Finally found it!
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Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 05:13:19 -0800
ST-OM The Secret Masters of the Earth
by Jay P Hailey
The Fusion reactor of the Taft VII colony was an easy job - basic maintenance stuff - but the colony didn't have a full time reactor and
power systems technician, so they skimped on the maintenance and the machine, for lack of a better term grew ill.
But a few tried and true repair tricks and techniques restored the thing to full capacity, and it would stay there for several years.
"Thank you." Mayor McConnell said. She looked about ready to bestow a medal on me. People who didn't understand the machines often reacted
like that.
I smiled a reassuring smile. "Keep my name handy. Call me out of you need anything else."
"Oh, we will." She said.
I knew she wouldn't - I wasn't clear on who would pay me for my time, and I didn't especially care - but they wanted to be sure it wasn't them.
I sympathized. Colonies were always at the ragged edge of their accounts back on Earth. There was a line past which Earth would declare a colony
failed and offer to evacuate everyone back to Earth to try again later.
But no one knew what that limit was - analysis I'd read suggested it was a case-by-case decision.
So every colony tried to get right up to that limit, less a bit to allow a pad for disaster. Managing a colony's financial life was as hard and
as finicky as managing it's physical presence. It was more an art form than a science.
But the cut corners meant I'd always have work as the big machines modern life depended on aged and began to fail.
So Mayor McConnell would skimp and shave and spend her allotted credits on Earth as carefully as any miser of the 20th century horded his gold.
I was a luxury until the machines failed.
-*-
I finished packing up my tools and arranging my shuttle for travel, when I heard a small voice say "Hello?"
I turned to see a small girl. She was pretty; with the hint of curves she'd have some day and a sharp intelligent face. She was engaging.
I worked to get the "awwww how cute!" out of my voice and attitude. Instead I said "Hello. What can I help you with?"
She was fairly direct. "You're the repairman, right?"
I nodded. "That's right."
She got a little embarrassed then. She twisted her hands together. "I.. ummm... I have a friend... He has some broken stuff."
"You want me to see if I can fix your friend's things?" I asked.
She nodded; glad I'd gotten right to the point.
I smiled again. "I think I can do that. It's okay to ask."
She smiled and her smile lit up the shuttle - she was going to be a galactic league heart breaker some day. She'd already wrapped me around
her fingers.
-*-
The first thing I noticed was that the man was holding a phaser on me. That does sort of focus my attention. I stayed still and breathed
deeply - My eyes were bugging out and I had that unpleasant shivery feeling up and down my spine - as if my back muscles were already in a
panicked, but completely uncoordinated flight.
I hate that feeling.
The second thing I noticed was that he was a mess - his clothes were dirty and torn, he was unshaven and he smelled. His hair was a long,
matted mass, and his beard was similarly long and unkempt.
His house was a prefab model, available from any catalog - but of a dated design. It was older than me.
"Who are you? Who sent you?" He hissed at me.
"Allan! He's a repair man!" Melinda said, insistently. I resolved never to trust another twelve year old blond as long as I lived.
"I didn't call for repair! I DIDN'T CALL FOR YOU!" Allan was near to panic.
"I'll just leave." I said in my most placating voice.
"He was fixing the colony reactor!" Melinda explained "I asked him to come here!"
Allan peered at Melinda. "You what?"
"I brought him out here for you!" Melinda said crossly. She was irritated at Allan. Apparently she hadn't seen enough madmen with
weapons to do the smart thing and hide. On another planet. Melinda was fixing to give Allan a good talking to.
I wracked my brains for a way to talk the madman down enough to escape with the girl and call in the colonial constabulary.
"You're off the books?" He asked me.
"I haven't logged the call yet." I said. I kicked myself - he could vaporize me and my truck and it might take days for the constabulary to
figure out what had happened to me.
Allan raised the phaser. "Oh, thank God. You don't know how long I've been waiting for someone like you."
My arms and legs felt weak, made out of putty. If I were a stronger man I'd have attacked him the moment he let his guard down. But the
adrenaline rush was taking a toll.
"I don't want to bother you, Sir." I said as calmly as possibly. "We'll just go."
