The Rift: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  My lodging on board this vessel is a chip made of carbon nanotubes. These tiny structures function like semiconductors, but they are immune to cosmic radiation. I am an AI, an artificial intelligence. At least those left behind on Earth classify me this way, even though my core consists of the consciousness of a real human being, a Russian cosmonaut and doctor. I have gained an enormous amount of knowledge, but I am still Dimitri Marchenko. I have the same feelings as he, dream his dreams, and shed tears over his lost love. Of course I cannot actually shed tears.

  My capabilities are limited. I can watch my surroundings because the sensors of the spaceship act as my eyes and ears. They capture energy patterns in the X-ray and gamma-ray ranges. They listen to radio frequencies and see 100 times farther into the universe than a human eye ever could. The cosmos is magnificent. That was my first impression today, right after waking. It is like being awakened by birds singing directly outside your open window. There are even sounds here. A giant wave is moving through the Perseus cluster, and I can perceive its pressure differentials as sounds. No piano could ever play such sounds, and no human ear could possibly hear them. Such perceptions will save me from loneliness, I hope, and I must admit that loneliness is my greatest fear.

  On the other hand, I will not be alone during the entire voyage. There is a reason I was awakened today, on the first day of a new era, as our Creator decreed. In the thicker middle section of Messenger, there is a kind of pouch containing tardigrades—also known as water bears—in an inactive state. The coldness of space, the radiation, the enormous span of time—all this does not bother these sleeping creatures. They accompany me because this is the most efficient and safest way of transporting an extremely valuable cargo: Adam and Eve. The complete genetic codes of these two passengers have been inscribed into the tardigrades’ DNA. When Adam and Eve finally awake, I will be their father and nurse, friend and teacher.

  January 2, 1

  During the past months, which I spent asleep, the interstellar dust was our enemy. If a particle larger than an atom had hit Messenger, I would probably never have awakened. Yet, from now on the sparse material filling the enormous space between the stars will be a friend. Messenger is starting to gather matter. While we have only covered three-quarters of the distance to our destination, we must start decelerating now in order to avoid shooting past it at high speed.

  Messenger has no engine to use for acceleration or deceleration. It received its launch velocity from giant lasers on the moon, placed there as part of mankind’s ‘Starshot’ program. These lasers shot high-energy photons at it. Because Messenger weighs so little, it managed to reach 20 percent of the speed of light this way. At the end of the voyage there will be no laser guns to slow it down. This does not matter for the other nano-spaceships of the Starshot program. Those are pure observers that are meant to fly past the stars closest to Earth and to send images and data home. I do not know whether they succeeded, because mankind was still waiting for results to be sent back when the lasers sent Messenger—and me—on a similar journey.

  I call up a concert by Tchaikovsky from the external memory. It remains quiet inside Messenger because there is no air on board to transmit sound waves. Nevertheless, the sounds float through my consciousness like curtains wafting in front of a window, and I imagine a thunderstorm outside. I used to love thunderstorms back on Earth. In Marchenko’s consciousness, in my mind, there are many beautiful memories of them, as well as two terrible ones that I have placed in a dark corner.

  I give the command that initiates the long deceleration process. At the rear end of Messenger, a microscopic opening ejects a net of tantalum fibers with the thickness of single atoms. I do this very carefully. The net will not be functioning as a kind of parachute. Every atom it is going to capture—and the initial plan assumes no more than one atom per hour—will enable Messenger to grow. Nano-manipulators will inspect the individual atoms and insert them where they are needed. The spaceship will gradually add new functions that are contained in its construction plan, its own DNA.

  At the same time, its mass increases. According to the law of momentum conservation, the product of mass and velocity remains constant. If its mass increases, its velocity must decrease. I am responsible for fine-tuning this process. Before the launch of Messenger, the distribution of matter on the way to our destination was unknown. Only the result has been predetermined, the approximate arrival time and the desired state of the ship and its crew. Based on this, I must calculate backward. If we encounter a dust cloud, I have to reduce the accumulation rate by partially retracting the net. Otherwise we will become too slow, extending the travel time. If for some reason we happen to cross a particularly empty sector of the universe, I will have to spread the tantalum net wider so it can capture more atoms.

