A Visitor to the Future - 121 - The After-Party

With the winner of the tournament decided, now came the vote among the spectators for the team with the best gimmicks. Sadly we couldn't vote for our own team, which was a shame - not because I wanted to win the prize, but because I thought Sasha and Gatecrash's chosen gimmick had been really interesting. The prize went to the team called They Came From Venus, who had incorporated an aerostat drone into one of their Proxies. The screens showed the gimmick in detail with footage from their previous matches and see-through blueprints as the announcement was made - the drone detached upon the start of the match, hovering above the arena using a lighter-than-air gas and providing the team with valuable insights about where each of the opposing Proxies were moving to. It had been especially useful in the third round, which I'd learned had been the same maze-like arena for all participating teams. From what I knew about the cities and habitats of Venus it made sense that the team from there were familiar with aerostat technology.

"That was really impressive," said Anode excitedly as she applauded the winner of the prize, ever one to speculate about engineering, "Lifting gasses weren't included in the tournament supplies, so they used hydrogen - which they made themselves from the water that was available! I wonder if they've ever considered vacuum-based lift instead? Would that even be doable in a Resiliency tournament with the restricted material list? Come on, Tungsten - let's go ask!"

Anode took Tungsten by the hand and pulled him in the direction of the other team, he looked back towards us and waved a goodbye as he was dragged into the stands. Antonia nudged me and raised her eyebrows as he turned around. Before I could ask why, Blaise leaned in from my other side.

"We're inviting everyone over to the Tom for drinks after, if you're keen?" he asked. It sounded like fun, so I quickly agreed. "Great!" he continued, "We're a bit closer than your place - the Tom is crossing the Atlantic so that we can get start getting our eyes on what happened here earlier. It's not every day you get an audit handed to you on a platter!"

There seemed to be no rush among the spectators to leave - many of the former competing teams were now discussing the results of their various matches. The stadium suddenly had a different energy to it - from the excitement at the central spectacle of the matches to the smaller, focused discussions between groups. I wandered around for a while and picked up all sorts of subjects being discussed, from two pilots from different teams breaking down and re-enacting part of their fist-fight for the gathered group, to a pair of engineers both sarcastically complaining about the pilots immediately ruining their nice repair work in the matches. There was even a small group discussing the uniforms that each team had made and wondering if that should be prize-worthy in the future. It was then that I caught sight of Crosstalk, off to one side. The tournament organizer waved politely as I approached.

"Ah, hello! Overgrown with Moss, right?" Crosstalk said, "Some great matches from your team! Did you enjoy the tournament?"

"I really did," I said without thinking, "Are you finished for the day? I imagine all of this took a lot of organizing."

"Yes, but well worth it, in the end!" Crosstalk gestured to me to take a seat next to them, "And there's still more to do. I have high hopes for Resiliency as a sport! We'll see it beat the popularity of Breakthrough or Weatherball yet!"

"I've heard of Breakthrough," I said, remembering Sarkona's explanation of the no-gravity sport, "But not Weatherball. What is it?"

Crosstalk's head leaned almost forty-five degrees to one side, a clear display of astonishment that I'd learned to recognize in faceless CIs, and their response was equally shocked. "You've never heard of Weatherball?!?"

"Oh, I recently came out of cryocontainment," I said, by way of an explanation, "Well, not that recently. It's been months now. Though I'm still getting used to... everything, I guess. I guess you could say I'm from the 2020s."

"How interesting! In that case, I'm happy to introduce you. Weatherball is one of the most popular sports in the Consortium. It's designed to be played at point-three gravity, so it has to be played in orbit near Earth, on gravity rings. There are two teams of five, and each must try to pass the Weatherball through the opponent's hoop. The properties of the ball change each time a team scores - the springball is bouncy, the summerball is lighter than air, and so on. Enhanced players are also allowed in some leagues, so that's always fun."

"What do you mean by enhanced - people with biodev modifications?" I asked.

"Yes, and mechanical enhancements too. It's absolute chaos - really fun to watch. Though now I realize I may have distracted you from the wonders of Resiliency - forget everything I just said - Resiliency is the best sport in the Consortium."

I laughed at that. Crosstalk came across as energetic, with a real passion in their tone for anything sport-like.

"Do you know when you were frozen?" Crosstalk asked, "I'd love to find out some more about sports in your own time.

"2021," I replied, "November, I think."

Crosstalk held a finger up in front of themself, "Now that is really interesting. I don't think I've heard of anyone frozen before then. Does that technically make you the oldest person in the Consortium?"

I blinked. The idea hadn't occurred to me before. Surely there was someone who had been frozen before me? But, thinking back on it, hadn't Dr. Grant needed me as a test case - how had he phrased it? "A long-term subject will allow us to study and improve the freezing process." The memories of those days were a lot less uncomfortable to think of, now that I'd had time and therapy to properly process them.

