Skylar brought up a set of graphics, showing the remains of the runabout. “We’re continuing our examination of the parts that we have here, especially the black box. It’s missing some data due to the missile impact, but we have been able to confirm from voice transcripts that McElroy was in the ship when it arrived insystem. Here’s the timeline.”
She pointed to another graphic, newly appeared above the table. A broad horizontal stripe ticked off the hours, while notable events were shown on parallel tracks. “It appears that he attempted to EVA to get to the sled, in order to cast off in the sled and avoid the missile impact,” Skylar told them. “However, the body was not in the sled when we recovered it. Either the missile impact ejected him from the sled, or he was not in it.”
“He might have fallen from the ship,” observed Lobeck. “Let’s look at the entire flight history of the ship after it arrived.”
A flight chart appeared. “Look, there. The ship changed its acceleration at 0542, instead of just heading straight for Kelter. Have we swept that course as well?”
“Yes, but not at a high resolution,” Skylar replied.
“Shift priorities,” Lobeck said. “That is the course on which we will find the body. Now, let’s shift to public communications. For our distinguished visitors, this is the main reason why you are here.”
“I hope you will fill us in,” replied Sonia. “All this tactical stuff. It’s so transactional. You figure all of that out. We can’t help you.”
Lobeck was tall even when he was sitting. Sonia felt his scrutiny as though he was scanning through every known fact of her life. “I agree, Dr. West, on one level. But there is another element in play that directly concerns your work.”
‘We’re all ears,” she said.
“We all know why we are in the Kelter system. Our new asset will only provide its full value to the Affirmatix Family if nobody else is aware of its existence. Overall, I believe that we have contained the explicit expression of the data, despite earlier serious errors in the Aurora system. Our next challenge is erasing the secondary effects, including the ripples from our own actions. And that is where you three come in.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Here is the question,” Lobeck said. “What information might cause people to believe, or speculate, in the discovery of our asset or something like it? For example, several writers picked up on the sudden arrival of all of our ships through a glome that had not been identified before. That begs for an explanation. We need to provide explanations or suppress the question. The articles in question have already been removed, but we must be vigilant for their recurrence.”
“You need a True Story,” Sonia said. “That’s a task for the Marcom Team, right?”
“It is, but they need help. It’s essential that our True Story should not only withstand scrutiny, but also that it should not direct anyone toward our discovery. I need you three to evaluate scenarios. Suggest courses of action, and evaluate those that we provide to you. Above all, we must preserve the exclusivity of our asset.”
“What’s your valuation target?”
Lobeck brought up the image that Sonia knew so well. “The best case scenario, of course. Ninety-nine percent. Dr. West, I have read your work carefully. Over the course of the next forty years the Affirmatix Family of companies can gain a controlling interest in ninety-nine percent, by value, of all business entities and assets that exist or come into existence between now and then. Affirmatix will own ninety-nine percent of human civilization. We can do that, if and only if we keep a lid on the Versari discovery.”
Sonia could have recalled every detail of the graphic with her eyes closed. Graceful gradations between ribbons of color, textured in the form of three-dimensional nets to provide substance and demarcate the outcomes. Three axes were shown: the passage of time, asset value, and probability. The ribbons represented various courses of action, starting as thick trunks at the present moment and then branching into fine filaments of future choices.
In the very top right corner, a thread glowed with incandescent emerald.
Hearing Lobeck state his goal, Sonia was floored. In the clouds of possibility, that was an outlier. The ninety-nine percent value outcome presumed the absolutely most aggressive, the most ruthless measures by Affirmatix, not just to retain the secret but to exploit it. Beyond ethical questions, that scenario ran on the ragged edge of harsh reaction by others. How far would the other six of the Sisters let themselves be pushed around?
She protested. “Mr. Lobeck, I am not sure you fully understand the uncertainties in that scenario. It involves taking huge risks−”
He swept her words aside. “Risks we are prepared to take. Anyway, as we might say, that question is above your pay grade. We will provide scenarios, and you will evaluate them.”
How could she make him understand? “We only include scenarios of that type in order to delineate the cloud. And there are some serious ethical questions−”
Lobeck held up a big hand, almost in Sonia’s face, until she stopped speaking. “Ethics is also above your pay grade,” he said. “We provide so many services, so many goods, so much benefit, to tens of billions of people. Every year, we offer more value. It is our duty to make Affirmatix products available to as many consumers as possible. And I expect everyone here to embrace that duty.”
“Isn’t it a little extreme to go killing people, as you did to Mr. McElroy?” Sonia felt herself flush as she realized too late that she might have said too much. This was not someone to challenge so directly.
Lobeck, however, seemed unconcerned. “We all know that it was self-defense,” he told her. “Any court in the land would back that up. The moment he left our facility on Aurora with information critical to us, he became an infoterrorist. He doubled down and redoubled, leaving the system, partially revealing the fruits of the discovery by travelling through a new glome, and then sending a message whose content we don’t yet even know. Make no mistake – McElroy has endangered everyone in civilization. If he is dead, we are fortunate.”
