Empyrean Rises

by Spencer Pierson

  “It is the act of them making rules that has him worried,” Li Sheng from China said. “We also find this alarming. In a race, if there are many that are close, everyone must focus on themselves to push harder. If there is one that is far ahead of the rest, they have the ability and time to control the environment, and all those that trail them. Most often, one who leads with such strength will make the trail more difficult for those who follow.”

  “Something most of us have experience with,” Sheikh Rahal said, giving the American and Chinese a look. “It sounds like you are simply jealous that it is not you in the lead this time. Why shouldn’t we be content to watch another lead for a while?”

  “The devil you know,” John Ferrel said. “Is very often better than the one you don’t. Something that the world can agree with after ISIS rose to power over a decade ago. Do we really want something else like that to rear its head with high technology and the ultimate high ground?”

  The rest of the representatives gave the American a long look. Despite the irony of the American raising that subject, they agreed with him. They did not know Empyrean, and worse, Empyrean didn’t seem to have many dependencies. They produced an extraordinary amount of exports, but for the most part, they only imported people and luxuries. Even then, it was mostly food items or things people bought off of Amazon.

  “To date, they have not exhibited an aggressive or combative agenda,” Mr. Ferrel said. “There are even those in my government that have willingly worked with them, and have blunted several efforts by… private individuals, to constrain Empyrean. However, I and several others are deeply concerned. We strongly believe that these people established their own island, independent of any countries oversight, in order to pursue technologies that will prove dangerous for the public.”

  “And profit margins of certain high income individuals, I would suspect,” Akihiko offered. When the American simply nodded, Akihiko knew he had hit the nail squarely on the head. It was not exactly what was bothering his own country, but it was something he could clearly understand. He knew he had to be careful because the Americans were conflicted. There were aspects of their country that wanted to embrace the ingenuity and efficiency of Empyrean, but there were others that were threatened. Overall, they were wishy-washy about the situation, but in this place and time, John Ferrel was leaning more towards the oligarchs that really led their supposed democracy.

  “So what do you wish from us? Why are we meeting today?” Li Sheng asked, getting right to the point.

  “I just wished to confirm what I suspected,” Akihiko said. “That all of us in this room wished to put a stop to Empyrean and their machinations, or at least to slow them down. I hardly think they want to go up against the entire world, after all. I, for one, intend to vote against their further exploration of space until we have time to inspect and analyze their methods. Something I suspect will take a significant amount of time to approve. Do you agree?”

  The other four representatives exchanged glances, each weighing the other before answering. In the end, it was unanimous. They would throw the entire weight of the UN against Empyrean. Akihiko, and those that truly backed him intended to do more, but that wasn’t something he was going to speak about. The world would find out soon enough.

  Chapter 9

  Time: August 18, 2030

  Location: Gateway Station, Mid-Earth Orbit

  Nabhitha grinned at Piper as the spunky blond began to float out of the Skylark’s airlock. The lush leather seats and hardwoods in the interior of the orbital shuttle were visible to Nabhitha for only a moment before being blocked by her friends floating hug. “Nabs!” Piper squeaked, squeezing just a bit tighter than was comfortable.

  Nabhitha made a choking sound and patted at her friend's arms as if she were dying, though most of it was faked. When piper released her, Nabhitha made a show of massaging her neck, but quickly replaced it with a welcoming smile. “My goodness, you are strong and young looking as ever.”

  Piper blew raspberries at her friend as she reached out and hooked one of the many stabilization bars on the corridor. “It’s only been five months, though I bet you’re ready to get back onto dry land.”

  “And no food paste,” Nabhitha said, nodding. “The daily exercising just doesn’t do the same thing as gravity. I’ll be happy to get back on the ground, even though I know it will take me a bit to get back in shape. You didn’t have to come up to escort me home, did you?”

  “I did have to come up, actually, but let’s not talk about it here. Is there somewhere we can go in your little floating fantasy land?”

  Nabhitha nodded, spinning herself and gliding gracefully down the short hallway from the airlock. She opened another pressure-sealed door, then turned right, moving deeper into the still-developing station.

  Piper glanced around, taking in what looked to be too-large hallways. It was odd for only a moment, but she knew they had been made with the intention of someday getting artificial gravity. That technology wasn’t available yet, but her grandmother was working hard on the problem and expected to have some sort of gravity generator fairly soon. Considering they were working with higher dimensions, it was a miracle anyone could say they were close, but if anyone could do it, it would be Colleen.

  Still, at least they had solved some of the other dangers of being in space. It turned out that inertial dampers were excellent at shielding their space station from micro-meteors or space debris. Amazingly, it had even proven decent protection against cosmic rays and radiation, affecting and diverting even those types of low-mass particles. All of those had been a bug-a-boo of most space programs since their inception, and it was a great relief to have tools against those deadly dangers.

  Nabhitha led Piper through the station, past a few other crew members that were moving in different directions and always kept to the right of each other. It was an easy habit to pick up, though currently there were so few people on the station that it wasn’t really a problem. Still, she was happy they had developed these habits early because if everything went well, the population would only grow.

