Rebuilding From the Collapse (Open RP, PMT) IC Thread

[Wasted Genius]

Ken assesses the situation and promptly panics

(Recommended listening: Chic, “Le Freak” https://youtu.be/EVZh4WcdC3s )

Ken had just 12 short hours to completely overhaul the plans that had been put in place to land Pacificans on Mars…eventually. The fact was, no one in the vast government of Pacifica seemed to have any interest in colonizing Mars. They were all focused on harvesting the relatively cheap bounty of the Moon. That was all going to change in short order...probably.

About the only thing the Board of Directors had agreed upon until now was to build a sort of space-version of a wagon train that would provision whatever other nation decided to invest in colonizing the Red Planet. This concept drew from the history of the California Gold Rush, where the mercantilist became far wealthier by selling picks, shovels and potatoes than the miner who did the dirty and risky work of prospecting for gold.

So Ken had to rework, tout suite, the combined effort of thousands of hours invested by a half dozen technical and financial committees and come up with a 15 slide PowerPoint presentation that would:

A) Explain why “he wasn’t on Mars yet”
B) Concoct a superficially viable strategy to shift gears to a new plan
C) Be able to defend his superficially viable strategy against the most detailed or oddball question
D) Reuse whatever had been invested so far in the old strategy
E) Get the whole new thing done in less than two years
F) Not violate the laws of physics in the process

It was only items B, D and F that were completely outside his expertise, so he calculated he was already halfway there. Now all he had to do is get the best people to answer these absurd questions. Or any people to answer them, as he was on a deadline here.

[Wasted Genius]

Ken desperately searches for a way out of Archie’s trap

(Recommended listening: Electric Light Orchestra, "Don't Bring Me Down")

Ken rifled through Project Wagon Train’s operational proposal and its white papers, charts, committee recommendations and findings. He skim read document after document, pausing only to take a second look at his own white paper titled “The Most Reasonable Case for Going to Mars.” It had been 15 years since he’d written it and he had forgotten most of the details. But he was pretty impressed with the razor sharp, fact-based argument he had made. “Enough of that,” he muttered to himself. He was on a mission to find a couple of subject matter experts (also known as fall guys or bag holders) that could get him out of this jam, first with Archie Panopoulis tomorrow morning and then later with the Board of Directors if need be.

He popped the tab on another Monster (his fourth, and the maximum recommended daily amount). It was already 3 AM and he had to get this sorted right away. He must find just the right people to shore up his thesis that Project Wagon Train had been a compromise decision, and EVERYONE had a part in it. And along with that he needed someone who had presented an alternative project that would have included astronauts.

[Wasted Genius]

Time out for a quick bit of history

(Recommended listening: Johnny Cash, “One Piece at a Time” https://youtu.be/18cW_yHo3PY )

The short version of Project Wagon Train goes like this: The Lunar Operations Five Year Plan was completed successfully in 2090. After that, the Board of Directors tossed around what to do with the plan’s surplus funds in order to squeeze the last penny of ROI out of the budget. After a lot of the kinds of contributions you get from agency heads that have no expertise in the subject that they’re spinning ideas for, it was agreed that a steering committee would be formed to come up with a functional Mars Transfer Program.

Ken was given the task (in very much the same manner as his current fool’s errand) to architect a five-year plan that would stay within the meager surplus budget and be an end-to-end solution. Ken, an engineer by trade, and an unimaginative one at that, did precisely as he was instructed and no more.

Project Wagon Train would consist of cargo ships made from the Lunar Operation's leftover structural parts, unused solid fuel boosters, spare liquid fuel tanks, used engines with some service hours left on them and refurbished navigational computers. No astronauts. Astronauts are the worst kind of expense (a recurring expense *gasp*) and they tend to break for any one of a hundred reasons in interplanetary space.

These ships would carry cargo containers, the same ones used to ferry hardware to the Earth Gateway by the Skylon fleet. These containers had earned the nickname “eggs” because they were white, cylindrical with rounded ends and were capable of being opened, like cracking an egg. The system of ships would form a regularly scheduled, totally automated route between the Moon and Mars. Any Pacifica agency or even another country’s space program could get their hard goods to Mars very cheaply.

So, it was a very reasonable case for going to Mars. In fact, the most reasonable case.

[Wasted Genius]

Yes, it’s still 3 AM on the morning before Ken’s do-or-die meeting with Archie Panopoulis

(Recommended listening: The Dead Kennedys, “Holiday in Cambodia”. Warning: Explicit and quite frankly, offensive language)

Back in the early days of the Mars Transfer Project, Ken was either an optimist or a political simpleton, depending on your perspective. He believed that his proposal would either be accepted or declined by the steering committee and that would be that. The pile of documents that he was digging through tonight proved that the “optimist” point of view was incorrect.

The moment he released his proposal for review, dozens of opponents popped out of thin air, from places he would have never imagined. He remembered the day his e-mail inbox exploded with items ranging from one sentence “you’re full of crap” flame mails to 5-to-80-page document attachments that proposed alternative uses for the surplus funds or better ways to complete the project. Others went into significant technical detail as to why his plan wouldn’t work, still others produced financial models of how it would never pay for itself. One even rambled on about Mars being haunted by the ghosts of an ancient civilization that should not be messed with.

He shook his head remembering the surprising spectacle of self-interest, technical ignorance and bureaucratic shenanigans that pushed and pulled the proposal around like it was in a mosh pit with a bunch of purple mohawked punks, only to have everything settle down just like the blunt cut at the end of a live performance of “Holiday in Cambodia”.

Ken looked down at the document before him. It was a financial model produced by some controller at the Energy Agency that was critical of his proposal (of course). What stood out to him was the rationale and the person who created it. The model spoke of excess fuel costs over the service life of any given ship, and you’d expect that from a bean counter. But what was peculiar was this projection was based on some very complicated orbital, trajectory and delta-v calculations. Even more intriguing was how accurate they were when compared to the actual program statistics. This must be one sharp ledger hound. And in that moment Ken knew he had his man, one Robert Aubin, CPA. We know him as “The Bob”.

[Wasted Genius]

4 AM = 5 hours before Bob’s workday begins, that is it's only referential significance

(Recommended listening: Climax Blues Band, “Couldn’t Get it Right” https://youtu.be/tmpa94oks4k )

Ken spent the better part of an hour poring over Robert Aubin’s critical argument against Project Wagon Train. He wanted to be fully prepared when he got Aubin on the phone. But there was something not right about the paper that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The physics parts of the document were scientifically brilliant but while the financial calculations were adequate, the way they were presented was simplistic (for example the ship’s propulsion system was referred to as “rockets, miscellaneous”). It’s almost as if two different people had written the paper. Ken couldn't know this, but that's exactly what had happened.

Ken called Bob at his home.

“Hullo?” Bob answered, his voice gruff and thick with sleep.

“Hello Mr. Aubin, this is Ken Watanabe, director of Pacifica Space Agency. I’m sorry to call you so early, but I have an urgent request from the head of the Office of Inspectors General.

Bob snapped to and blurted, “You mean Archie? Aw crap. What’s going on? I swear we’ve got that hydrazine contract overcharge thing worked out. It was just a misunderstanding with the vendor! There was no collusion!

Ken was surprised, because this sounded like something he should be aware of. “No this isn’t about hydrazine. Do you remember a paper you wrote 15 years ago about Project Wagon Train? It was titled “Fuel Cost Forecast, Project Wagon Train, Total Lifetime, Excessive.”

“Wha? 15 years ago? I don’t even remember a ‘Project Wagon Wheel’.

“Wagon Train, not wheel.

“Eh wheel, train, whatever. What is it and why does Archie care enough about it for you to call me at...” Bob paused to look at a clock, “...Four-twelve in the morning? For God’s sake.

“It’s called the Mars Transit Program now. It transports hard goods to Mars.

“Oh yeah, that. Wasteful. Should have been cancelled before it even got started.

“Well its been successfully operational for three years –

“- if you call under-utilized successful. At least that’s what I hear.

“We’re working on that. Look, I’m in a bit of a hurry. I have a meeting at OIG with Archie at 10 this morning and I need your subject matter expertise for a new proposal he’s asking for…uh, insisting upon. From reading your paper it looks like you have the unique combination of technical and financial knowledge we need to modify the Mars Transit Program in order to put Pacifican astronauts on Mars.

“I have what? Technical what?

