathed with relief, but in Snu’s mind remained the signs of deep concern. Minutes later the incident was already known to all the collaborators of the palace departments, resulting in a generalized increase of insecurity. The information also came to the knowledge of the President, who gave rise to an inquiry and the rethinking of the entire security system.

  Two weeks later...

  Following the investigation, it was decided to collect proposals for the installation of more reliable security equipment. Snu, on learning of that decision, was a little more confident, but still not very reassured. For everyone, and in particular the security staff, the most intriguing thing remained “why the access records, both from the door and from the corridors and inside the office, showed no evidence of any movement”. Nobody put forward the possibility that Snu herself had taken that action, since she had been with the President’s Secretary throughout the entire meal period, which coincided with the camera records. The question remained in the air: “how would that strange object have gotten to Snu’s desk?” Following the President’s decision and because that uneasiness in the air, it was urgent to take action. To this end, the Director of Personnel requested a meeting with a prestigious security specialist in order to analyze the situation in detail. Days later, the meeting took place in the Director’s office that, after reporting the occurrences, passed the word to the specialist seeking his opinion.

  -Unfortunately, there are no perfect security systems yet. As you know, when you increase the level of surveillance you are reducing people’s privacy, often conflicting with rights referred in the law. If we thought of a one hundred percent safe security system, it was necessary, utopically, to associate each individual with a code at birth, because the natural resources that exist in each individual (DNA, IRIS, Fingerprint, etc) are not easy to read and register. To solve this problem we would have to apply a “biological chip”, for example in the nape of the neck or in another accessible part, which by cellular adhesion would become an integral part of the individual. Of course, one would have to think about the possibility of its removal by surgery and, to counteract this, choose a place where it would become practically unfeasible, at the risk of causing serious damage to the tissues of individuals. Therefore, not being able to choose such a radical (inhumane) route, it is necessary to find a compromise between what the law allows and the desired level of safety, that is, as high as possible.

  Faced with that description, the Director of Personnel felt particularly uncomfortable with the subject of the specialist’s conversation, and therefore tried to deviate from that approach as quickly as possible.

  - Allow me to interrupt you, Mr. All, I’d like to give you some information. My experience is that coding systems are unsafe because they are not only slow to move within an organization’s buildings, but also very permissive, so these systems are not satisfactory to us. But please continue.

  - Following the initial thought I would say that pure code typing control systems are going into obsolescence; as well as magnetic stripe cards - these systems are being replaced by others, carrying a chip, to which a personal code is associated, but I confess, I’m not a fan of this improvement mainly in the concrete use of accesses, as is the case here.

  - What do you recommend, then?!

  - In my opinion, the solution may involve the use of biometric bracelets that aggregate a short-range radio signal transmitter. Its operation, despite presenting technological complexity, is quite simple, practical and efficient.

  -How does that work?!

  -The device interprets the basic physiological characteristics of each carrier and converts them into an automatic code which, in turn, is associated with another one assigned by the user. These two codes thus form, together, a single code which the bracelet converts into a radio signal which, in turn, is interpreted by the chain of sensors distributed throughout the part or parts of the building to be controlled. Thus, the wearer of such equipment when walking through corridors or rooms in which he is not allowed, the sensors detect his presence and send signals to the cameras that initiate records and produce inhibiting signals, including intimidating warnings.

  - How are these devices placed in your arms?!

  - The application and removal is done by appropriate equipment, installed at the accesses to the building. In this way there is a permanent control in the data update about the people present in the building.

  -So, assuming, by hypothesis, that the user tries to remove or destroy such equipment by his own means, what happens?

  - Any attempt to damage or remove the devices uncontrolled by the appropriate means ceases to function and the user is there
fore prevented from accessing all restricted areas. Thus, for that user, all doors and accesses remain closed.

  - What if the user leaves the premises with the equipment applied?!

  - In this case, in addition to the warning signals and recording by the cameras, the security guard intervenes and, in an extreme case, the user is inhibited from accessing the facilities again.

  - Is the system reliable?!

  - The equipment, apart from being safe, intelligent and effective, keeps all access and route records for a long time, in a totally independent and non-manipulable way.

  At the end of the meeting, the Personnel Director felt embarrassed and speechless. He thanked Mr. All for his contribution, but he did not feel comfortable with those suggestions. After the meeting, he held on to some reflections for a while, even finding it difficult to imagine that one day those who worked in the presidential palace would be the bearers of these bracelets “like prisoners in a penitentiary”, he thought. The problem would have to be solved, but certainly in a very different way from what the specialist had suggested.

  A few weeks later...

  Life in the palace had slowly returned to normal. Very few people were referring to the incident in Snu’s office. The Director of Personnel himself, not finding an improved alternative to the existing security system, dismissed the matter, but not without first giving instructions for online copying records to be duplicated on different computers and at different locations. Despite everything, Snu had not forgotten what had happened and was living with the situation attentively. So, she began to surround herself with the greatest possible security personal.

  The waste accounting project had evolved into broad contexts and in the form of future cities to be built. The University Centers now advocated, with the President, the construction of cities from scratch as a means of achieving economic development and a more perfect model of civilization, a model rethought from the point of view of the user and an equitable, prosperous and promising social organization. The President thus faced a double challenge: building a new model of a more equitable society, based on optimized root cities and periodic renewal, relaunching the world economy. This new model of social organization would not only produce profound social changes, but also have an impact on the world economy and tourism. For the President, the implementation of this model would meet old aspirations that he felt to be his own. The society he wanted to shape and leave as a legacy for the future could be built by using this plan for new cities. However, the option ran up against a potential difficulty - the enormous financial costs of making it a reality. If at the national level it was possible to carry out the programmed of cities with greater or lesser difficulty, at the international level this was not possible in most countries (regardless of whether or not they conformed to the model advocated), as they would never have the financial conditions to implement it. The President therefore considered that his mother might be right in suggesting that the purchase of public debt from these countries (in financial difficulties) could be a facilitating door to his global strategy.

