Chapter 3

Friday evening found me sitting in a board chair, waiting. The board room was a big square thing, completely sealed off from the rest of the world. It was said that people could survive in there even in the worst kind of situations: earthquakes, bombings, it could even work as a banker, or a panic room, if the situation called for it. It was designed to be self-sufficient, with adjacent restrooms, kitchen, and even sleeping quarters for all board members. The whole thing was hundred meters underground. There were other board rooms above ground, for meetings that were inferior. Like the subsidiary company meetings, etcetera.

The room had twenty desks in total, all arranged five aside to form a square. With all sides non conjoining. As far as I could gather, all seats had never been filled with board members. The maximum member of board members had been achieved over twenty years ago; before my father and my uncle, my mother’s brother, called it quits to their partnership. Back then, there had been seventeen board members consisting of members from both sides of the family. Since then, the board members had been reduced to only include the immediate family. Occasionally, expertise members were invited on temporary basis. For the last three board meetings, there had been a financial director and a law director present without fail. And it seemed that the tread would continue for a while as the memo issued for the board meeting had included them.

I was alone in the room, having arrived earlier than everybody else, as was custom of me. I thought it better to be early rather than late. It was always safer that way. Anything could happen and one would find themselves awfully late. There were refreshments already set on the desks. The attendants had been busy; juice, water, and even an allotment of sodas. If the meeting lasted long enough, as they usually did, a break would be taken for a quick meal.

The first to arrive, well second considering I had already arrived, was Mũlwa. The firstborn of the family, the general first born of the whole family. He was the general height for a male in the Mũtinda family, one meter seventy. Of an average build, and very dark of skin. He wore corrective eyeglasses nearly all the time. He owned several companies, subsidiary to the Mũtinda group but his main one was Steve Consultancy Services. Offering IT and related consultation services.

“Hey! Did you wait here all day for us?” he asked me as he stopped in front of my desk. I had the habit of sitting furthest away from the door and the front of the board room, where the chair of the board sat. He was a jovial fellow, always finding something to smile about. And easy on the bottle too.

“I have other things to do, you know. I just don’t like been late, is all.”

“You still come too early even for that,” he replied as he moved to sit in the middle chair, on the left wing to the front side. Facing the door. “So, did you shoot any fireballs lately? Or is your magic still refusing to obey you?”

I just shook my head. That question didn’t deserve an answer at all. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of my brothers; Kanyele and Mũtethwa. Owner of everything engineering related in the family, and owner of everything technology. Kanyele was the heaviest in the family with a slightly showing belly. Mũtethwa was the tallest in the family, approaching one meter eighty. He was lean, unlike his arrival companion. But they happened to be the loudest in the family. They also used to look alike when they were young. They didn’t look alike anymore. After exchanging greetings with the two of us, they went back to whatever they had been talking about. Mũlwa soon joined them. Kĩlonzo arrived soon after them, he would be the law consultant for the meeting. He had also been in the last two meetings. He was a tall lanky man in his forties. He joined Kanyele and Mũtethwa on the back side, facing the chair.

The girls all arrived at the same time. Merrily chatting about. Unlike the males, the females of the family had had a hard time maintaining a uniform height, but no issues with the skin tone, though. Mũtave was the tallest at one meter sixty, followed by Katũnge four centimeters below her and finally Mũtethya a few centimeters above one meter fifty. Their friend, Mary who was also the boards financial advisor, was even shorter. And light. I wasn’t sure she even made it to one meter fifty. After pleasantries, Mũtave and Mũtethya sat at the side close to the door while Mary joined us on the far side. She sat close to Katũnge who had taken her secretarial seat on the front side.

Soon enough, everyone was absorbed into conversations about each other’s lives, what they were doing, where they had been to. Their significant others, and all that. Things of no meaning to me. So, I kept to myself except the occasional grunts and acknowledgements when a question was directed at me. Mũtinda arrived more than five minutes over when the meeting was due to start. We had gotten used to it by now. Though there had been talk of delegating him from chair. Some thought it might cause him not to attend the meetings altogether. Katũnge started admonishing him even before he could sit and offer any greetings to us. He just smiled and shook his head at that. As if it was an inconsequential matter. It infuriated me a bit but I kept telling myself that it was nothing to get worked up over. Maybe they had been right, it was time he stepped down as chair. Mũtave wasn’t helping the situation by trying to defend him. She always did that all the time the debate came up.

