MORI GLARES AT THE 3D printer. “Stupid fucking machine.” It has stopped working today, of all days, and Tech is not his forte. “Shit, it’s the galvanometer, totally stuffed.”
Wait, wait, no need to panic. He recalls they have spares. Yes, Quinn ordered them; they’re in a box under her desk. He could be lucky— there might be a spare galvanometer waiting for him in the next room. And if he’s not lucky, she can help fix . . . no, no, no, he shakes his head, not a good idea, she can’t do that. She must stay away from the Station and stay focused on the wedding. He can’t have her too close right now. Everything will be fine if he can keep her distracted for a few more hours. It’s not a good thing he’s done, he’s fully aware, but he has a recovery plan, a blue-sky plan, a win-win, solid-terra-firma plan. He’s calculated the best-case scenario: She never finds out what he’s done, and there’s absolutely no reason to ever tell her the truth. She remains blissfully unaware, it’s a beautiful day to get married, and there’s no need to spoil it. He’s also calculated the worst-case scenario: She finds out and she’s pissed off, no doubt about it—the G12 is her baby. But, he reasons, it’s also kind of his baby, and they’re about to be married and couples share. He can make a case; she’ll understand. She’ll forgive him. No, no, no, she’ll never forgive me. She must never find out.
He checks the time on one of his Bands: a hour until the in-law invasion. He needs an IV vitamin infusion. He had one yesterday, and he tells himself he’s not dependent, but he needs another to get through the morning. He’s a little behind and the in-law invasion is playing on his mind. Not that he’s worried—he knows he’s likable—it’s just that her mother is sort of famous, world famous. A polymath, a professor of physics, and a philosopher of science. Lise has four Science Medals and a Nobel Prize in mathematics. She’s written twenty-two books and published over five hundred papers and essays on science, philosophy, politics, and economics. He looked her up, of course, and read her latest paper on the nesting of empty sets of numbers. It stated that reality is based on mathematics, and mathematics is based on nothing. At least he thinks that is what it said. He read the abstract; the rest was some shit about a theory of existence, or consciousness, or whatever you want to call it, based on nothingness. It was all profoundly disheartening, and he couldn’t get his thought sequence around any of it. At least he can say he read it.
He tells himself to prioritize: first the infusion brew, then he’ll fix the printer—if the piece doesn’t fit, he’ll use the spare printer to print a new part for the primary printer. It’ll take a little longer, but it’s his best option. Next, he needs to finalize the menu for the wedding, then meet the in-laws, check the Cloud Ship, sort the admin forms, and review the maps and geothermal charts. There’s also a pile of shipping requests and permits for Antarctica to finalize—and then the G12 data. That’s important; he needs to do that before she’s up and around, before she gets to it first. He glances again at the time on his Band; it’s still early. He has hours and hours, plenty of time. No need to rush.
He thinks of the menu and sighs. It’s been an absolute nightmare navigating the dietary needs of his guests. He didn’t foresee the difficulty—they’re all humans, they eat to survive, and they should eat what’s offered, but they don’t and they won’t. He’s catered for vegans, flexitarians, medicinal soupers, and edible foragers. But the main concern is animal protein. Transhumans prefer their meat clean and cultivated in a lab, not roaming around on a grassy paddock. Serving rare Wagyu beef with wasabi vinegar is risky and he doesn’t want to offend his VIP guests, but the product has already been sourced, ordered, and slaughtered.
He cornered Quinn a few days ago and ran his predicament past her. She paused, considered his dilemma, then replied, “Fries. You should serve fries. People love them. And beer—beer’s the best. Steak, fries, and beer—it’s a classic combo, you can’t go wrong.”
This confused him. Was she not listening? Had she misunderstood the problem? He tackled her again from a different angle, explaining his Wagyu concern, but she held up her hand, the way she does when she’s working, indicating that she was not to be disturbed, so he backed away.
Today, confidence imbues him. Today, he’s about to be married to a younger woman, a smart woman who knows how Axions define cold dark matter, and her climate model, the G12—well, it’s like having a super power. Her mother’s profile is also a bonus; the elevated social circles of the scientific community can’t hurt his career. He smiles to himself, buoyed by his future prospects, and makes a final decision to go with the beef fillet. If the Transhumans complain, he’ll blame the caterers. Moving down the list, he rejects synthetically produced seafood—no sea urchins, oysters, smoked salmon, or abalone. Half the population are self-harvesting in their cool zones. Next, he runs a line thorough insect sprinkles, cornhusks, and algae—too prolific. The motto is, “Rare food in a rarefied setting.”
Mori met Quinn six months ago. She was pitching her software system, the G12, to his brother, Niels—founder and CEO of eMpower, the Tech giant that liberated personal data. In a world of rising sea levels and human displacement, Niels created a global system that divorced data from the server. It was a sublimely simple strategy: release private information from the one-sided, avaricious, and oppressive relationship with Comm companies, governments, Corps, and search engines that were overtly collecting, mining, and selling the information. For the first time in decades, individuals controlled their own data. Corps couldn’t access it, use it, steal it, sell it, or profit from it in any way, and Niels Eco became a champion of the people—a very wealthy champion of the people.
Niels loves Tech more than he loves people, and the G12 sparked his interest. A synthetic virus that synced with the Earth’s magnetic field, connecting to the planet’s biosphere in real time, it was a predictive weather modeling wonder capable of accurately forecasting temperatures, winds, and rain days in advance. Initially, though, he couldn’t see the point of the system. The population was over global warming; they’d reached peak indifference decades earlier. They didn’t need to be told it was hot and dry because it was hot and dry all the time. Quinn’s system was also designed for nephology, the study of clouds, and she was two decades too late. The last time Niels had seen a cloud, he’d been thirty-five and it was 2035. Now, the only place clouds hovered was over the Polar Regions, where it rained all day, every day.
Despite this, he was interested in the software and the Tech. Quinn’s pitch to him revealed nothing about the software or the Tech, however. He probed and quizzed but got nothing in return and began to lose interest. Quinn, knowing her pitch was going nowhere—it never did—decided to change tactics. She held Niels’s gaze across the room, smiled, and said, “Space weather. Solar flares.”
A single flare could wipe out communication systems across the planet—satellites, the New Internet of Things (NIoT), and GPS, all destroyed in seconds. The G12, Quinn said, was astoundingly accurate at detecting radiation waves. There was potentially Coin to be made.
Niels was potentially interested.