Diverse Energies

by Joe Monti Tobias S. Buckell

  In the vast, dark lands of China and India, there are stories of misery and suffering that the West can hardly comprehend. In these places, how a child is born is how she will die. Whether it’s called caste or hukou, the children of the poor have no realistic hope of ever emerging from their lot. Indeed, the prosperity of some of their compatriots depends on their remaining poor and easy to exploit. Yet many of these children could have been brilliant researchers who could help with the search for a cure for cancer or the next energy revolution. So much human potential was wasted.

  So I started the Volpe Ness Technology Group, named after my first two investors: my thesis advisor and my landlady in Palo Alto. To our investors and the public, our secret sauce was a technology that allowed us to solve complicated computational problems cheaply and quickly. In reality, we were one of the first companies to make it big in the arena of human-powered computing.

  We recruit bright, promising children from the slums of India, China, Africa. We promise their parents that we would give these children a new life, a life that they could not give them. And we keep our promise: We clothe, feed, and care for the children. Our nutritional and medical staffs ensure the students have healthy meals and receive plenty of exercise. After all, they’re an investment, and we have an incentive to ensure their development.

  In exchange, we ask them to work. Trained from a young age to hone their pattern-recognition skills, they’re experts at solving the kind of problems we specialize in. But we present the problems as computer games that they enjoy playing. Yes, the children spend all day playing games. At the same time, they’re helping pharmaceutical companies, computer chip foundries, and university research laboratories with cutting-edge research at incredibly low prices. Go search through the patent database for the last ten years, and you’ll see the contributions of our computational services everywhere.

  Nor do we neglect the spiritual development of our children. What the media calls a “cult-like” atmosphere is misleading. These are children who have been raised without the benefit of family or acculturation. They require the firm hand of discipline and a regimented lifestyle. To put it bluntly, I sometimes feel like a zookeeper.

  Some have asked what I thought would happen to the children when they were older. The truth is that I don’t know. I never thought that far. Deng Xiaoping told the Chinese that they had to cross the river by feeling for stones, one step at a time, and I think that was sage advice.

  There are some who seem to think that every child can be raised like a Western child. I do not know if they’re foolish or ignorant: Surely they understand that progress always requires a disproportionate sharing of resources and that the wealth of some demands the poverty of others? I take the world as it is. I did not make these children poor. History did.

  For those of you who think I have done these children wrong, I invite you to visit the villages from which I took them. Walk through the streets, observe the scurrying criminals, and hear the cries of women in houses of prostitution. This would have been their future.

  No, the children are not free, not in the way you might want. But they are free from want, from hunger, thirst, uncertainty, violence.

  In a world full of suffering and exploitation, I tried to exploit a little less and ease some suffering, and for this I am crucified.

  “What did you say?” David asked.

  Helen shrugged. “I said no.”

  The men, who said they were lawyers (David had to look up the word), had been very kind. They had explained that all the children had been harmed, had had their lives taken away. They asked the children to help them punish Dr. Gau.

  “He was all we knew,” she said, “the closest thing we had to a family. The lawyers make it all sound so simple. But we now know that there’s nothing simple in this world.”

  David let out a sigh of relief.

  But Jake, who stood next to him, said nothing. He wrapped his arms around himself and felt the scars on his back.

  It was Jake’s turn to meet the lawyers, and he grinned at both Helen and David before leaving.

  David couldn’t help but feel guilty. He and Helen had continued to play with that tiny, stolen computer — he learned that it was called a “phone,” though it looked nothing like the “phone” in the dictionary — and eventually found out that they could type and converse with others Outside through it. They wrote about what life was like in the school and when they were doubted, took pictures with the phone as proof. Then some reporters saw the pictures, and everything was history.

  He had felt sorry for Dr. Gau as he was taken away with his hands cuffed in front of him. He had looked so frail and old, not at all like the all-powerful headmaster of the Volpe Ness School.

  The lawyers had explained to David that everything Dr. Gau had ever told them was a lie. Even the Outside workers had dressed in dirty overalls only because the school had insisted. The teachers were all in on it. It was all pretend.

  Yet he could not help but miss his old life, a life where he knew what was expected of him, and one in which he delighted in finding the patterns in things. He had read Dr. Gau’s letter and cried. He wished he had Jake’s certainty about the rightness of things.

  He did not know if he could find the pattern in the world outside the walls. It seemed too big, too complicated, too overwhelming.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Helen said. “We always do.”

  He took a step closer to Helen and opened his arms for a fierce hug.

  Author’s Note: For more on human-based computation, see Human Computation: Synthesis Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, by Edith Law and Luis von Ahn, 2011. The multiple sequence alignment “game” played by David is modeled on the game of Phylo, available at http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca.

