2
Sights to See
Cardwell's Law: Over time, entrenched interests destroy innovation.
Everyone from the ferry, minus the new mother and her newborn daughter, was escorted to the auditorium. Dash, as was her nature, chose to sit in the front row. Ping and Jam muttered about it, but came with her. They had the first three rows to themselves.
A tall man in a dark blue suit stood at the podium. He had silver hair and a face weathered by age. Ping whispered, “Wow, did they get him from a museum?”
“Shush,” Dash whispered back. “He looks very distinguished.”
“Dinosaurs look distinguished. He looks old.”
The lights dimmed as the first slide of the man’s presentation appeared on the screen. “Welcome, everyone. My name is Colin Wheeler, and this conglomeration of fourteen isle ships is the BrainTrust. The ship hosting this meeting is the GPlex I, one of the first ships built by GPlex and FB for the autonomous mobile archipelago we have today.” The screen behind him transitioned to the next slide, an image of all four of the original BrainTrust ships, GPlex I and II, and FB Alpha and Beta.
“As most of you know, the first BrainTrust ships were built in haste sixteen years ago, just before Deportation Phase II, when the American national government sent the 101st Airborne Division to Silicon Valley to round up and expel all the foreign engineers. GPlex and FB, having seen the writing on the wall a year earlier, had been rushing to complete the first isle ships and get them into international waters two hundred miles offshore so their foreign employees could go there and still be maximally productive. By the time the troops arrived the GPlex and FB headquarters had only half as many people as they had hosted the year before; only American citizens remained. Copters and ferries could easily shuttle back and forth between the BrainTrust and the Valley, so engineering teams could still have frequent face to face meetings. The President—who had not yet been named President-for-Life—sent a Navy frigate to drive the isle ships all the way across the ocean, but it was met by the newly-formed California Coastal Patrol. The California governor had realized that GPlex and FB—along with lots of other companies in the Valley—would move their operations out to the BrainTrust if they had to, and if that were to happen, the subsequent loss of jobs, increase in welfare rolls, and destruction of the tax base would drive the state into bankruptcy.” Colin paused. “The Coastal Patrol would have been quite overmatched by the Navy frigate sent to force the BrainTrust to leave, but the steadfastness of the Patrol was never put to the test. Quite by coincidence a Chinese cruiser showed up, asserting that if the Americans were going to stick their noses into China’s business in the South China Sea, it was only fitting for the Chinese to help ensure that the Law of the Sea was enforced in international waters off the coast of the United States as well.”
Quiet laughter bubbled around the auditorium, but Ping squirmed in her seat. “Was this before or after World War II?” she whispered. Dash and Jam both glared her into silence.
The history lesson was brief. Colin moved on to the layout of the ships in the archipelago, showing how one could go from any ship to anyplace else in the BrainTrust, especially the cafeterias, the shopping areas, and medical stations. He finished within half an hour. “Good news! Our time is up. As you look around the auditorium, you’ll see a number of guides sent by your various employers to take you on customized tours.” He gestured around the auditorium at men and women—all much younger than Colin, Dash noticed—who stood with glowing signs. “If each of you looks at your phone, you’ll find an email specifying which guide you should join.”
Dash, Jam, and Ping looked at their cells. “I don’t have an email,” Dash muttered.
“Me either!” Ping cried.
“Neither do I,” Jam added softly.
“Nor do you need one.” Colin smiled as he stepped in front of them. “You’re with me.”
In the passageway outside the auditorium, a four-seat vehicle awaited them. It reminded Dash of the bumper cars she’d seen in Hong Kong’s Disneyland, though this one had no steering wheel. Colin stepped around it and climbed into the far side. “All aboard!” he called. Once everyone was settled, the vehicle glided silently away.
Ping pounded the back of Dash’s seat in a quick rhythm. “I guess you never really get to go very fast here, do you?”