And then it dawned on The Bob. He remembered it all now. He put his forehead in his hand and whispered to himself, “Aw crap… Ben. Godda**it Ben.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t get that last part”, Ken said, “Can you meet me in my office at 9 and then we’ll go over to OIG together?

Bob sighed heavily. He couldn’t care less about Ken Watanabe, Director of Pacifica Space Agency. If it was possible, he couldn’t care even less about Project Wagon Wheel or Train or whatever. But he was six months from retirement and a corruption investigation by OIG could royally screw his pension. And Archie Panopoulis would definitely start sniffing around if Bob’s name came up (again). “Sure, I’ll be there,” he said and hung up the phone. And then he immediately called that b*st*rd Ben.

[Maineiacs]

Connie Burton, of Portland, Oregon, a graduate of UCLA, was a technician with PSA's R&D facility at Long Beach, CA.

There were several falsehoods in that statement.

Connie Burton wasn't Connie Burton; she was Diane Fournier. She hadn't graduated from UCLA, she graduated from Columbia. Although she had a background in engineering, she wasn't really an engineer. And she didn't really work for PSA; she was an operative for MFIT (Maineiacs Federal Investigations Team). In fact, the only part of the above statement that was even partially true was that she really did grow up in Portland; just not that Portland. She'd been in Pacifica for the better part of a year, gathering intel on the current state of their space program. Her mission was not really malicious; she wasn't there to sabtage anything, just monitor it. The two halves of North America had had cordial, if somewhat casual, relations since communication had been restored after the Collapse and the Dark Years, and she (as well as all operatives in Pacifica) had been warned to take as little provocative action as possible. She had done the PSA Mars program no harm, and, she liked to think, had even helped it along in the small way her assumed position allowed. Would Pacifican authorities see it that way? She certainly hoped so. Her findings themselves contained the proverbial good news/ bad news. Pacifica was, indeed, behind Maineiacs in the race to Mars. The reasons were two-fold, she had surmised. First, Pacifica was run by a bureaucracy so labyrinthine that it made Maineiacs' government look simplistic. There was always an appalling sea of red tape to swim through to get even the simplest tasks done. It put her in mind of the Vogons from the 20th Century novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Second, PSA's program had heretofore been focused on automated probes. But no longer. Diane had come across documents that seemed to indicate that PSA was about to completely revamp its entire approach. Some were urging a manned program, and there were indications that PSA's Director was in favor of the idea. Also, she had come to realize the PSA had actually a much grander vision of its purpose and goals than MSA did. MSA seemed to be a bit myopic. They were focused -- focused to a fault -- on getting to Mars. From what she had seen during her prep for her mission in Pacifica, Maineiacs had few plans beyond vague talk of colonization. PSA were drawing up plans for resource exploitation not only on Mars, but also on the Moon, and even the Asteroid Belt. If MSA had similar plans, she was not privy to them. Diane sent her report off to Asst. Director Hale, along with her recommendations, over a secure link. She would then await further instructions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Joseph Hale, Deputy Director of Maineiacs Federal Investigations Team looked over the report submitted to him by the mole placed in Pacifica's Space Agency. It confirmed what he had feared: yes, Maineiacs would reach Mars first, yes we'd have boots on the ground on the Red Planet long before them, as PSA had mainly seemed interested in robotic exploration, but MSA's advantage wouldn't last, as the report laid bare the weakness in MSA's Project Ares. It was a plan to get humans to Mars -- and that's it. There were no concrete plans about what to do once we got there. A colony? OK, to do what? Were we just going to collect rocks like MSA's predecessor, NASA had done on the Moon a century and a half ago? Sure, look for signs of life, or at least fossils, that would certainly be big, but ultimately of no more than scientific interest. The government still had no idea what to do with Mars once we were there. Pacifica did, and, according to the report, they were on the verge of switching to a manned program. Well, the ISPP couldn't be sped up, and neither could the ERV. It would return a year and a half after launch, come what may. Hale decided to contact Director Harlow and suggest MFIT lean heavily on MSA to flesh out their plans.

[Wasted Genius]

It’s all coming together for Ken

(Recommended listening: Angelo Badalementi, "Red Bats With Teeth")

Ken hung up the phone with Bob Aubin and breathed a sigh of relief. The main gap in his presentation to Archie Panopoulis was covered. Ken would spin the original rationale behind Project Wagon Train and then hand it off to Bob who would use his unique talents to create a new solution on the fly. Bob didn’t know this yet of course, but his paper was proof that he was well versed in the subject. Besides, Ken already had the bones of a new plan based on a footnote in Bob’s paper. All Bob had to do for today’s meeting was put some superficial skin on it. And no matter what, he would position Bob in Archie’s sights so Ken’s clever self would be safe. He rubbed his palms together vigorously and clapped. He could feel the good energy. Or maybe it was the Monsters. He’d already had six of them.

There was only one thing missing. “Oh, that’s right!” he said aloud to no one. It was almost 5 AM. Four hours - plenty of time. He picked up his phone and started typing a text:

Hey Josh, you up?

No

Lol. I need some help!!!

What?

A 15 slide .pptx by 10 AM today

Cant be done

Just rough, no video, animations or transitions
You drop in graphics and format textboxes I’ll do the content
I just sent you the sketches

Ok
You owe me

Rofl don’t I always?
Needs PSA background

Ok

And…

Come on not hexagons again

Acid green glow on black

(10 seconds goes by)

Your sketches look they were made by an 8 year old meth addict

Thanks man!!! I’ll hyu at 9

You said 10

Rough draft by 9

Ok but the billable just doubled

Np

It was on. Everything was coming together for Ken. If only he knew what his day would end up actually being like.

[Wasted Genius]

Ken is on fire

(Recommended listening: FC Kahuna, “The Remixes – Nothing is Wrong” https://youtu.be/kTe_1cQoMmY )

• Ken gets dressed and is off to the office by 0700
• Ken arrives at the office by 0730
• Ken makes himself coffee. OK it’s Keurig but it tastes kind of like coffee.
• Ken also slams his first Monster of the morning
• Ken composes content for the PowerPoint presentation
• It takes no more than 2 minutes per slide
• Because text is always in bullet points (15 words max per point) in PowerPoint
• And that’s super easy because a Capuchin monkey could write a doctoral dissertation in bullet points
• But then Ken notices he has forgotten to breathe for over a minute
• Ken sends the final-final content to Josh by 0800
• Ken. Is. On. Fire.

[Wasted Genius]

Bob shows up right on time, but brings along a +1 (and a whole lot of trouble.)

(Recommended listening: Cloud Cult, “Please Remain Calm” https://youtu.be/lkheCQHekSE )

Ken’s admin assistant buzzed him at precisely 8:55 AM.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Aubin is here for his 9 o’clock. He has a guest with him.”

Perfectly on time, Ken noted. He could follow his usual protocol and leave Bob stewing in the reception area for 10 minutes, in the customary power play that executives had been practicing for years. But not this time. Besides, Ken was curious about the uninvited guest.

“Please show them in,” Ken said in his most calm and professional tone.

The first thing Ken noticed was that neither Bob nor his guest were dressed appropriately for the occasion. Good, this would give him what he supposed was the upper hand in the power game. Beige khakis and short sleeves with button down collars. And the guest hadn’t even buttoned his down.

The older, more worn-down looking one spoke first.

“Hello Mr. Watanabe, I’m Robert Aubin (you can call me Bob), and this is Ben Ovechkin, my technical liaison.

Ken extended his hand, “Pleased to meet you Bob, Ben. Ben, your last name sounds familiar.”

“Yes, my grandfather was Alex Ovechkin. Greatest hockey player in the NHL.”

I know, I know, Gretzky is The Great One. But even *he* thinks Ovechkin will break his record before 2025. And he’s all for it.

Ken replied, “Yes of course, that must be it.”

Ken motioned for the men to sit and moved to his own seat behind his desk. He began to explain the whole story so far. When he got to the part about Bob’s paper, the two started nervously looking side-eyed at each other. Ken sensed this and asked, “have I gotten something wrong?”

“Well,” Bob began, “You see…” and he paused for a moment glancing at Ken furtively.

He continued, “Ben here is a genius. And I mean super genius. He was assigned to me 15 years ago to help me decipher all of that science gobbledygook on the Energy Agency reports…”

Ken noticed when Bob said Ben was assigned to him 15 years ago, Ben’s left eyelid twitched perceptibly.

