Killing Time

His face turned toward the ocean again, and his manner softened once more. 'Yet in the meantime, inexplicably but undeniably, the water and the air grew dirtier than they had ever been. New pandemics appeared, with no medicines to treat them. Poverty, anarchy, and conflict ravaged more and more parts of the world.' He sighed once, his brow arching. 'And the fish — disappeared…' When he turned to me again, his face radiated a paradoxical and disquieting calm. 'How did it happen, Dr. Wolfe? How, in an age when the free flow of information and trade was supposedly creating a benevolent global order, did all this happen?'

Just then the shipwide address system issued another gently throbbing alarm, at which Colonel Slayton announced that there was to be another 'system transfer' in two minutes. 'We're heading into the stratosphere for a few hours, Dr. Wolfe,' Tressalian said. 'How would you feel about coffee and dessert at seventy thousand feet?'

I hadn't noticed, but during dinner the ship had inclined its angle of progress, and in just a few seconds the rippling image of the nearly full moon became visible through the surface of the ocean. Maintaining its speed, the vessel rushed up out of the water and into the open air, its superconductive electromagnetic generators propelling it into the heavens at a fantastic rate that did not even rattle the china on the table.

Colonel Slayton moved quietly toward the stairs and headed up to the control level with calm purpose. 'There's no need to contact the island, Colonel,' Tressalian called after him. 'I've already double-checked the apparatus. We're set for dawn.'

'Sorry, Malcolm,' Slayton answered, continuing his climb. 'The military penchant for redundancy dies hard.'

Tressalian laughed quietly in my direction. 'The Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan,' he explained, 'have refused to heed our warnings about the American strike, so we'll have to force them to leave. They've got their women and children down in those tunnels with them, and that's not blood I particularly want on my hands.'

'But how can you force them to go?' I asked.

'Well — I could tell you, Doctor,' Tressalian said as he began to drag his body away from the transparent hull. 'But I think it'll be far more effective if you observe.'

CHAPTER 15

Once we'd leveled off in the thin, cold stratospheric air, Tressalian led a slow procession up to the observation dome atop the nose of the ship. As we stopped by the guidance center on the middle level to pick up his wheelchair, I saw and heard the consoles of monitors blinking and humming under Colonel Slayton's direction, and noted that my earlier amazement at the fantastic advances embodied in the ship was beginning to fade. I found myself marveling at how quickly the human mind can accept and become adjusted to technological leaps — although of course, Tarbell's vodka and Larissa's continued and ever-more-pointed physical overtures were going a long way, on this particular night, toward assisting my own acclimation. But ultimately it was a testament to the seductive power of technology, a power that my host — who refused to explain any further about the Afghanistan business until we got there — expounded on as he sat in his wheelchair in the observation dome:

'While the average citizen, Doctor, was engaged in this mass love affair with information technology — and while the companies that produced that technology happily painted themselves as the democratizing agents of a new order — real economic and informational power, far from being decentralized, became concentrated in an ever-decreasing number of megacorporations, companies that determined not only what information was purveyed but which technologies were developed to receive and monitor it. And while in your own country there was at least a struggle early on for control over this mightiest and most pervasive public influence in history, the crash of '07 put an end to the fight. In a collapsing world, Washington had no one to turn to for help except my father and his ilk. And they offered it, to be sure — but only for a price.'

'To put it simply,' Colonel Slayton said as he rejoined us from the control level, 'they purchased the government.'

Tressalian smiled at him, then turned back to me. 'The colonel has a gift for brevity that is sometimes mistaken for detachment. But remember that no one experienced the practical effects of what we're talking about more than the soldiers of the Taiwan campaign, who— as you yourself have pointed out, Doctor — unknowingly sacrificed themselves for a bigger share of the Chinese market. Yes, the information technocrats, my father among them, purchased the government, and after that all legislative initiatives and material resources were diverted from regulatory programs, from environmental and medical research, from education and foreign aid, even from weapons development — diverted from everything, that is, save the opening of new markets and the expansion of old ones.'

'All right,' I agreed, Larissa's ever-closer presence making me feel steadily more at ease. 'I'll admit I agree with you, but so what? You've said yourself that this sort of thing has happened before in human history.'

'Non, Gideon,' Julien Fouche said as he wrapped one meaty hand around a small espresso cup. 'That is most distinctly not what Malcolm has said. The beginning of the story may have precedents, but this last chapter? There has never been anything like it. The floodgates were thrown open, and human society, already saturated with information, began to drown in it. Tell me — you are familiar, I suppose, with the concept of the 'threshold moment'? When a process increases so drastically in rate and severity—'

'That a quantitative change actually becomes a qualitative one,' I finished for him. 'Yes, Professor, I know.'

'Well, then,' Fouche went on, 'let us put it to you that world civilization has itself reached just such a moment.'

I sat back for a moment. Extreme as his words might have sounded, they could not be dismissed, given their source. 'You're saying,' I eventually answered, 'that the growth of these latest technologies has been so quantitatively different from other informational developments — from, say, the invention of the printing press — that the effect has been a qualitative shift in the nature of society itself?'

'Precisement,' Fouche answered with a nod. 'But don't look so amazed, Doctor. The people behind these technologies have themselves been claiming for years that they were bringing about enormous changes. It is simply that we who are assembled here view those changes as' — he took a sip of espresso as he struggled to find a word— 'ominous. '

Then it was Leon Tarbell's turn: 'The 'information age' has not created any free exchange of knowledge, Gideon. All we have is a free exchange of whatever the sexless custodians of information technology consider acceptable.'

'And the very nature of that technology means that there is no real knowledge anymore,' Eli Kuperman piled on, 'because what those custodians do allow to slip through their delivery systems is utterly unregulated and unverifiable. Mistaken facts — or, worse yet, deceptions on a simple or a grand scale, supported by doctored evidence and digitally manipulated images — become commonly accepted wisdom before there's even been a chance to determine the validity of their bases.'

'And remember,' Jonah Kuperman added, 'that we've now raised not one but several generations of children who have been exposed only to that kind of questionable data—'

'Whoa, whoa, slow down!' I finally called out, holding up my hands. During the brief respite that followed, I let out a deep, troubled breath. 'This is starting to sound like some kind of runaway conspiracy theory — technoparanoia of the worst kind. What in the world makes you think that people can pull off deceptions on a level that will change the fundamental underpinnings of entire societies, for God's sake?'

Everyone around me suddenly grew strangely silent; then, one by one, they turned to Tressalian, who was staring at his fingertips as he slowly bounced them together. After a few seconds he looked up at me, the smile on his face more charming and yet more devious than it had been at any point in the evening. 'We know, Doctor,' he said quietly, 'because we've done it.'

'You?'

Tressalian nodded. 'Quite a few times, actually. And the best, I dare say, is yet to come — if you'll help us.'