“Nope,” Colin answered. “These arvees—Archipelago Electric Vehicles—are limited to thirty kilometers per hour, which is plenty for cruising across the isle ships. You can order one from your phone, and you can get from any point on the archipelago to any other point in seven or eight minutes.” The arvee whizzed around a corner, utilizing its collision-avoidance system to weave past a green-and-purple bicycle with a nearly-erect rider. Another bicycle, a streamlined triathlon bike in lustrous black-and-red with the rider bent far over the handlebars, surged past them. “There are a lot of people packed in here, but it’s a three-dimensional world—the ships are twenty-five decks tall, so a lot of distance is covered by going up and down elevators, as we are about to do now.” The arvee entered a huge elevator, large enough to hold four arvees, and they exited a few decks up.
They emerged next to a passage that led outside through automatic doors. A crisp fresh ocean breeze swirled past them and Jam pulled the scarf covering her head tighter. Her scarf, a swirling rainbow of rich pure colors, gleamed in the sunlight.
As their arvee turned left and glided to the stern, the next isle ship along the eastern edge of the rough rectangle of ships came into view around the towering bulk of GPlex I. Dash looked up . . . and up, and up. From here, the ship looked to be as tall as the sky.
Colin coughed. “Before we start the tour, I need to thank you, Dash, for your work on the ferry coming here. Amanda—Dr. Copeland—said you saved a pregnant woman’s life. Despite Amanda’s help, as she tells the story. I guess there was a rare but fatal complication?”
Dash nodded. “Eighty percent fatal.”
Ping, sitting behind Dash, punched her shoulder. “Our own super-genius, and she’s a life-saving heroine, too.”
Dash slid down in the seat to protect her shoulders from additional compliments. She noticed that Colin was shaking with silent laughter. Dash asked, “So you know Dr. Copeland well?”
Colin nodded. “We have worked together for many years.”
Dash leaned forward and turned to look him in the eye. “You are not a typical tour guide.”
Colin scrunched his eyebrows as he considered his reply. “Well, giving the tour from time to time is one of my duties.”
Ping was the first to notice the evasion in the answer and deduce the reason. “Oooh, we’re special.”
This time Jam punched Ping in the shoulder. “We are not special, foolish one. Dash is special.”
“Of course,” Ping acknowledged contritely. “That’s what I meant.”
Colin cleared his throat. “So, the first things you should all notice are the bots on cleaning duty.” He pointed at a couple machines scrubbing the endless line of Plexiglas panels comprising the transparent gunwales that separated them from a multi-story plunge into the sea. The bots looked like oversize breadboxes with insect legs.
The bots toiled ceaselessly. The panels were so transparent they were mostly invisible, except where the bots washed them. “You’ll see bots throughout the ship, twenty-four hours a day. They’re an important part of how we can maintain so many residents on the ship. Unlike cruise ships that have hundreds of crewmen working to keep things shipshape and provide services, we have a very small crew, many of whom work as wranglers for the bots that do the maintenance.” They rolled around a corner to see a large gray structure floating in the distance. The hull of the vessel was barge-like. In that respect it was similar in design to the isle ships, very wide with no real prow, but the superstructure was featureless and dull, an ungainly half-breed of a ship that sat lower in the water than an isle ship with its cruise liner-style superstructure. Colin pointed. “That is the factory and manufacturing research ship Hephaestus. That’s where we do all our work with hazardous materials.”
Dash added, “For example, currently there is a prototype for a new polysilicon factory. Polysilicon is used to make solar cells, but both the hydrogen chloride and the trichlorosilane used in its manufacture are quite toxic. The BrainTrust’s Hephaestus would be an excellent place for a polysilicon factory.”
Colin looked at her with some surprise. “It’s like Dash said. As the regulatory regime dirtside gets ever more rigid, polysilicon plants are shutting down, leaving an opportunity for us.”
Dash switched topics. “And of course the Hephaestus is probably where you process spent nuclear fuel from America into new fuel for your own reactors.”
Colin’s eyes widened and his whole upper body stiffened. “The media generally thinks we just repackage the SNF from the mainland and dump it on the ocean floor.”
Dash snorted—another un-Balinese habit she’d picked up in Texas. “I am not the media. I can do math.” She pointed out at the bots scrubbing the windows. “You use energy profligately. Washing these transparent sidings takes an enormous amount of fresh water, which means an enormous amount of power.” She pointed at the towering bulkheads beside them. “The newest isle ships have superstructures built primarily with magnesium alloys rather than steel. You import no magnesium, therefore, you are extracting it from the ocean. I cannot even imagine how much energy that requires, even if you have a more efficient process than the known state of the art.”
