NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (39 page)

To their complete surprise, Yanyan and Sascha find themselves standing in Andreas’s virtual room.  They watch him sitting behind a workbench smiling coyly at them and gesturing towards the two stools opposite him.

“How the hell did…?” asks Yanyan almost angrily.

Sascha stares curiously into his eyes.  “Why would you do that?”

“Please,” beckons Andreas, “take a seat.  I’ll explain everything.  I promise.”

As they both take to their stools, Yanyan asks, “Somehow no one knows, right?”

“Of course.  I had to get your attention.”

“But why like this?” asks Sascha, slightly perplexed.  “Why couldn’t you just bring it up during the meeting or attach a document to the file?”

Andreas smiles awkwardly, trying to work out how he can best distill eleven years of politicking and fierce competition over the pecking order into one concise statement.  “It doesn’t work that way here; I did what I had to do.  It’s as simple as that.  Well, it’s not…  There’s also an intrinsic need for privacy due to the nature of the issue I need to talk to you about.”

Yanyan squints for a moment, trying to work out his orientation.  “You’re on your own here, aren’t you?”

Andreas nods and reflexively swallows with some effort.  “It’s been like this for a long time … since before I got here, anyway.”

This gets the interest of both Yanyan and Sascha and they glance at each other with concern.

“Let me show you what I’ve got,” says Andreas with a sense of urgency.  “Here you go…”

After a few moments of processing, Sascha says, “I’m sorry about what you’ve experienced here, Andreas … but you’ve done an incredible job, regardless.”

Yanyan stares at him.  “The consequences of this … if your work had been squashed … or worse yet, if you had followed along with the order of things that’s become entrenched here, we probably wouldn’t have made this discovery.”

Sascha nods in acknowledgement.  “I think that’s the worst thing about this … well, not the worst thing, but it’s certainly disturbing to contemplate.”

Andreas glances back and forth between them.  “So how should we handle it from here?  I mean …”

“We should continue with your stealth programme,” states Yanyan.  “We have no choice.”

“That’s right,” says Sascha.  “We should also get you away from Venus in a low-key manner in the next week or so.  Until then, it should be business as usual.”

Yanyan looks at Sascha.  “We should just agree to the repopulation of Venus as scheduled and move on from there.”

Andreas cuts in, “I’ve got a whole series of updates I need to equip you with before reintegrating you.  You’ll be able to keep focused and communicate effectively in your own virtual rooms if need be as well.”

“Of course.  Go ahead,” says Sascha.  “We’ll send out a crew relocation memo in the coming week and you’ll be on it, okay?”

Andreas nods in appreciation.  “Thanks for understanding,” he says sincerely.

“Are you kidding me?” asks Yanyan.  “How could we not?  Without this, it’s game over.”

“She’s right Andreas.  We weren’t even speculating on the possibility.  The data that the investigation team supplied us with would have clearly convinced us to go down the wrong path.  We weren’t even close to considering this on our own.  I’m kind of embarrassed, actually.”

“It’s not easy to investigate, though,” admits Andreas.  “It’s really just that I’m generations ahead of these guys.”

“Clearly,” says Yanyan and Sascha in unison, evidently impressed by the fact.

Satisfied, Andreas smiles a little.  “Okay, let’s get on with it, then.”

“It was nice to see you again, Andreas,” says Sascha. 

“We both remember your parents,” adds Yanyan.  “It’s been too long.”

Andreas nods quietly.  “See you soon.”

Yanyan and Sascha disappear and are reintegrated.

For the remainder of the meeting, Andreas sits on his stool in his virtual room going over what they said and trying to put some perspective on his past and future.  He then reintegrates as he’s heading towards the exit of the conference room behind a small group of colleagues.  He glances over at Sascha and Yanyan: again they’re listening quietly to the Venus R&D manager, who is now flanked by his first and second advisors.  Andreas looks into his cup, sees that it’s empty and exists the room, walking directly back to his quarters to be alone.

Six days later

Andreas stands looking out beyond Venus and towards the approximate location of Earth from a private waiting room in Venus Space Station.  Before arriving this afternoon, he took digital representations and dissolved all of his meagre possessions in his apartment on the surface after he received his relocation orders yesterday — four days after repopulation.  He has a file containing his belongings’ specifications for later reproduction with his personal 3-D printer that he’ll no doubt have when he arrives at his destination: Facility 7.  This leaves him merely with a small carry bag packed with a few mementos and personal items that he can’t bring himself to subject to digital processing.

He glances at the time ticking away in his peripheral data feed and waits one more minute, observing the milliseconds rolling by.  He turns, walks towards the main door and exits.

On his way down the hallway towards the lift that will take him to the departure lounge, he’s contacted cognitively by the Second Adviser to the Venus R&D manager — something that hasn’t happened in several months.

Good afternoon, Andreas.

Oh, hi.

Could we meet in a more appropriate location?

Certainly.

The Second Adviser provides him with a key to an official virtual discussion room; Andreas prepares programs that will assist him to conduct surveillance and protect sensitive mental states from surreptitious observation.  After duplicating his consciousness, he walks into the room, where he sees the Second Adviser sitting quietly on a couch overlooking a representation of Venus.

“Please, take a seat,” directs the Second Adviser.

Andreas sits down.

The Second Adviser forces a smile.  “You know, Andreas,” she begins, “your behaviour over the last months has been noted, and …”

“I’ve been busy doing R&D.”