  Over the last years, the Ministry of Economy had made very important financial investments in public debt in several countries. The President now recognized how his mother’s words, despite being megalomaniacs, had every logical meaning. In his mind there was an unquestionable truth: “whether you like it or not, the dependence of a debtor on his creditor is all the greater the lower the solvency condition of the former”. Whatever decision the President might definitely make, it was imperative that the construction of the model city now advocated should materialize. Thus, the following meetings started to involve all the ministries, either to evaluate the implications of such a decision as a whole, or to find the most suitable place or places to launch the first cities. In-depth studies indicated in detail not only the financial costs associated with each of these options, but all the social and economic implications in each of the pilot regions. Assessing advantages and disadvantages in all of them, it was clear from the outset that there were no significant differences, so the decision had to be political.

  According to these studies, future cities would have a 60% reduction in waste under the various headings compared to traditional cities in terms of population equivalent. The total budgeted costs for the construction of the first model city, with around two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, were twenty percent lower than the traditional ones - despite having much more demanding technical specifications, both in infrastructure and in all housing equipment and services (the city was designed to be totally autonomous in its basic needs, for a population of a quarter of a million inhabitants). It could, however, grow on a regular basis, by adding modules (which were nothing more than replicas of the initial one), and it could multiply as if it were a colony. Everything had been thought of from a point of view of functionality, beauty, environmental, of resources saving, and of quality of life and comfort of the residents. The mobility of people as well as objects would be guaranteed by public transport of electric traction, executed by three levels: underground, on the surface and aerial connection. The travel speeds of these vehicles would be, however, inversely proportional to the risk of accidents. The vehicles would be controlled by a network of sensors, cameras and traffic signals, connected to each other by a complex security system, from which terminals distributed throughout the city, would depart for additional information to the users. The aerial electric vehicles would form an agile transport network, connecting the tops of buildings by cable cars and arranged in a modular matrix, serving the residential, commercial, leisure and service areas, in such a way that they greatly reduced the traditional distance when travelling. In turn, the collection of waste, solid and liquid, would be done through an integrated automatic network, with central treatment stations. All the buildings to be constructed would be monitored by sensors of various natures, from thermal to seismic, electrical control and communications. The centre of the city foresaw a huge lake in the centre of which a large artificial island was included, where government buildings and other public utility buildings such as museums, a university and a hospital, as well as municipal services and various research centers would be installed in the northern part. On the southern side of the island would exist large green spaces with leisure areas, golf courses, sports facilities including a stadium and several hotels. On the perimeter outside the lake it was planned to build a road network that connected with the other areas: residential; commercial and services. Next to the inner shore of the lake would be the planned catering areas, gardens and parks. The model city had eight main entrances regulated by traffic controllers, allowing only access to non-polluting vehicles; for the rest it would be mandatory to park in parks on the outskirts of the city. The safety of people and goods would be guaranteed by a sophisticated global surveillance system placed throughout the entire city. All buildings to be constructed were based on anti-seismic plates built to withstand telluric movements close to the maximum of the Richter scale. Each building would include a communications center with more than one interactive station, allowing them to solve most current problems, including health problems. All restricted accesses, including residential ones, would be carried out by personal, non-transferable and unique biometric identification cards, and through them, people would be able to carry out all the necessary operations for the community, including banking, treatment of specific services and others. Each card had associated information of the individual. In the city, life without this card would become almost impossible - the card’s greatest security was given precisely by the existence of a biometric chip with simultaneous validation given by thumb and index fingers. A lost or stolen card would become automatic and totally inoperable after detection of misuse by third parties, so any loss would require its rapid replacement.

  The media were reporting that the President’s decision on the new cities was imminent. The construction of the prototype city model would involve two hundred thousand workers and a high invest
ment of many billions. This was an ambitious project, both for the bold deadlines for implementation and for the innovative nature of many technological solutions that would be applied in its construction. The ministries responsible for launching and coordinating all that gigantic work unfolded in overtime to meet the demands. In the palace, for months people directly linked to the project, as was the case of Snu, no longer knew what it was like to have a full weekend. Yet, for all those who collaborated closely with the President in this giant task, no one equaled him in hours of work and physical resistance. In the corridors here and there his unusual work capacity was commented on.

  When everyone expected the President to reach the limit of physical endurance, this news came not by his hand but of one of his advisors’. Snu, on her way back from another marathon of meetings, late in the evening, fainted, falling unconscious in one of the corridors already near her office. The security guard, watching this incident through the security camera, immediately informed the Palace Health Services that got a doctor on the spot. In the diagnosis, a drop of blood pressure with symptoms of cardiac arrhythmia was detected, so Snu was sent urgently to the hospital. After careful observation in the emergency room, Snu was hospitalized for precaution and the need for complementary exams. The President, involved in the many requests arising from various meetings and public acts, only much later learned about what had happened to his Assistant. It was not the first time that one of his collaborators had shown symptoms of great tiredness, but none as severe as Snu. The President therefore felt great personal discomfort with the news, as he was somehow at the origin of the accident - the overload of work he had put on his staff in recent weeks had showed its consequences. The following day, with the weekend’s entrance, he asked his secretary for a direct connection to the hospital.