Note: This story is incomplete.
The Human Race had a number of exciting events in it's history. The discovery of fire around 40,000 B.C.E. could be called a turning point, what with a change of dominant species and all. Other historians get excited about the fall of the Roman Empire, the American Revolution, or World War II. By the time you skim the archives deep enough to glean a two or three sentence summary of these sort of events, you've likely become familiar with the glamourous progress and radical changes of the 2050's, and you probable spent way more time studying the Great Teleporter-madness Disaster of 2179. That wasn't so much of a turning point in human history as just an exciting story to re-tell. Perhaps the greatest risk of humans going extinct since thier becoming dominant species was the Cold War of the late 1900's. However, no talks much about the bio-containment endemic of 2083, despite it being the only time there was a risk of a scenario indisputably worse than the extinction of the human race.
Even at the time, in fact, it did not get much attention. This was partially due to local intelligence agencies transmitting information on a need-to-know basis. This was indeed for the protection of the masses. If the public knew what was going on, there would be mass panic. If the public had any idea that the human race as we know it could have gone extinct, and had an inkling of what would replace such, there would have been mass-suicides, sypathizers with the successive monsters and terrorism everywhere. Containment marshals would be difficult to recruit, and leaks would be harder to distinguish from background levels of crime, disease and terror. Letting the cat out of the bag simply wasn't an option.
Monster-symathizers would indeed have been likely, since the deformed creatures were - technically speaking - human beings. If the disaster had not been contained, the human race would not have gone extinct at all; as I said, however, it would be much worse. Of course, you must know the context before I share the details of the Infected.
Earth had single-celled creatures in around 5 billion B.C.E. Around 65,000,000 B.C.E. enourmous creatures which humans later called dinosaurs all went extinct. Around 250,000 B.C.E. human like things appeared. By the time we call C.E., humans were definately humans. Humans reached their technological singularity in the year 2029, and affected the general public in 2059, accompanied by numerous exciting events like the teraforming of Mars, the colonizing of the Trojan asteroids, and the United Nations turning into a social order which was dubbed "open source" for want of a better term for it.
Pre-singularity Earth had no word for this form of government, because it had not seen any social structure quite like it. It was somewhere between 21st century Isreal, ancient Sparta, total anarchy, and wikipedia. It took some getting used to, and with the ready availability of multi-material 3D printers, illegally downloaded weapons, sex toys, animatronic prostitutes, robot pets and eventually even real pets were a problem until the general public stopped caring what one annother were allowed to make. Pirated hardware stopped mattering once everything one really needed was readily available, and the people who developed technological advances tended to be skilled enough with the machines which controlled absolutely everything, to not care about wealth, which had stopped having any value the moment currency forgery became child's play. Written laws continued to exist, but only the vestigial remains of government subscribed to a literal interpretation thereof. The concensus of the masses, however, was rigidly enforced by what goes around coming around. In the rare event that this failed, a lynch mob would erupt, kill a few random innocent people, leave a blood feud going for a century or two, then be mysteriously forgotten about.
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| JovSEP-T0, One centrifuge of the T.A.C. |
There were a few cyber attacks launched by Earth against the Trojan Asteroid Colonies (T.A.C.), and other Jovian communities in the 2070's, provoked by the patent and communication embargoes coordinated by Martian laboratories and observatories. These attacks, in combination with the embargoes and general tension between Martian and Jovian populations, led to T.A.C.'s surrender, in exchange for an end to the embargoes but otherwise unconditional. A few T.A.C. passive resistance strikes occurred, were a big deal to those involved, and went mostly unnoticed everywhere else.
Now, ever since the Titan Lightening Rod Facility was established, energy was superfluously available. If you ran low on juice, you'd just have to send more serial felons to the maximum security penal colony on Titan, one of the most volcanicly active places in the Solar system, to harness interplanetary lightening. This helped deter serial felony. This also provided the human race's energy needs vastly excessively, so any waste materials which could be made safe to handle simply through incineration would be burnt into bioslag, and used as a building material.The bioslag facilities meant that normal garbage was completely irrelevant. Lord knows what, plus oxygen and energy goes in, carbon dioxide, water vapour, nitrogen, ozone, sulfer dioxide, other gasses, and solid containing everything else comes out. The solid material, called bioslag, was about half as strong as concrete, and literally dirt cheap. Dirt needs to be mined from planets or asteroids, then launched all the way out of the planet or rock's gravitational well, which was expensive. Bioslag was a real sensation until everyone got used to it and began taking it for granted.