“Well, I’ll tell you I couldn’t get along without him. That’s why I’ve fought tooth and nail to keep him all these years. He’s that smart.” Bob thought he was giving Ben a great compliment, but anyone could see Ben dying inside as he quietly listened.

“So what happened with that paper is I got a request from my boss to comment on the financials of your Project Wagon Wheel proposal…

“Train. It’s called Project. Wagon. Train.

“Train, wheel, whatever. Anyway, I couldn’t make diddly squat out of the technical data so…I…uh…took a guess and said it would waste excessive amounts of fuel over the life of the program. I wrote my part up and handed it off to Ben to grind away at the data and back up my stuff with numbers.

“Ben gave me back the report and I looked at it, briefly,” Bob cleared his throat, “and well graphs and tables, trajectories and gravity wells…it all seemed like science fiction to me. I trust Ben, he’s a genius, so I signed off on it and sent it up the chain.

Ken was beginning to sweat. Suddenly his crisply tied tie felt very tight. His hands were trembling under the desk. Maybe it was too many Monsters, or maybe he was watching his whole strategy vis-a-vis Archie Panopoulis catch fire and make that droning sound of an airplane in its death dive.

[Wasted Genius]

Ken rides an emotional rollercoaster all jacked up on coffee (OK, Keurig “coffee") and energy drinks.

(Recommended listening: Rammstein, “Feuer Frei!” https://youtu.be/ZkW-K5RQdzo )

Ken began to slouch dejectedly in his chair. 35 minutes ago he had the whole situation under control. But this meeting, where he was supposed to be the puppet master had gone horribly off the rails and was a flaming wreck.

Bob Aubin continued with his explanation, “So when you called me this morning, I got right over to Ben. Y’know so he could sort things out. Ben, tell him what you told me.

Ken was expecting this to be the coup-de-grace to his plan, leaving him empty handed for his meeting with Archie in…30 minutes. Oh lordy.

Ben began, “Well I’ll admit, I wasn’t a fan of Project Wagon Train, and it’s true it was mostly because of the propulsion system. But I had my own idea, which I detailed in a footnote. Breaking down the fuel usage was easy; it was a basic undergrad-level math problem. But I didn’t just want to blow the project out of the water without providing an alternative.

Ken had perked up a bit when he heard the mention of Ben’s footnote. He hoped it was the same one he had read last night, and that he suspected had been overlooked when the steering committee analyzed the proposal.

“Yes, the footnote. Tell me about that,” Ken said, coming off less confident than he’d hoped.

“You see, at the time the Energy Agency was testing a nuclear fission propulsion system for large-mass deep space probe missions. That seemed a lot more fuel and propellant efficient to me, so I proposed, in my footnote, that the conventional main rocket engines and some of the solid rocket boosters on the Project Wagon Train ships could be replaced by the experimental nuclear fission engines.”

Ken, now with a tone of mild desperation asked, “Do you know what happened to the nuclear propulsion experiment?”

“The experiment was successful –

Bob interrupted, “- but they cancelled it and reallocated the budget to solid rocket boosters.”

Ben, for the first time in the meeting looked visibly frustrated. He blurted, “Tell him why they cancelled it Bob.”

“Okay, okay. They cancelled it because I struck it out of my quarterly expenditures report. To be fair I didn’t see the connection between Project Wagon…Train and the experiment. It just seemed like more money being shoveled into the incinerator for the sake of another science fiction fantasy.

Ken was confused, but he was beginning to have a glimmer of hope that with perhaps a year or two delay he could salvage his plan.

Ben spoke. “But here’s the thing. They originally built 10 prototype reactors. They used two of them. The other eight are still up there.” (he pointed toward the ceiling).

Ken almost leapt over his desk. “Up there? Like where do you mean?

“In space, stored in transport eggs, in orbit around the Moon. I checked the manifests and inventory records before we came over. They’ve been up there for 15 years.”

[Wasted Genius]

---

How do you get past the giant with a hundred eyes? Spellbind him...if you can.

(Recommended listening: Muse,”Survival”)

The presentation to Archie Panopoulis was going well. At Ken’s request, Bob answered only direct questions from Ken with as few words as possible. What Ken didn't tell Bob was that his questions would lead him through a summary of how the Energy Agency had administratively bungled the Project Wagon Train proposal. Once this was established Ken pushed Ben Ovechkin into the spotlight (aka the bullseye of the target) to discuss the solution in fine detail. This led to Archie taking a keen interest in Ben, just as Ken had hoped.

But Ben, it turned out was somewhat of a crouching tiger (or was he a hidden dragon?), because he was just a little too good at this. Maybe he had been sharpening his claws (whether they were of the tiger or dragon variety) lo these 15 years.

At the same time Ben was being thrust into the spotlight center stage, another element of Ken’s scheme to mesmerize Archie was being unfurled.

Some say a good PowerPoint presentation can be the difference between closing the deal or pounding sand. And as the icing on Ken’s layer cake of manipulation, Josh’s presentation was spectacular. Somehow he had magically taken a few badly scrawled sketches and weak bullet points and turned them into a 15-slide depiction of space program transformation, with slick transitions and animated illustrations all on a background of what Ken saw as tastefully muted, glowing acid green hexagons.

Archie was hunched over his desk, his enormous bulk resting on his elbows, fully engaged in the drama being hosted by Ken.

“And in conclusion,” Ken said with an oratory style, “you can see that PSA has a fully prepared contingency plan to upgrade and redeploy the cargo ships of our Mars Transfer Program to launch 100 Pacifican archeologists, geologists and support crew to Mars within one year from the Board of Directors official authorization.”

Ben winced at this last statement. No one had said anything about timelines until this very moment and this was an unrealistically tight one. But Ken beamed with confidence. He knew exactly who he would first steal from Bob and then assign as program director.

[Wasted Genius]

---

Ken’s is back on the rollercoaster, this time without the aid of stimulants.

(Recommended listening: Willie Nelson, “The Party’s Over”)

Archie stood up and moved around his desk. He was as happy as Ken had ever seen him (which meant the menacing scowl that had become the permanent architecture of his face was almost missing).

“Gentlemen”, Archie said, “that was an impressive show.” He began herding them toward the door. “It looks like you’ve really done your homework, congratulations. And Ken, that PowerPoint, you know what they say about PowerPoints…”

Ken was both relieved and excited. He was already imagining the next step, the sub-committee to the steering committee and getting a proper proposal together and the PowerPoint, oh the PowerPoint he was already dreaming of…

Archie began moving the trio out the door by pressing his gigantic form into their comfort zone, like an enormous shepherd dog moving a tiny flock.

Just as Ken approached the door, Archie said affably, “Oh, Ken, if you have a minute, I’d like to follow up on a couple of things…”
Ken stopped in his tracks and in one fluid motion Archie both waved goodbye to the others and closed the door. His demeanor instantly transformed into the customary Archie menace.

“Well that was slick…very slick.” He turned his back on Ken and lumbered back to his desk, Ken following with a kind of instinctual obedience.

“So you’re telling me that a Grade II Accountant did an end run on you and the entire Space Program Steering Committee. And now you want to replace the lawnmower motors you installed on our Mars Transfer fleet with hemi V8’s that have been orbiting the Moon for a decade and a half?

Things were suddenly looking a lot less rosy than they were a moment ago. Ken sputtered his weak defense:

“We’ll need the extra thrust to support adding the crew module, like I showed on slide 10…and it’ll give us more speed too. It’s the rocket equation, three things depend on each other – fuel, mass and speed. Any space operations project is ruled by these things. It’s known as ‘the tyranny of the rocket’.

“Hm,” Archie snorted, “is that right. But you know what else ‘any space operations project’ is ruled by?

“Um, no…

“Politics.” Archie shouted as he slammed his hand down on the desk. “It’s politics that either gets Pacifica to Mars or keeps it on the Moon. Maineiacs is leaving us in the dust and the BoD won't like that one bit so there's all the tyranny of whatever you said right there.

There was a moment of silence in the room as Ken weighed just how screwed he, or let's be honest, Ben Ovechkin was going to be.

“Ken?

“Yes Archie?”, Ken stammered.

“You wouldn’t BS me about getting to Mars in a year would you?"

“Uh, I said launch to Mars in a year."

“Well I heard ‘get to Mars.’”

