Voyage

by C. Paul Lockman

  Beasley and I continued for the rest of the day. I enjoyed the focused attention of my peers (although who, in truth, could claim to be a peer to a guy like me?) the gratified smiles, and the swell of pride I felt at these incredible achievements. Single-handedly changing the world, well… it’s a trip.

  Hal had done so much. His rather dry, cause-and-effect thinking was never ineffective or inefficient. He was totally aware of all variables, all of the parameters in decision-making. His titanic computational power, harnessed by a desire to assist, to heal, to manage our global Renaissance, was from the beginning a trunk of the project, upon which were hung the branches of funding, guidance, exploration and planning upon which mankind relied.

  Smaller projects occupied my time much like hobbies; I had such resources and could deploy people and material anywhere in almost any amount. Special high altitude suits helped volunteer climbers and forensics people clean up trash from the world’s 8000m mountains, and recover bodies. New and startling cave complexes in Mexico, Spain and Papua New Guinea were mapped for the first time using professional-grade spelunking suits of my design. Well, Hal’s design in actuality, but no-one could know that.

  Hal and I brokered a deal - which actually took six years but involved me for about five minutes - to organize, make digitally available, and generate cash for the authors of every book ever printed. 99.7% of extant human literary and musical output is now available under the Commons License, (a wordy appellation which merely sprouted a sprawling family tree of slang for describing ‘free’ media) which works a lot like the old BBC Television License. Only you get pretty well everything anyone has ever written.

  We dwelt on these events in the last hour of the day, by which time I could tell Beasley was getting ready to be finished and take his helo-shuttle home to Virginia. I scanned the room as he wrapped things up, seeing if there was anyone I wanted to talk to, or spend time with, after the deposition. The three sexiest girls in the room were all, on some level, spoken for (I have an unerring memory for such things) and I tended to steer clear of the most obvious opportunities to complicate my life or sully my already extremely chequered reputation. I’d check with Hal once I got to the car, and see what he had lined up for me.

  We thanked the assembled crowd, agreed to meet again the following day, and headed out. “You still get the same kick out of this, don’t you?” Beasley asked, arm around my shoulder as we left together. “Like a school Speech Day, a university graduation and a Nobel Prize, rolled into one”, he chuckled amiably. He might rib me about my lifestyle and the amount of high-profile fun I was having, but never did he caution me about it; if anything, Beasley’s support and guidance was a passport to the craziest things I’d ever done.

  We shook hands warmly and I promised to get him the new Nano-fibre fishing poll he’d emailed me about. They ran at about $70,000 each; Hal would take care of it. A few days’ quiet lake fishing in Montana next August sounded pretty great. Beasley was whisked off to the heliport and I slid into the limo for my ride to the hotel.

  People were used to this by 2033 but it must strike my reader as rather odd that I was the sole public face of my organization, of this gigantic project. It just never occurred to me to hire anyone else; from the very beginning, Hal and I had run the show together, the best team in the Solar System. More cooks in the kitchen would only have complicated things, and Hal’s repeated warnings about security were not just silicon paranoia, but born of a real concern that involving others would inevitably compromise the project. We had applications and inquiries by the million, of course – engineers wanting to join, project managers seeking a role, investors and scientists and politicians and reality TV show producers… everyone from National Geographic to People Magazine wanted a slice of me, the project’s mastermind. All of my correspondence appeared to have been written by me, and was signed thus. And besides, I could hold down a schedule which would leave any CEO reeling. Who needed help, when you had a superhero and a secretive supercomputer working together?

  “Can you make a 9.30pm drinks thing with Evelyn Tanner?” A raised eyebrow, a slight smirk.

  “Depends, Hal, what’s it about?” I relaxed luxuriantly in the copious back seats of the limo – I like plenty of space when I travel – and lit a hand-crafted cigar lightly laced with a mild dose of MDMA. The city slid past, darker now, less busy. Another smooth ride through The District, one of hundreds. I enjoyed the comforts of my position, but all in all, I thought as I blew smoke rings, I’d rather be hanging out in my apartment on Takanli with Falik. Ach. I dismissed the thought along with its attendant discomfort, deep in my gut.