  Gods of the Dimming Light

  by Greg van Eekhout

  Now

  He’s going to kill me.

  I’m bleeding from a gash in my right shoulder. The pain is bad, but what’s worse is the blood’s making my grip slippery. If I drop my sword, I’m dead. My legs feel like bags of wet cement, and no matter how much I scream at them to move, to run, to bend and leap, I can barely manage a stumble. Part of me just wants to stop, lie down, give up, and rest. This is too hard. And it’s hopeless. And it’s kind of silly. Of all the ways I ever thought I’d die, getting sliced up by a big Viking guy would come somewhere between having a UFO crash on my head and getting disintegrated by laser sharks. Dropping my sword and letting the universe have a good laugh at my expense makes as much sense as anything.

  Then I think of my mom and dad and sister at home. It’s getting late, and by now they’re starting to worry. They won’t know what happened to me. I’ll be a missing person, forever, and along with everything else that’s going on their lives, they’ll have to deal with the sadness of losing their only son.

  And I know them. They’ll never stop looking for me. Even though they’ll never find me, they’ll never give up.

  Egil Thorvaldsson blinks and wipes blood from his brow. I’ve put a pretty deep cut over his eye. But it hasn’t blinded him, hasn’t slowed him down. He smiles and laughs, and his laugh sounds like the roar of a bear.

  “You are very brave, little boy,” he says.

  He’s going to kill me now.

  Before

  There’s a foot of new snow on the ground in San Diego. The bright side is that the fresh snow covers last week’s sooty, muddy, sludgy snow. The cruddy side is that there’s snow in San Diego.

  I crunch down the sidewalk in my Baja boots, which is what we call regular shoes wrapped in newspapers and duct tape. A few people have real boots that help keep their feet warm and dry, and we have a special word for those people, too: rich.

  There is snow almost everywhere now.

  Snow in Los Angeles.

  Snow in Miami.

  Snow in Hawaii.

  Snow in the deserts and on islands that used to glisten in turquoise waters.

/>   It’s because we burned too much oil and coal and it changed the climate.

  It’s because we’re caught in a new part of a natural cycle.

  It’s because we sinned and God is punishing us.

  Nobody has any clue. It’s just winter all the time, and nobody knows why.

  I’ve spent the day trudging into every open restaurant, shop, and office downtown, asking and begging and pleading for a job. I hate asking for anything. But I woke up early this morning and took inventory of the pantry. Three cans of government-relief soup. A box of crackers. Some scrapings of peanut butter. That’s what’s supposed to feed me and my mom and my dad and my sister.

  “Got any plans today?” Dad said when I shut the last empty kitchen cupboard. He tried to hide his wince as he walked into the kitchen. His back isn’t getting any better.

  “Not much. Just gonna walk around a while.”

  He nodded and wouldn’t meet my eyes. He doesn’t like me to witness his guilt and shame. Dad’s a proud man. Mom’s a proud woman. And they can’t feed their family. They sold the car when they could no longer afford gas, but all they got for it was spare-parts money. Mom sold her engagement ring. They’d sell the house if they could, even though, other than Elsa and me, it’s the thing they’re proudest of. But it’s five rooms they can’t afford to heat. More than running out of food, I fear losing electricity. The only thing worse than starving is starving in the dark.

  “It’ll be okay,” Dad said. “Something will come through.”

  Yeah, something will come through. And pigs will fly. And bread and soup and electricity will come from the butts of these flying pigs.

  “I know, Dad. Something will come through.”

  He came over and ruffled my hair, like I was seven instead of seventeen. I used to mind it when he did that. But his hand was warm, and he was trying to give me courage even though he’s always afraid. There’s something awful and sweet about it.

  So, I’m willing to beg. Not that it does any good. We are all now a nation of beggars, and there’s not much left to give.

  At the bus shelter, I lower myself to the cold metal bench to rest my legs. The bus doesn’t come by anymore, but I’m not alone. A wind is picking up, blowing uncollected garbage down the street, and even though this bus shelter was built to protect people from sunny days and light breezes, it’s still better than nothing. After a few minutes, there’s about half a dozen of us cowering in the cold.

  A woman bundled in blankets, like a woolen mummy, wanders up. She’s humming to herself, and then she begins saying something in a voice like a cracked glacier.

  “Three winters with no summer between,” she says. “The Midgard Serpent awakens, and its thrashing cracks the world. A wolf of Fenrir’s kin grows to eat the Moon. Men forget the bonds of kinship and make war. Ax age, spear age, sword age, and an age of wolves till the world sinks down.”

  Nobody pays her much attention. People are used to all kinds of crazy these days.

  “Would you like my seat?” I say.

  She smiles at me from beneath the hooded shadows of her blankets. “You are a kind boy,” she says. “And I smell the blood in you.”

