The Braintrust: A Harmony of Enemies

by Marc Stiegler

  Chuck shook his head in awe. “And thus God uses the wicked to lift up the righteous.”

  Drew was still a little baffled. “Ok, but how’d you get the plans? The Web, I guess?”

  Howie nodded. “Yeah, these are plans that intentionally break the rifle down into a series of separate print runs that’re almost impossible to recognize as rifle parts. And I knew from the BrainTrust website that we could rent the printers. Everybody rents time on these things: copter inventors, engineering startup companies, and the kids at the university, of course, for their lab projects.” His expression turned wistful. “If these printers didn’t cost ten mil apiece, we could make a fortune back home printing every kind of weapon and tool needed to do God’s work during Armageddon.”

  Jerry asked the obvious logistical question. “Cartridges?”

  Howie shook his head. “The bullets themselves would be easy, but the primers for the propellants would be impossible. You remember how I hobbled aboard with two canes?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Well, the canes were full of ammo packed in paraffin.”

  Jerry clapped Howie on the shoulder. “Howie, it was God’s will that you should find us and we should find you just in time to make the trip.”

  “Amen,” agreed Drew and Chuck.

  As they packed the gun barrels, a number of small parts started to take shape in the next run. Jerry figured it out first. “That’s like half a firing mechanism, those pieces tabbed together in odd shapes? We’ll have to file the tabs off.”

  Howie grinned. “It’s good to be workin’ with such smart folk.”

  Jerry turned to Chuck. “How’re we doin’ on gettin’ the fertilizer?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Every day there’s a shipment from the Hephaestus, where they manufacture it. They move it in smallish quantities on a daily basis because—get this—they think it’s dangerous.” That got a grin from everyone. McVeigh had knocked down a Fed building decades earlier using this same kind of fertilizer. “We have a fellow believer on the cargo deck wrangling bots. If I’m lucky, I should be able to snag a couple fifty-pound cans.” He suspected that his wrangler friend would be happy enough to help if he heard the whole story, but Jack would be better off knowing nothing, so Chuck planned to use a bit of legerdemain to make it look like the cans were lost overboard during the transfer. It was the weakest part of the whole plan, but God would see him through.

  Drew laughed suddenly. “This whole plan is goin’ so smooth, it’s like shootin’ deer from a helicopter.”

  “With titanium guns,” agreed Howie.

  “God’s will,” Chuck chimed in.

  “Amen,” said Jerry.

  ***

  For a long time, Dash sat in the café sipping a cup of white tea. She had no idea what she would find when she went into Anne’s room, but she wasn’t ready for it even if it was good news.

  Byron slipped into the chair next to her. His eyes looked dark, and he clutched a sheaf of papers tightly.

  She stared at the papers. “He’s gone,” she whispered.

  He held out the papers. “For you.”

  She leafed through the pages, barely comprehending them, but seeing enough. “It’s not yet done.” The formulas and equations pressed on her eyeballs, trying to get in, to be seen, to be understood, to be appreciated. She dared not do it.

  There was just too much.

  Colin’s words echoed in her head. We set out to solve one very important problem. We solved it extremely well, I think, and solved a number of additional important problems along the way. But we did not set out to erase all the problems of mankind. Do not expect us to.

  Dash had a single problem to solve. She had not solved it yet, but she would, along with several others. But not this one.

  She would digitize the papers and publish them as they were. Perhaps one day she would find someone to pass them on to. Someone to appreciate them as they deserved.

  She felt a burden lift from her heart. Having determined her plan, she allowed the symbols to leak into her mind. She made a few notations—questions, really—in the margins. Just jotting down thoughts that might be interesting to consider, she went on and on, until she had no more. Then she was ready to go back to the problem she would solve.

  One of Anne’s daughters had paid an enormous premium for an enormous room to allow her entire family to sit with her. She was sitting up in bed, and when she looked at Dash, she smiled in alert recognition. “Dr. Dash. It’s so good to see you.”

  Dash stood gaping at her. Was this the same woman who could barely focus her eyes the last time they’d met, who had thought Dash was one of the refugees she had assisted twenty years earlier? “Ms. Rainer.”

