'I could, perhaps do those…'
'We can handle it, Grum. We have special instructions about several of the programmes, by the way. Certain updates and changes which should be routed directly to you.'
'So I really don't have to do anything about running SyncDep?'
'Not unless you insist, of course.'
'Thank you, no. I'm sure that it will work far better without my interfering. One thing, though. I would like, if Stew has not already left instructions to this effect, to have information on the levels of interaction and co-operation between departments across the company. Relative figures would be fine. Just so that I can get an overview on the state of play regarding the effectiveness of communications across the company.'
'That would be a report on our own effectiveness, wouldn't it, sir?'
Ah, I'm "sir" again. Whoops. 'It's not a SyncDep performance report, Steff!' Grum chuckled. 'I'm really more interested in the current level of spontaneous interaction, regardless of SyncDep's intervention. Things like research sharing, inter-departmental chatrooms or discussion boards, deliberate use of the consultancy service to facilitate multi-stakeholder projects, all that kind of thing. I'm trying to get a picture of where the communications channels are freest, and where they are less so. Some departments possibly have reason for not involving themselves in that kind of exchange, but others not so much. Now, I know that this is SyncDep's raison d'etre, but I'm not looking to do anything except know the status for while Stew's away, OK?'
'OK, Grum. Thank you for clarifying. I'll get you that information. How frequently would you like it updated?'
'Snapshot once a week?'
'Certainly.'
'Great. I'll leave you to it. I'm sure that I have caused something of a bottleneck in the flow of information, myself. Cheerio.'
Grum left the office, and there were, indeed, several people who left their seats immediately to converge on Steff's domain.
By the end of the week Grum had a complete picture of how things stood. It turned out that Steve Branch was one of those people who was updating SyncDep daily with progress reports, so Grum did not really need more than a day of his time.
Even so, it had been a hard week in getting the information sorted in his brain's framework, and he would be glad to relax at the weekend.
He and Vann had promised Ju that they would go to see dinosaurs at a park in New Jersey on Saturday. Grum had promised himself that he would take Ju to start learning to swim over the next few Sundays.
Chapter 7
KELVIN'S email left no room for doubt about the future of nuclear power stations in the state of Nevada. There just would not be one. No matter how friendly Kelvin was with the Lieutenant Governor, it seemed, the state government was not going to budge. In a way Grum was glad of that. There was no real need to have nuclear power in Nevada, the slack could be entirely met by renewables. The state government was entirely supportive of those initiatives from USSMC which promised a large boost to the electricity generation capacity by solar photovoltaics. They had offered some incentives of their own in the form of direct investment in the supporting infrastructure, and positive endorsement of the programmes.
Nevada as a whole still got the majority of its power generation from natural gas, whether imported of locally produced, but by Grum's calculations they could tip the renewables over the edge and in to the lead for the first time. That would be something to crow about, and he made a note to talk to Steve Branch about it.
What that did mean was that the other states would become more important in terms of the fourth and fifth gen testing. He brought up the EIA file for the states with active nuclear programmes. What he needed was to find the states which had nuclear power from Independent Power Producers which were active a preferably growing.
In no particular order, he thought the best prospects were Ohio, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. That gave quite a few options for both fourth and fifth gen test builds. Then there were other countries to consider. Leaving aside those places where religion or politics of one form or another precluded active participation, there were still a number of active programmes in which USSMC could involve themselves. That would be a trickier prospect, though. Most of the board was still shy of sharing intellectual property, clinging to the belief — and Grum had to consider it a belief, as it had no supporting evidence — that ideas were important regardless of execution. USSMC had a mountain of patents which they could never execute on, but which were nevertheless considered assets. The system was so hopelessly broken that preventing progress was actually considered to be a positive. Still… If he could show the board that sharing research on fission could bring about the larger goal of a functioning Moon Base, and open up the exploration plans, he might be able to do it. Give up the hypothetical gains — no matter how huge the paperwork says it could be in the next hundred years — for tangible gains in the next five-to-ten. It had to be a winner.
Grum had stopped focusing on the screen in front of him as he hypothesised, looking instead at his own thoughts as they scrolled across his brain. So the knock at the door made him jump.
It was Hank, and Grum waved him in.
'Day dreaming about your eventual rise to glory?' said Hank as he walked in and shut the door.
'Trying to figure out how the various nuclear power programmes fit together.'
Hank glanced at the data on the screen and winced. 'Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.'
'OK. What's on your mind?'
'You're really going to test nuclear power station designs?'
'Yes. You know that.'
'On Earth?'
'I don't have another planet to test on!'
'Well, not a planet…'
'You mean do the initial research on the moon?'
'Why not?'
'Don't get me wrong, Hank, I'd love nothing more than to ship all the nuclear research and all the powerstations to the moon, or to Mars, but it can't happen that way.'
'Again, why not? We could build a minimum number of the current third generation power stations up there, and continue all the research outside of our atmosphere.'
