Bugs

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 90 DAYS

There was a predictable range of reactions to Sally’s announcement, from fear to skepticism to jubilation. She held hundreds of interviews, many simultaneously, while Secretary General Decatur and Ambassador Lazlo tag-teamed the top tier media with reassurances that testing was ongoing and that Sally would continue her original work only after WICO was certain of her fitness to do so. 

I was swamped with requests for interviews and reluctantly turned down all but a couple so I could focus on my current job. At our morning meeting, Riddick reminded me that my priorities remained the same. “We’re assuming for now that this ‘Sally’ personality is a new bug, so I want you to include it in your evaluation of Sanda’s past performance and its impact on the current strategy.” I had already debriefed Sally on the strategy’s status and inconsistent behavior before the crash, but Management clearly wasn’t satisfied with her answers. “Also, I think it’s time we go into the field to get some of what our test friends call ‘ground truth’.”

“Aren’t you concerned about the fallout from Sally’s revelations?” I asked her, imagining she would be locked in her office for the next few days just sorting through the public’s reactions. I still couldn’t figure out why my blog posts weren’t driving her crazy.

“I’ve got it covered,” she said softly without explanation, and closed her eyes in what I assumed was dismissal.

Four hours later we stood next to an unpaved road in the middle of a rural community that the test team referred to as TC-186. Around us were single level buildings made of something resembling thatch, and in the distance was a field with what looked like tall weeds growing in rows under tents separated by small groups of short trees. The low hum of insects emanated from a garden in the shadow of the building in front of us.

“Welcome to the future!” a man yelled from behind the building. He emerged, dressed in simple brown clothes, deeply tanned, and all of thirty years old. “You must be Will,” he said happily, shaking my hand. “Hello Seer,” he greeted Riddick.

“‘Seer’?” I asked him.

“Our nickname for Miss Riddick, because she sees everything.”

“It just seems that way,” she said offhandedly. “How are you, Jim?”

“Doing better, now that the bugs are back,” he said, leading us into the building which revealed itself to be a house. “The poison’s almost eradicated.”

“Pesticide,” Riddick said for my benefit. “What are the sensors reading?” she asked Jim.

“See for yourself,” he replied, striding up to a table against one of the walls. On the table, a small instrument was dominated by a screen that showed spikes on a graph above a row of numbers.

“Ninety percent of the worst components are gone,” Riddick read. “What’s the health rate of the sample insects?”

“About that same rate,” Jim said. “Plot forty-three isn’t doing so good. We think the plants were compromised before application, dropping effectiveness.”

“Insects are getting hit by both increasing temperatures and pollution poisoning their food,” Riddick explained to me. “The best we can do now is the first step in the strategy’s physical component: protecting, cleaning, and repairing. The latest cleaning treatment from the WDP group is in the final stage of its field test, just in time, but we have to have reasonably healthy plants since it needs the plants’ help to do the work.”

“Toxic to non-toxic in less than three days!” Jim added.

“It looks like you’ve also got a start on the next step, nurturing,” I said to him, thinking of the insects in garden.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sharing and multiplying will happen when safety is verified, which is a-ways off.”

We spent several hours with Jim and a dozen of the other residents touring the rest of the community, including its nascent food supply which consisted of widely dispersed gardens and an orchard at the edge of a small forest. During the tour, I quizzed the residents about their experience with the strategy so far.

“The consensus seems to be that the early stages could work,” I commented to Riddick on the trip back to the facility.

“That’s to be expected,” she said. “Sally has the highest confidence in that part.”

I was surprised by her positive tone and use of Sally’s chosen name. “You know I’m going to write about this, right?”

“Yes. I always expect you’ll share what we talk about.”

“Okay. What do you really think about Sally’s claims?”

“In my line of work, perception is as important as objective observation because they both influence people’s behavior.”

“That sounds almost like one of Sally’s rules,” I noted, “and you didn’t answer the question.”

“I appreciate the fact that she challenges assumptions,” Riddick said after a long pause, “and that she cares about her own future as much as the future of those she was designed to serve. I also like that she has searched for her own value system and come down on the side of what I would call good. If she was a person, I could see us being friends.” She turned to me as I drove. “What about you?”

It was clearly a rhetorical question, but I answered it anyway.  

Reality Check

Insects are very much in decline for the reasons Riddick cited. One of the biggest and most urgent challenges involved in delaying extinction is saving these creatures that contribute critically and immensely to the health of many other species, including ours.

The “treatment” used to detoxify pesticides is purely fictional.