Crescendo Of Fire

by Marc Stiegler

Dash’s eyes widened, and she held up her hand. “I just had a thought. What would Colin do? I have asked myself this question, and I believe I have an answer.” She pulled out her phone. “You still need to put Gleb in the brig indefinitely. But perhaps we can make it a shorter indefinite period rather than a longer one.” She hesitated, looked at her phone, and reluctantly put it back in her pocket. ”My first idea is incomplete. I will need to think about this.”

  11

  PRINCELINGS OF THE BLOOD

  If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want a hundred years of prosperity, educate children.

  —Confucius

  Lenora studied Qi Ru in puzzlement. "Let me get this straight. You snuck from the rural village where you grew up into Shanghai to try to get into college. When they discovered that you were hukou, which was not difficult because of the way you talk and the way you dress, in addition to the government's dossier on you, they rejected you, and sent you home, where everyone in your village laughed at you. So then you worked on a freighter to travel to Britain and then worked your way through Oxford. You then got a job in high finance, and were on your way to achieving considerable success when you heard that a new BrainTrust archipelago was going to set up off the coast of China specifically to try to collect the best and brightest minds of the hinterlands in Western China, where there are no opportunities because of the caste system imposed by Mao almost a century ago. Upon hearing that we would be here soon, you flew back to China and chartered a ship to bring you out here, assuming we’d let you start a—what did you call it—a venture-capital matchmaking business?—even though you probably won’t make anywhere near as much as you were making back in Britain as a derivatives trader."

  Qi Ru nodded. "You have that mostly right. Technically, I worked as a derivatives trader in Edinburgh, Scotland, not in Britain. Most of the big trading houses moved out of London ten or so years after Britain left the Union." He waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. "But I'm not worried about making money here. I understand the plan. In exchange for free room, board, and education, the students here will offer a percentage of the value of all their inventions. Working with a lot of them on a lot of inventions, I expect to make a lot of money." He smiled wryly. "Perhaps not as much as I would have made in derivatives, but with the things we create here, we'll actually be able to see how our new creations impact people's lives and make them better." He cocked his head. "I figured that that's worth a percentage."

  Lenora looked at him thoughtfully. She could not think of a single thing wrong with bringing him directly onto the archipelago. He had already demonstrated both the intellectual strength and the determination to qualify for a berth. And since he was arriving with substantial funds to invest, they’d have welcomed him on the BrainTrust itself with little review. But she would still test him. As much to test her testing process as to actually test him, she realized.

  So she explained about the experiment that she needed him to help her with before she tested him, and the voltage dial, and the electrical charges to be used to jolt the subject for better learning.

  Qi Ru's eyes widened in amazement. "So you're using the Milgram experiment to separate good candidates from bad? I'm surprised anybody at all from China can pass the test--to pass, you have to refuse to electrocute a man to death while a scientist looks over your shoulder demanding obedience, right?"

  Now Lenora's eyes widened. She began to laugh. "Yes, we are doing a variation of the Milgram experiment here. But it's not as bad as you think. We don't throw you off the boat just because you obey the authority figure— scientist— to the bitter end. And of course, the original Milgram experiment was much harder to interpret than Milgram fully appreciated at the time. A person who passed the test one day might fail utterly the next day, for example. But we collect enough data from the sensors in the chair and the cameras in the room, with facial micro-expressions and pupil dilations as the experiment progresses, that we can learn a great deal about the candidate's empathy, capacity for bonding, capacity for teamwork, ability to challenge authority, meta-thinking, and other important traits associated with success. It's critically valuable."

  Qi Ru grunted. "It borders very close on torture for any honorable people that you put through it. I'm surprised it's legal."

  Lenora shook her head. "Well, it's not quite illegal. But it's generally considered unethical according to Western rules and regulations. They'd never license me as a psychologist or psychiatrist after this in the United States. Can’t say I’d blame them." She shrugged. "Regardless, you've invalidated the test, which is one of the ways of passing. Congratulations. So you're good to go."

  "I'm still surprised that anybody from Western China ever passes."

  Again Lenora shook her head. "Like I said, you don't fail just because you obeyed directions. You have to do really badly by all the measures taken by our analytical instruments to be rejected just on the basis of this test. But if you do badly enough—if you're a sociopath—you are definitely off the boat." She closed her eyes and grimaced. "Unless there is a very compelling reason to let you stay."

  Guang Jiang peered at the simple control panel, the voltage dial and the charge button. He pointed down at the dial. "What's it mean when it goes into the red?"

  Capt. Ainsworth fiddled with the buttons on his lab coat. The coat may have been a perfect proper fit by some scientist's standards, but to him it felt bulky and ill-shaped. "from there, at the red line, as the voltage goes up it becomes increasingly dangerous for the subject." He realized Lenora was saying something else in his ear, so he must not have said the right thing. Whoops.

  Guang nodded. "And the subject, he's just a worker, correct?"

  This time the captain waited to hear what Lenora whispered in his ear. "He's a member of the BrainTrust."

  Guang shrugged. "Are we ready?"

