Agenda 2060, page 7
Gigantic hundred-ton trucks from open-cast mines advance on the camera and dump their loads of black coal.
“Though this program is still far from complete, I am pleased to report that the results are outstanding. The years of smoke and ash cover experienced by major cities on the Eastern Seaboard are, in my opinion, a small inconvenience compared to our goal of carbon neutrality. It is a success story in every respect.”
Fade to a lonely camel train wending its way across the dunes of the Sahara Desert.
“Less successful has been the proposed planting of eighteen billion trees across the Sahara Desert. It is true that, at this time, none of the trees have survived. But with a visionary new solution to be presented by the Kyros Foundation at the forthcoming Earth Day celebration, which will involve digging a canal from the Mediterranean Sea into the heart of the desert and relying on the desert sand to desalinate the seawater, I believe that this will prove to be only a temporary setback.
“And while the goal of Agenda 2060 was to see these and other large-scale tree plantings completed, we should not be put off by temporary setbacks. After all, goals are set in order to inspire and motivate us. Thus, we should be immensely proud of what has been achieved to date.”
Artie starts to walk off camera, then turns and walks back on set.
“And to those who say we need more carbon dioxide to make trees grow, not less, I have this to say: the ITPP knows what it’s doing. That’s why global temperatures are not rising as predicted.”
A COSMETRIC CHANGE
March 2058
The atmosphere in the Lineal Progression Office had changed significantly since the morning six months ago when the department head had called Alexa to their office with instructions that she was to sign a Loose Lips Agreement and appear before the Agenda Implementation Tribunal. In the weeks following that appearance, Alexa’s status had changed visibly, and a unspoken exclusion zone had opened up between her and her colleagues once they realized she had been given a new level of responsibility to which they were not privy.
They could read the signs, though. The allocation of a large corner office with a lockable door that the cleaners were not allowed to enter unless Alexa was present; the IT technician who arrived from the Social Justice Office to shut down their servers while (it was rumored) a new dedicated ethernet cable was run to said office; the autonomous vehicle that appeared at the front entrance whenever Alexa left the building: these were the clearest possible signals that she was now to be treated with caution. Banter around the water cooler ceased as she approached. Smiles became rigid. After-hours social invitations now excluded her, and she had no time for old friends from her college days. Only the department head could guess at what her new role entailed, and he, as a witness to the Loose Lips Agreement, was equally bound by it and thus cautious about speculating on the nature of her new work.
For her part, Alexa had no problem with any of it. She was fully engrossed in her task, which she found challenging and stimulating, and she felt that at last she was truly using the brain that Jordan had once described as ‘the brightest—and most beautiful! —ever to study mathematics.’ The people at the Social Equity Ministry were in awe of her security clearance status and equally in awe of her analytical skills, unaware of why they had been instructed to give her full access to their data. Those who appreciated her physical charms looked forward to seeing her, and those who felt threatened by those same charms found it difficult, nevertheless, to resist her sunny smiles and cheerful greetings.
The mystery surrounding her work was heightened one morning when a visitor appeared at her office door, accompanied by two Social Justice Office security wardens. It took Alexa a few seconds to recognize the person—square jaw, heavily muscled tattooed arms, strawberry-blonde wig—as the member of the Agenda Implementation Tribunal who had rather severely criticized her work at the Lineal Progression Office as being partly responsible for the mess they were in.
The person introduced themself as Shane Whitman, and after the two wardens had swept the office for bugs and removed Alexa’s Konektor from her desk, they were dismissed, closing and locking the office door from the outside. Shane pulled a chair up to Alexa’s desk and removed their wig to reveal a closely shaved bald pate.
“It’s showtime, Alexa,” Shane said with a big smile and not even a hint of severity. “We’ve chewed the cud on this thing until there’s nothing left to digest, and I’m here to give you the tribunal’s decision.”
“Oh!” Alexa was surprised. She’d been waiting for the tribunal to summon her again. This visit was the last thing she’d expected.
“But before I tell you what we’ve decided, I wanted to say a few words to you in person, Alexa, because you have displayed an openness and honesty that I personally find shaming, and I know some of the other members feel the same way. It may help to explain our decision. You see…”
What Shane went on to say was too personal—and frankly, too complex—to remember in much detail. But Alexa summarized things for Jordan McPhee later that day, after she requested an urgent meeting with him in a park near her office.
“Shane Whitman, it appears, is one of many white men who, around the time of the Overthrow, decided to obscure their sexuality for reasons that had nothing to do with sex. They saw the adoption of the Agenda articles that explicitly provide for the empowerment of women and minorities as erecting a barrier to their own ambitions.”
“So, they chose to wear wigs and lipstick to confuse people,” Jordan suggested wryly.
