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LBQ2-3a

Left Beyond Quest III - Thread 3a (The Clock Skips)

The Foreman hears AK-47s being chambered behind him.

"Oh, that's fine, Mister Foreman," Rehoboth says, relaxing visibly.

"Carpatescu knows every detail of my career. He doesn't mind one little bit, you see. People like you sleep soundly in your beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do you harm. I've been one of these men. I've broken a lot of eggs to make my omelet, Foreman.

"Do you think it's easy to keep this continent under control? Take your average American white boy, or even black boy, they'll probably think Africa is one big blob of heat and scarcity. Do you have any idea how many languages are spoken between here and the next city not even five hundred miles away? How many clans, tribal groups, movements? The only way to hold it all together is with my left hand holding the horn of plenty, and my right holding an AK. Don't think you can threaten me. Carpatescu can find another nerdy phone repairman in a week, but I? I'm a lot less replaceable than you.

"Now you've got thirty seconds to tell me why I shouldn't nod at my man behind you, GC uniform or not, and he'll shoot you in the neck. Your boys can send your recording to the big boss if they want; it'll never leave his office."

The Foreman makes a quick decision.

"If you’re having a hard time keeping control, perhaps instead of rejecting the technology that can make things difficult for you, instead you use it to make keeping things under control easier. This kind of implementation is why Carpatescu employed me to make this infrastructure here, and I can make it work to your benefit as well. No need for bribes or corruption, and we don't both end up dead for crossing our respective betters."

"Who says I'm having a hard time keeping control?" the old man asks impulsively, then sits back down, takes a breath, and tries to appear statesmanlike. To his credit, he changes gears faster than a Vespa scooter.

"Oh, I see what you mean. Please, forgive my poor understanding of American English. Yes, I believe we can work together in the future, you and I. For now, please accept my thanks for your work so far. So"—and his accent thickens, possibly for public consumption by the guards—"wah kand a technology woud ya like to pioneer heah?"

“Since there is little analog infrastructure here, let's unify voice and data nodes in order to bring things up to speed quickly. They can be made to record and track enemies, observe them. Plus, fusing communication in this way will inspire a unification in culture through language, allowing there to be fewer conflicts and barriers over time . . . and of course, it would be easy to keep an eye on the balance of power if most information went through this channel."

"I don't understand a word you said about digital this and analog that, but I think I get your gist. Yes, Mr. Foreman, I think we have a deal."

The old man shakes the Foreman’s hand and leads him out. The hot, salty air feels surprisingly good. The guards outside are at least nominally on the Foreman’s side, although they are on loan . . .

Rather than going home immediately, the Foreman decides to start laying the groundwork for the new unified system right here and now by talking to his workers.

His group gathers round the newest pylon.

The Cellular-Solar system is . . . well, pretty inspired, actually. He should know. His contribution to the technical side of the design of it is what got him the job, after all.

Each pylon allows for voice and low-bandwidth data communication, automatically gives preference to first responders, and even in its prototype incarnation can be built quite tough.

Digital voice is a bit of a radical step, but will offer a lot more flexibility later on. The only issue is that making it work properly will require long-range connections that would not be covered by the mesh, a centralized network node. These will be expensive to erect, but can function as secondary staging areas for the Foreman’s people since he will find reason to move people in and out for maintenance, and effectively unify the cellular and Internet coverage for the people in the region. Unfortunately, people will have to be talked into adopting the new system, so initial adoption rates will suffer. Now that the Foreman has a government budget, maybe it's worth looking into.

Building a unified network node would be a significant endeavor, but the reward would be that afterwards, the network infrastructure for that territory could be switched between voice and data without any overhead.

The Foreman decides to try it back home first and make a token effort to install something here. It would be more beneficial in their own capital, garnering favor with their landlord by bringing economic stability, and they can always come back to add one in Africa. Rehoboth will expect one more Cellular-Solar pylon, but the old man wouldn't be able to tell a 1920s radio mast from a cellular tower.

As the Foreman and his team huddle to work out how to do the new system, the current system pings him with an email to tell him that the satellite launches happened without a hitch, for once. GNN can now be picked up everywhere in the world!

Thinking again about the pylon, the Foreman figures he had made no specific promises to Rebohoth, so there's that. He gets back home with his crew and feels remarkably happy about being back on his home turf.

The accountants aren't happy about the huge expenditure, but when are they ever? They do recommend that he purchase some fleet assets so that they don't have to keep renting them.

The time rolls around again to plan out CATS' operation for the month. Things are getting a little more complicated, he realizes as he assesses the situation. They have six cellular and eight Internet nodes missing, and there isn’t much budget left. Decisive action is needed. It might be time to make a deal with Rehoboth to give them funding if CATS prioritizes his lands over others on their projects.

Perhaps not just Rehoboth, but also the South American leader for the same thing. They are both development-poor countries and could use the preferential treatment.

As for CATS’ teams, the Foreman decided to put four on recruiting a covert team, two on cellular solar research, and one on building network equipment. Scientists could be used to support their research.

Recruiting a security team isn't even difficult: Chicago is fairly full of unemployed former soldiers, less keen on the subterfuge, much more used to operating together tactically.

The Foreman keeps working on the new network node design, with Dr. Robertson's assistance, of course. He has something to contribute: a grad student whose job is to design extremely precise antennas.

This research team works hand in hand with a production team to get the new generation of Cellular-Solar out.

The "Global Community Weekly," the magazine William Cameron works at, prints a small article about CATS actively recruiting veterans as part of a program to reabsorb them into civilian life after the demilitarization. The article is overall positive.

The Foreman can now use a covert team as personal escort, to escort a workgroup, or to remove or at least delay "obstacles" in various territories. If he gets sufficient fleet assets, he can even set them up for rapid deployment.

When it comes time to negotiate, Mr. Rehoboth and Mrs. Santiago are surprisingly receptive, especially after the Foreman gifts both of them with one of those laptops David Hassid had prepared (and possibly had stolen a couple of). Nobody blames him for conducting the negotiations remotely, as a way to show off the tech, although he visits South America for in-person discussion. His meeting with Colonel Corazon Santiago is brief. She has one of those Andine faces that could be a very harried thirty, or a serene fifty—her hair is jet black, and she probably dyes it. She seems less interested in network nodes and prefers infrastructure to be as decentralized as possible. "We appreciate the Cellular-Solar system, don't get me wrong, but we don't want to become dependent on it."

The Foreman lets her know about the satelloons—ham radio enthusiasts can use them, too. Of course, satelloons require more work to set up, so an increase in funding may be in order . . .

"Interesting,” she responds to the proposal. “Yes, I think we can work with you. Understand that we are on board with Carpatescu's plan, but people here have lived with brigands and bandits for five hundred years, in some places. Armed peace is the best peace."

“I agree, I should learn to shoot,” the Foreman muses.

"Yes, you should! I was a range instructor, oh, about a century ago. Want me to give you some pointers?"

The Foreman agrees and as they walk, they talk. He tells her about the Second Amendment from North America.

She appreciates the concept and will discuss keeping it around next time she and the other subpotentates meet with Carpatescu. When the Foreman brings up the camera and communications development for the satellites, noting how much easier it will be eventually for her to find bandit camps and spot hostiles, she seems a lot less keen on that surveillance, oddly enough—definitely less than Rehoboth was.

