A Learning Experience

Chapter Seven

Bern, Switzerland

Kevin had always liked the Swiss. They were a mountain folk, like some of his own family, and they had a robust attitude towards personal freedom, gun ownership and maintaining their independence despite being surrounded by stronger and often hostile nations. Indeed, they actually were more democratic — for better or worse — than much of the Western World.

They also maintained a largely-secure banking system, despite the pressures of the War on Terror. Their reputation for discretion was everything, even though it worked against the forces of freedom and liberty as much as they worked against dictatorships and tyrannies. An African despot could have a Swiss bank account, crammed with as much foreign aid funds as he could loot from his benefactors, but so could his opponents. And they had far fewer pesky laws on technology transfer than the USA. Quite a few small computing businesses had moved operations to Switzerland in the last few years.

He stopped outside the building and smiled to himself. Wilhelm Technology was a very small firm compared to the giants, but it had operations in both Texas and Switzerland. On the surface, the technology they produced was made in Switzerland, allowing it to avoid export restrictions and government interference. If nothing else, the internet made it much harder to hide when something existed the government didn’t want its citizens to have. And then they could simply order it from overseas.

Idiots, he thought, sourly. Small innovative firms like Wilhelm had once been the lifeblood of the American economy. Now, they were often forced out of the market by paperwork and regulations that the bigger industries could simply pay lawyers to avoid. Maybe some of the regulations made sense, maybe they didn’t… but they collectively strangled the life out of the small businessman. In desperation, some of them had even started to outsource their production facilities to other countries. Many of the major industries were already gone.

He stepped inside and smiled. There were few people working in the offices; Wilhelm Technology’s factories consumed much of their manpower. The receptionist looked at his card and waved him to a seat. He’d expected a wait — most corporate big-shots preferred to keep people waiting, just to make their inferiority clear — but he was met within seconds. But then, he should have expected no less.

Markus Wilhelm had been a USAF Geek when Kevin had first met him, years ago. He’d never flown an aircraft and never would, not even one of the Predator drones, but he’d been extremely important, none the less. The fighter pilots might sneer, yet in an age of increasing technological development and deployment, the computer geek was often more important than the pilot. After he’d finished his first term, Wilhelm had taken his expertise and founded a company of his very own. And he’d seen moderate success since then. It would have been more, Kevin knew, if he’d been able to find additional capital.

“Kevin,” Wilhelm said. He was a tall, but slim man, the very picture of a geek. The glasses he wore, he had once claimed, were the same style as Bill Gates had worn before he’d become a billionaire. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Kevin said, as Wilhelm led him into the office. He couldn’t help a trickle of nervousness. All the other people he’d contacted for Steve — and the ones Mongo was collecting — were people who could disappear, if necessary, without being missed in a hurry. Wilhelm, on the other hand, would be very noticeable if he vanished. People would ask questions. “I was wondering if you would be interested in a business proposition?”

Wilhelm turned and frowned at him. “You are offering me a business proposition?”

“Something like that,” Kevin said. “There is a piece of… technology we wish you to market for us. We would split the profits.”

“And who,” Wilhelm asked, “are you working for?”

Kevin nodded, mentally. He’d expected the question. Unlike the others, Wilhelm had good reason to be suspicious of any offer, particularly with an unverifiable source. The CIA had turned more than one American business into a front operation over the years, doing serious damage to American interests when the truth finally came out. Wilhelm was hardly interested in turning his company into a cover for the Company, particularly given the pressure on his operations from the NSA.

“Someone new,” Kevin said, evasively. He reached into his briefcase and produced another NDA. He’d rewritten it for Wilhelm, his wife and any of his employees he felt like inviting into the secret. “Someone who needs your assistance in selling his wares.”

Wilhelm’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me,” he said.

Kevin had considered several cover stories, but most of them would be easily to disprove, given enough incentive to ask questions. And Wilhelm would definitely have such incentive.

“Sign,” he said, instead. “And then we will discuss matters.”

After a long moment, Wilhelm took the paper and sighed it.

“Let me get this straight,” Wilhelm said, after he’d been teleported to the starship and given a brief tour. “You’re founding your own nation and you intend to sell technology to finance your operations?”

“Basically, yes,” Steve said. He found himself liking Wilhelm on sight, but it was hard to trust anyone who hadn’t seen the sharp end of war completely. “We have various… gadgets we intend to sell, through you if you’re interested in helping.”

“A case could be made that your actions are treasonous,” Wilhelm said, after a long moment. “What do you make of that?”

Steve put firm controls on his temper. “I understand that you are having your own problems with the government,” he said. “What do you make of our desire to avoid the government?”

Wilhelm nodded, slowly. Steve smiled, recognising he’d scored a point. He wasn’t sure he fully understood Kevin’s explanations of precisely why Wilhelm Technology was having problems, but he was sure it was because of government interference. Besides, if Wilhelm had been completely committed to the government, he would have stayed and worked for them on a very low wage.

