Shine

by Jetse de Vries

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Get a wireless router, a few wireless receivers, and a server. That might be the expensive bit, but...” he sinks into thought. “If you use an existing PC you won’t even have that expense. Run it on the Province’s generator... I reckon you could cover all the adjacent offices as well. Triangulate.”

  The Province’s office sits in the midst of a cluster of offices—the entire administrative centre for Torba Province, encompassing the Banks and Torres Islands, thirteen islands, ten thousand people, eleven phones—and it is in wireless range of many departments, those being: Health, Education, Customs, Police, Court, Bank, Post Office. “Then, we can hook up the server to a phone line, get an Internet account, get it to send and receive e-mail once or twice a week. Turn it into an Internet gateway. Once you do this, once everything is in place, you can add users to the network at no cost, and charge them a membership fee. Piece of piss.”

  “Kan,” Freddie says in Bislama, which is very rude. “Then why don’t we do it?”

  “Who’s going to pay for it?” Mike Rowe says, and makes the money sign. He pushes his plate—still half-full with rice—away and lights a cigarette instead.

  “We can arrange that,” Freddie says. “The EU—”

  “—couldn’t find their ass if they sat on it,” Mike Rowe, twenty-three, cynical man of the world, says with feeling.

  Fatfat Freddie smiles. “Let me worry about that,” he says. “Just write the proposal.”

  Mike shrugs and waves his cigarette in the air, trailing smoke. “I’ll do it right now if you want to. Go back to the office?”

  “Let’s,” Freddie says. He pushes his empty plate away and belches. “I’m finished.”

  They go.

  11

  THERE IS ONE road in Sola, a long wide track following the shore line, stretching from the little airport, across the Arep School, past shops and the Market House, past the Province office and the rest of the administrative buildings, past the wharf and the football field. As Freddie and his companion walk down it (slowly, for Freddie considers each step carefully before executing it, and when he speaks he stops to rest) they do not yet know that it is towards the future that they are walking.

  100

  SOLNET—The Sola Wireless Network Initiative

  Objective:

  TO CREATE A viable wireless network within the Sola (Torba Province) administrative centre, initially within the Provincial Government offices but later to encompass all civic services (health, education, court and police etc.). Such a network [...] would act as an Internet Gateway [...] Membership fees will help reduce running costs and, assuming expansion in computer technology in Sola/Torba, even produce profit at some point. Additionally, if deemed appropriate, wireless coverage can be extended across Sola using a broadcasting station, extending the network to personal computers in Sola (such as the laptops recently acquired by the Arep teachers) and to Arep school itself, and even onto the nearby villages, making Torba Province a leader in rural Internet development.

  SOLNET—BRINGING THE FUTURE TO TORBA

  101

  “I LOVETHE slogan,” Freddie says.

  “I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” Mike Rowe says.

  110

  THE CONNECTION RUNS between 19.2k to 31.5k. Data packets travel from the server, a depilated old machine, into the phone wire that runs to the radio broadcast tower, and across the air, as radio waves, to the distant receiver in Santo, where they feed into the general phone system, go up into the atmosphere by satellite, and finally resolve as data packets again. The connection is slow, inefficient, the web interface running through a proxy server, the e-mail is restricted to text-only, but...

  111

  FROM: MIKE ROWE

  To: James Millner

  Subject: Hello from Vanuatu!

  Hi Jim,

  Can you imagine it? Solnet is a reality! Donors were jumping over themselves to give us funding, though as you can imagine it took months for anything to materialise. Well, everything’s in place now, and I really appreciate all your help and advice in setting this up. Any chance you’ll be coming to visit? Ha. We currently have the 8 computers in the Province office hooked up, but Education (3 computers), Customs (1) and Health (2) are seriously considering joining the network. As it is, all it takes is plugging in a wireless receiver on a USB port and charging them a membership fee—really appreciated that open source management system you sent me, by the way!—meanwhile a whole bunch of teachers got themselves laptops through some funding scheme and we’re looking at joining them up too, but in that case would need a stronger transmitter. Also looking at a more decent hook-up via some trial satellite system being offered for the South Pacific. Expensive, but donors are being currently generous.

  PS: Can you send some cigarettes?

  1000

  “SO IF YOU do this,” Mike Rowe says, and the mouse moves across the screen and settles, “you can run a search for anything you want. Like, what interests you?”

  Father Mertock thinks about it and says, “Anything?”

  “Pretty much. Look, sapos mi wantem lukaotem Jesus, oraet?”

  “Oraet...”

  “Mi mas typem Jesus insaed ia—” Mike Rowe types ‘Jesus’ into the search engine bar, “—and as you can see...”

  The screen changes. Web site links appear. Father Mertock considers them, with less than whole-hearted enthusiasm, it seems to Mike.

  “What about...” Father Mertock says, and stops.

  “About?” Mike Rowe says.

  “I heard you can see, you know...” he smiles, shyly, “Girls.”

  1001

  ATTENTION ALL USERS

  The downloading of pornographic images is strictly forbidden by Solnet rules as well as by Vanuatu government legislation. Failure to comply with said regulations will result in your account being terminated and a complaint lodged with the court clerk.