Colin was back to laughing silently. “Well, our nuclear reactors are not much of a secret any more anyway. We never actually lied about them, you know. It was just never very politic to mention them in public circles. We let people believe the solar panels and wind turbines on the top decks of Gplex II and FB Beta supplied our power, if they wanted to believe it.” He sighed. “An outraged media storm about our horrific and evil power generation systems has been inevitable for a while now.”
Dash asked, “When can I see them? The nuclear reactors, I mean.”
Colin considered the question. “Soon.”
Ping whispered to Jam in a loud voice, “Did our Dash just score one on the old guy?”
Jam nodded. “I believe so.”
The arvee swerved around the outer edge of the last isle ship in the row, allowing them to look north for the first time.
Jam pointed to a new sight in the distance. There were several ships, but their courses looked odd. “It looks like two of those ships are going to crash.”
Dash pushed her glasses up her nose; Colin squinted and chuckled. “That’s the fishermen and the Greens playing chicken.”
Ping observed, “I like playing chicken.” Her eyes gleamed. “I always win.”
Colin explained. “The Greens want to prevent that cargo ship from coming through the reef to deliver supplies. You can sort of make out our artificial reef, low and dark green; it completely encircles the BrainTrust except for a couple of shipping channels. The merchant ship is heading for one of those channels. The Greens hope to embargo enough deliveries to make the BrainTrust operationally impractical.” He pointed toward a ship moving to prevent the Greens from blocking the merchant ship. “But we have a deal with some of the California fishermen. They rent our harvester bots to load up with our kahala from the reef, then they take the haul back to the States. Since the bots are ours, are arguably in international waters, and are not aboard the fishing vessels when they return to port, it is not illegal for the fishing vessels to utilize the bots. And since the fish were caught by American vessels, the fish are not subject to the thirty-five percent import tax. So the fishermen want us to stay, maintain the reef, grow the fish, and rent them the bots. The Greens and the fishermen inevitably butt heads from time to time.”
Dash frowned, “I’m surprised the Greens don’t just bring a boat into the passage and dump it there.”
Colin nodded. “They tried that.” He pointed farther to the west. “Do you see the lump in the reef out there?”
The ladies squinted across the water.
“The passage through the reef used to be there. The Greens plugged it with a ship, so we opened the passage you see now and grew the reef into the Green ship, embedding it. Now it’s part of the reef.” He paused, then continued dryly, “It has become quite a popular tourist attraction.”
Ping laughed. “So the Greens enhanced your business. I love using the enemy against himself.” She laughed again. “Though that is more Jam’s style than mine. I personally prefer to punch people.” She tried to hit Jam in the shoulder, but Jam swung her arm in a casual block and deflected the blow into the seat behind her. “Ow!” Ping exclaimed. “See what I mean?”
More silent laughter from Colin. Dash thought he might be enjoying himself too much. He said, “We have plenty of opportunities to use the strength of our enemies. Too many opportunities, actually. Everyone hates us.”
Dash gave him a skeptical look. “Surely that is an exaggeration. The fishermen like you, apparently.”
“Some fishermen,” Colin acknowledged, “but most don’t. The shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico hate us because we farm and export shrimp, and since the shrimpers are from a Red state, the President has banned our shrimp outright. So we export our shrimp to Canada and Australia. The lobstermen in Maine hate us since we also farm lobster. But Maine is a Blue state, so the President allows us to ship lobster tax-free to the States.”
The little arvee had been carrying them from ship to ship around the archipelago across tunnel-like gangways with Plexiglas arches. They came around the northwest corner and could see the first hints of the ship in the southwest corner. The superstructure, instead of being white, was a wild swirl of richly saturated colors.
Ping bounced up and down in her seat, rocking the arvee. “I’ve been meaning to ask about the ship with all the colors. It’s beautiful!”