  “Ms. Tanner represents the United States Air Force”, Hal reminded me, “and we have been in correspondence for some time regarding issues of intellectual property, technology transfer and the like. This is the first part of the matter I cannot deal with remotely.” Hal took a quirky pride in his ability to run pretty well anything from nearly anywhere under almost any circumstances. Firing off a few letters, indistinguishable from my own, was child’s play. “She has requested a meeting with you in person and has remarked numerous times as to its pressing urgency”.

  Urgent I am sure it was, but it wasn’t the copyright issues that brought the raised eyebrow. I had clapped eyes on Evelyn only once, at my gigantic marquee at the 2031 Melbourne Expo, and immediately filed her figure in a category I called ‘fucking gorgeous’. She was almost supermodel tall, and fit so curvaceously into her smart, blue uniform that I very nearly asked her out on the spot. That would have been awkward, even if she hadn’t been working for the other team – I was in the middle of a jet-pack demonstration which involved an unscheduled appearance at the MCG, briefly interrupting the Third Test by hovering over mid-wicket, waving enthusiastically to the adulated crowd. The umpire had famously called me a ‘dingbat’ at a post-match press meeting. With such shenanigans on my schedule, grabbing a drink with delicious, ebony Evelyn had had to wait.

  “9.30 it is. My place or hers?” Hal was used to my lascivious sense of humour by now.

  “The Cotton Lounge”, Hal checked. There was time for an hour at my hotel first, a shower and some work with Hal. He had booked me into one of my own places, which was campaigning vociferously, and with some success, for an Eight-Star rating; I was particularly pleased with the thirty-nine storey lobby atrium, which was large enough to contain its own working ecosystem of jungle trees, ferns and vines, tropical birds, and even a small squadron of spider monkeys. Banyans stretched endlessly into the cavernous, glassed spaces; guests took rope walkways and hardwood bridges from the restaurant to the Olympic pool, or to the new Zero-G exhibit, or the nightly laser-shows at the roof bar, probably the best view in town. It was seldom other than completely full, and guests agreed it to be well worth the upending of years of building regulations by exceeding the height of the Capitol building. Some people just think too small.

  I relaxed on the balcony after my shower, cigar still providing its tobacco sweetness and the endlessly interesting mix of relaxant and stimulant. Hal and I worked on a couple of speeches and agreed tomorrow’s schedule before I took a minute to read up on Evelyn Tanner. Hmm... graduate work at Cal Tech, teaching at the new USAF Academy in Dayton, top of her class all the way through, etc, etc. Two recent papers in peer-reviewed journals – I read them both in a couple of minutes. One was pretty good, a survey of newly available orbital surveillance technology; the other was paranoid nonsense about Dvalin. I knew which would be up for discussion tonight. I clicked the file closed, noticing as I did so that Evelyn was apparently single. Oh, and that at least one of her colleagues suspected her of being a lesbian. I never ceased to be amazed at Hal’s intelligence-gathering.

  I eschewed the limo for the six-block walk. Hal chattered in my earpiece for most of it, catching me up on world events in which we had, in one way or another, had a hand. Hal was keeping a close eye on China – we were only a month away from completing the dismantling of the Yangtze Dam, and he w
as monitoring downstream conditions as they slowly improved. A general halt to damming, coal-mining and nuclear fuel refining had been part of China’s chapter of the Dvalin agreement – still gratifyingly in place after twelve years – and her hinterlands had benefitted as much as anyone from the numerous development projects I had put in place. Dozens of cloned Yangtze dolphins were being bred in captivity, almost ready to retake their place at the top of the great river’s food chain. It was this kind of news which made the whole business just so worthwhile.

  She was waiting for me at a quiet table, or at least as quiet as this madhouse ever gets. DC’s most popular spot for a late drink, the Cotton Lounge never got old, never lost its charm, never let me down. The staff welcomed me like a movie star, but one with whom they felt a personal friendship. No uniform tonight, I noticed, but a neat trouser-suit, short navy jacket over a white blouse, to which my eyes instantly travelled as soon as we’d shaken hands. We sat and I motioned for the waiter.

