ontrol of weather. The idea had begun as a spark of inspiration C in Aiji Waki’s mind.
As the Sagan Teams, with the help of NASA, brought orbiting, electricity-producing PV arrays online, and began transmitting energy into the American electrical grid, Waki and his engineers were shaping and honing a second function of the engineering marvel known as Heaven: control of Earth’s weather. By the end of the 20th century, they had proven the system viable. More important, they tied weather and energy together, two halves of an evolution with the potential to transform the planet.
Kennedy’s goal, from the start, was a single Operations Center for the entire globe. He had shared with Carl the shining future vision he had glimpsed on Elm Street in Dallas. He couldn’t tell Carl the details of how he had acquired that vision, of course, but he convinced Carl that the GREOC would move humankind one step closer to that vision.
“Carl,” he’d said, in 1985, “rainfall has always been crucial to human survival, and by now I think we can both agree that electricity is just as critical. If we have one GREOC in control of energy and rainfall for the entire planet, Carl, it will draw peoples of Earth together. Rotating the GREOC to different countries will give all parties the incentive to practice a doctrine of fairness.”
The two men used their collective influence to steer people and their governments toward the single-controller concept, in steps.
Early in 1994, they formed a dozen Regional Oversight Committees, with punitive powers, although each country retained control 323
over the parts of the system it owned either outright or through contracts. The system worked. The ROG in each jurisdiction resolved minor disputes to the satisfaction of all parties.
They replaced the ROGs after only five years with the Weather Guild, a group of thirty-five men and women appointed for alternating two-year terms. The Guild’s duties would transition to the GREOC at midnight, with Manny in the middle of the action.
He decided against his rocker, for now. Instead, he remained standing while he pushed a single control that populated the Sky over his head with the range of displays he preferred to use. He knew he’d have to summon his rocker eventually, but for now he looked up and thought about the idea he’d had while speaking to Jim. He decided to go for it.
With a spoken command Manny summoned Spencer, Primary for the American sector, and a dozen view angles of Spencer appeared, hanging suspended in the air in a three-foot-square frame, eight feet in front of Manny. He flicked his eyes to one image, a close-up, and the image expanded to fill the frame. The clarity and solidity of the image made it difficult still for Manny to believe that no one else could see it, nor hear Spencer’s side of the conversation about to begin. He chided himself as he realized his right hand had risen reflexively to touch the tiny pinger worn around his right ear, even though touch activation had not been necessary on his externally worn pinger for over a year now, ever since the implantable version had become available—an option he enthusiastically declined.
“Still pressing nonexistent buttons, Manny?” Spencer asked.
Manny guiltily pulled his hand down, replying, “Can’t a guy scratch his head around here without catching flak?”
Spencer smiled again at the response he’d heard more times than he could count. “What’s up, Manny?” he said, as he leaned back in his rocker and laced his fingers behind his head.
“Wha-da-ya think about the precip comin’ otta Canada?”
“They started lifting too late. It’ll come down in the Rockies.”
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“Yeah. Listen, what if we jumped in with our own fans? Think we could save it?”
“Not if we wait till midnight. What? You mean now?”
“Rudy’s in charge up there tonight. I know 'im pretty well. If I can talk him into lettin us get involved, you ok with it?”
“Hell yes. We’d have to find a relay,” Spencer said. Then, after glancing up and punching two buttons, he said, “Ah, I see two already positioned well enough. You already knew that, didn’t you?”
“That’s what I get the big bucks for. I’m gonna call Rudy.”
“Hey,” Spencer said, “can I drive? It’ll be my sector after midnight.”
“You drive,” Manny said. “Get your moves coded in and let me take a look.”
“You got it,” Spencer said.
“Rudy, Manny, at the GREOC,” Manny said, after Rudy answered the phone in Winnipeg. Manny used a conventional phone now. Cerebral Hologramic Implantable Medium Port (CHIMP) technology was not widely available yet. It was another technology conceived by the Sagan Teams, then handed off for development. It required both parties to the conversation to have the devices.
“Hey, Manny ole boy,” Rudy said. “How ya like that big new palace they built for ya down there?”
“I like it fine,” Manny said.
“Hear you might buy it and move in when the GREOC moves.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice. I’d need a lot more moola.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
“You gotta quit listening to rumors. Listen. Got a question.”
“Shoot.”
“How would it be if I used my resources to lift that precip easterly tonight?
“We’d need a signed contract in place first, wouldn’t we?”
“Now. That’ll change in a few hours,” Manny said.
“Ah,” Rudy replied, “and by then it’ll be too late, huh?”
“Fer sure. It’d be nice to give our mid-west some drought relief.
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“I da-no. Maybe I should give my boss a call.”
“Then he’ll have to call his boss, and it’ll be six weeks before we get an answer. You can make this call. I hear you run the place anyway.”