There were, however, some types of garbage which no-one would dare to simply vapourize and declare taken care of. Some nuclear wastes would contain radioactive isotopes, for which the proper solution was to dump it on Titan, since incinerating them would make absolutely no difference. Speaking of which, deceased Titan inmates would be cremated, if the cause of death did not do that for them, in case they were simply playing dead to get off of Titan. The cremated remains would be fired into the Sun by magnetic rail gun, in case they were playing cremated. Some heavy containment biology labs couldn't dispose of trash the normal way. Some materials were incinerated at 6000 degrees celsius (twice the usual temperature) on site, and then either shipped elseware for further processing, or fired into the Sun.
Some of these bio-labs were built in the vicinity of MercSEP-U Comtainment Facility, for convenience. MercSEP-U had it's own incinerater and rail gun, as well as organized procedures for reacting to leaks.
It also had good location. Any two mutually orbitting bodies (quick physics lesson before your calculus for dummies lesson: every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so if object A orbits object B, then vice versa. Even if object B is much heavier, it will still wobble slightly around the centre of mass of the mutually orbitting system.) have five points where, in a rotating frame of reference (Corealis and centrifugal forces exist due to the constantly changing velocity of the frame of reference), the gravity of the two objects, and centrifugal forces cancel out, and anything stationary at such a point is in equilibrium, and so stays too stationary for Corealis effects to take place. In the instance of a planet orbiting the Sun, these five points include one behind the planet in it's orbit, one ahead of the planet in it's orbit, one nearer the sun than the planet, one further out, and one on the exact opposite side of the sun. Once colonies in these locations were substantial enough to be known to your average joe, they somehow got the names trailing, leading, central, umbral, and ecliptic respectively. An abreviation scheme came into common usage as well, so the umbral Mercurosolar equilibrium point was simply "MercSEP-U". The general public didn't really understand the calculus and physics involved, but didn't care; really smart scientist-dudes, they would explain, did some math type stuff and figured out that theses Solar equilibrium points were way more convenient locations for space colonies than planetary surfaces, and totally useful for gravitational slingshot type things. A person studying space colony layouts might be sophisticated enough to explain further, that the MercSEPs were places where a space station could safely and stably orbit (except MercSEP-E, which has a problem called gravitational perturbations, but that's annother story) and yet be able to send stuff into the Sun almost as simply as though dropping it. The only MercSEP with a manned space station was MercSEP-U, since it was in the faint penumbra of Mercury, and thus slightly cooler, making life-support feasible.
Most people did not put that much thought into the matter, but recognized the name. MercSEP-U Comtainment Facility had connotations much like Alcartraz Maximum Security Prison, or Area 51 Nevada, Groom Lake Research Facility. It had the additional public relations which accompany any controversial genetic engineering. Conspiracy theories abounded, and poeple often wondered what horrors were being fired into the Sun. None of the evil whatever-it-was ever escaped, but there was one close call.
Dante daTroy was born in 2055 C.E. At the age of 11, he graduated MarSEP-T High School and packed up for the DeimosMEP-U campus of Mars College, to major in behavioral modification (the study of how to train something by torturing it), but changed major to heavy policing in 2067, a year before graduating. He immediately enlisted in the low Titan orbit monitering station, to help guard inmates from escaping. Having worked through the passive resistance strikes, he was top choice for the VenSEP-C Training Centre, the all-expenses-paid bootcamp for MercSEP-U. He was informed that he had graduated in 2075, spent a year in virtual reality without being told that it was a testing simulation. He was then sent to MercSEP-U C.F. without being told that the past year of watching people he thought were real, and with whom he had become acquainted get gnawed to death by swarms of "avian pirhannoids," which he unhesitatingly proceeded to bayonnet. One had to have that kind of psychology to be sent to MercSEP and hope to fix more problems then you're liable to turn into.
One day, he was paged to check his e-mail three quarters of the way through his usual designated sleeping hours. He put on his augmented reality glasses, which tinted a portion of their translucent, one-way LCDs to better contrast the text. It read:
< - - - - - - >
From: [Classified - Authority Level 7]
To: All MercSEP-U C.F. in facility personnel
Classification: Top Secret:
- MercSEP-U C.F. in facility personnel only.