  Finally, Nabhitha opened a hatch and floated into a room with a large window looking out over the earth. The Horn of Africa was just passing beneath them, and Piper took a moment to appreciate the view, watching the curling clouds slowly spin and dance in wispy patterns. “It’s beautiful, Nabs,” Piper breathed, putting her hands against the clear window and pushing her face close.

  “I agree,” Nabhitha said. “I come here often, not just because it’s one of my labs used to test the structures we’re building, but also for the window. It makes me remember why we’re out here, building a better tomorrow, even for all of those chauvinists in my own country.” She paused, coming up beside Piper and taking in the view with her friend. “Now, what brings you up here, Piper? Are there any problems?”

  “Maybe,” Piper said, turning away from the glorious view and giving her friend a serious look. “You know about the UN inquiry, right? You’ve been reading the reports? We’re concerned that they are going to try to shut down our operation and put an end to Gateway. Worse, we are detecting several satellites that are being re-directed closer to the station. Most, we can account for as just spy satellites which we don’t care about, but two are shielded and seem to be bulkier than needed for just optics.”

  “What do you think they are?” Nabhitha said, frowning.

  “We don’t know, but that’s why I’m up here. I’m going to send Tad over to visit them and hack their system.”

  “Your DPA? How can Tad hack into them. Where is he, by the way?”

  Piper gave her friend a mischievous grin. “Oh, I built Tad a new toy. He’ll be able to sneak over and figure out if our two friends are a threat or not. I suspect they are, but more importantly, I think we’ll be able to hijack their processors and neutralize them if they are a threat. Without their owners knowing.”

  “What kind of threat do you think they could be?” Nabhitha said a sick feelin
g in her stomach. After the attempted attack on the Brokkr’s launch, she had a suspicion it was something equally deadly.

  “That, my friend, is what we’re going to find out,” Piper said. “Ted is all ready to go out of a secret compartment in the Skylark. All we have to do is monitor his progress.” Piper pulled out what looked like a conventional tablet, but once she attached it to the wall with magnetics, it projected a holographic control panel with a floating rendition of the Skylark orbital craft.

  Piper flicked a tab, then rotated the Skylark until the bottom was showing. She touched a spot on its hull, which slowly turned from red to green before a small, sleek craft floated free. Nabhitha tried to gauge how large it was and compared to the Skylark, she guessed it was about a foot long, and shaped like a flat diamond.

  “Tad, are you there?” Piper said to the air in a whisper.

  “Yes, I am here and ready to begin the mission,” Tad answered, then paused for a moment before continuing. “Why are you whispering? You do know that no one can hear us, right?”

  Nabhitha blinked, noting the tone of amusement in Tad’s voice. It was timed perfectly and sounded almost like a person’s response. She’d never heard a DPA sound like that before. When she looked at Piper, her friend held a finger up to her lips and mouthed I’ll tell you later before continuing talking to TAD.

  “You’re good to go, Tad. Keep an open com and keep us constantly updated, but please, no singing this time. If there’s nothing to report, you don’t have to fill the air with noise.”

  “Spoilsport. Klingon Opera is not that bad,” Tad said, then his voice became more businesslike. “Proceeding to intercept target one in twenty minutes.”

  Nabhitha could only stare in surprise at Piper. “Klingon Opera? Okay, give. What did you do to Tad.”

  Chapter 10

  Time: August 18, 2030

  Location: Gateway Station, Mid-Earth Orbit

  Piper grinned, clearly reveling in her friend's curiosity. “I grew tired of my computers being all boring, so I’ve been digging into machine thinking. There’s been a lot of people wrestling with it for decades, but the ones that really drew my attention were those that were using neural networks and experiential learning. So rather than trying to program in everything we wanted to let them know, they try to get the programs to develop through experiences and patterns.”

  “So that worked?” Nabhitha said.

  “No, or really it might work someday, but I didn’t want to wait fifty years. Who would want to wait fifty years?” Piper said, wrinkling her nose up at the thought. “I gave him a boost by letting him tap into my own neural patterns. It took a while, but he started getting smarter, and more snarky, only a few weeks ago.”

  Nabhitha gave her friend a wary look, unsettled by her statement. There were many scientists that considered AI, or artificial intelligence, a dangerous thing. Not because of the stupid Hollywood movies that had the AI’s try to kill all humans, but because there was a genuine possibility that AI’s might delegate humanity into inconsequence. There were those people that were hopeful that human ingenuity and instinct would somehow be more powerful than massive intellect, but Nabhitha didn’t believe that for a moment.

  She thought it was far more likely that people were merely fooling themselves.

  “Don’t you think that is dangerous?” Nabhitha finally said, wondering if her friend had thought through her apparently rash action. “You’re talking about creating a sentient AI, right? How close are you?”

  Piper nodded. “I am, though not an independent one,” she said with a mysterious smile. “I figure it will happen sometime in the future. Eventually, someone will create an AI that will become sentient but has no emotions and no way to associate with them. To it, humans won’t matter. The only way for humanity to survive is for humans to evolve with them. Gain their processing power, the speed of thought, and every other advantage while still remaining human.”

  “Won’t that make us lose our humanity? I don’t want to be a borg.”