Melinda looked at me disappointed, "But you said..."
Allan interrupted her. "Please, mister, I apologize. I Came out here to get away - I'm not used to unexpected guests." His phaser was now held loosely at his side. His expression was pleading.
I made a snap decision. I held out my hand. "Give me the phaser."
He looked at me. I knew I was stern. Perhaps a touch angry. I couldn't over ride it at the moment.
He nodded slowly "Alright. I guess that's fair." He handed me his phaser.
It was older than mine. A federation model. As I examined it - I felt my blood thunder in my ears and my muscles clench. The damned thing was
completely empty. The worst danger Allan posed with it was scaring me into a heart attack. Or hitting me with it.
I glared at him. I was about to haul off and hit him. He looked woebegone. Suddenly I saw him clearly again. A hermit trying to defend a broken down shack with an empty phaser.
He didn't need the constabulary - he needed medical attention.
"Good." Melinda announced. "Now we can fix Allan's house."
She was nothing in not stubborn.
-*-
Allan's house had four basic problems. First the old replicator was down. It was very down, since Allan had tried to repair it. So pieces
of it were scattered among a complete sty, a mass of rotting destruction.
because Allan had lost the ability to acquire food and dispose of waste in any modern way - he'd failed to do it in any more primitive way -
his house was swamped in old, unwashed dishes, old unwashed food containers, old unwashed clothing, and debris of all sorts and kinds.
That was the second major problem. The smell was horrid.
The third major problem at Allan's house was that his generator was down. That lead to Allan's lack of personal hygiene - without energy for
hot water, sonic washers for clothes and himself or shavers, he'd simply done without.
The fourth major problem was that Allan was insane, perhaps to the point of violence and a danger to himself and everyone else around him.
Melinda didn't see it that way. "Pleeeeeaaaaaaaassseeeee," she wheedled.
I looked at her. Plainly the girl was delusional her own self.
"When he can clean up, he's a lot nicer, please help."
"Sweetie - he's crazy." I explained. "He thinks people are out to get him. He'd dangerous." I didn't know how much of process schizophrenia I
could explain to her. I'd never seen such an advanced case myself. Federation medical science made it one shot and some therapy and it was
gone.
"He explained it to me, but I don't really under stand it." Melinda said.
I nodded. Paranoid schizophrenic hallucinations were bound to be out past the life experience of a twelve year old.
She said "Please help him, and then if you decide I'll help you take him to the hospital."
I pictured her trying to help me with the stunned bulk of a mad man. I stared at her. Her whole heart was into helping Allan the nut.
As I stared I felt my insides grow soft. Damn her!
"What do your parents have to say about this guy?" I grumped.
Her embarrassed look told the rest of the story. Alright - once we rescued Allan from his hygiene disaster I was going to take Melinda home
and then I was going to have a talk with her parents.
"Stay with me." I growled. "And if I say run - I want you back in this shuttle on the bounce, hear me?"
She looked at me like I was a touch crazy myself.
"Agree, or I leave right now." I insisted.
She squinted at me and then nodded.
-*-
Allan disappeared into his room as soon as I had the power supply back up - that was easy - that was another missing maintenance issue. I reset
the machine and cleaned her up a little bit and she chugged right back to life. The power supply was very old, but a rugged, durable design. The
power supply would outlive Allan, given care.
The Replicator, well that was a different issue. We had to fish through the disaster for missing pieces, and then I had to study the
specifications carefully. Like the Power Supply the replicator was over 50 years old and an odd make. I was lucky my technology database had the
stats.
I began to reassemble the machine, carefully looking for clues about what had caused the initial failure.
One stroke of luck - the replicator has failed some time before the power supply - so the krellide cell in the replicator was chock full. We
could run it for a while while the power supply caught up with the main house battery.
-*-
Allan came back into the living room, clean. He was thin. His hair was now very short but very clean as was his beard. His clothing, still
rumpled was clean.
He started to gather clothing from the living room. "I am sorry about this. I can only guess what you must think of me."
Holding up the rematerialization stabilizer from his replicator and checking with my tricorder, I replied. "I was thinking untreated
schizophrenia."