Lobeck surveyed the room.
Silence.
“Now, let us focus,” he resumed, “on the actions we need to take to achieve containment and to protect our asset.”
Somehow Sonia managed to make it through the rest of the meeting. Jennifer and Simone. Yvette. Jennifer and Simone. She would take care of them. She could do this.
Do Something
Evan knew that something was very wrong. Too much time had gone by, over two hours. They should have lifted by now.
Mira had insisted that it was necessary for her to stay docked to Top Station until the next optimal flight window arrived. To save fuel. And get lunch, of all things.
He would be glad to pay for the fuel, as much as she needed. That is, after he was officially not dead any more, and was able to provide credit. He had enough assets. At least, he did when he was alive.
But Mira was right. Rushing from Top Station would have created a bogey. The algorithms would have noted it.
Evan was slightly crouched in order to stay entirely hidden in the intake, and that was a bad thing. Initially it had been okay. Then he had felt the need to stretch. To move, even a little bit. He found himself doing a series of tiny maneuvers, just to get into some different kind of muscle position.
The EVA suit didn’t help. It was bulky, designed for comfort and functionality while operating in open space. By himself, he could easily have fit into the intake with plenty of room to move around. But with the EVA, he was stuffed in like toothpaste into a tube. This was not going to work for long.
He had grown tired of asking the suit what time it was, so he had a display showing the time. It incremented every second, the prior red digit seamlessly replaced with its red successor. Every sixty seconds, the minute incremented. That was even worse than having to ask the time, but Evan did not shut it down. He was done talking to the suit, for a while.
As another hour went past, Evan con
templated his options. He could clamber out, go over to the next lock, and go into Top Station. He could find out what was going on.
It was a really bad idea, and he knew it. Still he fought the imperative to do something, anything.
It was so deeply ingrained. Do something. It was always better than nothing. Evan tried once again to scrunch up his legs, so he could straighten his back. No dice.
Do something.
Evan knew why not. He had learned.
The expedition to Middlefork. The shuttle had entered the hangar with too much speed and at the wrong angle. Everyone could tell that something was horribly wrong. Suited researchers had flung themselves desperately out of the way. All had escaped the impact, except for Jacob.
When all was still, they had emerged, feeling lucky to be alive. Then the screams had begun, transmitted directly into everyone’s suit audio system.
They had found Jacob, his hips and legs crushed between a side rail of the shuttle and what remained of the hangar wall.
There was air, of sorts, on Middlefork. Not much, and it was cold, so they all wore suits out of habit. Evan was sure that the air was going fast out of Jacob’s suit. Still, that alone would not kill him, and they could provide a supplemental flow.
The crew had turned to Evan. He was the leader of the expedition. What should they do?
Evan would remember the moment forever. He was an exoarchaeologist, and was only the leader because he had scraped together enough funding for the trip. But people always looked to the source of the money for leadership. The screaming continued.
He had to do something. Under Evan’s direction, the crew rigged a haul line and lifted the rail partly off Jacob, until they were able to pull him out. As gently as they could, they transported him into the main air-filled base, met along the way by the expedition’s only medic.
It had been the wrong call.
The lifting and tugging had pushed the sharp ends of shattered bones through his spinal cord. Before they started their rescue efforts, Jacob could move his legs, aflame with pain as they were. He never moved them again.
Evan had visited Jacob in the hospital. Jacob had accepted Evan’s apology, for what that was worth.
Years passed, and Evan never saw Jacob, or heard from him, until Jacob had been hired onto the crew on Aurora, just over a year ago. Zero gravity was the best work environment for him. Jacob was efficient and focused. He made valuable contributions to the research. His useless legs did not matter on Aurora.
Evan had taken the lesson, as dearly bought as it was. It was not always required to do something. He resolved to stay in the intake for as long as it took.
Four hours, twenty-one minutes, and forty seconds after the start of his EVA, Evan felt the ship release from Top Station. A gentle thrust now provided some sense of up, to the opening of the intake, and down, to his feet.
He wondered if it was now time to do something. Almost, but not yet. Mira would tell him. “Suit,” he said, “Listen for voice transmittals from the ship, and play anything that comes in.”
“Will listen for transmittals and play them,” the suit said, although it was already set to do that.
Two minutes and twelve seconds later, Evan heard “Just a quick roll to check on our attitude controls.” That was the signal. He slid out into the blessed vastness, then pulled his way around the small ship, climbing up the modest rotation, until he came to the airlock.
Coming through the inner lock door, he imagined life outside the damn EVA. Just a little while longer, and he would be without the suit. He would even take being stuck in the tiny cockpit. That was a mansion by comparison.
Once inside Evan did not hesitate to start stripping off the suit. He pulled off his helmet, and reached for his right gauntlet.
Something was different.
“Evan,” Mira said, “I’d like you to meet someone. This is Rod Denison. He’s a newsman, and he’s going to write your story.”
