Safety Is Paramount
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Authority remained a force for good. For about ten years people learned to co-organize and relatively quickly the movement spread to the point that country-level governance became obsolete. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a violent minority held on to violence and brutality and terrorized others. That’s when the Authority came to the rescue and brought safety back to humanity.
It took a few years, as the RADICAL movement spread and companies became healthier and even more financially successful. Innovation was flourishing. In what felt as the blink of an eye, they became the new norm for businesses. This new-found capacity to co-organize and c0-create changed people in fundamental ways it changed the world around them. At that point, traditional static countries with strictly defined borders gave way to co-organized, dynamic Pods with fluid boundaries.
But it wasn’t all roses. As in everything to do with people, it was a spectrum: from the most decentralized Pods to the smaller but violent Pods dominated by coercion and fear.
The more centralized a Pod, the worst and more brutal life became for the people trapped in it. As resources became more scarce, these Pods became very aggressive towards Pods where abundance was common. However, the progressive Pods quickly figured out how to minimize this threat by investing time and resources to propagate experimentation and wealth creation among the would-be attackers. It all pointed to a sustainable future for humanity, and that’s when the Authority took shape.
The Earth Authority Pod had come together in what was formerly the southern area of the United States. Most of the central and southern US had never quite shaken off their authoritarian ways. Pods from this area maintained a few entitled roles, including a Presidency. These were mostly symbolic, until Jane Ping turned her presidency into a position of power. She renamed her Pod the Earth Authority and created a movement to bring together the poorest, most violent Pods into a ruthless military force.
Chairwoman Ping's Authority Pod got very efficient at slashing and burning its way to power. Like Alexander the Great, as Ping’s Authority took over, it would maintain a lot of the practices of the wealthier Pods–so long as it didn’t threaten her control she kept through her gigantic bureaucracy. And what kept the bureaucracy in line was what became known as the Mirror Security Service, a not-so-secret police which reported directly to Ping.
Outright violent resistance had not been an option for healthy Pods. A few had opted to counter-force to keep Ping’srsquo;s Authority at bay, but that choice changed them. They became more authoritarian. People who did not support the violence had to be coerced into giving up their voice and their wealth; there was even conscription involved in a few cases. Once a Pod chose the path of violence, principles got corrupted, commitments became meaningless words, and these Pods became ripe for the Authority’s takeover.
After a relatively short but intense struggle, the Authority won. It took over and imposed its ways on all of humanity. Chairwoman Ping’s “safety is paramount” became the unifying cry. She got to define what “safe” meant and anything that threatened her absolute power wasn’t and was eliminated one way or another.
Divine Power
The Authority’s law and order meant safety and it meant the absence of war. The Authority ruled over all political and military power and did away with hostilities among people. Safety was paramount.
Of course, the Authority had to deploy force whenever a threat arose. For the safety of the people, of course. For example, the religion Ministers protected the Authority from extremists and their made up deities and they deployed force as often as needed. For the safety of the people.
Interestingly, the religion Ministers were not part of Ping’s original scheme. Much like it happened at the collapse of the Mughal era and the rise of the British colonial government in India, the rise of the Authority created a rigid, hierarchical system that reshaped social groups into divided communities that could be more easily controlled. The people who ended up as Religious Ministers convinced their significant following that the Authority’s power had to be, indeed, divine. Chairwoman Ping brought them into her ruling hierarchy and it made the Authority the de facto catholic religion.
Solar Authority
Ironically, in spite of its official name, the Authority extended its power beyond planet Earth and its power reached out to the Solar habitats that had been deployed by the prosperous Pods. From the tiny Venus to the extensive Jovian habitat, all were forced to organize along the Authority’s strict hierarchy and to report according to their bureaucratic procedures. The Mirror agents made sure of it and that peace and order prevailed.
Establishing control of the Solar habitats was relatively cheap because it was easy enough to tap all the communications channels and even cheaper to deep-spy on everything that went in and out of the habitats. A couple of roaming ships full of loyal, well-trained Mirror agents, popularly known as the Marines, was enough to put down any signs of resistance.
The use of Worms to carry data and messages was a bit more problematic at first because if they got through, they could dump their hidden payloads on Solarnet in the blink of an eye. That happened a couple of times, but the Authority was able to sweep it under the rug pretty effectively. Not to worry, the Mirror software has gotten better over time and these days it can tease out any Worm payload that is potentially threatening to safety or to Ping’s power. When it happened, the people involved in the treasonous act were taken care of without much of a fuss: first the people on Earth would be taken care of and then the spacers involved, often during a rotation, would simply disappear. Out of sight, out of mind.
Chairwoman Ping had the whole world—and everybody else in the Solar system—in her hands.
RADICALS
The thing about people who have experienced their whole selves is that they are changed by it. When, on top of that, these people have become good and adept at experimenting, they approached life, all of it, as a grand playground. And when need be, they knew how to use their curiosity and playfulness to defend themselves very effectively.
Trying to step out of the iron cage imposed by the bureaucracy, could be painful, even letal when the Mirror agents got involved. But having seen a path to a more humane future and then being cut from it was all the motivation they needed to do something about it.
The first few attempts to bypass the deep-spying software did not end well. People would disappear quietly and all traces of their work would disappear with them. So they learned to get around the deep-spying software without detection. It was a constant race, but the RADICAL folks could move very quickly and stay way ahead of the people spying on them who were slowed down by the weight of the hierarchy above them.