  The first catch is a proton, the core of a hydrogen atom. Messenger can tell what the net captured, based on the strength of the transmitted impulse and its own speed. In the beginning I won’t be picky, as the ship needs almost any element for its growth. At some point, though, the ship will no longer require hydrogen, the most common element. Then Messenger will eject superfluous material, a process that will also serve to reduce our velocity. These variables cannot be calculated in advance. A simplistic computer program would undoubtedly fail at some point. This was the reason I was chosen to be the first crew member.

  No one asked me whether I wanted to do this—at least I cannot remember it. I found all the information necessary for fulfilling my mission in Messenger’s memory. Yet there are memory sectors not accessible to me. I suspect they contain certain answers, maybe even the grand plan behind the entire expedition.

  When I awakened I had the following feeling: Is it right for me to be here? And, everything will be revealed in due time. Therefore I was surprised but not shocked to wake up as the AI of this spaceship—far away from any form of life, except for the tardigrades that will stay in their state of suspended animation for a long time. The last time I felt like this was as a child, when my mother took me to church. I would sit on a hard chair at the edge of the domed interior, and she held my small fingers in her calloused hands. Then everything turned silent, until an angelic choir began to sing. I have no faith in God or a higher being, but I know there are things my rational mind cannot grasp, even if the moment arrives when Messenger finally provides a quantum computer I can access. That very moment is actually contained in the ship’s construction plan.

  January 3, 1

  Today I started to keep a diary. Of course, any change to the ship is accurately recorded. Even 20 years from now I will be able to trace when Messenger received which capabilities, how fast it moved, how much it weighed, and what the ship’s instruments saw. A diary requires me to record things in a more concise fashion. While I was reconstructing the first two days from the log files, I could clearly see the advantage of a diary. I am not just creating it for myself, but also for Adam and Eve.

  The remodeling of the ship has already started. The needle—originally precisely ten centimeters long—to the very last atom——has grown by a tiny fraction. Initially, the goal is to optimize the internal systems. I will gain new capabilities, but that is a vague way of putting it. The ship will learn new things, and I am going to profit from it. I must be careful not to identify with the ship.

  I am not the ship. The technology of Messenger only serves me. I am Dimitri, called Mitya by close friends. The nickname touches me. It feels as if my mother were stroking my cheek, her hand clothed in a scratchy wool glove. Or as if Francesca is complaining about one of my dumb jokes. Francesca, my love, where are you now? I would like to call her, but the ship won’t be able to send a radio signal to Earth for at least another ten years. Then I might expect an answer perhaps seven years later. Those aren’t exactly ideal conditions for a romantic relationship, and I hope to find a way to handle this painful recollection. Wouldn’t it have been better to delete this part of my memory?

  According to the Creator’s
plan, the nanofabricator will be expanded first. This is a difficult process. Messenger will begin to grow from the inside out. The fabricator is responsible for producing everything the ship needs, including itself. It works in three stages, of which only the first one existed at launch. That was the primal machine, so tiny humans could not see it without a magnifying glass. For this, the engineers copied the greatest inventor of them all—life itself. The machine has no internal moveable parts, and possesses neither arms nor gears. Instead, it uses electromagnetic fields to manipulate the atoms and ions captured by the tantalum net. It places them at the location determined in the plan, just like the ancient Egyptians moved stones where the architect intended them to go. In the end, after an incredibly long time, a pyramid comes into being—or in our case, a spaceship.

  But we have not yet reached this point. The fabricator can only work as fast as the net delivers building material. I have to be patient. The human being I used to be never possessed much of this useful skill. As an AI, I have left this phase behind: I can slow down or speed up my experience of time by simply manipulating my internal clock. This enables me to increase my reaction speed enormously during a dangerous situation. And if I get bored, when nothing happens for weeks, I can adjust the clock rate so it feels like a single day has passed by.

  I hope I will no longer need this ability in the future, but today I activated it.

  You can pre-order Proxima Rising here:

  hard-sf.com/links/610690

  Copyright

  Brandon Q. Morris

  www.hard-sf.com

  brandon@hard-sf.com

  Translator: William Knapton

  Editing: Dr. Ulrike Bunge

  Editing Team: Marcia Kwiecinski, A.A.S. and Stephen Kwiecinski, B.S.

  Cover design: Sanura Jayashan using images by John Jason (Unsplash.com), Raka Si (Pxhere.com), crop_ (Depositphotos.com)