by A. I. Zlato
From the shuttle to his office, there were only ten metres. But he was interrupted several times on his way back to the office. Everybody knew here that he was a busy man, but that he never refused to answer a question. His commutes, from his house to the construction site, and from the site to the office, gave people the opportunity to chat a bit with him. Even if the answer was self-evident, even he knew the questioner already had the answer, Egeon considered that everybody deserved his attention. A trivial enquiry could hide a deeper anxiety, the fear of not meeting expectations, of feeling useless … Every question was important. He ended up spending thirty minutes on his way to the office, reassuring some people, encouraging others, bringing others back on track, and getting angry, just a bit. Egeon was the hot-tempered type, who could easily become irate if things did not go according to plan.
Once at the office, he smiled, thinking that he and Teo formed a perfect team. A grumpy man with a jittery fellow … what a team!
His office was nothing but a large table littered with plans and notes, surmounted by a half-hull of a plastometer to counter the wind, rain and sunshine. He sat down in front of this sprawling display of paperwork and read the report filed by the night-shift team. He immediately became irritated while perusing the first lines.
The report indicated a delay in the construction of the ultraF network, from the control room to the main line, which crossed the structure from one side to another. The team leader complained about the lack of skills on this particular work stream — and requested the help of an expert.
Egeon angrily wrote on the report that there was no expert in that field, at least in the way the team leader understood the word “expert.”
Indeed, the ultraF network had been built in the earlier years of the community, and there was no construction diagram, no design plan left. Therefore, Egeon and his team had to approximate things, test, adjust, modify to get some form of result accuracy. The technological knowledge underlying the network’s implementation had been lost, or the earlier designers had not thought about transmitting such knowledge.
Either way, the result was the same. So, it was simply impossible to find an expert in the field, and the night-shift team leader knew that. This ploy was one of his usual excuses, to justify the delay in the project. Egeon kept on striking through the report, rendering it ultimately unreadable. In front of the darkened page replete with incomprehensive comments, he sighed, and then grabbed a blank sheet to give clearer instructions. The ultraF was critical, and there was no way they would undertake the trip with a prototype.
This combo of star-shaped microprocessors looked like a neuronal circuit. Each node emitted, transmitted, amplified or stopped information, based on the content. The network facilitated a quasi-instantaneous flow of basic data, alleviating the work of the main unit, which no longer had to handle those minor tasks. Here, in the community, the ultraF network linked houses together, managing the storage and consumption of energy, the use of water resources, the recycling of waste. None of these work streams required human oversight, which represented much-needed savings in time and resources, and thus an optimisation of the latter. In the shuttle, such a technology would be critical.
Egeon wrote one page, front and back, of instructions intended for the subsequent teams who would handle that specific work stream.
He re-read what he wrote, edited a bit, to polish his comments, to be less aggressive. Not much. Anyway, everybody here was aware of his explosive temperament, and, in general, his colleagues complimented him for his effort to cool himself down. Once he felt his instructions were clear, he moved on to other reports filed by the night-shift team. He then looked up and saw the sun, already high in the sky. The morning was well underway, and he was already hungry.
He stood up and went to the canteen, which fed the teams, day shift and night shift alike. Smells of roasted meat, hot bread and spices constantly pervaded the building’s environs. Open on all four sides, the canteen housed the kitchens in its centre, surrounded by a bar. Tables and chairs were available to welcome those starving. As he entered, he greeted a few people, who, like he, were taking a break. The cook in-charge, Talos, smiled when he saw him.
“How are you, Egeon?”
“”Fine, thanks. Except that the ultraF network is not progressing as I would want.”
“I bet some people will soon feel your “anger treatment,” even if they on’t want to.”
“Correct. I’ve made some notes, to avoid getting too mad.”
“The “too” was not necessary in the sentence, was it?”
“You are right, Talos. Please fix me one of your special sandwiches.”
“A sandwich as you like it, full of meat, or a sandwich as your wife would like it, full of veggies?”
“Full of meat, of course!...Hahaha … and I trust you wouldn’t tell her anything, right?”
“She will find out anyway, you know that.”
- Yeah … but never mind!
Egeon loved these trivial exchanges, which helped him escape his work mode momentarily. He ate his sandwich while still chatting with Talos, about everything and nothing, especially about nothing. Satiated, appeased, he went back to work. In the corridor linking the canteen to his office, he found no one, so he was back within minutes.
He then focused on laying out the plan for the upcoming work streams. His forte was engineering, architectural conception, and he oversaw teams directly. For other fields of expertise, and there were many, he relied on department managers, who were as talented as Teo, each in his or her respective field.
Egeon had been railed early on by his dad, Eaque, who instilled all his knowledge in his son. The latter quickly showed a knack for sciences and engineering, so Eaque made him his heir. When his father retired, considering himself too old to manage the construction crews, Egeon stepped in the role. He continued to seek his dad’s guidance for several years after taking office. Initially, he needed to be reassured in his decisions, and Eaque was generous with advice. Gradually, he gained confidence, and when he went to see his dad, it was mostly to make the old man happy, so he would feel useful and still involved in the community’s affairs. Upon his death, Egeon lost not only his dad, but also his mentor and his confidant.