  1010

  EPIPHANY’S WEB SITE

  Hello, friend,

  My name is Epiphany Gideon, and I am from the island of Vanua Lava, in beautiful Vanuatu. I am 32 years old. My husband’s name is Paul, and we have one child, a boy. My husband is a teacher at the Arep School, it is a secondary school here in Sola. It is the only secondary school in the province. He has a laptop, and since a month ago he signed up with Solnet, which means he can use the Internet, but he says it is good for me to do it too, and I use it in the evenings when he goes to drink kava. This is my web site. Mike Rowe, who works for the Province, is helping me set it up. I hope I can share my life with you, wherever you are. Mike says we will all have digital cameras soon, so I will be able to post pictures of myself. Please write to me!

  Love, Epiphany

  1011

  FROM: MIKE ROWE

  To: James Millner

  Subject: Satellite Hookup

  Hi Jim,

  Wow! I didn’t think they’d go for it but Freddie had them eating out of his hand. We’re officially on the new South Pacific Satellite Link-Up Scheme (SPS-LUS) thanks to some very generous funding from the regular donors—no doubt they’re garnering much good karma alongside highly-valuable fishing rights in Vanuatu waters and the possibility of enlarging an already bloated customer base. Do I sound jaded? I guess I do—I should be happy, but I’m not sure how all this is affecting the island—it’s not only the donors but one of the people here, Dudley Cruickshank, set up this web site with a donate option, basically saying send us used digital equipment and I’ll plant a coconut tree for you—you know, sustainable development + personal donor involvement + third world issue—and somehow it got on the freehack.dev org and do you know what? We’re flooded with second hand portable music/video players, digital cameras, wireless broadcasters/receivers, mini-stations, enough pirated and open source software to run the UN, it’s scary. Some of the chiefs are distinctly not liking t
he change, and I have to say, on a personal level, that now even less people are working in their gardens, so we’re still relying on cargo ships (now more than ever) and I am getting tired of eating rice. Been trying to disseminate some advanced cooking software but the mamas are not cooperating all that much. Speaking of which, some of the men are even less happy than the chiefs—a couple of months ago I set up that open source democratic voting system you sent me and somehow the nearby village (Mosina) organised online voting for their next chief and guess what—they elected a woman. Great embarrassment, some resentment from the men, though so far it’s been quiet. I do worry what would happen once we extend this to the whole island...

  1100

  THE BEGINNING OF the end came like this, softly: the way the clouds spill over the volcano in the late afternoon and come to rest over the tall green hills (image available for download at a small fee from Vanua-Lava.images.com.vu with many others of our specially selected high-res digital images of these scenic and unique islands). The beginning of the end came like this:

  1101

  “WHAT DO YOU call this?” Mike Rowe says. He is a little older and a lot less gaunt, and in the new fashion of his country no longer smokes. Freddie sits opposite him; they are at the market house.

  “Vanua Lava Aelan Faol Flambé,” Freddie says proudly. He is even rounder than before. “South Pacific Fusion Cuisine is the next big thing, you know.”

  “I know,” Mike says, and smiles, “I read about it on cnn.com.”

  “What do you think?” Freddie’s sweeping arm indicates the new Market House, adorned with large printed images of foods from around the world, and of native islanders shooting fish with their bows and arrows, of diving for lobster, of climbing coconut trees... “The designer was from Islamabad, the pictures I took myself, and the cam feed—smile, you’re on it! —is watched by about two thousand people at any given time. Around the world.”

  “I never imagined,” Mike Rowe says, and then stops, and looks a little embarrassed.

  “Local knowledge!” Freddie says effusively. “Once the access was there, once there was a little bit of technical training—the rest just happened naturally.”

  Mike Rowe thinks about that word, “naturally,” but decides not to object. “Work is good,” he says instead, “Mike Rowe Systems is doing quite well—and I got married.”

  “Congratulations!” Freddie says, and calls until one of his staff brings them both a drink.

  “So what next?” Mike says, after they toast each other.

  “Interconnectedness,” Freddie says. “and self-sustainability. No more waetman/blakman, no more aelan/mainland, no more binary division. I’m talking probability diffusion, I’m talking nano-cloud mini-formations, I’m talking multiple singularities. No more food/fuel imports, no more volunteer dependency/first world handouts, no more monocrops/soil depletion. I’m talking solar/wind/biofuel/wave generators, I’m talking biodiversity farming and reforestation, I’m talking sustainable fishing and coral reef renewal. I’m talking—”

  “Whoa!” Mike Rowe says. “Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “Information,” Freddie says, “wants to be free. And independent.”

  1110

  SATELLITE IMAGE, TAKEN from sub-orbit, penetrates through the thick white cloud that are nearly always present, to show:

  The lights are strewn across the island like digital snakes, like delicate cables, necklaces of light, their patterns geometrical enigmas, beautiful like fractal shapes, the whole island burning in pinpricks of intense light, high-speed data wafting through the air, through the ground, leaping from one coconut tree to another, permeating every living thing, every drop of rain, every coral reef, a moving, always-moving, vibrant and living and alive formation, an entity of complexity and beauty that—

  The image freezes, fades, replaced with static. The satellite probes, again and again, but it can find nothing of what it had seen, just a moment ago, below the clouds.

