2022 by Ken Kroes

their bulletin boards with his
name and a message for him to call her.
    Frustrated with her lack of progress, she
picked up the phone for one last call. He has to be at the
colony and must have gotten into trouble somehow. There is only one
person I can think of whom I can contact to maybe get some answers.
Richard, the head of the foundation itself.

Chapter 11 - The Elders

    Richard reviewed the report on Spencer while
eating breakfast with Mikhail.
    “Why the hell is the DIR interested in us?”
he asked.
    “It’s buried in the report you’re reading.
They’re wondering why they can’t get any more information on us
from their Dark Web search engine.” Mikhail said. “I have to admit
I thought you were paranoid when I first came on board and saw that
the foundation’s computer network had no physical ties to the
public Internet. Turns out it was a brilliant idea. Even I didn’t
realize the depth of information that the DIR gathers.”
    “I understand they don’t like secrets kept
from them—but why us? What was the trigger that made them look this
way?”
    “The public side of the foundation is getting
too good and you’re starting to step on people’s toes. Someone
wants to find your weakness so they can put a stop to it.”
    Richard slammed his fork down. “I only wish
that was the case. I’m guessing the CURE threat has more to do with
the recent decline, in general, consumption than the efforts of my
foundation.” He admitted to feeling baffled. “Why do people
continue to think we can keep expanding and growing on a planet
with finite resources?”
    “Human nature, I guess.”
    “No!” he said more loudly than intended. “I
absolutely refuse to believe that. This planet, our economy, even
our society has limits to what we can throw at it. A few
generations from now, we’ll have exhausted the planet of some of
the key resources we use today, like copper and phosphorus. If this
were really understood, I believe that behavior would be different.
People have been brainwashed over the last several thousand years
that growth is good and it can continue on forever.”
    “Maybe,” Mikhail said, “but if that’s the
case, you can’t fix it overnight.”
    “No, we can’t,” Richard admitted, “I need to
run, I am late as it is for the elders’ meeting.”
    Richard hurried to the town hall and found
the Elders’ Forum room. He knocked sharply on the locked door and
Mario responded almost instantly. “I’m glad you found us. Don’t you
have a key?”
    Richard laughed as he entered. “Good
question. You’d think after paying for all of this that I’d have
keys to the only two locked doors in the complex.”
    A group of ten men and women sat around a
conference table. The room itself was fairly large and contained a
small library in the back along with some radio equipment. A
strange looking machine with a keyboard stood in one corner.
    “Good morning, everyone.” Richard said,
letting his eyes rest on each person at the table. “You’ve been
selected to be the first elders of Percipience. With our initial
population of three hundred, we’ve decided to start with ten clan
huts. During this construction phase, we‘ll be laying out plumbing
and electricity for the fully populated fifty huts but will only be
constructing fifteen. That will give you five for easy expansion in
the upcoming decades without putting a big construction burden on
your small population. There’s no sense in building all of the huts
now though because many would deteriorate before you ever got a
chance to use them, and I want to make sure that each hut has a
good population right from the beginning.”
    He told them they would receive no special
privileges as elders for their huts. They would be expected to do
the same work as the others and, in addition, would be responsible
for managing their hut and helping to oversee the village. Their
word would be law, but they must be fair. He called them