  “You know there are over five hundred books about you?” she asked once I had ordered. “Nobel Laureate… Man of the Year six times?” Her incredulity was wrapped in a smile as she recounted the pillars of my legend-status. Not intimidated, I was pleased to see. Impressed, sure, but then… wasn’t everyone? “How on earth does someone like that find the time to meet a nobody Air Force lawyer?”

  I smiled, took a sip from my gin & tonic. “Are you kidding? I’ve been stuck with senators and journalists all day. You’re the most real person I’ll encounter this whole trip”. I was in DC only for the week, and then off on my travels again – into space for the eighteenth time this year for a technology demonstration. “Actually I’m just as surprised the Air Force found time for me, amid all the downsizing you guys are busy doing”.

  It was a joke decorated with barbed wire; the Pentagon’s role had shrunk so much that large parts of the building were mothballed. Defence budgets, not just here but internationally, had plummeted as the global race for resources simply stopped in its tracks. With everyone getting pretty much enough of everything, who needed to fight?

  She smiled thinly at this none-too-subtle shot across her bows. Perhaps it was a little heavy; after all, she’d been nothing but civil. “Smaller is Better”, she quipped, “that’s the new logo. A tiny but highly capable fighting force…”

  I waved a hand, not impolitely, but enough to spare myself further Pentagon propaganda. “I’m only teasing… besides, all those smart young guys and girls can come and work on space projects.” It was true – fully 20% of initial space-based engineering work was being done by ex-forces personnel. There had been lengthy editorials about the potential ‘militarization of space’ but I had gone on a talk show and so vehemently pummelled this lunatic point of view that it had never really resurfaced. “Maybe you’d consider applying one day?”

  She took a sip of her own drink, smiled once more (damned cute, I thought to myself) and then subtly slid a folder of documents onto the table. It sat there for a minute, untouched, as I watched her carefully. It was a little like watching a cat who has seen the bird, but has yet to establish its stalking strategy.

  “I think you’ll find these interesting.” She opened the folder and handed me the first page. It was a memorandum from an Air Force General to the Secretary of Defence, and it looked genuine. I read, deliberately slowly as not to arouse suspicion (I was always careful with this when reading in front of others), then set it down on the table and returned to my drink.

  “Bullshit.”

  She took it back, returned it to its folder, unphased by my sudden rudeness. “Will that be the sum total of your remarks?” she asked, turning on her court-room formality. “I’d have thought a man of your eloquence…”

  “Dvalin and the End of the World”, I quoted. “The Last Age of Man: Dvalin and the Coming of the Plague”. I gestured to the folder. “National Security Posture in a Post-Dvalin Environment… I’m beginning to think that, despite my best efforts, a good chunk of the human populace is deeply learning impaired”. Tanner’s lips pursed. This friendly drink was turning ugly.

  “Oh really?” she managed, flipping through the rest of the folder.

  “Don’t bother showing me any more of that crap. I keep an eye on my detractors – the conspiracy types, the paranoid morons, the would-be military-industrial profiteers and the Cold War, cloak-and-dagger spooks… You’re all barking fucking mad.” I gestured with my drink to reinforce the point.

  Tanner pushed on, ignoring my rather uncharacteristic rudeness once more. “This one you haven’t seen”, she promised, passing the two-sheet document across the table. She sat back, a little pensive, almost as if awaiting an explosion.