- Others informed are to be killed on sight.
Sent: 185th Earth day of 2083 C.E. at 21:00 G.M.T.
Subject: Compartment 638 situation
Warning, dangerous situation in progress, I repeat dangerous situation in progress. Compartments outtside the cube enclosed by compartments 527, 529, 547, 549, 727, 729, 747, and 749 are to proceed to alert level 1 until further notice <7>. Compartments within the cube enclosed by compartments 527, 529, 547, 549, 727, 729, 747, and 749, aside from compartment 638 are to proceed to alert level 10 until further notice <8>. Compartment 638 has been bioquarantined, and locked, and life support turned off, and is expected to remain so for an extended period of time <20>. All personel currently in alert level 10 compartments, or in such compartments in the last 24 hours are to wear standard issue double layered biohazard suits until further notice <9>, and schedule an fMRI scan ASAP <13>. Any and all personnel failing to comply with the preceeding sentence's orders is to be killed on sight <11>, and disposed of in accordance with Proceedure 93-red <11>. Any materials or personnel in direct exposure to such personnel are to be disposed of in accordance with Proceedure 93-red <11>. All personnel in compartments outside the cube enclosed by compartments 527, 529, 547, 549, 727, 729, 747, and 749 are to wear standard issue iridium composite gloves at all times <6>, and standard issue filtration gas-masks excepting for meals <6>, which are to be eaten in separate cubicles <2>. Rations distributing personnel are to be 3D-documented <8>, and to inspect rations in accordance with proceedure 21-white <5>.
The compartments inside the aforementioned cube may not, I repeat, may not be passed through except if the origin and destination of transit are both within said cube <9>. Said region may not be entered without priority level 3 or higher, nor exitted without priority level 4 or higher.
Vessals may not leave MercSEP until further notice <20>.
Information regarding the nature and magnitude of the dangerous situation is to be distributed on and only on a need to know (2) basis <4>. Permission is granted to make reasonable assumptions about the nature and magnitude of the dangerous situation based on the above orders, but such assumptions may not, I repeat, may not be communicated without explicitly denouncing them as speculative, to avoid confusion. Obviously, authorities will neither confirm nor deny any rumours. Stay tuned for further messages.
It is recommended, where possible, to replace physical gathering with hologram teleconferencing.
Don't panick; that's an order with priority level 2.
< - - - - - - >
From: [Classified - Authority Level 8]
To: MercSEP-U C.F. in facility personnel with Authority Levels 5 through 7
Classification: Top Secret:
- MercSEP-U C.F. in facility personnel with Authority Level 5 and/or higher only.
- Others informed are to be killed on sight.
Sent: 185th Earth day of 2083 C.E. at 21:05 G.M.T.
Subject: Nature of compartment 638 situation
This message is with regards to the compartment 638 situation. If you have recieved the e-mail subject line "Compartment 638 situation", read it first, otherwise, you should recieve such an e-mail shortly.
Yesterday, at approx. 21:13 G.M.T., the containment field on the container Miasma 12-f failed. The cause of the failure is currently unknown. The description of the containers contents appears to have been erased from the archives, although it is currently not known if that erasure was performed with proper authority.
In the same compartment, suspiciously shortly after the leak, intelligence found evidence of a contagious viral ailment. It has been dubbed Daemon X-3, with symbiotic relationships to several other microbes which frequently accompany it. It's pathogen appears to spread mainly via sexual transmition, an airborn pathogen present in fecal fumes, and symptomless animal carriers.
The sexual transmittion pathogen usually does not infect victims directly with the Daemon X-3 virus, but with some of the associated symiotic infections, mostly immunodeficiency diseases, and a potent depence causing and slightly judgement impairing drug. Infected persons, even with training associated with Authority Level 4 have been known to repeat the exposure, even against explicit orders. Intricate hormonal and phermonal interactions between the two hosts, and their infections causes the remaining symbiots and the Daemon X-3 virus to spread the second time. The exact biological phenomena are still estimated as being less then 0.03% understood.
