IN CHAOS THERE IS OPPORTUNITY

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “An Unsustainable Life – The Book of Darwin.”

Chapter 18: In Chaos There Is Opportunity

Darwin’s darkened silhouette leans against a peeled post harvested last summer when he and Mateo replaced each of the six ponderosa logs supporting the hacienda’s portico roof. Steam delicately dances off his espresso-laced coffee as early April air blows through branches harmonizing with woodpeckers whacking their way into tree bark for breakfast. The lazy morning sun walks shadows down Marquez Mountain to the xeriscape front yard keeping frost at the defined edge of dew. Even moisture on mornings such as this seem to sense they are as transitory as the late model cargo van and enclosed trailer rolling to a stop at the apex part of the circular driveway leaving it blanketed in a billowing cloud of road dust.

Darwin slowly saunters toward the cargo van just as the driver steps out. “I’ll be damned,” he laughs. “Alfonso, is that really you? How is it even possible?”

“Life my friend, life!” Alfonso shouts while giving Darwin a strong Italian embrace.

“I hardly even recognize you,” Darwin says. “What’s it been, ten, twelve years?”

“Fifteen mio amico, but who’s counting.”

“You were such a gym rat, I can’t believe it.”

Alfonso laughs while rubbing his belly. “This is what marriage and two kids does to a man.”

“Still at Oracle?”

Alfonso looks down pretending to suddenly care how dust covers his shoes. “After our crew crashed into the proverbial shitter, I bounced around a bit. I took your advice and left the company as soon as the new owners came in. I was at Oracle initially, but that felt too much like working on a death star for the Empire. Mostly I’m back to startups, more energy, more excitement, plus, better opportunities to make a difference. That’s what lured me to your startup and it’s still the bait on my hook.”

“Al’s found quite the nice niche in contract support,” Tien clarifies as she comes around the van to give Darwin a hug and kiss on his check. “He’s very much in demand. Even now, no one matches his system configuration magic.”

“You’ll have your hands full here,” Darwin warns. “I’ve got power and connectivity issues you’ve probably never encountered.”

“As long as that little solar system Tien told me about can convert DC into consistent 220 AC, I’ll be fine. And just so we’re clear, consistent is what counts.”

“Little,” Darwin laughs. “When have you ever known me to not go big? Wait till I show you the farm, that bad boy can bank close to a megawatt of power on a good sun day.”

“Sun day?” Alfonso questions.

“Welcome to the land of mañana, mi amigo, where the sun almost always shines and each forecast calls for scatterings of enchantment. Consistent power won’t be an issue, at least not till winter. Connectivity’s the challenge, there’s no cell service and satellite coverage is a bit sketchy.”

“We’re okay on that front,” Tien chimes in. “We’ve decided to work off-line, best for everyone. We’ll use Internet for small bandwidth stuff but data transfers will be via courier.”

“I don’t know what kind of pigeons you’re flying in California,” Darwin teases. “But here to there’s an awful long way to carry an optical drive.”

Tien misses Darwin’s pun. “No pigeons, we got a guy who makes two runs a week between Los Alamos and Livermore. You just meet him in Taos on his way through whenever you’re dropping off or picking up. We got a spot on our end that’s right in the neighborhood. It’s not only secure and convenient, but totally legit.”

“You got us our own little pony express. The irony’s inescapable; the same guy shuttling secrets between nuclear weapons laboratories to end humanity is also couriering our stuff to save humanity.” Darwin shakes his head. “Only you Tien, I don’t even know how you come up with this stuff.”

Tien laughs. “Never attempt to navigate the nautical landscape of a mad mathematician.”

“Trust me,” Darwin counters. “I long ago learned that. Follow up question though, exactly how big is this community you’re building?”

“We have you, me, Alfonso here, and Kevin our courier; but he’s not read in. All Kevin knows is that my startup’s contracting with you for consulting and he’s the go-between. We’ll be using double-sealed courier bags and fingerprint locked cases. Beyond that we’ve recruited a few hold outs from your old Shadow Dancer group and reconvened the old gang, except Nash who’s gone to the dark side and Basia who got married, started a family, and moved to France, so far she’s a no.”

“We’re gonna need Basia,” Darwin states. “Nobody cooks code like her.”

“Coding’s changed a lot since you last crashed a computer,” Tien contends. “I’m not sure she’s kept up enough to be relevant.”

“A generational talent like hers catches up quick. Look how fast I’ve come up to speed.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Alfonso scoffs. “When you see the crazy-ass stuff I got in the trailer, your idea of high-tech is gonna be retired beside the Commodore 64 I’m certain you’re still using based on the wilderness way you live.”

