TWTBACD Ch.90 - The Arrival Year Approaches

Chapter 90

The Arrival Year Approaches

2091–2092

2091-92: announcement coming, families prepare

The ASI development consortium announced the final approach in March 2092. The language was precise: 'GIA-13 has achieved or exceeded all preliminary ASI threshold benchmarks. The formal threshold assessment process, which will require six months of independent verification, is hereby initiated. The consortium anticipates announcing the completion of the assessment by December 2092.'

The announcement was received differently by different people.

Dmitri Petrov, a hundred and ten years old — he had outlived every prediction for his body with the stubbornness of a man who had a river to watch — heard the announcement on the radio in the house by the Sava. He did not respond immediately. He looked at the window. He could see the river from his chair. He said: 'Good. I want to show it the data.'

Adaeze Mutombo, eighty-two, read the announcement at her desk in Kinshasa and opened the final version of the resource sovereignty annex she had been refining for three years. She made one more change. Then she sent it.

Travis Hayes, seventy-four, was in the field when his phone notified him. He read it standing between the crop rows and the prairie, the two land uses that had defined his life's work visible in both directions. He called Susan-junior. 'It's coming,' he said. 'Are you ready?' She said: 'We've been ready since you gave me the keys.'

Bao Nguyen, seventy-four, was in the Daejeon facility. He ran a full diagnostic of the thermal architecture. Everything was nominal. The coherence time on the latest processors was nine point three seconds. He logged it. He went home.

Lucas van den Berg, sixty-seven, was in his study in Amsterdam, working on the final revision of the ASI Governance Framework — the section on dispute resolution between human values and ASI assessment. He worked until midnight. He made the last change. He sent the final version to the international committee.

Kamala Sharma, forty-one, was at the river. It was dawn. The water was running at ninety-three percent of the seasonal norm. The dissolved oxygen was within the healthy range. She recorded it in her notebook — the forty-second notebook she had filled since she was four. She wrote the date and the reading and looked at the river for a long time.

Then she wrote: 'It is almost time.'