Chapter 24 - The New Man

John googled terra nullis and very quickly found Bir Tawil. This turned out to be 2,000 square kms of unclaimed territory. Meaning that no government had any jurisdiction over it. Of course that didn't mean it was uninhabited and some quick further searching revealed that there were nomadic gangs out there preying on gold prospectors and tourists. The land was trapezoid shaped sandwiched between Egypt and the Sudan.

Of course there was some vegetation, but very scarce. There was no infrastructure and no amenities. In that sense it was an ideal training ground for a Mars colony. He entered his superiors office. She shooed him away and he went outside, closed the door and waited for her to put the phone down. Having the high privilege of being able to casually walk into her office didn't give him, or anyone else, the right to be there. He knocked and was called in. "I hope John that this news is good enough to take my mind off this arthritic knee?"

"Coming from China you may not have heard of the virtues of Urtica dioica or its common moniker of stinging nettle. The soft deeply serrated leaves have tiny hairs which painfully sting when lightly brushed against you. It's a harmless pain but it also puts the brakes on arthritis."

"As a respectable middle aged woman coming from China I am also not expected to know that there are brothels in the United Kingdom where men pay good money to be tied to the bed posts and get a stinging nettle whipping to the knob. Not that I'm trying to schedule your recreation time for you, but lets not start putting arbitrary limits on each others knowledge just before having a business discussion."

John took a deep breath. He hadn't shared his fantasies with anyone, mainly because they were just that: fantasies. However Lü Zhi had gone closer to the bone than she was aware of. The fact that she was his megalomaniac fascist boss didn't help much either. "As you are no doubt aware, there have been experiments done by NASA in Hawaii on the Mauna Loa side of the saddle area on the Big Island. There they had a habitat, or high tech tent, of the kind that could well be planned for their Mars mission. The “astronauts” were kitted out in space suits and there was a 20 minute delay in communications to simulate the distance of Mars from Earth. Now don't get me wrong, this was great research that needed to be done and we were able to acquire the data, including full video coverage, but there is another approach to compliment this, which NASA hasn't thought of."

"I have gone through these reports and it all seems very complete and sound research. What you're proposing had better be good."

John had a mouthful of water and began. "Let's just take a step back and begin at the beginning. We are planning permanent, self sustaining and propagating space colonies. Humans are the driving force and it will take all that we have got to make this happen. So the question is: when does learning begin? Well it's before birth. Animal studies have been done, not only animal but plant studies as well to back this up. While not proven, the prudent working assumption is that learning begins as soon as the nervous system forms. Like all other biological processes, the healthier the parents, the more effective the embryonic learning. By learning I'm talking about emotional responses, food preferences, level of social status and cooperation, a sense of danger and opportunity. In layman's terms: instincts. We also know that humans are not a “stand-alone” creature. We have over a thousand species we carry within ourselves in the form of bacteria, viruses and fungi, known as the microbiome, in our intestines and on our skin. These regulate just about everything, including brain function.

In order to get the people right, we have to get the microbiome right. We have profiled the optimum species mix for the microbiome in all the different areas of the body. The best diet that maintains this is a high fibre, moderate fat, moderate protein, low carb regime. We have also ascertained the best levels of minerals and vitamins for an array of situations. Coupled with a culture of yoga and body consciousness the latent instinctive ability to choose the optimum diet can be developed in humans just the way it is in most wild animals. We have to do with our pioneers diet the opposite of what we do to the diet of those we wish to dominate. If you want to subjugate a species you feed them crap, if you want them ruled by Genghis Khan's and Napolean's then the feed the rulers the best diet possible."

"Important as it is, diet is a technical matter with which I trust your judgement. You don't need my permission for this, just do it John."

"It doesn't stop there. What else do you think those astronauts learned during their stay in Hawaii that wasn't mentioned in the reports?", John didn't wait for her to answer. "They learned to accept artificial limitations, like the space suits, the 20 minute communications delay. It's easy to argue that they knew it was an artificial situation that was needed to approximate Mars as close as possible, but your subconscious doesn't work like that. This would put a huge dampener on creativity. The next big problem is that the astronauts would accept that reality is determined by those in authority. Same as before, the astronauts knew this at the time, but subconsciously they will adopt this pattern of thinking - which is the last thing we want."