“The world’s moving fast,” Tien adds. “Faster than you can imagine. You’re either a lifelong player or you’re sideline sushi; pretty to look at, tasty when fresh, but downright useless when your short shelf-life expires.”

“Talent doesn’t tarnish,” Darwin counters. “Basia took what happened at Berkeley as bad as any of us, she’ll want to be part of the solution. I’ll go to France if that’s what it takes to bring her back on board.”

Tien is less than convinced. “I don’t see her relocating to California and we don’t have courier service overseas.”

“Leave logistics to me, hasn’t that always been my wheelhouse? Where there’s a need, there’s always a solution’s hovering about.”

“That’s why you’re our fearless leader,” Alfonso jokes.

“I don’t know about that,” Darwin laughs. He looks around pleased to see it’s a good sun bank day. “Why don’t you get settled Tien, while I show our hardware engineer my solar farm and nearly completed command center.”

The boys watch Tien make her way inside. “Command center?” Alfonso questions.

Darwin ushers Alfonso along the flagstone pathway leading to his straw-bale shop. “I think we can agree ‘Command Center’ has a skosh more je ne sais quoi than ‘computing cluster.’”

As they continue toward the shop Darwin highlights the many challenges he’s overcome in both the design and execution of his command center project. They’re thirty feet from the shop’s western wall when Darwin stops beside a large ponderosa. “Check out my latest gadget.” He taps four times on the tree trunk. As if by magic the right high-bay shop door begins to roll open. “Pretty cool, eh? My invisible keypad is based on the same technology as Wozniak’s touchscreen. If you look closely, you can see the translucent touch pad? You sometimes have to get at an angle.”

Alfonso distorts his head to find the right angle. “I’m getting better,” Darwin continues. “Sometimes it takes me awhile to find the keys though.”

“Incredible,” Alfonso mutters. “I got a feeling you’ve been doing a lot of staying relevant up here in your wilderness resort.”

“You know how it is, born an engineer, always an engineer. After Tien sucked me back in, I figured I’d better start prepping.”

Alfonso laughs. “Engineers, the beavers of the people part of our planet. Isn’t that what you’d always say.”

Darwin nods while continuing up the flagstone path. They pass the last tree before Darwin’s property opens to a large expanse of sage brush, chamisa, and juniper in a clear demarcation between the end of Marquez Mountain and the beginning of the flat valley floor. There, beside the shop and intermixed with nature, are multiple long rows of photo-voltaic solar panels laid out in a uniform grid. Each solar panel has a visor on top with hydraulic actuators.

Alfonso stops in amazed wonder, “this is incredible.”

“Just a little something I’ve been working on the last few years. I don’t have them all operating yet, but I’m close. Wait till you see the control system I designed, each panel independently rotates along six degrees of freedom to optimize solar gain without tilting up enough to be visible by airplanes or satellites.”

“Ergo the visors?”

“Exactly. They extend and contract based on the pivot of the panels such that they prevent the panels from being seen from above the glide slope.”

“Glide slope?”

“The angle of approach an aircraft would have if landing on my shop. Any angle above that, the panels are invisible.”

“Ingenious,” Alfonso concludes, “A stealth solar farm hiding in plain sight.”

“Yeap!” Darwin proudly acknowledges. “And as cool as all this is, it’s just the candles on the cake. Wait till you see what’s underneath.” Darwin forcefully pushes Alfonso toward the shop because Alfonso can’t take his eyes off the pure artistry of the neatly laid out grid of midnight blue rectangular solar panels each suspended in air by steel columns camouflaged to match the terrain. Once inside, they stop in front of the southern wall where peg boards hold an assortment of hand tools hanging above a long line of work benches and tool cabinets. “Looks like your basic shop wall, right?” Darwin asks. He guides Alfonso over to a tall tool cabinet near the front of the shop and taps on the metal door four times. “Another Wozniak wonder,” he says.

The cabinet door swings open revealing a four-foot-wide hidden hallway between the exterior and pegboard walls. As they step inside, the hallway automatically illuminates and after a few feet the corridor transitions to stairs leading down. “It took a while to dig these steps because I couldn’t use the tractor. It’s the only part of the command center I had to do by hand.”

There’s a landing at the base of the stairs with a metal door. Again, after four-taps on an invisible keypad the door unlocks. “Are the codes all the same?” Alfonso asks.

“No,” Darwin replies. “une chucka une, une chucka deux, une chaka trois, didn’t want to get too crazy given the keypads are invisible.”

