Sparks of Chaos (22 page)

“The question is does he cause us more trouble than he’s worth?”

“Leave both of these problems to me, I’ll monitor the situation in Germany and make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. I will keep Chase busy and out of your way.”

“Thank you, I am tired of dealing with him and I don’t want him upsetting Birgit anymore.”

So that is what this all about, the alpha male was keeping the younger buck away from his female. It was the animal kingdom all over again, exactly what Rex had hoped to avoid, only he didn’t see it in himself. “I will see to it.” Was Rex’s sudden acceptance of his new Grand Design due to the emergence of Birgit on the scene or the realization that he would have more control by hand selecting and training the young new recruits?

“I wanted to commend you for your initiative on Prettybone Island. In reviewing the details of the agreements you made with Ravitura I found them to be meticulously executed. It was crucial that there be no loopholes once they understand what we plan to do with the island.”

“Thank you, I think they will be quite pleased with the spillover effect from tourists and visitors to their islands.”

“True, but never underestimate humanity’s ability for greed when the opportunity presents itself. Best that they have no recourse or weaknesses to exploit.”

“How are the physical preparations of the island progressing?” Rex asked.

“I had already prepared the subterranean portion of the island. It is quite hidden and allows us to quickly erect the buildings while no one is paying attention. We will say that we have brought in power plants and desalination to provide fresh water, but it is for show, the infrastructure will all be supplied from below.”

“Are the plans completed for the architectural layout?”

“We set the eastern part of the island for the Stubbard Institute; it is naturally separate from the western side by a lake and some hills. We will keep the homes for the faculty and a visitor’s center there so that the other side of the island will be mostly off limits. At least initially it will be necessary to show off the island to the outside world, there will be an intense interest in this place once we make the announcement.”

“What are the arrangements for the other side of the island?”

Armstrong called up a map of the island showing Rex the terrain and an overlay of the proposed building plans. “The western half has already been connected to The Snake for easy access to bring them over when we convert them from students to recruits and to secretly travel back and forth. The student housing, school rooms and recreational facilities will be over the top deluxe. The interest in this school will be intense and we must be completely prepared. The remoteness of the island and our insistence on keeping the students sequestered for almost the entire year will enable us to control the situation. We don’t anticipate that the student side will get much use after the start-up of the school as we plan on transitioning them to Surga as soon as possible.”

Rex reviewed the plans, making some adjustments and then issuing his approval to go ahead with the completion. “Congratulations on a job well done.” He reached over and whispered carefully into Armstrong’s ear, “While I appreciate your initiative and efforts, if you ever have the temerity to do something like this behind my back again, I will erase your personal identity and re-program you.”

They sat in silence for a few moments until the awkwardness was broken by the arrival of Birgit. She bounced in excitedly full to the brim with enthusiasm for the task at hand. Oblivious to the tension around her she jumped right in to the conversation and said, “I have some ideas that I can’t wait to share with both of you.”

Armstrong sat still as a stone while Rex proceeded to share the plans and the maps they had just reviewed. Risk was an important aspect of leadership, and fortune most often favored the bold. It was easier to be daring and take risks if you were unconcerned about your personal safety. He would take Rex’s words as a warning and be more circumspect in his actions but he would not be deterred from his duties as the Guardian. While he would balance the risk, it would not stop him from acting when he deemed it necessary, regardless of the consequences.

Rex was delighted with Birgit’s unbridled excitement at being included in this important task. He found himself enjoying sharing the physical layout of the island for the students. Having just been at school and being the same age as the incoming students she had some valid insights for the design. She was amazed at how quickly Rex was able to instantly modify the designs to show her ideas. The layout looked amazing, more impressive than any University on Earth. The living quarters for the students were a far cry from a standard college dormitory and closer to individual luxury apartments. They were designed to be indulgent and present a wow factor.

Showing a previously unrecognized flair for marketing, Birgit suggested they create themed buildings with individualized units each with their own unique coordinated décor. The media would certainly play up this aspect as it would physically demonstrate a dramatic difference to every other higher education institution. They could easily afford to do all of this as their actual costs would be minimal and the labor would come mostly from Taskers.

Moving on to the impressive amenities, Birgit showed them the proposals  for the impressive student activity center with a private beach, large swimming pool with a waterfall, cafes, restaurants and entertainment. She explained that even if most of these facilities would be little used once they convinced the students to move to Surga, it was all necessary to keep up appearances. The effort and money would all be worth it to build a narrative and a cult about their new school. It would be highly desirable and elite and garner intense interest. After the abject failure Chase experienced with trying to bring Professor Hauptmann, they felt it made more sense to hide in plain sight.

They had set up the perfect scenario, using an isolated island combined with restricted interaction with family and friends, they had an environment that was conducive to the kind of control they needed. The desirability of the free tuition, all expenses paid and a student salary of $20,000 a year would generate few questions or complaints. The degrees would take five years to earn and all students were guaranteed a minimum five year million dollar employment contracts with Stubbard Industries. That would give them plenty of time to integrate them into the Surga society without interference. Pleased with her contributions being taken seriously; she patted Rex’s hand and told him, “I have an idea that I really hope you will like. I would like to call it the Stubbard Academy of Global Excellence or SAGE. I thought it might be clever with the double meaning and all.”

“I love it, it’s perfect,” Rex said. “We do have to worry about keeping the instructors separate from the students as much as possible, so that they don’t realize they don’t actually spend much time there. I have come up with a fairly slick solution to that problem. The classrooms will have the latest cutting edge technology. Most instruction will be done by a life like tele-teaching that allows them to instruct remotely. We can hire world famous teachers who won’t be inconvenienced by traveling to a remote island more than once or twice, earn a nice salary for very little work and no one is the wiser.