  I smile back and give her my seat.

  I don’t feel very kind, but even if she is a crazy woman, it feels good to hear her say I’m kind. It’s like a little campfire takes light in my heart. No, I don’t feel kind, but I can act kind, if I can remember what it feels like to live in a world with kindness, then maybe in my own small way I can keep kindness alive for just a little bit longer.

  Then I spy a white spot of hope. It comes in the form of a paper flyer taped to a lightpost. I rise on my chapped and creaking legs and step closer, and my eyes fill with dollar signs.

  SEEKING PAID VOLUNTEERS FOR MEDICAL STUDY

  NorseCODE Genomics

  Males

  Ages 18–44

  Healthy with no chronic conditions

  Requires screening interview and blood test, with possible follow-up interview

  Compensation: Up to $1,000

  I’ve heard about these kinds of jobs, where scientists pay you to be a lab rat. When school was still open, I considered going to college and getting a biology degree, and then after that I’d get a master’s degree and then my doctorate, and I’d be a medical researcher, finding cures for diseases. Maybe there are still people doing that kind of thing.

  The address at the bottom of the flyer is for a place about two miles from here.

  I should go home, but if I do, it’ll be empty-handed, and I can’t blink the dollar signs out of my eyes.

  I do a bad thing. I pry the flyer off the post, just in case anyone else at the bus stop reads it. I don’t know how many of these volunteer positions are available, and I don’t want competition.

  “Men forget the bonds of kinship,” says the old woman from inside her mound of blankets.

  I feel small and unkind.

  The wind howls like an age of wolves, and I tuck the flyer under my thin jacket and start hiking.

  NorseCODE Genomics has an office on the ninth floor of a downtown skyscraper. The elevator’s working, and the lights are on, a pleasant surprise. I pause before a door of frosted glass to catch my breath. The glass is etched with the NorseCODE logo, a double-helix DNA molecule growing from a tree with nine roots. Through the door I go, into a bright, warm place. For a moment I just stand there, feeling toasty. It’s almost too toasty. I unzip my jacket and peel off my hat and the old sweatshirt sleeve I’ve been using as a scarf.

  The waiting room chairs are stuffed with people filling out forms on clipboards. They are not a well-looking bunch. They are thin, stooped, tired. The room rumbles with coughs and sniffles and moans, and I wonder if I’ve come to the wrong place.

  But I’m here for a medical study. And these people are sick. They are hungry. They are exhausted.

  The flyer said they were looking for healthy people with no chronic conditions. No wonder NorseCODE’s willing to pay so much. These days, healthy people are hard to find.

  On closer inspection, a lot of the people are just holding their clipboards, having already filled out their forms. There’s no snow in here, no rain, no shrieking wind, and the temptation to sit here until you get kicked out must be strong. But I’m eager to make some money and get home, so I ask the man in the nearest seat where to get a form. He motions me to the far wall, and there behind the desk I find the most striking woman I have ever seen.

  Her skin is icicle white, with a rosy blush to her high cheeks. Blond-white hair spills over her shoulders, which look firm and strong beneath a tight sweater so soft I have to stop myself from reaching out to pet it. Must be made of some kind of fancy goat.

  Standing there in my stupid Baja boots and makeshift winter gear, I feel like a troll. She knows I’m here, but she doesn’t bother to look up from her computer. So I unfold my flyer and put it down on her desk. Slam it down, really.

  Now she looks up. If a facial expression could kill, I’d be eviscerated. Her eyes shine at thirty below zero.

  “I’m here for the study,” I say.

  And she stares at me.

  And stares.

  And stares.

  “Any chronic medical conditions?” she says in an accent I can’t place.

  My dad has a bad back, which kept him from working even before the Long Winter began. My mom has diabetes. But I’m healthy.

  “No.”

  And she stares at me some more. And then, just when I’m ready to turn and run away from this pale, beautiful monster, she betrays the smallest of smiles.

  “You can go in,” she says, indicating a door behind her.

  I’m confused and flustered. I am a flustered troll padded in too much clothing.

  “You don’t need me to fill out the form?”

  “No, I don’t. The form is just a mechanism to get people sitting down so we can inspect them. To see if they have the surface qualities we’re looking for. Most of the people in this room
” — she screws up her face with distaste — “they’ll be sent home with ten dollars for their time.”

  “What surface qualities are you looking for?”

  “You have them,” she says.

  “What are they?”

  “You can go in. Through that door.”

  She looks down and returns to her typing, and I’m left there, trying to decide what to do.

  Ten dollars is more money than I’ve brought home in a long time. With ten dollars, you can buy a lemon, or three slices of bread, or four vitamin-C pills. Ten dollars is nothing to sneeze at. But the flyer says the study pays up to a thousand dollars.