Darwin gestures Alfonso through the open the door and when he does, lights automatically turn on causing Alfonso to stare in disbelief as he tentatively steps into a large, man-made underground cavern. “Unbelievable,” he mutters needing a moment to absorb the grandeur of this engineering marvel.

“Dug the whole thing with my tractor,” Darwin boasts. “Took a few months cause it’s an awful lot of dirt.”

“There are just too many questions,” Alfonso finally manages to say. “Like where the hell did all the dirt go?”

“Funny how nature provides.” Darwin answers. “Just before construction started, over toward the northwest corner of the property, a huge fissure opens up. Damn things like four-hundred feet long, three feet across in places, and sometimes as much as twelve feet deep. All the dirt I dug out of this hole got put in that hole, killing two birds with one stone.”

“How can you even afford this,” Alfonso mutters. “You got concrete floors and concrete walls. The steel pillars alone must have cost a fortune.”

“All free.” Darwin boasts. “I got a deal going with local transit drivers, whenever they have left over concrete after a pour they dump it here. I always have flexible forms waiting to be filled as you can tell from the random parquet pattern on the floor. I give the drivers forty bucks a load and a couple cold cervezas so, it’s win-win.”

“Except for the transit owner.”

“They have to recycle surplus concrete before it sets up, which costs a fortune. I’m doing them and the environment a favor. Technically all the other stuff I buy is also free, including my mountain and everything on it.”

“Because you use Berkeley bucks?”

“No, I still have all that. I learned the secret to how the rich stay rich, they never use their money for anything, they leverage their way through life. Instead of using my Berkeley bucks to buy this mountain, I invested it in the stock market. Not the high-risk, high-reward stuff, just solid technology stock and ETFs. Using that as collateral, I borrowed from a bank to buy my mountain and all my infrastructure. On the surface this sounds risky, right? It could certainly go sideways but here’s where the miracle and magic of money takes hold, my investments yield on average sixteen percent while my loan’s at two percent so, every year I’m banking fourteen percent profit after using earnings to pay the loan, so in essence it’s all free. Ya gotta love capitalism.”

“I get the math, but the solar panels and battery banks had to set you back big time. Not to mention buying all that stuff had to have gotten you noticed. We’re supposed to be flying under the radar. You remember that right?”

“Not only did it not cost me a dime, no one even knows I have it.”

Alfonso looks at Darwin in disbelief. “You get caught stealing shit on this scale and our entire operation’s exposed.”

“Don’t worry Obi-Wan, everything’s legit, I even have receipts, only not in my name. The Lib’s in charge of government are running this bizarre alternative energy incentive where homeowners can get solar systems for free but must pay for installation. So, I form a start-up solar installation company and convince half the valley to add solar. I provide installation for free so it doesn’t cost them anything. I gotta pay the crew but what the hell, I have fourteen percent of a helluva-lot of capital to play with. I include design and all procurements for every installation and along the way, funnel an extra panel and a few batteries my way. The mounting hardware’s pricey but as far as the machine shop in Albuquerque is concerned, they all went to valley homes, and my start-up writes off the costs.

“In phase two I’ll provide system maintenance, my crew needs work and I need a bigger battery bank. I got a deal with an Albuquerque recycle center where I bring them say ten batteries, but they charge me the recycling fee for twenty. Then I purchase twenty batteries and keep ten. It’s quite the solar laundering scheme, but nothing is illegal, just bookkeeping magic.”

“Except for ripping the government off of all the solar stuff.”

“You really think anyone in government’s smart enough to figure all that out? Look at all the homes I converted to solar to save the planet and how much I’m reducing the carbon footprint, that’s all they’ll see. Who’s gonna quibble about a few re-purposed panels. Oh! I didn’t even mention the best part. Over time, my crew will start refurbishing and replacing bad panels, it doesn’t happen often, but let’s say it does here more than elsewhere because of our harsh environment. As new panels are purchased, I’ll buy the refurbished ones from my startup for pennies on the dollar because I’m that kind of benevolent bastard. And, because of my benevolence, homeowners have no out-of-pocket expenses; once again proving me a true Robin Hood.”

“Let me guess, all the panels out there will miraculously end up on the books as legitimately purchased.”

Darwin grins. “Exactly. Purchased without spending a dime. Quite genius really and more important, completely under the radar. No one’s ever going to suspect the valley’s most altruistic Anglo is heroically plotting to save humanity from itself.”

“You’re a regular little humble shoeshine boy, aren’t you?” Alfonso enjoys his classic cartoon reference. “You even come equipped with your own bat-cave.” Even though Alfonso is compelled to tease, he can’t escape being impressed. “What I don’t get, is why you made this room so freaking huge?”

