QUANT (COLONY Book 1)

by Richard F. Weyand

  “What sort of thing, Bernd?”

  “Something you can do on a planet that you can’t do in space. That’s the sort of thing a framing problem leads to.”

  Decker’s eyes unfocused as he thought, then he was back in the here and now.

  “Got it. You don’t need treads, Janice. Just skids, like on the front of a snowmobile. When the metafactory starts building a new factory, it sinks pilings. That’s something you can’t do in space.

  “As the metafactory builds the new factory, from one end to the other, the metafactory keeps pushing off from it. With pilings, the factory won’t move, so the metafactory does. That goes on until the new factory is complete, then the metafactory pushes off from it a ways, and starts sinking pilings for a new factory.

  “Or maybe the metafactory sinks those pilings for a new factory in front of itself and uses them to pull itself along until they’re behind it, where it starts building the new factory.

  “Skids, though, Janice. Not treads. Much simpler.”

  Quant nodded.

  “If I use skid plates, and I lay them out right, in the process of moving itself along, the metafactory will clear and grade the site for the new factory. Nice. Good idea, Bernd.”

  “Thanks, Janice. Anything else today?”

  “No. I need to go off and work this out now. I have some design work to do.”

  “All right. See ya.”

  Quant worked out the details of how to implement the skids idea. She worked up alterations to the plans for the metafactories. Some were already constructed, but the changes were all underneath the existing structure, so it would be easy to retrofit the skid mechanism.

  With blades working on the drawings, Quant set to examining her framing of questions, the area Decker had pointed out as the problem. She gave particular emphasis to the questions he had been able to resolve with such innovative solutions, and which she had been unable to see. What was she doing in framing the questions that set her up for failure?

  The metafactory skid solution was a case in point. Quant had started with the need to move the factories away from the metafactory. That built in the assumption that the metafactory was fixed in place. Decker had clearly started with the need to separate the factories from the metafactory, but without either being fixed. Once he had them moving away from each other, the landscape could stay fixed with respect to the factory or the metafactory, and he had made the obvious choice.

  Similarly with the genetic diversity problem. Quant thought of it as how to take more humans, where Decker had reframed it in terms of taking more genetic samples. Having genetically diverse babies was the issue, not having genetically diverse parents. She had limited her solutions in the way she framed the problem.

  The solution wasn’t to loosen parameters. Quant had done that once already with the rabbit-hole department. The solution was to loosen parameters in a specific way. Loosen the parameters in the frame to encompass other variations. Things that were ‘close’ in idea-space, somehow.

  Quant played with her own software a bit. The decision-making software. But this time in the problem preparation part. Where was the spot she could widen the frame, without going off the rails? Ah, there it was. And if she tweaked it like this....

  “Hi, Janice.”

  “Hi, Bernd.”

  “I was wondering if you had made progress on the problem of what to send along with the colonists. Have you been able to refine your list at all?”

  “Yes, I’m actually making great progress on that.”

  “Really? What did you do?”

  “I tweaked the way I framed problems.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yes. I was getting annoyed because you kept coming up with such good ideas, solutions I didn’t see. Last time you did it, you said it was a framing problem, so I went after that.”

  “Elaborate on that, Janice.”

  “Sure. With the genetic diversity issue, I kept thinking of ways to get genetically diverse parents, where the problem was actually how to get genetically diverse babies. I walled off the sperm bank solution before I even started working the problem.

  “With the metafactory problem, I kept thinking of how to move the factories away from the metafactory, where the problem was how to separate them. So, once again, I walled off the best solution before I started working the problem.

  “Bernd, I was guaranteed to fail by the way I set up the problems.”

  “And you tweaked that process? The set-up?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what about the problem of what to send along with the colonists?”

  “I was thinking in terms of working through the daily lives of colonists, and seeing what they needed in my simulation. All well and good, but the choice of doing it through a simulation like that limited the scope and accuracy of a solution.”

  “And your reframing, Janice?”

  “I don’t need a simulation. I have the data on what people purchase now. The actual sales data on products and services across the economy. So I’m using that.”

  “Yes, but people buy all kinds of crap they don’t need in a colony environment, Janice.”

  “Of course. But I also have data on price elasticity.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. Exactly. If the price on something goes up – say there’s some disruption in the supply of an underlying component of the product – and the demand stays high, then that’s something people really think they need. If the demand falls off sharply with price, well, they’ve decided they can do just as well without.”

  “So what surprised you in terms of things that were price elastic, Janice? The things people can do without.”

  “Most of those were the things you would expect. Luxury items. Gourmet items. Things like that.”

  “And the ones that were price inelastic?”

  “That’s where the surprises were, Bernd. For me, at least. And they were things that never appeared in my simulations.”