Lü Zhi remembered her first office job. The office was shared by two companies who bosses got on well. But they didn't sort out the business administration very efficiently. Instead of a single figure being negotiated for the shared resources, giving rise to the same single figure appearing on 1 invoice per month they did it the hard way. There would be an invoice for the internet connection, another for the staff amenities, another for the telephone connection. The other company would issue separate invoices for car parking fees, cleaning and electricity.

Apart from the inefficient use of labour the bosses were inadvertently telling their staff to nit pick over each others work. This they did and then they nit picked over each other in general. The bitchiness went through the roof and when one day the air con broke down, slightly lowering the oxygen levels in the room the whole 'pressure cooker' blew up causing one business to leave and both businesses facing full office costs. It was a lesson that she would never forget. "So what are you suggesting John."

We let our astronauts study the Hawaii experiment and inform them of the pitfalls just discussed. We then send them to Bir Tawil where they will construct the kinds of living quarters we are planning for Mars. But they won't have to wear space suits, because that is an artificial limitation for Bir Tawil. If they find a useful plant, an underground stream they can make use of that. We have to cultivate a culture of opportunistic creativity. They will be allowed to trade with nomads or fight with them if need be. But apart from initial resources, we don't help them out. We can have a number of astronaut communities out there, those that perform poorly won't have children that go to Mars."

"We are not sending children to Mars."

"Not when they're children but when they grow up. You see we get these communities going in Bir Tawil with three months supply of contraceptives. If they haven't given up after that time they start reproducing. The children of the most successful communities will, from the embryonic learning stage, been with a community with the best cognitive abilities, the best diet, the best social structure and the best microbiomes for survival in a harsh environment. These will make the best astronauts we are able to produce."

"In the long term yes. In the shorter term we need to get the best we have presently got up there. A two pronged approach as it were. If the first generation of astronauts fail we can learn from their mistakes and send our second generation up. On the other hand if the first generation succeeds they will be having children of their own which will be born into the Martian colony. Still, all will not be lost. Do you have any kind of determination, or even wild guess, of the kind of intelligence to expect from the children of Bir Tawil?"

"More of a wild guess. But I would expect the average IQ to be sitting around 160."

"Well we can put those little kiddie-winkies to good use in just about any field. Hell John we didn't need a space colonisation program to justify this project. I shall approve a budget of $500 million unconstrained expenditure on this one. I don't want word getting out about it either."

John could hardly believe it. Within the corridors of New World Explorations the phrase 'unconstrained expenditure' meant a sum of money was to be placed into a dedicated bank account. That money could be withdrawn and spent on with no paper trail. No accounting, no invoices and no purchase orders. And to think he had $500 million. So if the finished project cost $100 million he could blow the remaining $400 million on a lavish lifestyle with no questions asked, ever. Of course he would arrange for records to be kept as this was good form, not to mention good management. But if he needed to bribe some government official or gang warlord to see the project through then unconstrained expenditure was just the ticket.

"How is the swarm of nano-bots for the bioconcrete coming along?", his superior officer asked.

"Apart from making them small enough to be able to function, everything else is ahead of expectation. We seem to be hitting some fundamental limitations with the technology. We may have to try a completely different approach, whatever that may be. On the upside most of the R&D has been spun off into the micro-bots projects."

"So it wasn't just a terminology glitch that I read.", stated Lü Zhi.

"No, not at all. I really should be more specific in naming this. But the micro-bot project is to put thousands, possibly millions of tiny robots in geosynchronous orbit above Mars. Individually they will be running the Kolibri operating system. They have been programmed to dock into each other and when a critical size is reached they pool resources and boot into Linux as a parallel processor super computer. This super computer can then use telemetry and telecommand to control construction robots on the surface of Mars. This gets around the 20 minute delay problem of having the supercomputer on earth. Since the microbots are in orbit they have constant sunlight powering their solar panels. Also if the super computer is damaged, ie by colliding with some space junk then more microbots can be sent up to replace the damaged ones. They will self assemble and network automatically. The construction robots on the surface of Mars also have limited AI built into them, for example they can take simple instructions like go to the other side of the room and they can do that."

"So, using medical analogy, the AI in the construction robots is like the microbot supercomputer's cerebellum?"

"Exactly. The remaining hurdle of this project is to get these microbots self replicating using raw materials from the asteroid belt and then dropping down orbit to intercept Mars. I am confident we can get there is about 5 years. After that we can trial the same technology using raw materials from Saturns rings. Not much to be gained from this solar system, but I am thinking ahead for the future. When we are colonising another solar system we want to send the least amount of hardware ahead and have it self assemble infrastructure in time for our arrival."