He called the meeting in order and reported that Nzisa, our step-mother won’t be coming for the meeting. It caused Katũnge to pause and report the same for our mother. The both of them been teachers meant they didn’t have the time to attend meetings as often as the rest of us. And so the meeting started with Katũnge reading the previous meeting’s minutes. We soon moved to father talking about our glad he was we had come. It was like he thought it was such a great bother for us to come. The meetings were not fun, especially when the debates and arguments started, but they helped us as a family advance our goals. So they were worth it, and necessary.

After his emotional speech, rather than the proper chair report he was supposed to give, he surrendered the floor to Mary to give us the super good news everyone wanted to hear. She began by saying that she had reviewed the group’s financial record keeping procedures and found them to be satisfactory, in preparation for the upcoming yearly financial audit. Huh! I guess it wasn’t that time of the year yet. But it would be in the next board meeting.

“I had thought today would be when we receive the financial statements,” Mũlwa said perplexed. I guess I wasn’t the only one.

“Hehehe, your mind is too money focused, brother,” Mũtethya replied to him.

“It is the whole point of all this, isn’t it?” Mũlwa threw back.

“Some of us care about more than just the money,” Mũtave reminded him.

“But we need profit to keep doing what we do,” Mũlwa told her. We all knew that. The notion of been a philanthropist, while good for those who wanted to, only made sense after you had the money to be philanthropic with.

They soon settled down and Mary was allowed to finish her financial report together with the recommendations she thought would help the group moving forward. She might have been of small stature but she was good at helping the group make big money. After all, the group had never had a loss year since she started. Even through a rough two years a few years back. And we all respected her for it. It could have turned out bad, really bad.

Then came the developmental reports and goals session. It had become the meat of the meetings for the last few years. And for a good reason. Mũtave went first. Mũtethya hadn’t even tried to present before her. It boded ill. Mũtave was a socialite and a doctor. She held a doctorate in two three fields of biology that I knew of, though I couldn’t recall which. Most of the family members did, or were pursuing them. Not doctorates in biology, but doctorates in general.

“So the last few months have been good for us, very good indeed if I do say so myself. Our hibernation trials—”

“You mean cryogenic sleep?” Mũlwa asked.

“I mean what I say I mean,” she retorted, annoyed, before continuing. “Anyway, our trials have been showing very promising results. During the last two months, we have removed three mice from hibernation every week, and they have fully recovered from the prolonged hibernation without any issue. There is no visible or observable detriment to their biological functions as far as we can tell. Our scientists have hypothesized that we may not run into issues with this batch until it’s all out of hibernation by the end of the year. Unfortunately, we will have to wait for two years before we can start removing the next batch from hibernation.”

“Observable? Even at the cellular level?” Mũtethya asked.

“Yes. Their cellular function is perfectly working as expected. The only issue we have now is the degree of muscle wasting. We know the longer they stay hibernated, the more muscle wasting they suffer from.”

“How long have they been hibernated for?” Mũtethwa asked, causing Kanyele to settle back down. Either they had the same question, highly likely, or he decided to wait to ask his question later.

“Two years, three months and this would be their third week.”

“How long do you think they can last before they lose too much muscle?” Kanyele finally asked.

“Eight more months, give or take.” After a minute of no questions being asked by anyone, Mũtave moved on to her next topic. “Our other project hasn’t been as progressive as we would have liked, but we have still made steps towards the right direction. The longest surviving brain we have right now is nearing months after its owner was pronounced ‘dead’. With access to the brain at the moment of death, we can maintain brain activity indefinitely. Or as long as biologically possible. Reactivating a dead brain has proved an unsurmountable obstacle for now. So, we have concentrated on a backup for when the body stops supplying the brain with energy and oxygen. Our initial experiments have proved promising. Very promising.”

Mũtave had finally started moving her research in a very interesting direction. The hibernation thing didn’t interest me at all. I saw no logical application for it. Especially now. Wait, is that supposed to be practical? When she started, she had said that it could be used for long space expeditions. Preserving the brain activity was an entirely different thing altogether. It was an assured immortality in that nothing could really kill you, short of your brain been destroyed itself. If pushed far enough, it could even save decapitated individuals. Though the reattachment of the spinal cord would prove a bit finicky. A few questions were asked, but I didn’t think it was the right time yet for that. A few more months for the research to bear more information was warranted. Mũtave was done after that.

