Ad Astra

by Jack Campbell

  "All of us? Everybody in Section Seven?"

  Foster frowned and held up a warning hand. "That doesn't exist," he reminded Kila in a soft voice.

  Kila looked like he was trying to eat his last words. "Damn. Sorry."

  "Just don't say it again."

  "I won't. I never say it. I don't know why I said -."

  "Said what?"

  "Why I said…" Kila finally got the idea. "Nothing. So, it's a go?"

  "Yes. I'll stay at the Frontera a few more days and then shift hotels. Is the number from the classified ad good for contacting you routinely?"

  "Now and then. Don't worry about coming by here. It's a mixed business and residential district, so there's always lots of foot traffic. You won't stand out."

  "Good location. Nice work."

  Foster met Jane Smith two days later at a public park. She wore nice but not flashy business attire which made her look more professional than attractive. "Tatya Ostov. Bureau of Inspections."

  "Pleased to meet you." Foster felt a data coin slide into his palm as they shook hands.

  "Yes. I understand you've come from the Genese Islands to help out in my branch. I appreciate your help, Mr. Danato."

  "I'm glad to be here, Ms. Ostov."

  "Your first inspection is set for tomorrow. Please report in to the Bureau front desk first thing in the morning. I'll go over your schedule then."

  "Thank you." Smith/Ostov left, and Foster made his way to the next-closest library to pop the coin into his data pad. It contained all the information he needed to memorize about his role as Julio Danato, facilities inspector from the isolated Genese Island chain brought in temporarily to help eliminate an inspection backlog at the bureau.

  Foster appeared at the Inspection Bureau the next morning, where the security guard scanned his ID, then handed it back with a bored nod. Security forces on every planet fought to ensure all identification data was compiled in a single place in order to assist their investigations. That also meant only a single place had to have false information inserted in order to mislead security forces. Naturally, security forces always insisted their ID sites where hack-proof. They were always wrong.

  Smith greeted Foster with cool politeness. As Ostov and Danato, they went over an intensive inspection schedule, covering a wide range of manufacturing facilities. "You need to check to make sure all equipment is operating within proper tolerances and all safety requirements are being followed," she advised. "You have authority to access any equipment and systems necessary to do that."

  Foster nodded, noting as he did so the small arms and ammunition manufacturing plants buried among the other facilities he'd have to inspect. "I won't have any trouble. This a pretty extensive list, though. I may have to work late a lot of nights to complete it in the time I have."

  Ostov smiled with patent insincerity. "You're a salaried employee, Mr. Danato. It comes with the territory. If you have any questions or run into any difficulties, please give me a call."

  Foster started work the next day. While analyzing the list of facilities closely, he'd discovered Jane Smith had arranged it so that he'd be hitting all the places associated with arms and ammunition late in the day. He'd have to put in a special mention about her foresight once this mission was over.

  Most of the facilities he inspected had nothing to do with his real task, but provided cover for the ones he needed to reach. He plowed through the Bureau of Inspections checklist at each location, grateful that the Valentians hadn't yet diverged from Federation standards on manufacturing equipment and related software.

  By the time he reached the first targeted facility, the week and that day were drawing to a close. Managers eager to get on with their weekend waved him onward as Foster assured them he could conduct his checks without their having to stay late.

  His work would've been considerably more difficult in early industrial days when physical jigs and forms were used to guide manufacture of parts. Instead, Foster accessed the controllers which would direct computer-guided fabrication of the parts for the new 'universal standard Viper personal sidearm.' Tolerances were tricky things. If they were adjusted just a tiny bit, everything would still look fine, and initially any test weapons would work okay, but within a short time parts wouldn't work well together. It'd take a while to figure out there was a problem, time during which manufacturers would inevitably claim operator error. If the controllers had a hidden worm cycling tolerance variances from part to part on a random basis, identifying the cause of the problem would be even more difficult.

  Foster finished his work, closing it out without leaving any fingerprints within the controller software. He'd changed the master patterns and their backups, so the only way to eventually fix the Viper pistols would be to redesign them. By that time, they'd hopefully have as bad a reputation as Foster could hope for.

  Another week went by, with another small arms facility and an ammunition plant included among Foster's bevy of inspection sites. His dry, routine reports were forwarded to the Bureau and buried within its data files, though not before Smith in her supervisor's job altered the identifiers on a few to make it look like someone else had inspected some of the arms facilities.

  Foster was having a late lunch at a store cafeteria when he noticed an increasingly large and impatient crowd in the payment line. A heavy-set man at the front of the line was drumming his fingers on the counter as he stared at a flustered clerk trying to ring up his charge. "What's the problem? I haven't got all day."

  The clerk mumbled what sounded like curses. "Excuse me, sir, I'm having trouble getting the system to accept your data."

  The man glowered. "There's nothing wrong with my credit status."

  "No, sir. It's just not accepting…good, there it…damn! Now it's balking at…"

  He leaned over to look at her screen. "No wonder! You're using that crap the government's been pushing. Shift over to the old stuff."

  "You mean the last edition of the Fed standard?" The clerk hit several buttons, waited a moment, then smiled. "It's working! Everything's fine, sir."

