2022 (12 page)

An assistant escorted her to a sitting room
and she waited at least ten minutes before Richard arrived.

“I’m sorry for keeping you waiting…Miss?” he
said as he came into the drawing-room.

“Sue is fine.”

“I don’t usually conduct business meetings in
my home, but my secretary said you were very persuasive about the
urgency of the matter. How can I help you?”

She stood, feeling more at ease on her feet
as she spoke. “One of our agents has gone missing. More
specifically, my partner. He was doing some investigating at your
West Coast colony when he disappeared.”

“Why are you asking me about this? I don’t
mean to sound unsympathetic, but how am I supposed to help you with
your missing agent?”

“I’m not here to play games!” she said, “Do
you know anything about this?”

He studied her for a moment and then made a
decision. “Yes, I know about Spencer. That’s his name, isn’t it? My
question for you is why was he spying on my foundation? I run a
legitimate organization.” At the mention of Spencer’s name, he
noticed visible relief on her face.

She had felt anxious since Spencer had been
missing and wished she had gone herself instead of sending a
rookie. Her composure returned quickly. “Where is he? I’ll have a
swat team here in minutes if you don’t release him right now.”

“That will hardly be necessary. I’ll see that
he’s released, but he’s presently at my headquarters, and you still
haven’t answered my question.”

“We were trying to find out more about the
colonies. There isn’t much information out there,” she said.

“Bullshit! There are masses of public
information on the colonies and what we’re trying to do with them.
I’m guessing what you mean is that there’s very little about my
foundation on the Internet since it has its own computer network,
and none of the systems are tied to the worldwide Net. Makes it a
little harder for your search bots to go where they shouldn’t be in
the first place, doesn’t it?”

“To be frank, you’re absolutely right. We
know very little about the foundation. And there are suspicions
that there may be activities going on that are not in our country’s
best interests.”

“Everything is legal,” he said. “I have a
fleet of accountants and lawyers to make sure of that.”

“Then why all the secrecy surrounding it, and
what about the security? This mansion looks like it’s better
protected than the White House.”

“The security is new. Most of it was
implemented during the last couple of months for my own
protection.”

“From whom?”

He checked off his answer with his fingers.
“Governments, corporations, unions, you name it. There’s a long
line of groups that would be very pleased to see me killed.” He
said that the foundation was attempting to do what no other
organization had done before—bring sustainability to daily living,
meaning that people should consume less,
much less
.
Advertising was one focus of the foundation, telling people to
delay purchases, buy secondhand items, and to buy small.

“Yes, I’ve seen some of the ads,” she said.
“The ones with the little kid saying ‘save some for me’ while an
adult waters the lawn were touching. But this is also the main
agenda for CURE.”

Richard stated vehemently that his foundation
had nothing to do with CURE. “You’re right—the ads are effective
when I can get them aired. Very few radio and television networks
will run them because their other advertisers say they’ll pull out
if they run mine.”

“But I’ve seen
and
heard them.”

“Only after I bought out a controlling
portion of the shares of several networks around the world.” Then
he asked, “What government department are you from?” not wanting
her to know how much he already knew about her.

“Department of Information Retrieval.”

“I suspected as much.” He made a quick call
and spoke in a low voice so that she couldn’t hear his
conversation. When he was finished, he said, “Your boy is fine. I
can let you speak to him in a while via videoconference. But you do
realize that if you want to know something about the foundation,
all you need to do is ask.”

“And you’ll tell the truth?”

He smiled. “Of course—at least we’ll be more
honest than many organizations. Everyone has secrets, but you have
my word that there’s nothing here to worry about.”

“What about the wildlife parks you’re setting
up around the world and the deals made with local governments to
restrict access?

“All the foundation is doing in those places
is setting up some long-term experiments—small villages to find out
better ways for us to live. Think about it like the mission that’s
sending people to Mars soon, except we’re not sending anyone to a
different planet.”

“Why all the secrecy around it?”

“I want these villages to be autonomous,
surviving on their own for the long term. We’re talking about a
multi-generation experiment here because I think that’s what it’ll
take for people to have a true paradigm shift. If knowledge of this
got out into the general public, I’d have to spend another massive
amount of money keeping the group isolated. I’ll tell you what—this
Spencer fellow is pretty close to where we’re setting up one of the
villages. Why don’t we send him there for a few days? He can look
around, talk to people, and then tell you firsthand what’s going
on. You’ll see there’s nothing sinister.”

“I like the idea,” she said, “but I want to
speak to him first,” Sue said.

********************

“Ah, room service!” Spencer said as the door
to his cell opened. He squinted at the light coming through the
doorway and could make out two guards. He had lost his sense of
time but didn’t think it was meal time yet.

“Get up,” one of the guards said gruffly.

“So you can interrogate and torture me some
more?”

The guard didn’t respond but walked over to
Spencer and forcibly brought him to his feet. He was led out of his
cell and followed both guards down the hallway. They opened a door
to a different room than he had been in last time and shoved him
in.

“We’ll be back in one hour. Be ready.”

Spencer looked around his new surroundings,
which were a considerable improvement over his cell. There was a
good deal more light than the cell he had been staying in, a real
washroom with a shower, and a plate filled with cold-cut sandwiches
and fruit set out on a small table. New clothes had been laid out
on the cot. He guessed his detention had lasted close to a week,
and he knew he needed a shower more than food.

Indulging in simple luxuries for an hour, he
was clean, dressed, and finishing the last of the sandwiches when
the door opened again. “Follow us,” said the guard.

He was led to another room that was furnished
only with a chair and a desk with a computer on it. Sue’s image
showed on the monitor, and he suddenly felt relieved.

