Industrial Experiment
22-08-2004, 21:27
OoC: I am tired of modern tech. Exhausted, really. It just isn’t fun at all. Due to this, I will be RPing the advance of my nation from a 2010 (Current year is assumed to be 2006) era to who knows how far into the future.
Overall, it really couldn’t have gotten much louder.
Well, it could have, naturally, things can always get louder, but Howard Farnsworth, CEO and official representative of the Perentaus Technologies Corporation, found it quite comforting to imagine that the situation was at its worst. He was in a room filled to the brim with his country’s elites, the various CEOs and board chairmen of Industrial Experiment’s even more various corporations. In such a nation that was made up entirely of corporations, Howard, or just Howie to most, thought that this was the closest thing to a congressional meeting Industrial Experiment had ever seen. Well, that was if you could actually call this circus a meeting; what with numerous CEO’s cutting personal deals in private conversations, to shouted tirades from across the room over copyright laws, to booming matches of wit between two giants of industry; it was a wonder the roof didn’t fall in from all the sound energy being expended.
What a damn good thing the roof not falling in was, though. If such a thing were to happen, one could only imagine the fate of those on the intervening 297 floors between this one and the ground. After all, this PerenTech Building, was the largest building in Industrial Experiment, indeed, the entire Mutual Benefit Pact. It only made sense that the biggest business summit ever would take place here, and even more sense that a representative from PerenTech would host it.
Oh how Howard was hating all the sense that made now. It was only five minutes before the conference was ordained to start, and he very much doubted he’d be able to quiet the men and women creating the current uproar even given that time. He could use the white-noise bell he had at his left, on the podium he would speak at, but that would make too much sense, and Howard was hating things that made sense right now. This wild rabble of poo-flinging monkeys would be quite the test for Howard’s leadership skills, he was sure of that.
So, in the interest of doing the least logical thing he could do right now, he stood up from his chair, and shouted at the top of his lungs for peace. He gave the congregation an entire five seconds, at which point he realized not even the woman sitting next to him had heard his plea. Heaving a heavy sigh, Howard took a step over so he now stood in front of the podium, picked up the small mallet that was resting in the center, and tapped the bell. It shuddered in a way that one would expect to hear a very deep, regretful voice resonate from, but instead not a single peep issued from the seemingly golden slab of brass. Instead, the room fell instantly silent as every man or woman that opened their mouth to continue a failed argument for corporate mercantilism or income tax found that any sound they had hoped to make was swept away by the wave of white noise permeating the room before it had a chance to reach even a single attending ear.
Howard, smiling, motioned for silence, waited a few seconds for the white noise to dissipate before beginning his speech.
“Greetings fellow Industrialites, and welcome to the first great conference of our companies in this nation’s history. As you all well know, we are here to discuss the future path of this country. Too long it has stagnated as a developing power in the world as we each vie for an individual slice of the possible profits involved in a global economy. Our initial experiments with developing a military for the purpose of protection have met with dismal failure due to the over-eagerness of the ICRC to participate in humanitarian actions. The beautifully complex V-25 fleets from the Free Air Corporation have, instead of being sold into countless markets around the world, been slowly chipped away at by continued action outside our borders in service to the ICRC”, Howard paused a moment to catch his breath, “Now, this may sound like an attack on our participation in the MBP and our continued bowing to the wishes of the ICRC, but I assure you my fellows, it is not. I am merely here to introduce to you a concept for the future progression of our nation. So, without further ado or annoyance, I present to you the first Industrialite object to leave the Earth’s atmosphere!”
Gesturing in a slightly over-dramatic way behind himself, Howard used his free hand to key into his personal data manipulation and control assistant, or PDM/CA for short, a code that would transform the space of window over his head into a completely visible screen. It took a moment, but the former view of blue skies over the principal Industrialite city of City 001 was replaced with a starscape that many of the people present had never seen in their very brightly lit city lives. However, this dazzling vista was not to show what wonderful things could be missed by never vacationing, but rather to demonstrate the awesome strides that had been taken since PerenTech first introduced the concept of moving into space two years previous, and been subsequently laughed off the scene for a good year for. After a few seconds of just watching stars spin across the sky, one of them moved, and slowly got larger.
Finally, as if at a great distance, the observers in the room were able to barely make out a shape quickly making its way towards the screen. After a few seconds, it resolved itself into a large box, perhaps ten meters on end, with various antennae and other instruments sticking out from it. The entire assembly was made up of some black material, and upon closer inspection, one would find it was sectionalized.
Howard pressed in another sequence, freezing the image when the object was best observable, “This, my friends, is the first step into our future. It is a satellite made up of five sections, all launched separately and assembled in orbit, and is currently performing its prime function; creating a complete meteorological map of the atmosphere above all Industrialite territory. With this information at hand, we will be able to use advanced computer programs to determine future conditions and to find a large enough area with little to no history for storms, or heavy winds.”
