Playground, page 29
One knock broke the spell. The music stopped, and Didier walked into the room. The parties stood ambushed for a moment before the ancient woman stepped forward.
“Monsieur le Maire! Quelle surprise!”
Wai Temauri sat up and grinned. “Royal visit!”
The two men had played soccer together when they were young, before Wai got huge and before Didier broke his ankle for the second time. For a few years, they could read each other’s minds. That made them unstoppable on the playing field. People called Didier the Moray, for his speed and fluidity, while Wai, already hefty as a kid, was the Grouper. And like the moray and the grouper out in the reef, the striker and his right midfielder made an unlikely but devastating hunting duo, scoring hard and fast against almost every island team who played them for the first time.
“Let me guess,” Wai said, from his seat on the floor. “You want us to come to tomorrow’s meeting.”
Didier stood in the doorway, gaping like his old namesake eel. The trip was a pointless waste. Of course Wai Temauri had already heard about the meeting. Of course he had gone to tell his current employer.
The ancient woman saw his distress and said something he could not understand. Her Canadian accent always gave him fits.
“Comment?”
Wai’s girl laughed at Didier’s confusion. The Canadian diver repeated her words. “I said that you are so kind to come make sure we knew. I am looking forward to you bringing us up to speed with the new information.”
“What was that music?”
The little girl bowed her head, somewhere between embarrassed and proud. “Bach’s Prelude in C Major.”
The old woman said, “Would you like to stay and listen to the rest of the concert?”
It wasn’t right. The woman was ninety-two, a superager, in better shape than many Makateans half her age. That must be a white-person thing, too. If the seasteading venture could bring that kind of health to the island, maybe he was for it.
“I need to get ready for tomorrow.”
“Yes. Of course.”
He let himself out, and the clunky, divine music started up again. It seeped out of the patched-up house and went up into the night’s moonless black. Its little tune spun out against the four thousand visible stars. There was no sky like the sky on a clear island night from the middle of the ocean. The same stars that shone down on him had shone down on the night when the first boat people reached this place, the same stars in the same configuration as on the night the phosphate rock was first discovered, the same again as when the mining company abandoned the island and thousands moved away from the gutted place. The same four thousand visible stars would shine down on this spot long after humans had played out their last moves on this Earth.
It surprised Didier Turi, the elected tāvana of Makatea, to realize that he was going to vote yes.
He kicked at his starter. The snarl of the motorbike drowned out the prelude, with all its finger faults, and he sped home in a cloud of acceptance and exhaust.
MANUTAHI ROA, MAKATEA’S ENERGY CZAR and all-around tech point person, moved the electronics for the event into the community center while everyone was in church. He called himself a Democratic Communist, with adamant but respectful disdain for the opiate of the masses. That atheism freed up his Sunday mornings and added four more hours to his usable time, leaving him, by his own estimates, almost nine percent more productive every week than if he had been saddled with belief.
The rain was coming down in sheets, as it did in December. But the morning was seventy-five degrees, as mornings almost always were in every month. Roa had a system whereby he backed the van halfway into the sala and unloaded all the machines from the back doors without getting anything wet. He did this for movie nights, and adding a hotspot and data link to the laptop and big-screen LCD was trivial. He was up and running by the time the mayor slunk away from church to prepare his presentation.
The mayor did not hide his nerves. He was soaked, and he made Roa put the equipment through its paces until he dried off and could operate the computer by himself.
“It’s going to be fine, Chief.” Roa was still repeating the mantra when the others began to show.
Turnout was robust again. The members of the two churches milled and visited, as they had within their own congregations all morning. Turi tried to usher everyone into the arcs of chairs so he could deliver the presentation before the cookout began. It was hopeless. Time worked differently on the island. No one was in a hurry to decide the future when the present still left so much to contest and contend with. Half an hour of socializing passed before the mayor got the meeting under way.
He began by reading a formal statement by the Californians that included commitments to the number and types of jobs that would be created, salary ranges for each category, and specs for the assembly facilities that would be built around the port. “Please, please, please hold your comments until the end.”
Next came the estimates for the number and size of the boats that would bring materials to and from the island. After that, Turi read out the formal promise of new health facilities and shops, followed by the summary of the environmental impact statement that no one could remember any visitor performing. He reached the part of the report that said the island’s population would eventually swell to three thousand people.
A buzz erupted from the seats. That was the population of Makatea back in the heyday of the magic rock. To preempt the discussion that the figure touched off, the mayor decided it was time to show the film. The Californians had made a six-minute promotional video for their financial backers, now repurposed to appease the residents of the island that the project hoped to transform. The voice-over, dubbed into French, was fatuous and forgettable. But the opening shot electrified everyone.
First came the planet seen from outer space. The globe turned, the satellite eye zoomed in, and up through the layers of cloud in the middle of the vast Pacific rose Makatea. A seamless pass from satellite to drone, and the film morphed into live action, panning across the island as if seen by an albatross. As the single sweeping shot closed in on the northwest, the audience gasped. Running from the old ghost town of Vaitepaua to the old ghost port of Temao, in photorealistic detail, lay the future gleaming structures of Makatea, as if they already existed.