“Right. Hang on.” Rudy studied a couple displays, then came back with, “It doesn’t look like you’ve got time, anyway. It’ll run down west, way it looks.”
“We got a couple relays in good position. Head on and low.
Regina will be in bed by the time it clouds up, or we might miss ‘em altogether.”
“Ok, hotshot. Go for it. Worst they can do is can me.”
“Thanks, Rudy. I owe ya.”
“Bet yer ass.”
There had been reluctance by other World control centers to turn over control to the GREOC. They’d become so invested in this system that promised to transform the earth, they didn’t want to switch off their own control until they were certain that those assuming control were knowledgeable of all the local and regional idiosyncrasies that required special attention.
“Are you aware of the seasonal reversal of wind direction in this area?” they would ask, or “Do you know how La Niño cooling in the equatorial Pacific is expected to affect agriculture here this year?”
Before 1980, training in, and knowledge of, electrical systems had been the main requirement of electrical system operators. By 1990, however, a new system operator began to emerge: those who had been so awed at the concept of Heaven project that they had digested every published report, had studied and understood all the sciences involved, including the science of weather. Those operators stood in as resident experts for their control centers as the first receiver anodes came on line in any control area.
By the mid-1990s, when they could no longer ignore the possibility that humans would soon acquire a rudimentary control of 326
weather, electrical system operators began receiving training in weather basics. By 2005, when plans for the first GREOC were being formed, it became apparent that those first GREOC operators would need to be meteorologists, and on a global scale. Over half the earth’s population lived under the influence of climates dominated by monsoons. Blessings of the monsoon could be good, if it began on time, progressed moderately, and lasted long enough. If not, monsoons could become evil.
For many years, most of the World’s control centers had been doing their best to reduce the hardships of, and increase the benefits of, weather events. However, each center had jurisdiction over specific areas only, and control of specific equipment. Often, one control center’s efforts subverted those of another, due to differences in goals, or differences in methods applied to the same goals. The GREOC aimed to tie together the needs of the entire planet, dispensing water as Solomon had dispensed justice: with indisputable fairness. Toward that end, for the past four years, all of those selected as members of GREOC operations teams had been transitioning away from their previous careers, and into training programs.
This training included Heaven programmers. They planned to automate as much as possible. Programmers would need to be conscious of the needs of humanity and how their manipulations could change the lives and fortunes of billions of people.
Tools available to the artificial intelligence of the automated system were quite remarkable. Within steel and plasma boxes, on Earth and in orbit, detailed data maps represented weather perfection for each day, each minute, for every spot on Earth. All Heaven had to do was move the world’s weather to match that idealized perfection. Easy to say, but in practice it was just a goal, sought, but never attained. Often, precious moisture was lost at sea when conditions offered no better alternative.
System operators represented the fine-tuning of the whole system. Theirs was the last chance to inject human intelligence into the equation; the last opportunity to test the success of the automation.
Whatever the reason, the system operator was expected to say, 327
“Wait, something’s wrong here. Let’s do this instead.”
That off-script operation would no doubt result in a call from the regional control center that had been cast in the role of observer, asking why the override had been introduced. It would be fortunate, when such a call came from the other side of the earth, that Professor O. L. Kast had created Earth Talk, back in the 1960s.
At 17:50, Manny received Spencer’s coded job sequence: a list of instructions they would feed into the automated system. Spencer had called existing subroutines wherever possible, Manny noticed.
Good, he thought, no point reinventing the wheel. The code was clean and easy to follow. Manny only had one question.
“Call Spencer,” Manny said aloud, this time making a point of keeping his right hand at his side. “Spence,” he said, once again looking eye to eye with Spencer, “what’s this ‘CALL SMART-SHIFT’ in your code?”
“A new subroutine I found in the bank. Looks like it’s designed for heavy lifting. Measures time lost to resource switching, expected time until the next switch, and compares that to mission gain from the better angle. Gains mission time by eliminating switches.”
“Hm, sounds interesting. Ever use it before?”
“No,” Spencer said. “But I included a kill. If we don’t like the way it’s working all we have to do is input ‘STOP SS,’ and it’ll revert to the sub we’ve used before.”
“Ah, I see that now. Good job, Spence. Let’s feed it to Heaven.
I’ll post the other sectors so they can observe. Hit go when ready.
I’ll observe from here.”
“Thanks, Manny. Feeding now… accepted… passed FAA check-scan. Bingo! Should be all downhill from here.”
“Right,” Manny said. “Catch you later.” He knew it would be anything but downhill. Spencer would spend much of his time over the next few hours analyzing the progress of the lift, looking for signs of inefficiency. Manny would do the same. The NERC rep would be poking around too, soon as he got word of the off-script op going down. Time to get serious. He whistled for his rocker.
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