Crisis- 2038

by Gerald Huff

  “I do not want to sensationalize this, but I do need to express the urgency of the situation. Every society has a breaking point, when the people become convinced that the rules of the game, both explicit and hidden, have been rigged against them. People who feel their lives, and their children’s lives, have no dignity will begin to lash out in despair and anger. We are already seeing this in the streets of this country with daily marches and riots. Basic income is our best chance to avoid violent upheaval.”

  Jake nodded. “Speaking of which, the terrorist group LKC has been all over the media. What’s your view on them?”

  “I abhor their use of violence. I believe with Gandhi and King that the only way to create lasting and positive change in society is through non-violent action. That said, I find parts of the LKC manifesto somewhat interesting. Have you read it?”

  Jake shook his head. “No. What about it interests you?”

  “The manifesto is stridently anti-technology, so of course I disagree with its basic premise. But there is a section on how technology is disrupting human relationships. I do share that concern. While technology has the power to bring us an age of abundance and freedom, I believe that we are overusing it in ways that isolate us. Technology should liberate us to spend more time together. But, instead, too often it reduces us to bits on a screen or in a VR encounter. You cannot fully express love and compassion for another human being through fiber optics, satellite links, haptic meet ups, and micro-drone follow-me’s. It takes real presence and connection, in person. So, I agree with the LKC manifesto on that one topic, but disagree strongly with the rest.”

  Jake said, “Let’s get back to that word you’ve used several times: dignity. What does that mean to you?”

  “Yes, this is critically important. I’m so glad you asked about it. Our existing social welfare systems create a powerful negative narrative, describing human beings who get government help as losers, or moochers, or lazy people who didn’t try hard enough. The fortunate few look down on them with pity and contempt, and attach a moral taint to the assistance they reluctantly provide, often with humiliating restrictions and conditions. This eats away at the social compact binding any society together, because mutual respect is essential to human relationships.

  “People who are told they are failures, living at the mercy of their betters, and treated like children incapable of making their own decisions, are stripped of their dignity and agency. They will be much angrier and more self-destructive than a far poorer person living in a village in India who has dignity and agency, despite having a higher standard of living.

  “This is endlessly surprising to the privileged, who do not understand why the poor are complaining. Most of the privileged have never felt the sting of social stigma, the shame of begging for assistance, or a slow lifelong loss of pride and motivation.”

  Jake nodded. “So, your basic income proposal isn’t just another way to provide government help more efficiently. It involves an entirely different mindset, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, exactly! A universal, unconditional basic income, as a birthright of being a citizen, changes the mindset. Everyone is treated equally, with respect for their dignity. Everyone has the freedom to spend that money as they choose. It is no longer about the deserving dispensing noblesse oblige to the ungrateful.

  “Basic income is a celebration of what we have accomplished as a species. We no longer all need to work forty or fifty or sixty hours a week; we can let the machines do most of the work. We can liberate parents, artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and dreamers to pursue lives of contribution, without falling into poverty, or into the government-assistance black hole of disrespect and dishonor.”

  “Thank you, Sara, for laying out such a clear and idealistic vision.” Jake turned to the camera. “We’ll be back to the second half of our show in just a minute.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 7

  Jacob turned off his screen, disgusted at the crass commercialism on display as Christmas approached. He’d heard his dark PNA buzz.

  Only members of the anti-technology movement knew how to reach him on this device. He checked the screen for messages; there was one new notification from an anonymous sender. He opened it.

  It contained an encrypted message and the initials LKC.

  His heart beat faster. They’d finally been contacted.

  He decrypted the message using the widely available LKC public key. Be outside @11:00 if you want to do more.

  “Melissa, check this out!” he called excitedly.

  She emerged from the bedroom. “What’s up?”

  “It’s LKC! They want to meet us!” He showed her the message on his PNA.

  “You sure it’s from them? Maybe it’s a trick.”

  “No way. It was encrypted with their key.”

  Jacob had been thrilled when LKC attacked RezMat and the power grid, and even more excited when he read its manifesto. It captured in eloquent prose all the arguments they had been making. And he agreed that more dramatic action was necessary to wake people up.

  “I don’t want to go, Jacob,” Melissa said. “I’m scared. LKC isn’t just about civil disobedience. They’re blowing things up. I want to disrupt things, not destroy them.”

  “Melissa, anti-tech protesters have been trying to get people’s attention for years with rallies and omnipresence campaigns. It’s not working. It’s time for stronger action. And LKC isn’t attacking people—it’s just going after the machines and the infrastructure that makes them. We did a smaller version of that with Supernova.”

  “We tried to send a message to people about machines taking over,” she argued. “It was a temporary disruption.”

  “So was LKC attacking transports and the grid. Seems the same to me,” said Jacob. He held her hand. “I’m going at 11. Come with me.”

  Melissa was torn. The voice in her head was saying no. But her relationship with Jacob was bound up in this movement. “Well, maybe we can just see what they want,” she said reluctantly. “Maybe they need support people of some kind.”

