Bootcamp

Early this morning I released the following announcement to the press:

“Possibilities from Responsibilities (PFR) is running its first Possibilities Bootcamp for the next three days in Sieva, Montana. Based on experience in World Information and Coordination Organization (WICO) test communities, the event is an opportunity for people to learn the basics of living a healthy, low-impact lifestyle similar to what they can expect after the global transition. Sieva’s residents have graciously offered their town to be used for training in identifying differences between pre-transition and post-transition environments, and are hosting town hall meetings both Saturday and Sunday nights to discuss what a local transition might look and feel like. Tours of the test community Vitalla are scheduled for Sunday, where WICO educational consultants will discuss the Threat of Imminent Extinction Global Strategy (TIEGS) and how it relates to testing done at the site.”

PFR has been recruiting attendees in the Sieva vicinity and online since Tuesday in order to determine demand for such events, and decided late last night to make it more public. I will be attending the Sieva activities, and Maura Riddick will be one of the educational consultants at Vitalla. Lessons learned from the event will be used to design events for other locations to begin during July in parallel with the strategy’s final execution phase.

Reality Check

The “bootcamp” is not a real event. As mentioned on May 15, Sieva is not a real town, and neither is Vitalla (a.k.a. TC-015).

I will not be posting to this blog until after Monday.

Nexus

 

Last night I had a disturbing feeling that I was missing a very important connection between two sets of events since the emergency declaration, and decided to re-read my principal record of those events - this blog. In one set of apparently coincidental events, changes to the global strategy’s timetable for action and response were triggered by new data and new analyses that have now returned it to effectively what was planned four months ago. Time lost due to optimistic expectations in the interim forced more extreme measures regarding the transition; while the earlier preparations for a similar end-state began paying off with enough people to fill a city ready and motivated to share with others how to survive and thrive under those potentially future conditions.

The second set of events could also be interpreted as coincidence. I haven’t been able to shake how Sally, the first living machine, anticipated I would misremember the date of an e-mail and as a result find the clue she planted about the act of sabotage intended to destroy her. That led to my conscription by WICO and an unexpected role in shaping the global strategy, managed and encouraged by Maura who experiences the world as if it is one of several, just as Sally sees human behavior as part of a simulation. Then I visited a commune and its spinoff that are both tied to Maura’s personal history and related to one of WICO’s test communities, where people have an intuitive understanding of complex probability that helps them lead rich internal lives that don’t require much physically beyond what supports basic survival.

After a lot of thought, I realized that there are myriad connections between these sets of events, and none is inherently more important than the others. “Importance is what you believe it is,” Maura suggested when I called to discuss this with her. “I happen to believe that what’s important is that we are part of those events. We directly shaped some. We noticed others and then acted on that experience, expanding their influence and therefore them.”

“How would Sally’s simulation viewpoint apply?” I asked, unable to reconcile it with what she was saying.

“The way we think about something is part of how we experience it. Thinking is a way of making something new with it, something that can change what we do. I imagine that what she does is similar to that.”

I recalled how Sally had generated the global strategy, and found the source of my initial disturbance. “What she does with that connects the future with all the events we’re part of.”

Reality Check

Sally is featured in the illustration below.

On January 24, Sally introduced a Hope Chart that ended the transition at the same time and total consumption level as the “new” one. It was replaced on April 18 with a new trajectory based on a new assessment of how self-sustained impact would be affected by a drop in total consumption.

The commune Mayakee and its spinoff Hikeyay each represents a simulated world. Mayakee is the simulation used prior to Tuesday, and Hikeyay is the simulation used from now on.

Updates

It took less than a day for WICO to release a new version of the global strategy. Knowing Sally, a nearly-complete draft was probably ready before Secretary General Decatur started his announcement yesterday. By early this afternoon I had a good idea of that the scope of changes were; and, an hour after that, I finished briefing Louis Delambre and the rest of the PFR leadership about the implications for the program.

A huge change to the strategy is that the global defense industry is being fully (rather than partially) co-opted to develop and deploy technologies for pollution cleanup; natural habitat restoration and creation; climate geoengineering; and safe decommissioning of the industries and technologies with ecological impacts that are unsustainable under the global conditions targeted for 2040. Another major change is a much faster decrease in raw material mining and processing to both eliminate new ecological impacts and choke off the material supplies for ongoing personal consumption. Finally, the strategy considers what could extend our species’ longevity based on new projections of self-sustained impacts that can’t be stopped, dominated by potentially forced population control for people struggling for basic subsistence and naturally motivated to have more children.

