The Great Symmetry

by James R Wells

  “Clearly they had something else in mind,” Mira put in.

  “When the warships arrived, maybe I should have just gone back to the research station, and it would have averted the whole thing. But now I don’t think so. They just went crazy. Warships. Missiles. Blockades. Chasing us through the cave. Stopping at nothing. To keep a secret.”

  “To make sure there’s not even a hint that it exists,” Mira pondered.

  “Anyone I even contact is in danger, whether they know anything or not. For instance, that Denison fellow who rode down with us. Who knows if he has been rounded up by now, to find out what he knows.”

  “And he didn’t tell me a thing about you!” Kate burst out. “Secrets everywhere!”

  Evan was surprised. “You know him?”

  “He’s one of my captains. He rode down with you, and still you didn’t send along word that you were alive. Let me go on thinking you were dead.”

  Evan turned to Mira. “You held out on me!”

  “Because if I told you, Evan, I knew you would do something foolish. And our current situation proves me right. I made Denison promise not to say who he worked for.”

  “Because you were keeping us apart,” Kate declared.

  Mira agreed. “Exactly. For good reason, as we see right now.”

  “You might have a point there,” Kate conceded. “But back to the present. If the problem is due to it being a secret, then the answer is obvious. It needs to be public. When we get out, we’ll contact the media. I have some friends at the top channels in the Spoon Feed. They’ll be so excited to get the scoop.”

  Evan raised his hand up. “It’s the right kind of solution – spreading the information so widely that we don’t matter anymore individually. And there are other really good reasons to do that – I’ve been thinking this through. But do we really know the media would take the story?”

  “Oh yeah! The ratings would be through the roof! Who would turn it down?”

  “All of them,” Mira replied. “All of them would turn it down. Every single one.”

  “But why?” Kate asked.

  “A story this big would be sequestered, right out of the gate,” Mira told her. “Then it would be evaluated by the infoterrorism office, and their subscribers, to determine whether it should be released. They might release it, they might not, and I am betting not. They would have to consider the interest of Affirmatix, and releasing the story would definitely not be in their interest. In any case, the only certainty is that we would lose control of it.”

  “Independents?”

  “We could find some independents who would run with it. But would they have the reach to really get the word out? And let’s not forget that any person we tell is instantly placed in serious danger. Who do we want to do that to?”

  “I still say we need to publish it,” Kate said. “Widely. The solution is dilution. They can’t track down and kill everyone. I could run a big advertising campaign. Oh, maybe not. Not anymore.”

  “I am sorry to share this burden with you,” Evan told them. “I can’t solve it. First I knew, and it almost got me killed. Now you two know, and that’s worse. And we have left a trail of others who may already have been harmed. Once you have the knowledge, there is no unknowing it. That is, as long as we are alive.”

  Happygram

  When she saw the notification on her phone, Sonia abruptly got up and left the meeting. “Carry on,” she told Ravi and Merriam. “I’ll be right back.”

  Fifty seconds later the door slid closed behind Sonia in her quarters. “Main display,” she said. “Run the message from Alcyone.”

  The scene opened with a lazy, low flyover. Flowering shrubs, ranging from pink through a deep magenta.

  The play set came into view. Simone and Jennifer climbed and slid happily. The shot widened to show Yvette, smiling and watching them. The voiceover began.

  “Hi mommy!” the girls said in chorus.

  Yvette’s voice was low, sweet, and wonderful. For the shortest of moments, Sonia was home. “Sweetie, we wanted to send you a little note to say that we all love you and believe in you. We are doing just great. In fact, I was given some extra paid vacation while you are on your trip. Up to two weeks if I want. So we were thinking of going to the hot springs for a few days.”

  “Tell her! Tell mommy!”

  “Oh, and Simone wanted me to tell you that she got a hundred percent on her advanced math test.”

  “A hundred and five!” Simone corrected.

  “And she got the extra credit question right. She knows you’ll be so proud.”

  Sonia watched her daughters playing, and tried to imagine something that mattered less than a math score.

  “So have a great trip, and we will have a party when you get back.”

  “Party!” Jennifer agreed.

  “One, two, three: We love you!” the three of them chorused.

  The camera rose until it was looking down on the entire yard. And then the video was over.

  Was the point of view selected on purpose? Gracefully floating through the garden, just a meter or so above the ground, then flying off.

  The colorful and enchanting denizens of every garden and park on Alcyone. Welcomed by everyone, the symbol of serene daily life on Alcyone. Over four hundred varieties had been identified, each expressing small variations in color, size, and shape.

  Hobbyists strove to capture the best images of their translucent wings shimmering in the sun. There was an annual contest for the best such picture.

  But Sonia knew what the dragonflies were.

  Dividing The Spoils

  Two of the delegates on Sanzite’s ship had by now been replaced by the Presidents of their families. Counting Sanzite, that made three Presidents and four Delegates.

  The Delegates were empowered to negotiate at the highest level on behalf of their family, but Sanzite appreciated the other Presidents making the journey. He knew how much he hated to travel.

