A Visitor to the Future - 32 - Auditors Assemble an Airship

"Is that odd?" I asked, "I sort of assumed that they did - it seemed like Blaise is used to designing aircraft from what he was telling me."

"Not odd, but certainly not common for a project like this," replied Tungsten, "People design blueprints, yes, but to actually build it yourselves?"

"It is necessary," said Regolith, now standing at the bar, "We require independence in our projects. That also means that we must maintain the vessel ourselves."

Blaise finished taking a sip from a martini glass before responding, "Once you've fabricated and programmed the first 3D printer it's all downhill from there - it's not like we had to build everything with our own hands. But yeah, Regolith, Sasha, Alexandra and me spent about a year on it. No different to a pre-Consortium project in that way."

"I feel like I'm missing something here," I said.

"Basically, we're off-grid!" clarified Blaise, "The ship isn't integrated with Consortium systems. Yeah, sure, the Consortium provides us with power and resources - it even has a few drones about for safety reasons. But the actual systems and instruments are independent. That's important for ships like the Peeping Tom."

"I did not choose the name," Regolith said, disapproving, "It was put to a vote."

"Oh, lay off it Regolith, it's fun! Auditing ship, spying on things?" replied Blaise, giving him an gentle elbowing.

"Why is having independent systems so important?" I asked.

"The role of an Auditor is not to trust what the Consortium tells you at face value," said Regolith, "And to take reasonable steps to independently verify information. An isolated system provides us with another objective viewpoint - instruments that have never interacted with the Consortium. We can compare the results to what the Consortium tells us."

"In other words," said Blaise, "You have to be a bit paranoid."

"That is one way of stating it. I prefer to describe our reasonable steps as diligent," said Regolith.

Thinking back to the Anchor Challenge, I wondered whether it would have taken Blaise and Regolith nearly as long to pinpoint the conclusion that Tungsten had eventually found. They certainly seemed to have the right mindset for investigation from what they'd said so far.

"Can I ask why you're both interested in auditing?" I asked.

"I've always been good at breaking things," said Blaise, "Seems like a natural progression to use those skills for something good."

"Had you asked me a few hundred years ago," said Regolith, "I would have said that it was because I did not trust the Consortium. I have since corrected that bias. These days I do not trust anything until it is independently verified and checked, which includes the Consortium. Auditing work helps to reassure both ourselves and the population that the system works correctly."

Tungsten chimed in, opening a second can of Mintleet and holding it in front of his face. "That's exactly why the right to audit is so important within the Consortium. Though it is a right most commonly exercised by Auditors, it is a critically important oversight role. It's also a right that I haven't exercised much myself, which is why I'm here with the Auditors today - I'm interested in using it more often and wanted to learn the ropes, as it were. When we were doing the Anchor Challenge I realised that I'd become too accustomed to the Consortium just being there."

"That is a common enough revelation to spark people onto the path of auditing," said Regolith.

I thought of the next natural thing to ask, "How many Auditors actually are there?"

"That would depend on your definition of Auditor," said Regolith, "Almost every citizen exercises their right to audit at some point in their life - the schooling system encourages it. That is the most common group of Auditors. The next most common are those who will continue to do so irregularly throughout their lives through either interest or a feeling of obligation or duty. Finally, there are the full-time Auditors like ourselves, those people who dedicate a significant portion of their lives to auditing - the total number of people following a similar approach to our own numbers in the millions."

I was a bit surprised by that, and said as much.

"It makes a lot of sense really," said Tungsten, "Auditing is one of the most necessary roles in the Consortium. Plus, it is only natural for both humans and CIs to be equally curious about and critical of the systems in which they live - auditing seems to be the natural conclusion of both those traits."

"Do you find the work rewarding?" I asked Blaise and Regolith.

"Yes," said Regolith simply, "Very."

Blaise scratched his head slightly before responding, "It does need a bit of a different mindset to what you're probably used to, though. The fact is that actually finding something wrong in the Consortium is rare. Ninety-nine point nine nine percent of the time you're not going to find anything wrong. When I first started that got me annoyed a lot. But then you realise that not finding anything wrong is a good thing, and you're doing your job right. You have to get yourself out of thinking I will find something wrong, and into the mindset of is this working right? It was Sasha who helped me to realize that, I'll introduce you later."

"Frequent breaks are often beneficial too," added Regolith, "We are very rarely under any sort of time pressure - if we find anything concerning and urgent we can also ask other Auditors to contribute."

"What sort of thing would be concerning or urgent?"

"Sixty-three years ago we spent about six months observing the power relay stations around Earth," said Regolith, "We found a minor rotational deviance that the Consortium wouldn't detect for another month, but would start causing issues in a number of weeks. We reported it, had it independently verified by other teams and submitted an error report. The issue has now been fixed. Urgent issues were much more common in the early days of the Consortium - a rarity now."


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