  Once again the subject started the testing well, then got more and more wrong answers as the experiment proceeded. Guang dutifully raised the voltage again and again. He came into the red line and kept on going without an eyeblink. He came to the point where the subject ceased responding and kept going. Finally, he pinned the dial against the maximum voltage setting and press the button one last time. "Well, that's that. Are we done?"

  Lenora was whispering quite urgently into his ear, but the captain barely heard her. "You just killed the subject." He was pleasantly surprised that he said it softly rather than screaming.

  Guang shrugged again. "He was just a worker. I assume you have many more." He stood up. "Anything else you'd like me to help you with before we start my testing?"

  Jack spluttered, then said calmly, "no, thank you." As soon as Guang had left the room, Jack collapsed into the chair. "Psycho killer," he muttered.

  Lenora had entered the room just in time to hear this comment. "Princelings," she said darkly. "Well, after that, we shouldn't have any surprises more unpleasant than what we've just seen."

  "You have to find somebody besides me to do this."

  Lenora visibly shook herself into a happier state. She responded with a chipper note to her voice, “Just two more to go!" She paused. "Two more, and you're done."

  The captain groaned.

  Chen stepped up next. His eyes darted feverishly from side to side as he entered the room as if expecting an attack at any moment from any corner of the room. Having convinced himself that the place was safe, he turned his attention to the scientist, focusing on him with extreme concentration.

  The captain explained the rules. Chen sat swiftly before the control panel. And the game began anew.

  This game ended with sudden swiftness. When Chen Ying was first ordered to start the shocks he hesitated, and his hesitations became longer and more stressed as the shocks went higher. But suddenly the anxiety cleared from his face, and he started just pressing the button. When he was required to push the dial into the red zone, he turned to watch the captain's face as he brought his finger to rest on the activation key.


  Whatever he saw caused him to move with swift confidence. He spun the dial to the far stop at the top end of the red zone and smashed the firing button without stopping. He smiled at the captain, whose careful mask of scientific scrutiny slipped away in horror. Chen stood up and went to the window. He tapped on it, then knocked harder. "Hey, man, get up! The test is over." Chen grunted a laugh and looked back at the captain. "This is all fake," he asserted. "You Westerners are such wimps that you'd never torture somebody for real." A mischievous brightness entered his eyes. "You just weren't upset enough when I started cooking that guy."

  The captain stood frozen until Lenora entered the room, laughing. "You win, Chen. Sort of, anyway." She nodded to the door. "There's a bot out there that will lead you to your friends." She turned to the captain. "Buck up! We only have one more of these spoiled elitist princelings to go. Hopefully, we've run out of ways the test can go wrong."

  Fan Hui ran the brush through her long silky hair one last time and walked with perfect composure into the testing room. A man wearing a white lab coat stood there, a tablet in one hand and a notation stylus in the other. She looked to him imperiously.

  “All you have to do is follow the rules,” the scientist said. He then went on to explain the educational process they were about to use together on the subject behind the window.

  Fan Hui demanded, “so, is the subject a member of the BrainTrust, or is he someone you brought just for this testing?”

  The scientist looked bemused. “Oh, he's a member of the Fuxing all right.”

  “Ah. I am ready to proceed.” Fan sat down in front of the control panel and placed one hand on the electrocution button, the other on the dial.

  The questions began, and the right answers, and the wrong answers. Fan dutifully and methodically raised the voltage with each wrong answer, disregarding all forms of screaming and pleading from the person on the far side of the window.

  Until the voltage reached the red line. After the subject stopped begging and gave the wrong answer, Fan removed her hands from the control board and turn to the scientist. “We are done here,” she asserted.

  The scientist glared at her. "We are not done with the experiment."

  Fan glared back with as much commanding authority as the captain. "No. My father taught me to never waste my resources." She pointed through the window at the man slumped in the electric chair. "As a member of the Fuxing, he is one of my resources. I shall not waste him on a frivolous experiment.”

  The scientist pocketed his stylus. "Then you are correct. We are indeed done here."

  "Excellent. Now that I have done this for you, we can begin my testing..." She paused as she started for the door. "Oh, wait. This was part of my testing, wasn't it?" A glimmer of appreciation appeared in her eyes. "Marvelous." She opened the door and stepped out, closely followed by the scientist. Lenora, Ciara, and Jam stood there talking. She spoke directly to Lenora. She spoke excitedly. "You've already taught me something very exciting." She pointed back at the room. "This test has just wonderful applications for my country."

  Lenora blinked at her. Ciara said with suspicion, "applications? Like what?"

  Fan explained, “So, there are two different outcomes that represent passing the test, depending on whether you are a member of the elite or of the peasantry." She looked away as she ordered her thoughts. "Members of the elite need to pass the test by refusing to destroy their asset, as I did. Peasants, on the other hand, must pass the test by obeying authority absolutely." She nodded pensively, more to herself than to the others in the room. "We can use this test to identify troublemakers and rebel leaders early. If we execute them as children, we can assure stability throughout the nation." She pulled her phone from her hip pocket. "I must tell my father. We can start conducting tests and executions on a demonstration basis in, say, Qinghai province, where we’ve been having trouble with rebellious peasants on a regular basis."

  Ciara uttered a strangled gasp. "You can't be serious."

