Creations (12 page)

Max decided that was about enough for one day. As he left the building he met Safi going the same way. He told her about the exchange of words that had just taken place.

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” she said. “What is it with that guy? If ever anyone needed a session at charm school, it’s him.”

“He certainly does have problems,” Max agreed.

They walked together down the road that led alongside the complex. On the way they passed Ross, helping himself to one of the bikes that were used for getting to the off-road areas of the island. He had a rucksack on his back and was wearing a black baseball cap with “New Zealand” written across the front.

“Going anywhere good?” Max asked him.

“Just exploring,” he said. “I’ve got my backroom team doing my job for me today, so I thought I’d take a look round the south side of the island. Where are you two off to?”

“I’ve got some samples to pick up from the test beds,” Safi said.

“And I’m finished for the day,” Max said. “So I’m going home.”

Ross joined them as they walked down the hill, pushing the bike along beside him. Max gave him the Oliver story as they went. Once he’d finished Ross just shook his head and said “unbelievable” a few times, but like Safi he had to admit that it didn’t really surprise him.

“I wish I could figure him out,” he said. “Just when I think he can’t get any worse, he does. He was trying to argue with me about my own job the other day.”

“In what way?” Safi said.

“There’s some anaerobic bacteria on parts of the seabed round here that could mess up some of our extraction processes. He reckoned they don’t count as being alive because they don’t use
oxygen. I told him I’d been an oceanographer long enough to know the definition of whether something was alive or not.”

“Anything that can reproduce and mutate,” Max said. “That’s the one I use.”

“Exactly. But he wouldn’t take it in. He’d made up his own mind and that was that.”

“Maybe he was worried you’d try the same test out on him,” Safi said. “See what kind of life form he counted as.”

“Yeah,” Ross said, laughing. “Genetically unique, that does kind of sum him up.”

They walked on a little further. Then Safi frowned for a second and turned to Max. “Are you sure that’s how you’d define life? That simply?”

“Yes,” he said, taken aback slightly. “If you want a good definition, then the simpler the better. If something can spread, but can also change over time, then that’s all you need to call it alive. Multiply and diversify, life is as life does.”

“But I can think of things that fit that description but aren’t alive,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Like jokes and stories. They get reproduced when people pass them on, and they always change each time they’re told. I guess if the best ones get told the most, then they even undergo natural selection. Does that mean they’re alive?”

“In a way they are, yes, but they’ve got more in common with viruses than living organisms. It’s because they need help from us to get passed on to a new host. But every time a new joke appears it spreads like an epidemic. People who’ve heard it before are immune so it needs fresh minds to infect.”

“To infect? Are you serious?” she said.

“Sure. You’ve heard of ‘memes’ I guess. People used to call them mind viruses. It’s all for real, I promise you.”

At that point the road forked, the left branch heading out toward the extractor test beds where Safi was heading, and the
right branch continuing down the hill to the coast road where Ross would start his ride. The three of them stopped, and Ross climbed onto his bike and got ready to set off.

“Well, it’s been great,” he said grinning. “But I think I should leave you two and your mind viruses alone, in case anything’s catching, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

“Okay, Ross, have a good ride,” Safi said.

He pedalled the first few yards, then freewheeled the rest of the way to the bottom, turning his baseball cap round backward so that it wouldn’t get blown off as he gained speed. Once he was out of sight Safi turned back to Max.

“Do you want to help me carry these samples back?” she said. “I don’t know how much there’ll be this time.”

“Okay, I’ll give you a hand,” he said.

This road was shadier than the one next to the complex, as if a tunnel had been cut into the vegetation that flanked the building. It was much cooler under the trees, and the building was soon out of sight behind them. After a while the paved road gave way to a dirt path, and eventually led to the extractor beds themselves. They were in a low windowless blockhouse, a row of large troughs, fed with seawater pumped from the beach. In each one, different combinations of catalysts and electrode arrays were being tested, in an attempt to coax the various trace elements out of solution. Safi went to them in turn and started pulling out the accumulator plates, lifting each one out of its slot like a honeycomb from a beehive. Roughly half of them went straight back where they’d come from, but she piled up the ones that looked the most promising and handed some to Max.

“Here, take these,” she said. “I was right, there’s more than usual. We must be nearly there.”

“Which one of these has got the gold on it?” he said.

She looked down the ones he was carrying. “Er, that one, but don’t try running off with it, you’re carrying less than a cent’s worth.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.

As soon as they were back out in the open they could tell something was different. Max was the first to look up.

“Where on earth did that come from?” he said.

What had been a bright blue sky was now dark grey, the clouds almost low enough to reach out and touch. They both shivered at the same time as a gust of wind came in off the sea, and then the first splashes of rain started to fall through the treetops.

“Uh-oh!” Safi said. “We can’t get rainwater on these! Come on, we’ll have to run!”

They were about halfway down the path when the rain really started. In no time at all the pathway had turned from red dust to dark brown mud, and by the time they got back onto the road they were both splashed and stained up to their waists. They sprinted the last fifty yards, sheltering the sample plates with their bodies as they ran up the hill to the main entrance. Once inside they put the plates down on the floor and leant against the wall to get their breath back. After a couple of seconds they just looked at each other and grinned. Safi had got mud all the way up her legs and arms, and even had some on her face where she’d wiped her hand across her forehead. Max was about to point it out to her, but then she put her hand up toward him, obviously to tell him something similar. In the end they said nothing and just laughed at each other.

“I think we ought to get cleaned up,” he said eventually.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” she said, not taking her eyes off him. Her clothes were wet through, a light blouse that had been perfect for the morning’s heat now clinging to her in patches that held close as she moved.