Dash spoke before Colin could answer. “That is the Elysian Fields, also known as ‘the party boat.’ When tourists visit, they stay there. The Elysian Fields has all kinds of entertainment, from roulette wheels to twenty-deck-high water slides.” She paused. Colin tried to speak, but Dash continued. “Whereas the first BrainTrust isle ships had steel superstructures, the newest ones are made with titanium-coated magnesium. They create the colors by stressing the titanium, as is done for titanium jewelry.”
They continued around the party boat and turned the corner to head east. Colin pointed southeast, beyond the low outline of the reef. A long, lean ship cruised slowly, shadowed by a pair of tiny vessels. The little ships looked like a pair of mice attempting to herd a cat. “The California Coastal Patrol gets into it with the US Navy from time to time. Each organization keeps a ship or two out here to protect their interests. Depending on the day of the week, one or the other of them hates us. The Blue unions as well as the Reds who run the federal government hate us for using general-purpose robots to replace human labor. Blues in general hate us for supplying a handy high-tech tax haven, but currently the California Blues like us because we send them hydrogen-filled dirigibles from which they pump the hydrogen and burn it so San Francisco can have both nighttime electricity and drinking water.”
Dash muttered, “I have wondered about that. Big as the dirigibles are, do they really supply enough hydrogen fuel to make a difference?”
Colin shrugged. “Every little bit of water you can produce helps when you’re in the seventh year of a five-year drought. And every little bit of energy you can generate after midnight helps when the dependency of your grid on wind and solar is so high that nighttime power production falls so low you have regular pre-dawn brownouts. The brownouts are the reason GPlex planted a third isle ship out here stuffed with nothing but servers a few years back. They needed reliable power. They considered putting a server farm in Tennessee, where they still burn coal all night for power, but the federal law requiring full continuous government surveillance of all data is rigidly enforced in the Red states. We won the bid.”
He went back to listing his litany of haters. “The Red states and Federal government in America may have the most complicated relationship with us. Religious conservatives hate that we offer low-cost abortions to medical tourists. Electric utilities like us because we take some of their spent nuclear fuel. The NSA hates us because we manufacture computer chips that don’t have back doors built in, making them harder to hack. The CIA likes us because they buy our chips for their own computers so they can’t be easily hacked. Farmers and ranchers like us because we import wheat and beef. Doctors hate us for stealing their patients, for using AI for some of the diagnosis/prescription tasks, and for using robots for surgeries. Lawyers hate us for using only binding arbitration to settle disputes, especially the medical disputes that are so lucrative dirtside.”
He took a breath. “Again, depending on which day of the week it is, the Federal government considers our reef to be either a navigation hazard to be destroyed or, since we’re currently only fifty miles offshore to deliver hydrogen to California more easily, they consider this reef to be part of the Exclusive Economic Zone for the USA, so it’s theirs to fish as they wish. The third legal interpretation is, of course, that it is ours, since we built it and maintain it beyond American territorial waters, but that is never their interpretation.”
Dash spoke as he paused. “I still do not see why the Greens dislike you.”
“Ah, yes, the Greens. Well, as I said, one of our businesses is collecting spent nuclear fuel, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission pays us to dispose of. The Greens see this as a problem because it weakens the arguments against the nuke plants, which the Greens want closed at all costs. And of course there’s the fact that we built two artificial reefs, one here outside the contiguous zone limit and another where we often anchor, two-hundred miles out on the high seas. Alas, the reefs are . . . ahem . . . artificial. So they want to destroy the reefs, but the fish and plants that grow because of the reef are natural and must be protected. And of course the BrainTrust ships are an abomination no matter what, a polluting stain on the ocean.”
Dash shook her head. “But you’re in the middle of the San Francisco Oceanic Dead Zone, where all the oxygen has been consumed by algal blooms driven by phosphates dumped into the ocean by the city. This BrainTrust reef we see here is the only place in a hundred kilometers where one can find a diversity of ocean life.”
“Not as much diversity as the Greens would like, since we harvest the algae and fish we want and cull the ones we don’t.”
Dash continued her thought, “And the BrainTrust is actually a carbon sink, pulling as much carbon out of the air as a city like Cupertino releases.”
“You’ve been reading our website. We sell the carbon credits in Europe, but the Greens still consider us a pox upon the water.”
“I suppose the Greens will get angrier as they come to fully realize that your entire fleet is powered by nuclear reactors.”