  “Call me Anne,” the matriarch demanded.

  “Anne. You seem to have made an extraordinary recovery.” Dash walked amongst the monitors again, marveling at the story they told.

  Anne gave her a few moments to study the displays, then interrupted her assessment with a peremptory word. “So, am I ready to run a marathon yet? I certainly feel like it.” She started to rise from the bed, but the wires and tubes got in her way. “You really must let me up,” she asserted. “It’s very hard to play bridge with my daughters while sitting in a bed. We need a table.” She nodded at one of her great-granddaughters. “And Nora wants to serve a proper tea. A hospital bed is simply not a suitable accommodation.”

  Dash just shook her head. “Let me call a nurse.” She moved toward the controls, but a red line of data awakened on the screen.

  “Aaah,” Anne moaned, then sank back onto the bed. “Argh. Too much, I guess.”

  Dash watched the numbers on the screen, and her joyous smile slowly warped into a grimace. “It is not you, I am afraid, Anne.” She hissed softly. “Lie back. Enjoy your family. Let them enjoy you.”

  Anne nodded. “I’m on a short clock, then.”

  Dash lowered her eyes. She started a slow drip of pain meds and went outside to wait.

  At first she let the sound of the hushed laughter emanating from the room wash over her, but too soon that faded. After that, she caught the occasional urgent whispers of matters too sensitive to allow the children in the room to hear.

  A shoe scuffed on the floor next to her, and she looked up to see Nora looking at her, wide-eyed. “Dr. Dash, Gran wants to see you.”

  Once more, Dash straightened her back and walked into the valley of death.

  Anne’s relatives walked passed her single file, shaking her hand and thanking her for her efforts. Dash could not speak; she had no words rich enough to express her grief. Finally she was alone with Anne, whose face was now set in a rictus of pain. But there was still a little laughter in her eyes, eyes that were sharp and clear. She shifted on the bed and struggled with the euthanasia toggle as her hands shook. “This is harder than it ought to be,” Anne muttered softly.

  Dash went to the side of the bed. “I can help you, to some extent.” She opened the safety and flipped the toggle.

  “Would you push the button for me, please?” Anne asked.

  “You must do that yourself.” Dash felt tears shimmering as her vision blurred. “I’m so sorry I could not save you.”

  Anne shook her head. “Don’t you understand? Yesterday I was drooling, and couldn’t recognize my own son. Today I taught my great granddaughter an important life lesson: though your performance may not go as well as you hoped, you can always finish with grace and charm.” She reached out, grabbed Dash’s wrist, and gave her a shake. “Do not worry about saving me. You already did.” She released her handhold, and with a last fluid motion, she stabbed the button.

  Moments later she exhaled, and her spirit rode away with her breath.

  Dash did not—quite—run from the room, down the corridor, up the stairway, and out into the open, into the tang of the ocean breeze.

  ***

  Dash was not quite sure how her friends had found her, or how they’d known they were needed. Nevertheless, she’d been h
appy when they had come up to her and silently given her a joint hug.

  When she was depressed, one of her defenses was to plunge into learning something new. One bit of historical education had been taunting her for a while. So Dash led her friends down into the bowels of GPlex I until they reached the entrance to her destination. Bowing to her friends and pointing the way, she said with satisfaction, “Here we are.”

  Ping stared at the sign, a slab of dull gray concrete inlaid with silvery-metallic lettering. Museum of Ocean Autonomy. She groaned.

  Dash laughed lightly; it felt good to be happy for a moment. “You do not have to come in if you do not desire.”

  Ping looked at her hopefully. Jam nudged her hard with a hip. A bright, though rigid, smile appeared on Ping’s face. “No, I’d love to see all the…ancient history.”

  “Good.” Dash grabbed Ping’s arm and hauled her inside. Ping looked sideways at Jam and stuck a finger in her own mouth to indicate gagging. Jam gave a melodious laugh.

  The first thing they came to, right inside the entrance, was a large model of a ship encased in glass. Ping complained, “That’s just a cruise liner. What’s the big deal?”