“But that would only give us a few months to launch. At top speed a nuke drive will still take 4 months to get to Mars."

“Well you better get moving then."

“Yes Archie…

[Maineiacs]

"As this report by MFIT recently leaked to us shows, our so-called President managed to strong arm an atrocious budget that included 2.29 billion ECr [OOC: Energy Credits, Maineiacs' currency] for a trip to Mars to basically, do nothing but sight see. The "plans" MSA had for their Project Ares are so vague, that one cannot help but wonder what the real purpose of this project is. The administration, as usual, declined our requests for comment. The people of this nation need to wake up. Comrade McDermott and his Communist coterie are fleecing this nation, either to line their own pockets, sell us out to a foreign power, or just simply bring us down from within. We call on any patriotic senator with the guts to do so to file formal impeachment charges against the Manchurian Candidate."

-- The Anti-Government Hour podcast

"Is this true?" asked Anderson McDermott.

"I'm afraid so, Mr. President." said Robert Harlow, Director of MFIT. "MSA sneaked it past us during negotiations on the Maglev renovation bill. I'm embarrassed that it got past our office as well, but budget matters are not our usual area of concern."

McDermott again read the report on MSA's alleged malfeasance as submitted by an MFIT agent embedded in Pacifica's Space Agency. This was going to be bad. A terrible embarrassment to him and his whole administration. MSA had somehow managed to get funding for a massive project of manned exploration of Mars, and an equally, if not more expensive project of research into ion propulsion engines, without actually bothering to detail what the aims of this Project Ares was beyond imply getting to Mars. The New Democrats, and especially the Reform Party, were going to have a field day with such blatant incompetence. Those nutjobs at The Anti-Government Hour were positively foaming at the mouth, screaming for impeachment. Not a lot of people took them seriously, but there were those in the Senate that were opportunistic enough to at least consider using that rhetoric to stir up controversy, and attempt to further their own ambitions.

"I think it's time a had a face-to-face talk with Tony Santos [Director of MSA]." said McDermott.

[Wasted Genius]

(Recommended listening: Frank Zappa, “Blessed Relief”)

Bob packs it in.

It was the morning after the meeting with Archie Panopoulis. Bob Aubin was going through his e-mail:

- 0800: Director, Energy – Execute ACH Funds transfer from Energy account 24116 to Space account 10203, $36,000,000,000
- 0834: Energy HR - Re-assignment: Benjamin Ovechkin
- 0900: OIB Case opened: Robert Aubin, re: Project Wagon Train inquiry

The first two of these elevated Bob’s systolic blood pressure precisely 12 points each. Bob’s circulatory system didn’t have much spare capacity to begin with, and so the third item kicked off that tightness in his chest that was becoming a familiar sensation.

But then, the next two items provided blessed relief:

- 0916: OIB Case closed: Robert Aubin re: A. Panopoulis recommends no action, Project Wagon Train inquiry
- 0925: Energy HR – Robert Aubin, eligibility for early retirement, full pension

Bob was bewildered, but that was nothing new. His head hadn’t been in the game for years and his main goal lately had been to run out the clock and retire with his wife to the little place they had purchased in the idyllic but at the same time kind of dumpy beach town of Cayucos.

Bob executed the transfer without even opening the e-mail, got the two empty bankers’ boxes he kept in the corner and called his wife:

“Honey, start packing, we’re outta here!”

[Wasted Genius]

Ken and Alexis have a strategy session. And Ben has no idea of what he’s about to get into.

(Recommended listening: Primal Scream, “Kill All Hippies”)

As Bob was packing his desk, whistling a happy little tune from his childhood, in a building across town Ken Watanabe (Director of PSA) and Alexis Brandt (Deputy Director of PSA) were meeting in Ken’s spacious office, both hunched in close at the round conference table that usually sat unused in the corner. There were several scale models on the shelf in the background. A Skylon SSTO, the LEO Gateway, the Lunar Gateway, an orbital tug and a couple versions of the Mars Transfer System ships, one laden with Space Egg containers, one without.

Ken’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the message and smiled briefly. The transfer had been executed. “Good”, he thought, a little surprised that the deal Archie had brokered with the Director of the Energy Agency had gone through so quickly. Ken guessed Energy must have been eager to buy itself out of a long and embarrassing inquiry over a mid-level controller with a habit of killing programs with his overused strikethrough key. So, good, now they had money, all they needed was time – and a plan that could be implemented, not just made up for a slick PowerPoint presentation.

“…the sub-committee will be meeting early next week”, Alexis continued as Ken re-focused his attention, “we can probably get away with the solution part of your PowerPoint presentation from yesterday, but they’re going to want qualified engineering concepts and prelim budgets pretty soon.”

“That’s fine,” Ken replied, “I want you to go there and give the solution pitch, but - this is important - you need to throw in a couple problems that will keep this thing in sub-committee as long as possible.”

Alexis was nobody’s fool and she picked up on Ken’s tactic immediately. “So you can come up with a real solution…”

“Yes that’s it, but there’s something else. While it’s true that I’m a bit skeptical of a 15 year old plan cooked up by an Energy Agency science-liaison-to-an-accountant which uses experimental rockets that have been stored in orbit around the Moon for the same 15 years, I’m thinking of another problem.

“And that is?

“Why Mars? Why the hell Mars? Somebody is bound to ask that obvious question eventually.

“I thought Archie made it pretty clear that the Board of Directors wants to go there because Maineiacs set up operations there. It’s a matter of national pride. We can’t let the world think the Reds are ahead of us technologically.

“That explains why we should go there once, but what are we going to do when we get there? We need to figure out how we can make this more than a ‘one giant leap for mankind’ moment. Did you know that Nixon was already thinking about how to kill the Apollo program as he was congratulating the astronauts on their brave achievement? I don’t want to see this whole thing fall apart like the Mars Transfer System did. Just another underperforming space program that will be hacked to pieces in a few years because of ROI concerns. Now I’ve got a chance to fix that Mars Transfer money pit and perhaps build something for the future...of PSA.

Alexis looked over Ken’s shoulder at the models on the shelf. She stood, walked over and picked up a couple of them.

“These are to scale with each other, right?

“Yes, they are.

“What if we modified a couple of these and strapped them to this,” she said as she held up one of the Mars Transport ships.

“But how would they land?”

“Wellll, you said you were sending a hundred archeologists and geologists. What if they were more like a hundred Lunar Construction Battalion engineers who had a couple of science classes in college? I mean, you could still call them scientists.

“Alexis, that’s brilliant. Work with Ben Ovechkin on that. He’s the new program manager.

“Does he know that?” she asked with a wry smile.

“He will in about 20 minutes, he’s my luncheon appointment.”

“Are you meeting him for lunch or is he today’s blue plate special?”

Ken laughed, “A little column A, a little column B.”

[Wasted Genius]

Bruce Higgins, Auditor Level II – Special Projects, Office of Inspectors General, South Bay District

(Recommended listening: Kraftwerk, “Computer World”)

(Technote: L-CID)

Every morning, first thing after visiting a dismal, windowless cubbyhole kitchen for his company provided "coffee"⁽¹⁾ and donut, Bruce Higgins switched on his computer and checked his customized OIG ERP workflow dashboard.⁽²⁾ The dashboard mostly contained information that was useless for the actual completion of his duties, though it was considered vital by management for the successful attainment of his MBOs.⁽³⁾ But he still started off with it as a low-impact way to let the ”coffee” kick in, allow for unhurried munching of the high-fructose-corn-syrup-frosting-derivative glazed donut and ease his brain into the days’ work.

One dashboard sub-pane he always skimmed was the L-CID Dot-0 alerts. The alerts were highlighted by level of urgency. No highlight meant normal, no problem, just FYI; yellow required a click-for-drilldown-details and red meant drop everything and get on this in the actual Dot-0 interface. It was set up to be simple enough that a Capuchin monkey could respond appropriately.

Everything on the Dot-0 sub-pane was usually normal urgency. It was exceedingly rare to see a yellow highlight. So each morning Bruce would scroll through the entries to read the overnight interagency news like it was the headlines of a business office gossip paper. For example, this morning:

• Dot-0 found a calculation flaw in a Transportation Agency quarterly report
• Dot-0 detected that the response time to an intrusion alert at a warehouse in Hawaiian Gardens was too slow per designated metrics
• Dot-0 scanned the district’s file system and found several Level 8 errors that it reported to Data Services

It all seemed simple enough, but behind the dashboard sub-window, Dot-0 detected everything and reported everything it detected to someone, no matter how trivial. Based on his knowledge of this, Bruce assumed he was Dot-0’s idea of who the most trivial issues should go to. In fact, one bullet point on Bruce’s job description mandated that he was to “resolve all emergent operational anomalies” in the South Bay District which was roughly a triangle from El Segundo to La Mirada inland and south to Huntington Beach.