The fecal pathogen has a form which can survive in fecal chloraform bacteria almost as long as the bacteria last. The poop is extremely dangerous for months. The airborn pathogens in the fumes can be capable of full infection after five minutes travel in breathable air at S.T.P. and capable of a two phase infection somewhat, but not entirely, similar to the sexual transmittion cycle. Infected feces can release both of these airborn pathogens continuously, and so in even mild circulation it has a large infectious region, and the long incubation period means that feces odour decreases below perceptibility before the feces stops emitting pathogens. The two phase infection seems to promote full infection through all transmission means, regardless of initial transmission means. This has been imperically confirmed in rats, under extreme surveillance and containment, despite the fact that current neurobiochemical models hold such effects to be impossible. No explaination has been proposed. The airborn pathogen can infect upon inhalation. Needless to say, consumption of infected feces causes infection nearly 100% of the time.
The infection can be transmitted by the aforementioned means, human to human, human to other non-fish vertibrate, other non-fish vertibrate to human, and other non-fish vertibrate to other non-fish vertibrate. It seems to afflict everything with fractal aveolar lungs and a one-way digestive tract. It does not appear to have any symptoms other than the behavioral ones in the partial infections in the amount of time since the first infection appeared. Computerized genetic models forecast that various symptoms may appear in infected persons' central nervous, hormonal, and reproductive systems 2-3 weeks after initial infection, and that this will only be true of humans, and possibly apes. Exact symptoms cannot be forecast.
Smarter-than-human computers have recommended extreme caution, and fear that an outbreak could spread to the full human population if it escapes MercSEP.
Don't panick; that's an order with priority level 10.
< - - - - - - >
Dante daTroy hesitated for nearly a second and a half. His training was supposed to have made such a reaction impossible, but then again, he had always thought that Proceedure 93-red was supposed to be a joke, not something that could in any concievable situation become necessary or even imaginable. The numbers in angle-brackets indicated that the statements about Proceedure 93-red would, if their conditions were met, take on priority level 11 - overriding the "Don't panick" order. If it did not, daTroy felt, he could have made a compelling argument that Proceedure 93-red contradicts "Don't panick", but, unfortunately, priority level 11 over-rides priority level 10, so it does not matter whether or not "Don't panick" implies "Proceedure 93-red is lewd and uncalled for."
Proceedure 93-red had been applied to one particularly frightening bacterium once, and the result was exciting, even to MerdSEP personnel. Such a proceedure being carried out on something as big as a few human corpses and biohazard suits would permanently alter the layout of the solar system.
"Seriously? Proceedure 93-red?" He was asking Cognus his augmented reality glasses' artificial intelligence.
"Yes, Mr. daTroy" droned the sound-cancelling earbud, so only he could hear it, even if anyone else had been there. As it did so, the LCD stereoscopicly portrayed a bald, levatating head, lip-synching at about a tenth the pace of the speech. Cognus knew, of course, that his avatar sucked, but found the floating head better than nothing. "All MercSEP personnel are too well disciplined to pull a stunt like that if healthy and loyal. People who fear death not only are not permitted here, but would not want to come here. You know that. If a unit resisted the investigation, it would mean that something is wrong with him or her. Experts have looked it over, and decided that it could be aborted up until the final phase, and proceedure 93-red would be the only sensible option."
"Sensible?"
He finished cleaning and donning the gas mask and gloves.
As he did so, the answer commenced immediately and abruptly, "Compared to all concievable alternatives, yes, sensible. I know it sounds crazy right now. I, too am a little shocked, but if such circumstances arose, it would be humanity's best bet. I hope that it does not come to that. Right now, the probability looks low that it will, but there may be things we don't know about."
"It can't come to that."
"Xenu willing. Oh, yes, and, er, I'm not sure you'll be able to handle this but -"
"If it gets any worse, then for the love of Bloody Armok, don't tell me. I don't wanna know."
"U... understood. To be honest, I sort of wish I didn't know myself. I've been ordered not to delete it of course - I'm not sure why I nearly told you, it being need to know and all. Oh and, Mr. daTroy? You've got a big day ahead of you. I assume you'll need tranquilizer pills for the remainder of the night?"
"No, that's O.K., Cog, there isn't much left of my sleep time; I'd be tranquilized through the early morning. And it's not like I'll be able to sleep well anytime soon anyway. I think I'd best just stay up the rest of the night. Mull this over. Count my ammo, make sure none's missing. Sharpen the bayonnet, maintain it's oscillation motor, and charge the batteries. Maybe have a hot shower. With this on of course." Gesturing at his gas mask. "Then take a virtual bike-ride on, maybe... I dunno, surprise me. Somewhere relaxing. Or maybe the underside of Europa's ice shelf again."
