The Weed Agency (11 page)

“Okay, the reason you and everybody on the Hill and everybody outside these walls is so batsh—er, bonkers with frustration at this agency, and all of them like this one, is speed—it takes forever for anything to get done. Somebody finds a weed in their crops, they want it dealt with, like, immediately. They want answers immediately. It’s out there, and you know that
somebody
knows what it is and how to deal with it, and yet
there are all these barriers. They have to take a guess on the best way to deal with it all, while they wait for their problem to work its way up the ladder, and wait for the answer to work its way down the ladder. By the time the answer reaches them, their problem may have completely changed.”

She paused on an image of many arrows heading up a ladder, and many arrows heading down a ladder. The graphic carried the message:

“Precisely!” Gingrich boomed. “That’s it exactly. How old are you, nineteen?”

“Twenty-four,” Ava answered.

“If she can understand this, why can’t you old guys get this?” Gingrich asked with a smirk. He was kidding, but Ava’s heart pounded a bit. At last, recognition! The Speaker of the House was in her office building, dressing down her bosses for not listening to her.

She switched to an image of a spiderweb, where all of the layers were connected with each other in concentric circles.

“What if you could connect everybody who ever worries about these things together so that information passes among them almost instantaneously? Instead of a farmer in Georgia and a state agricultural official in Florida and a pesticide manufacturer in Tennessee and someone here in Washington all responding to this separately and in periodic, static communication, what if they were all simultaneously coordinated? What if instead of this slow-moving, disconnected response, everyone in the system moved like a school of fish or flock of birds, separately but unified, to nip the problem in the bud? Our idea, Weed.gov, can do this.”

Humphrey quietly cleared his throat.

“If you give us the funding to implement Weed.gov, we can
do this,” she said, remembering Humphrey’s emphatic instructions about phrasing. “This would be the collective hive mind of everyone in the entire country involved in growing anything, from the biggest agribusiness giants to small farmers to gardeners. Somebody spots an outbreak of Dutch Elm disease and BOOM! They post it and it gets catalogued. Our experts examine the particular threat to regional agriculture, the most effective responses, the most likely dispersal patterns. Information gets out to everyone who needs it, instantly. For once, information can actually outrun the invasive species themselves.”

Newt stared in awe and glee.

“This is the most profound understanding of my revolutionary vision I have ever encountered from any federal government employee ever!” he said, practically bouncing out of his chair with enthusiasm. He looked at her in amazed delight. “I can’t believe somebody finally gets it!”

This somehow turned Ava’s enthusiasm up another notch. “Picture it: An online encyclopedia of all invasive and noxious weeds—tens of thousands of different species, categorized and cross-referenced. A photo-matching database so that any citizen could upload a photo of a particular weed and have an AI algorithm identify it.”

Humphrey jotted down a note to himself:
MAKE SURE AI DOES NOT DISPLACE HUMAN AGENCY EMPLOYEES
.

“Think about how quickly we would know when some invasive species is in an area!” Ava continued. “Think about how comprehensive our responses would be. In the long run, this could save millions! Within a few years, this could make us so efficient that we could be twice as effective for half the cost. With this up and running, you could probably cut our budget with no drop-off in agency performance!”

Humphrey failed to entirely stifle a spit-take.

“Thank you, Miss Summers, this has all been very helpful, but we ought to remind the Speaker of the caution necessary for long-term budgetary assessments!” He wiped the mess. “So as you can see, Mr. Speaker, the block grant proposal favored by some in the House, such as Congressman Bader, might result in some short-term savings, but would ultimately result in a disjointed system of responses that proved even more redundant and slow moving because of communication issues between separate state agricultural offices. Contrast that with the innovative, effective, and truly groundbreaking approach of Weed.gov, well …”

“The digital revolution ending the era of bureaucracy and ushering in an era of ad-hoc-racy, a fluid, organically structured organization that adapts to changing challenges and circumstances,” Gingrich beamed. “I’m very impressed, and considering that you’re all just a bunch of government employees, I’m even more impressed.”

“Don’t be too impressed!” Ava exclaimed before Humphrey could steer away from the Speaker’s lapse into condescension. “We’ve been trying to use the interagency working group as often as possible! It’s just like Toffler wrote—”

“You
read
Toffler?!” exclaimed Gingrich in giddy disbelief.

“Hell-
lo
?” Ava laughed. “He’s only the world’s most famous futurologist, the foremost scholar on how technology advances change society, and the preeminent theoretician of the singularity!”

Humphrey had urged all of his senior staff to read up on Gingrich, but he hadn’t told Summers to do this. He realized her enthusiasm was genuine.

For fifteen straight minutes, the Speaker of the House and Ava mind-melded on all manner of obscure scientific, technological, and sociological topics: Nanotechnology. Genetic engineering. Satellite-based handheld communications. Space
exploration. They quickly mapped out a plan to build a
Star Trek
–level utopian society within a decade and a half.