“And apparently confused themselves in the process. When you look at the figures for self-identification, it’s obvious that it isn’t Social Points alone that drive people’s decisions; the differences in Transitional Benefits claimed aren’t enough to justify it. Clearly there are other motivations at work. Besides, people like Shane Whitman are on an earnings scale that beneficiaries could only dream about.”
“Interesting,” Jordan observed. “This cuts across something I’ve been thinking about lately myself. We’ve been encouraged to see society in economic terms, as if monetary reward were our sole human ambition. Is that because currencies of exchange, whatever form they take, are the only things we can reliably count?”
“Or is it,” Alexa countered, “because money is the only thing that can be reliably counted on to control people?”
“Good point. Would you like to expand on it?”
Alexa preened. But why did she love this master/pupil relationship so much? She was a thirty-nine-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake!
“I’ve learned a few things in the last few weeks,” she confessed, “that I’m ashamed to admit I’d never thought to question before. It goes back to the time of the Overthrow. Maybe we were all in shock during that period. The banks had collapsed, people were out of work, there were breadlines, riots… The world was in chaos. Then the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations announced that the leading economies had agreed to abolish fiat currencies and adopt new standards for international and domestic trade based on Crypto Credits. Old currency debts were wiped out at a stroke. I never understood that…”
“It’s called a Jubilee.”
“… and our new government announced that Article Three of Agenda 2060 was being introduced with immediate effect.”
“Ah, yes,” Jordan interrupted, “Article Three: ‘End poverty in all its forms by controlling income distribution, limiting private asset accumulation, and ensuring equality of safety, security, and well-being for all, regardless of work input or ability.’ It used to be called ‘welfare’; then that morphed into the Universal Wage; but now they call it Transitional Benefits—which is a sly way of suggesting you still have the opportunity of moving on to something better if you’re a deserving citizen.”
“Which is what Society Points were designed for,” Alexa interjected. “Everyone receives sixty-five percent of the maximum Transitional Benefits no matter who they are, and those who are oppressed receive more according to their level of oppression. But you can’t trust people when it comes to assessing their own victim status—which is why I made my suggestion to work the idea backwards: give everyone a hundred percent of the benefits, then impose a range of penalties on those who are guilty of discrimination and oppression. It’s just a means of balancing the budget, for God’s sake! I never for a moment thought they’d go for it … but Shane Whitman proved to me that anyone who thinks they can predict human behavior is delusional.”
If there is a trick to being a good conversationalist, it is not how good of a talker you are, but how good a listener. A good listener offers moments of silence that discreetly suggest they should be filled. Jordan offered such a moment now.
Alexa struggled for a minute with her thoughts, as if reining in her powerful instincts to guide them in the direction her logician’s mind wanted to follow.
“Shane Whitman,” she revealed at last, “made it to the top of the government’s inner circle via a forty-year career in the FIB.”
“You mean the FBI?”
“No, the FIB: Federal Interrogation Bureau.”
Jordan whistled softly. “Now that’s heavy. And he took to dressing as a woman? I’d say that’s some change.”
“It’s only a cosmetic change,” Alexa laughed. “Underneath the dress, I’d guess he hasn’t changed at all—and that’s probably true of a lot of people in the top echelons of government. They’ve publicly paid lip service to diversity and victimhood because it’s helped them come out of the Overthrow aligned with a belief system that the majority of people have been happy to support.”
Jordan stood up from the park bench and walked over to a nearby tree, examining the trunk as if he had never seen tree bark before.
“Does something about that rub you the wrong way?” Alexa demanded forthrightly, miffed at his apparent disinterest. “I don’t want to sound cynical; I’m just being realistic. I presume you support the social justice and sustainability goals that the world has signed up for. I certainly do. But I’m aware that things can go too far in any given direction. That’s what Shane Whitman is admitting, basically—and that’s why they see my suggestion as an opportunity for a reset.”
“Ah, a reset!” Jordan called over his shoulder. He’d spotted something in a metal trash can on the far side of the park and set off towards it at an easy lope. Alexa watched, frowning, perplexed by his deliberate departure. He could run quite well, actually; she had never seen him in motion before. With his back to her, he burrowed into the wire basket, then turned back to her, triumphantly holding his find above his head with both hands.
“It’s a football!” he shouted. “Can you catch?”
Without waiting, he wound up like a quarterback and launched it towards her.
Her mouth fell open. She clambered to her feet as the ball spun towards her, describing a fifty-yard parabola through the clear, wintry afternoon air and landing in her outstretched hands inches from her heaving chest.
Jordan, incredulous at both their skills, trotted slowly back towards her.
“I can’t believe what I just saw,” he confessed. “Women can’t catch footballs. You must have a male gene.”