Mũtethya started with a bit of hesitation. Not very noticeable but we all knew her. “I’ll start with the bad news. You all heard in the news the breakthrough that Juniver Research Labs announced. I’m not going to lie; we are currently a month or two behind them.”

“I thought you guys were way ahead in that field?” Mũtethwa asked.

“We thought so too. I was given no indication that Juniver was so close. The intelligence provided to us was, as indicated by their announcement, false at best and way outdated. The intelligence report claimed that they had a high confidence that what Juniver and the others were doing was far inferior. We have had to rethink on the progress of the others too. Conakry Health shouldn’t be that far behind. They have a history of sharing research data with Juniver.”

“So, there is a chance of not one but more than two other labs been ahead of you?” Mũtethwa asked. He was the highly critic of the family.

“Don’t worry. Soon enough, we will be ahead again.”

“You can’t be sure of that.” This time it was Kanyele. I didn’t doubt Mũtethya’s team would be back on top. I had strong suspicions of what had actually happened. It had me worried.

“I can. We knew for certain that some of our research data had been leaked to someone. We just didn’t know to whom, and how it was leaked. The whom has been answered, the how still remains. We have increased our security measures; there will be no leaks in the future.”

“What’s your progress so far?” Mũlwa asked. A clear attempt to stop the discussion from spiraling.

“We have been able to successfully induce limb regeneration in monkeys. We are currently waiting to see what grows out. It should be done in a month or two.”

“If Juniver presented your research, shouldn’t you assume that it’s already a success?” Katũnge asked.

“Not really. They could have done something with the research that allowed them to be successful, right?” Mũtethwa answered, asking Mũtethya for confirmation.

“The scientists think so too.”

“Finally, I can stop worrying about losing my hands in a factory mishap,” Kanyele proclaimed, wriggling his hands on top of his desk. He had come close to losing one of them two years back. You would think as a senior engineer, he would leave the hand work for others. But he once said if he did that, he would feel way too detached from his creations. Like they were alien things to him.

“We are only at the monkey phase.” Mũtethya cautioned him.

“They are close cousins. It shouldn’t be that different for me.” Then he looked at her with a mock hurt expression. “Are you saying you would not try to regenerate my hands if I came to you with them turned to minced meat? But I’m your brother, you would leave me a cripple?”

“You would wait until human trials were done.”

“But that could take years.” He whined.

“Mativo’s didn’t.”

“But you are not Mativo.”

She turned to me then, and gave a sly smile, “No I’m not.” She had been the only one not surprised when I quickly shut down my human trials, less than a year after they began. “Next agenda, we finally have our first artificial womb baby, Danice. She was born last week, a perfectly healthy chimpanzee girl.”

“The moment the first trimester passed, I told you there was nothing to worry about anymore,” I told her. Unlike natural pregnancies, an embryo in an artificial womb was assured maturity when established in the womb. Short of a catastrophic failure of the womb, everything else was highly controlled to the perfect conditions for the perfect pregnancy.

“You never know what could happen,” Katũnge chastised.

But I was not dissuaded, “An artificial womb does not suffer from emotional fluctuations that lead to hormonal imbalances that could affect the viability of the embryo as it continues to develop. Once the embryo has established a way to get nutrients and rid itself of waste, it’s all set and done.”

“Moving on,” Mũtethya quickly started. “My last report as you all know is on immortality.”

“Are we finally going to be immortal?” Mũlwa asked excitedly.

“Not so fast.”

“There are already drugs that take off ten twenty years from those over forty years of biological maturity. That in a way, does promise a degree of immortality.”

“He isn’t wrong Mũtethya, your results are long overdue.” Mũtethwa added.

“I know that. What I’m offering is more sophisticated and final than what’s already out there. And we are finally starting human trials by the end of the year.”

“How long are the trials going to take?” Mũtave asked.

“Around two years till the end of phase one.”

“Huh! Why that long?” Mary asked. She had been silent so long that I had forgot she was in the meeting. When I thought about it, Kĩlonzo hadn’t uttered any word yet. It usually meant we hadn’t spoken anything that could be too disastrous to the group.

