Before 24 Billion and Counting

Chapter 1 Part 2 Journey to the observatory, an intriguing meeting

In planning my trip I intended to break the journey to London, thereby precluding traveling by the Boeing near orbital supersonic transport, usually abbreviated to BONOS which could do the trip from Sydney to London in something less than six hours.

The first leg of my outward trip was to Honolulu, from where I could reach Mauna Kea observatory to talk with Jacob Neumann, with whom I had a long standing friendship. This stemmed from my enthusiasm for the margins of science fact and fiction. His involvement in cosmological research required as much if not more speculative imagination than SF novella writers.

To make a virtue out of necessity I had booked a meal on the Airbus 880's restaurant which was noted for its comfort, menu and the view. I made my way to the restaurant once seat belts were declared unnecessary. I walked along the ranks of seats with something like a dozen cabin staff attending with meal and drinks trolleys in the lower deck, and then up to the middle level identically designed, and then again up to the large top saloon restaurant, with panoramic windows, pristine white table cloths, gleaming stainless steel table settings, good china and sparkling crystal glass, took me away from the overcrowded routine of life.

I had lived in both Sydney and Los Angeles, where the only way to obtain anything of a quality lifestyle was to insulate yourself with large quantities of money. In this I had only been partially successful, and had returned to New Zealand as my father neared retirement. He and his father had been shrewd in judging that New Zealand, with a politically incorrect immigration policy, a nearly apoplectic media bias toward birth control, a vigorous de-emphasis on growth and industrialisation, and a very rigorous insistence on educational achievement, had managed to reach 2050 without the normal 21st century city structure.

Many of today's cities comprise an inner ghetto of poverty and lawnessness, a doughnut ring of comparative prosperity either side-of a twenty lane orbital autoroute, and around that a series of monoculture fields and animal factory farms, from which all but a very selected few rich, and the agricultural labour force were excluded. To a greater or lesser extent the only other people inhabiting land between such cities were bands of brigands. The politically correct term for these was 'the homeless'.

During my time in those parts of the world that had failed to meet the challenge of economic over-stimulation, the ordered environment of a plane trip often formed the only period of relaxation and security.

I repeated, almost as a ritual, the lunch that had served me best in my more hysterical days, starting with a chilled Australian Chardonnay. As homage to a habit of my late wife I took french roll and lots of butter to go with the first glass and the crudites, whilst looking at the menu.

There was a lull in the service and an urbanely dressed tall caucasian man of around forty asked if he might join me and took the opposite seat. His easy manner and the humour that he readily displayed, as we exchanged those first explanations of who we were and how we came to intersect that place and time, made him a pleasant fellow traveller. We shared the wine and companionably continued through the meal. We chose the same dishes, a seafood salad followed by a venison steak and vegetables, and the cheeseboard. We selected a French claret to go with the venison and cheese.

Peter de Lesseps was a Canadian economist due to attend a conference in Vancouver assembling to discuss the problem that the flight had caused me to muse on - the imbalance between those parts of the world that had controlled their economy and demography, and those that had not. Peter's professional activities centred around computer based geopolitical econometric modeling, and he was, as others, trying to penetrate the future. His view of the prospects was gloomy. The choice thrown up by the number crunching lay between freedom with certain poverty and violent anarchy, and fascist suppression of human rights to achieve a balance between resources and demand. No middle course seemed to be able to maintain stability before reverting to one or other extreme.

I asked whether the strictly regulated society could be sustained - surely the population would rebel.

Peter laughed, "You come from New Zealand and ask that question! Your country is just one such."

The easy-going lunch companion changed to a formidable professional with a battery of incisive well prepared arguments.

"The reason it works is that you've been educated to accept control as the quid pro quo for your standard of living. The human rights of what is done in your name are not considered. You live comfortably insulated from the bulk of the world's poverty. You contribute nothing to its improvement. You say it works for you therefore don't rock the boat. A more heavy weight economy and more accessible country wouldn't have got away with it. Because the policies were introduced before most problems became apparent, political consensus developed without conflicting interest groups arising."

He drew a breath, relaxed, and then gave a little sigh, "I apologise - I'm not happy about my conclusions particularly since you and your countrymen, all seem to be likeable. Maybe we need disciplined ,control at this population level to survive. But I hate the idea."

"No offence taken.," I said, "Important ideas create strong feelings. But it's my thought that we weren't designed to live together in billions but to be small groups living in acres of untamed countryside. Lack of resources, pollution problems and cultural conflict wouldn't exist if all of our next door neighbours were 100 kilometers away."

Peter looked out across the vast silver wing and the two engine pods each with their proud RR symbol gleaming in the sun, another 880 flying back to Auckland, huge in the dark crystal clear upper sky some five kilometers away, the cloudscape of infinite variety, and the blue and green surface of the Pacific Ocean beneath, and said, "The life you describe couldn't have created all this." and he waved his wine glass to embrace the whole of our surroundings.

I replied, "Whilst I marvel at this plane, I'm sure the people I'm thinking of wouldn't have seen the need for anything so complicated."

"So as well as a life of comfort and security, your philosophy would condemn us to the technology that can be developed by tiny one man band organisations. No IBM, no computer, no Boeing, no dreamliner -"

I broke in, "No big Government, no atom-bomb."

I cut the reflective silence that followed with "It's a hollow argument anyway - we can't de-invent anything whether good or bad."

We continued talking over coffee, more about my work than his, feeling that the essentials of the problems of the larger world had been brought to the table between us, and seeking something in a lighter vein. Honolulu was fast approaching and we exchanged addresses. I left him with wishes for good luck at the approaching conference, and his last words to me were, "If you find an answer, don't keep it a secret."

"And me a publisher? You must be joking - take care - it's dangerous out there!"

I resumed my seat in the lower deck and fastened my seat belt, as at around 4 p.m. the engines wound down to idle, on the long approach glide path that the big plane needed for landing.