Things fell into place for Alex.
“He built an ark.”
“He built an ark.” Bista confirmed. “Actually, he built three. Three arks like no one had ever imagined before. Three arks so huge it never could have escaped earth’s gravity and so had to be built in space. Building it was one problem, but shuttling everyone and everything to it was an equally big problem. So he built a space elevator, which he tethered from an island he owned north of Fiji. As rich as he was, and even with his ability to create more wealth almost at will, this project taxed his fortune. He didn’t care. Money was an Earth-bound idea that he intended to leave behind.”
Alex stood up and stared up into the sky. A few white wisps of clouds against a background of blue. He had read about things like space elevators and building massive arks to get people off earth as a child, but that was while he had been laying on his bed with a tattered paperback in his hand. This man was presenting it, not as a story, but as fact. Ancient history, even.
“Janus did not make money for the sake of money. It was all for a single goal, to save humanity. Or, at least as much of it as he could. Which brought him to the most difficult choice of all. Who did he take with him and who did he leave behind, very likely to perish?”
“I imagine that if he was able to convince people that the end of the world was coming—and people tend to listen to really rich people—he could have sold a spot on the ark for any price he wanted.”
Bista nodded. “Absolutely correct, but Janus wasn’t interested in that. He’d already owned everything he could have wanted and found that wanting. Instead, what he preferred to do was implement his vision.”
“Ah,” Alex said. “His vision. These guys always seem to have a vision. Did it include him and seventy-two virgins?”
This reference truly stumped Bista. He touched his ear, which apparently turned the translator off, then turned to Pandrick. They spoke animatedly for a long minute, then Bista touched his ear again, turning on the translator.
“Sorry, I wasn’t aware of that idiom. Apparently it is a belief held by certain sects of people in your time that if they died, they would spend the afterlife with these virgins?”
Alex shrugged. “Maybe they really believed that, or maybe it was just something we said in the West to belittle their beliefs. I never knew.”
Bista absorbed that, then said, “Janus’s vision had nothing to do with the afterlife. He was concerned with the future of humanity. Along with Janus II, he had created what he thought was the perfect system of government. He wanted to take this opportunity to implement it.”
Alex laughed out loud, which startled both Sanda-eh and Monda-ak, because it was a harsh, bitter laugh. “I’ve seen a lot of powerful men implement their ideas. It usually worked out okay for those men for a time, but not so well for the people who signed on with them, unless they got in early. But, in order to get a golden ticket on the ark, everyone had to agree to accept this new form of government, right?”
Bista sat back, observing Alex. “Lanta-eh said you were cynical about things. She found that trait to be a positive.”
“But I guess you find it less so.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Bista answered. “I don’t need to convince you of anything. I just want to relay the story for your own benefit. Once I do that, it’s up to you what you do with it.”
“Good enough. So, what is this new form of government? I think I’ve heard them all, so I’m curious.”
“The core idea that Janus and his artificial intelligence came up with is that those who want to govern are almost always the least fit to govern.”
“Can’t say that I can argue with that.”
“Not always, but nearly always, those who seek positions of power, from low to high, do so to enrich or enable themselves in some way. To eliminate that, Janus made it impossible to—” he turned and conferred with Pandrick briefly—"throw your hat into the ring, as you would say.”
“That’s a good start,” Alex agreed. “But you still need people making decisions. Or does this Janus II call all those shots? I wouldn’t trust a world run by a computer any more than I would any of the systems we had. Which is to say, not at all.”
“It was a system of checks and balances. Janus II chose the leaders based on massive intellectual and psychological testing. Then, the AI made policy suggestions, but the leaders it chose could either implement them or veto them.”
“Of course,” Alex said, “This AI could also pick people that it knew had a natural tendency to support the policies it wanted to create.”
Bista smiled, as at a perceptive student. “Perhaps this is why Lanta-eh loved your cynicism. It allows you to see problems before they happen. The truth is, you’ve got to trust somebody. And, if you wanted to get on The Athena, The Demeter, or The Hera, that somebody was Janus.”
“Why three ships?”
“All three were built simultaneously, but no one had ever attempted an engineering feat like these ships before. Janus II projected that there was a chance that a single ship might not survive. So, he had three ships built to ensure that at least some version of mankind survived into the stars.”
Alex found himself engrossed in a future history that he had never considered before he had woken up that morning. “Did all three make it?”
“No,” Bista answered simply. “In the end, it took longer than Janus thought to obtain certain materials. That pushed the completion into the danger zone where it was possible that the end would come before the