“There you are!” she said. “You
do
realize that you’re supposed to fill out a series of forms before
you decide to go on vacation, don’t you?”

“Vacation! I’m a prisoner here. They’ve
interrogated and tortured me.”

“Not bad for your fist few weeks on the job,”
she said unsympathetically. “Vacation time is now over. I’ve spoken
to Richard, the head of this foundation, and he’s agreed to give
you an escorted tour to see one of their long-term
experiments.”

“What kind of experiment? Am I allowed to
leave now?”

“I’m told that you’ll be leaving shortly.
There’ll be a helicopter flight to the experiment site, and after a
few days there, you can come back to the DIR office, report in, and
do some real work. I’m sorry to be so brief—see you in a few
days.”

The monitor went black.
She’s a real
gem
. He had been held against his will and interrogated, and it
all seemed like another regular day to her. And now he’s expected
to keep going. He wondered if she sounded offhand because she
suspected that she was being monitored.

As if on cue, the door to the room opened and
the same two guards came in. One handed him a pair of sunglasses
then escorted him outside to a helicopter that was warming up on
the helipad. He was guided to the noisy machine increasingly unable
to hear what they were saying to him. When he had buckled his
seatbelt one of the guards gave him his backpack before shutting
the door.

He looked inside and quickly found his cell
phone and was thankful that the battery was not completely
exhausted on it. He could see that a few text messages had been
received, and he quickly typed in a response, pressed Encrypt and
then Send. With a full stomach of food and the hot shower,
accompanied by the steady drone of the engines, he soon fell asleep
and did not awake until the helicopter touched down in a clearing
that appeared to be in the middle of a forest.

He exited the helicopter and ran out from
under the moving rotors. An attractive woman stood at the edge of
the clearing. “Welcome to Percipience,” she said. “My name is Hope,
and I’m your tour guide. Please follow me.”

He did his best to keep up with her brisk
pace while she told him the purpose of the village. As they passed
by the trailer camp and towards the town center, he eyed the number
of trailers. “How many people are here?”

“Currently about eight hundred. But most of
them are temporary workers like me. I think the population will
ultimately be around three hundred. When the temporary people
leave, these trailers will be removed and this area will be used
for crops.”

“That’s a big area. Will they be tilling all
of that by hand?”

“Most of the garden areas and smaller crop
areas will be, but I’ve heard rumors of them building a small wood
gas tractor for this large field.”

“How do you keep something as big as this
whole village a secret?” he asked. “Until today, I didn’t know that
this program or place even existed.”

She smiled and nodded. “Very good security
and you have to remember that there are three more sites like this
around the world. It’s a pretty big job.” Then she abruptly changed
the subject. “You’re lucky that you arrived this week. The Air
Chair has just been completed and is operational now.”

“What’s an air chair?”

“It’s kind of a ski-chairlift system that
does a loop around the main points of the village. The planners see
it being used mostly by the elderly to get around and for moving
harvests between the clan huts.”

“Why not electric golf carts or something
like that?”

“This is easier on the environment and they
don’t want roadways. Besides, most wheeled vehicles use rubber
tires, and rubber is on the restricted list. That’s why, after all
the temporary workers leave, there won’t be cars or even any
bicycles around.”

“What’s the restricted list?”

She outlined a list of materials that
couldn’t be used in the village. “Rubber, for instance, because in
most cases it will decompose in less than a hundred years. And they
can’t make it, at least not until there are villages where rubber
trees can be grown.” She pointed to a hillside entrance they were
approaching. “We call this cavern the warehouse. A few critical
things are kept in here that can’t be rebuilt but can be stored for
a long time. When more villages are established, they will be able
to have some specialization which will then start to furnish these
items. For example, one village may supply the rest with copper or
rubber.”

Entering the cavern Spencer saw that about
half of the large area was filled with shelves that were about half
full and the rest had pallets with a variety of machine parts and
raw materials like copper ingots.

“This is a little over the top,” he said.
“Would it be impossible to send in a supply truck every once in a
while?”

She laughed and slowed down to let him catch
his breath. “The whole purpose would be defeated. This is a
multi-generation project, and people are signing up to live here
for the rest of their lives without assistance from the outside
world.”

For the second time in less than two weeks,
he felt like he was entering an alien community with ideas and
principles so unlike the traditional towns and cities he was
accustomed to. He mentioned his recent trip to one of the
colonies.

“Actually, the colonies are a precursor to
this type of village,” she said as they left the warehouse.
“Several of the social programs developed for Percipience were
beta-tested first at the colonies, such as the size of the clan
huts.” They approached the ramp to the Air Chair platform, and she
spent a few minutes explaining how it operated. They stepped onto
the next available chairlift, and she pulled the cord that signaled
they were ready to go. Within seconds, the chair automatically
attached itself to the moving cable and they started to wind their
way through the trees around the village.

“Is everything around here run on
electricity?” he asked.

“Yes, and this is one of the biggest users.
They’ve brought in large generators to provide electricity for now,
but construction is underway to supply power to all the village
from horizontal windmills and water tanks on the hill up ahead. I
think they underestimated the demand though because I’ve heard the
engineers say they’ll need to plan for more windmills with the high
consumption of this chair.”

“Horizontal windmills? Why horizontal? I’d
think that would be very inefficient.”

“I asked the same question,” she said. “It
has to do with one of the core values here. The environment is to
be treated equal to humans, so everything is geared toward leaving
as little negative impact as possible. The horizontal windmills are
far safer for birds, and so that’s the design they’ve used even if
they had to build more of them.”