  1111

  MIKE ROWE, OLDER yet, smoking again, stands the ship’s bow and looks at the sea as he approaches Sola. Over a year of silence—physical, virtual—and the powers that be want to know. They’d sent him in.

  Rough seas, calmer now. The seawater temperature has dropped almost two degrees during their approach, and the coral reefs miss the but-all-too-characteristic bleaching.

  On approach, Mike’s first surprise: the wharf at Sola is brand new and bustling with activity. No hurricane damage, no bent concrete with rusted metal wires—but a pastel brown artificial material that’s cool to the touch.

  Old familiar faces in the crowd, a multitude of vehicles where none had been—cranes, cars, bikes run silently.

  Mike steps off the boat onto the new wharf. Shouts greetings— “Yufala olsem wanem?” children run along the wharf. Rising like a fat sun, coming towards him: an old friend. Fatfat Freddie grins and says, “Sekhan!”

  They shake hands. Mike shakes his head. Freddie grins. Mike says, “Wanem I hapen long ples ia?”

  What happened here?

  Still bemused. “Kam,” Freddie says. “Yumitu go kakai.”

  Let’s go eat.

  Mike says, “I’m not hungry. Come on, Freddie. What happened?”

  “Solnet,” Freddie says, solemnly.

  Mike, frustrated: “Solnet was a joke! ‘Bringing the future to Torba.’ It wasn’t meant to—”

  “The future,” Freddie says, “is here. We are the future, Mike. Fuja I stap kam long Sola, Mike.”

  The future has come to Sola.

  They walk along the shore. New buildings rise around them, organic-looking, enormous trees shaped into sheds and houses. Above their heads a small kid glides on a silent kite. Mike says, “You don’t understand...” but knows it’s him who’s made the mistake.

  Solar panels rotate like sunflowers, following the sun. In the distance, above the hills, a long, thin structure stretches out into the sky. Freddie follows Mike’s glance, grins again, says, “Longbin blong spes.”

  Mike—“A long bean of space?” He remembers long beans. He had tried to grow some in his garden, back then.

  Then the meaning sinks in. “You’re kidding,” he says.

  “No,” Freddie says, complacently. Away in the distance, the space elevator (if that is really what it is) shimmers in the sunlight.

  “What happened?” Mike says again. Freddie says, “Melanesian ingenuity.” It used to be his favourite buzzword. Still is, it seems. Mike: “Come on!”

  “Information networks grow exponentially,” Freddie says. “We’re growing intelligent coral on the other side of the island. You should see it. Organic computing, Mike. The future came, while no one was looking. And now, at last, we’re ready. We’ve been waiting for you—or someone like you—to come.”

  “Well,” Mike says, “I’m here.”

  They pass rows of bright shops. Where once you could only buy tinned fish and candles, he can see, now the display on offer includes sun-powered gliders, deep-sea infrared goggles, what appears to be coral chunks with I/O ports...

  “How would you like a job?” Freddie says. “Head of our Australian Mission, perhaps?”

  “What Australian Mission?” Mike says, thinking of the hordes of Australian volunteers, unscrupulous businessmen, embassy staff and others who still populate Port Vila, on the distant capital island of Efate.

  “Our new trade and aid mission,” Freddie says. “We’ve decided it’s time to export.”

  “Export.”

  “Yes. Help the Aussies with their rather backward tech. Buy some prime land out there. We have big plans, Mike. You could be a part of it. A part of the future.”

  Mike Rowe looks at the sea. Dolphins swim out there, beyond the breakers, and amidst them he thinks he sees a group of children, diving and swimming like fish. Another glider comes over the shore line, from the direction of Port Patteson.

  “But the volunteers—” Mike says, and Freddie shakes his head. “No folentia,” h
e says, back in Bislama. “Fifty years of volunteerism—” he makes it sound like a rare type of disease “and what did that get us?”

  “Aid!” Mike says. “Projects—”

  “Did any of them ever work?”

  “Maybe one or two...”

  “Yes,” Freddie says.

  Mike remembers: funding going missing, white men in distant islands trying to dictate ‘community development’ in places they had never seen... Away in the distance a strange type of ship begins to approach Sola, solar-powered sails opening like graceful wings.

  “We’ve already established trade missions in the Solomons, PNG...” Freddie says. “Australia is next. Then—” he smiles. “Who knows,” he says, quietly. Mike Rowe looks at him, looks away. When he looks around he feels blinded by the sun. It was only a joke, he seems to want to say, but the words won’t come out. All around him the Solnet Ascendancy rises, and he stands in the middle and stares, and suddenly he can’t stop grinning.

  “Come on,” Fatfat Freddie says affectionately. He takes Mike’s arm and begins to lead him away—away towards the bright future, perhaps, wan fuja I braet tumas. “Let me buy you lunch.”

  Thirty storeys down, the city bustled. Thirty thousand feet up, the wind farms bucked and swooped. Between them, Tom smiled and ate lunch.