  Sanzite, obviously, was the only one of them who was in a tank of thick fluid rather than walking around. The others showed their respect by treating him as simply another president, facing him when he spoke, arranging themselves so that he was always a core part of the discussion. It made sense, since he was the host. No shaking hands, though. That had stopped many years ago.

  Sanzite called them to order. “I trust that everyone has had a chance to evaluate the information that I have provided. Does anyone need more time?”

  That would be embarrassing. He had provided a full two hours. Nobody asked for a delay.

  “So you know what we have discovered,” Sanzite continued, “and you may be gaining some idea of its value. We have done a valuation, and I was shocked by the result. If we manage this resource correctly, it is valued at ten times the amount of all existing asset value. All assets, that exist anywhere in civilization. Ten times that amount.”

  The designers of the travel tank had at least done one thing right. The top edge of the tank looked down over a slightly sunken floor, and nobody could look down on the fluid surface, even when standing. As Sanzite presented his findings, he was able to look just slightly down on the assembled presidents and delegates.

  “Why are you telling us all this?” President Lu, of ProSolutiana. “Why are you not exploiting this discovery for your benefit?”

  “Oh, we are.” Sanzite smiled, because he could still do that. “We have identified several of the most promising new planets, and we have ships on their way already.”

  “Still, why involve us?” Lu pressed. “Are you simply here to gloat?”

  “We are here for a very good reason. My associate Mr. Lobeck, who is directing our operations around Kelter, has forecasted that Affirmatix could control over ninety nine percent of all assets using this discovery. But he is not paying attention to a key principle.”

  “The Controlling Interest Rule. Of course.” Lu nodded.

  “Precisely,” Sanzite affirmed. “We abide by this rule on a micr
o scale. None of us may subscribe to more than forty percent of the salary and expenses of any government official. There are many good reasons, such as avoiding bidding wars over the subscription for a powerful post. But the biggest single reason is that if one of us insisted on a controlling interest in a top government official, the other six would not stand for it. In this case, on a macro scale, at some future day when you discern the trend, you would all take Affirmatix down, and we would be far worse off than if we had not made the discovery.”

  “So what do you propose?” Lu asked.

  Sanzite laid out his plan. “We will divide the value up in a manner that awards very substantial rewards to Affirmatix, because we brought it to the table, but does not violate the Controlling Interest Rule. I propose three shares for Affirmatix, and one share each for the other six families.”

  Sanzite had to stop himself from his deeply ingrained habit of gesturing when expressing a key idea. He didn’t want to bump against the confining walls of the travel tank. Someday, he resolved, he would just have a full size tank installed in a dedicated ship, so he could go wherever he wanted in comfort.

  “Three shares out of nine, that’s one third,” Lu objected. “Rather close to the forty percent limit, don’t you think?”

  “Three is too much,” put in Delegate Alsatie from RealHealth.

  “Two. Two shares.” President Remon from Individua.

  “Very good,” returned Sanzite. “We have established that three shares may be too much, and I tell you that two shares is definitely too little. Let us leave the rest of the haggling to the lawyers. Do we have agreement on the principle? We will divide this bounty. We will not war over it. And, we will maximize the value we can realize from the discovery, by working together. Most importantly, we will coordinate on the schedule on which we announce new discoveries.”

  “We can accelerate the pace of discovery,” said Remon.

  “Only by a very little bit,” Sanzite responded. “For the most part, we must keep on a schedule very similar to what we would have discovered anyway. Most importantly, we do not want anyone to detect a trend of greater discoveries that cannot be explained.”

  “But for the crowded worlds−”

  “Crowds are good for property values. They are mostly our properties, let me remind you. We must proceed carefully, so that we do not undermine the value of the investments we all hold.”

  The Presidents and the delegates continued the discussion for several hours. The implications. How to develop their discovery, without attracting unreasonable attention. It was the postcompetitive spirit at its finest, and this made Sanzite proud. Coopetition, for the good of everyone.

  After a time, they came to agreement on many topics, and identified others for further discussion. Details, that others could work out. Finally, it was time to adjourn.

  Sanzite was glad they were done. It had been a long meeting, although very productive. And, he was overdue for physical therapy.

  It was not a good idea to neglect his health.

  Publish Or Perish

  Mira suddenly stopped them in a small room and announced, “I know how to solve our problem. But first, I need to know that it’s real, beyond a shadow of a doubt. If you have a wondrous glome chart as you’ve described, let’s see it.”

  Without hesitation, Evan pulled a card out of his pouch and held it up. “This is it.”

  She held out her hand. “Give it here.”

  Evan surrendered the card. “I can bring it up on your tablet.”

  Mira inserted the card, and Evan invoked a program. “This isn’t the actual artifact,” he explained for Kate as the tablet initialized. “The original format couldn’t be read by our machines. This is just a basic database program with a lot of the information translated into it.”

  “All right, let’s see what she’s got,” Mira said.

  “It’s loaded. What glome do you want to know about?”