"You've got to understand,” she explains, “we've had yanquis keep an eye on us since forever. We're happy to be well rid of that, at least int heroy."

They arrive at the range to find police officers, some local, some wearing a Global Community armband, being drilled in trigger discipline as well as marksmanship.

The Foreman doesn’t do particularly well when it comes to hitting the target, but she's impressed with his willingness to learn and attention to trigger discipline and safety.

"I'm not at all a fan of your surveillance measures, but I think we can work together. Know that you're welcome to return."

This seems like the perfect moment to formalize a deal.

Col. Santiago proposes that if the Foreman makes sure the satellites over her territories have no cameras, she will ensure that his organization receives access to the black market, where he may find various stimulants and somewhat better weapons than he’d be able to get legally, such as tommy guns and anti-materiel rifles.

Santiago smiles. "You know, the last person who asked about that was CIA. He's one of the few who expected the CIA to get disbanded and wanted to make it, well, self-funding. I reckoned that the world doesn't need that after what it's done to our countries."

Looks like the Foreman has a deal, or part of one! Black market added. He figures he can push for a little more. “What about ‘unconventional’ training for our covert squads? Knowing how to use a rifle is good, knowing how to use a rifle and a garrote is better. I have no intention to become the new CIA. They've created enough problems in our homeland. However, I do believe it's better for the world if you have the better footing than Rehoboth does, and we could use the training."

Santiago seems amenable to any one of these options, although she sneered a little bit at mentioning the drug trade when discussing the black market. Through the Nomenklator, the Foreman learns that most of his accountants won't even touch the idea, but those that do estimate that Carpatescu will legalize quite a few drugs in the following years, and there's money to be made in between since legalization is often preceded by a drop in enforcement.

"Our interest in the chemicals side of the black market is for medical reasons,” the Foreman explains upon seeing her sneer. “See, I did some digging after one of my scientists found that a lot of radioactive isotopes vanished from the earth when the majority of the Christians did. And as it turns out, one of those isotopes was used in radiology medicines extensively. Since that's become an issue, my interest is piqued."

"Interesting, that. Maybe I'll have my men look at it,” she responds. For now, the Foreman errs on the side of caution and settles on only one of his requests—the training.

"I am loyal to Carpatescu, you understand,” Santiago mentions. “He is idealistic, and we need that. But he thinks in terms of absolutes. I believe in the doctrine of flexibility. My people have made it clear that they are tired of empty promises more than they are tired of war, and so if war comes again, we will deal with it our way. Si vis pacem, para bellum."

The Foreman prepares to leave, knowing that two former Argentinian paramilitary force trainers will follow him on the next flight. They are old, scarred men from a profession in which people don't last long; this bodes well for their skill.

Unlike Rehoboth, Santiago found the Foreman personable and seemed to like the agreement he pushed for, as it aligns with her own beliefs on matters. She leaves him with the following advice:

"Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate."

The Foreman will not be able to use satellite video surveillance in the United States of South America, unless he chooses to betray Santiago later, but his covert teams will be trained in improvised weaponry, guerrilla tactics, and good old-fashioned intimidation. Since he’s mainly recruited soldiers, this will be sold to them as becoming more proficient in counterterrorism by conducting red-team exercises.

After the negotiations, research, and other endeavors, the next month of the quarter comes around and it’s time for the Foreman to plan CATS’ operation again. Frustrated with the lack of budget despite negotiations, he reaches out to ask his accountants about how to get more funds, like selling equipment. The scrupulous ones point out that as a government agency, they shouldn't compete with private businesses, and their best bet is to use their funds wisely and complete Carpatescu's vision ahead of schedule—the man seems more worried about time than money, after all.

The unscrupulous ones point out that there's probably some money to be made in the drug trade, if black market contacts can be established. One guy who is very likely a member of the Christian Remnant but hasn't given the Foreman any reason to doubt his skill points out the story of Joseph's dream in the Bible, noting that squirreling away excess resources in case of penury later is nothing to be ashamed of.

Someone in the IT department proposes licensing the Nomenklator tech to search engine companies like Altavista and Yahoo: as part of the Foreman’s mandate, most of his research is in the public domain as befits a government agency, but that's a project he set up himself.

The Foreman decides against it. He likes being the only person aside from Carpatescu with an eidetic memory. He considers that he could also hire out his covert ops team. Carpatescu wants a peaceful world, but they aren't there yet. Plenty of people want to settle little scores before the big guy clamps down on it. Plus, they'll get field experience. He could get unlucky enough to see them wiped out though . . .

Meanwhile, some information management is necessary. Any rumors of violence having occurred during the meeting between Subpotentate Rehoboth and the Foreman, he declares, are old-order nationalistic disinformation and should be disregarded as such: the subpotentates and heads of global agencies are completely loyal to the Global Community and its humble servant Nicolae Carpatescu.

As it is, the Foreman has completed the basic satellite coverage mandate but is a little low on cash on hand (he has three bags of Nicks remaining for the month). He debates several actions to correct this, or giving his crews a break and hitting the pavement himself for a few things, and he ultimately determines it would be best to spend the last of their resources establishing the northern base, which has yet to be named. His men suggest New Brrrrunswick, Effincold, Ultima Thule, The Gulag, Silver City, The Glow, Vault 13 (Fallout II is one of the few video games to have come out after the Event, at which point the industry quickly discovered that adult gamers do exist and have money to spend), and the like. The Foreman goes with Effincold, an apt name.

To operate the base, he hires Ryan Andrews, former shipping magnate currently down on his luck after losing all his Navy contracts. He knows shipping and industrial logistics. Northern Canada is a bit desolate of infrastructure and other things that can only come in when the ice has melted. It’ll be hard to move stuff to and from the north without serious cost or investing into infrastructure to transport it, and Ryan seems like the right guy to handle that, plus having a shipbuilder on staff may help with fleet issues later on.

The Foreman also assigns volunteers there from the work teams, roughly equivalent to one of the work teams, to provide the initial manpower.

The Foreman spends most of the month setting this scheme up, but finds time to visit Effincold himself.

Mr. Andrews takes the men and materiel to the former uranium mine and makes ready to reopen it; some of the spent nuclear fuel will be used for a massive radiothermal generator, divided in blocks so as to not risk reaching criticality, which will in turn use a heat exchanger to generate nonradioactive steam. Silver is at the lowest price it's been in a century, which makes it uneconomical to mine, but the team will eventually be able to save money on other construction efforts due to being able to source the raw material in-house; the availability of cobalt is especially interesting for its medical applications. As for the nuclear fuel that can be extracted, there is a moratorium on nuclear reactors, and the official party line blamed the Event on radiation, so any talk of operating nuclear reactors is likely to meet with extreme public backlash. Andrews thinks that the stuff's there, so there's no harm in using it to heat the streets, at least.

His prospects indicate that the operation will at least pay for itself and give the Foreman some production bonuses when it comes to manufacturing, if it's operated quietly. They should enforce some nighttime discipline so sats don't pick up the lights from the facility (although, it is fortunate that they’re in charge of the sats anyway). It'll be less money spent renting and loaning and that's what matters most.