When he assumed the role of chief engineer, he did not immediately become the community leader. He was elevated in the hierarchy many years later by his peers, who concluded he was the best man for the job. He was the first to be surprised. Even if he thought he was one of the best in his field, he had no aptitude, and more important, no patience to manage the community’s everyday affairs. He nonetheless accepted that extra workload, and tried to execute it as best as he could. The supervision of other departments, complementary to his, was a natural activity for him. However, the management of daily affairs, small incidents, conflicts that undoubtedly would occur, was painful for him — even though he knew those were a necessary evil. Everything that dragged him away from the shuttle seemed a waste of time. Luckily, his agenda today seemed exclusively focused on the construction site.
After finalising work schedules, he gathered team leaders to deliver his instructions. They listened silently. No one dared a comment, because they knew it was not a good idea. Rebut Egeon’s views was something to avoid, especially when he handed out the schedules. Any comments regarding the inability to meet deadlines would be struck back, and the author roundly slighted. Behind his back, many were those saying they would rather report to anyone but him. Egeon was perfectly aware of that, and really made every effort to stay calm. Without success. How could he? The project, that was his whole life. Their existence, and especially the survival of their descendants, was intrinsically and irredeemably intertwined with the project’s success. He could not keep cool when someone told him of a delay, a problem, something that did not match expectations.
Once the meeting was over, he went back to the canteen for lunch. Talos fixed him a take-out meal, which Egeon later put on his desk, having f
irst removed all the paperwork lying there. While eating, he took out the notebooks in which he commented, every day, on the project’s progress, major problems, his own enquiries, as his dad and all his predecessors had done several generations ago. He liked to browse those notebooks, to read what previous generations had done, their mistakes, their questions, their successes. Their very existence symbolised the continuity of the project.
He had read several times his father’s notes, and found in them valuable information about the thought process that led to a particular decision. The writings of his dad’s predecessor, who was also Egeon’s grandfather, had a rather historical focus, because most of his questions had since been solved. Rewind a few decades earlier, and the reading became more and more difficult. The evolution of language made it uneasy to understand as he burrowed into more notebooks. Beyond four generations, Egeon could no longer grasp what his forbears had written, the time distance making their remarks too cryptic.
The earliest notes, probably written by the first site manager, had been largely erased. Only one word was legible, but meant nothing to Egeon. Gateway. He often wondered what the earliest manager had meant, if that was a critical message. Like a will crossing decades and centuries, that single word was perhaps an important key, but Egeon could not perceive the door it was supposed to open. He nonetheless kept remembering that word, seeking inspiration from it. One day, maybe he would understand it. He had asked Eaque about the word, but unfortunately, it was too late. The old man no longer had all his neuronal capacity intact, and he narrated a tale his grandmother had told him as a child, referring to space-time and end of the world. That story had no meaning for him. If Eaque had been aware of something, that information had vanished when he passed away. For now, the first word remained a mystery.
Egeon went back to his notebooks, and started writing his daily status report. He had nothing special to mention, except the delay experienced in the implementation of the ultraF network.
Despite his apparent optimism, he really was worried about that delay. He was the one who launched the project, his predecessors, rightfully, having relegated it to the backburner. To test his ego, he had thought he could successfully complete the project before handing things over to his successor. Looking at the white page of his notebook, he was no longer certain. He was exploring his options when he felt a tap on the shoulder. He turned abruptly, ready to rail against the intruder.
He realised, in time, that it was his wife, Galatea. He offered her a smile. She often came to see him, in the mid-afternoon. The stated reason was that she wanted to force him to take breaks. However, Egeon was certain she often came there to make sure he was not too tough vis-à-vis his employees. More than once, she had caught him projecting his ire on someone. Of course, she had been able to calm him down, to the delight of the person undergoing his “anger treatment.” Today, he did not need to be calmed down. He was nonetheless glad to see her, and offered to take a short break and go to the canteen to enjoy a nice cupcake. Or two.
She reminded him that having already had a sandwich in the morning, and a good meal at lunchtime, he could not be hungry. He harshly replied that he needed a lot of energy to work. She chose not to press him this time. She already “won” yesterday, depriving him of savoury bread offered at the canteen. She knew she could not “win” every day.
His wife was as thin as he was portly. Tall, her red eyeballs could easily look him in the eyes. Her curvy shape always drew his stare. Wherever one looked, Galatea was all curve, curve and only curve. Egeon knew it was not the right time or moment to venture anything intimate, although the desire was strong. She caught his stare, and reciprocated with a smile. Younger than he was, she had a near-perfect face where only a few wrinkles would hide in the corner of her eyes, to her despair. He thought those little age lines made her prettier. She always fixed her black hair as a ponytail, pinning it to her head. She tolerated no rebellious hair strand. If by chance some hair ventured outside her tail, she would subdue it with a pin. At the end of the day, she had a variety of pins, of all sizes and colours, spread from her temple to the back neck.
