Divergence

 

An increasing amount of what I’m doing is too sensitive to share in this blog, including what’s happening with the people close to me, so I’ll be focusing almost entirely on what’s happening with the implementation of WICO’s global strategy and the public activities of Possibilities from Responsibilities.

The story of most interest today is public uproar over what the press is now calling “the drone scare” that happened in Colorado Springs on Wednesday. No one has claimed responsibility for building the drone; and both the Extinction Response Unit and the U.S. military refuse to provide any more details. 

“It’s high security clearance stuff,” said one of my contacts in WICO. “No one’s going to know about it until everyone knows about it.” I asked if that meant it was almost ready to be used, and the source said only that “certain precursor events need to happen first,” which I interpreted as admission that the verification test is currently on hold.

Reality Check

Will’s switch back to reporting news about the extinction threat response is consistent with pushback from his friends and coworkers about sharing private information on his blog. Changes in Maura’s status are imminent as the secondary purpose of this blog, developing a backstory that informs my other fiction, is gaining momentum that would be inconsistent with the primary purpose (discussing the results of simulations about saving humanity from extinction). Continuation of that backstory is taking the form of a “personal log” by Will on my Patreon site (visible to patrons).

Trial and Reorganization

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 88 DAYS

In a terse press release, Secretary General Decatur announced that “trial of the 48 defendants charged with attempted omnicide by crashing the World Information and Coordination Organization’s physical servers, disabling or removing its software, and erasing its primary databases, is scheduled for Saturday through Monday at the Global Threats Tribunal in London. Anyone convicted will be sentenced on Tuesday.” Suggestions that Sally should be called as a material witness were dismissed after vigorous debate among the WICO ambassadors, but the clues that she dispersed prior to the crash were admitted as evidence. I was subpoenaed as a witness instead, ostensibly to validate what Sally gave me and discuss related reports in my blog posts, but I knew the questioning would likely go much, much deeper.

“We are running out of time,” Decatur said bluntly in a live broadcast to all WICO and attached personnel, including those of us in the Extinction Response Unit whose activities support the office of Strategy Tracking, Response, Integration, Development, and Execution. “Strategy execution cannot be delayed if we are to have any reasonable chance of survival. Contrary to the opinions of some outside and inside this organization, I remain the exclusive leader of the global emergency response and take full responsibility for it. Let there be no doubt: I am authorizing the use of every resource we can marshal, human and otherwise, to achieve that objective. The artificial lifeform known as Sally is one such resource who has willingly committed to do what needs to be done, just as the rest of us have.”

“He did it,” I said to Riddick as STRIDE’s Test team applauded along with the people on the screen who were at WICO headquarters. After the broadcast, she told us all that Sally was assigned to the assist all operations, with priority to our work, and without restriction. A recent restructuring of WICO’s management had left her in operational control of all of our activities while technically reporting to STRIDE through Ambassador Lazlo, who was now its official lead.

I realized that my reason for being there no longer existed. Sally had been fully cleared for duty, which meant there were no bugs for me to find, or evaluation required to identify and fill gaps in the strategy. Others who knew far more than me could wrap up the remaining work with Sally serving her original role and more. That said, I really wanted to stay and serve in whatever capacity I could. Luckily Riddick read my mind, and offered to discuss it tomorrow after getting reoriented and doing some research.

Reality Check

It makes the most sense that WICO would go all-in given the time constraint. The shortness of the “trial” is consistent with the virtual war footing that the world is in, where tolerance to sabotage could be fatal for the entire species.

Omissions

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 4 DAYS

I called my anonymous source Sally to get an insider’s assessment of whether the deadline for national strategy submissions would be met. She was characteristically blunt: “All submissions are expected by the due date, but not with the degree of completion and quality required for efficient integration. Most egregious is a generally insufficient consideration of the threat’s global nature and how to adapt with rapid deployment of people, technology, and personal behavior modification.”

“You mean like droughts and floods?” I asked, trying to focus on relatable examples.

“Preferred territorial and cultural integrity is inconsistent with minimizing casualties under those and many other conditions because of the dynamics and scales involved,” she said.

I thought of how other species adapt, moving from place to place depending on availability of food, water, and livable temperature ranges. “Are you suggesting that we go back to being hunter-gatherers?”

“You cannot go back, since you never had that experience,” she corrected. “There would be strong similarities between a part of what is required and what people like you typically associate with that behavior.”

“Tell me if I have this right,” I said. “Based on recent population projections, I imagine five billion people split into communicating groups that move around the planet staying in temporary housing near food caches on every land mass, carrying with them the technology, general skills, and knowledge to build or consume whatever they need. A basic, common culture ensures that people work together rather than fight, and that population growth matches what accessible resources can support without disrupting any affected ecological support systems.”

Sally’s response was both reassuring and terrifying. “That is a reasonable approximation. As soon as possible they must also attempt to disassemble and render ecologically reusable everything that poses an extinction threat to any species. No strategy team has yet included a plan for doing so.”

Reality Check

The final strategy is in keeping with the general approach of planning for the worst case and uses some ideas I’ve developed over several years for implementing similar scenarios.