Colin nodded his head. “Very likely indeed.”
In the beginning, the most radical Green group was Earth First!. They were ineffectual; a more determined commitment was required to drive so important a movement. Thus, a number of members formed the more serious Earth Liberation Front. To no avail; the seas continued to rise and the forests continued to wither. A truly dedicated, considerably more violent group splintered from them to become the Earth Liberation Crusade. The ELC had pursued the protection of the Earth with commitment and high explosives, but their urgently necessary success still lay in the future.
The Emeryville chapter of the ELC was referred to rather derisively by the leadership in Berkeley as the Peter, Paul, and Mary chapter. Peter, the founder of the chapter, had not understood the reference when he first heard it, but after he looked it up he was furious. His group was not some gaggle of Sixties folk singers; they were a serious action team.
Peter confessed to himself that the nickname had produced a positive effect: it had given him the angry drive needed to embrace this next operation. They were going to go big.
At this moment, however, his anger was a little subdued. Peter, Paul, and Mary had fallen on hard times. It was hard to light the fuse of worldwide revolution when you were shivering. Peter pulled his sweater tighter around himself and swallowed a curse. He was sitting in his own living room, dammit. How could his own living room be this cold? But the outside night was nippy, and the electricity was out again. “I can’t believe it! They’ve been using nukes all these years and we never knew.”
Justin, the team member who had been entirely forgotten by the rest of the movement because he didn’t even rate a place in the group’s nickname, was the pastiest-skinned and nerdiest of the four of them. He complained, “Well, some of us were pretty sure they were using nukes, but you guys—almost everyone in the movement—bought the idea that they were using solar and wind since they had turbines and panels on top of two of the first ships.” He plucked at his “Cherish the Earth or Perish with It” t-shirt. He was overweight, unlike the others in this tight circle of friends, and alone among them, he always felt warm. “Then when people started to notice that the BrainTrust’s power never went out even after days and days of clouds without much wind, people said, ‘Oh, they must be using OTEC!’” (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion power plants had been all the rage for a while in some Green circles.) “But I always knew that was bullshit, because they move their damn ships around. OTEC is really hard to move—it’s even harder to move than those isle ships—and you’d need a freakin’ shitload of ‘em to make as much power as they use.”
Mary, wearing her signature “Green is Life; Gray is Death” t-shirt, shouted in a squeaky voice, “It’s an abomination! I always said it was an abomination!”
Paul, whose t-shirt advised, “Conserve the Earth, We Only Have One,” put his hand on Mary’s shoulder. “And you were always right, Mary, and we always agreed. We just didn’t agree enough to get violent about it.”
Mary jumped up. “We have to do something!”
Peter rose slowly to his feet and made a calming motion. His sweater loosened, making the “Think Big!” slogan on the t-shirt underneath visible. “And we will do something, Mary, but not tonight. Tonight we have to plan.”
Justin lifted an eyebrow. “Plan? What are we planning?”
Peter answered grimly. “We’re going to knock out one of those nukes. We’re gonna turn that whole repugnant fleet into a radioactive wasteland like the West Coast Waste and the North Waste.”
Justin looked stunned, then scared, and then, slowly, excited. “The West Waste and the North Waste were created by nuclear missiles. We can show the world that nuclear power plants are like missiles, just waiting to go off.” He wiped sweat from his upper lip. “I like it.”
Pleading another meeting, Colin directed the arvee to stop and let him off at the GPlex I. Before he debarked he instructed the arvee to deliver Dash, Jam, and Ping to their new homes on board the Chiron, the ship specializing in medical research and tourism. As he gave the arvee the directions, they learned that Jam and Ping would share a cabin adjacent to Dash’s, just as they had on the ferry.
Dash was delighted. “That’s marvelous!”
Ping was similarly pleased. “What a magnificent coincidence.”
Colin shrugged. “Not really a coincidence. Cabins are generally allotted in sequence as they become available and people arrive. If you look at the distribution of departures and arrivals, it’s not unheard of for people arriving on the same ferry to wind up co-located.”
Jam spoke next, more slowly. “But only if the people from the ferry also happen to be assigned to the same ship.”