  “The National Security Agency has acted on Presidential Order #35571 re: the Dvalin asteroid and has provided the following executive summary… blah blah…. Unique event in world history… blah blah… unmanageable risk to human life… potential for global disaster in the event of an impact… possible military installations… orbital death rays… nuclear holocaust… imminent threat to the survival of the species…”

  I actually laughed. “Get the fuck out of here!” Freshly-silenced conversations took moments to restart following my blurted, torrid interruption. Even one of my favourite waiters glanced over in concern. My manners were slipping, and I knew it, but this stuff just wound me up. I’ve dedicated my life to bringing education, resources and peace, wherever it is needed (which is everywhere), and these buffoons can only see in my work what they’re programmed to see – clear and present danger, threat after threat after threat, an even greater rocking of the boat than they’d already been forced through. I understood their fear, or I tried to. It was quite a concept to wrap your head around: the wholesale re-writing of world political dynamics, military balances… everything was changing. If all your energy was free, all your water pure and all your transport zero-carbon, who needed to buy expensive fighter planes, or research nuclear-tipped missiles, or plan for Armageddon? I had pulled the rug out from under some of the most powerful people in the world.

  “The president ordered this assessment?” I asked, waiting for my pulse to return to normal.

  Evelyn slid more documents across the table, and the picture became clearer. And a lot worse. Evelyn leaned in closer. “Presidential backing for the Dvalin project is weakening”, she explained. “The Joint Chiefs think you’re moving too fast, and there is a fear that the asteroid will be used as a weapon… not in the short-term, they admit, but there’s no way to predict how it will be used be subsequent generations.”

  Oh, God, her naivety was killing me. I simply couldn’t tell her, sitting there in some swanky DC lounge, that the project was being run by a quantum super-computer who would never die, never fuck up, never go rogue. The human face of this project was the only thing which brought credibility and approachability to this vast, almost unimaginable proposal. They assumed, because they didn’t know better, that I would get old, become infirm, lose my marbles and hand over the running of the project to a protégé, or a committee, and then that age-old chaos would descend, the same chaos which follows unity – disorder, inefficiency, infighting… How can I tell you that it won’t be like that, without saying far too much?

  Tanner filed away the documents and looked me straight in the eye. “The President is preparing a speech which will raise these concerns.” Oh, Fuck. “Prime Time TV.” Double Fuck. “He’ll ask for a national debate on whether we can truly entrust our global security to a man with your… reputation.”

  That weak-willed, two-faced, yellow son of a bitch. We talked three times a month, sometimes more, and never had he raised this kind of fundamental concern. Could he really believe I’d mount lasers on the Dvalin asteroid and blast away at my enemies? I mean, for the love of God, I didn’t have any enemies! Peace was the whole point of the thing. Of all the things I hate, I think I hate most being misunderstood.

  I took a few breaths, counted to ten, let my eyes scan the lounge. A l
ong pull on my drink, a wave for another. Then I calmly intoned, “Dvalin is a resource project. It exists in order to pull a huge hunk of water and metals into earth orbit, in order that we have a ready-made off-world stockpile. You know all this”. She nodded. “There will be no weapons, no harm will come to anyone, and mankind will have a real chance to get out into the universe and try its hand in some very cool new environments”. This was my own propaganda, well rehearsed and crystallized to perfection after years of honing by Hal and I. “The President has received all of my engineering data, and I have been scrupulously honest in every aspect of this project, as befits something of such global importance”. My drink arrived and I ignored it. “Evelyn… this is a setup. You know it, I know it. The Joint Chiefs are assholes, dinosaurs…”

  It was her turn to wave a hand, rather brazenly shutting up the world’s most famous man. “They’re my bosses, and so is the President. If they are concerned, I am concerned. And so should you be.” She was calmer now, less officious, almost willing this odious, potentially horrid problem to go away. I sensed that she was as caught up in the romance of Dvalin, of our new orbital infrastructure, as anyone – an Air Force girl, how could it be different? Wasn’t this the finest exploration, the best flying that anyone could hope for? A fighter jock’s dream wrapped up in an environmentalist’s Utopia, straight from a socialist’s heaven, embellished with a geeky engineer’s flair… and all presented with unmissable, gigawatt-smile charisma by yours truly.

  “OK. Tell me, Evelyn”, I said in a more relaxed tone as I returned to my drink, “who knows you’re here tonight?”.

  She glanced down at the table, weighing up her answer. “Two senior guys at the Pentagon… but none of the signatories of these documents.”