Day 26 of 30

NanoWriMo2005
J E D Cline
Title: “The Ark of 1984’s Future”

Day 26 of 30

“So how did those 3Musketeers slackers,” Guardiano asked, “manage to get the space carousel escalator project going? They have no business sense, are just menial workers for the most part, and not one of them could stand up to either you or I in the ring for two minutes. Yet now they are bringing in profit from their solar power satellites electric beamed power that is a quarter of Tanfl’s aggregate profits. It does not make sense.”

“I looked into that” Rationallo mused. “It was a complicated history. And in fact, if Tanfl had not stepped in and provided engineering expertise and investment money, they might not yet have a single power satellite up and making money, especially after we destroyed their sliding armature segment manufacturing plant with its engineers and technicians. And, as you know, we would not have come up with that money without seeing the advantage in the long run of having them complete their dream of a ring of cities in orbit.”

“But you did ask how did they get it going. Tracking the technological concept begats would take us all the way back to the stone hatchet, I suppose. There was a key turning point, when several concepts that were nibbling away at the idea of using kinetic energy to maintain a structure that could help access space more efficiently than conventional reaction engine rocketry could do, were combined such that the weaknesses of the progenitor concepts were canceled out by a particular combination of the earlier ideas. The man who came up with the way to do the escalator such that everything fell in place neatly, unfortunately, was not a prominent man.

“You know how we need to be sure of things before we commit investors money in a project. Any manager that does not do that is soon not a manager anymore. We count on the reputation of a person, to evaluate the person’s concepts’ credibility. It is not always easy to evaluate a concept directly ourselves, especially if it is really a way that is not directly in line with our existing chain of command orientations toward knowledge.

And although this was a time before the united corporation formal accord to ban all innovations, most of innovating in this country had effectively been blocked by the “employment agreements” forced upon technical employees as a condition for employment, that handed over all their ideas to the corporation freely, with no requirement that the corporation pay them for those innovation keys, nor obligation by the employer to do anything with the ideas. Thus, ideas were a dead ball in the game of business.

But there were some technical people who would just not give up. They believed more in their concepts than in the wisdom of keeping a low profile. Mavericks, they were, and the corporations identified them, and put the squeeze on them. It took time to crush them in such a way that it was not traceable to the corporations. And in that time, sometimes an idea got out into the world.

“And the basis for the space carousel escalator was one of them. He started putting the basics of the idea on one of the national computer public networks before the internet became widely public, then he kept putting the concept on internet web pages where all could see. That all was in total incomprehensibility to corporate and academic thinking, he was giving it away freely. On his previous related concepts in large scale transportation innovations, the corporations simply would have an investigator go in and clean out every trace of record that he had the idea, thus he could not get a patent nor financing, so the concepts died there. The guy was barely surviving financially, and his woman was long gone, friendless, corporately blacklisted so he could not get a good job anymore, yet he kept on, he had no sense.

“He submitted papers to space related conferences year after year, yet was righteously ignored. But finally one conference had some leaders that believed more in concept validity and potential to help humanity, than in following standard business aims. And so the guy made a space conference presentation on the concept and got a paper published in a conference proceedings.

“And another conference too, despite the increased requirements for presentations, peer reviews, making camera ready copy; the guy did it all himself. Normally it takes a whole staff of people to do those functions, and they knew he was struggling alone, yet to their amazement he did it. By the next conference, they had sent in troublemakers to harass the employers of those who had supported presentation of those papers. And so the third conference, he again got a paper published, but the conference was set up so no one would be able to attend his presentation, delayed until long after the conference was over, in an obscure place, and his presentation was heckled by top management, and was totally ignored afterward. All good business techniques, of course.

“So another group focused on that kind of thing, especially bringing up the old idea of an anchored tether centrifugally supported tether out through GEO, like there were possibilities of the super strength material needed for that, on the near horizon, competition to the carousel way of doing it. He presented three papers at that conference, again at its end, and with hecklers in the audience to disrupt the man not trained in doing presentations, he just was winging it at everything and was somehow still going. So they just endlessly delayed publication of those papers until it was forgotten; the conference presenters employer was put on huge pressure by troublemakers sent in to do ugly stuff.

“So why did that not kill the concept? The guy had grown old by then, still living in poverty, and though not giving up, just faded away obstinately still trying. One does not live forever, and they made life quite miserable for him. Anyone with good sense would have seen the light long before and quit trying to get the concept accepted. But he stubbornly kept at it, believing in humanity’s wisdom instead of business power principles in action.

“The great corporations casually smoke screened and badmouthed the guy and the carousel concept, while they gayly went on with business as usual, living the good life. Winners always win, losers lose. Some losers simply don’t quit, however, even though lose they must. And that guy was one of them.

“The guy was gone, but his writings still had not been fully eradicated in published papers and in internet pages. Some internet-written science fiction had been written by the guy, also was loose in the public knowledge base. And so after the Great Famine dark ages had been passed, some of that concept was still available, and the 3Musketeers found it. Tanfl could not touch it since it was full of requirements for innovation; so it was against our principles to deal with such a thing. The 3Musketeers saw it as a way to save the kind of humanity that they were, even had fantasies of making the planetary environment get running again through restoration. They did some incredible things with the vision, I must admit. And so here we are.”

Guardiano had intently followed all that. “It is interesting to see how our ways of being, our traditions, slowly change in response to the pressures of reality. This will be an interesting example of what happens when traditions are flouted, bringing disaster upon those who do not honor tradition's proven ways.

“It had been agreed among all the great corporations to cease innovating technically, preventing costs of competition and thus increasing profits for all. It therefore became a fine tradition to be honored. Yet that guy, and then later the 3 Musketeers, terribly defied tradition, even the business practices and chain of commands of his day, to get that carousel concept into common knowledge, disgusting innovation stuff it is. Even many in Tanfl are eager to move to live in the cities in GEOrbit, where they won’t need to be dependent on the digestion vats anymore, but have a return of agriculture powered by endless sunlight availability up there. But it all will be the progeny of innovation, and will bring disaster therefore to them all. When the Leroy Brown Society prevents them from doing their abominable innovative changes to restore the environmental balance, and prevent their return along the carousel escalator to their homes and businesses on the ground, they all will perish up there, and the world will belong forevermore to the true believers who honor our business traditions.”