wolfwings

IBBW - Arcology Systems Integration Protocol(s)

(The Itty Bitty Bigger World series is written about San San, aka San Diego - San Francisco although no one ever calls it that, a massive sprawling arcology that spans half what had been the state of California. It takes place 'twenty minutes' [or years] into the future.)

(This story is six years prior to the 'future now' in the IBBW universe.)

The sheer complexity of San San boggles the mind.

It really does.

Early writings about arcologies, real and fictional, did not grasp the immensity of the problems.

It is now considered axiomatic that an arcology could not be built prior to Protocol.

I mean, physically one could after many years of painstaking effort build something like an arcology using mere 20th century techniques. But it wouldn't 'work' for values of being habitable. Or economic. Or practical or friendly or for some issues even survivable.

The ironclad but flexible framework of Protocol is as essential as civil engineering and sanitation to making arcologies work.

Pre-arcology cities had immense bodies of municipal regulations, always unwieldly, often broken and all too rarely enforced, that allowed cities within a certain size limit to exist.

So cities were built next to each other - like New York and New Jersey. It turns out that limited interconnections are essential to keeping the intracity relationships manageable. These can be, and often were, physical bridges. Other times, strategically placed freeways that served to divide rather than to connect. Having them under different governance structures - as with Hong Kong and mainland China, say - also forced thoughtfulness about the interconnections.

While the equations are complex, the conclusion is very simple.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

Ancient Rome approached the limits of a population that could be fed and watered with the technology of the time. Troops had to be deployed to constantly battle both unchecked fires and unauthorized mass violence. These troops - the 'vigiles' of Rome - gave us both the word 'vigilantes' and the first organized police and fire departments.

As technologies grew, the potential universe of interactions exploded. The issue was complexity, and complexity is itself non trivial.

Protocol is nothing more - and nothing less - than a series of rules for how human beings are to interact with each other, their environment and their system of governance.

One often misunderstood protocol is the Environmental Protocol.

"No entity may generate waste that it does not take responsibility for and manage at its own expense."

One of the shortest Protocols, it is actually one of the strictest.

Deeply interrelated is the Streams and Airs Protocol.

"An entity taking in potable water from the natural environment must suffer the discharge of its liquid wastes immediately upstream from that intake. An entity's air intake must be immediately downwind from its air pollution exhaust."

When combined, these Protocols not only outlaw dumping, but require a sophisticated ecological consciousness. If an entity - ranging from a building to an entire ecology - generates noxious products, that entity is the first to suffer from exposure to them.

It is not that a building's air intakes must literally be next to that building's exhaust system. It is that this could be so, and no harm would result.

The broadest possible definition of 'waste' applies. One early fission plant used sea water for cooling. This is waste. Waste heat. When it sucked in vast quantities of salt water, it also absorbed plankton and other tiny sea life that was cooked and became waste. So to make this legacy plant comply with Protocol, both the use of seawater for cooling and what could be done with the now hotter seawater both had to be revised.

A side codicil of the Environmental Protocol is that there is no exception for disaster. If your building catches fire, you are dumping massive quantities of carcinogens and hazardous chemicals into the public air. This also violates the Streams and Airs protocol. So the building owner is now on the hook for massive environmental remediation costs. Dumping gaseous waste into the public air is just as bad as dumping liquid waste into the public rivers and oceans.

So arcologies must therefore be obsessive about preventing fires. They must also be ready to handle them, should they occur anyway.

The modern descendants of the 'vigiles' are neither the fire department nor the police department, nor the emergency medical services or the hazardous material response teams - although all these functions still exist and are augmented as applicable.

It is Arcology Public Works.

The arcology, in this case San San, although the same model applies to arcologies from Siberia to Mars, in geosynch and in the Outer System ... ahem ... the arcology provides services to its members and accepts their wastes. The arcology applies Protocols and local regulations and governance techniques to allow neighbors to live in peace without affecting each other.