“We’ll have to claim they came out of the factory near Bern,” Wilhelm said, finally. “We were ramping up production of the new hard drives in any case, so it isn’t completely implausible. Not being able to file a patent, on the other hand, might raise some eyebrows.”

“You can file a confidential patent,” Kevin pointed out.

“The government would still have access,” Wilhelm reminded him. “But it might not be a bad thing if another company eventually cracked the secret of how the technology worked.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Steve agreed. The devices they’d intended to suggest were advanced enough to be noticeable, at least ten to twenty years ahead of Earth’s finest technology. It was depressing to realise that the alien starship designers probably considered them nothing more than toys. “How quickly could you start selling them?”

Wilhelm considered. “Maybe a month or two,” he said. “We could claim that the whole project was so secret hardly anyone knew about it — that isn’t uncommon in the computer world — which would allow us to start selling in two weeks, but that would probably raise eyebrows. Few secrets remain secret indefinitely.”

Steve smiled, tiredly. “Are you interested, then?”

“I’d be very interested,” Wilhelm said. “But I’d also be interested in relocating to the moon once you have a colony established. What sort of laws do you intend to have covering commercial operations?”

“We haven’t thought that far ahead, yet,” Steve admitted.

“Better get thinking about it,” Wilhelm said. “There are quite a few possibilities that don’t include alien technology, if you have free access to outer space. Zero-gravity production, for one thing, would allow us to produce all sorts of improvements on current technology and machined components. And then there would be no need to worry about pollution.”

He paused. “You do realise that setting up a lunar base probably contravenes the Outer Space Treaty?”

“I didn’t sign it,” Steve said. “And nor did the aliens.”

Wilhelm blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“There are thousands of alien races in the galaxy,” Steve said. He learned forward, meeting the younger man’s eyes. “As far as we have been able to determine through searching the alien database, the only law that is actually enforced regularly is a ban on genocide. And even that may be a bit iffy.

“We cannot rely on the aliens blindly accepting our laws when they enter our solar system,” he added, coldly. “The galaxy appears to operate on the principle that might makes right — and they are far mightier than ourselves. If we’re lucky, the best we can hope for is to become a protectorate, just like a newly-discovered tribe of natives in some godforsaken jungle lucky enough not to live near something a more advanced nation wants. If we’re unlucky, we will be enslaved or crushed beneath an alien boot heel. We need to make this work, Markus, before we run out of time. And we cannot rely on the government to do anything other than impede us or smother the effort under countless studies of how to do it quickly.

“To hell with absurd treaties, to hell with charges of treason. I want to win, I want to safeguard humanity’s future. And the only way to do that is to use this opportunity as ruthlessly as possible.”

Wilhelm studied him for a long moment. “Very well,” he said, finally. “I will join you.”

“Excellent,” Steve said. He nodded to Kevin. “My lovely assistant” — Kevin snorted, rudely — “will work with you to determine what would be the most… productive items to enter the market.”

“I could advance you a loan now,” Wilhelm offered. “I may not be Bill Gates, but I do have quite a bit of money stashed away.”

“That would be very helpful,” Kevin said, before Steve could say a word. “We’re sitting on the largest gold mine in human history and we have barely a cent to our names.”

Wilhelm smiled. “It will be done,” he said. “Can I see one of the aliens?”

“Our sole captive,” Steve said, standing. “Come with me.”

“They don’t seem very clever,” Wilhelm observed, as he followed Steve through the alien corridors. “To let you take control of their ship so easily.”

Kevin smirked. “How many people do you know who use ADMIN as the username and PASSWORD as the password?”

“Point taken,” Wilhelm said. “Half the problems I handed while I was in the service were caused by someone neglecting basic security precautions. One idiot actually took a USB stick he’d found in the trash into the Pentagon and inserted it into his computer. The Chinese must have laughed their heads off when they realised how it had happened.”

Steve turned to look at him. “The Chinese?”

“They’re constantly poking the edge of the electronic fence,” Wilhelm said. “You won’t believe just how much crap they’ve tried to pull, from inserting spyware into almost every computer produced in China to paying officers to obtain passwords and admin permissions for them. There was a whole flurry a few years ago about a remarkably nasty computer worm that might well have come straight from China. We never really got to the bottom of that, no matter what we did.”

He shrugged. “Or it could be the Russians,” he added. “Asymmetric warfare is their thing.”

“But it still seems odd for aliens not to notice the dangers.”

“This race seems to be permanently trapped in the Dark Ages,” Steve said, as they reached the alien’s cabin. The cleaning effort hadn’t quite reached this part of the ship; he saw Wilhelm wrinkle his nose as he smelled the decomposing alien meat in the air. “Just like some human groups, for that matter.”