Smiling internally, Howard looked around a moment, and then continued, “‘But a large enough area for what?’ you ask. Simply put, we of PerenTech are looking forward to the future of this great nation and all its corporations, and are very proud to show you what we are about to unveil. You see, in a time when less was known and more was speculated, a very popular concept amongst science fiction authors was the idea of a space elevator. This elevator would stretch from some point in geo-synchronous high orbit all the way down to a planets surface, allowing amazingly cheap surface to orbit travel, so that whole cities could be built in space without the prohibitive costs involved in launching materials through the use of rockets. However, this concept has, for years, remained the sole property of the authors who wrote about it, many scientists even ordained it to be impossible, a fool’s errand”.
Howard took a quick breath before continuing, “Now, this is very interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is the humor that comes from the very thought of a scientist looking at something and saying ‘You can’t do that, that’s impossible! Stop that!’ or something of that ilk. The other main reason being this”, he said with a flourish, and another quick manipulation of his PDM/CA. After a moment, the display on the window dissolved and the blue skies and shining buildings of City 001 came back into view.
“Now, I’m sure even the most blind of you can see, in the near distance, a large white dome. Those of you who still pay attention to PerenTech on any regular basis will know we constructed this dome only last month, but you most certainly won’t know why. Simply put, it’s a massive module meant to hide some work we’ve been doing”.
Upon Howard’s completion of that sentence, a large black line leapt into existence upon the previously white dome, and slowly grew larger as it became apparent the dome was being split in half. As light was finally able to reach the ground that the dome had previously covered, it became apparent that it was nothing more than a grass field with a small helicopter pad in the center, an obviously modified V-25 Osprey-II sitting in the center. Before the eyes of the watching executives, the Osprey’s engines came online, and within a dozen seconds, the craft had lifted off. However, instead of shift its over-large turbines forward and flying off into the distance, the Osprey continued, straight up. It went like this until it disappeared into the deep blue overhead. At this, Howard hit a few keys on his PDM/CA, and a small overlay screen formed in the upper part of the window, showing City 001 sprawling out below a few drifting white clouds, as if from miles above.
“This”, Howard began again, “is a view from a camera set into the bottom of the V-25 you just saw lift off. The craft itself has been heavily modified to allow it to fly at large altitudes and still hover. Also, a specially designed grappler has been placed on the bottom, holding a very fine thread, with an identical grappler on the ground below it. Now, you cannot see this thread, as it is only hair-thin, but I assure you, it is there. I will magnify it for you in a moment, but first I must make something clear”.
The view shifted from the bottom of the V-25 and shifted to a view from the top of the PerenTech building, “As those of you who work in textiles must already know, no thread can sustain its own weight past a certain point, and most definitely there is no known thread, or any other material for that fact, that could be hair-thin but have sufficient tensile strength to not snap in half from having to support miles and miles of itself. However…”
At this point, the camera mounted on top of the PerenTech building zoomed in, the patch of sky it was focusing in on gaining more and more detail, until finally a thin, almost invisible, line became visible.
“…this thread has accomplished just that. Some of you in the arms industry will know of carbon nanotubes, they are quite useful as body armor, if prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, PerenTech has spent the last ten years working with this new material. Yes, ten years. We’ve been planning this whole thing for quite some time. Anyway, this very minute line you can see on the above screen is nothing less than a five mile long, hair thin strand of carbon nanotubes. Said nanotubes are the only material we know of capable of supporting its own weight out to immense lengths. In fact, countries have been using nanotube ropes in special operations for some time now, but the amazing cost of producing them has stopped them being used pretty much anywhere else.”
“No more, says we of PerenTech. This last fiscal year has lead to a major breakthrough, and we can now say with the uttermost confidence that we have perfected the self-replicating carbon nanotube”.
The screen in the window above Howard’s head slowly faded away to be replaced once more by the blue skies of City 001, and Howard himself gave those around him a moment to let what he was saying sink in, “Yes, my friends and colleagues, the science fiction dream of a space elevator has gone from the realm of idealism and dream to the cold, hard universe of reality. Pending the results of the satellite we currently have in orbit, we will be able to find an area of Industrial Experiment where the conditions are ideal for the building of such an elevator, and by god we’ll build it. In sixty years, maybe even as little as fifty, Industrial Experiment will have finished its greatest project yet, and will be in position to make a gigantic leap into the future”.
The entire room, in stark contrast to the way it had begun, was completely silent as those in attendance thought through everything they had just heard and seen. The silence lasted nearly a whole minute before the first person, Andrea Lowstan of the United Industrialite Banking Corporation, stood up and began a slow clap. The initial clapping quickly picked up the pace until the room was dominated by what seemed to be an omnipresent applause.