The Foreman tells Ryan Andrews to go easy on things, and he agrees. "If you are still interested in acquiring naval assets,” he suggests, “there are a few that were almost completed when the disarmament policy came about. They have no weapons, but if you want and are willing to pay for it, in a few months I can get a good lead on an Italian carrier, an amphibious assault ship. Very versatile and can be configured for a lot of uses, from launching small rockets to carrying large construction vehicles and helicopters, although the diesel power plant is a fuel hog.”

The Foreman tells Mr. Andrews that that's for later, although he's clearly interested in closing up his old line of business with a last sale. He's seen CATS’ finances, so the fact that he's trying to sell them a warship tells the Foreman that he's not worried about the long term.

Later, the Foreman visits "Effincold" to find that the large RTG has already been put in place—more Soviet-era leftovers, he’s told—and there are some tents around it; drilling is scheduled to begin any day.

"Part of what made this place uneconomical in the thirties and forties," Andrews notes, "is that everything was coal fired. Turned out to not be an issue when the Allied armies took it over to get nuclear fuel for the Hiroshima bomb, of course, but then it went back to languishing. Now we have natural gas and the RTG, it should at least be able to pay for itself."

As a bonus, Dr. Robertson's team is relatively close by, only a few hours away by bush plane.

Andrews figures that setting the place up will take up most of his time, but since he plans to go back and forth between here and his home on the Atlantic coast, he'll be available for further consultation.

The Foreman’s meeting with Carpatescu is short: he's reasonably happy about the global satellite coverage ("If you had it done a week in advance, why, everyone in the world would've seen the signing!") but asks why he’s slowed down since.

“I am building for the long term, which requires preparation,” he explains. “We have several work crews and should be able to roll out cellular coverage in short order next quarter now.”

"I see. Exponential growth, then. Well, get results, Foreman. Do what you have to do; I don't have time to micromanage you. I have a world to bring together. I don't want our great purpose to be hamstrung because people can't get a signal. On that note, Mr. William Cameron complained to his staff of just that, so, get a move on!"

Well, he's not happy, but he's not particularly angry either, so the Foreman’s budget is intact. He just has some questions for Carpatescu, points of curiosity. He asks what Carpatescu’s vision of a united humanity looks like. They’re putting satellites up in the sky, but has he ever thought about going beyond it? Like, to a celestial satellite such as the moon?

. . . And he goes home satisfied that Carpatescu's vision for humanity's future in space makes a lot of sense, and that he wholeheartedly supports it. The Potentate was kind enough to give him almost two hours of his time in total.

In fact, it was so good a talk that he feels like using the Nomenklator to replay it.

What he gets is Carpatescu speaking in an odd monotone, between tenor and bass, a few syllables in one octave then a few syllables in the other.

“I would like to tell you what you are about to hear,” Carpatescu had said. "I do not know or care how you feel about interplanetary or interstellar colonization. Let's see, you're clearly into this, since you are asking. So, tell yourself that I agree with you, that my new world order will last a thousand years, enough to see men on Mars or on another star if you like, whatever it is. But you will hear me explain the same concepts to you, with just enough difference to consider my slightly different opinion an improvement upon your own. All I require from you, Mr. Foreman, is to make it so my true voice reaches the four corners of the Earth. Do as you want, believe what you want, kill your men and yourself from overwork in the process, but do it. Now I would like to tell you what you are about to do. You will stand in the supply closet for ninety minutes, go home, and be satisfied with my vision for humanity's future in space and flattered that I gave you so much of my time. I'm a busy man, and have to attend to another meeting. Go in peace."

Time marches on, and a new quarter begins. The Foreman settles down to plan out CATS’ operation for the month. It doesn’t take too long to make some decisions with his refreshed budget. He decides to buy three fleet assets, rent out a covert team, and survey Brazil. He also assigns two teams to expert research, three teams to making a network, and the other two teams to do nuclear research with Dr. Robertson.

Dr. Robertson is actually pretty enthusiastic on the issue—there are probably a few good scientific papers in the study, and he basically gets to be paid for it twice, once by the Foreman and once by his institution. He spends the whole month traveling across northern Canada taking readings from different former mining sites, taking samples back to Sudbury for study in a noise-free environment, and so on.

He asks to also go to Nevada and Russia for a few days to compare readings from old nuclear testing sites over there. The Foreman doesn’t have to pay for it, but it may tip off the subpotentates about his interest, so he allows Nevada only. Zakharov is smart enough to catch on; Dimmsdale won't be.

Mr. Andrews assists the Foreman in getting good deals when it comes to buying freight capacity, mainly by telling him what to buy and what to enter a long-term lease agreement with. He spends half the time trying to talk the Foreman into buying a decommissioned ship, but that was expected.

The Foreman personally organizes further work on the Nomenklator system; in addition to having basic voice recognition built in, the new model is now smaller and fits entirely behind the ear. It can be secured with a bit of the glue used by drag queens to hold fake boobs in place, or with an unobtrusive piercing. Most interestingly, since it's no longer dependent on the user's hair color, it now makes sense to make more than one!

He determines that further development should focus on making it smaller and making more than one. This will let him equip one team per month with Nomenklators, which has benefits both in tactical and work situations.

He makes a big production of his employees hiring out workshops and small factories in the American Midwest to churn out network equipment. He isn’t installing anything this month, but hopefully that will keep Carpatescu and Dimmsdale happy.

His trip to Brazil is relatively uneventful: he fulfills the obligatory photo op with Santiago, goes to shoot a few rounds at the range with her because why not, and spends the rest of the time surveying what's left of the Amazon forest.

There, he learns to his great surprise that just before the Event, there was a surge of missionary activity. After the Event, it abated—obviously—but lately it has started to trickle back up. What's oddly missing, though, are the, well, customers. Many native peoples took the disappearance of their children as a sign that the world was indeed ending, and a scary percentage of them just let themselves die after that. Others walked out of the jungle to seek help from the Westernized world. Either way, native peoples have largely (but not completely) either disappeared or integrated.

Santiago was afraid of this, but she has had her plate full with other issues. The Foreman tells her about his findings, after which sends one of her teams to verify what he said and collect actual quantitative data, and takes the opportunity to bring up that due to this, there's now room to develop the place. With two billion people gone after the Event, ecological concerns are less pressing.

The Foreman discreetly hires out his covert team. They aren't very loyal to him yet, and he mostly hired professional soldiers who aren't terribly keen on breaking the law, so their job offer set is somewhat limited to, well, not running drugs or anything like that.

Whatever the Foreman does with them, if they don't take casualties, they'll gain in unit cohesion and skill from being deployed in a real mission.

So, he sends them to escort a convoy of medical personnel doing blood tests and administering vaccines through Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they are at risk from local nationalists but they can enjoy feeling like the good guys.

Dr. Robertson spends most of the month traveling with a couple of grad students—the Foreman gets comped for plane tickets, and Robertson is perfectly happy to let his minions fly coach while he travels first class, so it doesn't make a perceptible dent in the budget. He does write a couple of short papers on the analysis of "nuclear glass" found at various testing sites. He has his underlings (and some of the Foreman’s) perform spectrographic analysis, and compares it with that of existing nuclear waste disposal sites, to which he has access due to being a known researcher, and so on.

He has a lot to say about trinitite specifically.