Wood-and-glass terraced houses nestled into the island’s lush forest. At a healthy remove, similar eco-friendly, human-scale artisanal workshops dotted the landscape. Everything was natural surfaces and bright colors, decorated in island styles. The rebuilt port itself exuded pleasant competence as it went through its productive paces. Its cranes and conveyors echoed those of the previous century, remade in beautiful new materials to bold new digital designs.
Makatea appeared as a harmonious, integrated network of living parts. Modular components in pleasing shapes and colors were being conveyed between the island’s stations. At the end of the assembly chains, innovative boats sailed into port, got loaded up with modules, and carried them away from the island. The computer animation followed these ships out past the reef into deep water, where they added their loads of modules to slowly accreting, self-assembling floating cities covered in greenery and bobbing on the waves.
The final scenes of waterborne activity disappeared in a crane shot as the film zoomed out again into the open ocean, then pulled back further to reveal the great globe itself. Something about the sequence played upon an ancestral dream. Floating cities spread out over the waves, forming and re-forming small, fluid, self-sufficient settlements in the middle of infinite water. It was the way that humans had come into the Pacific, and according to the video it would be the way that humans made a deeper home there.
Didier Turi had watched the film many times before the presentation, and he watched again now, still hypnotized. He had never seen so clever a bit of marketing. His impression was confirmed throughout the audience, even as the nose flute and wooden drums and steel guitars and ukeleles all blended into a great Pacific beat beneath a traditional Tahitian chant. Bits of surprised laughter accompanied the closing titles. In the murmur of suppressed delight, the mayor could hear votes changing from no to undecided and from undecided to yes.
If the island had voted the moment the video ended, the referendum would have passed. But when Didier regained the attention of the buzzing assembly, one of the islanders held his hand in the air. Wen Lai, the owner of the Chinese store, stood and waited for silence.
“I just want to point out the obvious. The film does not show what Makatea will look like once the project gets under way. The film shows what the Americans know we would love to see Makatea look like. Please remember you have not seen the future. You have seen a very clever bit of computer-generated advertisement. It just looks real.”
People muttered in chastised agreement. But the image of the more beautiful world that the islanders believed could happen was lodged now in their collective imagination.
The postmistress, Neria Tepau, took the floor. “It’s always the same trick with the Popa’ā. They think that if they amaze the natives and give us trinkets, we’ll give the whites all our land and surrender everything we have.”
Madame Martin, who’d studied history in Lyon, shouted out from the back of the assembly, “And they’re almost always right!”
The murmuring was more like hornets now. Didier shot a hangdog glance at the ancient Canadienne. In his best French, he said, “I’m sure that when they talk about white people, my brothers and sisters don’t mean to vilify all people who happen to be born white.”
Evelyne Beaulieu rose to her feet as vigorously as any nonagenarian of any race. “Je crois que même une pieuvre pourrait vous dire que des blancs ont fait cette vidéo.” I think that even an octopus could tell you that white people made that video!
The room broke out into hoots and applause. If the referendum had been held then, it would have gone down in flames.
Didier waited for the room to calm. He had to wait for some time. When attention shifted back toward him, he said, “I have many more files and fact sheets and white papers—”
This caused the room to laugh again.
“And white papers describing the project and the proposed terms of agreement that all of us are free to go through at our leisure. But make sure you do so soon. Papeete wants a vote in ten days. Also, the Californians have given us early access to a tool they hope will be useful to anyone who would like to explore the consequences of the pilot project in more depth. It is the latest version of the artificial assistant Profunda, a version that has not yet been released to the public. They’re making it available to us through a secure private link.”
“You see?” Neria Tepau shouted. “They think we’re too simple to know how to google things. They think we need an artificial nanny app to digest the facts for us and tell us what they mean.”
Because he had chosen sides, Didier tried harder than ever to present the material without any bias. Now he was beginning to see that bias and material were not separable.
“Many of the lead backers of the consortium helped to create this Profunda. They have spent years of their lives and made their fortunes on it—the fortunes behind this seasteading venture. They’ll use this technology to help design their pilot project. So even if the answers this creature gives you . . .”
He could not figure out how to finish his sentence. He backed up and rocked forward for another try.
“Even if you do not believe what this creature might tell you—”
“The consortium does!”
The assembled islanders turned to see Hone Amaru, the old mayor’s son, leaning against one of the sala pillars, his arms folded across his chest.
“That’s it,” Didier said. “It will be like talking to the brains behind the Americans themselves.”
The claim was met by collective doubt, but also by something like doubt’s more sanguine little brother, curiosity. Half the room held their eyes on the old mayor’s son, as if he might lead the island out of this bizarre development that the new mayor had led them into. But Hone Amaru, whose struggling rock-climbing enterprise was sure to take off as soon the seasteading project was approved, kept his own eyes trained on the monitor where the elected mayor’s presentation unfolded.
