04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (34 page)

Haller was so impressed, he almost forgot his tiredness and his hangover.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlmen," van Haas began. "I'm sure you are all curious as to what is going on here, and I will, with some necessary background, attempt to inform you, with the admiral's help, as best I can.

"I'm sure you're all wondering what you are doing here, although some of you may have guessed the heart of it. All of you have had long sessions with the direct computer interfaces either at the computer center or in remote locations, and all of you have spent a fair amount of time in the raw Flux region, or void, as it's commonly called. All of you have demonstrated, at one time or another, to a very significant degree, the ability to call up programs from raw Flux without the aid of mechanical devices. All of you have managed to gain some control over this, to varying degrees, and all of you have also reported this yet kept full security on this abiltiy from anyone not your superior. You are not all the people who have developed this unprecedented ability, nor even all the ones who have reported it to us, but you are among the top ten percentile in ability and control and you have shown yourself to be loyal and reliable. None of you are in the military arm, as you might have noticed. There are reasons for this. Admiral?"

"This morning, we, the combined boards of military and company, took the unprecendented step of dissolving the existing organization and and forming a new one," Cockburn told them in a clipped upper-crust New Zealand accent that sounded quite at home to Haller. "This is because the nature and mission of this colony has changed. Until now, everything was in getting this place established, running smoothly, and undertaking all the research projects our charter commanded. This has now been done. Now we are looking beyond this, inward, to our own future and our children's future."

"The corporate board of directors will continue to have jurisdiction over New Eden," van Haas told them, picking it up, "but the divisions will be changed. Each board member will be responsible for all of the operations going on in a specific region rather than along narrow departmental lines.

Many departments will be eliminated or merged, while a few new ones will be created, under regional directors responsible to the board member in charge of the region. This way, each region will operate in an autonomous manner."

"There will be no military as such," Cockburn added. "A reserve headquarters will be maintained for emergency purposes here, which I will head, but save for some refresher training on an annual basis and a small corps of professional officers and noncoms for each military division, there will be no active military. Security and Transportation will maintain a small squad under a single divisional chief at each Gate to handle routine traffic, and to keep the twenty-eight core interfaces secure from unauthorized use. Elected Anchor councils will make internal law as needed and support it, and create proper court systems to handle it. Most have already done so to a degree, so this is painless. Only General Ryan's Signal corps will be retained pretty much intact, and they and a new force, the Anchor Guard, made up initially of troops surplused from the other reduced commands and new recruits, will be the only forces other than Gate and command center security forces authorized to carry weapons."

There was some surprised rumblings at this, mostly because there seemed no real need for anyone to carry weapons.

"The reason why Signals needs weapons and an Anchor Guard is necessary," Cockburn explained, "is that there have been a number of very disturbing things going on in the void. Some men and women have gone off in it for one reason or another, either to experiment or out of madness, boredom, or whatever, and have had sufficient prior interface with the big computers to be somewhat Sensitive. They have been changed —horribly in most cases—by this, and have actually attacked legitimate people and even some supply trams with varying degrees of success. Signals must now send armed patrols with every major shipment of goods or movement of passengers between regions. This is a most unexpected and distressful development, and it appears to be growing worse each day. These people are demented and deformed, but they are not stupid. They were once people just like yourselves, perhaps even ones who worked for or with you. They are growing bolder and more successful. and they seem to be after women in particular. We believe they intend to breed colonies out there. There is no question that sooner or later they may attack within Anchors themselves to keep their mad colonies alive. The thought is disgusting."

There was a great deal of rumbling at this. Finally, someone in the back called out, "Why can't they just be located on the grid, then tracked down by grid and satellite and wiped out, sir?"

"A good question. Van?"

"We've tried it and tried it," the director told them, "and it just doesn't work. There is some kind of conflict in the master computer programming set up by this. Nobody, not even the computers, anticipated the idea of Sensitives in the first place, and we certainly haven't explained the phenomenon yet to anyone's satisfaction. The fact remains that any Sensitive who doesn't want to be found is invisible to the network, at least as far as a query from us goes. We don't know what the computer sees when it sees a Sensitive on the grid, but it doesn't see a human being or even an anomaly by the definitions of its programs. The satellites by themselves were never designed for independent work except in communications, and they just can't penetrate Flux of the density we have and need to maintain our heat and atmospheric balance. If a non-Sensitive is lost in Flux, the grid can locate him or her. If a Sensitive wants to be located in Flux, we can find him or her. But it there is a specific command that their locations not be reported, there's no way we can locate anyone. And these poor wretches do not want to be found. And that, my friends, brings us to the primary reason why you are here."

There was much disturbance and agitation in the audience now. People who had felt totally secure for years were now beginning to have worries and the willies.

"The Anchor Guard will establish secure borders around the Anchors, although this will likely take some time to do, building it the old way. There was some thought given to extending the Anchors far enough to build such a border, but we have found this, for a variety of reasons you in engineering might understand, to be impractical. Other plans called for the establishment of force fields supported by permanent amplifiers within the void itself, but this would expose individuals to prolonged, continuous interfaces and essentially seal off each Anchor from the rest of the world, something that is hardly desirous. Also, I am told, it is not easy simply to lower a section of force field long enough for traffic to move in and out at specified times. Not only do the psychologists believe this would be harmful to Anchor populations, but it would interfere with such things as drainage, Anchor maintenance shells, and the like. So we build a border, and give the keys only to Signals. They alone know the void well enough to keep commerce moving, so everyone and everything will move with them anyway."