“I, er, I need to go and make sure Gillian’s all right,” he said. “I hope she’s not been caught out in this as well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay, sure. I’ll see you tomorrow, Max.”

* * *

The next day was the same, and the day after that. The rain came and went, but the darkness was continuous. Within a week they were losing four hours of daylight from every day. The workload however went the other way, as the hours they spent in the complex got steadily longer. On days when Max was working in one of the windowless lab rooms he would often turn up before dawn and leave after dark, never having seen daylight in between. And with Gillian almost housebound by the weather, he could tell she was starting to feel the strain.

The feeling among the design teams was no better. The project had hit its first bottleneck, the part where the competing requirements of all its subsystems and assemblies first came together to struggle for their share of the design’s space and power budget. There were no outright arguments, just heated justifications of why the electrolysis tanks needed that extra amp that the steering system was asking for, why parts machining needed more space than filtration. And for Max the balancing act was particularly fraught, as he kept up a discreet line of communication to Isaac, drawing on his experience to help shape the safety measures he was more convinced than ever they would need.

Inevitably, at some point, the time would come to come clean.

* * *

“Right, everyone, if we can get started now. Thank you.”

Victor had called this meeting at Max’s request. Now that he’d got everyone’s attention, he was looking at Max expectantly, waiting for him to speak. Max took his cue and walked to the front of the room to face the crowd.

“I know it’s not usual to get this many of us together,” Max said. “But there’s something we need to discuss.”

Everyone was looking at him with interest, wondering what
he was going to say. He could see on their faces the signs of the hours they’d been working. Safi especially looked tired; if anything she’d put in more hours than he had. Now she was frowning at him quizzically, surrounded by her seven strong engineering team. In fact, all four of them had their backroom teams with them: Ross with his chemical experts, Oliver with his control engineers, and Max’s own group of sim programmers and mathematicians. The meeting room had never been so full.

“As you know, my role in all this is design optimisation. Using evolutionary methods to make your system designs as efficient as possible. And I hope I’m doing that successfully.” He said it in the knowledge that none of them would disagree. “But on top of that,” he continued, “I’ve been looking at the design as a whole, and I have to say there are a few things concerning me, and one thing in particular. I’m afraid we’re going to have to make some serious changes.”

He paused to see if there would be any reaction, then continued.

“I’ve been looking at the navigation system for the Prospectors, and what we’re planning so far just isn’t up to the job. We’re going to have to redesign it.”

Suddenly there was a burst of noise from Oliver’s group, followed by a short exchange of words among its members. Then one of them stood up, the young engineer, Mayaan, who Max had seen in the corridor two weeks earlier.

“Now wait a minute,” Mayaan said. “Navigation is our job, not yours! And it’s something we finished weeks ago!”

“I know, but it needs to be completely reworked.”

“What for? It’s one of the simplest systems on board!”

“Yes, and that’s the problem. It’s nowhere near sophisticated enough.”

“But it doesn’t have to be ‘sophisticated’. If it detects the boundary chain it turns round, if it detects another Prospector they pass on the right, if it’s time to replicate it just stops! What
on earth are you trying to build?”

Max kept his voice level but firm. “I’m not happy with the safeguards we’re using to keep these vehicles in place. The boundary chain is a good idea, but if it breaks there’s no backup. It’s a single point failure, and we can’t afford to have any of those in a system like this. We need to rule them out. I’ve spent a long time working on this, and there’s only one way to do it.”

“And what exactly is that?” Mayaan snapped. In many ways Max could understand his reaction; Mayaan looked more tired than most, and working alongside Oliver the last three months couldn’t have helped.

“We need a second navigation system, in parallel with the boundary chain turnaround rule. The Prospectors need to track their own motion through the water, and plan their paths to always stay safely within the zone. Then if one of them gets too close to the edge, the turnaround acts as a backup. It’s a two layer system: two things need to go wrong for it to fail, not just one.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Victor said. His face showed concern, as if willing to listen but yet to be convinced.

“Each Prospector needs to have a map of the local ocean stored in its controller. It will know the position of the islands, all the transmitters on the boundary chain, and all the major seabed features. It will measure its own motion through the water using flow sensors, and at the same time it will measure the local depth and compare that with its seabed map. And when it gets close to the boundary, it won’t just turn around, it will recognise which transmitter it’s being signalled by and add that to its positional data.”

By now Mayaan was facing away with his eyes closed, as if trying to keep his composure. Max carried on regardless.

“In addition to that, we need some kind of warning system, in case one of these machines does go where it shouldn’t, and we need to be able to override the navigation system and put it under human control. The whole thing has to be completely safe
and foolproof. Watertight, in both senses of the word. We can’t have anything less.”

Now it was Safi’s turn to look concerned. “Max? What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been looking into this for a while now, Safi. It’s the only way to do this safely.”

“But we already know the limits we’re working to. That kind of computing power simply won’t be available on board.”

“So we’ll just have to design these things so that it is.”

“But Max, we’ve been through this already. We can’t put anything on a Prospector that it can’t make for itself, and that includes the kind of hardware you’re asking for.”

“I know the restrictions on controller design. But using the turnaround system on its own isn’t going to be enough. We need something more.”

“But we ruled out complex autonomy right at the start, it can’t be done. So why are you bringing it up now?”

“Because I have to. I’ve told you my reasons.”

“Max, you can tell us what you want for as long as you want, but it won’t change the facts. Putting a system like that on board is completely out of the question. When are you going to realise that?”

“I know what you’re saying, Safi, but you have to think about how dangerous all this is, what could happen if we get it wrong.”

“For God’s sake, Max, just listen to yourself!” Even through her arguments with Oliver, it was the first time he’d heard her get even slightly annoyed. “Don’t you see why what you’re asking for is impossible? Do you think I’m just making this stuff up?”