Didier typed some characters into the notebook, and the screen switched from video to a large, clean text box beneath a header that read:
HELLO!
Welcome to PROFUNDA.
A new way of being in the world.
Ask me anything.
We’ll work on it together.
The audience buzzed. Didier said, “En Francais, s’il vous plait,” and the screen changed:
BONJOUR!
Bienvenue chez PROFUNDA.
Une nouvelle façon d’être au monde.
Demande-moi n’importe quoi.
Nous y travaillerons ensemble.
If the consortium was aiming to amaze the natives, the strategy worked. The gathering devolved into local arguments as the inhabitants of Makatea debated how to respond to this new invader. Should they welcome it with traditional island hospitality or lock it up in quarantine? At last, the Queen rose to her feet and shouted, “All right, then. Let’s see how this thing dances!”
Questions came fast and furious. The mayor repeated them into the boom mic on a lightweight wireless headset. At first the machine struggled with his accent, but soon it understood him perfectly—better, in fact, than did his mistress, the Widow Poretu, who sat eyeing the proceedings with suspicion from the second row, much as she eyed each Sunday’s Catholic liturgy. Didier thought that Profunda understood him almost as well as his wife, who monitored his performance from a seat in the center of the double circle.
For its part, the machine responded to the questions in a voice sounding like that of France’s most admired woman, an actress who started out as a mysterious erotic “ice maiden” but ended up the face of the national icon, Marianne. The resonant alto of the revered voice was enough to convince all those in the audience who had grown up on late twentieth century French cinema of the wisdom of Profunda’s replies.
Had the people who built this bot trained it on the sound of the world-famous woman? Of course they had. Does a person own the rights to her own voice, or was this theft? Didier had no idea. There was so much about property law that he didn’t understand. Almost all of it, in fact. It pained him to realize that he might ask Profunda. The machine would know. The machine could pass the bar exam of most of the world’s countries with a perfect score.
At first the questions simply tested the machine’s competence. How large was the island? How many people lived here? What were the names of the currents between here and Tahiti, between here and Rangiroa? The machine responded with precision and sensitivity, like a rambling but shrewd old auntie you’d do well not to underestimate. The bot was so apt, accurate, and fluent that it several times provoked the audience to bursts of admiring laughter.
With Profunda’s bona fides established, the questions homed in. How many new buildings would the seasteaders build in the first two years? How big would they be and where would each one be located? What would the jobs be like? Profunda contained within itself well over ten trillion parameters. It had digested most of the Internet and studied many libraries full of physical documents and evidence. Ten trillion parameters, as it turned out, were enough to turn a learning machine into a historian, an engineer, a business consultant, and even a social scientist.
Tiare Tuihani, who ran the clinic, raised her hand. “What kinds of services will the new clinic provide?” Profunda described the plan: three physicians and four physician’s assistants, as well as several nurses capable of giving a wide variety of emergency and routine care to the island’s three thousand workers. Loud enough for Profunda to hear, Tiare asked, “What will the clinic look like?”
Before Didier could apologize to the machine and chide the nurse for embarrassing the island, Profunda began painting pictures. The mayor swore under his breath in two languages at the bot’s new skill, and his boom mic picked up the profanity. Profunda knew enough to ignore the rude imperative and keep painting.
The look of the new clinic and its extensive pharmacy awed everyone and reduced Tiare Tuihani to tears. The building looked so beautiful the way the bot painted it, nestled on the familiar berm on the southwest corner of Vaitepaua, with people walking through its courtyards filled with tiare flowers. It seemed already open for business. Many in the audience imagined that all their loved ones who had left Makatea in search of real healthcare might now move back.
People asked to see the insides of the factories and close-ups of the port facilities. They asked for images of the modular sea-cities that their factories would produce. They wanted pictures of the shops and schools and civic buildings that the influx of cash would bring. Profunda obliged by drawing all these things. Numbers and words were forgotten as everyone got lost in the machine’s masterful paintings.
Clearly Profunda had also created the video presentation. Somehow it had generated the flyover based on the specifications the seasteaders had fed it. But to make sense of the specifications, Profunda first had had to read through tens of billions of other documents and study many hundreds of millions of photographs and film clips, comparing them to one another. In its short time on Earth, the machine had digested and analyzed a considerable share of all the data human beings had ever created.
Puoro and Patrice, who all but lived together on their twenty-foot wooden boat, asked how long it would take for the ships carrying materials from San Diego, Shenzhen, and Kobe to reach the island. “How big will the ships be, and how will they load at Temao?” Only after tricking Profunda into answering in detail did they spring their trap: “Won’t ships with such deep draws beat the hell out of the reef?”
Profunda’s answer surprised everyone. It did not sugarcoat the facts, but rather conceded that the seasteading project would indeed change the lagoon and the reef and all its populations. It speculated about the nature and magnitude of that change, sounding almost philosophical. It used the words “harm” and “damage,” and it tried to put a cost, in French Pacific francs, to the island’s lost resources, even as it warned that such estimates were approximate at best.
