It was also central to the mission of peace. SourceFlow depended on people, and people would depend on it. As the network grew to the edge of national and regional boundaries, the leaf nodes would place societal pressure on populations to cooperate for mutual benefit. Rampall saw national boundaries being redrawn, erased, by a legion of matte metal boxes.
The Source Foundation arranged the first, much delayed, shipment in the spring of 2057 to the Republic of Niger, a country subject to massive drought and left behind economically by its neighbors. When skyrocketing demand for aluminum resulted in the discovery and exploitation of massive bauxite reserves extending well past Guinea through Mauritania down to Ghana, but not Niger. The first batch of 14 machines was consigned to a provisional government led by Dumaka Desmarais, a progressive reform candidate running on a platform of education and self-sufficiency. It seemed like a perfect fit; foundation workers shook hands and broke bread with Desmarais in a public ceremony, then spent two days explaining the operation of the machines. “Maxim” Rampall himself oversaw the first siting, shook hands again and then left with the rest of the foundation contingent, except for a project overseer.
Over the next two months the overseer complained of limited information and restricted access; she was well cared for in the most modern hotel in Niamey, but never allowed direct inspection of the proceedings. Reports showed only 4 of the original SourceFlow machines had been sited, and 8 descendants to power them. When she adamantly demanded to see the sitings, a military guard escorted her to a fenced preserve holding the machines. The two machines she was allowed to inspect were strung together by electrical transformers and channeled earth. Water collected into a large reservoir, only an eighth full. An administrator proudly showed her the quality of the water by drinking it from a clear glass, throwing his arms open expansively and wiggled his fingers to indicate, without the need of a translator, the lake filling up and threading its way to the populace through rivulets or pipes.
The overseer was astonished. She tried to explain this additional infrastructure was unnecessary and wasteful; the machines were designed for direct delivery of water and power in villages and towns. Concentrating the devices defeated the purpose. Limiting the number of devices was against the purpose. The administrator grew cross; the foundation woman did not understand the region. The people there wanted safe water and consistent power provided by the government, not coming from machines. It was the government’s responsibility to maintain the systems and make sure the resources were supplied cheaply. The overseer bristled at the word, at the distance between cheap and free.
After returning to her hotel, the overseer reported back to the foundation and requested a direct meeting with Desmarais. Her inquiries led to a single response: infrastructure projects were the domain of the military and Desmarais’ authority extended only to civil matters. She filed a single resolution report 6 weeks later, writing that she no longer had any reason to remain in the country given the lack of cooperation with government authorities and that the project should be considered a failure.
Rampall didn’t see a failure of the device, only a failure of the drive to procreate. A revision to SourceFlow made all power and water production conditional on continuing expansion; new nodes had to be sited for extant machines to produce.
The Atacama desert of Chile is the hand that cups rain down into the Amazon; its peaks are bone and sand. Few people live there; few would desire to live there, even with plentiful water and power, even with the abundance of silica and lithium metal that produced 98% of needed material for replication. The 2060 batch failed there, through disinterest or disapproval.
The most successful siting of SourceFlow machines was the one that killed the project outright. In 2061, ten machines were sent to the panoramic Mongolian province of Sükhbaatar. Mongolia’s gradual transformation from nomadic to sedentary life had been pushed forward by mineral wealth, tourism and hard won independence, but the population density was still extremely low across vast tracts of nearly uninhabitable dry land. SourceFlow machines provided a partial answer, and the net spread quickly to 41 machines in 2064, providing necessities to growing populations and their livestock. 2064 was also the start of two years of terrible zud, the Mongolian term for an endless winter year where the overwhelming snow is too deep for animals to find food. Livestock began dying by the thousands; the buried populace was unable to site new machines. The current ones, driven by programmatic imperatives, began shutting down. Foundation workers rushed to update the devices to keep them operational – a task they succeeded at by removing the requirement entirely.
The imperative didn’t return in the promised future models, and interest waned as the scope of the dream and the reality of implementation diverged in such drastic directions. Replicator technology continued to improve; the repper in SourceFlow became badly outdated. Plans for additional R&D stalled as bills continued to add up. “Maxim” Rampall retired from the foundation board in 2066, citing poor health, while the foundation he had helped create limped along for several more decades before shuttering entirely.
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The roundabout described a semi-circular corridor of nearly a mile in circumference. Chandrasekhar had inferred it from the pace they had been keeping and the gauntlet had confirmed it from the nearly undetectable slope of the floor as they strode over it. He could not feel the gravity shifting as he took each step. In the imagination, the effect might have been that of stepping across a grindingly slow log roll. The true sensation was that of walking on a flat pathway that appeared to suddenly, though gradually, incline, but it never did. Each step was as easy as the last; it was a motivational exercise coach’s dream.
The light from Chandrasekhar’s helmet bounced as they walked, lighting up Siri in silhouette. Now a dim radiance grew ahead – the end of the tunnel. They subconsciously increased their pace as the light intensified, scarcely illuminating the walls of the featureless corridor. The walkway was wide enough to accommodate tens of people abreast, but it seemed unlikely it had been used for that purpose; no decoration and no friendly signs. A metallic strip running the length of the ceiling might have provided lighting. If so, there was no obvious way to turn it on.