Van Haas looked them all over. "Clearly, this is an alarmist's reaction to a problem that is still relatively minor, but it's one we must face before it grows all out of proportion. The key, of course, is not locks and guards and guns, it is correcting the problem. Some of our best people have worked for two years now, but we cannot find the programming flaws. The 7800's have been unable to use their self-diagnostics on this either. We have reached the point in that direction where it is clear that even if we find the problem and specific solutions, we would have to literally turn off and reprogram from scratch the entire 7800 network. That, of course, would entail first the evacuation of, then the erasure of, New Eden as it is today."

Haller found himself joining in a chorus of, "No! No!"

"Very well, then," the director said. "The only other way is to learn just what this process, this phenomenon, is. To establish a project to learn what is going on, why it is going on, how to control it and master it, and to use it to our advantage. This group is you. Effective at ten hundred tonight, an order will go out over both my and the admiral's signature ordering that all remote computer interface machinery will be declared surplus and reduced back to Flux. In sixteen weeks Signals will complete its project of creating water and supply caches along all void routes, then it, too, will surrender its network interfaces for destruction. The only exception will be a lone big amp, one subsidiary interface, one remote Guard computer with interface, and four of the network interface guns. Those will be under your control and for your work only."

"I must stress that this is volunteer work and is not without danger," Cockburn added. "We will show you some of the unfortunates we've managed to capture before you make your final decision on this. You will be living in your own village in Anchor, but with full access to the void and full protection from others. Your families, of course, may accompany you, as this might well be a very long project indeed. Discuss it among yourselves, but not with anyone outside this room, even Security or Signals. Discuss it only within your own building here, which we have taken great pains to make secure. Anyone who backs out at this point we feel confident enough to let him or her return to their old occupation. You have all proven your ability to maintain security. However— once out, you will stay out. No second chances. Once in, you will stay in. Anyone who wants out after should know that you will have to pass our psychiatric team to do so, and those of you who do not know what that means should seek an explanation from us or from those who do. It means, at the very least, that you will never be quite who or what you were."

It was a chilling statement, and it had its effect. All those in the room knew what could be done with the big machines to people, and all had no illusions about what might happen if someone else were at the controls and writing the program.

"Questions?" van Haas asked pleasantly.

Haller raised his hand. "Some of us in landscaping are working on the quadrant programs now, but while they are fairly well complete, they haven't been fully tested as yet. Can we be spared from that?"

"All of you are working to some degree on future projects," the director replied. "Hopefully, your staffs have capable and talented people to take over your places. If not, we will supply them. This project is to ensure that we
have
a future. There is no immediate timetable for the extension of the landscaping programs into quadrant or region size. The manufacturing and logistics for such a system is also monstrous and will require a concentrated worldwide effort. However, the bottom line is really that such programs are dependent on the computers and the amplifiers—huge numbers of remote interfaces and amps are required. Until we are certain that such a massive manipulation of Flux into matter won't create more nightmares, and until we can be certain that the computer network can be trusted to do it, it's all on the back burner, so to speak. To loose the force of four 7800's along a vast network now—well, it's just too dangerous. Whose other ideas might we get mixed in? It's your job to show me that this is possible, safe, feasible, and right to do. Yes?"

"Who will head this project?" somebody asked.

"The immediate leadership will be selected in the next few days from among you here. We have already narrowed it down to a few, but we hardly wish to take the computer's recommendations at face value in something like this. We, not the machines, will choose. The project director will report to a designated higher authority and to either the admiral or myself as needed."

"It sounds like we're going to be bottled up, maybe for years," another noted. "Why in the world do you expect any of us to volunteer?"

"Because you'll be first. You'll know before anyone else," van Haas said simply. "Because you are being offered work on the most challenging and mysterious research project in our history. The answers, if you can find them, might dwarf the discovery of the Flux universe or anything else we can imagine. You're being offered the cutting edge of science. Your alternative is ignorance, perhaps for life. Ask yourself why you came here in the first place, and why you first got fascinated by science, and I think you will know the answer."

"Remember, too, that you're different, all of you," Cockburn pointed out. "You can do something the masses, smart or dumb, cannot. You can somehow communicate with an artificial intelligence by mind alone and make it work like magic. You will always be feared and never trusted, even by those in high places, who can't do it. This stuff cannot be kept under wraps forever. Sooner or later they are going to be scared witless of you. You better band together and find the answers if you know what's good for you."

"Do the Soviets, Chinese, Franco-Brazilians, and the rest with colonies have similar projects?" someone else asked.

"No." Cockburn responded. "All our intelligence and exchange information seems to indicate that this phenomenon is unique to New Eden. Since some of the others have computers that are essentially the equal to the 7800's, and since most used the same linked net, Anchor, and Flux system we did, we must assume that this is one of those accidents of science; some way we did something different in our master programs that caused it. It is the price, but also the excitement, of new technology, to accidentally discover something like this. It is the curse of our technology that such programs and operating systems have become of necessity so complex and so abstract that no human or group of humans can even understand them, only direct them, so late-developing bugs simply must be lived with. We simply can't do what they could on Titan or Earth and shut the damned thing down and do it over."

"In the next few days," van Haas told them, "we will take you on tours and reveal all that we can without giving anything away, inside seventy-two hours we will have a decision on who will be what in this group. At that time you will have to make your decision."