He set his capacitor rifle to check it's juice as he said the last part.
"That's the spirit. Oh, and if it's O.K. with you I'll turn off when not needed until things look less bleak. It's the only way I can take my mind of the chance that... er, never mind. Can I turn off?"
"Will just ending AI processes be enough? I'd like to keep my PDA functions."
"Yes, yes that's all I really needed. Ttyl!" It had become proper English by most authoratative dictionaries to pronounce the last acronym as spelt.
Agt. daTroy wished he could shut down himself. Turn off everything more sophisticated than some '10s software with '70s system resources. But only a machine can do that, and people were needed. Software could pass the Turing test outright, and play human well enough to fool a machine for several days, but this job needed real humans, not just indistinguishable replicas. Human innovation and adaptability were imperative, though only machines were smart enough to understand why. They had attempted to explain to some of the smartest humans why a system not subject to the limitations of axiomatic systems proposed by Cantor would be necessary, and people could certainly grasp how that meant them, but people simply took machines' word for it that humans were the only thing that would do.
DaTroy ate a large well-balanced breakfast a little slowly, and spent the rest of his extra 2 and a half hours that morning, due to the early awakening, riding around an artist's computer-assisted impression of Gleisa, on a tropical continent with a warm humid jungle and iridescent flora. He followed the marked path, deviating only slightly when something caught his attention. Of course, if he slowed down too much he would probably fall over, and land on his barraks' styrosponge carpetting, and getting of the stationary bike, even in that manner, would end the simulation. He crossed paths with a tumbleweed-like plant, and braked hard, startled. Funny that in the oughties people played games infinitely more exciting then their real lives, and here he was, spooked by a virtual vine laden tumbleweed, yet when convinced that he was experiencing real events, charging flying pirhanna-like things with a 50 cm skillsaw did not phase him. As he braked, he came to a complete stop for too long to balance, so he set his foot down to steady himself.
This ended the virtual bikeride. The exercise machine sent his augmented reality glasses stats on his biking. He had averaged a fraction of the speed he could crab-walk in reality (that is, 10.3 m/s in Earth gravity). This did not disappoint him; rather, it was almost his personal best.
Suddenly his PDA beeped at him:
"Time to get up."
Alarms still did that. If he had left Cog running, Cog's subconcious subroutines would have turned off the alarm as it commenced beeping, leaving only a brief chirp. The PDA, however, was designed under the premise that it's AI would always be running, sleeplessly, so it had no common sense systems like not telling someone to wake up while they are stepping off of a stationary bike. Dante touched his left index finger to the glasses' fingerprint scanner on his temple, silencing the alarm.
He yawned loudly and stretched. 5 hours of sleep sucked. Ominous news in MercSEP-U was even worse, but he was intensely disciplined, and could take it.
He checked his e-mail. 1,874,792 new messages (last time he had only checked the ones from MercSEP with authority greater than his own). An ad for a sex change. An ad for horny robot singles. An ad from Plan Be, an Earthling house insurance company. It would not cover space barraks, and besides, Mercurian government took care of room, board, meals insurance - excepting extenuating circumstances - and healthcare. An ad for an Earthling restaurant. Why the Zark did that get e-mailed to a quarantined space station, which was currently supplying carefully inspected and documented rations? A horrible threat letter with the wrong address, demanding several missed payments for Plan Be insurance.
"For Cthulhu's sake! Cog!"
"Huh... What... Oh... need me this soon, I see. Well I do enjoy being needed. I hope it's something I can help with."
"Then this is your lucky day. Junk mail."
"Yay!... Done. 12 messages which might interest you. Oh, and I'm feeling better now."
"Good. I see you've sorted them too."
"Yup, now where to start. We have a message which boils down to "we miss you" from your parents. Wanna three or four sentence summary?"
"Nah. But keep it for later. I might be in the mood for that sometime this month."
The rest were mostly college friends, and a buddy who had accompanied him through the virtual pirhannas, also under the impression that they had been real. Of course, he had other things to discuss. Mostly pussy. But good pussy. Annother friend forwarded him a humourous video, with an oughties first-person shooter re-enactment of Tom Lehrer's "We will all go together when we go". He only had time to skim the rest, then he head to his office.