The light at the far end remained muted as they neared the exit. At the egress, the ceiling gave way as the ramp and tunnel walls sloped up sharply. Two helmets tilted up simultaneously; their visors reflected a subdued sea of stars. They were about to reach the open environment of Star City’s topside. Chandrasekhar blinked on a blueprint. If the plans were similar, they would emerge on the outer avenue of the Third Ring. On New Atlantis, the Third Ring housed high density mixed-use districts, vertical tenements of new construction providing residential and commercial space in connected clusters. Anders’ vision of urban relocation had been concentrated in the Second Ring outside of the Central Ring’s park. The Third Ring had grown too quickly for that; it was thoroughly modern in style.
Let me go first, said Chandrasekhar. He passed Siri and treaded up the ramp where he could see the pedestrian boulevard descending to meet him. The sight was comfortingly familiar: a wide, sprawling path in a herringbone pattern broken up by a median of tall trees, curving away past the parallax point, in a fashion identical to that on New Atlantis. Chandrasekhar considered the silent panorama before him, struck by the differences.
A sliver of sun peeked out from the direction of the central spire, creating an impression of dawn – or dusk. An artificial star? The technology required would be astounding. Chandrasekhar was too far away to make a guess at what he was seeing. The glare on his visor made looking directly at it difficult even with the polarizing filter.
Another boulevard intersected the avenue at the rim of the Third Ring and ran toward the city center, appearing to hit a wall of staggered glass buildings at the Second Ring. On each side of the spoke were blue ponds, rounded trapezoids several hundred meters across. Grids of glass-enclosed pallettes floated slightly above the surface of their stil
l waters. Beyond, squat buildings of irregular heights could be seen.
Aeroponics, said Siri, stepping up from behind him. That was reasonable; a largely automated farming system that utilized the vast reservoirs of water in the city would be ideal for generational flight. Food, water and … Oxygen, thought Chandrasekhar, as he turned to see a heavy forest contained by barrier walls along the streets. Trees radiated out from the Fourth Ring to the rim of the city, turning the far horizon into a model set of foliage held up to the night sky. The forest could produce oxygen for the journey. The thought prompted Chandrasekhar to check the environment on his gauntlet: again, too much oxygen, at an uncomfortable pressure reading. Maybe the trees were working too well. Keep your helmet on, he warned Siri.
The scene was growing perceptibly brighter as Siri nodded, moving forward toward the aeroponic gardens – definitely dawn. Chandrasekhar could now see dips and heights in the scene around him. The massive slabs of mantle that made up the city’s substrate retained a semblance of the natural curvature of their native origins, most pronounced in the tracts of forest behind them.
The quiet was unnerving. New Atlantis was a surprisingly quiet city: a place that had never heard the horns of traffic or the rumble of gasoline engines. Gravcars were nearly silent; they were restricted from flying topside other than to park. The only vehicle noise came from hushed air of passing trams that flew above the major avenues in endless loops. Yet even on this identical street, there would be the scuff of feet on pavement, voices chatting, birds calling, perhaps the distant echoes of construction. Here, there was an overwhelming absence of noise.
Chandrasekhar touched his gauntlet, linking it to his ceramic implants. He drew a handful of reflective objects from a velcroed pocket on his suit. Each was shaped like a set of narrow cones welded together at the wide ends – the swivel pin from a set of cufflink with a bloated middle. Shallow grooves inscribed their surface in a spiral pattern. The tips sheared off on a slight bias. They glinted in the rising light as Chandrasekhar gently tossed them off his palm. For a moment, the pins hovered motionless, and then flew up as weightless as snowflakes drifting in reverse during a blizzard.
Chandrasekhar nodded toward the center of the city. The pair headed off down the wide avenue. The terrain was not perfectly flat, but the gradation sloped gently -- algebraically -- from one slate crescent to the next. New Atlantis was overgrown; here, as they neared the short end of the trapezoid pools, they could see across to the raw disks of beautiful stone, exposed as building walls and plazas of indoor and outdoor space, without strict dividing lines between.
The wrist computer lit up with aerial imagery from the scattered pin drones. Behind them, forest canopy appeared to extend to the horizon; to their left, the modern buildings continued for some ways before transitioning to "reclaimed" structures, evidently residential despite the absence of any signs of activity. The buildings on their right extended for some kilometers before giving way to a deep, terraced pit. The light of the artificial sun failed to reach its depths; Chandrasekhar instructed the drones above the landmark to relay additional data. The area ahead looked clear until the wall of glass blocked off the rest of drones vision. Nowhere did the probes detect any movement, living or machine.
Additional data came back on the pit. In the alternate spectrum images, the underlying structure of the city was more obvious than ever. Strata of rock stacked onto each other as ceramic plates, their seams visible where jagged, toothy holes cut through them, getting progressively smaller. The passive distance detectors confirmed that the depths plummeted to that of the underside itself. A giant quarry, thought Chandrasekhar. The Star City was carrying the raw materia for replication in its very foundations. It was astonishing to think of the raw tonnage that had been consumed from that pit alone. Chandrasekhar strode forward, puzzling over a purpose that would require that amount of materia.