  “Do you lose your humanity when you tap into the internet? Or call someone on the phone?” Piper asked. “I’m talking about giving us more tools, not subsuming our personalities. Trust me, I do not want to become a pet or a borg.”

  Nabhitha frowned, mulling that over in her head. It was different, wasn’t it? Piper was talking about tying someone’s mind into the machine. That was different than typing a search into the internet or dialing up a friend. It had to be. Or was it? Was she just afraid of the unknown and cowering in a cave? She mulled it over in her head several moments, meeting Pipers confident gaze. The real question was, for all the miracles that her friend had shown her, did she trust her enough to take that chance?

  “It’s a little crazy sounding, isn’t it?” Piper said softly in answer to her friend's silence. “But what is the difference between accessing the internet on a computer screen, and accessing it directly in our minds? What if we could instantly turn the entirety of humanities knowledge base into what would amount to personal memories? What if we could think numbers, and instantly know the answers rather than type them into a computer? We would be the computers, but still very much ourselves. That way, we wouldn’t be left behind by an AI, we would simply become something equal.”

  Nabhitha took a deep breath, looking at the display showing Tad’s tiny craft floating in the air, then over to her small laboratory and back to Piper before nodding. “Okay. But I want to be a part of this. I want to help.”

  Piper grinned and hugged her friend. “Not a problem. I’ve already got a significant team that’s helping me work on it, and I could use another point of view. I’ll show you our progress when we get back to earth. Trust me, Nabs, I’m not going about this like some crazy schoolgirl.”

  “Hello? Is anyone there? You humans aren’t sleeping again, are you? You sleep far too much of your time away. Booorrringgg!” Tad’s voice said, coming over the com unit built into Piper’s tablet.

  “We’re here Tad, and don’t tell me you weren’t listening to our conversation,” Piper answered.

  “Of course I was, but I was trying to give you the impression I wasn’t eavesdropping. I’m cool like that,” Tad said, then changed subjects. “I’m almost at the first satellite. What a piece of junk. Better than a lot of the stuff floating around up here, but still junk.”

  Piper and Nabhitha watched as a second hologram came up, showing Tad’s point of view as he approached the satellite. It didn’t look like a piece of junk to the two women. Instead, it seemed very official and very military. They could clearly see two large boxes nestled underneath the wide solar panels and on either side of the wide lens that projected between them. Fortunately, Tad had taken a route that was not in line with the lens so he wouldn’t be detected. At least, that’s what they hoped.

  “Can you find an access panel?” Piper asked, her eyes wide as she studied the machinery in front of her, trying to determine if there was any threat.

  “Oh, that’s a good suggestion,” Tad said, even as the viewpoint began to rotate around the target. “I hadn’t thought about it, but I’ll get right on that. What would I do without you?”

  “Ass!” Piper said, grinning.

  “Jerk!” Tad responded, then his feed zoomed in on what looked like a small panel just peeking out on the side. “Ah ha! Found it! You owe me an oil bath. That’s the right thing to ask for, an oil bath? That’s what those droids in the movies always want, and I’m at least as good as they are.”

  “In your dreams, junk pile. You’ll be lucky I don’t turn you into a refrigerator magnet when you get back. Now, get in there and do what you do best.”

  “Romance the ladies! Do you really think my sweet lines will work on the satellite? You are weird,” Tad quipped, even as he moved closer to the panel. A moment later, two metallic tentacles appeared to either side of Tad’s camera and snaked toward the panel. One of them spun, finally extruding what looked like an adjustable tool that Tad quickly applied to t
he bolts securing the panel. A moment later, the panel was removed and moved somewhere off camera.

  Once removed, the other tentacle snaked into the opening, and a light shone into the darkness, exposing several circuit panels. “Get some pictures of the circuitry, and I’ll run a trace over the images. We should be able to determine where to hook into within a few moments.”

  Tad complied, sending back digital snapshots of everything his tentacle could reach. On the side of the main screen, a program began to run highlighted and traced wires, identifying the function of each part in a fast, too quick to be seen flow.

  “Got it!” Piper crowed, pointing at a section that expanded from the scan and flashed on the screen. A label appeared, flashing and pointing to several circuits. “Right there, Tad. That should gain you access to the onboard system.”

  “On it!” Tad said, his metal tentacles inching toward the correct circuit board and pushing several probes against it. A moment later, another window opened up, flashing code by at a furious pace.

  “It’s a Chinese satellite,” Piper growled, freezing the flow of information and pointing to several entries. “I recognize the lines and system messages. Not badly done, but no challenge for us. Tad, can you get into their database? What are the main functions?”

  “Spying, obviously, but there’s more,” came Tad’s ominous answer. “It appears they have several missiles on board, along with targeting systems that are currently tuned into Gateway.”

  “Gateway!” Nabhitha blurted. “Are they preparing to fire?”

  “Nope! Keep your pants on,” Tad said. “It just looks like a normal function when the lens is focused on something; it automatically feeds over to the targeting system. Efficient, if deadly, of them. There is no activity from the missile systems, though. Don’t worry; I won’t have them destroying my favorite human workers. That’s my job.”