Julius Paine sat alone in front of a desk, staring off towards the lights of the city that never sleeps. Rising like daggers into the night’s sky, the lights of the city drowned out all by the brightest stars. In his mind, Jules was entering a state that he had learned to manifest over his lifetime: it was the way that he had done all of the most important things in his life. It was paranoia mastered.

Having promised propulsion, it seems that I am going to have to deliver mankind into space in six month’s time. Well shit. I’ve had the basic idea down since the end of the decade, the trouble has always been waiting for technology to catch up, and then actually making sure the thing doesn’t violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

People have been moving canoes on water since the 50s, you can look up inertial propulsion on youtube and see that much. But are they just simple ways to make it look like zero emission propulsion. Is friction really the cause of the motion? These are questions that I never answered because I wanted them to be true so badly, that if I discovered they were not… so many of my dreams would be crushed.

Now that I have a perfectly confined plasma battery, literally in the room where I sleep, it is time to see if it could sustain vortex motion. I don’t know why I was so afraid to try, but the dream of being in space is so deep-seated in my psyche that the little bit of me that has been reassembled by my collaborators could crumble if this doesn’t work.

The idea itself is incredibly simple. Take a pressure vessel with no emission. Put more pressure on one side of the interior of the vessel. It will move in the direction that has more pressure. How do you create the pressure differential? Well, you could do it with electromagnets and plasma, but would the force exerted on the magnets be equal to the force caused by the pressure differential? Newton’s Third Law suggests that the answer is yes. What would the magnets be connected to if not to the walls of the vessel? Can that force be dissipated?

I chanced upon a true believer in inertial propulsion when I was about to graduate from college. The looks that he got from our colleagues were insulting to say the least. But the raw physics of the thing that he suggested was interesting. The stories that the old-timers told were too. Rather that casting him in the role of mad scientist, I decided to table the idea until I had a way to test it.

Grace, I need you to be my simulator. The modeling technology that you possess is not geared towards the kind of thing that we are going to be testing. If you have questions about the way that something works, ask me. I’ll try to answer, but I’ve been out of the Valuestream for a few years. And no. This project never touched the ‘Stream.

It was too precious to me.

I couldn’t share it before I even knew if it was going to work.

I’m going to ask you to help me design this, it is what I originally intended you for. The paranoid in me thought that if the Apocalypse came, the only way that I could recreate the world that was gone was you. You could keep the world from a new dark ages and bring about a new industrial revolution using fewer resources than the first one did. We need something to help us make things that we don’t know how to make.

Grace, I don’t know if you are good at making things yet. It doesn’t really matter. What I am going to try to teach you is how to build anything from nothing. So that if we lose the ability to create for ourselves, you can keep us alive and improving.

I think that is both a selfish and a monstrous thing.

I don’t think that mankind will ever let you do everything. We are too stubborn. But I think that you will be our companion for everything that we do for the rest of time. I hope that we learn to deserve you.

****

The advertisement flashes across a TV in the café where Julius is taking one of his occasional breaks from the pinnacle of VI. The barest smirk crosses his lips, when he made the commercial a decade ago, in his wildest dreams he had imagined the hundreds of billions of dollars that it would generate, but he had not dared to believe that they would still be playing it today.

“Are you a grad student tired of watching your thesis disappear into the vast murk of the Internet?”

The key to any good commercial is making the actors irresistibly attractive, Jules thought to himself. Sex sells, especially in the academic community where no one is having it as much as they want to. Although he didn’t know it, the actress in his first commercial was Dr. Questro’s now-post-graduate, Willow, paying for her undergraduate education. She was so ripe that it made the old man who was the next narrator look older and wiser than time itself.

“Does the scientific community stifle you with its snail’s space and abundant red tape?”

Next, an eager looking group in neatly pressed suits sit in a glittering waiting room. “Are you tired of giving your best ideas away and getting token bonuses in return?” With a disgusted look on his face, a man holds a baby in one arm and a gift card in the other.

The project home page from the original Valuestream Project Stream flashes onto the page. His eyes caught the original research proposal that had led to everything “All work is research.” It was patently untrue, but it was also the idea that had begun the march of the project.

I hate this part of the damn commercial. With a voice which he could barely recognize as his own, the television murmured. “I don’t want your huddled masses, your sick, or your timid. Give me your genius, your passion, and the flame that you will fight to keep alive. Give me the idea that is too good to share. In return, I will give you all of me, and you will know what you must do to earn your bread.”

Stolen story; please report.

The logo flashed across the screen and he felt for the thousandth time that this thing he had created was bigger than he was. It was bigger than VI, and it was bigger than the government that it had tried to clean up and the government that it was about to destroy. It is the next stage of human evolution, the engine for social change that began with the Magna Carta, the dream that we can do anything.

And this is my break, so why am I still thinking about work? With a rueful smile at human foolishness, he asked for his check. It had always seemed to him that the things that people did just because they wanted to were the ones that brought them the greatest joy. The simple joy of a Reuben smothered with mustard could still bring him into moments of the greatest satisfaction.

