In last week’s episode, the malevolent Minister Ping Yi competed his analysis the St. Paul’s weaknesses. In this week’s episode, David learns how and why he is to prepare his reports…
It was around two o’clock in the morning, and David could tell they were somewhere over Winnipeg, Canada. He could hear Captain Pruitt communicating on the radio as they crossed into Canadian airspace. Ranell prepared some comfort food consisting of a three-cheese baked macaroni and cheese pie made with sharp white cheddar, gruyere, and jalapeno jack. He mixed in caramelized onions, crimini mushrooms, and some tangy-sweet sun-dried tomatoes. Then he topped it with crisp, chopped prosciutto as a final flourish. It certainly wasn’t the macaroni and cheese from a box with powdered cheese sauce that David was used to. When the meal was over, they put away the dishes and worked in the galley until it was gleaming.
“How are you doing, Mr. Wilson? Are you tired?” Ranell asked as he placed a dish filled with thick slices of sourdough French bread to soak in an egg mixture so he could make French toast for breakfast.
“I’m good. I got some sleep during the evening shift.”
“Splendid,” said Ranell, wiping his hands on a towel. “I thought we might use this time to discuss the Rabban’s expectations for your reports.”
“I’ve been wondering about that too,” David said cautiously. “I’ve got some concerns about it and a lot of questions.”
“Come with me to the main cabin, and we’ll chat about it for a while. Grab some coffee.”
When they got to the main cabin, they settled themselves comfortably at the table. Pruitt was piloting, and Singh was in the co-pilot seat. I hate that guy. David picked his seat so that his back was turned, and he faced away from the lieutenant. Ranell seemed to notice the positioning, but he said nothing. Good. Don’t say a word, Sir. I don’t want to talk about it. Beyond the small sounds of intermittent conversation and the occasional radio contact, the room was still and quiet.
Ranell opened the conversation: “Why don’t you start by telling me what the Rabban said to you?”
“Oh wow.” David leaned forward, placing an elbow on the table and rubbing his head as he tried to remember. “First, I was worried about him firing me. Then it was all kind of a blur. He started telling me that if he didn’t get regular reports, the St. Paul wouldn’t fly.” Be careful, David thought, don’t tell Ranell that the Rabban caught you trying to run away. Just tell him about the first meeting. “He said he was looking for evidence of God or something like that and wanted to know what happens after we die… I thought he was about half crazy.”
Ranell sighed knowingly. “He makes a lot of people feel that way. What else did he tell you? Did he mention your book at all?”
“Yeah, uh...” David corrected himself, “Yes Sir, he said that I had already done this kind of work because of my book. And that all I had to do was ask people about their worldview and write down what they said. Does that make sense to you?”
“Don’t worry about that ‘Sir’ stuff, Mr. Wilson. You can just call me Doc, everybody does.”
The man seemed to have a knack for putting people at ease. “What are you a doctor of?” David asked.
“I’ve got a Ph.D. in Logistics from the University of Michigan with a concentration in Strategic Foresight.” Ranell rattled off his title in a casual tone as if it hardly mattered in this friendly conversation between two co-workers.
But David felt intimidated to be speaking to someone with a title like that. He must think I’m so ignorant. David’s discomfort must have shown on his face because Ranell guided the conversation back to the subject at hand.
“You wanted to know if it made sense to me what the Rabban was asking for; about writing down people’s worldviews?” he prompted.
“Yeah, uh, Doc.” David struggled with the familiarity of the term. “I think I might have a problem with that. You guys are all into this God returning and apocalypse stuff… but I don’t believe any of that. How am I supposed to write a report about it?”
Ranell leaned back to sip his coffee as he considered David’s concerns. Then he chuckled slightly and said, “Y’know, I’ve been with the Rabban for over thirty years now. I’ve been with him every step as he’s built this empire, and I’ll always be the first to give him credit for his achievements. But there are still times when I think it must be nice to just throw out some vague and contradictory guidance to subordinates and then rely on some old guy like me to come and take the time to clarify everything.”