“Well, yes, we all have.  But you’ve been absent from the collaboration opportunities and your input at times has been cursory at best.”

“More than merely cursory.”

“Maybe just a fraction … but my criticism remains the same.  Compared to other personnel, your record over the last few years has been consistently below the average.  And over the last few months, you fell to …  To be honest with you, Andreas, it’s only because of your intermittent achievements and input that you were kept on here at all.”

Andreas furrows his brow.  “Was there some expectation that my achievements should follow some preconceived model of continuous productivity?  I mean, I was doing R&D — it takes time to get results.  Of course results are going to be ‘intermittent.’”

“Come on, you can’t be serious.  Multitasking is an important part of it; and it
is
a team, after all.”

“I use those multitasking programs, too, you know … and to great effect, I should add.”

“Sometimes we’ve wondered, though, Andreas.  In any case, we did try at various stages to intervene and encourage you to behave more prosocially and proactively in the collaborative process, but we only witnessed a small amount of improvement.  At times, our analyses allowed us to infer that you were merely attempting to keep the system satisfied at a minimal level.”

“A
what
level?”  Andreas asks cynically.

“What I really want to say is that this decision to move you on was something that we deliberated on for some time; we feel that we did all we could before referring your case on to Central R&D Management with our recommendation that you be relocated to see if your situation improves with the change of circumstances.  I hope you understand…”

“You hope?” Andreas asks rhetorically.

The Second Advisor looks at him slightly bemused.  “Surely you know you were only kept here for so long in the state you were in because of your family history, don’t you?”

Andreas plays the game and says, “I was not aware of that.  No.”

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, Andreas, but we did treat you quite well considering the fact that you put us in such a difficult position … and for so long.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I put you all through so much, then,” says Andreas barely able to contain himself.

“Let’s just look towards the future; there’s a lot of work still yet to be done, and a great many perils down the track.  I just hope you’re able to come to terms with what we’re attempting to achieve here and will find a way to participate more fully in your future endeavours.”

Andreas looks the Second Adviser carefully in the eyes and says, “I can see where you’re coming from, and I will certainly do my best.  Thank you for your concern.”

The Second Adviser stays quiet for a moment, reflecting on their conversation and consulting with the First Adviser under the false assumption of privacy from Andreas.  “That’s all I wanted to say; I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

“We are on the same page…  We are.  Thank you,” says Andreas with all the sincerity that he is able to muster.

The Second Adviser stands up and Andreas follows; she offers her hand to Andreas and they both shake mechanically.

“All the best to you, Andreas,” she says smiling gently.

Andreas nods awkwardly in his usual manner.  “You too.”

The room dissolves and Andreas’s consciousness reintegrates.  He steps out of an elevator and into the departure lounge overlooking the adjacent oxygen-free shuttle bay; he takes a seat next to the viewing window and watches the robotic maintenance crews working on several of the shuttles.

Over the following ten minutes prior to boarding, Andreas analyses the data that he collected during his conversation with the Second Adviser and reflects on the fact that they were not only disingenuously positioning themselves as having power and influence over his life but also attempting to probe him to determine whether or not anything deeper was going on behind the scenes; this was indicated demonstratively by the covert deployment of penetrative analytical tools aimed at accessing and assessing his cognitive states and data storage systems in an attempt to identify the possibility of duplicity and any other hidden information that may serve their purposes.  After finding nothing but consistent benign feedback provided by Andreas’s data substitution activities in the background, the Second Adviser and her shadow, the First Adviser, left the meeting satisfied that they had made their political point satisfactorily and, importantly, that Andreas was what they thought he was: a non-threat.

Andreas files the data and enters the shuttle through the air-sealed passage with his other colleagues on reassignment, all of whom were oblivious to the real intent of the operation.

Prepared for the long-haul flight, Andreas sits patiently as the shuttle passes through the station’s main exit; he takes one last glance at Venus as the shuttle picks up speed and races past on its way to one of several orbital transfer ports located between the orbits of Mars and Earth…

• • •

Over the following six weeks, one by one, the leadership of the Venus colony was reassigned strategically about the solar system; all fifty-five of the managers were demoted, subjected to retraining programmes and systematic monitoring.  Meanwhile, an investigation was conducted into the causes for the culture failure, and an updated monitoring system was soon instituted around the solar system.  The new incumbents in the top five management and assistant positions on Venus were at their posts within the first week and immediately set about generating organisational change at the colony based on the best cultural and R&D practices established at Facility 7 and the model colonies; within days following this, the oppressive atmosphere had been disrupted and an effective empirical work environment had begun to be instituted.

• • •

Facility 7: orbiting Earth

After eighteen hours of travelling and forty minutes spent at a transfer port, Andreas disembarks from the shuttle with the eighteen other passengers, none of whom he has ever met before.  Waiting for him at the departure gate is an orientation download that provides him with details of his accommodation and a schematic of the facility, which has changed dramatically since he left it all those years ago.

He nods at the passenger he had a short conversation with
en route
, and he jumps on a personal hover platform that immediately heads towards his quarters, nearly two kilometers away through a maze of lifts, escalators and corridors.  Observing the scene from his virtual laboratory, he begins an assessment of the facility’s R&D programme database, the security systems, the mainframe and the network structures.  The nature of his initial results provide him with the impetus to conduct a more extensive and elaborate investigation before requesting a meeting with Sascha and Yanyan.