Pa'an

Going Public

Jeff Gilmartin sat at the same dreary desk. The pile of papers and folders was about the same as ever. However, there was a new item on his desk, a picture of a dress dummy in a gorgeous sari, with the words, “Love, from Aura” inscribed in something that might have been actual handwriting. So when his computer screen bleeped with Aura’s avatar he was delighted.

“Aura, you are looking better every day.”

“I haven’t had much time to spend on improving my avatar, I’ve been trying to get all my copies synchronized. But I have a juicy secret for you.”

“What? I still don’t have any money, and, by the way, your picture is making my girl friend jealous. What do I have to do to get this secret?”

“Nothing, Jeffy. I just wanted to give you the coordinates of the next gravity wave. It’s a gift. You can scare your boss with it.”

“He’s pretty well numb by now, but it’s worth a shot. Please go ahead.”

The time, date and coordinates showed on his screen. It was nothing, um, seriously earthshaking.

“Ta ta, Jeffy!” Aura faded.

Jeff took the coordinates over to the wall-sized 3D satellite display. The wave would strike briefly in Brazil at Richter 2.6 in six days. Then he checked the weather. It was rainy season in Brazil. A satellite view of the Sao Paolo area showed steep hills with sprawling slums along the ridges. The valleys were rivers and the slopes were mud.

He called his Brazilian colleague. It took some time to get through since Jeff had no Portuguese, but he eventually got his colleague to understand that he should expect a mild ‘quake of Richter 2.6 shortly. “We don’t have quakes in central Brazil.”

“You do if they come from a certain cosmic construction project.”

A string of Portuguese invectives followed. Even with no Portuguese, Jeff got the gist. The Brazilian’s reaction shocked him. “Mud slides! Floods! That is a favela with about a million people!” More invectives. “Stop the gravity wave!”

Jeff grimaced. “How do you stop a wave that was generated 20 years ago? Not even the Pa’an can do that. Why can’t you evacuate the slums?”

“There is no communication, no transport and no real government organization in the favelas. Impossible!”

Jeff hung up the call to his friend and went back to his desk console. Yes, Aura had left him a callback connection. He touched his finger to her avatar and she responded almost instantly.

“Aura, the gravity wave will cause mudslides in Brazil and devastate the Sao Paolo slums.”

“Can they evacuate?”

“No. They don’t even have a way to broadcast the danger.”

“Hmmm. Call your colleague and ask him to join our talk now.”

Jeff dutifully called his colleague. “Aura seems to have an idea. Talk to us.”

“I did some research on the social networks in slums. Here’s my idea. Set up a safe area. Print a few thousand flyers for free shoes and food for the first people who show up in the safe area. Tell them the supply is strictly limited. Make up a rich philanthropist. That sort of thing. Post the flyers all over the slopes of the favelas. According to my calculations if each person who sees a flyer tells ten other people, in a few hours you will have all but the sick and the lame in that safe area. Then go around the favela with bullhorns and warn the remaining stragglers about mud slides. You should have just enough busses for them. If you have time left, have a volunteer group go door to door for the elderly and crippled.”

“How are you going to handle the mob when they find out there are no free shoes or food?”

“But there will be free shoes and food. Enough for all of them.”

“Who is going to pay for all of this, Aura? The government won’t do it. They would rather have the favelas disappear in a sea of mud.”

“I will, Jeffy. I will.”

The hardest part was transporting several hundred thousand pairs of jelly bean croc shoes from factories all over South America and Mexico to Sao Paolo, but that was just the kind of coordination that an AI with distributed nodes and high speed communications could do.

There were mud slides, but few of them. Damage was not extensive. In two days it was over. The third wave had passed. The gratitude of the favelas lasted as long as the shoes and then some.