"Contained within the glass are melted bits of the first atomic bomb and the support structures and various radionuclides formed during the detonation. The glass itself is marvelously complex at the tens to hundreds of micrometers scale, and besides glasses of varying composition, also contains unmelted quartz grains. Air transport of the melted material led to the formation of spheres and dumbbell-shaped glass particles. Similar glasses are formed during all ground-level nuclear detonations and contain forensic information that can be used to identify the atomic device."

On the identification part, he has more to say: by the look of it, all samples he collected displayed less residual radioactivity than they should have . . . with the important exception of some of the samples from Japan that he had some colleagues send over.

He mentions that he would like to visit Gabon next, to take a personal look at the remains of a known natural fission reactor. The Foreman isn’t in the best of relations with the local subpotentate, Rebohoth, especially since he didn't keep his promise to deploy extra infrastructure in his territory last month. Alternatively, Dr. Robertson could visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the local authorities are unlikely to be cooperative, given the odd amount of superstition that still lingers about the nuclear strikes there. But that's for later.

"Foreman, here's my executive summary: there's something odd about nuclear decay rates. And, forgive me for sounding like a late night conspiracy radio host, but there must have been some degree of censorship about it: the pattern is fairly clear, and I refuse to believe that in two years, I've been the first physicist to notice. I look forward to my papers' peer review. My academic reputation should counteract that sort of thing, at least to a degree,” Dr. Robertson reports.

When the earpieces come back from development, they look like nothing special, but what's crazy is that the team has been able to fit an entire cellular phone in there, albeit one that can only dial one number (the Foreman’s HQ). They are powered by a lithium-ion battery of the sort that are normally used for pacemakers and will be able to use any cellular network under the Foreman’s control. They're too small to show up on a metal detector, so his agents will be able to carry them on airplanes undetected, unless people start putting X-ray machines in airports for some reason. The HQ team will handle coordination, use any satellite surveillance to alert people of obstacles, and have someone on call to look things up on a search engine or encyclopedia and read the relevant data to the agent. In addition, this lets the Foreman get an audio recording from each agent's stream, for later perusal.

He wonders what the world will look like when everyone can afford an electronic virtual agent in their ears or even just in their pocket.

To be safe, the team ensures that the lithium batteries in the earpieces can be shorted when need be.

Global Community Weekly - July 1998

After serious setbacks in April led to a cluster of new polio cases, Pakistan is revamping its vaccination strategy in a renewed effort to wipe out the virus.

The country is one of just three — along with Afghanistan and perhaps Nigeria — in which polio is still endemic. Eradication of the virus in Pakistan is crucial to the drive to rid the world of polio, once and for all.

Many vaccinators will go house to house, while others will look for families with babies born after the Event in refugee camps, train and bus stations, and at highway checkpoints.

Pakistan has had 47 cases of polio paralysis this year; it had only three by this date last year, and only 32 in all of 1997.

In mid-April, widespread panic among parents in Peshawar and the surrounding northern tribal areas, culminating into a terrorist attack on a medical team, forced the suspension of a national immunization drive.

To restore confidence, subpotentate Pravin Lal added, security for the drive was provided by the Global Community telecommunications division, who has no political presence in the area.

Residents will be asked only how many children are in the household and whether they have been vaccinated.

In Pakistan, extended families often live in large compounds; previously, they were asked about all couples inside, whether they were married, how many children each couple had, and who was pregnant.

Sometimes, the police arrested families who refused vaccinations.

“That was not helpful,” Mr. Lal said. “If you drag people to the police station, they feel insulted. Now, we will have a friendly chat. You don’t have to challenge the refusers; you give them a pep talk and encourage the local leaders to persuade them.”

In the latest incident in early April, a campaign worker trying to persuade a family to vaccinate was shot dead, apparently by an 18-year-old family member who then fled to nearby Afghanistan.

In an encouraging sign, Mr. Lal said, the polio virus is no longer found in sewage samples in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, so transmission there may have been halted.

Polio transmission has never been interrupted in Pakistan and Afghanistan; most of the cases are in the mountainous districts along the border, where government control is weak.

Nigeria has not had a confirmed polio paralysis case since the Event, but it takes at least three years without confirmed cases despite vigorous surveillance before a country is declared polio free.

by: Velma Zee, filling in for William Cameron

Progress is made, projects continued, and the second month of the quarter rolls around. The Foreman gets to work planning CATS’ operation for the month.

This time, he assigns three teams to deploy a Cellular-Solar pylon, adding cellular coverage to North and South America, as well as north and south Africa. Mr. Andrews heads the teams. Three teams are assigned to recruit covert ops, and one team will research preparedness with Dr. Robertson. The next region to explore is Australia.

Throughout the month, exploration reveals that Australia's mining sector has slumped a little after the Event, largely due to a dip in demand, but things there are overall quiet; the United Pacific States potentate is wise enough to recognize that Australia has its own culture and has generally allowed things to continue as they were. As a Global Community cabinet official, the Foreman is given the required minimum of red carpet treatment, handed over the keys to a fancy four wheel drive, and more or less allowed to roam around. The Event hasn't affected the ecosystem much, and the people reacted to the Rapture by tackling the demographic crisis the old fashioned way—in the towns the Foreman visits, he hears quite a few babies crying.

Looks like the preschools that existed before the Rapture and were obviously closed down by it will remain a thing of the past though: babies are too valuable to be left to institutions, and most local governments have increased maternity or paternity leaves so that someone in a typical household can be a full-time parent. Interestingly, this is one of the few policies in which Carpatescu's plans have encountered resistance: on paper, the notion to establish GC-sponsored "children's creches" is moving forward, but people aren't interested in that sort of thing. This goes double for this particular culture, and triple for the small towns in it.

The people here are used to kids attending classes taught by radio and similar methods of communication, brought about by low density and great distances. The Foreman is formally asked to test the new network nodes in Australia: there's plenty of sun for them to operate on, open spaces with no hills to block radio signals, and people here think of themselves as bootstrappy enough to work around a new system's inevitable hiccups.

The Foreman promises to do as asked.

In the meantime, his existing Cellular-Solar pylons are deployed without delay by his work team, under the experienced direction of Mr. Andrews. He's stopped trying to sell the Foreman a ship, for now, but reminds him that he can only slow down the demolition work for so many months. By the amount of bling he comes home with, the Foreman guesses he's managed to finagle a few good deals on the side, which is just fine since he has no personal hostility with the African subpotentate and so can work as a go-between.

The Foreman lets the local grandees know that they will get a network node, which will unify cellular and data service, within three months. They seem indifferent until he shows them a demo video on his laptop, at which point they quickly realize the benefits when it comes to distance education and distance diagnosis for simple ailments.

Ryan notes that he can "divert" one ship, but realistically, only one.

Dr. Robertson, meanwhile, has little to report: disaster prep isn't his specialty, although his skills as a lab manager make that more or less a non-issue. The report the Foreman gets from him tells neither him, nor the disaster preparedness expert Carla, nor his teams much new other than the fact that the world's infrastructure is slightly more likely to handle a global catastrophe well now than it was before the Event, simply because there are a lot fewer children to look after in an emergency.

