Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 204: Alternate “Event”

“I realize that this is on very short notice, but I believe the situation necessitates haste.” Isaac announced, opening up the meeting “Right now, we’re workshopping ideas for how the regulations could be changed to prevent another incident like what happened yesterday.”

He was currently speaking to a group of scientists, members of various regulatory bodies, industry leaders and literally anyone else who might be able to give good input on the situation.

… or at least the people he’d been able to get ahold of on short notice.

The Winter Solstice Event was currently going on, but he wasn’t needed there, which annoyed him a little.

On one hand, rendering your involvement superfluous because your mentees were just that good was one of the highest honors a mentor could receive. On the other, being told, however politely, “We don’t need your help anymore” … that didn’t feel great.

Also, he’d have loved to explore the newly opened Tier 8, which they hadn’t been allowed to touch last year. But he was going to be stuck in this room all day.

“First, we need to establish why that shit happened.” One of the inspectors he’d invited said “I mean, yeah, they fucked up, but there is only so much we can do, legally speaking, when people just ignore regulations.”

“Thank you, Rainer, well put,” Isaac said. The group was currently only comprised of twelve people and they’d decided to give the formality a rest until it grew larger.

“That guy was an idiot, it’s that simple.” Anne Schildhauer, the CEO of Isaac’s company and the person who ran the day-to-day, said “We know most of what they did, which corners they cut, and what the consequences were. Everyone knows that if you cut corners, you need plausible deniability to avoid being prosecuted for the resulting mess. The simple fact that the responsible person was on-site proves he’s an idiot and everything else followed from that.”

There was a long period of silence as everyone stared at her. Well, at their webcams, but the effect was the same.

“You do know what that sounded like, Anne, right?” Isaac finally asked dryly and she blushed furiously.

“I’m sorry, but the power of plausible deniability is legendary among higher management, no matter what industry you’re in, usually because we’ve heard of someone who’s gotten away with some extremely suspect behavior. If there isn’t a smoking gun linking the big boss to an incident, they can usually claim innocence and get away with it.” Rainer sighed “Let me tell you, it makes our job suck most of the time.”

Isaac grimaced at the thought. It could not be easy to prove whether someone knew something, even with the [System] helping.

“Right now, making the people in charge responsible for their crap is a secondary concern to preventing repeat incidents.” Isaac said “Yesterday wasn’t nearly as devastating as it could have been and went well-ish once help arrived, but it could have been a lot worse. We can narrow down options that make it harder for managers to bypass responsibility later, right now, we’ve got lives to save.”

“Aren’t those two inseparably linked?” Rainer asked “In the industry, too many people at a high-level stop seeing their employees as people and start looking at them as numbers on a balance sheet. And then, they’re more than willing to make those employees risk life and limb to fatten their boss’ wallets.”

“We need to make sure they remember that their actions affect people,” Anne suggested.

“They know what their actions do, they just don’t care. That’s the whole problem.” Isaac said “We need to make them care. Somehow.”

“Mind control?” Someone called from the back, earning a few chuckles.

“Without mind control.” Isaac sighed. This was going to be a loooooooong day.

***

“I still think that we need to make them responsible for all summoning and Hunting Ground harvesting on company time. If something goes wrong, it’s on the person in charge of the company, no matter how much they’re involved in the summoning.” A man Isaac didn’t know yet suggested.

Isaac sighed internally. That had been suggested in various iterations over a dozen times.

“And I keep saying that won’t work.” Wechsler sighed. The inspector who’d formerly belonged to Germany’s agricultural ministry was rarely around the team anymore, but he was still a good friend and a great help when he showed up to help.

“And why not?”

“Because it’s legally sketchy to make someone responsible for stuff they aren’t directly responsible for. In a large company, even the most extreme, obsessive, anal-retentive micro-manager can’t hope to keep on top of one-tenth of what goes on in the company at any given point in time.” Wechsler said, “Morally, blaming the big boss for corruption in their company is probably right, and chances are they know something about such corruption even if it can’t be proven, but it’s more than a little iffy, legally speaking.”

“Won’t making them responsible for any incidents make them pay attention to what’s going on?”

Wechsler just shook his head.

“The state could just hire more inspectors, and make having someone official present for industrial summoning mandatory.” A young man suggested. He belonged to a group that campaigned for industry responsibility, a cause that Isaac agreed with, though he very much felt that these specific people had some very unrealistic expectations of how things worked in the real world.

“And where will you get all those inspectors from?” Wechsler asked “Most governmental offices, no matter what they watch over, are drastically understaffed. We’d have to retrain all inspectors from the food service industry, infrastructure, all the various industries that produce materials, etc. and we’d barely have enough to oversee the current volume of industrial summoning, let alone future expansions.”

“But we can use that as a temporary fix, can’t we? And then train more?” the kid suggested.