  The customer shook his head and looked around at the others waiting in line. "That government stuff is developing more problems by the day. Didn't they bother testing it?"

  Another customer nodded. "My entire office just went back to the Fed standard. It's not perfect, but at least it's not full of bugs."

  A chorus of agreement sounded, but one man went against the tide. "The government's system is made in Valentia! Aren't any of you patriotic? Don't you want to support our government against the overbearing Federation?"

  The woman who'd spoken earlier laughed. "The Federation isn't messing up my work. The government is, with its worthless, bug-addled, slow, and lock-up prone system. I need software that works. That's just common sense. Or do you want to stand in line forever while the government's system chokes on ringing up your charge?"

  The Valentian patriot subsided with a scowl, making no protest when his charge went through on Federation standard software.

  Foster watched the little drama blandly, not showing even the smallest trace of humor when the woman declared the Federation wasn't responsible for causing the system problems at her workplace. He'd seen more and more evidence that the Valentian software system was breaking down, displaying erratic and impossible to predict failures and slowdowns. As if it had never been properly tested. Or as if a Black Clown worm spread throughout everything using that software was mutating source codes in very subtle ways.

  Another month passed. All of the facilities on Julio Danato's list had been inspected, and he officially returned to the Genese Islands with a brief parting thanks from supervisor Ostov. Now Juan Feres sat in his hotel room watching the local news.

  A skeptical looking woman gestured toward a video window beyond her. "Reports continue to be received of problems with the new line of universal standard ammunition and the firearms produced to use it." The video window displayed a group of uniformed soldiers with angry fa
ces, their hands slapping at their weapons. "Our sources tell us the rifles and pistols jam more often than they work. The ammunition is prone to misfires, and will sometimes jam the weapons as well. VelArms Manufacturing and Ares Ammunition, the primary suppliers of the universal standard weapons and ammunition, insist they have uncovered no problems in the factories and suggest users are failing to employ the new weapons properly."

  The video window shifted, showing a figure distorted so that neither facial features nor sex could be determined. The figure's voice was also altered, hiding it as well. "We know how to use rifles! This stuff is junk. That's all there is to it. Half the time you can't even seat a magazine of ammo properly, and when you do you can't extract it. Give the stuff time, we were told. We've given it time. It's still junk. I don't want to risk my life on a weapon that don't work. What the hell was wrong with the Federation standard weapons?"

  The skeptical newscaster spoke again. "Reports have also indicated that police forces in several cities which received universal standard firearms have abandoned them and gone back to Federation standard weapons. As one officer told us, 'I won't die with a jammed gun because some idiot bureaucrat decided to fix something that wasn't broken.' We will continue following this story and report on new developments."

  Another two weeks passed. Foster waited with growing impatience, which was finally rewarded during a brief visit to Kila's safehouse.

  Kila grinned. "Watch this."

  Another newscaster, this time a smug young man, faced the screen. "The Senate today voted to convene a special investigation into the universal standard ammunition and weapons fiasco. Hours later, the government announced that what it now characterizes as the universal standards weapons 'experiment' would be discontinued due to adverse performance issues and cost overruns."

  Kila shut off the screen. "Got 'em."

  Foster smiled and nodded. "I believe the operating system issue has already been resolved."

  Kila flopped into a chair. "That's my assessment, too. The Valentian system now has a solid reputation as a piece of junk. Even the government has shifted back to Federation standard, because the Valentian system has gotten too buggy." He eyed Foster. "That Black Clown is one mean little devil."

  Foster sat as well, feeling satisfaction rise and fighting it down. He wasn't off planet yet. The mission wasn't concluded. "You have to know you have a problem, then you have to be able to identify the cause of that problem. We created problems for the Valentians, and let them reach the wrong conclusions as to the causes."

  Kila's eyes narrowed as the front-door bell rang. He opened the door and leaned into the hallway to check the doorway monitor. "It's Jane."

  Foster grimaced. Coincidence, but still a bit unnerving to have three of them together here. "That's all right."

  Jane showed surprise at Foster's presence, then offered a bottle filled with amber liquid. "A toast to success?"

  Glasses were filled and drunk. The liquor had a fiery, exotic tang that Foster enjoyed. Not all native foodstuffs were unpleasant.

  Jane sank into her own chair and looked at Foster. "This is odd, isn't it? We've won, but no one'll ever know. We sabotaged an entire planet, and we, and our superiors, are the only ones who realize it."

  Foster smiled. "Sabotage is a loaded term. I prefer saying we introduced inefficiencies into non-standard elements."

  "And I'm supposed to be playing a bureaucrat! Why is this necessary? Why couldn't the Federation have just ordered Valentia to stick to Federation standard software and small arms?"

  "The Federation did send demarches," Foster pointed out. "Which were ignored. Valentia realized the Federation could scarcely afford to force a member world to conform to standards. Not openly, anyway. What Valentia didn't count on was that there are other ways than brute force to increase the price and trouble of non-conformity to Federation standards."

  Kila nodded. "Even I sometimes wonder why it matters so much. If the idiots want to diverge from Fed standards, let 'em. They're the ones who'll suffer."