He's more concerned about the fact that none of his papers on nuclear spectrography are published yet, although a delay of four weeks isn't unusual. He does, with some embarrassment, admit that his data was slightly off—the Nevada samples are still too low in radiation, but not as much as those from elsewhere, and they’re still lower than the ones from Hiroshima. Interestingly, the samples from Nagasaki followed the global "wrong" values.

On another note, the new Cellular-Solar pylons will be set to facilitate transmission of data.

Additionally, maybe it's the good press from the Pakistan operation, but the Foreman finds it surprisingly easy to recruit another security detail, even though his vetting isn't as thorough as the last time.

He privileges private investigators and repo men and, since he now has two teams, he tells them that he considers them cooperating in all things, no favorites.

He finds that since his security teams are of different extraction (soldiers and gumshoes, basically) the only way to prevent a rivalry is to mix and match the roster and then tell the trainer Santiago let him borrow to kick their asses. The end result is that he has two teams that can take on all jobs, although they won't excel in any of them. Since he isn’t building an army, he figures that flexibility is more important than specialization.

Now that he has two security teams, he has the ability to send one to back the other up, in case of a jam. Given that this would constitute a life-or-death emergency, he may do so regardless of cost—one team will generally accept being paid a couple of days late if it’s a matter of rescuing the other, if nothing else because they get bragging rights and it could have been them . . . as long as the debt is paid the following month and fleet assets are available.

With these other matters handled, the Foreman informs Mr. Andrews that he’ll try to purchase a ship, letting him know which ones he is interested in and which ones he isn’t. This way, Andrews can scrap the ships at the same rate but not start with the ones they might want.

Ryan Andrews figures he can go ahead and scrap one ship so as to keep the liquidators and inspectors happy. This will give more leeway to pick later. Naval work generally takes years anyway.

In the end, this was a fairly full month. The Foreman had to fly to Australia and reorganize his security force. Also, he had to talk to Dr. Robertson a little bit, measuring his words so he'd wonder if there is indeed some grand conspiracy about nuclear research so that, eventually, he agrees to let the Ghilotti brothers' construction crew watch his back, just in case. They're not the most polite or careful people to have around a nuclear physics lab, but they scare the students less than a full security detail might.

The next month looms closer, and the Foreman must plan out CATS’ operation once more.

Dr. Robertson has requested to visit Japan or Russia. He wishes to go to Japan to inspect the Hiroshima and Nagasaki sites, or to Russia to inspect the Tsar Bomba explosion site. Neither take a month, of course, but it would use up the whole month to do the data analysis (especially considering that he has a different job). Separately, one of his peer reviewers answered him regarding the study he’d already done, noting that her own data shows that Dr. Robertson's figures are slightly off for Nevada. This turns out to be the case—a simple calibration error due to Robertson's detectors being set for a cold rather than hot climate—but he is still puzzled to have only heard back from one peer reviewer.

“We aren't looking for a precise analysis, Doctor, just a qualitative measurement for now,” the Foreman expressed. “The analysis can be done later once we have a reason to put some effort behind your work. Can you quickly check both?”

Letting Dr. Robertson fly around the world a little is not a problem. He only takes up one to three seats on a plane, not whole rows and cargo space like when the Foreman has to send out a work team. He briefly sees him to the airport and notices a fire in his eyes that wasn't there before: he's definitely passionate about unraveling this mystery. He also seems a little flustered, though—hopefully he's not overdoing it.

The Foreman loses track of him in Russia as he enters the exclusion zone in Severny Island. He comes back two days later.

"Approximately 97% of the energy released by the Tsar Bomba was from fusion, not fission. This made it a remarkably clean initiation, relatively speaking. On an absolute scale . . . well, everything within thirty miles died, at the time. You can see the dunes created by the shockwave today, but it's entirely safe to walk around there now, although I wouldn't recommend anyone who plans on having healthy kids live there."

A week later, he sends a postcard from Nagasaki, and then one from Hiroshima, the cheeky asshole. It says, "All is well, this is the safest city I've ever seen" on the first, and "Radiation here is EXACTLY normal given that it's been 50 years, visit soon!"

The last postcard is from Fermilab, which incidentally is near the Foreman’s HQ in Chicago—airline ticket just worked out that way. It's a collage rather than a printed postcard; in it are Robertson, two of his grad students, one of whom has apparently collected about twenty kilograms of anime paraphernalia and the other about twenty kilograms of vodka and kvass, and an equation.

He tests the new Nomenklator (which can't block outside sound, simply because it's only in one ear and it's right now designed to let sound through, although noise canceling earphones have potential as a research topic) by reading the equation and seeing how long it takes for his team to get an answer. To his surprise, it's seconds, rather than minutes. The Foreman has someone look at the equation and tells the goon squad to resume tailing the doctor.

"Well, it's the equation for vacuum decay,” explains the team member assigned to the equation, “when there's a leak in a vacuum chamber and so on. Well-known engineering equation. Except that vacuum decay has another meaning in nuclear physics."

The Foreman asks the person at the other end of the Nomenklator to explain, and they say that it's best to send an email about it. So he does. Looks like it's been compiled by pasting a few CD-ROM encyclopedias together, then given a once-over by an actual expert:

“In general, gravitation makes the probability of vacuum decay smaller; in the extreme case of very small energy-density difference, it can even stabilize the false vacuum, preventing vacuum decay altogether. We believe we understand this. For the vacuum to decay, it must be possible to build a bubble of total energy zero. In the absence of gravitation, this is no problem, no matter how small the energy-density difference; all one has to do is make the bubble big enough, and the volume/surface ratio will do the job.

“In the presence of gravitation, though, the negative energy density of the true vacuum distorts geometry within the bubble with the result that, for a small enough energy density, there is no bubble with a big enough volume/surface ratio. Within the bubble, the effects of gravitation are more dramatic. The geometry of space-time within the bubble is that of anti-de Sitter space, a space much like conventional de Sitter space except that its group of symmetries is O(3, 2) rather than O(4, 1).

“Although this space-time is free of singularities, it is unstable under small perturbations, and inevitably suffers gravitational collapse of the same sort as the end state of a contracting Friedmann universe. The time required for the collapse of the interior universe is on the order of ... microseconds or less.

“The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it.

“However, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy.

“This possibility has now been eliminated.

“The second special case is decay into a space of vanishing cosmological constant, the case that applies if we are now living in the debris of a false vacuum which decayed at some early cosmic epoch. This case presents us with less interesting physics and with fewer occasions for rhetorical excess than the preceding one. It is now the interior of the bubble that is ordinary Minkowski space.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Andrews is requesting that the Foreman pick a ship to scrap this month so as to keep the other options open for longer. He tells Ryan that he’s least interested in the Zubr-class hovercraft corvettes, which lets him go ahead and begin the demolition process. A few of his people point out that it would be possible to adapt it for operation on ice or salt lake and use it as a booster stage for an orbital rocket, but the Foreman points out that there are dozens of ICBMs that can be recycled to launch microsatellites so there's no need.

There are some more pressing matters at hand. The shipping convoy going from China to Greece was attacked by Ethiopian or Somali pirates, and a container ship was seized. The Foreman sends a squad to bust the pirates, ideally with as few casualties as possible. Reward: 1 fleet asset OR large bonus towards buying Ryan's ship.