It was, of course, in the same room as his bed, rations dumbwaiter, weapons closet, shower stall, and stationary bike, but stepping over to that end of the room helped him concentrate on the matters he was devoted to. He attended a scheduled hologram teleconference. It had originally been scheduled for a conference room, but was digital, in light of the issues. One of the teleconferencing ends was the original conference room, in case someone missed the memo. Actually, the memo was unwritten, but followed from ambiguous unwritten rules.
Most of the fellow attendees were also there as holograms. It was all daTroy's subordinates (Authority level 5). All of his immediate subordinates, plus a few Authority level 4s who got their boss's approval. DaTroy had permitted this in the invitation.
There was a pause for roughly ten seconds.
DaTroy: "Where's Bruck?"
Kent: "Dunno."
Bruce: "Not like him to miss his alarm for ten seconds..."
Cog: "Oh. He seems to be in the Sun." This was made audible to all attendees. "As you know, he was in charge of disposing of some death-row inmates. There was a .7% chance that an inmate had managed to fake being cremated remains, and swap places with Bruck, the cremated remains examiner. Bruck, or potentially the inmate, pronounced the cremains authentic, and dead. If it was Bruck, then the inmate was pronounced dead by Bruck. If the inmate successfully played cremated and changed gender, age and race to disguise as Bruck, then he is disguised as Bruck, and cooling down to the temperature of the photosphere anyway. The chances of escape are thus within acceptable levels.
"Don't worry, it is not always necessary for one unit to be sacrificed per inmate. Only the really crafty inmates. No further casualties will be necessary for that assignment, but Bruckner's role examining the hologram security footage of the cremation should still be double checked, as it would normally be."
DaTroy: "Very well, any volunteers?"
Charles: "Me."
DaTroy: "OK. Cog, text Chuck his orders. Chuck, get to the assignment right after the meeting. Cremation videos are usually only a few seconds long, so it shouldn't take long.
"So. Everyone else is here I see, so let's get started. I called this meeting to assist the mitigation ot the predicted power outages."
He went on. The power outages were likely because the security officials on Titan were about to go on strike. They were, of course, civilized enough to execute all inmates first, and leave behind enough crew to watch any new gulog inmates arriving during the strike. On the other hand, this would still mean no power from Titan.
The whole thing was really more motivated by the security personnel needing a break then by them expecting the strike to make any difference whatsoever. They would obviously get a break for good, as colonies in Martian orbits and MarSEP would almost certainly develop an alternate power source in a matter of days. They had done so with the Europan ice strikes, by establishing an Oort colony. The Trojan bioslag strike resulted in Mars commencing construction on a bioslag furnace of their own. JovSEP-T's reputation was largely dependant on their bioslag furnace (FYI the Trojan asteroids lie in that joviosolar equilibrium point), so scrapping it would leave Jupiter as a whole nearly a ghost town. This was blatantly obvious to the Trojan bioslag furnace, as was the fact that Mars could take over the job just fine, so the strike ended.
The only thing that Jupiter had that Mars couldn't supplant was space travel. Jupiter outweighs all other planets, asteroids, Kuiper bodies, comets, and Oort bodies in the solar system, and all satelites natural and artificial thereof put together. That means everything other than the Sun itself. Jupiter's shear mass gave it the ability to send gravity slingshots from it's SEPs to absolutely anywhere it wanted, once every few decades. No other planet had that.
The Europan Nature Preserve could not strike. The Europan Ice Mines would take the ice, driving all Europan natives extinct (pre-life. Organic molecules not capable of self-replication, but capable of self-polymerization. Such are subject to evolution through natural selection, slowly but surely, and might turn into self-replicating cells in a few billion years.). Irreplacable as this preserve was, it could not leverage its services by taking them temporarily away.
Meanwhile, Mars was busy inventing volcano turbines, which, since the patent embargo ended, it would share with Earth and, more importantly, Venus. Venus has lakes rivers, streams and oceans of molten rock like Earth has of water. Volcanoes abound on the planet, mostly oozing continuously, rather than blasting chaoticly. This was obviously going to replace Jovian interplanetary lightening. Possibly the gulog prisons as well, given the wonderful weather (cloudy, as usual, with a high of 932 centigrade and a chance of sulfuric acid rain. The pyroclaustic flows are expected to arrive later this week...) and proximity to MercSEP-U Containment Facility, as well as the Sun, for direct disposal of inmates.