As Bruce scrolled through last night’s log entries, a new yellow-highlighted entry popped up, making a dull little pung sound as it did.

• PSA Facility Long Beach Multiple File Access Boundary Violation Level 6

Level 6 wasn’t a big deal, someone probably stumbled into the wrong directory and tried to open the wrong file. But before he could click-to-drilldown there was another pung and another yellow highlight. And then another. And then an electronic squeal like someone had stepped on a seagull accompanied by a red highlight:

• PSA Facility Long Beach File Access Pattern DELTA - Information Theft

Bruce had never seen a red highlight notification and so he hurriedly popped open the Dot-0 interface to read the report:

DELTA Pattern access – assigned user badge not present at login credential entry point. Files accessed not related to assigned users work objective profile. Multiple files copied to out of bounds location or device. Badge IDs in proximity of login credential entry point:

BAC-186493 Robert J Patterson – PE 2 - in bounds
BAC-487215 Jolene M Landers – PE 3 - in bounds
PSA-663866 Constance A Burton – Tech 2 – out of bounds

There were surveillance camera captures attached to the report with green boxes drawn around the faces of the three subjects. Hyperlinks appeared under each of the three clips providing highly detailed background reports on the subjects. There was also a little check box labeled “Detain for Interview.” This was something that Bruce had never seen before and he wondered if the system would actually allow him to select the box and if he did, what would happen. So as most of us would, he clicked the box belonging to Constance A Burton, the out of bounds-er, just to find out. There was the pung sound and the box was filled-in with a green check mark. The Dot-0 status sub-pane punged again, noting:

• Initiated request for subject apprehension and detainment: ID PSA-663866 Constance A Burton, PSA Long Beach Facility.

Bruce was a little shocked. Words like “apprehension” and “detainment” were pretty vague. Who would be doing the apprehending? What would detention involve? His imagination ranged from the woman’s boss asking her politely to step into his office to black clad and combat helmeted thugs pointing carbines and screaming “Freeze!” before wrestling her to the ground and throwing her into a windowless off-green cell only slightly larger than the office kitchen.

But Bruce shrugged this image off when he realized he would probably want to interview the other two in-bounds-ers. And he wouldn't want to make two round trips on the 22 Freeway if he didn't have to. He checked the boxes and again the pung sounds and again the Dot-0 notifications.

He grabbed his windbreaker and car keys and headed out. Long Beach was 30 minutes away even in light traffic.

[Wasted Genius]

---

Bruce Higgins, Auditor Level II versus the 22 Freeway (oh, and a threat to national security).

(Recommended listening: Bonnie Tyler, “It’s a Heartache”)

Traffic was light on the 22 Freeway northbound from Anaheim to the PSA Design and Engineering Complex in Long Beach. Bruce was lucky to hit that 30-minute lull between morning rush hour and lunch time rush hour, each of which were more than 3 hours long.

The trick was to get past the merger to the 405 freeway and then the immediate and unholy union of the 405 and the 605. Over one hundred years of supercomputer-powered traffic studies, public domain land seizures, lane additions, carpool lane expansions and multi-million dollar concrete flyovers had left the situation unchanged; Anaheim to Long Beach was a crapshoot at any time of day. Bruce roared along in his sensible road-pavement gray mid-size sedan taking every bit of the clear lane advantage in hopes of threading the 22/405/605 needle in under 30 minutes.

Shunting to his subconscious the fairly reflexive task of assessing the relative efficiency of each of the 10 lanes every few milliseconds and then snapping to and fro to maximize forward progress over his lesser qualified highway opponents, Bruce turned his conscious bandwidth toward what lay ahead – getting to the bottom of the Great File Heist of the Long Beach Facility (as he had already sarcastically named it). He wouldn’t be working alone. L-CID Dot-0 would be doing the heavy analytical lifting. He started the process with a simple voice command:

“Dot-0”

There was the same pung sound as his office computer made every time Dot-0 registered an alert.

“Compare the details of Incident Delta 21100513.”

Another pung acknowledged the command.

“Which of the subjects in detention is most likely to have initiated the anomalous file transfer?”

At this point it’s important to note that Dot-0 would use whatever voice had been selected for the car’s satnav system. It is also humorous to note that one day, Bruce had been screwing around with the timber, pitch and gender settings of the satnav artificial speech utility and had since been too busy to adjust them back. So when Dot-0 produced a response the answer came from a voice that was in the husky gravel of a middle-aged barfly who had a three pack a day smoking habit and had trouble finding a man, but no trouble finding whatever man was seated next to her buying drinks.

“The primary subject is Constance A Burton ID PSA-663866,” Dot-0 rasped.

“Dot-0, elaborate on this result.”

“Primary subject is Constance A Burton ID PSA-663866. Subject is assigned to a production area 983 meters from the incident site and does not frequent the area. Subject work assignment profile does not include the information class that was accessed. File access was executed by login credentials of a user that was not present at the incident site. The other subjects at the incident site were in their assigned work areas functioning within their assigned work profiles using their valid login credentials. There are circumstantial factors that infer the primary subject is functioning under an assumed identity.

Bruce continued to query Dot-0 about these circumstantial factors as he cleared the last bit of congestion from the sluggish 605 in-mergers on his right. This Constance Burton was intriguing. And he only had a little over 4 hours to sort this out. National security is one thing, but southbound traffic on the 22 freeway after 3 PM on a Thursday was not something he cared to mess with.

[Wasted Genius]

---

Bruce Higgins plays good cop…um, good cop.

(Recommended listening: Devo, “Secret Agent Man”)

Bruce arrived onsite at the PSA Design and Engineering Complex in Long Beach. He was met at the guard shack by Sylvia Ramos-Gonzalez, who had been with the Agency for 14 years, which is what it said on her name tag. Her name tag was meant to be a friendly introductory implement as opposed to her official clip-on security clearance badge which had laminate protected seals and holograms and miniscule type and bore a picture of her looking flatly into a focal point somewhere above and 50 meters behind the camera.

Sylvia was a pleasant person, with a beaming smile and simple demeanor. She drove Bruce across campus in a golf cart that was built for speed and was piloted in a way to imply that this trip had been taken hundreds if not thousands of times before. For Bruce, the uninitiated, it was a bit unnerving and he reflexively kept one eye on the landscape passing by at up to 40 kph and the other on Sylvia as she maneuvered across pavement, gravel path and concrete sidewalk with equal levels of minimal care. Sylvia could easily best him in the game of clear lane racing on the 22 freeway.

As they bumped and jostled on balloon tires the almost 2 kilometers across campus, Sylvia described what had happened with the detainees so far, which was essentially that they had been ushered to two conference rooms almost immediately and had been waiting patiently under minimal supervision for about the last 45 minutes. The two in-bounds-ers identified by Dot-0 were B-Wing contractors and had been held in the Bolsa Chica conference room together at their insistence and after a brief citation of binding policy agreements. The out-of-bounds-er, Constance “Connie” Burton was a PSA employee and had been held separately in the Redondo conference room, under closer surveillance. All had been cooperative, and all were a little surprised to be detained, but all said they understood because the campus is a high-security facility working on secret projects and you can’t be too careful when it comes to espionage. This was in Sylvia’s words and the last part sounded like it may have been a bit of a poetic addendum.

Bruce decided to start with the two B-Wing contractors. They were secondary subjects and at best they would give him something to leverage against his primary subject, Connie Burton. Bruce decided to play nice, basically good cop / good cop. This was partially because he couldn’t really envision playing bad cop to Sylvia’s good cop. And besides, this was likely a Dot-0 overreaction and the files were probably not that important to begin with. This all started as a Level 6 yellow highlight after all.

They arrived at the Bolsa Chica conference room and Sylvia made introductions, calling Bruce an OIG “Agent” which he immediately corrected to “Auditor”. This was a matter of OIG tradition, even though he did much less auditing than agenting.