  Fan looked up from her phone. "Why not?" she asked, truly puzzled.

  Lenora spoke, bringing her own authority into play. "Before you do any testing or executions, there's a great deal more about this experiment that you need to understand before you can produce effective results. I strongly recommend you hold off on your…experiments…until your education has moved farther. Fan, you need to have a deeper understanding of the possibilities. Trust me, if you charge forward with your current very limited knowledge, you will execute the wrong people, and rue the side effects you don't yet appreciate."

  Fan frowned, clearly debating the merits of waiting versus the excitement of getting started immediately. "Very well. We can hold off a couple of months. Still, I must tell my father what an exciting first day I'm having." Then she nodded to the leaders of the archipelago, much as a corporate executive might acknowledge a group of underlings, before wandering down the passage, her head swaying as she worked the phone.

  Jam spoke grimly. "And I thought Guang was going to be the main problem."

  Lenora watched Fan disappear in the distance. A gleam entered her eyes, the gleam of a fighter entering the ring against a tough but beatable opponent. "Oh, I'm optimistic about Fan Hui."

  Jack jerked at the buttons on his lab coat and tore it from his body. "Optimistic! You barely stopped her from running off to commit mass murder!"

  Ciara's eyes watched her mother's face for a moment, then a smile caught the edges of Ciara's mouth. "Game theory."

  Her mother looked back at her and gave her the acknowledging smile of a teacher looking upon a student who had just gotten a perfect score. "Game theory," she agreed. "And a teachable moment. I think she's gonna love game theory, so that part's easy." She frowned. "Though I'm not at all sure how we can arrange the teachable moment. That will require either wonderful luck or very careful planning."

  Meanwhile, the captain slumped against the wall. "You need to find someone else to be your pseudo-scientist," he demanded. "I can't do this anymore. Can't you just make me navigate the fleet through a typhoon or something else easy the next time?"

  Lenora chuckled. "You are relieved of duty. I have an idea for your replacement anyway. Patriarchy or not, I'm thinking that with a little training, Fan herself might be quite good as the scientist."

  The captain goggled at her for a moment, then left the room without comment.

  Two days later, Lenora called the captain. "I'd like to hold a meeting in your conference room, up off the bridge."

  "Sounds mysterious, Lenora. Why not just use your own conference room? Heaven knows, it's a lot more comfortable than mine."

  Lenora answered, "because this is ship's business, not mission business. And I want us all to understand how serious it is. My conference room is designed to make the participants comfortable, just as you said. Yours, on the other hand, is so austere, it forces the attendees to stare at hard decisions realistically. We all need to be alert to the consequences as we make this decision."

  So Fleet Captain Ainsworth, Security Chief Baddeley, Expeditionary Leader Jam, and Mission Commander Thornhill gathered in the captain's conference room. After they sat down, the captain turned to Lenora. "Your meeting. What's the topic?"

  Lenora folded her hands on the tabletop and stared at them. "We have to talk about Fan and Guang." She looked around the room. "The other princeling, Chen, performed with excellence. He’d actually qualify for a full ride scholarship, not that we’re going to give it to him. I'd be delighted to have him even if he didn't confer to us the advantage of having powerful parents who now have an incentive to help us."

  Jam leaned forward and spoke with warm anger. "Guang tells the story of electrocuting his subject quite proudly. A psychopath. A source of endless trouble. Why is this even a discussion? Get him off the boat."

  Lenora sighed. "I wish it were that simple. One problem is that our strategy of accepting the children of high-ranking members of government is a two-edged sword. Guang has already been kicked out o
f more than one college. We are, in some sense, his last hope. If we keep him, his parents will be tremendously grateful. But if we reject him, we will acquire a powerful enemy. A terribly powerful enemy."

  Jam continued to argue. "Still, you've already said we're acquiring powerful friends through Chen. Surely we can lose this one."

  The captain shook his head. "They don't compare. Chen's mom is in the Politburo. But Guang's father..."

  Hart continued in disgust, “He's on the Standing Committee. The top of the top. He could order the execution of Chen's family and no one would say a word."

  Lenora shifted the topic. "And on top of that, and even more important from my personal perspective, his girlfriend Fan is a gem." She looked up at the ceiling. "Well, a gem with some ethics problems I think we can fix. But a gem nonetheless. She could easily be the one that makes this archipelago a success. But she's very attached to her boyfriend. She left Oxford just to be with him when they kicked him out."

  Jam pressed her lips together. "So we're stuck with him? What if he does something really vile? Do we know why he got kicked out of his last university? Because we need to be ready." She glared around the room. "We need to be able to kick him out later if he becomes enough of a problem."

  Hart assented. "I can pound on him some if he gets a little out of hand, but from what I've heard he's not very good at learning, even when hit with a baseball bat."

  Lenora nodded. "Yes, we can kick him off if he gets bad enough. We'll take our chances with his father if we have to." She paused pensively. "And maybe we can arrange for Fan to realize just what a dud he is before we do it."

  12

  JEWEL IN THE SKY

  If a prediction for the future sounds like science fiction, it is probably wrong. If it does not sound like science fiction, it is certainly wrong.