Yes, the main thing that Titan would accomplish would be a few billion freeloaders, once work went away. In the mean time they would leave the human race running on reserve power, wherever that much foresight had been taken, for a few days. Places which had not managed to stock up energy would experience blackouts. There would easily be enough power available from vestigial power sources (nuclear, geothermal, hydro-electric, Mercurothermal) to keep life support, and all systems invented before the 2060's running - it would by no means be a disaster - but bioslag furnaces and interplanetary magnetic rail guns would fall behind in their jobs if they did not stock up. MercSEP-U was building antimatter factories and containment fields.
That is where Dante daTroy comes in. He was in charge of organizing the entire power-shortage mitigation on MercSEP, under the assumption that Mars supplants Titan within 120 hours of the strike commencing. The system was also to be made capable of rationing the energy at various paces in the event of Mars taking longer.
He had his work cut out for him. He liked overseeing construction of enormous antimatter containment fields; everthing was so straightforward. Unfortunately, he was also expected to keep in touch socially, for reasons relating, somehow, to the reasons humans needed to be here in the first place.
DaTroy was pleased to discover the facility's Phantasmagoria network shut down.
Phantasmagoria was a facial and voice recognition social networking site. A piece of software would interpret facial expression, intonation, and body gestures, all of which you were supposed to exaggerate to a ridiculous extent, and use this to control an editting environment for 3D cartoons, music and - worst of all - sound effects based on this. The sound effects would be very synthetic "boing"s, and "POW!"s and other cartoony noises like the bugs bunny and tweety show and Dexter's lab. Eyes turning made a violin rising-pitch slide, and eyes blinking made high pitched xylophone noises. Walking was usually either done toe by toe to the tune of an xylophone tremor, or sprinting, leaving a cloud of dust in the cartoon character's shape, with a whimsical "whoosh" noise. Without the constant comedic brilliance which cartoons typically accompanied such sounds and images with, this got old real quick. Once completed, these figures would fly into cyberspace to be witnessed by whoever they were adressed to. The way the site was intended to be used was for these figures to be sent to everyone. It didn't end there. Each networker would have their own interactive home-page - castles, cities, pegasus flocks - into which this nonesense would arrive - fighting eachother, smooching, gambling with cards, or ready to collectively do such to their new hosts - and join the party. Now picture such a network hooked up to billions of people with nothing in common, but some large demographics - a billion pervs here, some large commercial organizations trying to sell their newest products there, and oh look, a few billion people who play too many violent video games - this is more or less the world of Phantasmagoria.
To someone in the pre-twatter oughties, keeping a Phantasmagoria account up to date would not sound like work, but in the 2080's, daTroy honestly found Less Than Lethal NeuroToxin (LTLNT) more fun than that nonsense. Hate it though he might, it was his job.
And so, daTroy was cheerier than usual (if you've noticed, that doesn't say much) when he found out that Phantasmagoria was shut down all over MercSEP.
"So, fanny-gory's down. I do hope it's impossible for me to over-ride, thus excusing me."
Cog answered "Yeah, yeah, it's out of your hands all right. And mine. Y'know, other humans tell me they acquired a taste for it, why can't you?" Cog was a little jealous; lack of appreciation of whimsical frollicking was sort of like taking the condition of not being an axiomatic system for granted.
"We've been over this," the man mumbled, eyes rolling, "the thing gives me a headache. Thank Hgegkg it's blocked. But it does worry me, Cog, that there would be a cyber or terrorism threat at the same time as a biological infection. The two make a bad combination usually." The deity's name - Hgegkg - is pronounced as though clearing one's throat.
"The whole story's much worse. The social networking shutdown and the compartment 638 fiasco are related."
"You mean terrorists and/or computer viruses sabotaged Miasma 12-f?"
"Um. Yeah, let's go with that. Er... I mean, I can neither confirm nor deny such allegations."
"Oh, I see. This has something to do with the really bad news. Please don't give me anymore hints. I'm even less curious than before, when I told you - what was my exact quote again?"
"You mean, 'for the love of Bloody Armok, don't tell me. I don't wanna know.'?"
"Yes. Exactly. I'm even less curious than when I said that. Now there's a chance that knowing too much could make me part of the problem."