  Foster sighed. "Initially, yes. But they wouldn't be the only ones. Certainly, the initial effects of incompatible software and changes in manufacturing standards will be felt on the world which has more trouble and thus more expense in trade, as well as less market for its goods. Long-term, though, uniform standards are what hold political entities together. Humans love to innovate, to change. Once planets started diverging from uniform standards for software, manufacturing, and everything else, the process would just keep accelerating. That'd mean growing economic and social misalignment between worlds. Growing barriers to trade, exchange of ideas, travel, and so on. Eventually, that'd mean -."

  "No more Federation," Jane finished. "You'd think people would know better. Just trying to introduce new standards here cost Valentia loads of money and effort, even if it had all worked."

  Foster smiled again. "If people behaved rationally all the time, they wouldn't be people. And we wouldn't have the jobs we do."

  "True. Never-ending jobs, from all I hear. Where are you going to next? Another assignment?"

  Foster smiled with one corner of his mouth. "If it was, I couldn't tell you. But I've got some vacation time built up. I'm going home for a little while."

  "Great. Where's that?"

  Foster met the inquiry with another twist of his lip.

  Jane looked embarrassed. "Sorry. I just meant to be polite."

  "That's okay. You understand there's a lot of things we can't discuss, even among each other, just in case someone's cover gets blown."

  Kila gave one of his fierce grins. "You mean things like, is Gordon Foster your real name?"

  Foster smiled again. "Are you two really Jane Smith and Jason Kila?"

  They all laughed, but none of them answered the question. Foster sometimes wondered if Section Seven was really the far-beyond top secret title of his organization, or if Section Seven was itself merely a code name for some more heavily classified designation kept even from him. Wheels within wheels, and it usually didn't make sense to try figuring out where if anywhere it all ended. If people knew Section Seven existed, what Section Seven did, it couldn't function anymore, and the Federation would slowly start coming apart. Foster didn't see any good reason not to accept things as they were.

  Foster made his final goodbyes and left. He altered his way back to Juan Feres' latest temporary lodging, checked out, then returned as Mr. Oaks to the short-term rental apartment. He plugged in his data port, watching as it seamlessly matched the Federation standard operating system now being employed by the rental agency. Foster completed checking out Mr. Oaks, then headed back down to the street to hail a cab back to the port terminal.

  On the shuttle into space, he looked back at the globe floating in space. Foster had read of an early scientist who proclaimed he could move a world with a long enough lever. Foster's secretive levers weren't long, but thanks to their invisibility they moved worlds nonetheless. As Valentia fell away beneath the shuttle, Foster finally allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

  Author's Note on Standards of Success

  Back to the NASA space program, in particular the robotic rovers exploring Mars. Those rovers are remarkable achievements, and yet as the praise for them kept mounting I couldn’t help noting how little they could actually do. The smallest tasks took days to complete and the smallest areas took days to creep across. An astonishing feat, yet extremely limited in what it could do and very slow in doing it. Humans on Mars could accomplish a lot more…if they were allowed to. After all, the extraordinary success of the robotic rovers had taught us how to best explore Mars. Right?

  Standards of Success

  26 March 2014 – The world today braced for the first landing of humans on Mars as NASA representatives declared that every possible step had been taken to ensure the safety and success of the mission. “NASA has adopted as its model the spectacularly successful unmanned missions to Mars, and will use similar operational methodology to maxi
mize the results of this historic human mission. We want to duplicate to the greatest extent possible the amazing accomplishments of robotic explorers like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers while eliminating any possibility of even minor failures as a result of uncontrolled events.”

  NASA representatives repeated their previous statements that experience with unmanned missions led to the decision for scientists on Earth to control the landing on Mars, which in turn led to the extremely complex multiple-redundant landing system which neither requires nor allows any input from the astronauts actually riding in the Mars lander. “Experience with uncrewed probes dramatically highlighted the dangers to mission success of even a single input made without multiple layers of oversight to spot errors. In light of this experience, allowing a single, unsupervised astronaut to make inputs independently at critical points could put the entire mission at risk.”

  The official NASA press release points out that even though the astronauts have no way of themselves controlling their landing vehicle, if the crew of the Mars mission has any concerns during the landing sequence they need only contact NASA facilities on Earth, which would then take corrective action as quickly as needed, subject only to the ten minutes required for communications to reach Earth, the time required for a meeting involving all stake-holders in the mission to consider the situation and approve a course of action, and the ten minutes needed for any action agreed upon by the conference to be communicated back to Mars.

  28 March 2014 – The first human landing on Mars yesterday was hailed as an outstanding achievement despite evidence that the landing vehicle came down in the wrong area due to a navigational error programmed into the system by operators on Earth. Confidential sources claim minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude for the landing site were plugged directly into the digital navigational system without converting them from base twelve to base ten, an error which went unnoticed by every layer of management review. “The important thing is that the mission landed safely,” NASA representatives insisted, discounting concerns that the lander had missed falling into a deep canyon by only a small margin. NASA is refusing to release copies of transmissions from the lander on its final descent, which sources claim feature screams of terror from the astronauts.