Colin nodded. “True. Dash was, of course, always destined for Chiron, since that’s where her lab is and we like to put people’s homes close to their work. You two, as security guards, could have wound up anywhere.” He thought about it for a moment. “We have fourteen ships, but not all of them have the same number of security guards. You probably had one chance in ten of being assigned here.” Colin stepped away from the arvee and waved as they left.
The trip only took a couple of minutes.
Every deck of every ship had a different outdoor theme for artwork and decorations. The themes varied from whimsical, such as Dundee Outback, to majestic, as with Montana Sky. Colin had explained that the theming had started on Elysian Fields so that inebriated tourists could tell if they were on the right deck. The BrainTrust’s designers had taken the theme idea from a book, A Pattern Language, that Colin had mentioned so reverently Dash made a note to look it up sometime. The decorating on Elysian Fields had gotten so much praise that the owner/operators of many of the other isle ships got into a bit of a competition for the best and most beautiful deck themes.
Dash, Jam, and Ping were quartered on the Appalachian Spring deck. The passage bulkheads were covered in photorealistic murals of the iconic eastern American mountains. A depiction of a stand of lush red and pink rhododendron bushes, so detailed it seemed you could touch them, stood higher than their heads between the doors to their cabins.
Two large suitcases sat in front of Dash’s entry, and half a dozen crates sat beside Ping and Jam’s door. Dash watched an arvan, a self-driving cargo carrier slightly longer than their arvee, whisk itself away. She muttered. “I guess the van dropped off our stuff.” She thumbed open her door and clumsily heaved the first suitcase inside. When she returned, she was limping.
Jam noticed the limp. “Are you okay?”
Dash lifted the second suitcase upright. “Yes. I am missing much of the cartilage in my left knee. It does not bother me unless I try to run or—” she heaved again “carry heavy objects.” She finished moving the suitcase with a jerk before Jam could offer to help, and suggested, “Shall we get something to eat in maybe half an hour?” Gaining acknowledgment from her friends, she closed her door to unpack.
Ping looked at Jam. “These are all my crates,” Ping said. “Did they lose your luggage someplace?”
Jam shook her head. “For me, the BrainTrust is a new beginning.” She held up the shoulder pack she’d carried with her on the ferry. “This is all I have.”
Ping looked a little sad. Her expression became apologetic, but then it changed to joy. “Great! I can use a whole wall for my display!”
Jam gave her a sideways glance. “Display of what? Weapons? Hand-to-hand, of course—swords, maces, that sort of thing?”
Ping laughed. “How’d you know?”
Jam grabbed one of Ping’s crates and carried it over the threshold into the bare cabin. “If I can focus your attention for just a couple of minutes, we need to have a serious discussion.”
Ping studied her in surprise. “No! I refuse to believe it!”
“If you read between the lines of Mr. Wheeler’s calculations, there was one chance in ten that one of us would wind up on the Chiron with Dash. The chances that both of us would wind up next to Dash were less than one in a hundred. Someone put us near her on purpose.”
“You’re kidding!” Suddenly Ping’s expression changed. Where Ping had stood one moment, an owlish analyst stood the next. Her voice lowered a full octave. “I figured that out when they threw out my perfectly fine roommate to put you in with me, then went out of their way to make sure that both of us—both peacekeepers with mad skills—got to know our super-genius friend.”
“Someone’s afraid for her,” Jam said to this surprising new person.
“They certainly are.”
“Someone who knows something we don’t.”
“So we’ll take turns making sure she’s covered.”
Jam looked pensively at her roommate. “I thought it would be more difficult to get your participation.”
“We’ll take care of her, Jam.” Then Ping’s expression changed back to “wild-eyed child,” as if the sober analyst was a facade she could only hold for a few moments before reverting to her natural state. “Even if nothing else goes wrong, Dash is very attractive. She’s bound to wind up with a bad boyfriend or two. When we find out, we’ll discourage them—beat them black and blue, or break their legs.” She brightened even more, and her voice rose to its normal pitch. “Or, as a last line of defense, we’ll sleep with them!”
Jam grabbed another crate and carried it in. “I guess that’s a plan,” she agreed doubtfully.