Two miserable hours later, I followed the newly-classed officers back out of the level. As I exited, a pair of messages popped up. The first was from Juana. Big problems with the newcomers. Need you at Council House ASAP. The second was from Colonel Ames. Relaying this message on behalf of Air Marshall Hatfield. Your presence is requested at HQ immediately. P.S. Shad, this is an order and not a 'when you get around to it.'
I hesitated only a second. I was going to have to get used to wearing the uniform again, but that's what I had decided to do, so I needed to start acting the part.
I sent Juana a message: Be there as soon as I can. Boss called me in and set off for headquarters.
The grounds of what had a couple hours ago been a support home for the recovering addicts and homeless we’d inducted had the nicest gardens I'd seen in Threshold. Someone had carried cubic feet of dirt out of one of the levels and created garden beds. Paths wound between the beds, and there were flowers and vegetables growing in them.
Staff and residents were evacuating from the halls, clutching sacks of belongings. Many of the residents had attuned but not ever selected classes or gotten access to their inventory, so they were having to carry their belongings themselves. One attendant woman was urging along a couple of dazed-eyed men in pajamas.
"Just come along now," she was saying. "We've got a lovely new home all ready for us. It's got a seaside view. That'll be nice, won’t it?”
I followed the instructions Ames had sent me, entering the largest building of the compound, then toward the back into what had obviously been some sort of group therapy room. Chairs were still arranged in a circle, and there were cute motivational posters on the wall with cats and small fuzzy bunnies saying helpful things like "Hang in there" and "We're all in this together." I resisted an urge to set fire to them.
Air Marshall Hatfield had a desk set up for herself. It had clearly been carried in from elsewhere. She sat, in a swivel chair behind it, writing furiously on a pad of paper. Ames stood in front of the desk in an at-ease posture. I'd rarely seen him in uniform before. It was an odd effect. He wore quite a bit of decoration on his jacket, and I was certain he had earned all of it. After a minute, Air Marshall Hatfield laid her pen down. She looked up at me.
Belatedly, I remembered myself and saluted. She made me hold it for a good thirty seconds before returning. I lowered my hand.
"Captain Williams," she said, "I am trying to get the feel for this role and it may take me a day or two, especially since your computer systems seem to be non-existent."
It took everything in me not to let my jaw drop open at that. Of course, our computer systems were non-existent if you refused to integrate with the reality engine, I did not say.
"Ah, Kronos handles all our infosphere needs. He lets us integrate with the Galactics’ systems as well."
"So I have been told. Colonel Ames is working on getting me terminals that can access said infosystem. It's becoming more clear to me than ever of the need to keep some of our information and decision-makers air-gapped out of Kronos's way."
I boggled at her, trying to imagine a scenario where her security processes could actually keep Kronos out. “Nevertheless,” she said, laying down her pen, "I have consulted with people who are integrated, and we have begun to collect all relevant documentation. Which is to say — Captain Williams, where are all your reports?"
Her last sentence cracked like a whip, taking me by surprise. I blinked at her.
"My, uh, what?"
"Your reports," she repeated. "Your after-action reports on your missions. You've conducted multiple different types of missions here. I have details on training missions, orientation missions, and something referred to in very vague notes as fragment integration missions, whatever those are."
She let it trail off. I just blinked at her, feeling stupid, wishing Ames would send me a quick note telling me what to say.
Air Marshall Hatfield sighed. "Right. I've had this trouble with mustang officers before. It's no real fault of yours, Williams. You were promoted from enlisted and never given proper leadership courses. We will be remediating that now. Your experience is much too vital to lose, so you will remain in all of your normal roles, but I will have my staff mentor you and teach you the proper ins and outs of being an officer."
I said, feeling really stupid, "Thank you, ma’am.”
“I’ll have your new orders drafted shortly. For now, assume that you need to clear everything with Major Armstrong. I’ll assign him to directly shadow you on your next few missions and get a feel for what you do, as well as providing you with feedback.”
Oh, great. The guy I'd nearly gotten eaten by a polar bear was going to be my direct boss, breathing down my neck for who-knows-how-long.
"That said," Air Marshall Hatfield continued, "I understand you and Ames are the ones who have been on the ground here. Between you and Colonel Twofeather, you've done a passable job. I will have to restore certain standards, but I think we have a foundation we can build on. Once Colonel Twofeather gets back from his recruiting trip, we will all sit down and make some future plans.”
She made a gesture with her hand, as if reaching for a piece of paper that wasn’t there.
“I am concerned about our ethereum levels, especially the quantity that appears to be in civilian hands. This reality engine is an asset of Earth as a whole, gentlemen. The sad reality is that Earth is not unified. In the next fifty years or so, that will no longer be an issue, I have no doubt of that. But the reality of politics is that we are going to be scrambling for some time. Not even everyone involved in Joint Task Force Ganymede is on the same page. The fact that an RAF officer and not an American was appointed in command of this should give you some idea of the kind of political realities we are facing."
That, I was smart enough to figure out. Joint Task Force Ganymede was most of NATO plus a couple of other countries, but the United States would, as usual, be providing the bulk of the manpower. The other countries involved were afraid of getting pushed out of the way and had insisted on the JTF commander being anything but American.
