Earth Keepers

by Jorge Alejandro Lavera

  Note: This isn’t a chain letter, you will not spend a dime in the whole process. We will not ask you for any personal information. Once the first problem is solved, you can come and meet us in person or contact us however you wish.

  Decipher the following message to get instructions for the next step.

  Your complete name is within the message. All lines have the same encryption criteria.

  ro.var NalosCaran , JuidovenienB

  8e5jjs45jwp00jgjg5b044j0g95a/fcitom/o.cdrhuda.ciwww a eseéctCon

  Good luck! We hope to see you.

  Best wishes,

  Pre-selection team for Rho City, Argentina

  Juan Carlos was in his robe having coffee, while he went through his new emails on his laptop, like he did every morning at the dining room table. He looked at the email, sighed, and pressed the SPAM button. How strange that the antispam system hadn’t filtered it automatically. The email disappeared. He was sure it was for a time share, or as they called them now, condominiums. What a scam that was. He finished looking at his other messages, left the computer and got dressed.

  He heard his daughter’s alarm. He already had tea prepared for her when she appeared with a sleepy face.

  “Thank you, Dad.”

  “You’re welcome. Anything I need to know today?”

  Sofía thought for a minute and then asked: “What day is it?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Oh, yes. Hmm, nothing, Dad. Tomorrow I have a math test but today I have sociology, geography, and microeconomics, and no tests. Can I stay home?”

  “Haha, you know if you miss class, you have to study here at home.”

  “But I’m sleepy.”

  “That’s what you get for reading until three in the morning.”

  “Hmm. You always say it’s good to read.”

  “It is, but that’s no excuse to not deal with your obligations. You don’t have many, just studying and helping to keep the house in order,” said Juan Carlos.

  Sofía put her head down and when she raised it, her eyes were bright.

  “I miss Mom. She would have let me stay home.”

  “I miss her, too, daughter. Staying here to cry isn’t going to do any good. And your attempt at that under the breath manipulation is shameful. You know that Mom would have said exactly the same thing as I did.”

  Sofía rolled her eyes and curled up the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes, I know, but you can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Your poor boyfriend, if you ever have one.”

  “Dad!” exclaimed Sofía, punching him in the arm.

  “Which proves my point,” said Juan Carlos, rubbing his arm. “Hurry up, you don’t need to get there late.”

  Sofía ate breakfast, got dressed and left for college, which was seven blocks away. She was in her second year although she was only fourteen years old. As she had shown several times since she entered elementary school early, her intelligence and memory were so good that she didn’t need to study, it was enough to listen to teachers or professors once or see what they were doing, and it would be etched in her mind. As a result, they allowed her to advance with tests given freely, without attending all the classes in person, and she had advanced at a rate of almost two school years per year, on at least four occasions. She went to some of the classes that bored her the most (otherwise, it was impossible to get her to study at home), and those that interested her, like mathematical analysis or physics, she studied alone at home and went to the school to take the tests. She was already at the highest levels of those. Unfortunately for her, today was a day of boring subjects.

  Juan Carlos situated himself in his home office. His PC was on all the time. The screens lit up just by moving the mouse. He carefully checked the status of the service processes on the monitor on the left, as well as the status of the projects assigned by each client, while giving instructions to his employees on the screen on the right.

  One of his employees asked him how he could find a problem with the code. Juan Carlos thought for a second and suggested that he insert debugging instructions before and after the possible problem. He suspected that in reality the problem was that the code wasn’t even running, but he had to teach his programmers to find the errors on their own. Juan Carlos had a knack for detecting problems.

  If they told him what was expected, it was enough to look at a source code to immediately find the most probable cause for why the desired result was not obtained. Sometimes he didn’t even need to look at the code. He knew where to look because of the kind of error. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy for him to describe how he knew the answer. Most of the time, he didn’t know himself. Without knowing how, he would suddenly ‘see’ the solution to the problem. This had allowed him to start a small computer solutions company based on advising other programmers and programming companies. It paid well, he worked at home and his clients were satisfied, since he always got them out of trouble. Additionally, he could enjoy lots of free time.

  He delivered a finished job to a client by file transfer, and thought about what to do next. He remembered the spam he’d got that morning. It was odd that a scam or unsolicited advertising would get in his inbox with the filters he had. He opened his Google browser, and entered ‘Rho City.’ The browser took him first to a city Rho (Italy) on Wikipedia. He had no idea there was a city called that in Italy, but he wasn’t interested in that country. He entered ‘Rho city Argentina’ and the first entry was the right city. He went to that web page and noticed the professional design. The page was well organized. It had a map and photos of the city, advertisements for services provided, images of house and land plans, general information, the composition of the directory and many other things. But he noticed that there was no information about the location of the city, nor a way to contact them. On the ‘Contact’ page, a message said ‘We’ll contact you,’ which he found more than strange. He remembered the email he’d received and had to admit it seemed real. He opened the SPAM folder, and immediately found the Rho City email. He marked it ‘Not spam’ to avoid losing it, and opened it to read again.