  Mira pondered. “There’s a problem here. Anything I could confirm, you could have loaded from any star atlas. Anything else, I have no way of knowing that it’s correct.”

  Evan threw up his hands. “I don’t want you to be convinced. I just want all of us to survive this. You don’t need to know, you don’t want to know. Forget I said anything.”

  “Show me the real one again. The original.”

  Evan pulled a small box out of his pocket and opened it, then proffered it to Mira.

  Mira reached out and felt the object drop into her palm. It was the amber cube, about a centimeter on a side, which Evan had shown her while they were heading to Top Station. She held it to her lamp. Light spilled through, casting flowing patterns on her thumb. “This is crazy.”

  “This is real,” he told her. “And, I can prove it. You know that I glomed from Aurora, right?”

  “You say you came from Aurora.”

  “Ok, we agree that I came in from two million kilometers trailing Kelter Four. And you know I’ve been in Aurora for the last two years. Well, here’s the thing. That’s not a known way into this system! You know there are only four known emergent glomes here. Well, there’s a fifth, and I explored it by diving blind into an unknown glome, based only on my read of the data from this artifact which said the glome came out here.”

  Mira considered. She knew the glome had not been publicly known. That fact had been all over the news. It was conceivable that it had somehow been known, but secret, or recently discovered. But this was unlikely for the simple fact that a person or family who discovered a glome between two known and inhabitable worlds was already wealthy by virtue of that discovery, and the associated royalties collectible over the first forty nine standard years of operation.

  She realized that there was another way to check. “I want you to query on the star AL-54B, no inhabited planets, one relay station.”

  “I can do that. Give me a minute . . . okay, here it is. What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me, is there −” No. Mira realized that was not the way to control the experiment. There was a better method. “Just show me all glomes in that system farther out than a billion kilometers.”

  Evan queried a minute further then pulled back so she could see the screen. “Here you go, an even dozen.”

  There it was. At 1,350 MKM out, 8 degrees north of plane, sidereal 34 degrees. She knew it was there, and nobody else in the world did. Twelve years before, she had been on the first ship, the first human ship, she corrected herself, in the system. At the very edge of their sweep, she was certain that there was the signature of a glome, worth logging. The captain had overruled her because the strength of the signal was below the ASTM standard, and there had been no time or budget to alter course and get closer than 50,000 kilometers to be sure. It was too far out for practical use, anyway. Far out glomes almost always went to other far out glomes.

  “This one, where does it go?” she asked.

  Evan selected an icon. “Let’s see. Looks like the Alpha entry into the glome goes to a system about 50 parsecs inward, sidereal 340 degrees, not yet explored, also over a billion kilometers out. Upsilon Andromeda, if you like the mythical names.”

  “Hang on, why did you specify the Alpha?” Mira asked. “That’s the only entry to a glome that ever works.”

  “That we know of, right? The dataset also specifies destinations for the Omega entry.” The Omega vector was the exact opposite point of entry into a glome from the Alpha. “But here’s the strange thing – as far as I can tell, the Versari data is wrong about the Omega destinations. It lists some entries that can’t possibly be right – they would have been discovered long ago. That’s a big reason it took me so long to decode the matrix. Only the Alpha destinations match what we know.”

  “But you nailed the location of that glome, and I am the only person who has ever seen it. It’s true, isn’t it? All of it.”

  Evan nodded. “It’s all true.”

  “The glome routes to a hundred thousand new star systems,” Mira consider
ed. “Endless wealth. I could take it. Right now. I am the only one who knows the way out. Leave you two with lots of time to make up, in the dark.”

  Mira stood, holding the tablet. “I could find the perfect planet. Once this blows over and the fleet is gone, get a crew together and light out for the ragged edge. What would be better than that? So, you two, why wouldn’t I do that?”

  Kate looked horrified. Evan took her hand. “Don’t worry,” he told Kate. “It’s a riddle, and I know the answer.”

  Evan looked up at Mira. “Why not?”

  “Yes. Why not?”

  “Because it’s you.”

  They regarded each other.

  Just a hint of a smile from Mira was enough. “Do I get first choice of a planet, at least?”

  “Pick of the litter,” Evan assured her. “Assuming we make it through this. Now please stop frightening Kate like that.”

  “I can have a little fun, can’t I?”

  “Hey, I wasn’t scared!” Kate protested. “Anyway, I know a little about business these days, and I know exactly how Affirmatix plans to gain as much as possible. They’re going to publish every glome and claim every planet. For the royalties and the rights. And they can only get to everything first if nobody else knows about this – that’s the key. Evan, you said that they went crazy, but that’s not true. Affirmatix is just acting in their rational self-interest.”

  “Sociopathic self-interest,” he amended. “A massive case of lucraphrenia.”

  “Rational, sociopathic.” Kate held up two open hands as if weighing each word equally. “Same thing, when you’re that big. Believe me, I have lived it since I started running my little family. They’ll take an advantage like this and run everyone else out of business. There’s no actual sisterhood there.”

  Mira nodded. “Just one major, running everything.”