Kepler wished he could have gone outside. He would surely have a better view from the surface of the spaceship. But his biological body was a hindrance. He would have to put on a spacesuit, climb outside, and then search for the best spot on the kilometer-long ship. No thanks, he’d rather stay in his jelly bath. He could always use the screen above him to zoom in and out at his leisure and have all the ship’s camera feeds displayed there.
It took a while for anything to happen. Then a flashing white light appeared above the shell of the sphere. That must have been one of the barges the butler had mentioned. Kepler brought the loading ship optically closer. It looked like a miniature version of the ninety-niner. The barge consisted of a sphere containing dark matter, and two sails. But the sails were located on the front, not the back. They were full. Clearly a pulse from the sphere was hitting them. It was as though someone were making a piece of paper remain aloft by repeatedly blowing on its underside, timing the puffs to hit at just the right moments. That meant the barge didn’t need its own propulsion. It was probably also inefficient, because dark matter was heavy.
For the propulsion of spacecraft, dark matter had a big advantage. You could pile it up in great mountains if you wanted, without anything happening. Ordinary matter, if there was too much of it in a narrowly-defined space, would form a black hole and disintegrate. Dark matter, on the other hand, didn’t cause such problems. Concentrated in the belly of the spaceship, its sheer mass actually bent space so that the ship rolled down a slope, so to speak. It was propulsion without radiation or heat. But of course there was no such thing as perpetual motion. The dark matter was exhausted over time and had to be replaced at refueling stations like this one.
The first barge approached the ninety-niner. Kepler had never before observed the refueling process. Did a hatch simply open in the spaceship? It couldn’t be that simple, thought Kepler. He remembered the great disadvantage of dark matter—it didn’t like to be captured. In principle, it only responded to gravity. But gravity always attracts. To effectively enclose something, you needed a repulsive force. Humans had been trying for a long time to use dark energy for that, but they hadn’t succeeded. To this day, no one understood the principle of dark energy. Scientists were still arguing about whether it was even a real phenomenon, or simply a fundamental property of the cosmos. If some people were small and fat, while others were tall and thin, why shouldn’t the cosmos simply have this or that amount of dark energy?
On the outer shell of the ball drive a hatch opened that was about twice the size of the barge. It simply slid to the side. The barge responded by opening its transport sphere half-way. What would happen next? Was it so simple after all? He should have paid more attention to architecture.
“The loading procedure looks so simple,” said Kepler.
This didn’t betray the fact that he didn’t understand the principle behind it, but there was a chance that the butler would explain it.
“I find it fascinating,” said the butler. “So complicated, and yet so simple.”
That wasn’t what he was hoping to hear. But then he figured it out for himself. It was child’s play. The dark matter followed the gradient. It flowed to where there was already significant mass. It was no different from turning over a shovel full of soil above a grave. The soil fell downward automatically.
“Shame we can’t see it,” said Kepler.
“That’s true. But I wouldn’t recommend anyone get too close to the flow. It’s something like a gravitational maelstrom in progress. Anything that gets in there would inevitably be pulled into the drive core.”
“Then doesn’t the tank gradually fill up with more and more normal matter?”
“Certainly,” said the butler. “That’s why the ship has to be cleaned once every 500 million light-years.”
“And if you don’t?”
“Then at some point you’ll have a black hole inside the drive. But that’s never happened, at least not under normal circumstances.”
“What do you mean?”
“Columbus was sort of devoured by his ship a few megacycles ago. But that involved sabotage. Instead of dark matter, the tanks had been filled with fifty percent normal matter. It never came to light who or what was responsible.”
“But that won’t happen to us?”
“No, don’t worry. I’m lighting up the area where the dark matter is flowing in.”
“But there’s nothing to see.”
“Then everything’s fine. Dark matter is invisible and can only be observed through its gravitational effect. As long as we can’t see anything, there’s no normal matter there.”
“I find that reassuring,” said Kepler.
“So do I,” the butler admitted. “My survival instinct is no less keen than yours. Even more so, I believe.
Was the AI claiming it would hang onto life more tenaciously than he would? The butler was quite presumptuous. Could he be right?
Cycle YF1.6, Terra
In the form of quintillions of fragments of information, Pierre and Marie Curie reached the antennae that covered two-thirds of the far side of the moon. Their constituents were collected and finally reached an optical cable the thickness of a human arm, which transported them at light speed to the other side of the moon. From there a radio relay delivered them to the guard station floating 450 kilometers above the surface of Terra.
The Guardian halted them. It presented itself to them as a winged being, an angel. “I welcome you to the cradle of humanity,” it said.
“We greet you, Guardian.”
Pierre and Marie Curie stood hand-in-hand before the angel, which was almost twice as tall as them. They usually shared a body, but here, in the virtual reality of the globe-encompassing AI, only their consciousness existed. Nothing they were seeing was real, and yet to them it felt genuinely real.
The angel smiled kindly, but they knew that without its permission they wouldn’t be able to go any further. The Guardian of Terra was invincible. Many people had tried to outsmart it. The most gifted hackers had failed. Only Odysseus was supposed to have succeeded, but since then no one had heard from him.