The two B-Wing contractors wore identical uniforms of white pique polo shirts with B-Wing logo and course, beige wrinkle-free khakis. They seemed uniform in their overall appearance as well, having a kind of relaxed ex-military stiffness in grooming and manner. They had this unnerving habit of alternating talking in a precise balance of one beginning a response and the other completing it. For example, when Bruce asked what they were doing at the time of the breach, Robert began,

“We were working on cataloging our assigned data from a recent test run.”

To which Jolene added, “On a classified project, the details of which we cannot divulge.

Bruce asked if they had noticed Connie in their area.

“PSA employees come and go from the Archival Unit all of the time,” Jolene answered.

To which Robert followed with, “Facility security is managed by PSA, we are B-Wing contractors.”

“But you do have a responsibility to report suspicious activity,” Bruce countered.

“We were fully engaged in our assigned work,” Robert shot back.

“Suspicious activity as defined in the PSA/B-Wing binding policy agreement would include interference in our assigned work by a PSA employee, a direct request to perform a non-authorized activity or a misuse of B-Wing property. The PSA employee did none of these things.” Jolene finished, with a slight tilt of her head to look down her nose at Bruce, indicating she had the high ground and was about done with this line of questioning.

“Do you know which system the PSA employee was accessing?”

Robert answered, “It wasn’t a B-Wing system.” Jolene just gazed with lifeless eyes at Bruce. She was done and he probably wouldn’t get much of anything more from her. And she was right, she did have the high ground.

Bruce thanked them for their (non) assistance and released them to return to their duties.

Sylvia added her assessment: “The B-Wing people act like they’re kings and queens in a castle and we PSA people are only here to serve them. Anytime we need something we get the same run around. They’re always following their precious manual and quoting that binding policy agreement. You can take it up the chain, but you’ll just get a more legalese version of the same thing. I guess B-Wing still thinks they own this place.” Which they hadn’t for decades.

Moving on, Bruce reviewed the documents that had been accessed. They didn’t seem too important. Definitely not anything like a key scientific discovery or a pivotal technological secret. And this place was loaded with that kind of stuff. Long Beach was at the forefront of hypersonic research, with involvement in operational space programs and advanced developmental projects that stretched the imagination as to what was possible perhaps a century into the future. But these documents looked more like accounting journals. Pages and pages of inventory entries. Shipping manifests. Bills of materials. Payroll records. Contractor hourly billings. Just the detritus of your run of the mill bookkeeping operation. Well, Bruce had always suspected that Dot-0 had him pigeon-holed as the keeper of the utmost triviality. But then why the red-level alert? Why the option to detain these (boring) people? Maybe Connie could shed some light on this. Or maybe Dot-0 would.

Bruce tagged the documents in his Dot-0 notebook for closer scrutiny later. He was already feeling antsy about the mounting traffic on the return commute to Anaheim.

"Okay, Sylvia," he sighed heavily, "let's go introduce me to Connie."

[Wasted Genius]

---

Connie Burton – Jeux sans frontiers

(Recommended listening: Peter Gabriel, “Games Without Frontiers”)

Bruce had been interviewing Connie Burton, his primary subject in the Dot-0 Information Theft incident, for over an hour. It was 2 PM and he was running out of time and patience. Connie had given him nothing but her job description in a fashion worthy of an HR clerk and a lame story about “exploring information relevant to her current work assignment” which Dot-0 had already told him was something to do with fitting, trimming and affixing basalt-fiber composite panels to hypersonic test drones prior to stratospheric drop tests.

Bruce asked Connie a question he had asked at least three times already:

“So tell me how this –“ he pulled up a shipping manifest “- relates to your current work assignment.”

“As I’ve already told you, it’s for the supply chain research.”

She had told him that, but only that. No details as to how this supply chain research related to gluing tiles to a model airplane. Bruce had purposely left this open ended as a tactic to illicit a mismatch in her story in the summing-up phase of the interview.

It should be noted at this point that the Redondo conference room was special in that it was an “enhanced surveillance suite” wired for sound and concealed multi-point video. And no, there wasn’t a large two-way mirror on the wall opposite of the subject’s seat. This wasn’t an interrogation room; it was a conference room with eyes and ears. Many a department baby shower or birthday celebration had been conducted under the skin-tone enhancing fluorescent lights at the 14-place faux-maple conference table at its center. The eyes and ears of the room did however feed directly into the L-CID Telemetry Processing Module, so everything discussed was being analyzed, categorized and cross-referenced in real-time.

Also of important note, everything Connie tells Bruce during this session is a complete and total lie.

Bruce moved in for the kill ever so gently. “So you stopped what you were doing in the production shop,” he dramatically looked at his tablet, “which was ‘affixing heat-shield tiles to the nose cone of an XD-62’, to walk nearly a kilometer across campus and use someone else’s credentials to log into the PSA archival terminal, download this –“ again with great drama he swiped at the screen to cause it to scroll wildly through pages of accounting documents “to an SD card, which is forbidden to even be carried on campus, all with the purpose of doing supply chain research. For. What. Miz. Burton? This supply chain is for exactly what purpose?” Bruce sat back on the edge of the conference table and folded his arms. He had her, he was sure of it.

But Connie Burton, Thermal Material Technical Engineer Level I, was quite clever, clever in fact well beyond her scripted skills portfolio. And she had anticipated this question. And she knew the only way out of this room without undergoing more rigorous scrutiny was to toss Bruce Higgins, Auditor Level II and that lame overgrown AI help-desk assistant, Dot-0, that was no doubt eavesdropping on this session, a very small bone. So she feigned exhaustion and spilled her guts, right on queue, right at the apex of the summing-up phase of the interview. She would have ol’ Bruce safely on the 22 Freeway hurtling back to his cubicle in an Anaheim mid-rise with clear lanes as far as the eye could see, by 3 PM on the dot.

“Well, okay. The supply chain research isn’t exactly ‘on the books’. It’s legitimate, but not as a formal MBO⁽⁴⁾. See, we have our quarterly MBOs which our performance bonuses are based on. (Bruce was familiar with the whole MBO carrot-and-stick routine because everyone suffered with these.) But then, in my department we have “stretch goals.” It’s a way to show your performance assessment supervisors that you’re really passionate about your job and that you want to push your work to the next level. If you ever want to get promoted, you’d better have some successful stretch goals on your record. The thing about stretch goals is that they’re supposed to be only between you and your immediate supervisor and not in the formal performance documentation because they are on a best-efforts basis. They’re ‘aspirational’ and there’s supposed to be no demerits to your evaluation if you can’t complete them.

“So I was doing the supply chain research on my own. At first I figured it would be a boost to the department if I could find a cheaper source of basalt fiber composite from suppliers PSA already worked with. And then I had the idea of customizing a whole basalt-fiber supply chain specifically for our departments use.”

This actually sounded kind of plausible to Bruce, but maybe a little sketchy from a high-security procedures point of view.

“But why all of this bookkeeping data?” Bruce asked, “And why move it to an SD card? Why not just export it to a Dot-1 Data Cube in your department? And why use someone else’s login credentials?” Those were the gaping holes in her story. And Bruce was now 50% genuinely curious and 50% eager to put her on the spot.

“Mmhmm,” Connie replied with a level of relaxed confidence that caught Bruce off guard, “as a part of my supply chain research I’m building a Python-based data mining algorithm that sifts through all of the general journal trash to find connections that haven’t been noticed before. And, believe it or not, as a tech I’m not authorized to access accounting records; but my boss is, so I used his credentials. It happens all the time here, even though its technically not allowed.

‘As for the SD card and your Dot-1 cube idea," Connie continued, "let me start by saying this whole ‘stretch goals’ thing has gotten completely out of hand and the competition is actually pretty ruthless. These are engineers we’re talking about here. One thing about these engineers is they’d rather spend their time stealing a better idea from someone else than doing the legwork to come up with it on their own. This leads to rampant hacking of those Dot-1 cubes you’re talking about as the engineers try to rip-off each other’s stretch goal ideas.” She shook her head with a theatrical display of disgust to sell this point. “I was planning to do my work on a laptop that’s not connected to the network to keep it safe from those thieving bast…um, people. Of course I needed the data first so there is nothing on a laptop yet.”

Bruce pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows in that look of well-this-might-be-true. He could probably write this up in all of 20 minutes and recommend a minor reprimand and security protocol retraining for Connie and her boss.

