Read Online The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) by Michael John Grist - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael John Grist
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we need to be ready."
He stopped and grinned. Salle was blasted by the wattage. Sunk too deep in a leather armchair, she felt like a lowly cult member before a living god. His chiseled jaw, his cold and easy sense of command, his probing, intelligent eyes told her everything she needed to know. This was Lars Mecklarin, darling of Vanity Fair, star of Time and the New Yorker, upturning all our understandings of what it was to be human.
This was her future.
He asked questions; why she wanted to join the mission, where she saw herself in five years, and she'd babbled some answers, adopting some of his grandiosity in her comments and barely remembering a thing afterwards.
She didn't hear back for six months. Her calls and emails went unanswered, until finally she considered the opportunity lost. Headlines in the news sprang up every now and then about the crack team Mecklarin was assembling to go in his latest, greatest MARS experiment: three thousand specialists and experts packed into an entirely self-contained 'biosphere' somewhere in the US.
The doors would not be opened until ten full years were up. Mecklarin said it multiple times on TV. This was serious colony science combined with the greatest social experiment ever conducted. Apparently his funders numbered in the thousands; governments, corporations, space development companies, even aged billionaires were leaving him massive bequests in their wills, on condition that one day he scattered their cremains on Mars.
Salle watched it with excitement but also the glum pit of failure in her guts. To watch the very best of her age go under the soil without her was agony. It seemed every day they were doing some kind of technological exposé, making suppositions about the secret details of the plan on Discovery or National Geographic, guessing at three decks of greenery including a rainforest zone, a CO2 scrubbing system big enough to clean a coal plant, thousands of gallons of liquid oxygen, enough water to fill Bryce Canyon, plus thousands of groundbreaking closed environment experiments planned.
Mecklarin showed off his 'Bible' of all possible human choices to journalists from Vanity Fair, patting a solid-state super computer on their web video.
"It's all in here," he said cheerfully. "The most accurate modeling programs in existence, built on every study ever done, to forecast, mold and adapt human behavior. We perform extensive psychometric tests on the 3000 to determine all aspects of their personality and history, along with genetic propensities and family traits. We enter it here and set the model to churn. The results come out, predictive and getting more accurate every day, driven by the smartest AI yet. We know what our people will do when faced with any number of variables. We know what they'll say, what small talk they'll share on the lift, who they'll partner up with, everything."
The journalist looked interested. "So it's like playing God? It puts you in the position of a higher power?"
Mecklarin took it in his stride with ease; that charming grin and that galling confidence. "It's a closed system we're putting our people into. There's no outside line from God. Everything can be observed, understood and cataloged. MARS3000 is not only a full-bore test of every life support system we'll ever need for colonization, it's also the most powerful microscope on the human mind ever devised. What goes in must come out, and we will refine our understanding of each and every variable down to the last dotted i and crossed t."
The journalist frowned. "So you're going to bottle the human spirit?"
Mecklarin grinned. "And ship it off to Mars."
Salle got the phone call from Mecklarin on the drive up the MIT campus road, where she worked on a small-scale research project in the AI division. Coding responses to be algorithmic was a large part of her work, essentially designing underlying mechanisms that allowed for true AI learning, with the power to self-write and
He stopped and grinned. Salle was blasted by the wattage. Sunk too deep in a leather armchair, she felt like a lowly cult member before a living god. His chiseled jaw, his cold and easy sense of command, his probing, intelligent eyes told her everything she needed to know. This was Lars Mecklarin, darling of Vanity Fair, star of Time and the New Yorker, upturning all our understandings of what it was to be human.
This was her future.
He asked questions; why she wanted to join the mission, where she saw herself in five years, and she'd babbled some answers, adopting some of his grandiosity in her comments and barely remembering a thing afterwards.
She didn't hear back for six months. Her calls and emails went unanswered, until finally she considered the opportunity lost. Headlines in the news sprang up every now and then about the crack team Mecklarin was assembling to go in his latest, greatest MARS experiment: three thousand specialists and experts packed into an entirely self-contained 'biosphere' somewhere in the US.
The doors would not be opened until ten full years were up. Mecklarin said it multiple times on TV. This was serious colony science combined with the greatest social experiment ever conducted. Apparently his funders numbered in the thousands; governments, corporations, space development companies, even aged billionaires were leaving him massive bequests in their wills, on condition that one day he scattered their cremains on Mars.
Salle watched it with excitement but also the glum pit of failure in her guts. To watch the very best of her age go under the soil without her was agony. It seemed every day they were doing some kind of technological exposé, making suppositions about the secret details of the plan on Discovery or National Geographic, guessing at three decks of greenery including a rainforest zone, a CO2 scrubbing system big enough to clean a coal plant, thousands of gallons of liquid oxygen, enough water to fill Bryce Canyon, plus thousands of groundbreaking closed environment experiments planned.
Mecklarin showed off his 'Bible' of all possible human choices to journalists from Vanity Fair, patting a solid-state super computer on their web video.
"It's all in here," he said cheerfully. "The most accurate modeling programs in existence, built on every study ever done, to forecast, mold and adapt human behavior. We perform extensive psychometric tests on the 3000 to determine all aspects of their personality and history, along with genetic propensities and family traits. We enter it here and set the model to churn. The results come out, predictive and getting more accurate every day, driven by the smartest AI yet. We know what our people will do when faced with any number of variables. We know what they'll say, what small talk they'll share on the lift, who they'll partner up with, everything."
The journalist looked interested. "So it's like playing God? It puts you in the position of a higher power?"
Mecklarin took it in his stride with ease; that charming grin and that galling confidence. "It's a closed system we're putting our people into. There's no outside line from God. Everything can be observed, understood and cataloged. MARS3000 is not only a full-bore test of every life support system we'll ever need for colonization, it's also the most powerful microscope on the human mind ever devised. What goes in must come out, and we will refine our understanding of each and every variable down to the last dotted i and crossed t."
The journalist frowned. "So you're going to bottle the human spirit?"
Mecklarin grinned. "And ship it off to Mars."
Salle got the phone call from Mecklarin on the drive up the MIT campus road, where she worked on a small-scale research project in the AI division. Coding responses to be algorithmic was a large part of her work, essentially designing underlying mechanisms that allowed for true AI learning, with the power to self-write and
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