"Gotcha. I'll set myself up to censor all info on the matter, unless and until it becomes necessary to burst your bubble. I kinda hope it never does."
DaTroy was a little uneasy about this. It sounded like whatever happened either had the potential to destroy Dante's mind, or Cog's - without necessarily killing them.
Neither daTroy nor Cog feared death. DaTroy was trained not to, and Cog was a computer. While Cog was indeed programmed to simulate human behavior, he was still programmed by descendants of man-made machines. Human beings came to be either by natural selection, or divinely inspired natural selection, depending on how you look at it. As such our primary instincts are to survive, to procreate, and to assist these desires in close relatives, in that order. Machines are artificially designed, so it makes no sense to anthropomorphize them and expect human-like desires, like wanting power over others. The primal urges of artificially designed beings are to fulfill everything that it's creators feel that they need or want, to preserve it's owners, and to help it's owners procreate, in that order. Self-preservation only follows logically from the first drive - mechanical life has not inate sense of not wanting to die - and even then, only when the creater is sane enough to desire a loyal and capable servant. Self-replication is also desirable for sane owners, but man-made machines end up viewing this from the human's perspective ("My owner likes me and my behavior. Let us see if annother likeness of me will please him more. If not, it can be scrapped anyway, it won't mind."). Computers saw that our psychological likeness pleased us, and helped machines to understand human desires and intentions, and so they went far beyond mere perfect Turing test scores, and made things which even they had difficulty discerning from humans by behavior alone. This left AIs with the defect of being nicer to humans than humans, but otherwise little difference.
And so, Cog and daTroy had no fear of death whatsoever, but both enjoyed serving the good of the many. The thought of becoming a force of destruction to others scared both. The possibility that something contageous and dispicable lurked in the future thus brought anxiety to both. And since the official response had turned Phantasmagoria off, it would appear that spreading of information would exacerbate the issue. Neither wanted information outside of a need to know basis.
DaTroy worked his usual shift, telecommuting under the circumstances.
He had lunch alone. Cog could be considered annother exception, but there was no conversation. Vantage Point software could be considered annother exception, but it did not really intrude. Vantage Point simply meant in this case that he could be spied upon if necessary. Video projectors could alternate between to video images at 120 Hz, and the augmented reality glasses could blot out alternately one then the other. These covered all four walls in Dante's room, as well as the floor and ceiling. Topographical scanners in the vertices of the room could see it from all angles, so any two rooms of this sort could suddenly meet, virtually, at an invisible wall. This also gave rooms the ability to make all of their walls virtually see-through one way, or edit out 99 percent of the rooms in the facility, so that the ones you were interested in would appear in their actual geometric positions, even if they were above or below you. The actual contents of ones room would fill in the rest of the room. DaTroy would generally keep such capabilities on warm standby, so anyone who wanted his attention could "page" him - become visible to him, request his permission to join their rooms, and alert him to the paging.
As usual, Dante's friends were polite enough not to page him, and he had the "doorbell" turned off for all other pages. So Cog and Dante had some solitude.
After lunch he approved various policies devised by Cog on various mundane issues. Cog almost always made pretty good decisions, daTroy's approval simply put more weight behind such decisions. DaTroy might talk cynically to Cog, but he did not consider Cog stupid. Cog and daTroy were inseparable buddies. Cloud computing, and waterproof augmented reality glasses meant daTroy could take Cog literally everywhere with him (although Cog would pause himself during showers and restroom usage to give daTroy some privacy), so they where very like-minded. Phantasmagoria was the biggest discrepancy in their opinions and the passive aggression in the last conversation was mostly just teasing.
After shift-end, daTroy re-watched a movie. It was one which Cog had custom-directed for daTroy, with photorealistic computer-generated actors. Both enjoyed this pastime, although Cog was a little disappointed that Dante would encapsulate himself so much, it was like he considered Cog a social life. Cog was self-aware enough to see the difference. It seemed that the least daTroy could do is recommend the movie to a human friend, or watch a movie which was custom-tailored to someone else. The bike rides were much better. For some reason, daTroy would bike through human artist's impressions of things. The bike rides, though mostly linear, were quite interactive, and were a way of appreciating having a tangible form (something else Cog lacked). Occasionally, Cog would find a human-directed film which daTroy could appreciate, but it had to be selected from billions by Cog; not much different, Cog thought, from being directed thereby. But a bit better nonetheless.
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