Since the PFR program deals mostly with personal behavior, those last two changes are the most consequential. The former test community members in the program’s core group were already trained for static population and near-subsistence consumption at the end-state, having drawn more inspiration from experiences of a few remaining isolated indigenous groups than advice from self-proclaimed experts in the dominant high-impact cultures. During my weekend visit to Hikeyay, the commune that was WICO’s inspiration for TC-013 and the source of Maura’s greatest personal growth, several residents echoed the PFR core group’s opinion that the transition to the end-state is likely to be more difficult than living there. Predictably, that view led to the unanimous conclusion that the focus of everyone should be on creating the end-state as soon as possible, and that trying to ease the transition would be an unnecessary - and perhaps harmful - distraction.

Despite WICO’s gag order being in effect, I asked Maura how PFR’s response compared with any proposed changes to the strategy deployment plan. She followed orders and didn’t shared any details; but I could tell from her exuberant support of the end-state focus that it was too unpopular a position to be taken seriously by management. 

Reality Check

Until now, I’ve ignored discussion of the rapid uptick in population with low personal consumption that follows the “transition” from 2019 to 2040 associated with the low population/nature ratio that results from the combination of the transition and the self-sustained impacts that are reducing total resources. When and if the self-sustained impacts are halted will largely determine how much the simulated world’s extinction is delayed (the functional relationship between cumulative consumption and resource decrease is the other determinant). Management of population size would mostly affect the amount of personal consumption used for what I call “wants” with more population having historically provided labor for basic resource acquisition and processing to help ensure group survival and create built infrastructure for use in further growth.

Reset

WICO Secretary General Decatur made a rare announcement today that overshadowed all activities related to the imminent extinction threat. Essentially, he said that self-sustained impact projections used in the global strategy were too optimistic, and the alternative model presented by five scientists last week has been validated. The primary implication for the strategy is a faster ramp to a lower target for total consumption, with more aggressive waste cleanup and conversion to safely consumable forms. Adaptation approaches that occupied about a third of the strategy are not considered viable within the new time constraint.

Two major consequences struck me as I read details published afterward by WICO. One consequence is that the additional ecological impact of starting up more cleanup technology will more painfully reduce what individuals can consume. The second consequence is that tighter enforcement of personal behavior could cut off creativity that might be needed to detect and cope with a proliferation of unintended consequences. Creativity is of course the basis of Possibilities from Responsibilities, the movement that I am representing in my new job, and PFR’s future is now far more uncertain.

Maura decided to drop her request for transfer back to the Extinction Response Unit after learning that it will focus entirely on stopping self-sustained impacts immediately after it meets its strategy deployment obligations in two weeks. Samantha Lazlo agreed that she isn’t well suited, professionally or personally, for that or WICO’s education roll-out, and suggested that she interview instead for a position with the project Al might be joining. 

I was surprised that any technology and research unrelated to dealing with the extinction threat would be tolerated after Decatur’s announcement. Maura reassured me that WICO isn’t discouraging basic research or creative personal responses to the extinction threat; it’s just limiting the resources that can be consumed by them.

Reality Check

In my opinion, self-sustained impacts are the single greatest threat to the simulated world - and ours. I expect that emergency response to their presence would devote most new technology to trying to stop them, or at least slow them down. Ecosystems can be enlisted to help with that (one of the basic ideas behind the global strategy), and doing so includes helping them become healthy by reducing our impact on them. Pollution cleanup is one way of doing so, and it would almost certainly require a large technology component to deal with it in the limited time available.

Changes

 

Today I decided to accept Louis Delambre’s offer to be the press agent for Possibilities from Responsibilities. I will also be consulting on the direction of its development, which I believe should be focused on assisting rather than guiding individuals to contribute toward creation and nurturing of a better, healthier world that maximizes the diversity and longevity of life.

The job starts on Tuesday. Until then I am avoiding anything resembling work for the first weekend since I joined WICO. Maura and I have grown close; and now, with our professional relationship severed, we intend to become much closer. That will begin tonight with a trip to a small community called Mayakee that has been a pivotal part of her life and the lives of three friends who are like sisters to each other.