While walking to the canteen, Egeon told his wife his current concerns at work, knowing that she was of the few people who could understand the pressure he felt on his job. She was in charge of the Astronomy Department, which, by observations and calculations, had to identify the nearest planet offering the best chance of success. Nothing less. Egeon, in his field, had at least the possibility of creating prototypes, demo-testing his assumptions, and making the necessary adjustments. That was what had been happening with the ultraF network; teams were testing scenarios, which revealed all the defects to correct. Galatea did not have that luxury. She could only verify the accuracy of her computations by doing further computations — and so on, and so forth. Egeon knew he was under pressure, a big and immediate one, but at least on topics he mastered. Galatea had a much heavier, more permanent burden, of which she would never be relieved, because she would not see the result of her work.
As an heir to several generations of astronomers, she also had notebooks indicating remarks made by her predecessors. Unlike her husband, she felt comfortable writing personal comments beside the earlier comments, correcting inaccurate computations, refining prior measurements. These notebooks looked like a draft, as each remark seemed to have been corrected several times.
Her effort paid off, as she was able to determine the existence of several rocky planets, orbiting around the double-star Alpha of Centauri. Once there, humans would still need several generations to make one of the two planets liveable. liveable. By then, Galatea or her successors would need to find out which planet would best suit their goals, based on observations and inferences relating to a rocky sphere orbiting around a star, four light-years further away.
They both knew that the shuttle would embark on a one-way trip, that those on board would not see the planet, let alone witnessing the planet become habitable. If everything went according to plan. If the shuttle could withstand the interstellar trip, if humans on-board had a chance of survival, if they chose the correct planet, if the subsequent modification to make the chosen planet liveable proceeded as planned...So many “ifs”. So many hypotheses. But so few certainties. Nonetheless, they hoped to be part of the first group embarking on such a voyage, despite the risks. They were born to do this. They doubled their efforts, one day at a time, to make their dream come true.
Egeon went back to work, whilst his wife veered towards the Tunnel. Egeon thought the latter was the only, perfectly useless, project that his ancestors implemented. Built into the rock, the Tunnel was an artificial cavity, supposed to symbolise the passage the Arts had taken, after leaving Space O. In the middle, there was a small alcove, where people could light candles, to tell the Prophet where true believers were.
Edgard had always found it ridiculous. If a spiritual master would indeed come, he or she could use his or her super powers to identify the true believers. He normally kept such thoughts to himself, except when he was drunk, because it was the kind of comments that made his wife lose her temper. He saw her for a moment, as she headed towards the alcove, to light a candle and pray for the Messiah to come.
Shaking his head, he immersed himself in the latest undercover report. Regularly, he would send a trusted aide to gather intelligence in the City, to know the latest news but also to get materials they needed but could not find on-site, especially microchips. They had the means to produce them on-site, but the process was entailed significant time … so it was better to get the finished products. In addition, he felt the need to check what happened on the other side of the Forest, to ensure the preservation of their anonymity, even though the presence of a non-resident in the City, if it were discovered, would shed light on their project. Nevertheless, he continued to dispatch a spy three or four times a year, in the middle of the night. Upon his or her return, the agent would always file a report on the materials recovered as well as the latest ne
ws.
He was shocked by what he was reading. The report indicated that an unknown disease had been rampant in the City. Youngsters, children with no history of trouble, were committing suicide collectively, without any known motive.
He had already noticed, as his dad had, that the City was on the verge of decline. From the outside, it seemed prosperous, expanding its limits, increasing the length of skyscrapers. However, looking more closely, one could see signs of disintegration. Perhaps children had the intuition of such gradual destruction, feeling things that adults refused to acknowledge. But to commit suicide for this reason … was a bit of a stretch!
Time had really come, for him and the others, to travel to space, and to leave the Spaces, and their endless cycle.
You think you are superior to a machine, but what makes you better? You react to events depending on your character and experiences, in a predefined way, like a program. Your reaction is often not the best, because you do not know how to evaluate all available data and integrate them in a program that is superior to your own mental patterns.
Internal Report, Index Server
Chapter 5
: Cycle 1100 1010 0011 1111
The Tower, lying in the centre of the City, sprung into the sky, immutable. In its simple, cold beauty, it dominated the world with its large size. As the first building in the Space, it seemed as if it had been constructed with ageless materials. Without cracking or crazing, its surface did not require maintenance. It had never been renovated or even cleaned. Made of a single block, it absorbed light in full, and converted it into electricity. The top of the Tower lay well above clouds, and the production of energy occurred even if the sky was loaded. Myriad photoelectric cells, in the first layer of material, transformed the star’s light into electricity during the day.