  “Sure, let’s just find out. We’ve got just enough time for a PPF cloak check.”

  Jacob and Melissa donned their cloaks and headed downstairs at 10:50. At exactly eleven a green self-driving Lyft Toyota pulled up outside their building and stopped. They didn’t see anyone else waiting, so they got in.

  Once they were inside, the car started driving east at a leisurely pace. After two blocks, an electronically disguised female voice addressed them over the car’s speakers.

  “Good morning, Jacob and Melissa. My name is Geneva. I’m one of the LKC leadership team. To maintain security, this first meeting needs to be just a recorded message. Because you’ve accepted our invitation, I assume you’re interested in joining our cause. We need supporters like you to carry out our missions.

  “On the floor on the right you’ll find a nano-SD card. It contains an advanced algorithm for decoding messages found in ordinary pictures. Let me explain how it works.

  “Our communication system enables every member of the collective to construct and read messages by using the bits in carefully selected popular photographs. We will send you a link to an ordinary photo on a popular news site and a one-time-use key. With the key and the photo, the program on the nano-SD card will be able to decode meeting instructions or operational plans.

  “The car will now take you to a popular cafe. Have some lunch. When you return home, use the program on your first photo, which is of the new outpost being constructed on Mars on the Globonews main feed.

  “Welcome to LKC, Melissa and Jacob.”

  Lunch was awkward. Jacob was excited, but Melissa remained uneasy and silent. He did his best to convince her this connection to LKC was a good thing. The ride home was particularly tense.

  Jacob couldn’t wait to plug the nano-SD card into his PNA and point it at the Mars base picture. When he did, a page of
instructions appeared on his screen. With a flick of his finger he sent it to his big display, and he and Melissa read it together.

  It contained all the details for a full-fledged operation: disabling a lights-out, fully automated RezMat robot factory in East Los Angeles using a pre-programmed drone carrying a high-powered laser. LKC would provide all the materials, but Melissa and Jacob would need to do the reconnaissance, program the attack plan into the drone, and find a way to launch it undetected. The message ended with information on how to send a response.

  “Whoa, Jacob,” said Melissa. “No way. This is an actual operation. We talked about some kind of support activity.”

  “Wait a minute, Mel. I agree it’s a big job, but I think we can do it.”

  “It’s not the size of the job, Jacob. This is domestic terrorism. For real. We could get locked up for life.”

  “The Supernova hack wasn’t that different, Mel. And we pulled that off at two hundred different locations. This is just one target.”

  “You keep focusing on whether we can do it. I’m worried about getting caught.”

  “With you as the brilliant mastermind? I’m not worried.” He laughed and grabbed her in a big hug. She squirmed away from him. “I’m serious, Jacob. I don’t want to do this.”

  “Melissa, this is our chance to really have an impact. Like you said, Supernova was temporary. Three days later no one even remembered it. This operation is much bigger. That factory will be out of commission for months. Think about how many jobs we can save with all the robots that don’t get built.”

  “But Jacob, that will be temporary too. Like you said, after a few months it’ll be building robots again. We won’t have saved jobs, just delayed their replacements for a little while.”

  “Maybe. Maybe RezMat will pull out of the U.S. That could happen. But anyway, it will get more attention and inspire more people. We need to grow the movement, Mel. Come on, we need to do this. I need your help.”

  Melissa stared at him, arms folded across her chest.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 11

  Tenesha couldn’t concentrate on Professor Goodson’s lecture on the Occupy movement. She kept looking down at her PNA to watch the counter on the website for LAU Sara’s Message chapter. Every few minutes someone else would join. They were only a dozen sign-ups away from reaching the five percent threshold for inviting Sara to campus.

  “Ms. Martin!”

  Tenesha’s head snapped up. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.

  “Would you care to share with the class what is so fascinating online at the moment?”

  “I’m so sorry, professor. It won’t happen again.”

  “That seems highly unlikely. You haven’t taken your eyes off that thing since you walked in. You’re normally a very active participant in this class. Something is up. Please, either explain what it is or put your PNA away.”

  Tenesha said, “We’re really close to getting enough sign-ups on the LAU Sara’s Message website to let us invite her to campus. We just need…” She glanced down again. “Ten more.”

  Mitch Goodson gave her a small smile. “I didn’t know you were involved in that. Good for you. It’s a worthy project. However, I must insist that you keep your focus here during class.”

  She nodded. He glanced around the room.

  “Has anyone here not signed up yet?” he asked.

  A scattering of hands went up.

  “Well, get to the website and sign up,” Goodson said, “so we can bring Ms. Martin back into the conversation.”

  After class, Tenesha found Nate in the west cafeteria. She threw her arms around him and gave him a kiss. “We did it!”

  “I know! I spent the last hour just watching the counter.”

  “Let’s go the website right now,” Tenesha said. “Let’s send the invitation.”

