IN CHAOS THERE IS OPPORTUNITY

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

Chapter 19: In Chaos There Is Opportunity

Darwin’s darkened silhouette leans lightly against a peeled ponderosa pillar harvested last summer when he and Mateo replaced each of the six logs holding up the portico roof. Steam dances unfettered from his espresso-laced coffee as early April air harmonizes with woodpeckers whacking away at tree bark for breakfast bugs. The lazy morning sun chases shadows down Marquez Mountain onto the xeriscape front lawn keeping frost at the defined edge of dew as a late model cargo van towing an enclosed trailer rolls to a stop at the apex part of the circular driveway leaving it blanketed in a billowing cloud of dust.

Darwin slowly approaches the cargo van with a casual country gait just as the driver steps out. “I’ll be damned,” he says with a grin. “Alfonso, is that really you? How is it even possible?”

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

“I hardly even recognize you,” Darwin continues. “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?”

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

“Still at Oracle?”

Alfonso looks down pretending to suddenly care how dust covers his shoes. “After our crew crashed into the proverbial shitter,” he solemnly states, “I bounced around a bit. Oracle initially, but that felt too much like working on a death star for the Empire, so mostly I’m back to startups, more energy and excitement, plus, better opportunities to make a difference.”

“Al’s found quite the nice little 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 because even now, no one matches his system configuration magic.”

“Well, you’ll have your hands full here,” Darwin warns. “I’ve got power and connectivity issues you’ve probably never had to deal with.”

“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 the key metric.”

“Little,” Darwin laughs. “When have you ever known me to do anything little? Wait until 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 always shines and each forecast calls for scatterings of enchantment. Consistent power won’t be an issue, at least not until winter; connectivity’s the challenge; there’s no cell service here and satellite Internet’s pretty sketchy.”

“We’re okay on that front,” Tien chimes in. “We’ve decided that whatever we wind up doing, working offline is best. We’ll use the Internet for small bandwidth stuff, but data transfers and technology talk is 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.”

“No pigeons,” Tien flatly states dismissing the pun, “we got a guy who makes two runs a week between Los Alamos and Livermore, you just meet him in Santa Fe whenever you’re dropping off or picking up and we got a spot on our end that’s right in the neighborhood; it’s about as secure and convenient as it gets and totally legit.”

“Impressive,” Darwin assesses. “You got us our own little pony express and 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 in disbelief. “Only you Tien, I don’t even know how you come up with this stuff.”

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

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

“Small,” Tien confirms. “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, so, we’ll be using standard sensitive data protocols like double sealed courier bags and fingerprint locked cases. Beyond that we’ve recruited a few of the guys 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 cause her husband’s in the auto industry there. Her and I exchange emails occasionally but haven’t seen each other in years.”

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

“Coding’s changed a lot since you last crashed a computer,” Tien counters. “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 stashed 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 even 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 painfully 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 get her back on board.”

“Alright,” Tien dismissively replies, “but I don’t think she’ll relocate 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, a solution’s always 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.”

“Command center?” Alfonso questions as Tien makes her way to the hacienda.

Darwin puts a hand on Alfonso’s shoulder and starts escorting him toward his straw-bale shed. “I think we can all agree it has a skosh more je ne sais quoi than “computing cluster.” As they continue along the flagstone path Darwin excitedly highlights the many challenges he’s had to overcome in both the design and execution of his command center project. They’re thirty feet from the shed’s western wall when Darwin stops beside a large ponderosa and taps four times on the trunk. As if by magic the right high-bay warehouse door begins rolling open.

“Pretty cool eh,” Darwin boasts, “my invisible keypad is based the same technology as Wozniak’s new touchscreen. Here, look closely, can you see the touch pad? You sometimes have to get at an angle.” As Alfonso distorts his head to find the right angle, Darwin continues, “I’m getting better, but sometimes it takes me awhile to find the keys.”

“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 reconnecting with Tien, I decided I better start prepping.”

“The beavers of the people part of our planet,” Alfonso interjects. “That what you’d always say.”

They pass the last tree in the forest before Darwin’s property opens to a large expanse of sage brush, chamisa, and juniper marking the end of Marquez Mountain and the beginning of the flat valley floor. Beside the stucco building, intermixed with nature, are multiple long rows of photo-voltaic solar panels laid out in a uniform grid with each panel having a visor on top.

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 eh.”

“They extend and contract based on preventing 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.”

“Yeap” Darwin proudly acknowledges. “And as cool as all this is, it’s just the icing on the cake, wait til you see what’s underneath.” Darwin has to guide Alfonso into 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 suspended in air by steel columns camouflaged with the terrain. They stop in front of the shop’s 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 rhetorically asks. He glides Alfonso over to a tall tool cabinet next to the shop entrance and taps on the metal door four times. “Another Wozniak wonder.”

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, but at least 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 facing outward toward the solar panel farm they were just admiring. Again, it takes a four-tap code on an invisible keypad to unlock the door. “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 for Alfonso to open the door and when he does, lights automatically turn on causing him 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 proudly 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. “Several years ago, over toward the northwest corner of the property, a huge fissure opens almost swallowing the pickup me and Mateo are in. 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, concrete walls, and 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. Ya see, I learned the secret of how the rich get richer, you never use your money for anything, you leverage your way through life. Instead of using my Berkeley money to buy this mountain, I invested it in the stock market, not the high-risk, high-reward stuff, just Dow stocks. Using that as collateral, I borrowed from a bank to buy my mountain and all my infrastructure. Here’s where the miracle and magic of money occurs, my investments yield on average sixteen percent while my loan’s at two percent so, every year I’m banking fourteen percent profit after paying the loan, so in essence it’s all free. Ya gotta love capitalism.”