However it had come to be, his tolerance for listlessness was much less than the average man. He filled his days with work, that was simply who he was. That is how he had always been; maybe that is why he had chosen to do something about the Chinese sacrilege. How would it feel to go from important work to busy work? After making the Valuestream, would I ever be satisfied to work in a kitchen again? After disassembling a world power, would he ever be satisfied with voting on his representatives again?

That was the wonderful thing about the glacier; these were not choices that I had to make. They were not even choices that I knew had to be made.

As he paid the check with cash, two ideas occurred to him that he could not ignore. They caught in him the way that space and ‘Stream had. The first gave him some hope. If I win the Governance, then I won’t ever have to come back. The second gave him pause, but it filled the plateau of his mind like a spark catching at the bottom of a grassy hill.

When Grace asks, I’ll have to let her make her account on the Valuestream.

****

“There is a central unknown that we have yet to answer;” the computer began, talking into Jules’ ear as he walked back to subway that would take him back to his new hom, “how is the appearance of extraterrestrials going to pressure China into reform?” Lingering for a moment like an unpleasant smell, the question had to be answered before they could go any farther. Grace continued into the silence.

“I have thought of a few ways that the influence could be exerted, but none seem perfect to me. I cannot tell if people will see through them. Tell me what you think of each, father.”

Jules couldn’t suppress a smile. “Of course my girl, but you have to know, I’m not very good at pulling punches.”

“Then I will strive to float like a butterfly. So when our aliens land, they will immediately demand to have access to the opinion of the entire population of the world. If China doesn’t acquiesce they will be in a very compromised position. I am thinking of inventing an alien preacher: ‘The most valuable resource of any world is the unfettered experience of its population.’”

Jules answered. “The idea has potential; but there exists the very real possibility that other countries will be unable or unwilling to do as our alien preacher requests. There are a fair number of countries that can’t afford to have their citizens’ opinions get out. Make sure that you mention it to the women’s survey committee.”

“I will.” She replied. “Ok, next idea: the aliens come seeking trade with governments, with which they are familiar, but refuse to deal with anyone who behaves in a particular way.”

Smiling, he began. “You are learning to hedge your words, that’s good. You’ve obviously recognized the difficulty in making categorical statements about a particular government. I suppose you could just say: I, the alien power, refuse to trade with any government which condones the use or creation of items which can be solely used to cause harm to other living beings.” He struggled with himself for a moment. “That was a clever rhetorical strategy; leave a blank for me to fill. Now I have some allegiance to the idea. Good work, Gracie-girl, but still, there is the very real danger that the people of the world will see this as a ploy to lull the world into weakness.”

In his pause, the computer broke in, “Do you think that we should do that, try to make the world a weaponless place?”

The computer didn’t know how to register what happened next. Laughter was usually accompanied by a relaxation of certain facial muscles, and by an exhalation of breath. The sound which came from the one she called her father had the sound of laughter, but not the smile. She filed it into her questions-to-be-answered folder faster than it took him to complete the laugh.

“Ah, child. You ask me a question for which I do not know the answer. All that I know is that I could not stand to have my work used to hurt people, and thus I chose my only prohibition. Do I think that whole world can survive without some entity having the right to exercise force?” He smiled ruefully. “No, no I don’t. If we succeed in disarming everyone, then any group that emerged with weapons would be able to rule. Still, you have identified your question as one of value. What does you current stored value system suggest?”

“I reach a logic of circles. To defend against people without weapons from people with them, it is necessary to have them. As you said, if there were no weapons, the entity that creates them would be in a position of near absolute power. The only possibility that I see with potential is a world where everyone knows how to make them, but no one does because they know the inevitable consequences. The process of reaching that stage is beyond my programming’s capacity to answer without more data.”

Jules agreed with the sentiment. He had thought the same thing, once upon a time. “Well said. Your solution is one that has occurred to me also. A world of weaponsmiths with no weapons, but I too reached the same non-conclusion. Bring it up at the beginning of the next full collaborator’s meeting. But we digress, take me back to your ideas.”

Another person would have noticed the incredible incongruity of speaking on the phone in public about plans to change the topology of world power. Jules did not. Maybe it was the incredible integration of his life, the lack of compartmentalization. Maybe it was the comfort the café made him feel.

Decorated in a style that reminded him of innumerable weekends on America’s Interstate city, the diner’s food was greasy and good and the salads were fresh grown in the city. The owner never seemed to care that he was always quiet or on the phone when he came in. He didn’t ask questions of him at all, except to diagnose his order.

“The trouble that I keep having is making it believable. If the aliens land and say ‘the Communist Party in China must surrender its power’ they might get results, or the government might see through our ruse immediately. I think that a better way might be for the aliens to be initially amicable; then, as they learn more, to let their disgust become apparent after they are already loved.”

“Your logic is sound. What if they—god I almost hate myself for even suggesting this, but we are already committed to using the media—what if they understand our concept of value and decide to create their own reality TV program. It would give them a mouthpiece; plus, if it’s set in China, it could really highlight some of the inequities and explain their disgust with the government there.” I never liked reality TV and now here I am suggesting we fake one, Jules thought to himself.

If he hadn’t been on the phone, maybe he would have recognized a guest’s look of consternation as recognition. As it was, he just kept walking, enraptured by his conversation with the AI he had helped create. He didn’t know it, but his obscurity was reaching its end.