Simplified Discovery

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 56 DAYS

Three copies of the new Personal Environmental Assessment Kit arrived Saturday morning; and I spent most of the weekend trying one of them out while WICO’s Boulder field office and residents of TC-013 did a set of formal tests with the other two. Al accompanied me part of the time as an informal observer, recording my reactions and his while Sally monitored my progress (along with everyone else’s) via cell phone.

The number of assemblies in the PEAK was reduced to six, the largest being a compact device for measuring air pollution that relies on optical comparison and a reusable set of fine filters. Instructions were fewer too, with the design modified to be as intuitively obvious as possible without sacrificing functionality. As I wrote my observations in the kit’s logbook, I noted the simplicity of its new checklist format which together with an abridged guidebook removed context for the ecosystems being measured, and I wondered if useful understanding was being lost as a result.

“Consider the audience, Will,” Al said when I shared my concern during a lunch break yesterday. “You’re gonna have pros with cleanup tech out there with these folks who what they’re talkin’ ‘bout. No-one’ll be confused.” He picked up the can of biosafing solution. “Meantime, they’ll be usin’ this magic potion that’s general ‘nuff that it won’t matter what else they got.”

“I don’t trust that stuff, Al,” I said. “How do we know it won’t cause some other problem? The user should be able to tell if it does.”

“Someone close’ll know. That’s why they knocked the number of kits down to one per community instead of givin’ one to everyone.” That wasn’t the only reason, or even the main reason, but I wasn’t going to quibble.

“Sally,” I said, knowing the phone would automatically connect us. “What’s the reason for changing the formats of the guide and log?”

“Al was partly right, Will,” she answered over the speaker. “Although user feedback was very much appreciated, the major driver in the redesign was the ecological impact of kit production, maintenance, and recycling, and disposal. A reevaluation of education in the strategy was the second largest driver. It is now oriented toward discovery and relationship identification rather than information dissemination, with a focus on developing knowledge and understanding for the purpose of constructing a survival-constrained reality.”

“That’s quite a mouthful, cybercritter,” Al told her. “If I get what she-it means,” he said to me, “they bought your creation deal and ran with it.”

“Is that true, Sally?” I asked, suspecting it was more likely a logical outgrowth of the rules already in the strategy.

“Your edits and summaries of the rules are part of the substrate that led in that direction,” she said. “It made more sense to some of us when that context was identified.” By some of us, she clearly was referring to herself.

“How is the Education group managing that?”

“They’re holding what they call open brainstorming sessions with test communities, although the sessions don’t tend to match the technical definition of brainstorming. Their success is, however, undeniable.”

I relayed that discussion and the general progress of the tests to Maura when she called me this afternoon. She had already been briefed by the team, and expects to be back at work here on Wednesday. “I won’t be your boss anymore,” she added. “Samantha’s putting us together as a special ops team operating out of Boulder, where I’ll continue to be a liaison with the Extinction Response Unit. Meanwhile, you might want to read the latest copy of the strategy, which just dropped today.”

Reality Check

One of the elements common to most of my fiction is a selection of characters as observers who essentially report on what they see and experience in situations of interest. 

In this case, Will progresses through several roles that expose him - and the reader - to various aspects of his world’s preparation for dealing with its extinction crisis. The people he interacts with represent forces that could logically influence the trajectory of events or provide some insights into why things are happening the way they are.

Sanda/Sally is in the unique position of critically influencing events and understanding the underlying variables as parts of a simulation (which we’ve learned she experiences everything as). She also enables a fictional exploration of the human/technology interaction whose rapid evolution people in our world are being forced to experience.