"Maybe," I said as a reply, "I never thought to check. But I'm not actually that old - it's not like I've been... awake for all that time. I'll have to look that up later."

We discussed some of the sports I'd enjoyed the most in the 2020s - mostly Korfball and Rugby Union, which I spent a lot of time in my teenage years playing. Crosstalk hadn't heard of some of the more popular sports, which was suprising - strangely basketball didn't seem to have a following in the Consortium, for example. But most of the others were still around in some form or another, or with major variations. For example, a variant of pool was now a popular no-gravity sport, played in three dimensions instead of two. We talked for a good hour or so, Crosstalk's enthusiasm to learn more about the leagues and tournaments of my own time infections, as they had me reeling off more and more information.

Sarkona eventually approached and tapped me on the shoulder, asking me if I wanted to tag along in their dronecraft or come along later. I said goodbye to Crosstalk, and as I boarded the dronecraft and slumped into my seat, tired in the sort of happy-exhausted way from the long hours of the tournament, at some point I dropped off to sleep.

_

It was the Consortium who awoke us as we reached our destination, as Sarkona had also snuck in a nap before we arrived at the Peeping Tom. It was amazing just how easy it was to fall asleep on a dronecraft - they were so still and quiet that if I ignored the view, I could easily forget that I was traveling through the air. I looked out of the window as we descended, seeing the edges of rectangular landing pad illuminated brightly in white in the darkness below us.

There was no-one to greet us as we disembarked, but I knew the way to the bar area well now, and found the rest of the team, Regolith, and Malati together. Gatecrash was seated cross-legged on top of the bar counter, while the rest were arranged on the various stools, comfortable sofas, and in Anode's case, sat on nothing but thin air - I supposed that her non-humanoid joints could easily support that position. All of them were mid-conversation, facing some projections on the back wall. Alexandra, still stood up, was pointing at a set of numerical readouts with one hand, and with a tall beverage in the other. A piece of music with a lively jazz tone was quietly playing in the background.

"All I'm saying," said Alexandra to the group, "Is that if the Consortium had detected the quake, all the notification procedures were operational."

Sasha must have heard us walk in, because she turned around and waved. The others picked up on her motion and noticed us too, greeting us and Antonia shuffling along the sofa she was sat on to make space for me sit down. "Slightly tipsy audit going on right now. Apparently the auditors like the old-fashioned alcohol," said Antonia, tapping her own wine glass, "It's fun so far."

Regolith, who was sat on the other side of Antonia, leaned in with a matter-of-fact comment, "I must state for the record that this is not an actual audit, but a friendly discussion - and this is not how we usually conduct our audits. We will commence the proper work tomorrow - likely later in the day, judging by how much alcohol my colleagues are consuming."

I nodded and smiled - Regolith was always so formal. I'd lost the chain of the main conversation, though, and refocused my attention. Tungsten was now pointing at the projections on the wall.

"But how do you know that?" he said to Blaise.

"Audit logs and test packets!" said Blaise, who was seated at the bar, "Test activity takes place even during disaster events. Look, there's a test package from the seismic sensors to the main system. And again, a few milliseconds later, and again - all of them have unique identifiers, so we know that the notification systems were working fine. No, the issue must be one of detection in the first place."

"I would urge us not to jump to conclusions," said Regolith, "Not until we verify that with data."

"Argh," Blaise loudly groaned, exasperated, "Come on, Rego? What's the harm in a little harmless speculation? It's fun, sometimes!"

"And as we have established before, I am the fun police," said Regolith, crossing his arms. Alexandra smiled and shook her head.

"Alright, Officer Regolith, so back to the data then," continued Blaise, manipulating the projection with a series of complicated gestures, "If we look at the detection timelines... here, and then here, we can see that the sensor picked up no earthquake activity at all in the initial period. But as we've found, it was clearly working properly. Which means one of two possible explanations - either there was nothing to be detected, or there's some fundamental system flaw we haven't noticed."

"I feel the need to point out that those are not the only two options," said Regolith.

Blaise's tone of speech changed to deadpan, "One of many possible explanations, then."

Regolith nodded, happier with the language that had been chosen. Sasha addressed the non-auditors in the group, "This is why Regolith writes the audit reports," she said, "He is good at explaining with no drama, no ex-ager-ation."

"Exaggeration, dear," said Alexandra.

"Exaggeration," finished Sasha, smiling at Alexandra and correcting her mispronunciation. Her grasp of English had improved lately - we'd been speaking a lot of it among the team.

"So, you're saying that the Consortium simply didn't pick up the earthquake until later? How could that be possible?" asked Tungsten, tapping his chin.

"As the Consortium said, it was a Black Swan event," said Gatecrash from the counter, "I'm not an auditor but I know what those are - major events which the Consortium didn't expect, but it is hoped will understand after-the-fact. Chemists like me use that term too, for when we're talking about observations we can't explain yet. Oh, like-" Gatecrash then said a sentence in Human that I couldn't understand, the sentence far too dense - and the parts that I did understand seemed contradictory.