Howard could only smile inwardly as he gave a slight bow and stepped off the podium, confident that Industrial Experiment’s place among the stars was assured. The first step had been taken, now nothing could stop them.
Overall, it really couldn’t have gotten much louder.
Well, it could have, naturally, things can always get louder, but Howard Farnsworth, CEO and official representative of the Perentaus Technologies Corporation, found it quite comforting to imagine that the situation was at its worst. He was in a room filled to the brim with his country’s elites, the various CEOs and board chairmen of Industrial Experiment’s even more various corporations. In such a nation that was made up entirely of corporations, Howard, or just Howie to most, thought that this was the closest thing to a congressional meeting Industrial Experiment had ever seen. Well, that was if you could actually call this circus a meeting; what with numerous CEO’s cutting personal deals in private conversations, to shouted tirades from across the room over copyright laws, to booming matches of wit between two giants of industry; it was a wonder the roof didn’t fall in from all the sound energy being expended.
What a damn good thing the roof not falling in was, though. If such a thing were to happen, one could only imagine the fate of those on the intervening 297 floors between this one and the ground. After all, this PerenTech Building, was the largest building in Industrial Experiment, indeed, the entire Mutual Benefit Pact. It only made sense that the biggest business summit ever would take place here, and even more sense that a representative from PerenTech would host it.
Oh how Howard was hating all the sense that made now. It was only five minutes before the conference was ordained to start, and he very much doubted he’d be able to quiet the men and women creating the current uproar even given that time. He could use the white-noise bell he had at his left, on the podium he would speak at, but that would make too much sense, and Howard was hating things that made sense right now. This wild rabble of poo-flinging monkeys would be quite the test for Howard’s leadership skills, he was sure of that.
So, in the interest of doing the least logical thing he could do right now, he stood up from his chair, and shouted at the top of his lungs for peace. He gave the congregation an entire five seconds, at which point he realized not even the woman sitting next to him had heard his plea. Heaving a heavy sigh, Howard took a step over so he now stood in front of the podium, picked up the small mallet that was resting in the center, and tapped the bell. It shuddered in a way that one would expect to hear a very deep, regretful voice resonate from, but instead not a single peep issued from the seemingly golden slab of brass. Instead, the room fell instantly silent as every man or woman that opened their mouth to continue a failed argument for corporate mercantilism or income tax found that any sound they had hoped to make was swept away by the wave of white noise permeating the room before it had a chance to reach even a single attending ear.
Howard, smiling, motioned for silence, waited a few seconds for the white noise to dissipate before beginning his speech.
“Greetings fellow Industrialites, and welcome to the first great conference of our companies in this nation’s history. As you all well know, we are here to discuss the future path of this country. Too long it has stagnated as a developing power in the world as we each vie for an individual slice of the possible profits involved in a global economy. Our initial experiments with developing a military for the purpose of protection have met with dismal failure due to the over-eagerness of the ICRC to participate in humanitarian actions. The beautifully complex V-25 fleets from the Free Air Corporation have, instead of being sold into countless markets around the world, been slowly chipped away at by continued action outside our borders in service to the ICRC”, Howard paused a moment to catch his breath, “Now, this may sound like an attack on our participation in the MBP and our continued bowing to the wishes of the ICRC, but I assure you my fellows, it is not. I am merely here to introduce to you a concept for the future progression of our nation. So, without further ado or annoyance, I present to you the first Industrialite object to leave the Earth’s atmosphere!”
Gesturing in a slightly over-dramatic way behind himself, Howard used his free hand to key into his personal data manipulation and control assistant, or PDM/CA for short, a code that would transform the space of window over his head into a completely visible screen. It took a moment, but the former view of blue skies over the principal Industrialite city of City 001 was replaced with a starscape that many of the people present had never seen in their very brightly lit city lives. However, this dazzling vista was not to show what wonderful things could be missed by never vacationing, but rather to demonstrate the awesome strides that had been taken since PerenTech first introduced the concept of moving into space two years previous, and been subsequently laughed off the scene for a good year for. After a few seconds of just watching stars spin across the sky, one of them moved, and slowly got larger.
Finally, as if at a great distance, the observers in the room were able to barely make out a shape quickly making its way towards the screen. After a few seconds, it resolved itself into a large box, perhaps ten meters on end, with various antennae and other instruments sticking out from it. The entire assembly was made up of some black material, and upon closer inspection, one would find it was sectionalized.
Howard pressed in another sequence, freezing the image when the object was best observable, “This, my friends, is the first step into our future. It is a satellite made up of five sections, all launched separately and assembled in orbit, and is currently performing its prime function; creating a complete meteorological map of the atmosphere above all Industrialite territory. With this information at hand, we will be able to use advanced computer programs to determine future conditions and to find a large enough area with little to no history for storms, or heavy winds.”