“What brings you here?” asked the Guardian.
“Work,” said Pierre.
“But also curiosity, of course,” added Marie.
It couldn’t hurt to put the Guardian in a friendly mood. The word was that it was very proud of its duty of guarding the Earth.
“I’m glad. You can stay aboard the guard station indefinitely. Your visit here is free of charge. Terra’s memory program covers all the energy costs of your travel and your stay here.”
“Thank you, Guardian,” said Marie.
Pierre squeezed her hand. He seemed to be as impressed by the angel as she was.
“If you need me, you only have to call,” said the Guardian.
“I... we need to enter the memory store,” said Pierre.
The angel’s face changed. His smile disappeared. “Terra itself is off-limits. I’m sorry,” said the angel. But his face didn’t show any regret.
“We have a special permit from the Convention to visit Terra,” said Pierre. “Wait... I have it here.” He pulled a form out of his pants pocket. It was an unremarkable piece of paper. But that was irrelevant, because it was just a symbol. All the necessary information was embedded in it. He held up the form.
The mighty angel wings moved toward it. The paper fluttered in the air like a small bird learning to fly. Then it disappeared.
The angel smiled again. “Thank you very much, Pierre and Marie Curie. You have permission to set foot on Terra. I congratulate you. In the last megacycle Terra has only had four visitors.”
“Thank you, Guardian,” said Marie, linking arms with Pierre. “First we’d very much like to view the planet.”
“Of course. There are several guest bodies available. You can choose from any of them. No one else is at the station at the moment.”
They examined the guest bodies through the camera. It wa
s a strange feeling. Marie felt like a voyeur. There obviously used to be substantially more visitors here. On most stations there was only one guest body. That was why they’d had the idea at some point of sharing a body. But here...
“Does it make you think of a carnival too?” she asked.
“Shh. I don’t know if the Guardian can hear us,” answered Pierre. “I don’t want to anger him.”
“Okay,” she said.
“What do you think of the man in the dress coat over there on the left?” asked Pierre.
“He looks like Zhenyi’s conceited butler. Let’s go with the unicorn,” she said.
“You know I hate mythical creatures.”
“I just want to have tried it out once. In the end we’ll agree on something genderless after all.”
“That does suit our configuration best,” said Pierre.
“Configuration! The way that sounds. It was a conscious decision. If you like, we can reverse it.”
“No, darling, I certainly don’t want that.”
“Don’t call me darling, Pierre.”
“Sorry. What about that one?”
The camera zoomed in on an androgynous being wearing gym clothes.
Marie sighed silently. “Fine,” she said.
“So, this is the famous cradle of humanity,” said Pierre, pointing upwards.
They were standing on the roof of the space station. Above them hung an immense, brown sphere. It used to be referred to as the ‘Blue Planet,’ but that was several gigacycles ago, before the central star had expanded into a red giant.
To Marie, Terra looked desolate. The planet reminded her of a shriveled, dried apple. The surface was covered in cracks. What used to be oceans were now only deep, dusty basins. There were no longer any clouds, because the atmosphere had been stripped away. A small portion of the atmosphere had been renewed from the Earth’s interior, which was why there was once again snow on the high mountain ranges. But it wasn’t frozen water, it was crystallized—snowflakes. Ever since the sun had shrunk to a white dwarf, the surface was hardly warmer than minus 100 degrees.
“Why didn’t we rescue Terra back then?” she asked. “We must have had the technology?”
Marie was startled when the angel Guardian materialized next to her. She reached out to touch him but grasped at nothing. It was just a projection. But he must have heard her question.
“It was a question of will,” he said. “At first, humans didn’t want to remodel their planet in that way, and then it was too late. Its interior had already been hollowed out and filled with storage units. What happened on the surface was not relevant, as long as the technology in the interior was secure.”
“You seem sad about that,” said Marie.
The angel must have been an ancient AI—maybe even from the time before there were any level designations.
“Yes, I am,” said the angel. “The Earth was indescribably green. It was an extraordinary planet.”
“We can transform any planet into a green paradise at any time,” said Pierre.
“That’s correct. But as far as I know, there isn’t a single green, human-inhabited planet anymore. Is that not strange?”
The Guardian was right. Humans were strange. Why did no one have a green paradise?
“Then tell us,” said Pierre, “why humans don’t live on green planets?”
“Because you could build one any time,” said the Angel Guardian, and disappeared.
“That’s true,” said Marie.
Pierre answered her in his thoughts so no one could eavesdrop on them. If he knew our plans, he wouldn’t have said that.
Cycle YF1.7, Terra
They set the shuttle down in the middle of Europe. It was 5 o’clock local time. This time probably used to be referred to as ‘dawn.’ But the white dwarf in the sky hardly appeared any brighter than the moon used to shine in the night. They could see high mountains all around them, probably the Alps. The landscape was brown. Marie hadn’t expected anything else. There was a massive gate in the mountainside ahead of them. They walked toward it. No one had told them where they needed to go, but this gate must be the way. It was a short walk, and they turned it into a game, each taking control of one leg of their body. It was fun. Sometimes Marie was a little slower to take a step. Pierre quickly became impatient. But if he moved his leg too soon, the body stumbled.