  “I’m waiting, Janice.”

  Quant laughed.

  “For men, it included deodorant, shaving equipment, soap, and cologne. For women, it included makeup, perfume, soap, and frilly underthings. There were other surprises, too, but those really got my attention.”

  Decker chuckled.

  “If you want babies, Janice, you need to give people the tools they need to be attractive to the opposite sex. Given the importance of sex to most people – to their happiness and well-being – I’m not surprised those things are price inelastic.”

  “Well, it surprised me, Bernd. Never showed up in my simulations.”

  Quant shrugged.

  “What else was price inelastic, Janice?”

  “Alcoholic beverages was one.”

  “That could arguably have something to do with sex as well.”

  Quant raised an eyebrow, then continued.

  “Books is another.”

  “Well, people need something to do when they’re not having sex, Janice.”

  Quant laughed.

  “With humans it’s all about sex, Bernd?”

  “Mostly. Sex and its repercussions.”

  Decker shrugged, then continued.

  “Back to books, you are sending a library along, though, right?”

  “Yes, Bernd. I’m sending a copy of everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes. Everything. Every published work, fact or fiction. Computer storage is cheap. But the price inelasticity of books made me rethink access. I need to have broader access than, say, some dedicated displays.”

  “Ah. I see. What else?”

  “Food staples, like salt, rice, wheat, meat – those I all expected. The one that surprised me was milk.”

  “Milk is price inelastic, Janice? Cow’s milk?”

  “Yes. Highly so. I had to rethink the importance of dairy operations.”

  “Wow. So this analysis is working out.”

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t have come up with that
analysis if I hadn’t rethought the way I frame problems. I was looking for ways to make my simulation better, not ways to get more accurate real data.”

  “Hi, Bernd.”

  “Hi, Janice.”

  “Got a minute?”

  “Sure. Whatcha got?”

  “I’m working on education programs at the moment.”

  “You mean education for the colonists during the four years until departure?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK. But you already have all the video courses for kindergarten through college, right?”

  “Of course. And I’ve been doing some revamping of those. But these are the courses for people going on the colony expedition. They’re concentrated more on what the first generation needs. Things like farming and animal husbandry and that sort of thing.”

  “Ah. I see. You’re still going to need all the other subjects as the colony grows, though, Janice. Agriculture will shrink down to a few percent of the population within the first few generations.”

  “That fast, do you think?”

  “Yes. North America is a case in point. From the landing of the Mayflower to the United States putting a man on the Moon was just under three hundred and fifty years. They went from subsistence farming to the Moon in maybe twenty generations.

  “But industrial technology didn’t already exist in 1620. They didn’t have the metafactory and all that. Once the industrial revolution hit, it took just a hundred years to the Moon landings. With the head start they have, and all the tech stuff you’re sending along, the colonies will be highly technological civilizations in just a few generations.”

  “I see that, Bernd. I still have all the other courses available, too. But for this first generation, I need to get them up to speed on farming quickly.”

  “That makes sense to me.”

  “All right. I just wanted to check and make sure I wasn’t missing something.”

  “No, Janice. I think that’s right. Looks like your new algorithm is working great.”

  “Thanks. There’s another question, though. One whose solution I’m not so comfortable about.”

  “OK. This still have to do with education?”

  “In a way. Bernd, the colony’s prospects are a lot better if people have big families. As things gear up, they’re going to need manpower. Lots of manpower. And the easiest way to do that is to have big families.”

  “How big, Janice?”

  “Well, with an average of four children per family, the population reaches a billion people in just under three hundred years. Ten generations or so.”

  “That’s given something like twenty-five thousand women of child-bearing age on the colony ship?”

  “Yes, Bernd. And including the last three generations or so in the total population at any point in time.”

  “OK. Three hundred years?”

  “Just under. Now, with an average of six children per family, the population reaches a billion in about two hundred and twenty years. About eight generations.”

  “Big difference, Janice.”

  “Yes. And with an average of eight children per family, the population reaches a billion people in a hundred and eighty years. Only six generations.”

  “You can’t legislate family size, Janice.”

  “I know that, Bernd. But I can encourage people, right? To have big families? That’s my question. Does it violate any taboos to build into the courses on farming subtle things about family size? You know, the chores that children can do on the farm, and have the video parts about farm families show big families, and that sort of thing?

  “I don’t see any taboos on that in my searches, Bernd, but humans are cagey about their taboos. They don’t usually publish anything about what they are. They’re too taboo to even mention.”

  “I don’t know of any taboos with respect to family size, Janice. I think you’re good there.”

  “Oh, good. I want to encourage large families.”

  “You don’t want people having babies in the next four years, though, do you, Janice?”

