by Hammond, Ray
Connie indicated for the party to halt in the acclimatization area. The room was quiet except for the low hum of powerful air-conditioning. As their eyes adjusted, the visitors could see that about a third of the sixty control positions were occupied by a duty team made up of twelve women and eight men.
Tye walked his visitors around the top terrace and, as they circumnavigated the room, flat two-dimensional holographic displays appeared momentarily in front of the controllers’ seats before the visitors’ viewing angle changed and they disappeared again.
‘All networks are self-monitoring, of course,’ Tye pointed out. ‘What we do here is to match our traffic projections with actual usage and provide global feedback to the regional controllers.’
He could have added that the entire Network Control Center was completely unnecessary and had been created merely for show. Although it was monitoring the world’s satellite and terrestrial communications networks, it had actually been built to serve as a large demonstration suite for the Tye Corporation’s latest products and much of its quaint futuristic design was yet another product of Disney’s kitsch imagineering. All real network management functions had long since been distributed to automatic systems, regional strategic planning centres and local contractors and maintenance teams. This was a place in which to sell!
Tye led the party down a central aisle and waved them into seats in the three front rows. Four uniformed stewards handed out hot antiseptic towels. When these had been used and retrieved Tye nodded to one of the controllers and the central pit was filled with light.
Hanging in space in front of the visitors’ eyes was a giant globe: a representation of the planet Earth, fifteen feet in diameter. Despite his gnawing doubts about the Tye Corporation and its president, Jack once again found himself captivated by the power of Tye’s latest 3D Holo-Theater technology.
‘This view is created from images captured by over four hundred separate satellites of our Argus network,’ explained Tye, stepping into the pit to stand beside the huge globe. ‘This is a composite of what they are seeing at the moment, from about a thousand kilometres out. That’s about seven hundred miles,’ he explained. ‘As you know, all space measurement is in klicks.’
The visitors were silent as they drank in the details: the under-seat scent simulators added a hint of sea breeze to the atmosphere. The projection showed the sunlit side of the planet with the Americas to the left, Europe and Africa to the right and, dominating the centre, the immense curving blue of the Atlantic Ocean. They didn’t have time to register the complete absence of cloud cover.
Tye nodded to the controller again and the image dissolved and zoomed in at such high speed that it seemed as if a central vortex had formed. Within a few seconds the outline of Hope Island appeared with its larger neighbours, Cuba and Haiti. Then Hope Island, with its floating spaceport, launch runways and deep-water harbour was clearly visible, filling the holographic space. The camera zoomed again and they saw the tarmac area at the entrance to the underground complex. A further zoom and the camera was focused on the driver they had left with the first of the Volantes.
The controller mouthed a few words into his microphone and the driver held out a small piece of paper, the size of an old-fashioned business card. One further magnification revealed the characters on the card. In Cyrillic text with English sub-titles they read:
The Tye Corporation is proud to welcome President Orlov and his distinguished party to Hope Island.
The demonstration had its intended effect. The president smiled and then patted his palms together in appreciation. The rest of the delegation followed suit.
Tye smiled. ‘That’s an old party trick, although there is a new twist to the way we do it,’ he beamed, stepping out of the light. ‘High-definition visual satellite surveillance is really quite old-fashioned.’ He wagged his finger in mock admonishment. ‘Just don’t go building any new rocket silos on Cuba. We’ll catch you.’
Tye turned and nodded towards one of the control positions. A slim woman in her mid-forties, dressed in a white blouse and elegantly tailored navy-blue trousers walked to the edge of the Holo-Theater to stand beside him.
Tye introduced her to the visitors. ‘This is Professor Theresa Keane. You’ll be aware of her work on artificial life and machine intelligence.’ He paused. ‘We’re proud to have her here and we’re honoured that a Nobel Prize-winner should head our School of Virtuality at Hope University.’
He turned to the woman who shot him a brief but vivid smile. ‘Theresa, please show our guests our recent enhancements to satellite surveillance.’
Tye stepped out of the ring and took a seat in the front row. The holo-image snapped back to an orbital view of the Earth, now one-third covered by cloud. The visitors also noticed that within the short time that had elapsed during the demonstration of visual-resolution systems, the planet had turned a few degrees to the east.
The professor stepped from the shadows into the pool of soft light created by the shimmering representation of the planet. Her dark auburn hair was cut short and she wore gold-framed half-lens viewpers that glinted in the light.
‘Gentlemen, as you can see, we are now viewing our planet using only the visible spectrum of light,’ she began with a hint of a soft Irish brogue. ‘Remember, this image is composed in real-time from signals beamed back here by four hundred and eighteen low-earth-orbit satellites of the Argus network. But we are also scanning the planet at all wavelengths. Let’s remove cloud cover again.’
The image reverted to the perfect blue, green and ochre globe the visitors had seen when they had first taken their seats.
‘Most of the images that have now emerged from under cloud cover are being captured at infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. The systems are compensating in real-time for cloud movement and are translating their output into light of the visible spectrum.’