“Back in California you constantly complained about insufficient computing power because we lacked an adequate footprint, so, I went biblical in honor of Noah and made it half-scale of Noah’s Ark.”

Alfonso laughs. “Only you would reach all the way back to the last time humanity needed saving.” Like any engineer, he immediately runs the numbers, “The Ark’s three-hundred by fifty cubits and a cubit’s eighteen inches so, that makes this four-hundred-and-fifty by seventy-five feet.”

“Remember, half-scale.”

“Okay, two-twenty-five by thirty-five feet.

“If I used standard cubits. Noah’s British, remember.”

“Okay, two-fifty-five by forty-three.” Alfonso pops back as quick as any supercomputer. He visually sizes up the dimensions. “You bloody bastard, you used Royal units for the width.”

Darwin smiles. “I miss hanging out with engineers.”

“So, I’m right?”

“That needs to remain a mystery, as is what happened to Noah.”

Alfonso’s mood darkens. “One thing’s clear, we’re not being told the truth. The official report never mentions he was on his way back from a week at the Pentagon. Before leaving, he texts Tien about needing to meet, said it was urgent but wouldn’t say about what. She hadn’t gotten around to recruiting Noah for our project, so it’s not about that.” Alfonso takes a moment before continuing. “Noah wasn’t like Nash; he didn’t go to the dark side. We had a couple beers the month before his tragedy and he’s all excited about this new capability he’s working on. He wouldn’t say what, only that it was game changer, and I’d learn about it soon enough.” Alfonso looks around the cavern as he talks. “What exactly are you planning for, NASA satellite launches?”

“Between your computers, my solar system, and housing the talent team, we need all this space. I got heat pipes embedded in the floor and walls to circulate water from Kismet Creek so we can keep your hardware cold.”

Alfonso smiles. “You really haven’t kept up with technology have you. The crap I brought in my trailer is seven orders of magnitude more powerful for a tenth of the footprint we had on our old project. You could’ve built this bunker lots smaller.”

Darwin bounces back. “Then it wouldn’t be biblical.”

#

It’s happy hour by the time Darwin has his guests settled, the cargo van and trailer unloaded, and a preliminary plan sketched out for how their computer system will be configured. “Something you should know,” Darwin says while passing out courtyard cocktails. “I have guys coming by all the time to help with things. They don’t know anything about our project, so don’t let on. You’re just former colleagues on vacation.”

“We don’t have to be pretend married, do we?” Alfonso jokes. “One wife’s already more than I can deal with.”

Tien shoots Alfonso a terse stare as she settles into her preferred, blue-veined Adirondack chair. “Only guys?” she asks.

“There is a lady,” Darwin confesses. “Anna, she manages a gallery in Taos, not her dad’s, but trust me, that’s a Pandora’s Box you don’t want to open.”

Alfonso slides into the other blue-veined chair. “I saw Becky the other day,” he glibly mentions. “At the grocery store of all places. She asked about you and was about to tell me something when her kids start acting up, and that was pretty much it.”

Darwin busies himself at the courtyard fire pit arranging logs into a pyramidal cone. It’s been a short minute since he last thought about Becky, and it’s the first time he’s considered her being married with kids. He’s finding out the moment ‘over’, is really over, needs a moment of mourning.

“So, Anna,” Tien teases not knowing Darwin’s processing grief. “Do we get to meet her?”

“Probably not,” Darwin softly answers unsure if he means they will not meet Anna or he’ll never see Becky again.

With cocktails served, the fire restarted, and requisite small talk dispensed, it’s time to get down to business. “When I was last here,” Tien starts. “Four months ago, I think. You took on the task of outlining a general strategy, have you gotten anywhere? We can spend all night catching you up on the technology advances that have happened since then, but bottom line, we’re climbing closer to the steeper parts of our slippery slope.”

Darwin plops down in the canvas camping chair he brought out. “Yes and no,” he answers taking a serious sip of bourbon. “Should I start with the yes or the no?”

Alfonso grins as he jams his lime wedge down the Mexican lager’s bottle neck. “Good to know your standard answer to any question hasn’t changed. What’s next, you gonna wager me on the probability you finish your bourbon before my beer?”

“My wagering days are done,” Darwin states. He flashes back to the tainted moment at the Taos airport where he jokingly bets Vincent about his chances of making it to Chicago without crashing. He reaches down to rub Murphy behind the ears. “Let me jump to the task at hand. I wish I could confess Murphy ate my homework, there certainly were many cold nights around the fire I offered him opportunity but no, damn dog’s hell bent on seeing me finish. That leaves us the yes and no of how I solved my homework, or perhaps more accurate to say, attempted to solve it.”