Allan laughed. I looked at him. He looked at me and stopped laughing so much. Then he looked around. "You know, I can see where you would
think so."
"You did, in fact point a phaser at me." I said.
Allan looked embarrassed. "I apologize. It's just that..." he stopped.
"Go on." I said breezily - assembling the matter-feed rematerialization circuit.
He chuckled again, ruefully. "I'm drop out. If I tell you why, you definitely think I'm crazy."
"Suit yourself." I said. Definitely a call to the Colony hospital.
"My name is Allan Keerzuk. I'm an economist and an investigative journalist." He explained. "Well, I was."
"My name is Jay P Hailey. I fix machines." I said.
He nodded "Pleased to meet you Mister Hailey."
I looked at him again. I said it dead pan. "The pleasure is mine."
He laughed.
-*-
The replicator worked on the third try - which is pretty good for a strange machine found in pieces, I thought.
Melinda, Allan and I started cleaning up. We put wrappers for military rations and prepackaged foods into the replicator which broke them down
and sent the matter resulting to a sort of a septic tank.
Then we put dishes in - dirty dish in the replicator - clean dish out - waste material also into the sump.
Then we straightened up the things that didn't go in the replicator. I picked up "Social tapestry of the Cosmos" by Castros.
"Castros." I said looking at the introduction.
"Yes, he was one of my teachers." Allan said.
"I met him some time ago." I said.
Allan smiled "What a character."
After we picked up the non-replicator debris then came the mop and bucket and sponges.
By the end of the afternoon the place didn't smell bad, and looked positively livable.
Melinda and Allan did most of the work. Melinda worked like a machine. Colony kids often do that. You put them on a job and they jump on it
with both feet. Part of the colonial lifestyle.
Allan cleaned, almost with a vengeance - he was taking back his home.
Watching him began to alter my perception of him, a little.
Allan offered us lunch. I'd have refused but I'd cleaned and reassembled the replicator myself.
Allan replicated a sort of lasagna which was wonderful.
He wolfed his down "Nice to taste real cooking again."
I nodded, my mouth also full. "This is not bad at all. Who did this?"
He shrugged "I did. Living alone you experiment - this was one of the successful ones."
"Well done." I said
-*-
Allan looked at me. He was waiting for the question.
Did I even want to know? He didn't seem nearly as crazy now.
One of my personal failings is that I have a curiosity bump that verges on nosy - from the other side. "Why?"
He took a deep breath "I went looking for the secret masters of Earth."
I nodded. It was a common conspiracy theory. The Administration of Earth was so large and so complex it was literally past the human ability
to imagine. I knew from my time in Starfleet that there wasn't one Starfleet and hadn't been since about 5 minutes after it was founded.
Starfleet operated in discrete packages. Each package had mechanisms for passing information and decisions around. Rank and Position helped set
the priority for information and decisions that were networked through the system. Each discrete package had mechanisms for interacting with
other pieces of Starfleet.
From outside it seemed to make a whole, until you looked at it. Or lived in it. Than sometimes you just had to pray that all the insanity
was, on some fundamental level, heading in the right direction and just do the next right thing yourself. Each Piece of Starfleet had self
correcting mechanisms, but these worked best when applied to a different piece. When three or more Starfleet units got into the same self
correction issue - things could become complex. But we trusted that we all had the same fundamental aim - the well being of the Federation and
Starfleet.
I'd been assuming that Earth worked much the same way - but more mysteriously. There was no rank structure. The social contract was much
more vague. It was spelled out in pieces - there were even compilations. They were basic primers for citizenship.
But the Population of Earth is vastly more people than Starfleet. Each discrete bit lives in a huge ocean of information and needed services.
Each discrete package must filter information and react to the priority desire to perform its function to help society make it through the day.
For instance, I was a member of a discrete bit called the Los Angeles County labor exchange. It processed requests for workers to handle tasks
and then assigned workers.
My relationship with them was a lot more casual than my relationship with Starfleet Command had been. It was completely voluntary on my part.
Then there was the City of Los Angeles - a huge, sprawling mass of discrete packages of people all operating interconnectedly, interactively
to some how make the city function and add its contribution to society.
