Critical Futures

Part three (of three) of the final scene from Chapter 6 of Knowing Mars. Be sure to check out Aftermath for the key to this Chapter. Thanks for reading! Chapter 7 starts on Thursday.

Kyp was the first to speak again: “Say, I wanted to know, honestly, what you thought about how the meeting went yesterday. I’m worried that we were too removed, and talky,”

Gus looked quizzically at Kyp and opened his mouth to respond, but Matt spoke first. “I think you did fine, and I think people responded, it’s tough, you had a lot to say, and there was a lot to be said.

“Do you think anyone is actually going to go back with me?”

“If the number of people that responded to Irena’s call are any indication, then we’ll be turning people away,” Guss said.

“You think we’ll have more than fifteen thousand?” Matt asked, astounded.

“That’s not too many, really, and we could get more than that, think about it–” Kyp said, turning to Matt.

“You guys are kidding right?” Guss was agape.

“Nope, we’re serious about this, and more importantly the Morgan’s, and now Mars Colony is serious about this?” Matt explained.

“And you can keep everyone from going public, before the book launches?”

“It’ll be tough, but we’ve been good at keeping a secret for a long time, so this shouldn’t be too difficult,” Kyp said. “And besides, it’s good to be friends with ISA, and Mars is ready for real population growth, so the infrastructure has been in place for this kind of thing for a while,” Kyp explained. “They–or construction bots, at any rate–are building an addition to the colony structure on Mars, it’ll be ready long before we get back.”

“I suppose so. And we’re leaving, when, again?”

“We can start leaving in three weeks,” Kyp answered. “How long’s the window?” He asked, in Matt’s direction.

“I think they’ve said, six weeks to break orbit. When’s the attack go down?”

“Middle of next week.”

“I think, gentleman,” Kyp said, sitting up in his chair, “that we have a plan!”

And they did.

Part two (of three) of the final scene from Chapter 6 of Knowing Mars. Be sure to check out Aftermath for the key to this Chapter. Thanks for reading! The final part will drop on Monday.

“Lets hear it then,” Kyp demanded. Matt sighed, audibly, this kind of tech talk was never his thing, he understood it, but didn’t care about the specifics that much. “Whatever Matt, it’s important,” Kyp said, without looking away from Gus.

“Tons of bots, like the ones we used to dupe Busby last time, plus we’re all going to be running off independent servers, which should give us some control, over our time settings, which typically gives us an advantage.”

“Well and it’s safer,” Kyp said, “too bad it’s a huge resource drain,”

“Well the thing is, we’ve been able to write the interfaces tighter to the transmission hardware, and if we can slip like ten lines of code into the nodes, it works great.”

“You can get code into the nodes like that? Without tripping alarms.”

“Well that’s the exciting part, We’ve got a portable software node program that should be ready by the end of the week…”

“You’re kidding, right? We couldn’t even get a software node working on our own isolated system. You’d be able to cut a lot of risks out that way.”

“I know, it’s amazing. Works pretty good too. Gonna’ to change the world Kyp.”

“Too bad we won’t be able to see it.”

“Oh come on guys, the Morgans are talking about to going public and you’re blathering about this,” Matt said.

Kyp rolled his eyes melodramatically, and Gus ignored Matt and continued talking: “Anyway, all the hard work is in the prep: getting the node software and bots ready. We’re going to walk in with an army, more or less, and copy out the data that we can and start scripts that will delete or encrypt what we can’t–”

“So what’s the army for?”

“Making a point,” Matt said.

“Well yes, but it also means that we can throw data around and escape out and log back in, through our node, it gives us a lot of flexibility,” Gus said, in an attempt to rationalize his joy. “Think about it, we can have little cells of people who are just running security, people who are copying data off net, people tending to the encryption problems. We get a lot of crunching power without sacrificing our own efficiency, and besides everyone gets to feel like it’s a community effort.”

“You don’t have to justify it to me, that’s for sure,” Kyp said.

“Or me, really,” Matt said. “Those records aren’t strictly legal–even if they aren’t all that uncommon in ISA–and clearly I think he’s up to no good, the spying, the intimidation, the badgering that Taban and Kalian underwent–”

“We know,” Gus said, not feeling like reviewing the litany just now and the table fell silent for a moment.

Part one (of three) of the final scene from Chapter 6 of Knowing Mars. Be sure to check out Aftermath for the key to this Chapter. Thanks for reading! The next part will drop on Thursday.

“Isn’t Irena coming?” Matt asked when Gus arrived at the table he was sharing with Kyp. They had chosen an open air cafe–real open air–on the eastern seaboard of what was once the United States, for a brunch meeting.

“She’s running a legit security job right now. She’s had to be on net a lot more just to keep things afloat with me mostly out of the picture,” Guss said, after he sat down. “Fair’s fair, I suppose, I did that for weeks until Irena joined up, when you were leaving.”

Kyp smiled, and nodded, “though we were moving and off-net for a lot of that time, and I was gone within a month, and Irena came forward before I got to Mars. She has help though?”

“Of course. I’m pretty much superfluous at this point, which makes the decision to move to Mars a bunch easier,” Gus said.

“Oh don’t worry, it wasn’t a hard decision for you. You’ve been on the list since before we knew we were planning a… god, it feels like a damn mass exodus,” Kyp said.

“Well at least now you know why there hasn’t been a great immigration for Mars, no one wants to organize it.” Matt chuckled, and patted Kyp on the shoulder.

“You’d think with conditions like these people would be clamoring to get out,” Kyp said. He made a sweeping gesture in the direction of the street. It was dirty and poorly lit, and even in the middle of the morning when the traffic, was “light,” by local standards, the sidewalks were still filled with people, and the streets were almost always occupied by some sort of bus or truck. There weren’t many private vehicles, just in general, so maybe that’s what they meant by “light.” To make matters worse, the buildings were so tall, and massive that at the ground level the air was pretty stuffy, and there wasn’t a lot of light, despite building regulations that supposedly prevented this from being a “real problem.” The walk tubes at 100 stories that connected most of the buildings, didn’t help the light levels on the street, either.

“You’re the one with the special insight into the human mind, I don’t have a clue,” Matt said.

“But you’re staying,” Gus pointed out. “Explain that one.”

“There’s work to be done here, still. That’s important now.”

“That’s true, and thanks for that. Speaking of work to do, what’s our plan? For the atta–mission?” Kyp asked, correcting himself from sounding suspicious to any passers by.

“Its beautiful, from what we have. We’re pulling out all the guns on this, and doing some crash development on a couple of projects that should really blow them–and you away,” Guss said, his face lighting up with excitement.