System

10. Power in a Vacuum

A pair of silver doors slid back and Certaine stepped forward into the control room. He had changed his clothes during transit and was wearing a classic but very stylish grey suit. It had always been one of his favourites and he enjoyed the feeling of grace that it gave him. His hair had also been restyled and his nails painted. In short he was no-longer His Excellency, the Lord of Prion and Master of the Golden Hills, but just plain Adreus Phillipe Certaine again.

The control room was large and circular with rings of desks around a huge central table. There were long curved windows on the walls which looked out, somewhat paradoxically, onto a range of different views, ranging from snowfields to tropical oceans.

The others were already there and were gathered around the table. They were not alone, however, and the room was filled with people who were sat at their desks, talking rapidly or punching at books or screens.

Certaine approached the table slowly, taking in the scene. He did, as many had told him, thrive on chaos and this was just the kind of situation that suited his temperament. In fact, he had designed the control room himself so it fitted him like a glove.

'You made it then,' Fidriss grunted as he joined them at the table.

'Of course,' he replied. 'I just wanted to make sure that evidence was not destroyed before we departed.'

He let that statement hang for a moment, but if he had been hoping for a guilty response, he was disappointed.

'Okay,' he sighed. 'What's the overall situation?'

Phillipa Bartim gestured over the table. It displayed a view of the world in breathtaking detail. Mountains, cities and ships could be seen very clearly and there were visible ripples on the sea as waves and currents passed through weather systems.

'As you can see,' she said bluntly. 'The system is in serious breakdown. Everything that Crittis maintained has stopped working. As soon as he disappeared the portions of the system that were Crittis locked out. It's as if they don't exist anymore.'

Certaine nodded as he glanced across the map. There were red warning symbols hanging across the entire world. He pulled down a higher layer of the chart which indicated the solar system as a whole. The wider situation there was less desperate but there were still a number of red marks. He pushed this layer back up above their heads and turned his concentration to the table itself.

'Have you had time to summarise the reports?'

'We've got people doing that now,' Fidriss replied.

'Avatars or legals?'

'Mostly avatars. It was quicker.'

'Let's pull in a few legals,' Certaine suggested. 'I want some independent minds in here.'

Fidriss nodded but didn't comment.

'Okay,' said Certaine as he circled the map. 'Where are the crunch points? Can anyone isolate the non-urgent issues?'

'I'm on that,' shouted out a version of Phillipa Bartim who was seated at one of the desks

'Do it,' he ordered. 'And get those warnings off so we can see more clearly.'

The woman nodded and turned back to her desk.

'Now, let's take a look at the damage,' he continued. 'Someone give us those casualty reports.'

Purple icons and lists began appearing over the map. Certaine and his companions read them as they appeared, but the facts were already finding space in their memories. The images merely helped them to focus.

'The largest number of fatalities so far have been the result of traffic accidents, both in the air and on land,' Philipa Bartim observed. 'It looks as if the final numbers will be in the tens of thousands rather than the millions, but they could have been a lot worse...'

'Automatic safety systems kicked in very quickly,' commented Fidriss as he tapped one of the lists. 'Most of the accidents were caused by confusion rather than mechanical failure...'

'There have been millions of isolated incidents however,' Pierre Gastiss interrupted as he circled the table. 'Some of them were fatal. Most resulted only in minor injuries - but there have been a lot of them. The hospitals and medical centres are already struggling to cope and emergency services are paralysed...'

'We need to see our way through the clutter,' said Certaine as he leant over the table and waved his arm. The floating reports disappeared and most of the red warning symbols vanished.

'These are the critical situations,' he continued. 'In each of these cases there are people trapped or at serious risk. We need to tackle these first.'

His companions nodded but they were all mentally calculating the scale of the task. There was a lot going on out there.

As an individual Arden Crittis owned and occupied a sizeable portion of the system and had numerous service contracts across the entire occupied world - and way beyond it. With so much of the system in chaos it would take a long time to unravel the confusion. In the meantime, more people would inevitably be hurt.

'Time is of the essence, everyone,' Certaine stated bluntly. 'This is not a business meeting. We need to act fast...'

The five remaining council members didn't waste time with frivolities but turned their attention to the work in hand.

They all had their own service contracts and personal sub-systems which they could use - either by bringing them into conscious thought, or by assigning an avatar to the task.

Certaine, for example, was using a small part of his mind to run a number of safety cameras in Columbia. Most of the time he was unaware that this was even happening. The relevant portion of his mind simply carried out the task, much another person might breathe or digest food. It did not require his conscious thought.

Now he focussed his attention on that element of his being and he was able to bring the data feed into full view. There had been two road accidents in that area. One seemed to be relatively minor but in the other case there were passengers trapped in a large transport vehicle which had overturned. He mentally flagged this up with the local emergency services, redirected some traffic and allowed the images to fade back into his subconscious.

Dealing with thousands of incidents in this way would take an eternity, so the others had already called up avatars - versions of themselves that could act on their behalf. Some of these were echoes of their core identity, while others reflected aspects of their personality that could be useful in certain circumstances.

The room was already filled with versions of Bartim, Fidriss, Martiss and Gastiss - some male, some female. There was a Philip Bartim sitting next to a Philippa - like a pair of twins, wearing similar clothes and matching hairstyles. They were talking rapidly to each other in short unintelligible sentences as they worked to bring order out of chaos.

Little by little, the number of red symbols on the map table began to blink out. Difficult situations were resolved and major crises averted. The five surviving council members slowly took control of tasks that Crittis had been managing, or found ways of preventing further trouble.

Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, a three hulled ship was sailing on. Above it a tiny red swan continued to flash.