“The only piece that still requires work is how we go about identifying which students we want to select,” Armstrong interjected. “We currently have two different research projects under development to solve this. I was not sure if you wished to discuss the particulars in front of Birgit, due to their rather sensitive nature.”

“I think she has a right to know what we are doing and can understand why, go ahead and share them,” Rex told him.

“As you wish, we have identified five key characteristics that we must have to succeed. To gain the most from developing brains we determined the candidates must be between eighteen and nineteen years old. Development of the body’s cells makes that quite easy to screen for and eliminates the ability to lie about one’s age. The others are traits and more difficult to discern. We are searching for certain markers in the DNA and the brain that correspond to intelligence, innovation, sociability and adaptation.”

“What was the latest on the research from our Stubbard Industries labs?” Rex asked.

“You mean you’ve been working on this stuff for some time now?” Birgit interjected.

“One of the subsidiaries has been doing some work for the government and secretly for us. This isn’t a new interest of mine.” Rex answered her.

“They have made tremendous progress on the identification. The real problem is which approach we wish to choose to find our potential students. There are two different workable methods, they both will produce results but each has significant drawbacks. While we will announce to the world that we are accepting applications from qualified applicants from any country who are in the age range of eighteen to nineteen on the start of school, that is not exactly how it will happen.”

“What are our choices, I hope that they are not going to be complicated, the simpler the better,” Rex stated.

“No there are only two options. The first is the most effective but has a somewhat unpalatable aspect to it. Our researcher discovered an enzyme called comium which we genetically engineered to identify the traits we desire. They also invented a way for us to remotely read brain outputs for this.”

“I am sorry that I’m not a super smart scientist but I didn’t understand a word of what you’ve been saying. Would it be alright Rex if he explained this in language that a normal person could follow?” Birgit begged.

“Yes please, something a bit less scientific would be appreciated,” Rex added laughingly.

“Of course sir, the first option is to have an enzyme in everyone’s brain that we could read by satellite and easily allow us to find and track the best candidates anywhere on the globe.”

Birgit jumped in and said, “That’s better, I understand it now, why don’t we do that one, it sounds pretty good.”

“The difficulty comes in that humans don’t naturally have this enzyme and it requires a mild pulse transmitter in order for us to read it. In order to reach the targeted audience we would have to implant these into virtually all seven billion people on Earth. This would be accomplished by seeding either the world’s water sources or atmosphere with trillions of microscopic particles. It would take only two or three months to reach a ninety nine percent effectiveness rate,” Armstrong explained.

“That all sounds pretty good, would it be difficult to accomplish,” Rex asked.

“No, it’s not difficult at all; the problem is that a very, very small percentage of the population will have a fatal reaction to the enzyme.”

“How many people are we talking about?” Birgit asked.

“On a population of over seven billion it is statistically insignificant, only a few thousand at most.”

“You mean that just to find five hundred students we are going to kill several thousand people?” she asked with a horrified look on her face.

“We are not directly killing anyone; it is more an unfortunate by-product of the process.”  

“What is your second option?” she asked.

“It is much less effective, more labor intensive and requires us to use outside help. We would have to administer the enzyme and then scan those applicants that we felt were the most qualified. It will be a logistical nightmare to accomplish and will force us to miss out on many of the most desirable candidates. Remember these are people that we are going to make immortals and have to live with personally forever. Even a single bad choice will have drastic consequences. As distasteful and immoral as it may seem, in this case I recommend option one.”

“Oh Rex you can’t let him kill thousands of people,” Birgit wailed.

“I had a feeling you might feel that way and I prepared a counterproposal for you. We have the ability to add another component to the enzyme that would repair a DNA flaw in some very rare diseases that would save at least three times as many people who are killed by it. We can do this in a way that has almost no risk of discovery. Would this be acceptable?”

“I guess so but it is so hard to wrap my mind around all of this, it makes my head hurt just thinking about it,” she complained.  

“No solution will be perfect; I think we must go with Armstrong’s suggestion. I wanted to point out to you Birgit, that we respected your opinion enough to share the hard truths and all the details with you rather than hiding the nasty parts,” Rex told her.

Faced with the difficult choices that adulthood often presented, Birgit understood that responsibility carried a heavy burden. “Thank you I guess,” she said tentatively, feeling like the day she found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. It was hard to face the facts that people would die because of a decision she helped make. “When are we going to launch this?”

“The physical transformation must be almost complete before we make the announcement to the world media. We can finish this in about two weeks of outside world time which is about a year in Surga time. That should allow us plenty of time to finish all of our preparations. We will only get one shot at doing this right and we are betting the future of society on the execution of our Grand Design, there is no room for error. This will require your absolute commitment, can I count on both of you?”

“Of course sir, you have my complete support and dedication,” Armstrong said.

Birgit answered, “You can count on me,” with more confidence than she felt. This was not something she could take lightly, it really hit her that she was playing with people’s lives here and would have to try and give it her all.

Chapter 38

Public speaking had never been a strong point of his and that was another reason he had chosen scientific research as a career. He had always been much more comfortable working alone in his laboratory than talking in front of others. Just because he was no longer an unattractive science nerd didn’t mean he could suddenly become a great orator. Technically he wouldn’t actually be speaking in front of anyone either figuratively or literally. Rex would be taping his announcement of the founding of his new SAGE school here alone in his room while his brother would actually be handling the news conference.