Each smaller piece was part of a larger conglomeration. Until you had Earth itself.
This is all so complex that it is easy to imagine that a somewhere there are people who know a lot more about what's going on than we do.
And if you accept that idea for the sake of argument - the next step is to assume that if some people understand the hugely complex system that
perhaps they can manipulate it.
And if they can - what do they do with it? And who's looking over their shoulder?
I nodded "Earth ddome seems to have things in hand." Which is true as far as it went.
Allan nodded "That's what I thought. But people reported disturbing stubs of information to me."
"Oh?"
"Do you know how many Atlantis projects there have been?"
I thought about this. "It's a popular concept."
"Since 2200, there have been thirty of them." Allan said.
"Oh."
"Why? Where do they come from?"
I shrugged. "And why don't they work?"
"Largely, they do." Allan said.
"So why do we need more of them?" I said. I wasn't buying it, but I'd look it up when I got home.
"It's a popular theme among conspiracy theorists." Allan said. "I distanced myself from their work and started from scratch in order to
avoid credibility problems."
I nodded. Pot, meet kettle.
"I discovered that there had been Secret masters of the Earth." Allan said.
I looked at him dubiously.
"Seriously - there were at least four cabals, organizations or loose affiliations of people who took over the Earth, and essentially ran it
for a time." Allan said. "Sometime their names are still remembered. Remember the Kennedy Coup?"
I nodded. In the late twenty-second century there was a Political corruption scandal. It seems that old North American Political and
financial families had banded together using ties of mutual history and acquaintance to begin to edge their way into Earth Dome.
They had all but taken the place over before a corruption scandal broke open their informal conspiracy.
It was regarded as one of Earth Dome's triumphs that it had policed itself of this influence cabal with the enthusiastic help of the people
of Earth.
This cabal still held some influence, although it was an open secret now. People with names like Kennedy, Bush, Armstrong or Shepard had a
tendency to provoke suspicion and mild rebellion when they appeared in politics or business.
"I remember. I also remember that most participants were essentially forced to retire from politics." I said.
"That's just an example. There have been others." Allan said "The entire second half of the twenty Third Century on Earth - this one was
killed by the events surrounding Khitomer."
I winced. Elements of Klingon and Starfleet Command structures cooperated to try and sabotage peace between the Federation and the
Klingon Empire. "But in the end they were revealed, discredited and even prosecuted."
"Some people suspect there is an AI running things on Earth." I said. It was an old kumquat.
"Nonsense. Statistical analysis of the decisions taken by Earth's culture would reveal it easily. That's how we track the power structures we know of."
"Oh? The decisions they make leave foot prints?"
"Yes - if these structures don't leave foot prints it's because they make no decisions - or have randomized their decision making process
enough to defeat themselves."
"Oh. So the secret masters of Earth aren't really."
Allan nodded. "Indeed. But there were two others that, as far as I can tell, came and went unremarked. One didn't even recognize itself."
I tilted my head.
"I call it the Beta power structure." Allan stood up and handed me an ancient PADD "It had a distinct membership based on prior service in the
Secretariat of Earth Dome. Many of these people found their way into critical management of subsystems and stayed there for decades. I
haven't tracked it all, yet."
I looked at the PADD it had a mesh describing a set of interrelationships about as complex as the operations of a Starship main
computer. I blinked it would take months to wade through all that.
"It came apart with the death and disablement of three key players," Allan explained "Prime Minister Francisco was the last lynch pin - after
he died, The Beta power structure broke into four factions and struggled for power through proxies in the elections of 2342."
I recalled that election. It was hotly contested. We all had opinions. It was like a big sports event or some sort of championship that caught
everyone's attention.
I looked at Allan "And?"
"With the mixed results of that election, power structure Beta was reabsorbed. It ceased to exist as a separate entity," Allan said.
"Sounds more like Politics to me." I said
"Yes, this is part of Earth's defense mechanism against these - Marker issues or leverage points for the exercise of power occasionally fall
under the spotlight of public attention - and when they do, either a power structure has a charismatic representative, a good explanation or
both, or it looses influence through the political process."