And just then, in an example of perfect timing, his phone punged with a 15-minute advanced alert that he needed to get on the road back to Anaheim.
“Okay, well, thank you for your candor Ms. Burton. My department will be in touch with any requests for information or further directives. This concludes our interview; you can return to your work.” He began collecting his materials and turned to the security officer. “C’mon Sylvia, take me back to my car, I’ve got a freeway to catch…”

Postlogue: Neither Bruce, nor Connie, nor Connie's boss, nor Connie's presumed handler, nor Dot-0 have any clue what will actually happen as a result of today's incident. What none of them know is that L-CID has been triggered and has already started quantum-crunching all kinds of data, tucking odd bits of information into dimensions inaccessible by mortals, issuing requests for intel from Dot-1s all over the OIG and PSA and making it's ubiquitous inferences (the "I" in L-CID), inferences that will span the far reaches of Pacifica and perhaps even into Maineiacs.

[Maineiacs]

Suggested listening "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iaR3WO71j4

Suggested viewing "Lou Rawls, Secret Agent" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ohQmdyuQc


"Connie Burton" aka Diane Fournier, stood at her workstation and grimaced slightly as she took a sip of the lukewarm swill that passed for coffee around here. A voice came over the PA system: "Connie Burton, report to conference room one." A frisson of alarm went through her. This was highly unusual. Had she been found out? If she was lucky, this was just about some poor performance issue. If that were the case, she would just apologize profusely and promise to do better. She gathered herself and went into the room. Waiting for her was Bruce Higgins. She had heard of him. He was an auditor. OK, Plan B: play dumb, and Don't. Tell. Him. Anything.

He questioned her for an hour. She told him (repeatedly) that she was a Thermal Material Technical Engineer Level I, assigned to fitting, trimming and affixing basalt-fiber panels to hypersonic test drones prior to stratospheric drop tests. That was technically true. Sort of.

“So tell me how this –“ he pulled up a shipping manifest “- relates to your current work assignment.” He asked.

“As I’ve already told you, it’s for the supply chain research.” said Diane.

That's all she intended to give him -- Name, rank and serial number. He didn't look pleased with that.

“So you stopped what you were doing in the production shop,” he dramatically looked at his tablet, “which was ‘affixing heat-shield tiles to the nose cone of an XD-62’, to walk nearly a kilometer across campus and use someone else’s credentials to log into the PSA archival terminal, download this –“ again with great drama he swiped at the screen to cause it to scroll wildly through pages of accounting documents “to an SD card, which is forbidden to even be carried onsite, all with the purpose of doing supply chain research. For. What. Ms. Burton? This supply chain is for exactly what purpose?”

OK, tread lightly here, she thought.

“Well, okay. The supply chain research isn’t exactly ‘on the books’. It’s legitimate, but not as a formal MBO. See, we have our quarterly MBOs which our performance-based bonuses are based on. But then, in my department we have “stretch goals.” It’s a way to show your performance assessment supervisors that you’re really passionate about your job and that you want to push your work to the next level. If you ever want to get promoted, you’d better have some successful stretch goals on your record. The thing about stretch goals is that they’re supposed to be only between you and your immediate supervisor and not in the formal performance documentation because they are on a best-efforts basis. They’re ‘aspirational’ and there’s supposed to be no demerits to your evaluation if you can’t complete them.

“So I was doing the supply chain research on my own. At first I figured it would be a boost to the department if I could find a cheaper source of basalt fiber composite from suppliers PSA already worked with. And then I had the idea of customizing a whole basalt-fiber supply chain specifically for our departments use.”

That was reasonable enough. Would he think so?

“But why all of this bookkeeping data?” Bruce asked, “And why move it to an SD card? Why not just export it to a Dot-1 Data Cube in your department? And why use someone else’s login credentials?” Those were the gaping holes in her story. And Bruce was now 50% genuinely curious and 50% eager to put her on the spot.

“Mmhmm,” Diane replied with a level of relaxed confidence that caught Bruce off guard, “as a part of my supply chain research I’m building a Python-based data mining algorithm that sifts through all of the general journal trash to find connections that haven’t been noticed before. And, believe it or not, as a tech I’m not authorized to access accounting records; but my boss is, so I used his credentials. It happens all the time here, even though its technically not allowed.

‘As for the SD card and your Dot-1 cube idea," Diane continued, "let me start by saying this whole ‘stretch goals’ thing has gotten completely out of hand and the competition is actually pretty ruthless. These are engineers we’re talking about here. One thing about these engineers is they’d rather spend their time stealing a better idea from someone else than doing the legwork to come up with it on their own. This leads to rampant hacking of those Dot-1 cubes you’re talking about as the engineers try to rip-off each other’s stretch goal ideas.” She shook her head with a theatrical look of disgust to sell this point. “I was planning to do my work on a laptop that’s not connected to the network to keep it safe from those thieving bast…um, people. Of course I needed the data first so there is nothing on a laptop yet.”

“Okay, well, thank you for your candor Ms. Burton. My department will be in touch with any requests for information or further directives. This concludes our interview; you can return to your work.” He began collecting his materials and turned to the security officer. “C’mon Sylvia, take me back to my car, I’ve got a freeway to catch…” said Bruce.

Connie/Diane went back to her workstation for the rest of her shift. When she got home, however, she sent a message to her real boss, Joseph Hale at MFIT. It read simply:

Code: Select all

Possible breach of cover. Request instructions.


[Wasted Genius]

---

Reggie Jackson (III) steps up to the plate

(Recommended listening: Frank Zappa, “A Little Green Rosetta” Lukewarm warning: He says the f-word a couple times.)

Bruce Higgins studied his case notes from the previous day’s PSA Long Beach Design and Engineering Complex Information Theft Incident. He was hoping that with a little luck he could close the case within 24 hours and drive up his sagging Q2 performance metrics a bit.

The case notes were kept in a Dot-0 digital binder, and it was clear that L-CID (the AI algorithm behind the Dot-0 interface) had been busy overnight. Alongside Bruce’s voice notes, keyword tags and exhibit markers there were L-CID’s “inferences”. These inferences were often easy to read natural-language sentences that drew connections between one piece of evidence and another that might not have occurred to the auditor. But sometimes an inference would appear in a code-like pidgin language that L-CID had created for itself in its early days and had since degenerated into a gibberish only an L-CID DBA could decipher.

The problem presented by these cryptic inferences to Bruce (and his prospects for a Q2 performance metric boost) was that sometimes a case submission that hadn’t reconciled them would get flagged and kicked back by a supervisor and the lost time would get tagged to that case’s shot-clock. Thus, it was always a gamble to leave these inferences unaddressed, no matter how trivial they seemed at the time.

The problem was with a few of the L-CID entries that started like so:

PSA-663866.bkgnd><.PWM><PDX== and then strings of what looked like data pointers that all started with the characters #GUID

And other inferences beginning like this:

\\PSA/LGBDEC/GJ>>SA[10203.66].{Activity Flag}== and more #GUIDs
\\PSA/LGBDEC/GJ>>PSA/ANA/GJ>>SA[10203.01].{Activity Flag}== and still more #GUIDs

Bruce could make out that the inference starting with ‘PSA-663866’ was referring to Connie Burton’s employee ID and so must have something to do with her. But the second set of inferences was harder to decipher. It looked like something to do with the files Connie had been trying to download, but he couldn’t tell anything beyond that.

Bruce knew what he needed to do next. He picked up his phone and scrolled through his contact list selecting one that he hadn’t connected with in a while. The voice that answered was way too enthusiastic for the role he held:

“R-r-r-reggie Jackson, OIB Data Services, how can I help you?”

Remember, this is the 22nd century, so no, this isn't *the* Reggie Jackson, superstar right-fielder of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim MLB team. This is his fictitious grandson, Reginald Martinez Jackson III. This characterization is meant as an homage to the real Mr. Jackson, one of the sport's all time greats.

[Wasted Genius]

---

The GUID⁽⁵⁾, the bad and the ugly

(Recommended listening: AC/DC, “Hell’s Bells”)

Bruce and Reggie spent a few minutes catching up. They reminisced about the time years ago when they were assigned to root out fraud in an urban development agency divisional office in Rancho Cucamonga.

Reggie laughed and said, “I’ll never forget the look on the face of that division’s controller when the OIB windbreakers came in like a swarm of ants with their red hand carts ready to haul him and his files off to Anaheim.”

