Gina shrugged. “Yeah, no way to know. But they’re not like royalty. They won’t command a following of fanatically loyal subjects.”
“Right. We’ll keep an eye out, do patrols, but it’s not top of the priority list. What are you doing with the five you captured?”
“Four of them will go to trial for the hundred and fifty deaths of Thark citizens. The consensus seems to be a lifetime posting to the fish plant, or something equally smelly.”
“And Brennan?”
Gina sighed. “Honestly, Marcus, we don’t really have anything. We played with the idea of incarcerating him for life, or deporting him to another colony, or even back to Earth. All of those alternatives are a ton of effort and cost, and make no sense except as some form of retribution. And he’s not worth it. We’re considering just sticking him with the other four and being done with it.”
There were nods around the table. Fish plant labor was easy to automate, but the Council had used it as a punishment for dissidents and miscreants. The irony of hoisting them on their own petard was so overt that it needed no further words. Brennan deserved worse, but I agreed that he didn’t deserve the effort required to arrange something.
“And meanwhile,” I looked to one of my monitor windows in my heads-up, which showed the orbital autofactories in full swing. “Another dozen or so cities and we’ll have the entire population of Poseidon in the air.”
Gina grinned at me. “And then we’re gonna vote you out on your ear.”
“Can’t wait.”
Announcement
Riker
October 2227
Sol
Bedlam.
No, even that wasn’t a strong enough word. It reminded me of the first meetings of the UN, way back when. Everyone was attempting to talk at once. Half the people were hammering their Request buttons, the other half were ignoring them. The chairperson sat at her desk with her head in her hand.
I grinned into the camera. Technically, I still had the floor, so my mike was active. “Sooooo, want to hear more?”
The chaos cut off like a switch had been thrown.
“As I said, this vessel will hold all of the remaining population of Earth. Every last one. We will obviously still have to build stasis pods. However, Herschel and Neil, the two Bobs in charge of the Bellerophon, are also building pods in their cargo bay as they travel. Good news, they have all the material they could possibly need. Bad news, with relativistic time dilation, they’ll only have three and a half years to work with.”
Representative Misra requested and got the floor. “Could they slow slightly and enjoy a longer subjective time to work in?”
I smiled and nodded. Ms. Misra understood the mechanics very well. It made talking to her so much easier than most of these bozos. I grimaced for a moment at the unintended contempt in that thought.
“That’s correct. However, it would result in a longer transit time from our point of view. There’s still the Others to worry about. Their plans are a big unknown, but we’re going to assume we don’t have time for a leisurely flight plan. I’d rather get them here quickly, then we can make use of all that scrap in their hold.”
I shared out a list of tasks and milestones. Most of the UN delegates ignored it, but a few looked down and started reading.
“Once the Bellerophon gets here with her hull full of scrap metal, we can assign every single printer and AMI to the task of building more pods. Meanwhile, we need to make sure our shuttles are all in good working order. I’ve calculated that we can move about three hundred thousand people at a time, using the existing airworthy enclave shuttles and cargo vessels. I’d like to get that number up to a round million.”
I released the floor and nodded to the chairperson. Every Request light in the UN lit up.
Fun times.
Representative Hubert from the North African enclave took the floor. “Mr. Johansson, I am concerned that we will not have enough stasis pods for all of Earth when the ship, er, the Bellerophon arrives. Yet I note that you are still allocating resources to things like colony ships and shuttles. What about creating more printers, to increase the throughput? I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but have you considered what the most efficient schedule is?”
Hubert sat down and turned off his mike, giving up the floor.
I nodded an acknowledgement. I could have been offended, but I’d rather have the question asked and answered. “Representative Hubert, it is a good question, and well worth asking. And the answer is that I spend a considerable portion of my time considering all the alternatives. The problem is that, no matter what course you navigate, there is always a bottleneck. Whether it’s lack of printers to build everything, or lack of sufficient material, or lack of drones and roamers to assemble the parts into the end product—it’s always something. Shift your schedule and you simply shift the nature of the bottleneck. Printers, for instance, are the most complex thing that a printer can make, except for something biological. They take forever, and have a high defect rate because of the precision required. So it’s not as simple as just making more printers to enjoy the benefits of exponential growth. You give up considerable manufacturing opportunity while engaged in that particular task.”
I paused and looked around at the various windows. “Concentrate on shuttles and we may not have enough stasis pods come arrival day. Concentrate on stasis pods and we may not have a way to get people up to the carrier quickly enough. I’ve already decided to stop manufacturing colony ships. We’ve got enough returning ships, now, to keep a flow going, and we need the raw materials for shuttles and pods.”
I paused again, then turned off my mike and sat down. Immediately, a dozen request lights lit up. With a sigh, I realized I would be here for a while.
Court Battle
Howard September 2220
Omicron2 Eridani “How long do you expect this to last?” I whispered to Ms. Benning. I glanced across the courtroom where Bridget’s children sat with their lawyer, Gus Kistler.
“Actually, it’ll be over in an hour,” Benning replied. “In the end, it’s a really cut and dry situation. Bridget Brodeur’s last will is on file, and its veracity is not being questioned. They are trying for an ‘undue influence’ ruling, but since that’s usually about inheritances, it’s not likely to fly. Lastly, they’re trying for sympathy with the ‘laying our mother to rest’ gambit.”
She shuffled some papers. “What it’s really about is a delaying action. They’ve been trying to prevent it for long enough that something would happen, or we’d run out of money—” I snorted. Fat chance of that. “Or get tired of fighting, or we’d make a mistake…” Ms Benning turned to me. “They’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at us. It’s a good thing Mrs. Brodeur was wealthy.”