She spoke slowly and carefully, ensuring that the visitors’ translation systems would deliver one hundred per cent accuracy. She wasn’t sure how recently their software had been upgraded. She looked around her small audience to see if they were following her. Their faces told her little.
One of the Russian delegates in the front row rose hesitantly and bowed. ‘May I put one question?’ he asked in slow but reasonable English.
The professor nodded and smiled her permission at him. Jack decided it was a very nice smile despite the island rumours about her sexual preferences. His emotions were definitely surfacing again.
‘This is simulation, yes?’ the delegate asked.
Theresa Keane smiled and shook her head as her questioner sank back into his seat. ‘No, we are not simulating what might be going on under the clouds,’ she explained. ‘We are monitoring ground-level movements, heat and electrical activity at non-visible wavelengths, and representing them visually. The only things we can’t see through cloud cover are inert details such as fine lines, print, objects that don’t store heat and so on. We pull these details from a database that is updated every time cloud cover lifts. What we are seeing now is a form of enhanced real-time visual-wavelength monitoring.’
The group was silent as it digested the implications of satellite surveillance that could see through cloud.
The Russian delegate rose to his feet again, his hand raised as a request to ask another question.
Theresa smiled her smile at him again. ‘If you’re going to ask whether the network can also see in the dark, the answer is yes, it is fully scotopic – performance is even better than with clouds in daylight; there’s less refraction, less visual interference.’
The questioner nodded, hesitated, then nodded once more and fell back into his seat.
There was silence in the room and Jack smiled to himself. She hadn’t mentioned the link between the corporation’s terrestrial wireless networks and the surveillance system. A huge amount of data was uplinked from sensors in the cellular networks to help the satellites see in all weathers and at night. Nor had she mentioned the sy
stem’s radar-lidar components.
Theresa allowed the silence to hang for a few seconds more and then she turned back to the globe. ‘For the second part of my introductory presentation this afternoon I thought you might be interested in a short history,’ she said. ‘So, just for fun, I’m going to freeze the image so we can take a look at how we started to connect our planet – how we started to create the digital domain and living space I call global virtuality.’
She waited until the planet became still.
‘It all started over one hundred and seventy years ago, here.’ The hologram dissolved and zoomed towards the eastern seaboard of the United States and then adjusted its image to present a round two-dimensional map of the Delaware peninsula.
Suddenly a line of white light snaked northwards between two areas of darkness.
‘This was humanity’s first form of electronic communication,’ said Theresa. ‘This city at the bottom is Washington DC and the world’s first telegraph line covered the thirty-five miles to Baltimore. It was built by Samuel Morse when he was fifty-three. Then, over the next hundred and seventy years, the industrialized nations wired themselves with telegraphic cables, telephone lines, satellite networks and, finally, the mobile wireless systems we all use today.’
*
Calypso Browne felt sorry for her precious charge and she tended to indulge him. She hauled herself out of the pool and, once again, ran to fetch the beach ball from the grass.
‘That was a foul,’ shouted Tommy. ‘I wasn’t ready.’
Calypso crooked the ball in her arm and smiled down at the petulant seven year-old. ‘So how many times do I have to say “Ready?”’ She smiled. ‘Here!’
She shot the ball towards the boy and jumped back into the warm water. The early-afternoon Caribbean sun was so hot that, although her dark skin required no tanning, all she really wanted to do was stretch out on the grass for an hour. But the boy had so little time to play. Tommy leaped and caught the ball above his head.
‘I’m going to score,’ he shouted and punched the ball back over the small net they had rigged across the pool. Calypso feigned an attempt to reach it and allowed it to fall into the water behind her head.
‘You weren’t trying!’ shouted Tommy. ‘Give it back.’
‘Yes, I was so,’ laughed Calypso, hands on hips in mock anger.
She shot the ball at him once more and again it bounced off his fist and out onto the manicured lawn surrounding the pool.
‘Your turn, Tommy,’ shouted Calypso. ‘I’m always getting it.’
The boy swam for the steps and clambered out of the water. He retrieved the ball and, holding it high over his head, ran back towards the pool intent on hurling it as hard as he could at his laughing companion – she was now poking her tongue out at him. He was so preoccupied with his aim that he didn’t notice his discarded baseball bat by the poolside. The bat rolled forward under his foot and with a yelp he flipped backwards and cracked his head on the unpolished marble slabs laid around the pool edge.
Calypso churned the water as she swam to the nearest steps and ran to the boy’s aid. He was flat on his back, unconscious. Dr Browne didn’t hesitate. She raised his eyelid. There was a slow response to the light. She lifted his wrist and pressed a button on his Day-Glo orange LifeSwatch. His pulse was almost 120. A second press of the button revealed his blood pressure was 110 over 60. She checked again: it was falling.
Calypso stood and ran to her bag. She grabbed her VideoMate to summon help even though she knew that the boy’s LifeSwatch would have already transmitted its pre-programmed emergency alert. In a few seconds it would automatically make a decision whether or not to start injecting its small store of concentrated adrenalin through the boy’s skin.