“After a month, the results will be noticeable. But we will need to monitor them for any side effects for the procedure. That’s why phase one lasts for two years. Then they will enter phase two which will last five years, phase three for ten years and finally phase four. By that time, it would be considered safe to say that our procedures work.”

“People will have to wait for seventeen years?”

“No. After phase one, it will be made available for the limited few. After phase two, to the general public.”

“Okay, my turn now.” Kanyele declared with a florish. He must have been dying to present his achievements and only waited until he thought everyone else was done. As far as the memo had said, those three where the only ones with reports to make, well and me. But I always, without fail, went last.

“I’ll start with light-speed. We finally broke it. We have a prototype engine that has achieved and went past the speed of light. Now the hard part will be upscaling it to the size that can power one of Mativo’s humongous ships.”

“They are not that big.” I complained for the sake of it.

“Your ships can be measured in acres, acres my brother,” Katũnge added, not helping at all.

“They need to be that big to support humans, the weakest link in the proverbial space chain.”

“Hey! This is my time. Wait until I am done before you start on his things. Where was I?”

“What does that speed mean for space travel?” Mũtethwa asked, pushing the discussion along.

“Well, the journey to our nearest neighbor can now be completed in less than four years. We haven’t tried testing the highest possible speed the prototype can achieve yet. We might be able to bring it down to months maybe.”

“With my current ship size? Or something bigger?”

“No! Never!” Kanyele was adamant about not putting his engine on one of my ships. I didn’t get it. Unless he started building his own ships, that was where they would end up.

“Is there another speed limit past light-speed?” Mũlwa asked.

“Not that I know of,” Kanyele answered. “Unless someone else knows something.” A few shakes of the head confirmed that no one at the current meeting knew of any speed limits past light-speed. “Any more questions on that topic?... Moving on, anti-gravity. —”

“I thought you had already done that,” Mũtave interrupted him.

“Yes, but improvements are always in order. The Gravity Device Mativo has on his ships is like the first iteration of the wheel ever invented; crude and barely performing its intended function. Its efficiency is abysmal and its power consumptions ungainly. Its chances of failure are so high that the ships have wings and other redundant recovery mechanisms. –“

“Why are you using it then?” Mũtethya asked me.

“Why not? The worst that could happen is it failing forcing us to hard land back on the planet. There is so many failure recovery safety protocols that crashing is near impossible. The best case scenario, we successfully leave the planet saving us the billions it would cost to assemble the ship in space. Of course, the device could always fail in fiery explosion.” I answered her.

“That only happened once. And we already solved that issue.”

“It still cost me a ship,” I reminded him. And he had the audacity to smile at me. I wasn’t the richest in the family, not by a long stretch. Every penny muttered to me more than it did for them. At least it appeared so to me.

“Anyway, the new iteration is more energy efficient and functions better, way better. By the time Mativo comes back from his expedition, it will be ready for a test flight.” Kanyele finished up his report. I still wished it had been ready for the expedition. I had pestered him for weeks before he revoked my security clearance to his research labs and blocked me on all communication networks.

“What about the light-speed prototype? Will it be ready for a test flight then?” Mũtethwa asked the question for me.

“Not sure. It depends on how long the expedition takes, but it could be close. Maybe a year away.” Kanyele said. That gave me hope. All I had to do was spend a whole year gallivanting around the solar system and I would come back to a faster than light ship engine. If only my schedule was so fluid.

After a few minutes of silence, Katũnge finally said, “I think it’s your turn Mativo.”

“Well, the first thing I wanted to talk about is Venus. –”

“I hate Venus,” Kanyele commented.

“We all do. So close yet so far away,” Mũtethya agreed with him. I waited to see if they were done. Apparently not.

“Is there any new proposals on how to terraform it faster? The last one I heard promised something in the tune of more than a thousand years,” Mũlwa wondered.

“Even with immortality, a thousand years to wait for something seems not worthy it. With the way we are going, we could have exhausted the solar system. And with journeys to the nearest star systems counted in a few years or maybe months, people are bound to get bored of waiting.” Mũtethwa commented.

“I think Mativo was saying something about Venus,” Father spoke for the first time since the developmental reports and goals session had begun. He had a look, as if he knew more about what I was about to say. Someone was not fully loyal in one of my companies, and that was not a good thing. Even if it was to my father. The talks quickly died down and I continued.