Imposed hierarchies had a price and the RADICALS took advantage of it. With a little help from their Worms, they learned to create acceptable reports including mistakes and the respective punishment metered out. According to the reports, re-orgs happened often enough and people were shuffled around from one role to another. Everybody kept competing with everybody else and some were promoted while others got demoted. The Worms learned to make it all sound acceptable enough.
Accidentally, they found out that many of the old Pods had a similar deep-fake operation going on.
Breadcrumbs
Maryfer, from the old Mayabeque Pod, noticed something awkward in the reports coming from the old Shanghai Pod. Well, she didn’t notice, but her Worms did and they reported the anomaly to her. She didn’t think much of it, but she verified that there was more than an even chance that these reports were not quite right. So she consulted with Tony.
“Wait, you are getting Shanghai Pod reports, how’s that? How did you break through all the ‘need to know’ blocks?”
“Well, no, I didn’t break through anything. My Worms pointed the reports to me, I verified the anomaly, and here I am, talking with you. But, now that you mention, you’re right, how did my Worms get them? And why?”
They stared at each other in silence, but you could almost hear the gears going on in their heads. Without warning, Maryfer jumped into her Anchortron. It sounded like she was having a nice conversation with her sister, but Tony knew better. They did a few minutes of a performance for the Mirror’s tap and then they walked away to speak in privacy.
“What’d you find out?”
“It seems that our Wormhole Engines have been finding others with similar enough affinity profiles. The Shanghai report came through as one of the ‘breadcrumbs’ they were using to calculate affinity. I am guessing that and building their affinity profile from very similar breadcrumbs and that’s how they found each other.
“What do you mean ‘breadcrumbs?’”
“Our work leaves lots and lots of breadcrumbs behind. That's how the Mirror discovered the first few people who tried anything like this, the ones that got ‘disappeared.’ We trained our Worms to sanitize them as soon as they were created. Sometimes they could erase them completely, other times they could blur them, and in a few cases they have to create a whole lot of other breadcrumbs to obscure their provenance and render them insignificant. In any case, the Worms learn from them, though, and incorporate them into their affinity calculations.”
“But… the Mirror’s Worms…?”
“To avoid the Mirror, our Worms have also been trained to not share that part of their oncology to other Worms. But there is an exception for others with very high levels of affinity, which we assumed would only be our own Worms. If, and that’s the only thing that makes sense to me, these other Worms are learning and building their affinity profile from very similar breadcrumbs then they would be open to each other and try to figure out how well their profiles fit.”
“Are there others, or just Shanghai?”
“I plan to figure it out, but from what I was able to figure out without raising suspicions, there are others and it may include Callisto and Ganymede. If that’s true, it means…”
“No shit. This is big!”
Corruption
The Authority’s hierarchy needed corruption. In fact, all Fiat hierarchies do, from the smallest org to dictatorships, they need corruption and couldn’t function without it. Corruption keeps the people at the bottom busy—think of it as a form of entertainment. And, it gives the more ambitious people a path to power, a career path that doesn’t threaten the hierarchy itself, but protects it. Of course, the Mirror agents knew where to look and would make the call when to intervene, which wasn’t often. And that’s why the Authority’s bureaucracy was strewn with an acceptable level of corruption.
Systemic corruption worked for the RADICALS, too. It served to identify people who weren’t doing it because of idealism, commitment, or principles. They were the ambitious, doing it as a path to power or they were just angry and frustrated and since they couldn’t get justice, they could at least grab a bit of the wealth and power that’d otherwise go to the top.
The RADICAL’s learned the hard way to be careful, that if what you asked for involved too much risk, you would be turned in for loyalty points. This had happened to the Mayabeque Pod. Otherwise, corruption was a way for them to get some things done. The people who were willing to turn a blind eye for a fee were bringing value to them, so they’d put up Banners to pay for these… contributions. And, yes, the RAD distribution system was very much operational, although not as out in the open as it used to be. And not only with them, as each old Pod learned how to corrode the Authority’s foundation, the Worms spread the word with the other high-affinity Worms so they could keep learning from each other.
The Authority
The Wormhole Engine high-affinity network was a major lever in eating away at the Authority’s foundation. The RADICALS kept checking to make sure that there was no leak for their Worms; one their biggest fear was that one of the Mirror Worms had quietly infiltrated their network. But so far, everything was safe. They were constantly leaking breadcrumbs, but nothing that would point to their important work—they did it as an obfuscating tactic. When something leaked through that could even become remotely suspicious, they would know who to bribe to make the whole cloud of leaks go away quietly. Even if the Mirror agents were paying attention, they would not know which breadcrumb, if any, was worth following. So, they didn’t.
The RADICALS’s simulations could identify people who were taking bribes because they were angry at the Authority. They did it as a way to “get some justice” out of the system. About 37% of them fit this profile, and another 20-30% were highly probable to fall in this “angry” category. That meant that about half of the blind-eye people could eventually be potential supporters.
It seemed that the habitats were well ahead because they had Marines on their side. They had proof without the Marines’ tools of violence, the Mirror agents could transform in a relatively short time. This meant that it was possible to unfang the Authority without shooting a bullet, to use the old expression. But the habitats were a special case, very self-contained and far away from Chairwoman Ping.
But… would it be possible to transform Chairwoman Ping?