Al just let me know that out of curiosity he will be interviewing for a local position with a new research project in quantum physics that strangely needs someone with expertise in ecosystems and the technologies for characterizing them. Even more odd: Samantha Lazlo recommended it to him.

My future posts on this blog may not be as regular as they have been. I will of course discuss any significant news about the imminent extinction threat that isn’t covered by my press releases from PFR. The result of WICO’s analysis of the new impact model is particularly of interest, along with changes to the global strategy and its execution.

Reality Check

I remain technically unemployed (what my wife calls a sabbatical), having taken over a year off to develop my writing and research, as well come up with a viewpoint and a plan for dealing with the related issues that I could believe in enough to promote. This blog has shown the maturation of this effort, along with the majority of posts on my Twitter feed.

Mayakee is not a real place. It is the fictional commune that preceded Test Community 13 (TC-013).  

Creative Feedback

 

Today five of the world’s top experts in social-environmental forecasting published an op-ed claiming to have derived a model of self-sustained ecological impact that is more accurate than the one used by WICO to create the global strategy for dealing with the imminent extinction threat. The model’s predictions show that the current target for total consumption is twice what it needs to be, and it must be achieved by 2040 to meet the strategy’s goals. A cache of data and detail about their derivation was delivered online to WICO headquarters just before publication. In a short public statement, Samantha Lazlo promised that a thorough review of the claim and supporting materials will be complete by next Tuesday, and any required changes to the strategy will be identified and announced by the end of the week. 

I asked my favorite experts what they thought of the claim. Al Menzies was surprised that such a challenge hadn’t been made sooner: “The trashin’ of the biosphere assessment opened the door for it. I know three of those researchers, and they’ve been salivatin’ for a chance to show your cybercritter what good ole’ fashioned scientists can do with their own data. Their reputations and the implications for the timeline are too serious to ignore.” Maura Riddick suggested that we wait for Sally’s verdict before getting behind the new projections, especially since there is no time left to delay the strategy’s execution.

For me, it validated the need for inspiring creativity in observation, understanding, and action based on a core respect for all life. A strategy is just a guide; and a guide must be based on reality to enable success. More people gaining more experience, and sharing lessons learned about the reality it embodies, provides feedback necessary to improve the guide and its usefulness to more people. Even incorrect understanding can yield more insight into reality when it is tested, because it often results in more experience and questions that drive more robust understanding. 

Pondering this, I have realized that, fundamentally, the lack of such creative feedback in the education aspect of the strategy’s deployment is what drove me to leave WICO. I knew that soon it would drive me crazy, replacing the feeling of doing something meaningful with doubt and longing for finding my own way and sharing what I learn with others. Whatever happens with the implementation of the global strategy, I know I can’t escape the drive to tweak my contribution to it now as a citizen, and encourage others to do the same.

Reality Check

The “model” is based on a new simulation, illustrated in the following graphs:

Offers and Consequences

No one, least of all me, expected the degree of blowback on WICO after my resignation. I suspect a large part of it was due to Al resigning shortly after I did, and Maura requesting a transfer back to full-time work with the Extinction Response Unit. My colleagues in the international press asked for interviews with all three of us as soon as the news became public, and we politely declined. Neither of us wants to hinder the deployment of the strategy or take a chance of hurting WICO’s reputation (though Victor Lansing did get criticized on social media after my last blog post).

Louis Delambre from Vitalla called me yesterday with an interesting offer. The Possibilities from Responsibilities (PFR) movement is growing fast, having already drawn members from more than a dozen test communities, and they need a press agent who understands what they are trying to do. I agreed to think about it, subject to the conditions that I can work near home and continue with my independent writing. Both Al and Maura encouraged me to accept the offer, revealing that they were recently asked by PFR to consider other support roles. I plan to decide by Friday. 

In the meantime, there is a lot of news to catch up on. The biggest story is the outcome of an international court case brought by the fossil fuel industry to force WICO’s member nations to pay as damages the revenue expected to be lost when the global strategy is fully executed. “Since the entire economy is expected to contract as a result of the emergency response,” read the verdict, “no organizations can claim an excessive burden. In addition, plaintiffs should consider themselves lucky that damages are not being sought by the world’s nations for creating much of the threat being responded to, since the analyses provided in evidence amply show that such damages would easily overwhelm the revenue expected to be lost.”