“One of my research teams submitted a proposal that could have Venus terraformed in around fifty years. Twenty years, if we push. But that has the potential to backfire on us. Very badly. The –”

“Wait! You said fifty years, right?” Mũtethya said.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?” Katũnge asked.

“That I said fifty years? Yes.”

“That it could work,” Katũnge clarified.

“No. It is a proposal. It will have to be scrutinized by other research teams before it can fully be accepted. By the end, the time frame could change. It might be less or more time. We will have to wait and see.”

“How long before the scrutiny process is over?” Mũtethya asked.

“I would say on average one two years. But it could be as long as ten.”

“So, we might have an answer by the time you are back?” Mũlwa this time.

“Yes.”

“And how long do you think before we can terraform it?”

“Venus is protected under charter by the League of Nations. We would never be allowed to do anything there.” I answered.

“We could offer them the proposal,” Mũtave suggested.

“Never. There is nothing they could give that would be enough of a compensation.” I told her.

“What then? We wait for a thousand years when we know we could do it in fifty?” Mũtave asked.

“No. We do something.”

“You can’t be suggesting…” Mũtethwa trailed off, as if afraid to finish the sentence.

“That would be risky,” Kanyele said. Katũnge and Mary nodding to that. Father was silent, nearly expressionless, on his seat.

“It could mean the end for us,” Mũtethya warned.

“I have to warn you—” Kĩlonzo tried to intercede but was silenced by several ‘we know’.

“What?” Mũtave seemed to have been left out somewhere.

“Mativo is suggesting we take control of Venus from the League of Nations,” Mũlwa explained to her.

“Why? How? That…” and she didn’t seem happy with that. And was having trouble expressing her displeasure. “We cannot do that.”

“Why not?” I asked her.

“We could work with them. Share,” she pleaded.

“And how would that benefit us? We would simply be handing them the resources in a silver plate. They would have done nothing to earn it except set a bunch of laws.”

“Father, we cannot do this.” She turned to our father for support. Almost pleading.

“I’m not for the idea either. But it is a sound business decision. Mativo will be back from exploring the Solar System in a year’s time. We will want to go farther out after. Most if not all the others are for the idea, you too. –”

“That’s different.”

I took off where Father had left. “It’s not. A lot more resources will be needed to explore further out of the Solar System. We will need to exploit everything in the Solar System for that. Venus included. If we share Venus with them, it will set a precedent. They will think themselves entitled to everything we come across. Every planet, every star, every moon. We will do all the work, and they will do nothing, with our hard earned fortune falling in their laps. Sooner or later, we will resent them. We will come back and take it by force then. The people will have developed attachments to it. And they will fight. And we will kill them all. After all, they will be thieves, taking what is ours by force. This prevents war, at least a war where a lot of innocent die.”

“It will set a different kind of precedent. Corporations owning planets, moons and star systems. Soon, there will be a war between these corporations. And people will still die.”

“Highly unlikely.” Mũtethwa argued back. “Besides, wars between corporations would be costly for both parties. And corporations are all for profit. Not loss. They only support wars that don’t affect them negatively financially.”

“Okay. Now that that’s out of the way, can I talk about the upcoming exploration?” When I got a few murmurs of consent, I soldiered on to the expedition. “As you all know, in eight weeks’ time, I will embark on a journey to explore the whole of the Solar System. Well, it will mainly be the main eight planets and their moons. Plus, the asteroid belts; some of the asteroids. There’s nothing much to report. Everything is going as planned. The crew is as ready as it will ever be. The last of the scheduled simulations will be contacted in two weeks’ time.

“The final route has been planned and mapped out. You will find it in pages three and four of the booklets in front of you. Pages five and six outline the expected timeline of events through-out the whole expedition. From pages seven onwards, it lists all that we will be doing at all the destinations we will stop at. What we expect to find there and the difficulty of performing those exactions. And the last two pages give a brief overview of the things we might try to do if time allows it.”

“It says here that you will land on Mercury.” Mũlwa pointed out.

“Attempt an approach on Mercury. While landing on Mercury isn’t the hardest thing on the whole expedition, approaching it is a whole different matter. If we get close enough for landing, we attempt it. But only the shuttles not the main ship.”

“Can you imagine getting stranded on Mercury?”

“Guaranteed death.” Mũtethwa said.

“Yeah, but before that.”

“I don’t know.”