The Brits were, generally speaking, good allies of the US, and it just so happened that I agreed with Air Marshall Hatfield that we were going to have to start working together as a united planet sooner or later. The problem was I had a feeling that the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans, and a few other unfriendlies, had a pretty keen ideas of who should be calling the shots on United Earth.
I wasn't saying that the United States and NATO had always made the right calls. In fact, we made kind of a lot of dumb ones, even in my lifetime. Grandpa could wax downright eloquent on the subject, but he, like me, had volunteered to serve in our country's army, and I still felt a bit of jingoistic patriotism. Though, once you got out to Jupiter's orbit, national boundaries started looking mighty silly.
"My hope," said Air Marshall Hatfield, "is that sooner or later we can have more professional administrator types take over a lot of the roles you and your grandfather have been playing, leaving you to serve on an independent force that I will be setting up under Colonel Twofeather. He's been involved in planning for it already. We'll be calling it Tip of the Spear, and with luck, you'll be traveling to other reality engine exploits to secure ethereum for us sooner rather than later. That said," she tapped her desk, "how is it that the ethereum reserves have been fluctuating rapidly in the last three months?"
"Right," I said. "So, the Civilian Council is requesting more and more ethereum all the time. There's good reason for that. We initially estimated that the big ethereum outlay would be to get people integrated in the reality engine. That costs a certain amount of ethereum. We've arbitrarily called that one I-unit. I for integration.”
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She raised an eyebrow at me. "I guessed that, Captain Williams.”
“So, it costs one I-unit to integrate someone into the system. That includes rebuilding their body, giving them a class, all of that. That's an average," I added. "It takes a little more to rebuild an 80-year-old whose body is riddled with tumors than it does to integrate a fit 20-something. But on average, that's what it costs. Once you've got a class, we assumed that people would be more or less independent. There's a small ethereum charge that everyone exerts just by existing once you've been integrated into the system. But that's so negligible, it's produced by the reality engine almost as a byproduct, and it cycles back in. It's only if we have to go outside of an engine, like back to Earth, that the ethereum involved in the cycle is lost entirely."
Air Marshall Hatfield nodded. "Go on."
"But a bunch of the newcomers haven't been quite as self-sufficient as we hoped. They're not able to help with farming levels for raw materials that we can then use to create more advanced artifacts and processed food. So, we're having to have Kronos give us the crafted items."
I could see she wasn't quite following me, so I decided to give an example. "Say you want to feed lunch to 50 people. Well, if you can have someone on a farming level harvest meat from an animal and some fresh vegetables to make a salad and grow corn and wheat to make bread, then your I-unit cost for the meal is going to be something like .001 I-units per person per day. Not too bad. If instead we have Kronos deliver us those meals pre-packaged and ready to eat, it costs .1 I-unit per person per day. Two orders of magnitude more. And sure, that's not very much, but when you multiply that by how many people we have here and how many days there are in a year, we were burning through our budget a lot faster than we expected. Same thing for building material. Cut down trees, harvest them into timber, use that to build houses, it’s retty cheap. If we need Kronos to deliver us prefab housing, it's a lot more expensive. We had planned initially to be able to house most people inside of reality level zones."
"And?" Hatfield pressed as I paused to make sure she was following.
"Turns out it takes ethereum to stabilize those zones so that people wake up in their own beds every morning rather than somebody else's. Or that their pajamas don't turn into scratchy woolen underwear overnight. That sort of thing."
She blinked at me. "How is that possible?"
How to explain a reality engine to someone who wouldn't integrate? I looked at Ames. He stepped in smoothly.
"We have a more in-depth course from one of our experts in reality engine systems. I'll arrange to have you briefed at your convenience. Captain Williams is giving a pretty good layman's overview though, if you can use that as your working explanation for now."
Hatfield nodded. "That makes some sense. That would explain why your ethereum reserves are dipping faster than expected."
"Also, we've been getting a lot of freshly-inducted humans who leave the system immediately,” Ames added. "The Galactics are recruiting heavily on Earth."
"Yes, I know. There has been some talk in high places about whether or not to allow it. We've decided that we really can't stop them. Anyway, the more humans we get out into the galaxy, the better."
"That's true," Ames allowed. "Except that according to the Constitution we negotiated with Kronos, any Earth-born sentient—and note the word sentient there. You might pass along a warning not to allow pregnant orcs to visit Earth—anyway, any Earth-born sentient is entitled to integration and class selection here at the Ganymede Reality Engine. That means any Joe Schmo who shows up can get a class, including the ones that have signed contracts with Proxima to immediately ship out to their own reality engine, giving back nothing of value in exchange for that one I-unit. And of course, Proxima is signing up people in bad shape, the ones that we haven't been able to get to yet because we're still trying to prioritize the terminal. People with missing legs from diabetes or getting it blown off in an IED in Afghanistan a few decades back. Not to mention addicts and mentally ill. Proxima and the other Galactics have been bringing in people en masse with contracts that, I personally think were signed under the influence of some drug or another. But they hold up in a Galactic court of law, so they're getting these former bums cleaned up on our dime and then shipped out. It's a real problem, and we're talking not just ethereum drain, but people drain."