'I'll tell you why… You don't have a drink by the way. You know where the coffee is.' Grum outlined his reasoning — the same reasoning that he was using to justify the decision to himself. 'One of the things I was just going over was that our own research — while some of the best in the world — is insufficient. We have to be out in the global community and pushing the research at home as hard as we can just to get where we want to be in the next ten years.' Hank had poured his coffee and was moving back to his chair, but he did not look about to interrupt, so Grum continued. 'We could do as you say. Build third gen reactors on the moon, perhaps with some fourth gen improvements. There are such things in existence already, so that would not be impossible. But there are still only small implementations of the fourth gen technology entire. And fifth gen… We are pushing it to get our fission department to come up with concrete designs. In short, we need access to the rest of the world's knowledge on this, and we need to give them ours.'
'Woah, boy! Giving away our IP?'
'Doesn't do us any good stuck in a closet where no-one can use it, does it?'
'Let's say I agree with you. If we are going that far, why not open up UMB and our research orbitals to the same programmes? Get them all on board.'
'If I thought the board would wear it, I would do exactly that.'
'Holy crappola, Grum!'
'It's about the execution, Hank. Hoarding IP just stagnates the market. Nobody needs to innovate incrementally and it's left to a major market disruption to force innovation by the incumbent players. We don't need to horde ideas, we just need to execute them better and faster. The very fact that we had an idea first, can give us a leg up. I don't even mind the idea of lagging the release of information a year or two behind the real innovation, so long as it doesn't hurt us. But some of the research we're h
olding on to is decades old, and has probably been surpassed, or can fix a problem in someone else's research which we could then use to execute our own plans better and faster.'
'Idealist.'
Grum shook his head. 'Pragmatist.'
'And what about opening up the moon base and orbitals to competitors?'
'We don't have to do it for free, Hank! Charge 'em rent! Most research placements in the academic world come with an associated fee, sometimes quite a substantial one, usually picked up by industrial concerns which can afford it and want the research done. Witness MITAMP. We don't need to make a massive profit on it, but it is not unreasonable to cover our costs, plus a bit. And as I said, if our greed in hoarding research is actually hurting us, then that's a problem which should be addressed.'
'OK. Colour me convinced — though as you say, I doubt the board will be easily swayed — I'll come back to my original point. Why are we building nuclear power plants on Earth, when we don't have to?'
'We still can't do everything in-situ on the moon. Plenty of the research we will need is already earthbound, plenty more will need people who can't or won't travel to space. I'm not happy with the idea, either, Hank. And I do like the idea of spreading the energy security even further by using augmented third gen reactors as the first stage of UMBRA. I think that flies. But the pure-play fourth and fifth gen reactors will need earth-side testing, at least initially.'
Hank sighed. 'I guess you're right.'
'Thanks for coming to see me about it, Hank. I was a little worried that everyone else was gung-ho about building more reactors on Earth.'
'As I did with you, to be honest. I can see the reasoning. I'll work with you to try and make a way forward on this. Do we have to do it in our own backyard, though?' Hank pointed to the highlighted states of New York and New Jersey on the screen.
'Two points on that front. One, it would be hypocritical not to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. And two, if we can get a closed-system three-point-five or fourth gen reactor built there which uses the waste from the old second and third gen reactors as fuel? Won't that be better?'
'I guess.' Hank sounded defeated, which was not the state Grum wanted him to leave the office in.
'Look at it this way, Hank. We will need a nuclear safety committee, and people to guide the priorities of the builds. What better people than us? Two people who don't actually want the things on the planet, anyway.'
That did the trick, and Hank brightened. 'You're right about that.'
'And you can push UMBRA along with the augmented third gens, that will stop some of the board moaning about delays.'
'True enough. OK. Let's do this.'
'Doing it!'
Chapter 8
STEW, Amy, and Clait arrived home behaving as a happy, relaxed, and harmonious family. Grum could not see any signs that this was a feigned attitude, so the holiday seemed to have worked after all.
They told Grum and Vann that they had arrived back in the US on the Friday, and done nothing but sleep from the afternoon through to Saturday morning.
It was now Saturday afternoon, and they were at Grum and Vann's apartment while the laundry was going. Stew was going to pop back every now and then to deal with another load, but they fully intended to occupy their friends' apartment for the remainder of the day, and tell them everything.
Grum had ordered — and had shipped down a few days before — a delivery from Kelso's for the occasion. Grum had asked Justin to include a lager for Amy.
Amy took the lead in the storytelling.
Most of the first week was spent with Amy and Clait going round Antigua, mostly to acclimatise and occasionally to take in some of the child-friendly wildlife tours. Stew mainly tagged along, in this retelling, and — looking somewhat embarrassed — Stew did not contradict.
Although Grum had banned Stew from any classified material, he was still getting the filtered — and therefore no longer classified — reports from his office. After a week of this, though, Amy had lost it with Stew.