“I keep telling people, the science that Michael Crichton based
Jurassic Park
upon is extremely doable, and would really not be that expensive, difficult, risky, or time-consuming!” said Gingrich with an incredulous irritation that seemed incomprehensible to everyone else in the room but Ava.

“Not when you can adjust the growth rate of the species by tinkering with its genetic code!” Ava said. “And who’s to say you have to stop with dinosaurs? How much does the endangered species list change when we can whip up as many animals as we need in a lab to replenish the species? We could have flocks of dodos whenever and wherever we want! What happens when extinction becomes not just reversible, but obsolete?”

Wilkins leaned over to Humphrey. “This is going a little too well,” he whispered. “It’s getting creepy.”

Gingrich stayed a half hour longer than scheduled, and talked with Ava all the way through the building to the front door. He hadn’t explicitly promised funding to create Weed.gov, but his body language and tone suggested a transformative excitement.

Then … nothing happened. Weeks went by. Then months. No bad news came from the Hill—enacting the Contract with America was proving a time-consuming challenge for the new Republican majority—but no good news, either.

Until Humphrey’s secretary received a call, inviting the administrative director to a meeting … with Congressman Bader. The new congressman already established himself as the rookie hell-raiser of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Humphrey and Wilkins reported to Bader’s office, only to be
informed by the secretary that the congressman was expecting them … on the Speaker’s balcony.

They reported to the Speaker’s office, and Bader’s head emerged from a doorway.

“This way, Humphrey. Leave your Boy Wonder,” Bader cracked.

Wilkins glowered and left.

They emerged to a luxurious balcony, and past the wrought-iron gate was one of the most spectacular, and coveted, views in Washington. Just past a lawn lay the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial, beyond that a reflecting pool, a long expanse of the National Mall with the boxy Smithsonian museums on either side, and the obelisk of the Washington Monument. A noisy airplane made its ascent from National Airport. The sun was beginning to set. The traffic noise seemed distant. It was an oasis of relative quiet and open space compared to the cramped offices in the building behind them. Humphrey realized if he had a balcony like this, he might never step back inside his office.

Bader lit up a cigar, and offered one to Humphrey.

“John Hay,” he said, not removing it from his mouth. “Named after Lincoln’s secretary. They grow the tobacco in my district.”

“No thank you, Congressman, my preferred vice is any brown liquor in fine crystal.” The two men stared out at the mall for a moment, and then Humphrey felt compelled to break the silence. “This is a most kind and … suspicious invitation. I figured that to ever enjoy this view, I would need an invitation from the Speaker himself.”

“Newt allows me to use it.” Bader buffed and looked Humphrey up and over. “He and I are getting pretty chummy lately.”

Humphrey sensed there was a bitterness beneath the bragging, and his mind began calculating, analyzing, out loud, almost uncontrollably. “He has given you a special privilege.… He did this because he needed something from you … or if he needed to placate you. By any chance, has the Speaker decided to abandon the effort to cast my staff and me to the fiery pits of budgetary oblivion?”

Bader nodded, and continued to stare out toward the horizon. “Newt says he’s … putting my bill to eliminate the agency on the back burner. Wrong fight at the wrong time, he says.”

Humphrey managed to stifle any laughter, but not the smile. “I had been hearing something along those lines.”

“And he seems to be gung-ho about this magic computer system you sold him on,” Bader growled.

“Weed.gov,” Humphrey declared.

“Right,” Bader said, although his tone made clear he couldn’t possibly care less about the name of the system. “So … in the interest of … cooperation between your agency and my colleagues, I was willing to go along with the funding for this weed-picker-dot-com thing if you could point to some other program that you deemed … expendable.”

Ah-ha
, thought Humphrey.
He can’t cut all of my budget, so he wants to find a piece to save face
. “Within the agency or elsewhere within the federal budget? Because I’ve always found congressional fact-finding missions to exotic overseas destinations to be a particularly unnecessary portion of our governing expenditures. Bringing the spouses along seems like an unnecessary expense as well—”

“Within your agency,” Bader said, shooting Humphrey a glare that could, by itself, trigger a hostile-workplace complaint. “Surely, any good administrative director could think of some expenditures of his agency that can be eliminated or cut back so that funds can be reallocated to a new computer system.”

Humphrey drummed his fingers on the railing.

“Unfortunately, Congressman, nothing is coming to mind off the top of my head. I would need to look at our most recent budget figures,” he said, shaking his head. He backed away, sensing that the meeting’s purpose was clear and there was no point in hanging around.

“Take a look,” Bader said. “After I get some specific and substantive suggestions and figures, I would … really enjoy having you back up here, to … enjoy some brown liquor in fine crystal.”

“Your hospitality is most kind, Congressman,” Humphrey lied. “And I’ll get on that as soon as possible. My study of Washington has taught me to always partake of an invitation from a congressman when given the chance,” he smiled as he prepared to twist the knife. “Because you never know how long they’ll be in a position to offer that invitation.”

Bader’s mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t.