“What does he want from me?”
Ranell leaned forward again. “Well, first of all, everything he told you is true. He’s looking for evidence of Jesus’ return to earth, and he does want to know (among many other things) what happens to people after they die. But it’s also true that what he wants from you is rather simple, something that you are quite capable of doing for him. And please don’t worry about the religious aspect of this assignment. Besides a basic understanding of the Christian context of the question he’s asking, it’s actually rather better that you aren’t Christian yourself. I can see why he selected you, based on the Pandeist philosophy you wrote about in your book, your reports are bound to be more objective and thus more valuable.”
“How can it be simple to ask people when Jesus is returning? And how is anybody supposed to tell me what happens after we die?”
“OK, OK.” Ranell held his hands up. “Slow the train, Mr. Wilson. You and I do not yet share a common frame of reference.” The conversation grew quiet as Ranell considered his next words. Then he asked, “You know the Rabban owns GML, right?”
“Yes.” David knew that.
“So, GML has a fairly massive intelligence-gathering apparatus. It’s not unlike a government spy network, and although it operates on many of the same principles, GML’s network is market-oriented in its approach. Understanding that is the key to understanding how the Rabban built this empire. He has literally hundreds of people gathering information for him. He wants you to be one of those people. You will write a report, score it according to some fairly simple criteria that I am about to show you, and then you’ll send it forward to an analyst, who will compile your report with many other similar reports. Then that analyst will forward the whole packet to another guy. It’s a process based on something called a Structured Argument. Have you ever heard of that before?”
“No.”
“Well, let me give you a simple example, OK?” Ranell turned his chair to face one of the wall-mounted screens. “GML is basically a big transportation company, right?”
“Yeah.” I’ve seen how big it is, David thought.
“So, if I’m the Rabban, I might be wondering one day about how much money I could make by providing shipping services to Canada.” Ranell glanced knowingly out the large window to the lights of Winnipeg slowly sliding by beneath them.
“OK.”
“OK.” Ranell echoed, “Let’s put the basic question on top of the board here in a little box labeled, I don’t know… ‘Profit in Canada.’ Sound good?”
“Sure.” David said with a shrug of his shoulder as he watched the icon appear on the screen.
“Now, let’s just brainstorm for a few minutes, Mr. Wilson. What types of things would the Rabban need to know if he wanted to make a profit from transportation services in Canada?”
“I don’t know,” David furrowed his brow, considering the question. “He’d probably want to know what people were going to buy…”
“Excellent!” Ranell placed another box below the first box, “Shall we label this one ‘demand’?”
“Yeah, then you gotta have ‘supply.’”
“Right again!” Ranell said gleefully. The two men spent a few minutes brainstorming in this manner and came up with about twelve different ideas about what it would take for a transportation company to make a profit in Canada. “Now we have to sort these ideas into groupings that make logical sense,” Ranell continued. For instance, fuel prices, employees, and fees could all be considered aspects of the larger idea of ‘cost.’ Do you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So let’s place those ideas below ‘cost’ and connect each of them to ‘cost’ with a little line. Do you see how we could do the same thing with all these other ideas? You can arrange them into a structure where the answers to the minor questions feed the answers to the bigger questions, right?”
“Yeah, I see how you can do that with these two items here. They are both related to time…”
“Let’s not go that far right now, Mr. Wilson. This whole thing is just an example. For now, let’s just focus on one tiny part of this question in front of us. Let’s just pick… oh I don’t know, how about ‘fuel,’ OK?”
“OK.”
“Do you think you could go out today and tell me what the price of a gallon of diesel fuel is in Winnipeg, Canada?”
“Sure, that’s no problem.”
“Right, and do you think you could tell me if today’s price is higher or lower than it was yesterday?”
“Of course.”