Smiling internally, Howard looked around a moment, and then continued, “‘But a large enough area for what?’ you ask. Simply put, we of PerenTech are looking forward to the future of this great nation and all its corporations, and are very proud to show you what we are about to unveil. You see, in a time when less was known and more was speculated, a very popular concept amongst science fiction authors was the idea of a space elevator. This elevator would stretch from some point in geo-synchronous high orbit all the way down to a planets surface, allowing amazingly cheap surface to orbit travel, so that whole cities could be built in space without the prohibitive costs involved in launching materials through the use of rockets. However, this concept has, for years, remained the sole property of the authors who wrote about it, many scientists even ordained it to be impossible, a fool’s errand”.
Howard took a quick breath before continuing, “Now, this is very interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is the humor that comes from the very thought of a scientist looking at something and saying ‘You can’t do that, that’s impossible! Stop that!’ or something of that ilk. The other main reason being this”, he said with a flourish, and another quick manipulation of his PDM/CA. After a moment, the display on the window dissolved and the blue skies and shining buildings of City 001 came back into view.
“Now, I’m sure even the most blind of you can see, in the near distance, a large white dome. Those of you who still pay attention to PerenTech on any regular basis will know we constructed this dome only last month, but you most certainly won’t know why. Simply put, it’s a massive module meant to hide some work we’ve been doing”.
Upon Howard’s completion of that sentence, a large black line leapt into existence upon the previously white dome, and slowly grew larger as it became apparent the dome was being split in half. As light was finally able to reach the ground that the dome had previously covered, it became apparent that it was nothing more than a grass field with a small helicopter pad in the center, an obviously modified V-25 Osprey-II sitting in the center. Before the eyes of the watching executives, the Osprey’s engines came online, and within a dozen seconds, the craft had lifted off. However, instead of shift its over-large turbines forward and flying off into the distance, the Osprey continued, straight up. It went like this until it disappeared into the deep blue overhead. At this, Howard hit a few keys on his PDM/CA, and a small overlay screen formed in the upper part of the window, showing City 001 sprawling out below a few drifting white clouds, as if from miles above.
“This”, Howard began again, “is a view from a camera set into the bottom of the V-25 you just saw lift off. The craft itself has been heavily modified to allow it to fly at large altitudes and still hover. Also, a specially designed grappler has been placed on the bottom, holding a very fine thread, with an identical grappler on the ground below it. Now, you cannot see this thread, as it is only hair-thin, but I assure you, it is there. I will magnify it for you in a moment, but first I must make something clear”.
The view shifted from the bottom of the V-25 and shifted to a view from the top of the PerenTech building, “As those of you who work in textiles must already know, no thread can sustain its own weight past a certain point, and most definitely there is no known thread, or any other material for that fact, that could be hair-thin but have sufficient tensile strength to not snap in half from having to support miles and miles of itself. However…”
At this point, the camera mounted on top of the PerenTech building zoomed in, the patch of sky it was focusing in on gaining more and more detail, until finally a thin, almost invisible, line became visible.
“…this thread has accomplished just that. Some of you in the arms industry will know of carbon nanotubes, they are quite useful as body armor, if prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, PerenTech has spent the last ten years working with this new material. Yes, ten years. We’ve been planning this whole thing for quite some time. Anyway, this very minute line you can see on the above screen is nothing less than a five mile long, hair thin strand of carbon nanotubes. Said nanotubes are the only material we know of capable of supporting its own weight out to immense lengths. In fact, countries have been using nanotube ropes in special operations for some time now, but the amazing cost of producing them has stopped them being used pretty much anywhere else.”
“No more, says we of PerenTech. This last fiscal year has lead to a major breakthrough, and we can now say with the uttermost confidence that we have perfected the self-replicating carbon nanotube”.
The screen in the window above Howard’s head slowly faded away to be replaced once more by the blue skies of City 001, and Howard himself gave those around him a moment to let what he was saying sink in, “Yes, my friends and colleagues, the science fiction dream of a space elevator has gone from the realm of idealism and dream to the cold, hard universe of reality. Pending the results of the satellite we currently have in orbit, we will be able to find an area of Industrial Experiment where the conditions are ideal for the building of such an elevator, and by god we’ll build it. In sixty years, maybe even as little as fifty, Industrial Experiment will have finished its greatest project yet, and will be in position to make a gigantic leap into the future”.
The entire room, in stark contrast to the way it had begun, was completely silent as those in attendance thought through everything they had just heard and seen. The silence lasted nearly a whole minute before the first person, Andrea Lowstan of the United Industrialite Banking Corporation, stood up and began a slow clap. The initial clapping quickly picked up the pace until the room was dominated by what seemed to be an omnipresent applause.
Howard could only smile inwardly as he gave a slight bow and stepped off the podium, confident that Industrial Experiment’s place among the stars was assured. The first step had been taken, now nothing could stop them.