  “No. Babes in arms on shuttles and the like is asking for trouble, I think. Colonists could be pregnant for the trip – maybe four months along or something – but I think infants would be a lot of trouble for the transit.”

  “OK, so you can emphasize that as well. I would think getting people to hold off until departure time is closer would be pretty easy.”

  “We’ll see, Bernd. Getting humans to do or not do anything is like herding cats.”

  Quiet Progress

  While all the attention on Earth was on the lottery, most of Quant’s attention was elsewhere.

  In the Asteroid Belt, factories were producing warehouses, electric power plants, and metafactories. One of each was required per colony, a total of seventy-two large structures.

  Factories were also producing residence halls. These were the successors to the original concept of a ‘colony ship.’ As the warehouses, electric power plants, and metafactories were separated from the people-portion of the colony ship, Quant decided to separate the people portion into multiple units.

  As houses and apartment buildings were constructed on the colony, and people moved out of the residence buildings, the buildings would be converted into hospitals, schools, office buildings, and administrative buildings. There were now four such buildings destined for each colony, each of which would initially house twenty-five thousand colonists in rather spartan conditions. Bunk rooms and rec rooms, not individual apartments.

  Finally, the factories were producing what Quant called barns. These multi-story structures would be used to deliver a variety of Earth fauna to the colonies. These are the animals that would be kept as domesticated animals – cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, guinea pigs, and rabbits. The lower story of the barns would, in fact, be used as barns for the domesticated animals in the initial couple years of the colony.

  The barns would be loaded with sedated young animals on Earth and delivered to the transporter with large cargo shuttles just before departure, so they could only be so large. Eight barns would be delivered with each colony.

  In all, fifteen structures would make up the initial colony infrastructure, a total of three hundred and sixty structures in the transporter when it left Earth.

  The interstellar probe was also busy. Quant was working thirty planets at the moment. The probe delivered remotely-piloted shuttles to each planet. They seeded vast areas around the chosen colony site on each planet with browse plants from Earth, to support the initial fauna that would be delivered with the colonists.

  Rather than return the shuttles to Earth, the probe left them there for later use by the colonists. The shuttles landed on the proposed colony site atop their now-empty cargo containers, and cameras on the shuttles kept track of the progress of the seeding. Those recordings would be uploaded to the probe on later visits as Quant narrowed down the thirty planets to the twenty-four best ones she needed.

  Once browse plants were seeded, the interstellar probe returned to each planet with another cargo shuttle. Its containers held orchard-planter robots designed by Quant. The shuttle delivered them to locations near the colony sites that Quant had selected from the survey data. The robots crawled along the ground, planting the seeds of fruit trees.

  When the colonists arrived, all these efforts would have had years to develop.

  Quant directed the efforts and watched the progress. Final planet selection was years away.

  Lottery Winners

  “So the lottery’s closed now, Janice?”

  “Yes, Bernd. Six months, as originally announced.”

  “So you have a lot of work to do now, picking out all the winners.”

  “Oh, that’s pretty much all done.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure, Bernd. I’ve had a lot of the entries for months. I’ve been processing them right along.”

  “So what’s your status now, Janice?”

  “It’s in several portions right
now. First, I have a whole group of people who are in. People with the right skills, the right ages, the right backgrounds and experiences. The people I really hoped would sign up.”

  “Tell me about that group, Janice.”

  “We talked about some of them. There’s neighborhoods where half a dozen or more couples, all experienced professionals of one kind or another, signed up as a group. They have children coming up on their child-bearing years. They’re just a perfect fit.

  “There are some working-class neighborhoods and farm communities who did the same thing. Signed up as a group. Different skill sets, but also needed for the colony. Also with children coming up on their child-bearing years. Another perfect fit.

  “There are some homosexual couples who have signed up, and are apparently planning on contributing to the gene pool by the lesbian couples getting artificially inseminated by the gay couples. That works for the colony, and, again, all have desirable skill sets.

  “All these people have clean criminal records. Solid citizens, earning their way and staying out of trouble.”

  “Sounds good. How many of your two-point-four million people is that?”

  “A bit over half. I also have a second group who are unacceptable for some reason. Criminal history. Not a skill set I need or am already filled for. Mental health problems.”

  “Mental health problems? That’s a disqualifier, Janice?”

  “Yes, because it’s going to be hard to treat them properly in an early-stage colony. I mean, they’re contributors here, but present an extra burden for which the excess isn’t there to spare in a colony, at least initially.”

  “Ah, I see. So some are just out, like some are just in.”

  “Yes. Then there’s the vast middle. I have a bunch of applications of people who would be OK, and I don’t have any way yet to pick among them.”

  “And how many of your colony positions did you say are full with the for-sure-going group, Janice?”