Part 3: How Many Lives
The Marcom Team
“Let’s get started!” Elise was the leader of the Affirmatix Marcom team, just arrived on a shuttle that had come through the new glome from Aurora. Marcom – Marketing Communications – was a mainstay function of each of the major families, creating and maintaining the messaging that the family needed to grow and thrive.
“This one is going to be a great challenge, but I know we’re up for it!” She was a can-do kind of woman. Featuring stylish couture, clothes and makeup, she was also pretty, somewhere under there. “And it’s so important. Special assignment to Vice President Lobeck! Direct to the Senior Vice President!”
Was that perfume? Sonia became increasingly certain. On the confined space of a ship, it was either an unwitting choice, or a studied disregard for others who might not prefer the same sensory experience.
“First, let’s welcome our economic experts,” Elise continued. “Drs. West, Ravi, Merriam, it’s great to have you on the team. Our focus today is on filling the vacuum. We know the kind of false stories that we can’t have out there, and we know how to keep them tamped down. But that won’t work forever. We need to get the True Story out and promote it so it becomes the generally accepted reality. Then all those other stories fade into being CT, and our work is done.”
Conspiracy Theory. CT.
“So let’s look at our candidate True Story,” she directed. “Merlin, run it down for us and we’ll see if we can poke holes in it.”
Merlin was Elise’s right-hand man. “We need a simple story that explains one main thing,” he said. “That is the fact that so many ships passed through the new glome so quickly after the first ship did. If it was truly a new glome, that couldn’t happen.”
Ravi spoke up. “Don’t you think that the fact of the first ship being destroyed is kind of big news? Or the blockade we are now conducting?”
“Sure, the True Story has to cover those things too,” Merlin agreed. “But they are second order issues. Families fight, families bluster and threaten. When it comes to that, people generally keep their heads down and let it blow over. What we can’t have hanging out is something entirely unexplainable. We definitely can’t have a mystery that has people speculating about any way to know where a glome goes in advance of the first time it is entered.”
“So explain it.” Ravi was always right to the point.
“Here’s what we’ve got,” the story artist offered. “We start with the fact that the glome was already known. There’s no avoiding it. We don’t like that much, because we don’t want people thinking about the idea of us, or anyone, knowing about glomes that aren’t published. But, there’s one exception. People accept that governments used to stash secret glome locations so they could do a surprise attack in wartime. So, our starting point is that the glome was known by some government, and then the Affirmatix Family learned of it.”
“It looks like there’s no choice,” observed Elise. “We need a good story that shows the glome was already known. So how do we fill in the backstory? When was the glome explored?”
“We’re going with 2245, fifty-nine years ago,” Merlin told her. “We found a report from an amateur insisting that he picked up a signal from about that direction. Said he traced it for three days. Couldn’t get anyone interested because it didn’t match any known frequencies or patterns.”
“Is the report factually accurate?”
Merlin shrugged. “Does it matter? We’ve been talking with his son, and the guy does a great interview. Loves to talk too. Proving his dad right after all these years.”
“And the unusual signal?”
Merlin gestured, and an animation began. “We’ve found an expert who can tell us all about how government military explorations around that time did something like this. Just a faint signal that listening posts would recognize, but nobody else would.”
Sonia thought it was the stupidest reel she had ever seen. A robot ship appearing out of nowhere against a star field. Colored waves illustrating the
idea of a signal being sent. A satellite listening in the distance. Somebody had gone to the trouble of making it, on the apparent assumption that the team members couldn’t understand two sentences.
Elise was pleased. “Sweet! So, do government explorations really do that?’
“Maybe they did,” Merlin replied, “but there are no government explorations anymore. It’s all the families. And everybody knows that commercial ventures wouldn’t bother with all that subterfuge, because the moment they find a connection to a known system, they want to publish just as soon as possible, and stake a claim for the royalties.”
“I love it!” Elise bubbled. “Sneaky old things that governments did, before we got them under control for everybody’s benefit. So let’s connect up the other events.”
Another inane animation. Sonia could barely make herself watch, but there was nowhere else she could look without being purposefully rude. The perfume was killing her.
Merlin narrated. “The first ship through was a terrorist planning to spread harm to Kelter, in the form of a new recipe for creation of a TDX virus. The missiles were a successful effort to stop that ship. The blockade is a secondary measure, and it will be lifted in a few more days.” The animation showed warships with badges, signifying the good forces of law and order.
“But I expect that lots of people think the blockade is very heavy handed,” Ravi was taking on the skeptic role, as he typically did. “Even with that story, we may not be making any friends.”
Elise waved it away. “Oh, we don’t need friends. People can have their opinions, including about us. Gives them something to do. As long as the things they have opinions on are based on the right facts. So, any other issues about believability?”
It appeared that there were not.
“Ok, then let’s move on to effectiveness.” Elise turned to Sonia. “Dr. West, I’d like you and your team to model the effects of this story. Assume that it becomes the generally accepted version of events, and give us an evaluation about whether it helps or hurts our chances of achieving the outcomes Mr. Lobeck desires.”
The Great Symmetry Page 9