“Yeah, those were the days,” Bruce agreed, adding, “I always wanted one of those windbreakers. Now I’ve got one and let me tell you, it’s not all its cracked up to be.”

“True, sitting in the secured third sub-level basement of Chet⁽⁶⁾ isn’t where I expected to be either. But you know what, I probably wouldn’t do anything different if I had the chance…”

“Yeah, same here. So okay, I’ve got these L-CID flags that popped up on a case in Long Beach I’m hoping you can sort out for me. I just sent you a shared link to the file.”

“Lemme look. (there was a brief pause) Okay, got it. Yeah the first one’s are about someone named Connie Burton…the GUIDs point to some facial recognition files…oh, here it is, yep. Her CV says she lived in Portland, OR but L-CID couldn’t find a single facial recognition shot of her there, not on the street or the Trimet or anywhere…oh but wait (Reggie chuckled his ‘gotcha laugh’) L-CID *did* come across some intel it scraped from Facebook. She’s facial matched and tagged in several pictures that either looks like she’s shopping or partying with girlfriends in high school. But here’s the kicker. It’s not Portland, Oregon, it’s Portland, Aroostock Province. And her name isn’t Connie, it’s Diane.”

“I knew it!” Bruce exclaimed. “There was something about her that didn’t seem like she was from Portland (Oregon). I mean, for one thing she was way too ambitious. Her whole story revolved around getting promoted.

“Yeah, they do prefer their side hustles in the Northwest.”

“Alright, I’ll track that down, can you get me something on the other files? I couldn’t make heads or tails out of that character-salad.”

You could hear keyboard clacking in the background as Reggie dug into L-CID’s gobbledygook.

“Whoa,” Reggie whispered and paused for a second and then again, “whoa, whoa, whoa.”

“What’s going on?” Bruce was getting a little worried. Reggie was pretty much the top L-CID Codetalker in the nation.

“Uh, nothin’. Hey, can you meet me down here at Chet? I’ll have a visitor badge for you at the guard gate.” And then Reggie just hung up.

This was bad. Bruce grabbed his windbreaker and headed out the door. And to top it off it was a Friday. Southbound on the 5 Freeway to Laguna Niguel on a Friday. Hell’s bells.

[Wasted Genius]

---

Welcome to the swamp…

(Recommended listening: Talking Heads, “Swamp”)

Reggie stood waiting by the north entrance of The Chet as Bruce pulled into a visitor space. In spite of his mysterious abruptness on the call an hour earlier, he seemed relaxed and friendly now. He waved to Bruce and smiled.

This was odd, Bruce thought. As they walked through the lobby and got on the elevator, Reggie sounded more like the building’s docent conducting a tour than a highly experienced AI engineer who had significant national security concerns about the data Bruce had shared with him.

Reggie pushed the button marked “B3” which had four unmarked buttons below it. As the doors closed Reggie continued his tour guide monologue:

“…When they decided to home L-CID in The Chet, they excavated 6 stories deeper under the basement in a reverse-ziggurat fashion. We’re on sub-level 3 and the L-CID hardware and support equipment is on the lower levels. That’s some spooky stuff down there.”

“And here we are,” Reggie continued as the doors opened to what looked like the movie set of some far-future command center. Bruce was a little taken aback by the sight. He had imagined Reggie working, nearly forgotten, in a painted cinder block office on a lonely corridor in the basement of a nearly vacant building. This place was buzzing with activity. Reggie noticed Bruce taking it all in and he commented,

“When people think of AI they imagine Skynet in a box with thousands of tiny lights blinking away on the front, cooking up its plan for world domination without a technician in sight. Truth is, L-CID was designed to stay live for about a week with no intervention and on an emergency low-load level of functioning. It takes over a hundred techs to keep the system running on a day-to-day basis.”

Reggie guided Bruce to his large glass-walled office that was clearly on the supervisory tier of the split-level operations center.

Reggie closed the door behind them and immediately shed the tour-guide façade. “Looks like your subject Connie or Diane or whatever her name is stumbled onto some pretty big stuff Bruce.” He sat behind his desk and turned his monitor so Bruce could see what he was talking about. All Bruce could make out was what looked like a loosely wound ball of multicolored string with tiny glowing beads embedded in it. Along the right side of the display was a column of GUIDs.

“This is what L-CID generates when it analyzes a case. It usually looks more like a spider web with a few Christmas lights on it than this kind of wad, so that should give you an indication right off the bat that we’ve got something unusual here.”

“Whoa –“ was all Bruce could croak out.

“Exactly. Now watch this.” Reggie clicked on the top GUID. It popped over to the left side of the display, dragging one of the beads of light and about 10 colored filaments out of the wad with it. “And this.” Reggie clicked on about four more GUIDs in quick succession and the wad started to look more like a disheveled mass of string that a kitten had gotten into.

“How could anyone ever sort all of this out?” Bruce asked in disbelief.

“They couldn’t, because this is just a 3D rendering. L-CIDs real model is in up to 11 dimensions. And we’re never going to show even this to a Dot-0 user. It would just generate support calls.” (He said this last bit in a way that betrayed his opinion of the common data end-user.)

Reggie continued, “So this is when we have to dive into the wad and let the AI guide us through. I hope you wore your water-tight undies, 'cuz we’re going in…”

[Wasted Genius]

---

There *is no* Pepe Silvia

(Recommended listening: Yello, “Oh Yeah”)

For those of you keeping score at home, 10 points if you know why this post’s title and the recommended listening are related. 5 point bonus if you know why they both relate to the post. If you want your cookie, please post your request in the OOC thread.

Bruce looked on as Reggie, the nation’s best L-CID code talker, rotated the wad of GUIDs, connecting strings and tiny glowing beads of information that were represented on his display screen.

“This kind of situation is what L-CID was designed for,” he said, “there would be no other way to see the connections between this,” he clicked on a glowing bead to reveal a shipping manifest for 10 metric tons of basalt-fiber structural beams, “and this,” he clicked to reveal a deployment verification for a Space Egg in a high orbit around Mars.

“I could go on and on with this line of connections,” he added.

“You’re telling me someone shipped 10 tons of I-beams to Mars? We don’t have anything on Mars but a few scientific rovers.” Bruce exclaimed.

“They didn’t ship them to Mars, they shipped them to a high orbit around Mars.”

“How much of this stuff is there in ‘high orbit around Mars’?”

Reggie typed and then spun the wad then typed some more and spun some more.

“About 76,000 tons.”

“Of I-beams?!”

“No, it’s not all I-beams…” (more wad spinning and typing) “it’s all kinds of stuff. It’s all so-called ‘hard goods’.”

“Who sent all this to Mars? And why for chrissakes?”

(even more wad spinning and typing)

“Looks like a lot of people. Or agencies to put it more accurately. In fact, just about all of them and for roughly an equal tonnage when you compare across the government. As to why, we’re going to have to ask L-CID to make a focused inference.”

“I’m sure that will take pages of GUIDs and wads and strings and beads and whatever.”

“Nah, watch this…” Reggie pulled a hockey-puck sized speakerphone device from behind his computer.

“L-CID,” said Reggie, and the speakerphone made the same ‘pung’ sound as Bruce’s Dot-0 interface did when he gave it a voice command.

“Look at the wad on my screen.” L-CID punged again in response.

“Derive an inference as to why all the actor-agencies would order delivery of hard goods to high orbit around Mars.”

The wad on the screen started to shimmer and then glow while the connecting strings vibrated and bead after bead popped.

“Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about, do your thing L-CID.” Reggie pointed at the screen and remarked, “L-CID is going through every voice call, text and e-mail that has anything to do with this stuff. They don’t even have to have come right out and said it explicitly.”

L-CID punged again and then a computer-generated voice, just like the WOPR in the 1983 movie “Wargames”, said:

“In a series of unofficial communications, the Board of Directors required all agencies to utilize the Mars Transfer System at a ‘minimum significant level’ each year the program has been operational. No other requirements were specified by the BoD. PSA however required all shipments to be one-way, unless a waiver was granted and excess fuel costs were reimbursed.”

“So the agencies have been dumping stuff in a high orbit around Mars for…over 20 years?” Bruce asked.

“Looks like it.”

“And one other thing – is that L-CIDs official voice?”

“Nah, I was just playing around with the speech synthesis settings on my computer one day and haven’t had the time to put them back…”