"That's one of the stranger parts of subatomic chemistry," Antonia said to me to clarify, "I can't really provide more of an explanation than that, I'm terrible with anything smaller than DNA. I don't even know how to translate it into English."

"Yes, but unlike quantum studies," continued Tungsten, "Surely seismic activity is well-studied enough to rule out these events?"

Anode stood up at that - or, I suppose, she stood up straight, as she had been supporting herself. "Making a wild guess based upon what I've seen - it's possible that what the Consortium was looking for to detect an earthquake here just wasn't there. Some wild chance of the ground composition that stopped the first tremors from being detected, or something like that. It's not my area of expertise though - I can't say that I've ever built a seismic sensor before. Actually, now that I say that, I'm adding that to my projects list."

"Right," said Blaise, "And even if the Consortium didn't pick up those first tremors, it did pick up the next ones. We had more than enough time to react - the Consortium could have whisked us all out of there, if it had needed to. The system worked as intended, even if we lost a little bit of warning time."

"Isn't that a worry, though?" I asked, "That the Consortium's systems won't operate as intended? What if that's the one thing that stops someone getting hurt?"

"Hah," laughed Alexandra, "Apologies, you're just reminding me of me a little. When I first got into auditing I had a similar view - everything component had to be perfect, with no room for error in my view. I suppose I was trying to make up for past mistakes by making sure that there would be no mistakes any more. But that approach is completely unrealistic - though it did take Sasha a while to coach me to her way of thinking."

"Which is?" asked Tungsten.

Alexandra nodded at Sasha, who knew what she was referring to, "It will break, at some point," Sasha said.

"That's the one," continued Alexandra, "For a system as complex as the Consortium, it's not wise to rely on making everything perfect - the system is too complicated, with too many variables. We're never going to be able to monitor a hundred percent of what goes on in the Consortium - not even close, and that monitoring can have errors or, as Sasha says, break. That's why the Consortium is designed with layers of protection in mind. If the first defence fails, there's a secondary one, and if the impact of that risk is severe enough, there will be a third one - all until the risk is sufficiently mitigated. In this case, it may be that the primary sensors didn't pick up this low-magnitude quake initially. But as it became more severe, it was picked up."

Alexandra made a few gestures with her free hand at the projection, slightly spilling the drink in her other hand in the process. The projection now displayed a series of textual reports instead of numbers.

"These are risk assessments," she continued, "Done by auditors like us on this exact system. Let me scroll through, one second - here. This assessment states that the primary risk for earthquakes is that they will cause harm to citizens of the Consortium - that's probably the most common high-level risk we see in assessments like these. The first mitigating measure put in place is the early warning system, but there are others too - resilient construction in earthquake-prone zones, the Consortium's disaster response protocol and rescue drones - look, even access to Biodev or cryocontainment in the event of earthquake-based injury. All of those in combination reduce the risk to an acceptable level."

"That's what's called the Swiss Cheese model," added Blaise, drawing some looks from the non-auditors in the room, myself included, "No, really! Think about it - imagine you're slicing up some swiss cheese, wait a second, hang on." He went behind the bar's counter and made a few gestures at waist height, before folding his arms to wait. "This'll be worth it, give me a second, carry on."

"I think you're getting it, though," said Alexandra, "The right approach is not to rely upon preventing failure - that's almost impossible. Instead, have back-ups and contingencies in case failures occur."

"Right," said Blaise, walking around from the bar with three rectangular blocks of swiss cheese on a platter, each coloured different shades of yellow. He took a knife and cut a thick slice from each one, before placing them on top of each other. He then held the finished product up - despite being full of holes, no light shone the entire way through the cheese, as the slice behind blocked the gaps. "See - the holes in this cheese analogy are potential issues. A layered defence like this prevents the issue ever going all the way through them."

Gatecrash spoke from the counter, "You know, you could have just talked about the Resiliency tournament instead, and used the very recent and exciting example of having backup Proxy limbs, and optics, and circuitry?"

"Yeah," said Blaise, smiling, "But this way is tastier." He bit into his combined cheese slices and sliced the rest up before he began to pass the platter - and a metal box of crackers - around the room. It was very good cheese.

"Have there ever been times when all of the layers of the Consortium's defenses failed?" I asked the group.

Regolith was the one to respond, "Not recently. Such failures were far more common in the Consortium's infancy. The most notable example would be the Dauntless Navigator shuttle disaster. That led to some major changes in how spaceflight was managed throughout the Consortium."

Conscious of the fact that the subject of the disaster might be a sore point for Sarkona, I didn't press further.

The atmosphere seemed to relax after that, the group conversation now settled for the moment. With food and drink now in hand for everyone who wanted it, focus fractured and everyone began to split off into smaller conversational groups. We drank, we ate, and talked about everything and nothing, all of us enjoying each other's company after what had been a long, challenging, and fun day.


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