  Dash frowned. “Even if she were ‘just a cruise liner,’ it would be a worthy exhibit. Cruise liners could reasonably be described as the first semi-autonomous floating cities. Particularly the later ones, which carried up to ten thousand people. But she is not actually a cruise liner. This is The World, the first semi-autonomous residential ship.”

  “Ooookay. It still looks like a cruise ship.”

  Dash growled briefly, though her growl sounded more like a puppy than a Doberman. “Ships are ‘she,’ not ‘it.’ In 2006, The World’s owners sold all her cabins to permanent homeowners. While many of the homeowners only lived on board part-time, many of them were permanent. The ship’s routes and destinations were chosen by the residents.”

  Jam raised an eyebrow. “The cabins must have been expensive.”

  “Oh, yes. Much more expensive than the cabins on normal cruise liners of the time, which cost about as much per square foot as a New York apartment. But the owners of The World were able to charge a remarkable premium due to the exclusivity. To be considered to purchase a cabin, you had to have at least ten million dollars in assets.”

  Ping said, “Well, that sounds like a lot, but there are lots of people with that much money.”

  “And you had to be invited to submit a request by an existing homeowner.”

  Jam offered. “So you had to be nice to someone.”

  “And then all the existing homeowners had to vote you in.”

  Silence ruled for a moment. Ping admitted, “I guess it was pretty exclusive, at that.”

  Jam asked, “Why was it called semi-autonomous? The captain had final authority over everything, didn’t he, like most ships?”

  Dash reflected on that for a moment. Suddenly she understood why Colin had described the BrainTrust as a corporate dictatorship. All ships were, at the end of the day, very nearly dictatorships when they were at sea, ruled solely by their captains. “The World was only semi-autonomous because it had to put in to harbor frequently for food and fuel.”

  In contrast, BrainTrust isle ships did not put into any port. The BrainTrust Consortium, to whom each isle ship captain reported, for all intents and purposes maintained continuous rule. At the end of the day, if you didn’t like the way the BrainTrust operated, your only recourse was to leave. Which, Dash reflected, was actually a very powerful check on the power of the Consortium. The Consortium desperately needed the best and brightest aboard the ships, else the Consortium would quickly find itself penniless and broken.

  Remembering something she’d read before embarking on her voyage, she muttered, “A choice is better than a voice.”

  Ping leaned over to hear better. “What was that?”

  Dash shook her head. “Just an old quote from some of the people who did the early work preparing the way for the building of the BrainTrust.”

  As they moved through the rooms, Dash kept up a running explanation of what they were seeing. At one point Ping whispered to Jam, “She knows more than the museum does. She’s not learning anything, so why are we here again?”

  Jam whispered back. “Because she enjoys teaching as much as she enjoys learning. We are her friends. Be her student for today. She needs it.”

  “Uh huh.”

  They came into the room with another large glassed-in model ship, the GPlex I herself. Built to same scale as the model of The World, she was visibly larger.

  “There she is,” Jam observed. “That’s the ship we’re on at this very moment.”

  Ping asked, “Where are we?” She peered inside. “Ah. There’s a little arrow, see? ‘You are here.’ Cool!”

  Dash had stepped away, intrigued by a large image of a group of people standing in front of the ship. At least, one could presume it was the ship, though only a small part of the superstructure loomed in the background of the tight photo. As Ping and Jam drifted over to her, Dash pointed. “The ribbon-cutting ceremony.” She peered at the faces, matching them to the names in the caption. “Everyone involved in the autonomous mobile island movement–known as seasteading at the time--was there.” She started pointing. “Friedman. Quirk. Thiel.”

  Ping yawned. “Ancient history. They’re all dead, right?”

  As Dash looked into the center of the crowd, she saw a face that looked familiar. She gasped as she read the matching name, and pointed at the face.

  Ping was looking around the room, bored, but Jam saw Dash’s stabbing finger and leaned over to see.

  The caption read, Colin Wheeler, Project Director, BrainTrust.

