The number of residents brought in after my estimation experience almost doubled our population, and we had to prepare and consider how best to bring in who and what we could while still keeping the Charter and its promises for everyone.

The Foundation had recruited slowly in the beginning, and as the population grew and assimilated into the culture of the habitats, the pace of recruitment increased. By the time Kevin and I came down, each habitat was increasing their population by three thousand residents a year. The Board chose to double the population in every habitat, a number able to be supported for generations at our current levels of technology.

Once they decided on the numbers necessary to meet these goals, the Foundation recruited heavily, bringing people in as fast as we could safely do so. They used the vague time periods I had given as hard deadlines. There were many unknowns, and of course, the Board did what it always did: plan for the worst. Since the LCO Initiatives had begun, there was a new focus on transparency between those who planned and the people those plans affected. When the matter was brought to the people of the habitat, while everything said was true, no mention was made of my "estimate."

The Foundation explained they wanted to expand recruitment in anticipation of the world continuing its downward spiral in ever tighter circles. It was obvious to everyone in the habitats, consuming the media and news from the surface and keeping up to date with family and friends still there. They knew how crazy it was getting; who wouldn't want to live where reality was firm and everyone was treated equitably?

The residents of the habitats rallied to the call, understanding the changes happening around them were a response to offer a safe and sane life to as many people on the surface as possible.

Until this time, only two residential floors in each section had been occupied; the third was built to accommodate a reasonable renovation schedule. The Foundation Board chose to open the empty floors immediately and requested residents who had to move as their circumstances changed to consider moving onto the newest floors. And they did so, allowing for a more even mingling between those newly come down and those comfortable living in our society.

The Foundation also paused work on the construction of Section 6, moving those resources to build out two floors in the very top section to hold what eventually came to be called Quarantine Village and the support services it would need.

Most decisions regarding handling our rapid population growth were handled by participants working within the LCO Initiatives tasked with those subjects. Educating new residents so they integrated into our society and culture was a broad topic, as was incorporating them into our creative-capitalistic society.

Everyone needed to have the opportunity to earn extra units to supplement their recompense. Because almost every cooperative and creative endeavor involves purchasing raw or recycled materials or renting space, all of which are the property of the Foundation, joining a cooperative meant providing an investment, which could be as high as a full year's recompense.

The cooperatives were an important part of our society, running most of the establishments serving the needs of our residents: dining, entertainment, recreational and merchandising. In order to serve the number of people coming in, they would need to expand quickly. The LCO Initiative on New Resident Integration recommended the Foundation subsidize cooperative membership for new residents by supplying half the cooperative buy-in and, for fairness, providing it retroactively to those the decision to expand affected before the subsidy was in place. Other recommendations included encouraging cooperatives to expand onto new floors, with no cooperative being able to be present in more than two quadrants in a section.

Other priorities established general procedures in the case of a surface pandemic to keep everyone in the habits safe, especially those who volunteered to help with recruitment and quarantine. The Foundation began ordering protective equipment and medical supplies consistent with an air-borne virus, the most feared outcome. We planned well, and even when the pandemic struck, we were able to continue recruiting once we were past surface lockdown orders.

The LCO Initiatives, of course, were concerned with longer-term goals. Coming out of the first Liaison Conference, the highest priority involved creating frameworks for government and interpretation of the Charter. The two were intertwined, of course, since the Charter insisted upon representative government within its clauses. Those involved in the Governmental Formation Initiative expanded upon the work already done by the Foundation regarding formulating a representational government, layering the voices of our Charter signatories onto it.

Our elected officials would follow a ladder of offices, named but not modeled after the cursus honorum of the ancient Romans. With some exceptions made for the first few elections, anyone wishing to move up the ladder would have had to win both a regional and overall election in each of the lower rungs to be eligible. With the beginnings of the ladder planted in service to one's neighbors, we hoped to weed out those who viewed elected office as a path to power rather than a position of responsibility to others. (1)

Elected officials would continue to work a regular job and participate in the ten hours of mandatory Community Tasks a month. The rest of their tasking time would be spent on the work of the office they were elected to. No other subsidy, recompense or restitution was given to an elected official.

Any rules enacted by those in elected office would be considered temporary before being brought to an assessment consensus. During an assessment consensus, any rules adopted in the time would be available for review by the people, and they could choose to accept it permanently, reject it, or send it to the SIG Council.

The Special Interest Group Council was another product of the governmental initiative. Originally more aptly named special advocacy groups, the acronym was considered offensive or was too silly for most participants. Representatives of the various interest groups advocating for their members' needs made up the SIG Council. Almost anyone could join an interest group; the only ones not eligible were those elected to office or who served in any official or high-level habitat administrative positions. Groups could be formed representing almost any kind of joined interest; the only interests expressly forbidden were those of spiritual groups of any kind.

The SIG process was onerous, and any proposal going through the process was viewed through the lens of differing interests. Individuals could perceive an issue with a particular policy, bringing up both the issue and a suggested solution for presentation. Upon review and suggestions by all the SIGs, an adopted proposal was given to Habitat Governance, and thus, any changes needed to once again go through the assessment consensus.

The popular consensus was also a project of the Initiatives. Anyone on the Foundation Board, Habitat Governance or the SIG Council could start the process. It allowed for more extended and nuanced discussions of issues affecting everyone living and yet to be born. If the ramifications were to be felt by all, every Charter signatory should have a voice and a vote.

Much good came from those Initiatives and the decisions to expand our populations, but there were also unintended consequences.

One of those was lessening the background checks each recruit had gone through. The pandemic and the takeover of social media by Elon Musk and his subsequent shutting down of data gathering access for anyone not paying tens of thousands a month made it much harder to gather the detailed information the Foundation had increasingly relied upon when considering who to recruit.

By the time of the pandemic, background checks had become cursory. Since the Foundation had never relied on political affiliation as a data point, some came in who were ill-suited to this new society. To compensate, the Foundation began offering multi-year contracts in 2020, specifying an amount of surface compensation if the recruit stayed the entire time and allowing those not suited to leave when their contracts ended.

If the Catastrophe had not come to pass, those who were uncomfortable would have more than likely left, and the issue would have been solved. Unfortunately for everyone, they could not leave when their contracts ended; there was nothing to go back to.

There weren't many who slipped through this way, a few hundred in each habitat at the most, and I cannot find it within me to condemn the loosening of the strictures since we saved so many more.