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Workflow
Every Program Commander treasures some particular aspect of the job and for Thur it is compliance. The government has very specific rules on everything and grant proposals are supposed to use specific fonts, margins, have prescribed number of pages, prearranged sections, provide specific information on the investigators' mathematical activities and so on. Within days Thur has absorbed all this knowledge and started applying it religiously.
"I know that it is tough on everybody," he says waiving a font measuring gadget, "but this is the government. One day you screw up the font size and the next you will be bombing the wrong country."
"I am not bombing anyone and I am not checking fonts either," rebels Mek but the others are less certain. There is a powerful lure of compliance checking that resides in an odd combination of a mindless activity and a dramatic impact on the affected individuals.
Thur turns out to be spectacularly good at attracting Program Commanders to this nearly extinct art. A daily quiz called "Compliant or not?" featuring snippets of questionable proposals, font measuring workshops, compliance speed trials and so forth, is just a small sample of ways in which Thur engages everyone with his favorite activity.
So when the real proposals finally arrive Thur is ready.
"Out of over hundred submissions routed to me," he exclaims excitedly, "only three were compliant."
"So what did you do?" Uce asks with morbid curiosity.
"I returned them all without review," explains Thur, "isn't this what we are supposed to do?"
Having 93% of his workload processed in just two days puts Thur on a path to become the employee of the year and the fastest Program Commander ever. However, the three compliant proposals turn out to be tough cookies.
"I keep reviewing them but there is no consistency," Thur is getting more and more depressed and complains daily.
"How many reviews do you have?" the Programs Commanders inquire helpfully.
"Over thirty for each but I am still lacking a solid statement indicating fundability," confesses Thur sipping his tea. "The ones that I returned without review were so much better," he admits with sadness in his voice.
The silver spoon of employee recognition is slipping out of Thur's grasp and out of desperation one day he declares, "Perhaps I will fund all three of them. After all it is only 3% of my allocated budget."
These gutsy decisions pay off handsomely. By the year's end Thur is the most decorated Program Commander in the Mathematics Unit and the darling of the Government Science Agency higher administration.
"What do you think of the Program Commander Inutilis program?" Mek asks Chael on the side.
"The jury is still out," Chael replies, "but I have an idea about Thur."
Serendipitous conversation
One day Chael takes out Thur for coffee.
"How do you like the job" he inquires.
"It is interesting," answers Thus sipping tea from the cup that he never parts with.
"Have you ventured beyond the Mathematics Unit?" Chael asks.
"Is there anything else?"
"Let me share a secret with you," he says with a smile, "this building is like a spaceship."
"It needs fuel, engine, and whatever else," he says looking probingly at Thur.
"I know a little about spaceships," Thur says quietly and Chael relaxes as if suddenly his mind got a lot more clear.
"Well," he says confidently, "mathematics is also like fuel, nothing happens without it."
"Every funded mathematics project is read and digested somewhere in this building in a matter of weeks!" he whispers.
"Amazing!" Thurs exclaims. Then his face clouds, "But I have declined nearly all of them," he adds after a pause.
"Don't worry. Curiously, the declined ones are absorbed even faster," says Chael and stops as if he said too much.
"How can it be?" Thur is curious.
"Software," says Chael, "we call it Freejunket. It allows any scientist in the world full access to all of our resources."
"And where does all this mathematics go?" asks Thur.
"Everywhere," says Chael, "it underwrites every scientific project and brings it up to speed. It is the intellectual currency in our world."
"On a planetary scale," he adds, "and the biggest consumer is the Climate Change project."
"The Climate Change project?" Thur is clearly surprised, "what is it?"
They talk for another half hour and in the end Thur looks like he just drank a gallon of Red Bull.
"I can't believe it! This is amazing!" he keeps repeating.
"Sometimes you have to shit in your own nest," Chael concludes cryptically as they part.
A+ for humans
Back in the methane lounge on Kepler 438b Zaph and Ord are exchanging thoughts.
"Math is about understanding but only about understanding," Zaph concludes after probing Lander's brain. "To actually use it for anything takes quite a bit more, and these guys think that math is crap anyway," he thinks loudly, "It would take a great deal of effort to conquer the Galaxy."
"What if we worry about nothing?" he finally poses a question that has been nagging him.
Ord, who was recently briefed by Thur, is ready with the answers.
"Yeah, math alone is not enough," he admits patiently, "you need to know how to use it and you need discipline. Unfortunately they have both."
"Let me tell you something," he begins to relate what Thur just leaked to him. "A while ago they discovered that their planet looks pretty good from far away and it scared them quite a bit."
"Yeah?"
"And you know what they did? They cloaked it!" Ord's tone is a high praise for human inventiveness.
"Cloaked it? How?" Zaph is also impressed.
"This is called the Climate Change project. They recruited every member of their species to burn shit and muck the atmosphere as much as they could. And it worked splendidly. The planet does look like shit now, and even they wonder if they did not go too far," Ord explains.
"Every member of their species?" Zaph is flabbergasted.
"Well," says Ord, "5% does half of the work, but everybody is pulling their load."
"And they use mathematics for it?" Zaph brings back the main point.
"Without math they would look like an inter-species vacation destination within ten thousand parsec radius," Ord channels the revelations from Thur, "they gave all they got to this project!"
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