'Which is when I followed through on my threat. Revoking your access and telling the security office to fry your devices,' said Grum. He admitted to himself that he had taken a certain amount of satisfaction in doing that. The security office readily agreed — though only with all the formal paperwork — because most employees in the company were boringly conscientious when it came to security, so they hardly ever got an order to fry company equipment. They really, really, wanted to do it, and had made the paperwork as easy to fill out as possible. It had taken half an hour, tops, to complete the forms.
'You did,' said Stew. 'I don't know how you found out, though.'
'Oh that was easy. I had a call.'
'But I had talked to the security office,' Stew objected, 'and told them that I would not be accessing any more classified files. They said that as it was me, any other level of security would be OK. They did comment that I was on holiday, though.'
'Then they had more sense than you, but no, I didn't get another call from SO.'
'I called him,' said Amy.
'And gave me a right rollicking over the phone for having you work on a holiday, and was it really a holiday if you were still working? So… I pulled the trigger.'
'Probably for the best,' said Stew, chagrined. Grum saw him glance at Amy's expression. 'Definitely for the best.'
'Right, so after that was dealt with…' Amy continued the story, and Stew seemed to feel freer to interject with comments from then on.
Apparently it took most of the next week for Stew to stop moping about having been cut off from work, and another few days for him to relax and actually start enjoying himself. Which was just as well, because Amy was ready to cut the holiday short and come home.
The last two weeks, though, had been fun, relaxing. and a time of complete enjoyment. So the holiday was adjudged a success, and Stew had agreed to leave all work related items back in the house the next time they went away as a family.
Vann called a halt to the tales so that Grum could cook some food, and Stew could go and sort out the laundry.
Grum left Vann and Amy chatting in the front room, watching the boys play and burble. Most of the burbling was coming from Clait, who was recounting the points of the holiday that he thought were the best, to Ju, who seemed genuinely interested.
Vann had been wise to break the conversation at that point, Grum considered. They were about to approach the elephant in the room of Stew and Amy going away to the orbital, which would be better saved until after they had eaten and the kids were in bed. The plan was for Clait to stay the night, and most of Sunday so he could go swimming with Grum and Ju. Stew and Amy had started him swimming in Antigua, but stayed with him the whole time. Getting some practise in at the pool would not be bad. It would also help establish the idea of Clait staying while his parents did other things.
Grum decided that a light-ish meal which they could share with the children would be best, then the adults could have snacks through the evening if they were still hungry.
Stew arrived back just as Grum finished cooking the chicken for the dinner, and was making the side-salad and pasta to go with it. Grum heard the general greetings from the other room and heard Stew making his way towards the kitchen.
'Aren't you done yet?' asked Stew.
'Couple of minutes.'
'Good. I'm famished.'
'Then you'll have to have something after. It's a light one so the kids can eat with us before going to bed.'
'Fair enough.' Stew drew closer to Grum and lowered his voice. 'Listen, man. Thank you. Seriously. Saved my bacon with what you did. Don't get me wrong, I was ready to poke your eyes out with a needle at the time, but… Thank you.'
'Don't mention it.'
'However,' Stew continued, keeping his voice down, 'if I find you acting like I was, I'll do the same to you.'
Grum turned a side-long grin on his mate. 'Good luck with that.'
'I mean it. Once I was the studen
t, but now I am the Master.'
'Only a master of SyncDep, Stewie.' Grum was done with the cooking, and starting to plate up. He almost lost some pasta out of the colander as he spoke, though.
'Your powers are weak, old man.'
'You can't win, Stew,' said Grum, over his shoulder. 'You chose the wrong character to lead off with!'
'Damnit! Fine. If I see you behaving like I was then I'll get Vann to deal with you.'
'At last! A credible threat!'
'Git.'
'Truth accepted. Help me carry the plates in.'
The meal was over, each adult having taken turns in cajoling the two boys into eating something other than just the chicken. Grum decided that he would have to deploy the weapons-grade cheese with the pasta and salad next time. The kids were washed, brushed, and put to bed with no more than token complaints, for which each parent was grateful.
'How is Clait taking the idea that you two're going away again?' Vann said when they had settled on the sofas with a glass of something relaxing each.
'To be honest, I'm not sure it's made it through the holiday buzz, yet,' said Stew, and Amy nodded agreement. 'I'm not entirely sure how to make it sink in without pushing him to outright rebellion.'
'I have no fool-proof answer, and I don't think Grum does either,' said Vann. Grum, who was in the middle of taking a swig of his bitter, paused and shook his head a fraction, before continuing to drink.
We've never left Ju for longer than a weekend, he thought. I doubt he would react any better. Grum did not say it aloud, though, so Vann could complete her idea.
'Are you tagging everything everyone is doing next week with "while we're away"?'
Stew nodded, emphatically, but Amy shook her head. 'I thought that would be too heavy-handed,' she said.
'If it's not sinking in, the might be one way to make sure. Another way might be to have a direct, sit-down talk with him about it. About what he wants to do while he's staying with us,' said Grum.
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