“Easy, right? And you can easily see how the price of fuel in Winnipeg factors into the Rabban’s bigger question about how much profit he can make in Canada?” Ranell asked. He left the question hanging in midair, encouraging David to pick up the thread.
David rose to the challenge, “Yes. And all the other bits of information coming in, taken together, could paint a picture for him about what his chances are of making a profit.”
“Right again, Mr. Wilson. Bravo!” Ranell clapped his hands in delight, “That is what a structured question is; a very large question broken into many smaller chunks with people assigned to collect data and others assigned to analyze it. In fact, this is the very question we asked decades ago that eventually led the Rabban to invest in airship technology. GML now operates several super-jumbo carriers to service the very profitable Canadian cargo routes by air that were previously only intermittently accessible by truck across the famous Canadian ice roads. It is a potent foresight tool when used correctly.”
“So, the Rabban just wants me to do reports on one small slice of the larger structured problem he is working on now?” David asked.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And for his big question, he wants to know when Jesus will come back?” David scowled slightly.
“To explain that part, Mr. Wilson, we’re going to have to delve into Christian philosophy just a little bit. Are you OK with that?”
“Sure, Doc, no problem.” David was feeling more confident now, and the problem intrigued him.
“OK, let’s begin with the end in mind. In the Bible, the last book is the Book of Revelation, written by the apostle John when he was exiled on the Island of Patmos in the late first-century. As you are probably aware, the Book of Revelation describes Jesus’ return in great detail, although in many cases the descriptions themselves are confusing and subject to wide interpretation.”
“I’ve never really read it or anything,” David offered, “but it talks about the apocalypse, right?”
“Exactly,” Ranell agreed, “and the specific part of the Book of Revelation that is of interest to the Rabban is found in Chapter 16, verse 14, where the glorious and final Day of the Lord is described in terms of spirits performing miraculous signs and gathering the kings of the whole world for battle on the Great Day of God Almighty.”
“So is the Rabban looking for miraculous signs?” David asked.
“No, but that’s a good question.” Ranell nodded as if he was personally familiar with it. “But instead of that, what our Delphi group finally came up with was a focus on the ‘Day of the Lord’ aspect of the verse.”
“What’s a Delphi group?”
“Oh, my apologies, Mr. Wilson. A Delphi group is a bunch of over-degreed old codgers like me sitting around writing ideas on Sticky Notes and posting them on whiteboards over and over again until we get some sense of what we collectively agree is the essential question. As you can imagine, there was a great deal of spirited discussion as we worked through the process; however, the Rabban was kind enough to provide some very exquisitely prepared meals and good wine.”
“Sounds like you had a good time,” David smiled.
“For someone like me, it was wonderful. However, I suspect most people would have found the process to be exceedingly tedious.”
“Why the ‘Day of the Lord’ focus?”
“That’s just the problem, isn’t it? And it’s a difficult one at that. You see, Mr. Wilson, the problem we ran into with Revelation was that the phrase ‘Day of the Lord’ is used something like eighty-six times in the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. The prophet Zephaniah said, ‘The great day of the Lord is near… In the fire of his jealousy, the whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden end of all who live in the earth.’ The prophet Joel used the same phrase when he made the striking prediction, ‘Let all who live in the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming… before them the earth shakes, the sky trembles, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.’ And even Jesus himself, when the disciples asked him about when these things will happen, answered, ‘on that Day, Nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines, and pestilence in various places, and great signs from heaven.’” These are just a few examples. So, you can see with all these references to the ‘Day of the Lord’ we came to believe that the repetition itself was foreshadowing and amplifying something of great importance that we needed to pay attention to.”
David was grinning in a way that might not be considered entirely polite. “I can’t believe you quoted all that. Did you memorize it all?” His tone was more mocking than amazed.
The impertinent reaction didn’t seem to faze Ranell, who just chuckled. “We’ve been at this quite a while, you know.”
“So, the Rabban is looking for signs of the coming Day of the Lord, then?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why not?”
“Because we think many of them may have already come.”