  He looked carefully at the first line of the riddle.

  ro.var NalosCaran , JuidovenienB

  It said that his full name was there. His name was Juan Carlos Navarro. Looking carefully, he saw that indeed the letters of his name were there, but the periods and spaces were in strange positions. The text was mixed up somehow. It wasn’t backwards, it was more complicated than that, but there wasn’t a substitution of letters, either, they were all there to see.

  He looked at the first letters, ‘ro.var.’ There was only one ‘v’ in his whole name, the ‘v’ in Navarro. Certainly ‘var’ looked like the middle part of his last name. He noticed that if he took the part before the ‘var’ and put it after, he got ‘varro.’ The last part of his last name, with the final period and everything. It looked like the line was backwards, but in groups of three letters, instead of by individual letters. He took the groups, and put them from back to front. He got the decoded message right away.

  Welcome, Juan Carlos Navarro.

  Connect at a www.ciudadrho.com/cita/fg954j0b04jg50jgwp045jjjs8e5

  He copy/pasted the address in the browser, and a blank page opened, which said only:

  “Juan Carlos Navarro, appear in person today, November 7 at 6:00 p.m. at 1434 Sarmiento, 20th floor, Office 34, for the first interview.”

  Juan Carlos sat looking at the message, impressed, and quickly printed the page on the screen. He looked up a Buenos Aires map online to get directions from his house and was surprised, realizing he wanted to see what it was about. He wouldn’t say anything to Sofía yet, in case it was just a waste of time or some kind of scam. He didn’t have anything else to do after work, so it wouldn’t be a problem going at that hour.

  When Sofía got back from school, he said:

  “I have to go out in a little while to run some errands.”

  “Now? And how long are you going to be?�
��

  “I don’t know. I suppose a couple of hours at the most.”

  “Okay. Can I invite a friend over to study?”

  “Yes, of course. And why don’t you ever invite anyone when I’m here? Do I embarrass you?”

  Sofía averted her eyes.

  “Oh, Dad, of course not. It’s just that I don’t want to be alone.”

  Juan Carlos looked at her and saw that she was blushing.

  “Is it a female friend or a boyfriend?”

  “It’s Marisol, Dad.”

  “Okay, I trust that you’re responsible enough to be alone at home with a friend. I have to go,” he said, looking at his daughter.

  “Thank you, Dad,” Sofía answered, looking for the phone.

  INTERVIEW

  Buenos Aires, November 7 2027. 5:50 p.m.

  “Well, showing up is a good first step. You wouldn’t believe how many didn’t show up or showed up late, which of course makes them lose a lot of points,” said the woman who greeted him.

  Juan Carlos was nervous. He knew it was dumb to ask, since if it was a scam they weren’t going to tell him, but he couldn’t help it:

  “Is what they’re offering for real? What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. Or in any event, the only catch is that we don’t know if you can come with us. All you need to do is demonstrate that you can contribute something important to the city and you can live there. Of course, many others will do the same and vacancies are limited, so while you may pass everything, you may still be left out. You must get a good total score.”

  He didn’t say anything. He clenched his teeth, but nodded his head.

  “I must advise you that they will judge your character, so they’ll ask you all kinds of personal questions, many of which you may find offensive or controversial, but you must answer them anyway.”

  He nodded again.

  “Sign here, please. It’s the consent form for the interviews and the tests that will come later. There will be both intelligence and physical exams. There is also a confidentiality clause. You must not reveal to anyone what you have been asked here or what the process is, or absolutely anything about what you’ll find out about Rho City, especially its location. If you violate this particular secret, you will face civil and criminal charges so severe that you will be paying them for the rest of your life. Do you understand what I just told you?”

  “Completely. Not a word to anyone,” Juan Carlos assured her. He read the papers. He saw nothing compromising outside of what had been mentioned, so he signed.

  “Okay, what’s your profession?”

  “I am a computer systems developer.”

  “What would you like to do if you could do what you wanted to? Anything at all.”

  “Well, I like programming. I dedicate myself to what I like. Although I would also like to write, teach, study, and the sciences. Sometimes I think I would have liked to be a scientist, one of those who can do research.”

  The woman took some notes, filled in some blocks, and then asked:

  “Are you homosexual?”

  Evidently this was the part that she said would be ‘personal.’ He answered no.

  “Do you have anything against homosexuals?”

  “No.”

  “Do you care if homosexuals marry or adopt?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think of genetic engineering applied to food?”

  “That if it weren’t for that, a lot of people would have died of hunger.”

  “And if genetic engineering could be applied to people?”

  He thought a little bit.

  “If there’s weren’t ethical issues, it would be fascinating to see what could be achieved. Imagine, for example, modifying humans to be able to photosynthesize. That would resolve world hunger forever, right?”