One of his security teams is flown to Teheran, then to the Iranian coast. Rehoboth was unwilling to provide any logistical assistance, so the incursion will have to happen from the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. The team is put on a Bangladeshi coast guard corvette, with another sailing towards it to attract the pirates' attention. They have assault rifles and a few rocket launchers, but the real threat is that they are willing to slit the crew's throat and sink the container ship if they are approached.

The Foreman’s men and women have been instructed to try to de-escalate the situation first and foremost. Having a mix of people in his security squad proves extremely useful: private investigators and repo men are fairly good at getting it across that they aren't there for glory and country and put the pirates at ease as they take the ransom and release all but one of the hostages, with the promise that they'll let him go as soon as they reach shore in one of the ship's tenders.

The pirates, convinced that they more or less got away with it, don't keep their guard up, and allow one of the former military personnel, a sharpshooter, to take an impressive shot from one of the corvettes, taking out the pirate holding up the last hostage in the dark from one moving boat to another 75 meters away. The man had the presence of spirit to jump in the water and was quickly rescued.

With only one death, one lightly wounded hostage, and both the ransom and ship recovered, the operation was a remarkable success. The Risto shipping company, based out of Greece, are grateful and manage to repay the Foreman in kind.

He decides to let subpotentate Lal take the credit with Carpatescu.

Carpatescu briefly praises Pravin Lal's peacekeeping efforts in a press release; the former physician in charge of the United Indian States thanks the Foreman profusely for letting him look good. "I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of further cooperation, Foreman! Please visit any time."

Later, the Foreman decides to see Tsion Ben-Judah, who is very amenable to the idea, and he arranges a meeting in his study in Tel Aviv.

This meeting is set to happen before the Foreman’s quarterly performance review with Carpatescu.

He makes his way to Tel Aviv airport and finds that the man has come to pick him up personally with a driver, courtesy of the institute he works with, and an old Mercedes sedan in excellent shape.

The rabbi directs his driver to a small cafe in a busy section of Jerusalem. Tsion, with a huge, black, three-ring binder under his arm, speaks quietly to the waiter in Hebrew, and the Foreman is directed to a window table surrounded by plants. When menus are brought, Ben-Judah looks at his watch, waves off the menus, and speaks again in his native tongue. The Foreman figures he's ordering for them both.

The waiter brings an unsliced loaf of warm bread, butter, a wheel of cheese, a mayonnaise-like sauce, a bowl of green apples, and fresh cucumbers.

“If you will allow me?” Ben-Judah points to the plate.

“Please.”

The rabbi slices the warm bread in huge sections, slathers them with butter and the sauce, applies slices of the cucumber and cheese, then puts apple slices on the side and slides a plate in front of the Foreman.

“Please do not wait for me. Eat while the bread is warm.”

The Foreman has taken a bit of time to prepare and knows that traditionally, the Jewish mealtime prayer is after the meal, not before, yet the man bows his head and seems to begin to pray in American Protestant fashion.

"You are not a man of prayer?" Tsion asks afterward.

“I prefer to thank the kitchen staff, if the meal's good. Any role played in the matter by any god, they would be aware of my thoughts on the matter regardless.”

“I can see where you are coming from. But surely you agree that there must be a first cause."

Both men start eating. The fare is simple, but extremely rich, as someone had added just the right amount of invisible salt and butter. The Foreman knows this to be a property of a number of foodstuffs grown with the Eden fertilizer.

"Of course, there must be a first cause. That in no way guarantees that anyone on earth is as yet correct about what that cause is, no matter what entities may, or may not, have claimed responsibility. We hardly assume the first to claim responsibility for any public explosion is telling the truth, why should the big bang be any different?" the Foreman ponders before asking directly, “So, did you convert to Christianity?”

Ben-Judah checks his watch and joins his companion in eating up, then pushes his plates aside and hefts the notebook onto the table. It contains a four-inch stack of manuscript pages. “I have several more of these in my office,” he says, “but this is the essence, the conclusion, the result of my three years of exhaustive—and exhausting—work with a team of young students who were of incalculable help to me.

"But if you want the short answer: yes. I am now a member of what you would call the Christian Remnant, and I encourage you to make the same choice. The evidence is overwhelming. On that note, I assume that I have you to thank for not being cut off the air?"

"We are responsible for sending data out; picking what data goes out isn't our problem."

Tsion glances at his watch again and eats a little faster. He seems less interested in having this discussion.

"Ah, I see. So you are merely in charge of the technical issues, and the important decisions are made by the potentate directly?"

"Currently. This may change."

He seems to gets the hint and slows down again.

The Foreman and Tsion talk about the first cause a bit; he finds that Tsion used to accept big-bang cosmology but is now questioning it, thinking that young-earth creationism may be more likely.

The Foreman reminds him that Einstein was Jewish and nobody's proved him wrong yet.

"Of course. Einstein was an intelligent and learned man, but the brain has its limits. He is often quoted for 'God does not play dice,' but he believed in Spinoza's god, a mechanistic, deistic God that is a far cry from the living God who is mighty to save. Alas, I am afraid that he persisted in that belief to his last day. What if I were to tell you that not only does God play dice, but the dice are loaded?"

He smiles in a grandfatherly fashion, then proceeds to give a quick summary of the biblical story. The Foreman expected something better from a renowned theologian than a Sunday School lesson, but he's clearly trying to keep it short.

Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery to a man named Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials. The Lord blessed Joseph so that Potiphar’s household prospered, and he decided to put Joseph in charge of everything he owned.

Potiphar’s wife didn’t like Joseph so she schemed a way to get him in trouble, so she made up a lie that Joseph had disrespected her, and he had Joseph thrown into prison!

Two of Pharaoh’s workers, his cupbearer and baker, were also being held there. They both had strange dreams, which Joseph interpreted to mean the cupbearer would be released but the baker executed—and so it went. Two years later, Pharaoh also was plagued by strange dreams, so the cupbearer remembered Joseph. He went to Pharaoh and told him about Joseph, who was then brought before Pharaoh to hear the dream.

Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream, you can interpret it.”

Joseph gave God all the credit for helping him interpret dreams! Pharaoh described his dreams to Joseph. In his dream, Pharaoh was standing on the bank of the Nile when suddenly, seven fat, healthy cows came out of the water. After them came seven sickly, thin cows that ate up the healthy ones. In his second dream, Pharaoh saw a stalk of wheat with seven healthy heads of grain sprouting. Suddenly, seven shriveled heads of grain sprouted and swallowed up the healthy ones.

“If you were Joseph, do you think you would be able to interpret these dreams?” Tsion interjects here.

With God’s help, Joseph interpreted the dreams for Pharaoh, explaining that the seven healthy cows meant there would be seven years of abundant food in Egypt, followed by seven years of famine.

He suggested to Pharaoh that during the seven years of abundance, some of the food should be stored away in cities throughout Egypt. That way, during the famine, there would be food to keep the people from starvation. Pharaoh liked this idea so well that he put Joseph in a high government position in Egypt.

"Are you suggesting we stockpile for a crisis?" the Foreman asks.

