Questions

 

Three questions have been running through my mind since Monday: What is it, how good is it, and what do others think and feel about it? Answering them and the questions that follow from them was a game started by Louis Delambre on Sunday to train the bootcamp’s participants in the application of curiosity, responsibility, and empathy to actions, objects, conditions, and events. He introduced the game before the tours of Vitalla began, driving Maura and her fellow educational consultants crazy both as targets and sources of the questions.

“I’m getting tired of this,” Maura complained as we crossed the Colorado border yesterday, “and don’t you dare ask why!”

“Don’t worry,” I remember answering. “I feel the same way.” It took less than an hour for us to start up again. We both luckily had the rest of the day off, except for the time I took to write yesterday’s blog post. 

Today I joined her for a debriefing about the trip in my first visit to the Rocky Mountain Operations Center since resigning from WICO. We were interrupted by a rare Homeland Emergency Alert broadcast to everyone’s phones, warning that it was unsafe to be outside until further notice. While the rest of the public guessed the reason, Sally announced to the staff (which she considered me an honorary part of) that an experimental drone used for dispersal of pollution-collecting microbes had been accidentally released from a test facility in Colorado Springs. It was being tracked, and a search-and-recovery operation was underway using Air Force drones.

The whole story sounded fishy to me, but it was confirmed publicly three hours later along with news that the drone was safely recovered. I asked Sally if the Widely Dispersed Pollutants (WDP) group was still involved in experimental technologies development now that the Extinction Response Unit is in charge of trying to stop self-sustained impacts, but she refused to specifically answer, saying instead that “jurisdiction is currently fluid.”

When I was alone again with Maura, I recalled Ronald Wingate’s discussion on Blue Planet Day about commercial pollution cleanup technology, and Sally’s comment suddenly made sense. “What was the drone, really?” I asked Maura.

“Not this again,” she said plaintively.

“Seriously, who was controlling it?” I insisted. “Who, or what?”

“What are you thinking?” she asked, her expression revealing that she was taking me seriously.

“Why did it have to be hunted, unless it was under control? And if it was under control, what was the controller thinking? Was it being used as a delivery device for microbes, if it even had them, or was it being used for something else?”

She closed her eyes for a few moments, but they kept moving like she was reading a book or watching a movie. Then she opened them with the force of a revelation. “It wasn’t the WDP group, or Extinction Response, or the military. It was private.”

I nodded. “E.D. has a lab down there. Or it could be something externally controlling it.”

“The what,” she said, as if she was recalling something, like the conversation we had before we left for Montana. “You don’t think it was Sally, do you?”

“She was a little too vague when I asked about the WDP group,” I pointed out. “That answer left the door open for several answers, and several motives.”

“Like testing a commercial product,” she said. “Or manipulating perceptions to change the future.”

Once again, questions led to more questions.

Reality Check

One point of focusing on curiosity, responsibility, and empathy is to develop a consciousness of context for experience that can guide future experience toward desired goals. In my experience, asking and answering questions is a critical part of the process, and well worth the effort even if it initially leads to more confusion.