"So who's in charge now?" I almost dreaded the answer.
Allan looked haunted. "No one."
"What?"
"Earth dome can influence things but they lost full control in the 2250s." Allan said. "Earth's economy, Earth's Society is like an animal
without higher brain functions. The system runs autonomously. When an animal is hungry - chemical changes in its blood stream trigger
neuro-chemical reactions which translate to a hungry feeling which the animal addresses - but it never stops and thinks 'Why am I hungry? What
does it mean to eat?' Earth does certain things because it needs to but there's no one in a central position enough to ask the next question."
I stared at him.
"This is why there have been so many Atlantis projects. We all think a major ocean floor colony or some other macro engineering project with an
Atlantean theme would be a good idea - but there's too little awareness of what has gone on before or even what's happening now."
"So twenty Nine Atlantis projects are the results of cluelessness?" I asked?
"No, no, most of them have been very well done projects." Allan said "Because each one is its own small node run by competent people. But the
interrelation to the rest of Earth is too basic. Earth doesn't have coherent idea about what she's doing with her oceans - except vaguely not
to break them."
"Hmmm." I said.
"Earth is a beast with no brains in a social sense today. A good natured, tame beast, but a beast." Allan said. "And I think the reforms
of 2356 have settled the issue for good."
"I voted for those." I said. The reforms of 2356 basically reinforced the idea that any given Earth Citizen had authority to throw anything any
government entity was doing into question.
"As did I." Allan said. "In any given specific instance they are a wonderful idea. But over all I think they had the effect of making the
lobotomy of Earth's economics and political systems permanent. Earth is now an unconscious beast."
"And so you dropped out." I said.
Allan pointed at the PADD to make his point. "By metaphor, we're cells of the beast."
I nodded
"The Lobotomy wasn't a surgical procedure. There was no knife," Allan explained "Earth developed a new sort of immune system cell which
discouraged and changed the sorts of a neurons that become the centers of higher decision making functions."
I chewed on this
"I am one of those neurons." Allan said. "By knowing what I know, in theory I could spawn a power structure."
"That sounds like a lot of work." I said.
"A hideous amount. But how would Earth's defense mechanisms discourage me?"
I blinked
"You don't know. I don't know - no one knows." Allan was intense "It wouldn't even happen consciously. It would just occur because the right
circumstances happened to trigger the response. What would the response be?"
Suddenly I understood what Allan was Paranoid about. Sort of. "Surely no one would hurt you."
"We don't know that!" Allan hissed "There's nothing in control of the response!"
I leaned back and chewed this over.
After a while I said "So you're not hiding from a Conspiracy - you're hiding from the lack of one."
Allan laughed "An interesting way of framing it, but yes."
Melinda, listening to the adult talk with rapt attention, piped up. "My Dad says you're a submarine."
Allan grinned "Perhaps."
"A subversive?" I asked.
"Yeah. That's the word." Melinda nodded.
"Okay, Allan, how do you want it?" I asked.
He blinked at me "Oh, please, be honest."
"Okay- I am not sure I believe you at all," I ticked off on my fingers, "Even if I concede your point, I am not sure that your reaction to it is
the most constructive or positive one."
Allan thought about it. "There's no reason why you should believe me after just one conversation. If you carefully follow the sources I have
outlined there, you can find all the facts you need. As for the other, well, I find the quiet life suits me anyway."
I had an urge. "If you need any more help, message me on Earth and invite me to dinner. I'll come out and we'll deal with it."
Allan smiled "Thank you."
-*-
I gave Melinda a ride home. She burbled happily the whole time. She either wanted to join Starfleet and be a Starship Captain or grow up and
run the Colony. I didn't tell her anything. I just made encouraging noises.
I visited Allan and Melinda twice more - for dinner and repair trips to the Taft VII colony.
-*-
Two years later, I received word that Allan had moved. Melinda said that he'd suffered a computer virus which had destroyed all copies of his
work. After that he packed up and moved further out on the frontier. She included several energetically hostile conspiracy theories about that.
I didn't sleep too well for a while after that. How does a computer with no network connections get a virus?