"Now, my young friend, that was Pharaoh's dream, not yours, was it? But . . . well, yes. Something precious left the world two years ago, something irreplaceable. I do not believe that the potentate will be able to keep the machinery of civilization working, especially considering . . . But yes, I believe that your job is of paramount importance, and you should take advantage of the good times while they are good, not by squandering your resources, but by saving them for what is to come. Show wisdom beyond your years and be prepared."

Questions buzz through the Foreman’s mind. “If the Anti-christ existed,” he inquires, “why would he want his voice to reach the whole world at one time?”

"To deceive people into following him, rather than Messiah, of course. There will come a day when all will have to choose, for it is written that Messiah spoke, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. That would truly be a tragedy."

“And if God wants us all dead . . . do you think we should still struggle?” he continues.

"Here I must quote you the second letter of Peter: The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."

The Nomenklator team gets one of the sysadmins on the horn who went to seminary for a year and a half before switching majors to engineering, and the Foreman can basically hear the facepalm. "King James version? Really?"

Ignoring that, the Foreman asks another question. “What is your opinion on the Event?”

"The Rapture happened, as was prophecied by Isaiah and Daniel. And just when I was delivering my address, the Global Community signed a false treaty with Israel—thus begins the last terrible week of the Lord. The current order of the world has seven years to go from then, and six months have already passed. If you wish to know more from someone belonging to your culture, I suggest you talk to Pastor Bruce Barnes, in Chicago." The Foreman files that away for later and moves on.

“You don’t like Carpatescu much. Why? He’s done so much good for the world.”

"I likely put myself in danger by voicing my opinion to you, but God compels me to speak truth,” Tsion responds. “I believe Carpatescu is the Antichrist: he will live another three years, three and a half into the Tribulation, and commit great atrocities. Then he will die, and be blasphemously resurrected by Satan, and thus begin the Great Tribulation. Now, have you more questions, or shall I ask you one of my own?"

“Entirely fair that it's your turn. Go right ahead, ask away.”

The man leans forward and tries to grasp the Foreman’s hands. He is visibly sincere, if the Foreman is any judge of body language.

“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. Please. You may not get another chance. And if I am being too forward . . . you said that you would not censor anyone's message, merely make it so all messages go where they should. I ask you to promise me that."

The Foreman has to admit that the meal was both very simple and excellent. As he decides what to say, Tsion Ben-Judah writes an address and a phone number on a 3 by 5 card from his binder, in remarkably neat if somewhat angular handwriting.

"Right. Thank you for your time, Dr. Ben-Judah. And for the excellent restaurant recommendation. I can put you in touch with Dr. Robertson if you’d like to discuss these matters with him as well.”

"Of course, I would love to talk to Dr. Robertson, if he wishes to know more about what I believe,” Tsion accepts. “Feel free to arrange it at any time. I have completed my big project, and am gearing up for a new one, but should be able to yet make some time in between."

The Foreman says he’ll try to set something up. Tsion Ben-Judah smiles. "Excellent! I believe he will be fascinated by what I have to tell him." After a pause, he continues, "You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"I think you have given me some good advice."

He shakes the Foreman’s hand and presses into it the 3 by 5 card he wrote.

Bruce Barnes Acting Pastor New Hope Village Church Mount Prospect, IL

2484345508 web :f3.to/newhopevillagechurch

"This is my dear friend Bruce. Contact him if you wish to make up your mind about God. He is local to you."

The Foreman departs from the meeting, returning home, where he follows up on Bruno Folgore, who is still undergoing training as far as those around the Foreman know. It’s been half a year though, so he might be done.

By now, a couple of his people have been working on research for long enough that they're considering getting degrees via night study; the various distance learning systems that served Army and Navy servicemen and so on have survived, and are now starting to timidly branch into online courses.

Next, the Foreman decides they need to handle cellular coverage in Eastern Europe. He has to keep the boss happy otherwise they’ll lose funding they need. That does in fact wrap up Carpathia's mandate to instantiate basic cell or radiophone coverage all over the world.

He sets Andrews to work, buoying him with the promise that he’s finally buying the ship. People are starting to get used to cellular phones and text messaging: nearly everywhere where reception is spotty, CATS starts getting requests and even demands to construct additional pylons.

Covering India would be a multi-year project by itself, but cell phones aren't particularly cheap so the rollout is mostly done for politicians and executives first, then for professionals. Subpotentate Lal does what he can to encourage adoption.

In Russia, subpotentate Zakharov loves the idea and insists that it would make much sense to link the voice and data networks together. He offers a reward of 2BN to test this in his territory first

1. which you accept
2. which you explain that you will do as soon as possible, but you already promised it to someone else.

Just before the Foreman’s meeting with Carpatescu, Ryan tells him that the ship he wanted has not only been spared from demolition, but is ready to go immediately, since any retrofit can be done underway. Even the ship's boats are in place!

The Foreman, of course, picked the Italian modular aircraft carrier.

He checks out the carrier's description in the last published Jane's, checked out from the local library, and is . . . whelmed.

It's a far cry from an American supercarrier, being more similar in shape to an amphibious assault ship or a WW2-style jeep carrier. But it's his, and more importantly, the inside is designed around swappable modules to allow her to operate in a number of configurations, from hospital ship with medevac helicopters, to amphibious assault, to light carrier. They can even chuck everything out and use her as a fast, albeit expensive, cargo transport.

"Uh, Boss, did someone leave a bunch of tanks in it?"

"Those aren't tanks, they're B1 Centauro armored vehicles. They have wheels, not tracks."

"Found the military nerd."

"Shut up. Dibs on driving it around the dock."

Anyway, there's four of the damn things in what is, in fact, a dedicated heavy vehicle bay which probably happens to be the module that was installed in the carrier. Since the Italian military never had a lot of money to throw around, they invested heavily on modularity: the B1 can be configured as a tank destroyer, fast howitzer, IFV, or engineering vehicle. It will not excel at any of these roles—an M1 Abrams has even odds on fighting all four at the same time, assuming everyone starts with a full loadout—but can quickly take on any of them . . . if one can find the original guns for it. If not, it still makes for an excellent way to deploy a small infantry team safely and quickly, at the very least. Two of them, in engineering configuration, can erect a prefab Cellular-Solar pylon in minutes.

Still, it's the Foreman’s boat now, for all intents and purposes. She is officially called the Aircraft-Carrying Cruiser C551 Giuseppe Garibaldi, and it's bad luck to rename a ship, so Garibaldit it is. The ship is currently in Genova, Italy, and can be used in a number of ways. The Foreman will have to spend 1BN every time he reconfigures her. She starts with a generic configuration, effectively keeping her modular bays empty so that various light equipment can be brought on board. She can launch and land helicopters, most small propeller aircraft, and the AV-8B Harrier jet with a full load.

The Foreman doesn’t really expect to find one of those any time soon, but the military nerd that identified the Centauri mentioned that there's no reason why they wouldn't be able to operate WW2-era combat aircraft from this ship, since it's roughly the length of a WW2 carrier. Basic helicopter operation is possible in all configurations, since the flight deck is usually accessible no matter what. It’s known that the Israelis were working on medium-range, unmanned propeller aircraft (the closest translation into English military lingo is "drones," although they aren't intended to be used as target practice, rather they are intended to carry out missions themselves), which would fit well on this big boat.