She looked unconvinced. "I don't know that I believe that losing a few thousand addicts and diabetics is that great a threat to Earth's future."
"Ma'am, there are exactly two things Kronos can't build himself: ethereum and people. This is costing us both."
"You may have a point," Air Marshall Hatfield conceded. "What else? I see several inputs here into our budget, very large quantities of ethereum, and I'm not seeing an explanation as to why."
I took a deep breath. "Yes, ma'am, that's on me. Like you said, I have not been filing my reports properly. Kronos revealed to me recently that he is unable to access certain of his ethereum reserves. In exchange for my help in accessing those reserves, he is turning over half of the ethereum to us."
"That's these two large deposits into our budget," Air Marshall Hatfield said.
"Yes, ma'am.” When Juana had pointed out to me that holding onto the ethereum myself could be considered embezzlement by pretty much every Earth government out there and possibly under Threshold law as well, I had dumped almost all of it into the Joint Task Force Ganymede coffers along with a note saying to ask me about it. I was holding back a little bit in reserve just for emergencies.
"I'm afraid I have to admit I don't know if this is a vast amount of money," Air Marshall Hatfield said, studying the figures on her printout.
"Well, ma'am, I've had some Earth economists do some pricing," Colonel Ames said. "They put the value of reality engine integration and class selection at something along the lines of the cost of a four-year degree from an Ivy League college plus a successful cancer treatment. We're talking something like one point five million Earth dollars or one point two million pounds, according to the last exchange rate I checked."
Air Marshall Hatfield's eyes widened. "One I-unit?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She looked at those numbers and shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm going to need a calculator for this one."
"It's billions at least," Ames said helpfully, "but we really don't have any way of exchanging it for Earth dollars, nor do we want to. Better to think of it as your operating budget and figure out what it's going to cost you in IUs, not in dollars."
"Are there more of these deposits, Williams?"
"Yes, ma'am.”
“We will need to make efforts to collect them all as soon as possible. I'll have you work with Major Armstrong on that."
I was not looking forward to it. “Yes, ma’am.”
"I found when it comes to resources, it's better to have all you can up front than to have a smaller monthly income," Air Marshall Hatfield said. "Now. I know you’ve been a bit lackadaisical about forms and accounting so far. That’s understandable, but it’s got to stop. We’re going to have accountants from half a dozen or more civilian governments breathing down our necks as soon as they figure out that this Ethereum is, well, money. I’ve brought along staff to help us get our books in order. The first thing I’m going to need from you is a full accounting of the influxes and outgoings.”
I took a deep breath. Ames jumped in before I could speak. “Ma’am, Kronos will be able to get that information to your staff, but it’s going to be a lot smoother if they will integrate with the engine.”
“I want to keep our infosphere separate –”
“Without offense, ma’am, and speaking frankly right now, Kronos is the infosphere here. There’s no way we can keep things secret and honestly I don’t think we should try. He is going to find out sooner or later. I will get you a precis of the Ethereum we’ve spent, but please consider integration.”
She hesitated. “I’ll consider it. Also a projection for how long the current supplies will last, if we stay at the current rate of induction or for doubling, tripling, or quadrupling the rate over the next six months.”
“I’ll handle that,” Ames said smoothly.
I should probably have shut up, but I didn’t. “We’ve made some promises to the Civilian Council to help them with their budget, ma’am.”
Air Marshall Hatfield set down her pencil. She steepled her hands together and leaned across the desk toward me. "Captain Williams, I am aware that you have a conflict of interest in that Councilor Lopez-Williams is your wife. There are times when the military has to work closely with the civilian population. This is one of them. It is akin to the relationship that any large military base has with the local population, somewhat compounded by the fact that we are quite a long way from home. That said, we need to be leaving a clean paperwork trail. Earth-side funding for this task force is complex enough. I cannot be showing any sort of questionable records, and neither can you, or we’ll be facing an audit. In six languages.” She shuddered. “If the council wants etherium that our people have earned, from now on they need to be coming to me with requests.”She glanced down at her desk. “Councilors Chen and Fletcher have a meeting with me first thing tomorrow. I’ll emphasize the new rules when I meet with them."
A cold worry seized my gut. "Ah, yes. If I may, Commander, those two councilors are probably going to be your biggest thorns in the side. They're very concerned about the comforts of the population and incredibly resistant to imposing any quotas of any sort, whether it be work quotas or rationing."
A glint of a smile passed over her face. "Is that so?”
“I don't mean to interfere with your affairs, but if you were to extend an invitation to Councilor Lopez-Williams, she would be glad to attend that meeting as well." I hesitated before adding, "Conflicts of interest have their benefits."
Now I was sure she was hiding a smile. "Well, Williams, I appreciate your input and candor. Please be sure to connect with Major Armstrong to start working on the skills transfer. It will need to go both ways. He has a lot of valuable experience with leadership and report writing, but you have absolutely unique skills here in the system. Leverage them.”
"Yes, ma'am.”
"Dismissed."