Reality Check

While “Will” was busy adjusting to more time on his hands, I continued development of the simulations driving his future and the those of other “worlds”(including ours) that are the basis of my ongoing writing projects.

Resignation

The following are personal opinions of Will Jackson, and do not reflect the official or unofficial positions of the World Information and Coordination Organization, its personnel, or any of its affiliates.

I resigned from WICO last Saturday after refusing to give up writing my blog. “The Execution group runs a tight ship,” Victor Lansing told me, “and it must speak with one voice. That is especially true for our education component, since it has direct contact with the public. As a well-known member of my team, what you say to others has the weight of being part of that program, and must be subject to the same controls as the rest of the deployment.” He offered me the option of using the blog as an official announcement platform for the team, but I chose not to. “You are either a journalist or a team player, but you cannot be both. Since it is against WICO policy to fire someone for exercising free speech, Ambassador Lazlo might be amenable to assigning you to a position in a different group, just not this one.”

The ultimatum came at the end of his briefing, which had proved Samantha correct in her expectation that there could be no creative modification of the program by me or anyone else. The “field testing” he wanted would be mostly a means of tweaking efficiency based on assumptions already locked into the program. I asked if the assumptions had been tested by members of the test communities who were in the brainstorming sessions, but he refused to answer (in my personal and professional opinion, that meant “no”).

Samantha was disappointed but not surprised by my resignation. She thanked me for my service, and added that no one within WICO will be allowed to share any non-public information with me. I was, however, encouraged to take any steps on my own to further the goals of the strategy and encourage others to do the same. This post is the first such step.

Reality Check

My experience with real projects and vision of what drives Will overrode my inclination to keep him in WICO. Also, he can now return to reporting events outside of his job focus.

Education

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 45 DAYS

The global strategy is now officially in “deployment,” the initial step in its execution, which is being managed by the Strategy Tracking, Response, Integration, Development, and Execution (STRIDE) office’s Execution group. Our General Assistance and Processing (GAP) team expected that this wouldn’t have an impact on us since we report to STRIDE’s director, Samantha Lazlo, but we were wrong.

“Having taken the initiative to educate the public,” Samantha began in a remote meeting with us this morning, “you will be exclusively helping the Education group roll out its public training program.” I glanced at Maura and Al, who looked as surprised as I was. “Their brainstorming with the test communities has yielded some promising results,” she continued, “and Victor Lansing is anxious to get you involved in field testing them.”

“Is Victor’s group now part of the Execution group?” Maura asked her.

“I’m sorry. I misspoke. Since the Education group also has other responsibilities, within WICO and on other projects, their Extinction Strategy Support team will be a functional report to our Execution group, and you will be reporting to that team. Victor is now exclusively managing its efforts.”

I couldn’t resist shaking my head in disbelief that such bureaucratic nit-picking still mattered. “Will we have any say in the content?” I asked hopefully.

“That will be up to Victor, but I expect not. However, Sally has expressed interest in pursuing any suggestions your team may have, since she is now managing WICO’s response to direct public inquiries. The CORE training you did yesterday was particularly helpful to her.”

“I’ve been wonderin’ what the cybercritter’s new role was gonna be,” Al said.

“That’s just one of her roles. To her, I think it’s more of a hobby.”

“Sure it is,” Al muttered.

Maura called Victor after the meeting. He will give us an in-person briefing this weekend. In the mean-time, he wants us to document what we already shared with the public, going back to our first PEAK tests.

“It’s like submittin’ a sample for a freakin’ job application,” Al said, reflecting my own reaction. 

Maura looked pensive. “I’d like to know what else he plans to do with it.”

Reality Check

My personal experience with organizations informs this scene, along with interest in exploring an intersection of two of my careers: as a test engineer, and as an educational developer/consultant.

Outreach

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 46 DAYS

Any other organization likely would have fired me for what happened yesterday and insisted that I take down this blog, but WICO has decided to keep me on with no restrictions on my speech. Samantha Lazlo provided an explanation in a video statement posted this morning on the Global Strategy Public Update site:

“The World Information and Coordination Organization encourages all efforts at public outreach by our staff and affiliates who are familiar with the global strategy and support its goals. In the interest of performing its core function of disseminating information and coordinating action to maximize success, WICO requests that strategy-specific observation and interactive direction protocols be used wherever possible. An overview of the protocols is available on this site, and WICO staff will be available to answer any questions and provide additional guidance.”