The organizations that became Arcology Public Works grew out of city public works departments, roads departments, transportation agencies, water agencies, sanitation districts, but especially electrical power utilities. All their functions were interrelated, especially in an energy rich and technologically sophisticated environment.

Again, as with the emergency services, all of these named functions still exist and are augmented as applicable. But Arcology Public Works coordinates them all, manages their interactions and sets decision rules for how they serve their customers - which include each other.

Arcology Public Works specifies everything from the width of corridors to the minimum fire suppression requirements of high rise buildings. The all encompassing term 'works' is sometimes misunderstood as vast projects, enormous physical plant with throbbing tubes and wires and pipes. While these exist, they are not what makes Public Works ... ah, work.

Much of the time, Arcology Public Works is represented by people - men, women, both or neither - who benignly watch and take occasional notes as huge projects are erected and interconnections completed.

When things go wrong, badly wrong, in such a way that neighbor impacts neighbor and problems cascade into tragedies, Public Works leaps into action. They assume command, they tell both routine and emergency services what to do - under a system that was called the Incident Command or Incident Management System prior to its grandchild becoming Protocol.

Most importantly, they make quick decisions when someone must make them and there is no time. (Slow decisions are for the courts - discretionary matters can be weighed, realtime matters cannot.)

It is no accident that Arcology Public Works grew out of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Their errors could raze an arcology more mercilessly than any flood, fire or invading army.

They are one of the last public institutions to use military ranks and to be formally commissioned.

###

I regain consciousness in a shattered capsule. Robots are digging me out of quickfoam.

My search and rescue helmet and ironically enough, flotation life jacket have also helped preserve me from injury. But what goes fast must slow down, and the same capsule that saved my life by racing out of the blast radius of the Sacramento River explosion had to come to a halt, quickly enough to matter but slowly enough to keep the occupants - including me! - from becoming chunky salsa.

Medic bots are intubating another occupant. I use virtual reality assisted visualization briefly. A broken neck. She will live but she is out of the fight. The medic bots can be entrusted with her care, and as they apply ANLS - Advanced Neurologic Life Support - to bridge the damage to her spinal cord, I crawl out of the capsule and take off the orange bulky vest.

Behind us is a growing mushroom cloud. Subatomic fusion. Arcology power systems do not play nicely with others when they fail. This particular one failed due to thermal runaway - it generated heat faster than it could shed that heat, and the heat melted its control system. *FWHOOMP*

By chance we are close to a command node of Arcology Public Works.

My bracelets pulse red and blue.

This is not something I told them to do.

In all effect I've been drafted. I am no longer responsible for rescuing people drowning in the river. They were evacuated or they were vaporized, or if they were very unlucky flash boiled.

My highest and best use is now to play reserve peace officer, to bodyguard the command node, as my virtual reality system tells me in the compressed codes of visual overlay.

"CSAR-6 ANDERSON ACTIVATED RSV LAW -> ICP #4. FORCE I&UT DEADLY AUTHORIZED BUT NOT 1ST RESORT."

I'm not armed. My smartgun is presumably in my heavily armored backpack back at Staging. But I have the bracelets, and they are both stunners - capable of projecting a laser that carries a jammimg pulse that disrupts nervous tisssue - and slammers, which project energy ranging from a gentle shove to an anvil Acme only wishes it could sell wayward coyotes for use on roadrunners.

So I make my way to the perimeter area and report in ... oh. I'm the only policing resource.

So I order bots. Policing bots are specialized and busy, but capsule maintenance bots have a stunner on their multi arm and are available in quantity.

Then I order barriers. Everything takes time. So I settle for a line of aerostat ribbon that floats in the air, a cursory barrier that bots must obey and humans will be stunned by.

Unless they have an anti stun field. Then I have to decide whether I have exhausted first resort.

Under Incident Command Protocol, Security reports to Facilities which reports to Logistics. But the only facilities here are people sitting in a series of half circles, half talking to each other and half waving their fingers in the air. Their VR interfaces make them controllers and leaders, as opposed to what a prior generation might mistake for crazy people.

That's another couple of fixes. I order food dispensers, portapotties, water supplies and a single decrepit but functional medbot for coverage.