She bent down and disabled the LifeSwatch, just to be safe. Personal health protectors were better than nothing if the wearer was alone when a crisis struck, but she didn’t want to risk Tommy’s heart being accidentally stimulated until she had a better idea of what his internal injuries might be.
*
‘Well, we have now arrived at the present day,’ said Professor Keane quietly.
Her audience sat transfixed at the diorama of their planet cocooned in chains of satellites and networks of cables.
‘We estimate that there are currently about four billion social and commercial transactions per second taking place in the digital networks, most of them initiated and completed without human intervention. We have now come to realize that every device – the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, computers, the Internet, cellphones, wireless devices, VideoMates, bodynets – are all different aspects of the same thing. They are all devices for access to the electronic digital extension of human consciousness that is global virtuality.’
She paused, preparing to wrap up her presentation.
‘You might be interested to hear the words of the first message ever sent electronically,’ she continued. She looked at her DigiPad to ensure the quotation was accurate. ‘It was sent by Samuel Morse in 1844 when he had made the final connection to his telegraph cable and, of course, it was in binary code. It said: “What hath God wrought?”’
What indeed? thought Jack at the back of the room.
‘Thank you for your attention, gentlemen,’ concluded Professor Keane. ‘Now we’re switching from our history lesson back to our real-time monitoring of the world’s networks and I’m handing you back to Tom.’
She nodded at the controller and stepped into the darkness.
The Russian president patted his palms together again and his party swiftly followed suit.
Thomas Tye stood up and walked into the pool of light, keen to enjoy his audience’s appreciation of the dazzling display.
‘What you see now is our monitoring of current network activity. The intensity of light in the networks indicates the traffic load. We estimate . . .’ there was a pause as he looked at a digital counter above the display ‘. . . that over three billion people, or their software agents, are currently transacting in the world’s digital space. One of our single laser beams can now carry over one hundred million video calls and if all the children on the planet wished to send a holiday video to their grandparents at the same time – live feed or recording – there would still be sufficient capacity.’
From two rows back, Jack saw that the Russian leader was leaning forward and pointing towards the bottom of the globe. Tye also noticed the action and followed his gaze. At the southern tip of the globe, just above New Zealand and northern Antarctica, a dark spot was growing like red wine spilled onto a white tablecloth.
Tye straightened and shot a look at the senior controller, then at Connie in the back row. She rose and left the room, unnoticed by members of the visiting party.
‘It looks like there’s a network outage in one of the sat-nets,’ he said calmly. ‘Traffic will re-route around it automatically.’
He paused. ‘Let’s move on to the real business of our meeting.’ He nodded towards a steward at the top of an aisle to open the door.
‘I am delighted to introduce one of your former Russian countrymen, Doctor Nicholas Kutúzov.’
An elderly, white-haired man in a grey suit walked carefully down towards the presentation area. The Russians clapped more enthusiastically.
‘Doctor Kutúzov will be your host for this part of the presentation and you’ll be delighted to hear that it will be given in natural Russian. We will now switch all systems over to the Phoebus Project. As of this moment, this is no longer our Network Control Center, it is the Command Center for the Solaris Energy Stations.’
Tye nodded to a controller and stepped out of the pit. The image of the Earth snapped off and there was darkness for a few seconds. New holo-panels appeared in front of the control seats and the large projection screens on the rear wall lit to present distant real-time views of the Earth from space beamed back from Tye’s Argus network and from NASA’s Mars-orbit Hubble VI observatory. Then Jack noticed a holo-image in
the central pit that was new to him. The sun and the inner four planets of the solar system glowed in the darkness. He switched on his VideoMate translation system. He noticed a subtle change in the air: the ScentSims under the seats were releasing a low-intensity fragrance that had been created by the olfactorologists in Tye Consumer Electronics R&D. Jack recognized it from the past: it was the smell of old dollar bills. It was called ‘Anticipation’.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. It was Connie.
‘Can you be spared?’ she whispered. ‘Tommy’s had an accident and he might have to be moved.’
*
‘Me,’ called Haley as she pulled her key from the lock and slammed the door behind her. Although her sister had lived in Ladbroke Grove for over three years, Haley still found herself impressed by the space and elegance of the mid-nineteenth century belle époque mansion. Felicity and Martin only had one floor of the house but that was . . . only one floor? That was still three times the size of Haley’s apartment and offered fifteen-metre reception rooms and huge bay windows overlooking lawns and trees. It was London living at its most elegant.
‘There in a minute,’ Flick shouted from a bedroom.
‘Yeeeee,’ whooped Toby as Haley scooped her nephew up from his playpen. He was just over a year old and always loved his aunt’s visits. Haley imagined that, because she and Flick were identical twins, she was somehow closer to Toby than an ordinary aunt would be. It certainly felt like that and Toby had never shown any objection. This evening he was to be all Haley’s as Felicity was meeting her husband Martin to attend a soirée at the Foreign Office. Haley and Toby would be staying in and Haley felt it was just like old times.