Maura, Al, and I had just finished being remotely debriefed on our trip by the Quality Assurance team’s test community support managers when we learned about the statement. Rachael Zeitman, the manager of TC-014, reflected the general opinion of the other staff there and at the Rocky Mountain Operations Center by thanking me - in colorful language - for “effectively shutting down our operations.” I reminded her of the facts (discussed in yesterday’s blog post), but she and the others considered them irrelevant in light of the new directive. “The communities are going to be in the front lines of PR and training now,” she said. “Our test conditions will be corrupted, and the remaining goals aren’t going to be met. Congratulations, blogger! The rest of your tasks just evaporated!”

The RMOC was inundated with calls, e-mail messages, and online requests for help, most of them directed at me and Maura. A crowd of visitors larger than the one on Blue Planet Day swarmed the office. “This is great, isn’t it?” I observed. “It’s exactly what we were hoping for!”

Maura was waiting on her phone, and smiled. “Yes, it is,” she said. “I’m trying to get the Extinction Response Unit to take some of the load. I wish Samantha had mentioned that first.”

I wondered if the suggestion was already in the online guidance. Al was way ahead of me. He showed me the site on his phone. “It’s step number one, includin’ links to the ERUs in every country.” To Maura, he said, “That’s probly why you aren’t gettin’ through.”

“So much for a managed roll-out,” Maura muttered, still smiling.

“Where’s Colorado’s test community?” someone shouted over the crowd, and Maura’s smile turned into a frown. “Yeah, where’s TC thirteen?” someone else asked.

“It’s in a protected area,” I responded, hoping that as Coloradoans they would respect the implications of that statement. “We’ll need permission to change that status, but we might be able to get some of their members to brief you on what they’ve learned.”

Maura nodded thankfully as my answer was accepted, and began speaking on the phone. That gave me an idea about how to fill an obvious gap.

“How would everyone like to get a lesson on those protocols Ambassador Lazlo mentioned?”

Fifteen minutes later, Al and I were facing the crowd at one edge of the parking lot bordering a hiking trail, holding backpacks of gear we used at the test communities. Two hours after that, we completed the first of what will become regular hands-on classes in what is now known as CORE: Coordination, Observation, Recording, and Exploration.

ABOVE: Screen-grab from Ambassador Samantha Lazlo’s statement.

Reality Check

Lazlo’s statement is consistent with her encouragement - and selective discouragement - of Will from the beginning of their interactions. The image of her at the end of the post shows the WICO logo in the background, which represents land, water, and microbial life.

Maura’s reaction to the question about TC-013 masks a large part of her backstory, which ties directly to the origins of the community through a connection to her family.

The CORE gear has yet to be revealed. A version available to the public would include the Personal Environmental Assessment Kit (PEAK).

Rebellion

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 47 DAYS

The GAP team was surprised to discover that a discussion during our last assignment resulted in world headlines, exemplified by this story in this morning’s Montana Highlevel Review (reprinted with permission):

WICO TEST COMMUNITY GOES ROGUE

By Jonathan Tolliver, Staff Reporter

The small town of Sieva is ground zero for a rebellion in the World Information and Coordination Organization’s effort to launch a global strategy designed to combat the threat of imminent ecological collapse. According to the local newspaper, the Sieva Times, at least three dozen members of a reclusive commune called Vitalla visited the town at noon yesterday and began proselytizing the residents and businesses to join a movement they call “Possibilities from Responsibilities.” Leader of the group Louis Delambre revealed that Vitalla is actually one of WICO’s test communities, and its residents have decided on their own to “enable people to control their own destiny using the basic principles of long-term survival: responsibility, empathy, and curiosity.” 

Online research by Sieva Times owner and chief correspondent Brendan Wells revealed that the new movement has much in common with a suggestion posted Friday by blogger Will Jackson, who was recruited by WICO to help recover from the attack on its servers and is now assisting with the finalization of the global strategy. “It’s simple deduction,” Wells wrote, “that Vitalla is TC-015, the second of two test communities that Jackson was planning to visit on WICO business. This begs the question: Did he incite its members to go rogue?”

Jackson was unavailable for comment.

