Even if it’s just a day at the office, Murphy can walk in the door, and there are a lot of ways a planet can die …
Chapter 2 Measure Twice
The probability of the bread falling butter side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
Corollary of Murphy’s Law
PortalNet Liaison, Vancouver, Contract Day 24
The 3D model of the Contract area hung in the air over the conference table. Carl Volcker was not happy with how little he knew about what it actually meant. The big tub of mud they had taken Contract to make a drain plug for had two irregular belts of methane clathrate in it, averaging about 30 metres thick. The blast of the planned shot would go right into the bottom belt. He knew enough to agree with Tommygun. If they did so, bad things would happen.
The players were all there in the on-line meeting on WRAITH. The Three Horsemen, Elroy Risk, Annette and Alexandra, respectively his Chief of Staff and VP for Business Intelligence, shared one screen. Tommygun was in another, the grainy delayed picture showing the inside of the Can. Mister Jamie was in a screen with a tropical background, looking as happy as a man pulled off beach time with his fiancée. The background to John Halliwell’s screen showed his office at Princeton. The muscular Mr. Clean looking guy was Eyes, the Head of the Entity Intelligence Unit, in his crowded cluttered cubicle in EIU.
Carl cut to the chase. “The methane deposits in the mud amount to, in total, approximately 85 million tonnes of methane. That’s significant, about 15 percent of Earth’s annual emissions. There is the possibility that such a deposit is unstable and could expand all at once. The ratio is 164 to one. I think it is likely to be enough of a disturbance to pose a high risk of triggering the disaster we have taken Contract to prevent. What effects the release of the methane would have on the planetary environment is a known unknown, far beyond my knowledge.”
Alexandra raised her hand, both physically and digitally. “Eyes, give me your evaluation of whether this was a setup, and they wanted us to fail.”
Carl was enough off balance to ask, “Why would they do that?” And how would he know if they did? Trying to figure out what human beings really want is hard enough. Aliens are alien.
Eyes steepled his hands, choosing his words precisely. “Assumption one, any advanced race will have a strong will to survive, or it would not have survived. Assumption two, survival, and the means of survival will be a root of conflict.”
Carl nodded judiciously, drawing on hard-won precedent from previous Contracts. “On a large scale, I can buy it. Individuals can be fanatical enough to not care, though. Aliens can lose it that way, same as humans.”
Eyes nodded acceptance of his point. “On those assumptions, this scenario. Another polity, for unknowable alien reasons, wants Lowland destroyed but doesn’t want their fingerprints on it. They put out the RFP, give us bad data, sit back and wait. In their best case we screw up, they get what they want, and it’s not on them. They don’t have to pay anything because it’s a Violation. If we do the Contract successfully, then they pay the credit and no one is the wiser.”
Eyes popped up two 3D models of the mud belt next to each other, one visibly far more detailed than the other. “The data set from Jonas Stone is much better and more detailed than the one from the locals. We have done a compare and contrast and can see no evidence that the locals manipulated the data to hide the methane deposits. The resolution in the local data is poor enough that the belts just show up as noise.”
“Probability?” Elroy asked.
“Not enough data. This is a worst-case scenario, looked at as such.” Eyes said.
Elroy took a three-second pause. “Occam’s Razor points to incompetence rather than malice, but it doesn’t matter. No trust in the local data. Tommygun, good call.”
He turned his attention back to Carl. “Where are we on the negotiations?”
Carl had his position crafted and was ready to defend it. “I’m doing this as a string of Variances. First one we’ve already done. They paid for the data collection. I went Tier Two there, and I was prepared to go to Elroy for Tier One if needed.”
A very brief nod from Elroy endorsed his call. Carl pressed on. “Next is a delay for data analysis and mods to the work schedule to deal with the additional threat to their world, at which point I present them with whatever alternatives fall out of the data analysis. Their world, their choice. Tommygun, you will of course be in the loop, contingency plans as needed.”
“If they wave off the Contract altogether?” Elroy asked.
“Then they do. They now have a larger problem than they thought they had, with potentially planetary consequences, whether they do anything or not. I made the point, emphatically. There is the risk, which I can’t quantify, that the avalanche would destabilize the methane pockets anyway,” Carl said. This is where I earn my pay. There’s a fine line between motivating people to do what I want and pushing them over the edge into an irrational response. It’s a hard enough read with humans, never mind aliens.
Tommygun gave him a characteristically emphatic finger point. “Be damned careful with the penalty clauses. I don’t want them trying to lay off the consequences on us. I’m not saving their damned planet for free.”
“Copy.” It was a fair point, and he would watch the contingency plans she built. “I’ll need frequent updates on your contingency plans.”
“You got it,” she said.
Carl went on to the showstopper which had precipitated this meeting. “We need an expert in this area who can spearhead the effort to tell us what we’ve got here with the climate effects from the methane release. Without hard data we can’t go forward.”
“Copy. Concur.” Elroy nodded to Annette. The telecon ended.
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