“I get the math and good for you for being so fiscally disciplined, but certainly the solar panels and battery banks had to set you back and on top of that, 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 none of this stuff 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 none of them are 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 switch to solar and provide the installation for free. I gotta pay the crew but what the hell, I have fourteen percent of a helluva-lot of capital to play with. In addition, I include free engineering design and take care of procurement’s; for every house I do an install, I 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 gets to write off the costs.

“In phase two of my diabolical plan I’ll provide system maintenance, my crew needs work and I need a bigger battery bank, so, I did 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 an elaborate solar laundering scheme, but nothing is illegal, just bookkeeping magic.”

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

“There is that but as far as anyone’s concerned, I’m the most benevolent bastard in New Mexico. Look at all the homes I converted to solar to save the planet and how much I’m reducing the carbon footprint, who’s gonna quibble about a few re-purposed panels. Oh! I didn’t even mention the best part of my scheme. 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. Then, as new panels are purchased, I’ll buy the refurbished ones from my startup 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.”

“Exactly.” Darwin says with a grin. “Purchased without spending a dime. Quite genius really and more important, completely under the radar. No one’s ever going to suspect that behind the valley’s most altruistic Anglo lies a heroic plot to save humanity from itself.”

“You’re a regular little humble shoeshine boy aren’t you,” Alfonso jokes about his cartoon reference, “you even come equipped with your very own bat-cave.” Even though Alfonso enjoys his cynical banter, 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 three-hundred cubits by fifty cubits.”

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

“If I used standard cubits. Given Noah’s British, perhaps I went with Royal units.”

“Okay, five-hundred-and-ten by eighty-five.” Alfonso pops back as quick as any supercomputer could.

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

“So, which is it?”

“That needs to remain a mystery, just like what happened to Noah.”

Alfonso’s mood darkens, “We have our theories but 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 and before leaving Washington, he texts Tien about needing to meet; said it was urgent but wouldn’t say about what.

“Tien hadn’t gotten around to recruiting Noah for our project so, it’s not about that.” Alfonso considers the matter further. “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’d been tasked to develop; wouldn’t give details but says it was a game changer and I’d learn about it soon enough.” Alfonso keeps looking around the cavern as he talks. “What exactly you plan on doing here, launch NASA satellites?”

“Between your computers, my solar infrastructure, 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 the place cold. My massive battery bank and power inverters require a lot of space, and let’s not forget the talent team Tien keeps saying we’re gonna need.”

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

“Darwin stumbles to justify his cavern, “well, then it wouldn’t be biblical.”

#

It’s more or less happy hour by the time Darwin has his guests settled, their cargo van and trailer unloaded, and a preliminary plan sketched out for how the computer system will be configured. “One thing you need to know,” Darwin says while passing out cocktails, “I get guys here all the time for one thing or another, none of them 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 Darwin.

“There is one 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.”

“I saw Becky the other day,” Alfonso glibly mentions while sliding into the other blue-veined chair. “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 arranging logs into a pyramidal cone in the courtyard fire pit. It’s been a short minute since he last thought about Becky and the first time, he’s seriously contemplated her being married or having kids; the moment “over,” is really over needs a moment of mourning.

“So, Anna,” Tien slyly teases not knowing Darwin’s processing grief. “Will 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 started, and requisite small talk dispensed, it’s time to get down to business. “When I was last here,” Tien starts, “I guess four months ago, you took on the task of outlining a general strategy, have you gotten anywhere? I can spend all night catching you up on all the technology advances that have happened since then, but it doesn’t change our bottom line, we’re just climbing closer to the steeper parts of our slippery slope.”

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

Alfonso grins as he pushes a lime wedge down the bottle neck of his Mexican lager. “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 softly states flashing 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 slowly sips his bourbon. “Let me jump to the task at hand.” He reaches down to rub Murphy behind the ears, “I wish I could confess Murphy ate my homework, there certainly were many a cold night around the fire I offered him opportunity but no, damn dog’s hell bent on seeing me finish. So, 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 table beside his nearly empty bourbon. The journal’s black cover and red trim are well worn but for the most part its 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 that didn’t get a go. 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 my working 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.”

“So, it seems, on the surface at least.” Darwin finishes his bourbon. “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 in agitation as he sizes up his half empty beer relative to Darwin’s empty glass. “If nothing else, we at least have a project code word to make us official.”

“Going undetected by technology consumers is fairly simple,” 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 an oxymoron?”

“I don’t disagree,” Darwin continues, “with either, but 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 pull off. No one held a gun to our heads when developing the Parkinson’s technology and look at the shit-show we caused.”

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

“So, what’s the plan?” Tien asks.

“Priority one is neutralizing the autonomous soldiers. We owe that to the world.” Both Tien and Alfonso nod in agreement. “I’ve thought about the many 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 profusely proselytizes. “We need to control the means of production.”

“Even that’s a short-term solution to a long-term situation. We have to elevate the problem beyond rendering them ineffective. We could have the bots join forces but that would cause excessive human chaos, and here’s where things start to get dark, if we can do it, so can others, so now preventing that has to be in our solution space.”

“Easy but complex.” Tien concludes as she begins to understand what Darwin means.

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

“Which is?” Tien asks.

“Every possible scenario is likely unless we do something.”

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

Darwin pulls himself up from his chair and slowly walks to the edge of the flagstone 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 dwindling remains in his bourbon glass through a spinning vortex 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, “will be foreshadowed by the soft seduction of the masses through the democratization of data controlled by evil oligarchs. It’s already happening and we’re at ground zero. Never forget the lesson of Socrates who warned the rise of democracy leads to the consolidation of power in the hands of demagogues; the last level of hell even Dante dared not descend. The challenge confronting us is what the hell an eclectic group of misfit idealists does about that?”