I’m commenting now. I unequivocally did not incite anyone to “go rogue.” My discussion with Delambre and several other people in the community was part of a sharing of ideas about the next steps in the roll-out of the strategy. Besides, my views were already known before the visit (published as personal opinion in this blog), and I must emphatically emphasize that there is nothing wrong with them. Further, more research by Mr. Wells and Mr. Tolliver - who should know better - would have revealed that test communities are mostly staffed by volunteers who are free to leave at any time, and that includes Louis Delambre.

The survival of humanity, and the other species affected by what we do, is determined by all of us. We all have a stake in it, which means we have a stake in each other and the world we share. The basic principles cited by Delambre encapsulate these facts as requirements for how we must all live to enable it. My friend, and coworker, Maura Riddick has a more personal way of putting it: “A lasting life worth living consists of sharing, loving, and knowing.” We don’t need a formal strategy (or an organized movement - sorry, Louis) to tell us when or how to begin. When is now, and how is for us to decide with the help of others.

Reality Check

Sieva is not a real town, but it is crudely modeled on an existing one in the vicinity of the fictional test community TC-015 (Vitalla).

While “Will” was offline, I worked on updating the simulation and the global strategy that derives from it. The following graphs show the latest results. 

Note: 

·     GWP (Gross World Product) is world GDP

·     C is consumption/person, which includes needs, wants, and waste

·     R is total consumption

·     Rmax is total resources

·     “Mid case” of sustained resource decline is chosen for the detailed projections

·     Population is only constrained (~ -2% annual change) during the initial descent

·     Target total consumption is equal to 1 Earth/year instead of 0.5 Earth/year

End of initial descent is in 2045 (instead of 2040) for better population control

Trip Plans

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 52 DAYS

Our small GAP team got through the third page of our task list today. Most of the tasks involved data processing, along with scanning of paper photos and maps collected from the three test communities over the past month. It wasn’t all secretarial: we got to manually study what we were scanning and record anything we found of interest.

Starting tomorrow we will be visiting the two other test communities in the Rocky Mountain region, learning firsthand about their daily activities by actually participating in them. We’ll spend most of the weekend at one of the communities, TC-014, which is in the middle of Wyoming butte country and part of the desert biome. Then we’ll spend nearly two days at TC-015, northwest of Yellowstone National Park in Montana's temperate grasslands biome and near both the desert and temperate coniferous biomes.

Maura reminded me that the first test community that I visited with her (TC-186) is also in temperate grasslands, and near the temperate broadleaf biome. Al added that some of the most interesting ecosystems are mixes of several types, and the borders of the Yellowstone area are among his all-time favorites in the United States. During the trip we’ll be able to make assessments of a variety of environments with a Personal Environmental Assessment Kit, “running it through its paces” as Al likes to say.

As I studied a map of our route in our now crowded office at the RMOC, I felt an echo of the concern I had with the distribution of test communities. I asked, “Doesn’t it bother either you that these communities are downright tiny and out of the way?”

“What’s your point, Will?” Al asked. “Except for our number thirteen, they’re in proximity to the stations for observin’ verification. You know that.”

“But do they represent what most people will experience? I get that the commune flavor matches what might be the case in the end state, and the isolation helps keep the data clean.” I realized I really was talking like an engineer. “But can we count on them reflecting what people in even modest-sized towns would be able to do, or want to do?”

“They’re not aliens,” he said. “Most of ‘em have grown up near the communities, or got their education in large cities. They know what to expect.”

“Is that really the same thing?” I pushed.

“Al’s right,” Maura said. “This was all considered when the reference strategy started being developed. It wasn’t considered an issue. What do you recommend instead?”

The answer suddenly became crystal clear. “We take it on the road.”

“Take what on the road?” she asked.

“Like what we did when we were testing the PEAK around here. We start the roll-out early, informally, enlisting everyone we meet to start taking the first steps and get used to seeing things differently. Let’s face it: we already know most of what needs to be done. The experts in the test communities can get out into their local communities and begin educating people immediately, get them thinking creatively about what to do next.”

Maura paused, apparently taking it seriously. “Extinction Response is already working with local governments on the roll-out. How would this be different?”

“That’s at the government level. It has the appearance of being imposed on people from the top. I’m suggesting simultaneously building from the bottom up.”

“Let’s talk more about it during our trip,” she said. “We can ask the testers what they think.”

Reality Check

The descriptions of the settings for the test communities are a general match to reality, but they are still fictional.