  Jam looked at Dash. Dash looked at Jam. They both looked at Ping. Jam said dryly, “Yes, Ping, I’m sure you’re right. Ancient history. I’m sure they’re all dead.”

  Jam’s cell phone beeped with a text message, which she studied briefly. “Ok, Dash, we have a recommendation for somewhere we should go next.”

  Ping whirled back to her friends in delight. “Awesome. Let’s cruise!”

  ***

  Jam followed the directions that had been texted to her phone. They took her onto the FB Alpha, up the elevator to the highest covered deck, then up a ramp onto the top deck, which Jam thought should just be called the roof.

  Except that this deck should probably be called the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon.” These gardens did not hang and were not in Babylon, but they were in their own way probably more remarkable than whatever Nebuchadnezzar II had built.

  Perhaps it should be called the “Glory of the World Garden” instead, because Jam was pretty sure there were flowers and shrubs from almost everywhere. Some sections had heaters to keep the vegetation in the temperature range of its homeland. Some had bright lights to enhance the sunlight to tropical levels. Other parts had misters to keep the flowers as well-watered as they needed to be. And some parts of the Garden had all three.

  From the center of the garden you could see nothing else but sky if you looked up, and the lush spread of flowering plants seemed to go on forever.

  Dash exclaimed in delight. “Bali! These are from my home.” She pointed at a stand of plants that rose above their heads, with purple flowers edged in gray. “Andong. It has good medicinal properties.” She turned and pointed at another thicket of shrubbery sporting densely packed branches covered in yellowish foliage which opened to star-shaped scarlet flowers. “Soka.” She just stood there, breathing the familiar scents.

  Jam looked around them, seeking the one structure that should stand high enough to be seen. “There’s the dome.” She pointed. “That’s our destination.”

  Ping jumped up to look in the direction she had pointed. “A dome! Cool! Can we climb it?” She leaped again to see over the andong. “It looks like it would be fun to climb.”

  “Let’s go find out,” Jam encouraged. Ping ran ahead to check out possibilities.

  “What’s in the dome?” Dash a
sked.

  “I am told it contains magic,” Jam answered.

  “I am skeptical.”

  “Of course.”

  They walked in companionable silence to their destination.

  They saw a couple coming out, pushing hard on the door to open it and jumping out of the way as it swung closed. Clearly the door was meant to stay closed except for the briefest moments for entrance and exit.

  Ping pulled on the door handle with both hands. “Allow me,” she said as she dragged it open.

  Passing inside, they found themselves inside a small alcove with another door at the far end; they stood in an airlock. Dash commented, “This is serious containment. How dangerous is the thing we are going to see, anyway?”

  Jam pushed the inner door open. “All is now revealed.”

  Dash went through, crowded forward by Ping. The dome’s walls and plants were covered with a dizzying array of colors, and more colors swirled through the air in an endless silent current that marched—or flew—to its own rhythm. It was so complex in aggregate that it was hard to pick out one patch to focus on.

  Ping figured it out first. “Butterflies!”

  Dash gasped, and even Jam stared in wonder. “Magic,” Jam whispered.

  Dash wore a smile as wide as an isle ship. “Magic. I accept your claim.”

  They walked slowly toward the center of the room, the current of colors whirling around them. Something about Dash’s white lab coat seemed to attract the butterflies; one by one, they settled on her shoulders, her arms, and her head. “Monarch. Azure Hairstreak. Swallowtail. Birdwing.” She named the orange and purple and yellow and green butterflies as they landed.

  More butterflies settled upon her, and she instinctively spread her arms to give them more places to land. She turned her palms up, and half a dozen landed on her hands. As she turned to face her friends, her smile was so wide it hurt.

  ***

  Amanda accompanied Colin to the botanical garden at the top of the FB Alpha. Amanda looked at him in amusement. “Time to stop and smell the roses?” she asked, not quite sarcastically.

  “We don’t do it often enough, do we?” Colin had a faraway look in his eyes. He bent to a pot of star jasmine and inhaled. “We forget many of the things we see, but very few of the things we scent.”