Isaac shook his head “It’s not practical to not inspect anything except industrial summoning. Completely shifting would just be a knee-jerk overreaction.”

“Practical.” The kid scoffed “We can figure out a solution that works, and then we make it practical.”

Isaac had to suppress a chuckle “We’re literally here, three days before Christmas because things are winding down until the 24th, then we’ll have two holidays after that where nothing else can legally be summoned. That’s how long we have to come up with a good solution that we can present to the relevant bodies of government so they can hopefully be implemented. Practicality is all that matters.”

“Let’s switch to a different topic.” Wechsler suggested “Isaac, your company deals with Hunting Grounds up to Tier 8 and you’ve never had a problem. What’s your solution for when things go wrong? What is your emergency backup?”

“Me.” Isaac said flatly “Nothing above Tier 6 gets summoned unless I’m in the building. Or another S-Ranker is around, though it’s usually me who’s there.”

“It’s not like that helps us any.” Wechsler sighed. Isaac nodded.

“What we really need is to look over everything, all summoning. Too many people fuck around with monsters and it’s other people who suffer the consequences.” One of the other inspectors suggested.

“So, a police state?” Isaac suggested.

“Look, I know how that sounds, but it would work, wouldn’t it?”

“Do you mean ‘the ends justify the means’?” Rainer asked.

The original speaker nodded.

Isaac slumped onto the table, then pushed himself back into a sitting position before replying “Do you know what the problem with that justification is? The end results depend on your means. So, if you use extreme means, you might warp the situation so much that in the end, you’ve got a million different kinds of new problems. In other words, the ‘the means change the end’.

“So, what do we do now? A police state is off the table, and so is overdoing it with the inspectors and legally problematic solutions …”

None of the people here were stupid, at least most of them, but they were tired. So tired. So many solutions were suggested, so many solutions discarded.

Just a little longer …

“Look, kids, it’s simple.” Professor Chandler said, “If managers and company owners care more about their bank accounts than their employees’ lives, then we need to make sure that when their companies summon, either their necks are also on the line, or their wallets are.”

“We already talked about that.” Isaac pointed out “Excessively.”

The Professor hadn’t been able to make it earlier today, so he hadn’t known about that, but really, had he really thought that no one would have already brought that up?

“There are legal issues of making managers and CEOs directly responsible for what other people do, I’m aware.” Chandler said, “But let me ask you this: have you a ‘Qualified Person’?”

Isaac frowned “You mean someone qualified to do a certain task?”

Rainer facepalmed “Why the hell didn’t anyone think of that before?”

Isaac kept looking around, waiting for someone to explain until Chandler finally did.

“It’s a principle from medicine manufacturing. A Qualified Person is an experienced pharmacist, biologist, or chemist who has to look over all documentation available for a specific batch of product and sign off on it as safe, or discard it. If the batch is released for sale, and it turns out to have been faulty, then it’s all on the Qualified Person’s head.

“Now, my suggestion would be we create a system along those lines. The person who’s ultimately in charge has to either sign off on any summoning operations because they’re the only ones who are qualified to do so. If they don’t have the time, they have to designate a proxy to sign on their behalf. Meaning that when something goes wrong, it’ll still be on the big boss in charge.”

“Fuck.” Isaac muttered. Knowing that a process like that already existed would have been good to know this morning.

“Would that work, Thomas?” he asked Wechsler.

The lawyer nodded.

“There is one small issue with the Qualified Person system: if something goes wrong that isn’t reflected in the paperwork, like something getting labeled wrong, the Qualified Person isn’t responsible. So if there’s just an unofficial policy to gather more than is normally considered safe, that might give the people in charge a pass.”

Isaac shook his head “When something goes wrong, the people involved can be asked about such a policy under truth-detecting spells. Creating a full cadre of gatherers and bodyguards capable of bypassing such checks would be expensive, probably eating up almost all of the profits they’d gain by ignoring safety regulations.

“Companies might ignore safety regulations for extra profit, but what kind of idiot would bypass necessary safety precautions for no real gains?”

Rainer gave him a pointed look “Like you said, an idiot. Someone would just inevitably decide that it is their good right to ignore the regulations, even if they don’t gain anything from it.”

“And I thought I was pessimistic,” Isaac commented.

“Work as a hygiene inspector for a day, you’ll see where I’m coming from,” Rainer told him seriously.

Isaac sighed and shook his head “Anyway, moving on, we’ve got a basic idea of what might work. Let’s flesh out this proposal and send it to our various political contacts and acquaintances.”

As he wasn’t a lawyer, he stayed out of the next bit for the most part.

Eventually, though, they had a proposal that might get accepted, implemented in a way that was at least mostly true to the original idea.

Hopefully, having upper management sign off on summoning operations, either directly or via a legal proxy, and thereby making them put their own necks on the line, legally speaking, would somewhat alleviate the current problem. At least as long as the damn lobbyists didn’t have their way.