  They sat down at a table and Nate pulled out a tablet. He navigated to the administrative page of their chapter website and tapped the button that said Invite Sara! It had never been enabled before.

  The screen popped up a simple form titled Step 1 of 2 that tied into the LAU event calendar.

  Tenesha swiped at the calendar and was happy to see there were openings in late January. They picked the earliest possible date that worked with Sara’s schedule and tapped Next.

  The next form prompted them to explain in two hundred words or fewer why Sara should visit their school. “Oh man,” said Nate. “I didn’t know there would be an essay section.”

  “Piece of cake,” said Tenesha. “Hand that thing over.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ST. LOUIS - DECEMBER 14

  Sara sat on a tall chair on a makeshift stage, facing a handful of local reporters and a rack of automated cameras and monitors. The monitors displayed the faces of about forty other media participants. When she saw a signal from one of the show runners, she began to speak.

  “Welcome to all of you watching in omnipresence. I’m Sara Dhawan, here with Nelson Ridley, CEO of Modern Meats, to talk about one of the ways technology can help us heal the planet and move toward a world of abundance. Nelson, thanks for taking the time to talk with me.”

  “Certainly, Sara. Happy to support your mission to educate people on our technology and the tremendous benefits it can bring.”

  “I’d like to ask you a few introductory questions. Then we’ll ask our friends in the media to join the conversation.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “First off, what led you personally to start Modern Meats?”

  “Well, I had quite a fortunate upbringing. Great schools, lots of enrichment and technology. I went to a prestigious university and my parents were able to pay the full freight. When I graduated, I followed more than half of my class to Wall Street. I joined a big firm and did some quant work for them, refining their trading algorithms. We were generating profits and returns for extremely rich people based on nanosecond responses to trading patterns. I was making a lot of money, but my life seemed empty. In college I had been more active in social causes and I felt I had lost that part of myself.”

  “What happened then?” Sara asked.

  “A friend of mine introduced me to a scientist who had discovered new techniques in biofabrication. His work had the potential to really impact the whole planet. I invested in his start-up, one thing led to another, and I took over as CEO four years ago.”

  “People who are watching and listening may not understand biofabrication and its connection to the environment. Can you explain?”

  “That’s because we haven’t really reached scale yet. There are several more technical hurdles to overcome. But biofabrication is the process of growing biological tissues organically in an industrial setting. Essentially, we can grow meat just starting with stem cells and the right set of reactants in a large vat. Once we can scale this up, we can eliminate vast amounts of environmental damage caused by raising animals for slaughter. Deforestation, high water consumption, crop monoculture, disease vectors, and greenhouse gas emissions are all linked directly to raising and killing animals. Not to mention the pain and suffering of the animals themselves.”

  Sara nodded. “What are the barriers to scaling it up?”

  “Well, we have technical challenges in managing very large bioreactors. We also need to further refine the appearance and texture of our meat. The meat we create almost looks and tastes like it came from a live animal, but people are still usually able to tell the difference. Some of our early competitors didn’t make it because their food texture wasn’t close enough to slaughterhouse meat. But we’re getting closer every month.”

  “Thank you, Nelson. Let’s open it up for questions.”

  An AI program noted all the requests from local and remote participants and began sequencing them randomly.

  A man in the front row got the first buzz to proceed. “Hi, Sara. Why are you on this tour around the country vi
siting tech companies?”

  Sara smiled. “Thank you for the question. It’s quite simple, really. I’ve been talking about how science and technology have the potential to lead humanity into a world of abundance. I want to make that fact more real for people. I want to educate them on the progress being made around the world. I want to influence the wealthy to support investment in these technologies, and governments to create policies that enable them to flourish.”

  A woman on a remote monitor had the next question. She introduced herself as a reporter for one of the financial channels.

  “Sara, you talk a lot about unemployment, but this seems to me a classic example of how new industries emerge to provide new jobs, even as old industries shrink. Economies have always created new sectors to absorb workers displaced by automation. We can just never imagine what those industries will be in advance.”

  Sara nodded her head. “Yes, that has been true historically, because the new industries providing valuable new goods and services have themselves depended on human labor. But that is changing. Nelson, how many people does your firm employ?”

  “We have almost a hundred employees,” he said proudly. “Mostly scientists, data analysts, and engineers.”

  “I see. And how many people are employed in the animal husbandry, meat packaging, processing, and distribution industries in the United States?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Half a million or more, probably.”

  The reporter asked, “Nelson, don’t your employees use resources created by other companies? And once you scale up production, won’t your factories employ many thousands of people?”

  Nelson looked puzzled. “No, ma’am. My employees mostly use super-computing resources that cost a few thousand dollars a month. We use cloud neuromorphic compute providers that are totally lights-out. As for factories, the only way to make our product cost competitive is to have highly automated facilities. Our chemical suppliers all have automated factories. We’ll have self-driving trucks doing the transporting, and I expect our factories will be almost entirely lights-out, too, with just a few people on hand.”