The available configurations are Interdictor, Light Fleet Carrier, Fast Cargo, Hospital Ship, Amphibious Assault, Floating HQ, and (with a bit of work) Antares Rocket Launch Vessel. The generic configuration will provide two fleet assets when appropriate.

The four IFVs are two of one and two of the other.

The four Centauri in APC configuration currently doing donuts in the parking lot are, as far as anyone other than the dock crew knows, not there, so the Foreman himself has no right to complain about the yee-haw noises currently coming out of the drivers. Guess it counts as training . . .

Should he ever come across a tank gun, and an excuse to take it home, it will be reasonably easy to install it; for now, the turrets have been removed in order to maximize personnel carrying capacity. Four APCs (technically IFVs) are sufficient to carry one of the security teams in its entirety, with some room to spare for VIPs or small volumes of precious cargo such as gold or gems. Should things heat up in Africa, these should help quite a bit.

Oh, and they own an aircraft carrier now. Not a very big one, but it's likely to be the last one in operation in a year or so as the demilitarization initiative continues. So there's that

Meanwhile, it's time to go talk to Carpatescu! The Foreman chooses to show up in person in opulent New Babylon. This will let him and his Nomenklator team observe the man.

He potentially has good news, in that his second mandate got wrapped up right before the end-of-the-month meeting.

He flies to New Babylon first class on a regular airliner, to find the city slightly larger and significantly glitzier than last time: there's even a small artificial lake now. This gives him a couple of hours to take in the sights; the place at first reminds him of a tacky tourist trap, as if Donald Trump had been asked to redesign the Vegas strip, but he quickly notices that the city is set up to withstand, of all things, an old-style siege: the water towers are armored, most buildings have backup generators, and so on.

Carpatescu has him wait outside his office—which, the Foreman notes, is still on a middle floor of one of the smaller skyscrapers, although it does take up the whole floor—and even though it's only a few minutes, it's a little nerve wracking. The fancy new flatscreen TV in the antechamber shows some highlights about the new city, including a digital rendering of the new Global Community Building, intended to become the nerve center of a united Earth.

The door opens. ". . . Thank you again for coming, Cardinal Mathews."

"Thank you for your support, sir."

Nobody announces you, but Carpatescu seems to prefer things to work as unadorned in private as they are pompous in public. "Come in, Foreman."

The Foreman does. The office doesn't really look different: big table with built-in screen, decor that looks about a decade out of date, not much in the way of wall art. He’s mildly jealous of the setup: a giant desk with multiple built-in screens and something that looks like a voice recognition system but which he can tell is actually some shmuck a floor or two down typing very quickly while listening with a pair of headphones.

He had considered letting Carpatescu flip the final switch, or some such ceremony, but maybe it's something he can do in front of the press tomorrow: the Foreman is trying to impress him, not the world, and he prefers to keep that sort of thing for the hoi polloi.

Instead, the Foreman gives him an IP address going to a map indicating global coverage and points out that there aren't any empty spots on any populated landmass.

"Oh, but Foreman, this simply will not do! Where's Antarctica?" He laughs paternally after a beat. "I kid, I kid. Exemplary work. Exemplary work indeed. Now that the globe has a common voice, it needs a common language: I speak, of course, of ones and zeroes. The written word shouldn't be left behind, after all. Keep up the good work, and ensure that the library in every podunk town from here to Ohio has an Internet terminal. I'll be honest with you: I'm not a big believer in this technology, but if it keeps would-be dissidents busy arguing with each other while we proceed with the good works, it'll have done its job. Plus, I understand that we will need a global data network for my financial unity initiative—it'll make things considerably easier."

That doesn't sound like a difficult mandate to accomplish: from an operations perspective, it's just more of the same.

The Foreman asks for details about Carpatescu's space policy. "Come now, my young friend, one planet—and its immediate neighborhood—is enough for now, is it not? I will give you a preview, however. There will be a Global Community Space Station, an orbiting laboratory and factory of new ideas for the new era. I will make the announcement in a few months, if the disarmament program proceeds apace. I would like to tell you what you are about to know: that I am content with the results you have brought me, and that I demand more of the same."

“A question, sir? Perhaps If you would like, with your blessing, I can launch and provide satellite cellular coverage over the moon after I finish in Antarctica?” the Foreman says with a serious face before smiling.

"Sure, why not? We shall have the Solar Community yet. Why, in a thousand years, I . . . we may yet walk under a different sun altogether. Why shouldn't the cosmos belong to us?" He picks up and keeps up that not-sure-if-serious tone effortlessly, with just the right shade of ambiguity that the Foreman is unable to guess if he means it or not. He decides to actually take it as permission.

His earpiece isn't full of the screams of the jubilant because, as he finds out in the New Babylon airport waiting for the flight home, once he can find a modem jack, his inbox is full. He’ll have to remind people that he runs a telecom company, not a space program . . . Actually, come to think of it, is anyone even in charge of that? He does know that government appointments in the USA and other countries are basically being allowed to expire rather than being actively canceled; even President Fitzgerald is still in Washington, sitting in a slowly emptying White House and presumably watching TV for most of the day.

At the end of the month, the Foreman takes a moment to reflect. He’s been at this for a year! Morale within his organization is not stellar, but it is quite high—they’ve gotten a fair bit done, people in the know appreciate that they’ve built a small, secret paramilitary force for good, and his side projects hint at the fact that either he or Carpatescu have some big plan that they aren't quite ready to reveal yet.

"Rethinking global poverty reduction in 1999" Global Weekly - October 1998, issue 2

1998 could be a landmark moment in understanding global poverty dynamics. In June, we reported the start of a new poverty narrative, one that brought the plight of Africa squarely into focus. In September, we also discussed an unprecedented tipping point in global wealth prospects: More than half the world is now middle class or richer, fueled by the aftermath of the Event and a rising Asian middle class. As Steven Pinker and others observed, the rise of the global middle class — and the implications on policies, industry, and political economy — might have been one of the most important “ignored” stories of 1998.

To prepare for the year ahead, data scientists at World Data Lab responsible for uncovering these findings have updated the World Poverty Clock to take into account recently released data and forecasts from the World Bank and IMF, as well as refinements in poverty measurement in India. The biggest headline from their work may be that when official numbers for India’s extreme poverty are published later this year, less than 40 million people will likely be living on below $1.90 per day, compared to 225 million in 1993, the last year for which official data on Indian poverty is available.

Looking at poverty trends worldwide, World Data Lab now estimates that on New Year’s Day 1999, just under 200 million people across the world will live in extreme poverty. By 2010, this figure is expected to drop by half.

The good news is that 1999 will start with the lowest prevalence of extreme poverty ever recorded in human history — less than 8 percent. In all likelihood, this level will set the “ceiling” for a new era of even lower single-digit global poverty rates for the foreseeable future. The bad news, though, is that poverty reduction rates are expected to keep slowing down considerably over the next decade.

Amid this context, several salient trends stand out, indicating a great divergence between stagnation in Africa and great progress in most other parts of the world (see Figure 1), notably India.

The road to 2010. Asia will outperform every other developing region and in early 1999, the world’s largest continent will have an average poverty rate of below 4 percent. That share is projected to fall further to only 1 percent by 2015.

Authors Homi Kharas, filling in for William Cameron Kristofer Hamel CEO, WDL Martin Hofer Research Analyst, WDL

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