Siri's yell crackled over the suit radio. Where are they?! She was crouched at the edge of a pool. Chandrasekhar surged into motion, closing the gap between them quickly. ANSWER ME!
He laid a thinly gloved hand on her turned shoulder, expecting her to recoil. She didn’t move. Her outburst had been sudden, but predictable. Chandrasekhar imagined that she had thought of the whole affair as something of an adventure, up until the point their ship had crashed on a marooned city. They had talked very little since she had released him from the pod; the suits made it difficult to read body language and expressions, but something had changed. He was surprised that she had as yet expressed no recriminations to him, the man responsible for her being here.
Siri turned, fiddling with her helmet. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking, she apologized. She adjusted the polarizing visor to shade the growing light, hiding the tear tracks on her face. Her heavy breath hummed in the radio as she walked resolutely to the paved street. We’d better keep looking. The sound of their boots resounded against the encroaching buildings as they followed the spoke to the city center.
Chapter 13
Anatomy of the Brain | Physical Response | Fight and Flight
17-A is a poor student of anatomy. He periodically lifts his head from the tablet screen, staring into space and mouthing the names of body parts to himself, then glancing back down for confirmation. From the number of disappointed sighs and the constant tapping of 17-A’s thigh against his own, Wald discerns the subject is not 17-A’s forte. Hope he’s not pre-med, thinks Wald. It was disconcerting to think about all those doctors graduating in the top ten percent of their class, because the other ninety need jobs too. How often do you hear about full doctors quitting because they just weren't very good at it? You put that many years in and you're going to keep being a doctor, good or not.
At least being a doctor is easy to explain at parties. Then again, thinks Wald, people are probably always trying to get you to look at things on their back, or get them some prescription drugs on the QT. That's how you quit being a doctor -- get your license revoked for over-prescribing oxycodone.
Twenty years at the same job and no one in his life knew what Stephen did. Not because it was classified – well, it was classified, but with a minimal security clearance. He could tell immediate family the nature of his work, just not the details, and the nature of his work was coded numbers and symbols. Most people would call this cryptography -- a mistake he had learned to politely pass over without rolling his eyes. Cryptography was the grunt work of coding and decoding that happened when it was obvious something was already there. Wald was a steganographer; his job was to find encrypted messages in places no one suspected.
A common way to illustrate steganography is to start with a digital picture. Most technically savvy people understand that the image, appearing as one continuous flow of color to our eyes at a distance, is actually made of tiny pixel dots up close. A computer represents these dots as a set of numbers that define the color by a combination of values - in some systems, a mix of prime colors, though there are many others. The trick is that, just as our brains interpret those dots into a full image by blending the dots -- abstracting the information -- so too does it abstract the tiny differences in those dots into lines and objects.
With steganography, it is possible to hide information in those dots in ways our brains do not perceive by changing the values of the dots in tiny ways; changing their brightness or warping them slightly according to a formula that another, secret image is fed into as data. When the formula is applied to the modified image in reverse, the secure image appears. The technique, although much subtler, isn't too dissimilar from the answer cards in vintage board game sets that had the correct answer in blue under a geometric mess of red ink. The player would hold up a red sheet of plastic, filtering out the red part of the image and magically revealing the truth. Both methods rely on our willingness to overlook details for what we expect to see. With the answer cards, it's obvious there is a code to be broken; when millions of anonymous images are uploaded to the Internet every day, the obvious becomes a lot harder
to pick out.
Yes! The student had just repeated a litany of mouth movements and received mute approval from his computer. Wald resists a sudden impulse to reward him with a mini-cookie from the foil bag he had shoved into the seat pocket. There, now move your damn elbow.
Wald prefers a simpler, less technical example of what he does: looking through personal ads for hidden messages -- in bulk, with a thousand processors running algorithms to check for patterns.
I Saw You: Friday, 9:45-ish, corner bar. You had on a red sweater and looked like a sexy devil sent to take my soul. YES, PLEASE! We talked about low-fi electronic fuzz (NO THANKS) and pop-punk (GET REAL) . Me: 36, no kids, 6'9", eyes on you all night. You said you lived on 11th between 51st and 52nd but I didn't get the rest! Desperate to get in touch.
Is that a code describing a contact meeting at a specific time at a set of GPS coordinates? Probably not, but it's hard to read I Saw You and really believe all those shy idiots are for real. And it's not just personal ads; there are a litany of avenues to hide illicit communications in a meaningless messages: file metadata; hobo scrawls; red cross stickers on skyscraper windows; spam; audio tracks with ambient sounds. Basically anything your brain is trained to overlook, allowing the communication to hide in plain sight. The profession of steganographer belies the credo that security through obscurity is no security at all. Obscurity or obfuscation is just another method to make things more difficult on an would-be observer. One more layer of time consumption, just like the security through design techniques that are naively believed to be foolproof.
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