“And white men can’t throw them,” she shot back. “You must have a black gene.”
“Ah!” he replied ruefully. “You remember the secret twenty-five percent? If only I’d known that when I was young…”
“Anyway,” she continued rather sulkily, “I was going to tell you some of the things I’ve discovered at the Social Equity Ministry … but it seems you’re not that interested, and I’m bound by secrecy, anyway.”
He took the ball from her and kicked it far into the distance, where it disappeared into the white-barked birch trees. Then he took her arm and steered her back to the park bench. “I’m sorry. Something you said triggered a bad memory for me,” he explained. “Belief systems: I’m very wary of them. And the fact that you’re dealing with this Shane Whitman person from the FIB.”
The belief system he had in mind had led to his deplatforming, and the painful fracturing of his relationship with Lexie. Belief systems sounded compelling in the abstract, but in practice, implementing them required sacrifice. And as for the FIB, well…
“I know what you’re thinking,” Alexa allowed. “I guess it’s just that I rely on your encouragement, and I’m entering dangerous territory without any guidance. These people want me to enroll with them.”
“Enroll? What does that mean?”
“That’s the only way I can put it. They want me to join a group to advise them on how to pitch a dramatic reset to the public. Remember when I talked to you the other day about Artie Sharp and the ArteFact Channel? That’s the sort of thing they’re after. If he could be recruited—I suppose persuaded would be a better word—to buy into the changes, he could help in selling them to the people.”
“I’ll have to make a point of watching it,” Jordan said innocently. “Meanwhile, I am interested in what you’ve learned at the Social Equity Ministry—very interested—but I’ll not ask you to breach your secrecy agreements. Tell me only what you feel comfortable sharing.”
OCCAM’S RAZOR
April 2058
Nothing is what it seems. Two people sitting on a park bench. One wants to reveal her secrets; the other wants to conceal his. But are their reasons obvious to each other already? Do they think they know enough about the other person and their circumstances to trust what they hear?
A lifetime of distrust and caution clouded Jordan’s thoughts. When Alexa presumed that he supported the social justice and sustainability goals that the world had signed up for, she had made a point of emphasizing that she did. He could take her word on that, or he could take it with a grain of salt. After all, who didn’t support social justice and sustainability? Pledging allegiance to it was one thing, but dangling it in someone else’s face as some kind of sign of virtue was what one might expect from an idealistic teenager—not a mature and intelligent woman like Alexa. Of course, controlling societies exert a sort of moral suasion that, in their citizens, can manifest itself as unconscious repetitions of the core creed mantras. If that’s what Alexa was doing, it was disappointing, to say the least. Her professed admiration for Jordan had promised better than that.
In his line of work, Jordan was challenged every day by the ability of AI to understand context and meaning. Human communication is incredibly complex. People often imply things without explicitly saying them, so for his machines, understanding nuance required focused attention. Would their neurobiological programming have detected inconsistency in Alexa’s reportage? On the one hand, she had cynically dismantled the sincerity of Shane Whitman and his fellow tribunal members for paying lip service to diversity and victimhood. On the other hand, she was seriously considering joining them in a scheme to implement a reset designed to neutralize that very diversity and victimhood. Whose side was she really on?
Every story is only part of the story.
In the field of artificial intelligence, Occam’s razor posits that the simplest theory explaining any data is invariably the most likely to be true. Alexa had basically asserted that the cause and outcome of the Overthrow should be judged in purely economic terms. (What had she said? “… the leading economies had agreed to abolish fiat currencies and adopt new standards for international and domestic trade based on Crypto Credits. Old currency debts were wiped out at a stroke…”) On hearing this, Jordan’s own neural network had flashed a warning signal: none of this matched the speech or thought patterns he had learned to associate with Alexa. The simplest theory was that these ideas came from another source (from the time of the Overthrow or thereafter, obviously), thus mimicking the speech and thought patterns of someone else—a prominent economist, perhaps. So, he returned to his office and asked Quantum XR-11 to do some research.
In short order, those same words and speech patterns were identified in classified transcripts of evidence presented to the Security Oversight Committee at the time of the Overthrow.
VOICE 1: You are Donald Melville Smythe, correct?
VOICE 2: Correct.
VOICE 1: You have been charged with incitement and sedition for spreading false information to undermine the authority of the state.
VOICE 2: I am an economist. My job is to interpret the economy.
VOICE 1: Your interpretation is that of a conspiracy theorist, not an economist.
VOICE 2: My interpretation is based purely on fact.
VOICE 1: Isn’t it a fact that our people—and the majority of people in the developed world—have spontaneously demanded an end to inequality, greed, and the squandering of resources? Isn’t it a fact that international institutions have responded to those demands by rejecting money as the staff of life—making you and all economists angry about your redundancy?