Darwin pulls a well-worn hardback journal from his backpack and sets it on the courtyard table beside his nearly empty bourbon. The journal’s black cover and red trim are well worn but for the most part it’s in the same shape as when he bought it at the used bookstore that desperate day on Telegraph Avenue. “I’ve been journaling the tries. Read it at your own peril but I warn you, my process is as nonlinear as ever, so don’t judge me for my random poems and idioms, they’re part of the creative dialog.

“I’ll spare you the gory details and start by laying out the problem parameters. We all agree on the need to be stealth, so enough said about that. I extend that sentiment to whatever it is we do; it must remain totally invisible to both capability developers and technology consumers. No one can know we’re manipulating outcomes or behaviors; you’ll find references to this as ‘manipulating the manipulators/manipulatees’, or Project Mp3.”

“Shouldn’t it be Mp2?” Tien questions. “You’re controlling two variables not three.”

Darwin finishes his bourbon. “On the surface it seems so but would you not concede we too are victims of technology’s grand distortion. Mp3 acknowledges our duplicity in how we got here and the fact we’re not without original sin.”

“Back to that are we?” Alfonso scoffs as he sizes up his half empty beer relative to Darwin’s empty glass. “If nothing else, we got a project code word; make us official.”

“Going undetected by technology consumers is simple enough,” Tien states. “The entire silicon sector is based on the principle of synthesized manipulation; attract, addict, control. That’s the business model.” Tien considers her thesis further. “Seems Mp3 is a double entendre.”

Alfonso grins. “Or oxymoron.”

“I don’t disagree,” Darwin continues. “With either assessment. It leads me to question whether our crisis is by design or grew organically.”

“Has to be organic,” Alfonso asserts. “Otherwise, we’re looking at a massive global conspiracy even the evil World Economic Forum couldn’t conjure. No one held a gun to our heads when developing the Parkinson’s technology and look at the shit-show that created.”

Darwin nods. “It makes our challenge easier but at the same time more complex. We’re battling a Greek Hydra and the only way to defeat it is one head at a time.”

“What’s the plan?” Tien asks.

“Priority one has to be neutralizing the autonomous soldiers. We owe that to the world.” Both Tien and Alfonso nod. “I’ve thought about multiple ways to come at this, such as disorientating the bots during deployment but that just impacts one battle as the war wages on. I considered causing them turn on each other, which led me to think about ways to make them unable to discern friend from foe, but again, it’s a one battle solution as the war wages on.”

“To quote Karl Marx,” Alfonso proselytizes. “We need to control the means of production.”

“Even that’s a short-term solution to a long-term situation. We need to elevate the problem beyond rendering the soldiers ineffective. We could have the bots join forces but that would cause excessive human chaos. Here’s where things get dark, if I can imagine it, and you can realize it, so can others. Preventing that has to be in our solution space.”

“Easy but complex.” Tien sighs. “I understand your assessment.”

“The deeper you dive, the darker it gets. I’ve come at this, a thousand different ways, each having hundreds of possible paths that all converge to one and only one outcome.”

“Which is?” Tien asks.

“Every scenario is likely unless we do something.”

“And the closer we get to the source,” Alfonso concludes. The fewer heads Hydra has.”

Darwin pulls himself up from his chair and slowly walks to the edge of the courtyard. He stares at the bluish-white aura the rising moon casts as a foreboding halo around the peak of Marquez Mountain. “Remember the mantra I posted above our conference room door?”

“In chaos there is opportunity.” Tien and Alfonso simultaneously recite.

Darwin assesses the absent remains of bourbon in his glass of lamenting ice. He starts for the kitchen but detours to toss two logs on the dying fire before facing his cohorts like a convict seeing the gallows for what they really are. “First we create chaos,” he calmly states. “Then we find fate’s laten opportunity.” He pauses, waiting for words he’s certain still exists, an emeritus professor whose journey leaves him wondering if wisdom has value in a dissonant world. “The coming AI revolution,” he forebodingly warns. “Is going to be foreshadowed by the soft seduction of the masses through the democratization of data controlled by information oligarchs. No one seems awake to this yet, and yet it’s already happening. Socrates warned that the rise of democracy leads to the consolidation of power in the hands of demagogues. It’s the last level of hell even Dante dared not descend. The enemy is no longer technology developers; their die is cast. The enemy of humanity are the Information Oligarchs and their unrequited rise to power. The challenge confronting us, is what the hell an eclectic group of misfit idealists can do to stop them?”