  She quickly took notes and he noticed a slight smile in the corner of her mouth.

  “And how would you keep the population from exploding to impossible levels?”

  “Well, since we’re talking about genetic engineering, and playing god, I’d say...you could modify the uterus so that it would be eliminated along with the first delivery. That way, no one could have more than one child. I’d prefer to do something to the male, but I can’t think of anything to make them have just one child, and besides, it’s the female who gets pregnant. That is, when a woman becomes pregnant, certain hormones change, but the man’s body has no way of knowing whether or not the woman got pregnant.”

  She raised her eyebrows as she wrote, and marked more boxes.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “No, I’m an atheist.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Seriously? None?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “To believe in ghosts, I’d have to believe in the hereafter, and for that you have to believe in gods.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, yes or no?”

  “No.”

  “Telekinesis? Telepathy?”

  “No, and no. I don’t believe in anything paranormal or supernatural.”

  “Do you know Malthus is and what he is known for?”

  He was surprised at the change of subject, but it turned out that he did.

  “Yes, I do. He said that the world population can’t keep growing without limits, and that the mechanisms for regulating growth are famine, war, and disease.”

  “Correct. And you don’t think he was wrong?”

  “No. It’s just that we find ways to combat these things. A lot of people die of hunger despite technology that we develop to make more food. A lot of people also die in stupid wars, and medicine had a golden age with the discovery of antibiotics, but the extension of longevity created a whole series of new problems. Senile dementia, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, cancer. A lot fewer people arrived before they were old enough to suffer them. I’m sure there are too many people to live comfortably.”

  “Let’s say you’re the captain of a ship that is sinking in the Arctic, there are only a couple of minutes, and a small boat for four people: there’s you, your wife and little child, along with a woman with her baby, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a lawyer, and the Queen of England. Who do you put on the boat?”

  “You’re asking me who I’d save and who I’d let die?”

  “Exactly. And explain your reasoning.”

  Juan Carlos thought about and finally said:

  “If four people fit in the boat, the woman with the baby counts as one. The baby in the end is with the woman, doesn’t take up any space and weighs almost nothing. Is everyone healthy and normal? Because it wouldn’t make sense to save someone who’s gravely ill. The lawyer and the queen can go to the bottom of the sea, for what they are worth. Of course, I’d want to save my wife and child. Supposing that we can’t count my child as half a person, that leaves one seat. So I have to choose between saving the Nobel Prize winner and myself? Surely the Nobel winner is valuable and would have something to contribute in the future, but I would want to be with my family and survive, of course. Of course when they rescued us, I’d be in trouble for letting a Nobel winner or the Queen die and not having ‘sacrificed’ myself, so I don’t know, I don’t see any good exit. If you said there were no future or consequences, I’d save myself with my family and the woman with the baby.”

  She took more notes in the computer and raised her eyebrows when she heard a ‘beep’.

  “Well,” said the woman, “that’s the interview for now.”

  “Already?”

  “That’s enough for now.”

  “Um, so, what happens next?”

  “Come here tomorrow, same place, but to reception. Give your name and they will tell you where to go for your medical exam. Fast for eight hours ahead of time. Bring something to eat after the medical exam, because after that will be intelligence and psychological tests. We’ll contact you later tomorrow with the results and we’ll tell you when and where, if appropriate, what to d
o then. Oh, and even if you’re rejected, you may keep the results of all the tests.”

  “Well, okay, thank you very much, I guess—”

  “You’re welcome, Juan Carlos. There’s the exit.”

  Juan Carlos was a little taken aback, but he supposed she had a lot of people to interview. When he left, he noticed there was another person waiting to come in. He went down the elevator when he realized that the woman had never introduced herself. He left without knowing her name.

  When he got back to the house, Juan Carlos went straight to the kitchen to get some orange juice. His mouth was dry. He satiated his thirst, washed up and put the glass away. He went to the dining room and heard noise in his daughter’s room.

  “Sofía?”

  The door to her room opened and she came out towards the kitchen.

  “Hi, Dad, we were studying.”

  Through the half-open door, Juan Carlos could see Marisol standing there, straightening her hair.

  “And what were you studying?” he watched her as she got some water.

  “Speaking in tongues.”

  Juan Carlos saw Marisol trying not to laugh, and turned back around to see Sofía turning as red as a beet. Man, the subconscious was a powerful informant. Suddenly he remembered all the times Sofía had asked permission to go study, never with boys. He remembered the interview he’d just been in. ‘Do you have anything against homosexuals?’ they’d asked and he answered frankly. Although now that his daughter was involved, he wondered if the questions were merely coincidences. Because, just today, the same day that they asked him that, he discovered this? Or, maybe, until now he’d simply ignored the signals and the questions in the interview put him on alert? Or maybe he was imagining it all and it was all innocent coincidence. For a minute, he felt like an evil-minded degenerate.