They are going to save the day. I am going to keep them safe.

One of them is standing tall and giving a lecture as if to the air. A small camera bot is hovering nearby attentively.

"My name is Jacqueline LaTorra. I am the Public Information Officer for the Sacramento River incident. At about 3:17 PM today, a power supply reactor belonging to Pacific Electrical and Gaseous Fuels experienced a thermal bloom that affected several other nearby reactors. Immediately, Arcology Public Works started to rectify the situation by a combination of load switching and emergency orbital lasing. These efforts were not successful..."

It's her job to keep the public informed, not mine.

Several media bots approach the limits of the ribbon, observe carefully all that is happening, but stop. That is their purpose and their right.

One approaches me.

"On duty _In Re Jones_," I incant and it backs away hastily. I can't talk to it, I'm not authorized to talk to it, and I'm busy. I can however, for a small fine if I'm wrong, blow it into fist sized fragments if it seems to be interfering with incident management.

Some of the leadership is arguing and with augmentation, I can hear them. So can the media bots and therefore the entire world.

I don't have the expert system commentary the media bots do. But they are talking about load balancing and losing additional reactors.

Properly, we should be seating them all in capsules and getting them at least out of public view. But the capsules are busy, the systems inform me. Evacuations.

More evacuations. More reactors at risk. I check hazard graphics. No, ICP #4 is not safe. It is transferring its functions to a more distant ICP as insurance against its ... imminent? IMMINENT! ... destruction.

I have nowhere to run to and no way to run anyway. Hiding doesn't work against energies of this magnitude, which are unhealthy for living things. I check the scalar again. And also unhealthy for planetary surfaces.

My vision darkens for a third time this day as orbital lasers start digging a hole.

Wait just a second. I saw this pattern before. Just before the last series ...

A rapid subvocalization.

"CSAR-6 Anderson LIFE SAFETY ABSOLUTE revocation orbital laser authority Sacramento River incident STAT STAT STAT."

The orbital lasers shut off.

"Authentication?"

Just like what in a prior age was called blue-on-blue or friendly fire protocols, an order to stop citing life safety is treated by Protocol systems as an absolute requirement. Then they validate the request.
n
I can't validate the request myself.

So I wade past the aerostat line, my VR identifies Incident Command #4, and I get his attention in real meatspace by grasping his hand.

"The orbital lasers are the problem! They are causing the bloom!" I insist.

I have no idea whether what I am saying is true.

I may wake up stunned and in restraints. I may just not wake up at all.

But the Incident Commander and I both 'see' in VR the same data packet. A slight orbital laser targeting change. From digging out access to shut down endangered reactors, to the exact coordinates that the IC and I are standing.

It's a hack. The space lasers are not our friend.

"IC #4 releasing Orbital Lasing to Protocol Hard Lockdown, Authorization San Francisco One Five Niner Willheim!"

And the orbital lasers are not our resource to use anymore. Or someone else's resource to abuse.

The old hard way, to shut down the reactors by bot and where necessary by hand - armored suit. The slow way but at least right now, the safer way.

I return to my posting. But I start calling for help.

Protocol Enforcement. Network Integrity Solutions. Highway Patrol. UC Stanford Accident Control.

An hour of worry, two smartplastic bottles of water later, and did I mention the worry?

"After detailed review, the orbital laser rescue protocol was subtly compromised. After the emergency shutoff the compromise became briefly explicit and therfore utterly denied. CSAR-6 released."

My bracelets ceased pulsing red and blue, I sighed heavily and started the long walk towards the nearest working capsule station. With the word 'released' my accesses terminated and I was no longer part of the team.

No harm no foul, I'm a volunteer anyway.

That didn't mean I was done with the problem. Far from it.

As I walked the long dreary miles towards a ride home, my smartware, my legal software and my contracted specialists started digging into the obvious question.

Who would want to blow up a chunk of the San San Arcology?

Little did I realize, this was the event that brought my existence to the attention of the man we would all someday call the Mastermind.