“True,” Kevin agreed. “You know we used to offer laptops to schoolchildren in Africa? The idea was that they would develop their talents and join the global information age.”

Wilhelm lifted his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“We did a survey, a year after we donated the laptops,” Kevin explained. “Only a handful of children ever managed to learn how to use them properly. The remainder were either junked or turned into portable lights for the women who cook. They — the laptops — were just so far outside their experience that they had no idea what to do with them.”

“And these aliens are the same,” Wilhelm mused. “You know, we could probably sell some crap to the aliens if that’s the case.”

Steve nodded. “Something to think about, if we live that long,” he agreed. He opened the door to the alien’s room. “Meet… the alien.”

He smiled as Wilhelm gasped in shock. It was a familiar reaction by now; men who took the teleporter in their stride found themselves caught short by the mere presence of the alien. A couple who happened to be deathly scared of spiders had recoiled when they’d seen the alien, then had to be given alcohol to calm their nerves. But then, after meeting deadly spiders in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fears were actually somewhat logical.

“Let me know when you come to an agreement,” Steve said to Kevin, then left the compartment. “I have to check up on Edward.”

He made his way down to the medical bay, then smiled. In a handful of hours, Mariko had turned it into something more suitable for human use, scrubbing the decks clean and installing a couple of beds she’d had brought up from the ranch. The older kids had helped, captivated by the thought of learning from alien computers and neural interfaces rather than at their desks, along with the rest of the children in the region. He smiled as he saw Edward, lying on one of the beds.

“I feel fine,” Romford protested. “But she threatened to cuff me to the bed if I tried to leave.”

“She’s the boss in this sickbay,” Steve said, firmly. “How are you feeling?”

“Well, I can feel my legs and my groin,” Romford said. “That’s… very definitely an improvement. And I can actually walk, when she lets me.”

He paused. “Does she have a sister?”

“She never talks to her family,” Steve said. He wasn’t surprised by the question. If he’d lost the ability to have sex and then regained it, he would have wanted to have sex as soon as possible too. “But there will be other women coming up here.”

“Or there will be shore leave, I hope,” Romford said. He sat upright, looking down at his hairless chest. “She says the hair will grow back in its own sweet time.”

“She’s probably right,” Steve said. Romford was certainly sounding a whole lot better. The croak was gone from his voice, for one thing. “What else did she say?”

“She said he ought to stay in bed,” Mariko’s voice said. Steve turned to see her standing behind him, her hands on her hips. “I know this autodoc is likely to put us all out of business, but I would infinitely prefer to have you lying down until I am absolutely sure it does what it says on the tin.”

“Yes, boss,” Romford said, reluctantly.

Mariko caught Steve’s hand and pulled him into the next compartment. “I don’t tell you what to do on the ranch,” she snapped. “Don’t tell me what to do in my sickbay!”

An angry retort came to Steve’s lips, but he forced it down. “What’s wrong?”

Mariko sighed. “I checked him carefully,” she said. “I did every test I could think of with the equipment I brought up from the ranch. And you know what I found?”

Steve shook his head.

“Perfection,” Mariko said. “His spine has been repaired, several gunshot wounds are no longer detectable, a small problem with his heart has been fixed, even the excess fat he gained since being forced into the residence has been removed. The autodoc did a perfect job, well beyond anything the best surgeon on Earth could do.”

She sighed. “This thing will put all the surgeons on Earth out of business,” she added. “And there are quite a few other things it can do. Do you realise that we could start producing cancer cures now? Or a modified virus that could destroy AIDS? Or… hell, Steve, I want to improve the kids. What sort of mother would I be if I let this opportunity pass me by?”

“Improve the kids?” Steve asked. “How?”

“All sorts of little genetic tweaks,” Mariko said. “They’d have perfect eyesight for the rest of their lives. They’d live at least two hundred years with minimal age-related decay. They’d be completely immune to everything from the Common Cold to AIDS. They’d never really put on weight or lose their muscle tone; hell, I think even their mental agility can be modified and improved. And this… thing just did it! I asked for a list of options and it provided them, almost at once.”

She looked up at him, plaintively. “Steve, honey, this scares the hell out of me.”

Steve frowned. He didn’t understand. “Why?”

“One thing you learn as a doctor,” Mariko said, “is that, on average, there are no real differences between different races — different human races, I should say. But with this technology… it wouldn’t be long until people start creating superhumans, men and women who are smarter, stronger and just plain more capable than the rest of the human race. Or you could start creating slaves, people who really are good for nothing more than grunt labour, people who are always obedient to those they know to be their masters because servitude is engineered into them.

“This is Pandora’s Box, honey. And once you open it you can’t stuff the contents back inside.”

She hugged him, tightly. “That’s why I’m scared,” she admitted. “This is going to change the world. Everything will change.”

Steve nodded, hugging her back. Now, he was scared too.