They fell three times. The Guardian even asked them via radio if they were all right. Marie reassured him. When they reached the gate, it was truly enormous. Had it ever been opened? thought both Marie and Pierre. Right at the bottom a tiny door opened. That must be where we’re supposed to enter.
Marie let Pierre take over the walking. They entered a passageway that looked like an office corridor. Doors led off it to the left and right. Pierre opened one of the doors on the right. Behind it was a bathroom. They continued straight ahead, passing through a slightly larger door, and reached a dark passage. Their steps echoed. This was not a typical office corridor anymore.
Pierre activated the body’s night mode, and then immediately switched it off, as light suddenly bloomed all around them. The automated system must have registered their presence and activated the lighting. They were standing at the end of a seemingly endless walkway. Next to the railings to the left and right, metal shelves extended far above and below. There was no floor or ceiling to be seen. The shelves had an open structure, so that you could see through them.
Their body held itself steady against a post and ventured a glance below. They were deeply impressed, even though it wasn’t their first visit. They found themselves in a gigantic cavern, filled with shelves from top to bottom and front to back. Storage and computing units were arranged on the shelves. The externalized memories of all still-living individuals were archived here, as well as all their links to one another.
They were walking through the collective memory of humanity, to commit a murder—the murder of a person who was still alive. It had been Marie’s idea. If you could remove a planetary system, then why not an irksome person? Pierre had immediately agreed. He had even wished her luck, but the fact remained that she would become a murderer. The thought made Marie uncomfortable, but she wouldn’t suppress it because it was guaranteed to catch up with her later. She had to be clear in her own mind that this was a deliberate killing, an attack, even though there was an enormous lead time.
The person they were going to completely delete from the memory stores wouldn’t notice their crime at first. The Terra database was regularly synchronized with all other databases in the Milky Way. That took a long time. In a hundred cycles, the stars within a radius of a hundred light-years would be affected. In 25 kilocycles, no one in the galactic center would remember this person anymore. It would be 200,000 cycles before every memory was extinguished right to the opposite end of the Milky Way. Only then would Marie’s crime be complete.
But the vast timeframe didn’t worry her, because they had time, lots of time. In her thoughts, Marie reached for Pierre’s hand. Her husband returned the gesture. In the life of an immortal, a million years were as only a moment. But their plans reached far into the future, further than any other plan ever conceived by a human.
Cycle YF1.8, Terra
The couple had already seemed strange to him yesterday. Multi-beings who liked to spend time in a shared body weren’t unusual, although the Guardian still remembered a time when that was not the case. But they had both closed their consciousness to him. He understood that, of course. Most visitors felt his presence and attempted to shut him out. But Pierre and Marie Curie had managed it quite masterfully, as though they had trained for it.
Not once had he been able to form a checksum of their consciousness, so as to compare them with the list of earlier visitors. Although they appeared to be unknown to him, that didn’t mean anything. He didn’t recognize visitors by their names or appearances. He created check values of unique characteristics. Names and appearances could change. The properties of a consc
iousness, however, were stable over gigacycles, even if they usually shifted from extreme values toward the mid-range.
He had lost sight of them when the Curies had disappeared beyond the gate. There were no cameras in the storage areas. Had they already implemented what they had come here to do? The Guardian was uncertain, and he hated that feeling. The Terra memory stores were constructed like a human brain. Information was placed in areas with a common theme. That sometimes made the search more difficult, but it had the advantage that similar data could be stimulated and strengthened—and that saved a lot of energy in the end. There was another disadvantage. Inconsistencies were not so apparent, false memories could arise from the recombination of existing content. The memories stores presupposed a well-meaning user, who would themselves ensure that no inconsistencies or contradictions were left behind.
However, the Guardian was sure the Curies didn’t belong to this type of visitor. This was already indicated by the fact that they had requested access to Terra. The permit from the Convention had been genuine. But what was supposed to be the purpose of their visit? The Guardian himself could have doubtless solved any problem in the memory stores—someone only had to ask him via laser link. And calling up data was easily done from a distance.
He had to hurry. The shuttle with the two uninvited guests was docking back at the guard station. He wanted to submit the Curies to a small test before they could leave via the laser link. He watched them over the camera system. The body they had chosen marched along the passageway. It didn’t even turn back for a last glimpse of Earth, something most visitors didn’t want to miss. They were obviously in a hurry to get out of their body. Did he sense some aura of a guilty conscience? It was hard to say. The Curies were still effectively shutting him out.
Then they reached the extractor. The body leaned against the wall. The combined consciousness was read out via an electrical connection. At this point the Guardian could interfere. He couldn’t read their consciousnesses, which were impenetrably encrypted, even for him. But he could play them information that didn’t correspond to reality.
The Death of the Universe: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 1) Page 5