Further than Before- Pathway to the Stars

by Matthew Opdyke

  Pathway already had millions of space-vehicles buzzing about back and forth all over the solar system, but none of this activity was visible to public Earth or even vulnerable to being tracked unless a person was read-in to Pathway. As a matter of reality and fact, Eliza’s foresight was so far-reaching that even the most malevolent and advanced of aliens could no longer track Earth or any of its inhabitants. Pathway’s read-in system was iron-clad if not better, since thus far, out of 2.2 billion people and growing, not a single individual had defected. The correctional algorithms that Eliza and Yesha had initially set in motion had since matured and worked splendidly to persuade with fairness the loyalty of everyone in Pathway. As it was, everything outside of the IMC that had been planned was well ahead of schedule, since these technologies would be revealed after Eliza ran for President of the US and won the race and would be essential before humanity could sojourn into deep space and traverse the stars. She did not plan to run in 2020 since the UP still needed to grow, but she knew if she ran in 2024, she would win, and then humanity with any luck would be ready.

  Thus, Vesha could theoretically take her time building each spacecraft of the IMC if she wanted to, but she had planned on completing the gigantic spacecraft reasonably soon despite the lack of a time crunch. Delays etc. could happen at any time in outer space, and even more so if your work center was above the outer asteroid belt and the orbit of Pluto itself, just on the inside the Oort Cloud. Plus, she wanted to have and show a finished product to allow for testing and further improvements with time to spare. Every possibility had to be considered, including super advanced hostilities, so they needed to be prepared. If healing did not work, they would need to be prepared to eliminate any concern over survival, so they could get back to the healing of the Universe. They could not miss a thing, so they didn’t, and they wouldn’t.

  As steward over the entire project, and quite possibly the most significant and most expanding set of journeys mankind was on the cusp of seeing and being a part of, Vesha ensured that the workers were well-prepared and safe by protecting each project through completion within a series of optimized human-friendly bio-environments with conveyances and work centers for volunteers who wanted to be involved but had decided to live naturally or through Darwinian evolution. Very few there were, of those who chose to allow themselves to live on only through their progeny, but they were bright and glorious in spirit, nonetheless. Many, both optimized and natural, had joined to be a part of the long-term nature of progression itself. Those who were optimized wanted to behold the evolution of the Universe through desired rather than random results, and those who were natural wished to share their legacy through their children and future generations.

  For now, Vesha was ready to get this project started.

  Chapter 39: Solar System Operations, Section 2

  Starting off with design, Vesha would routinely brief Yesha, Eliza, and James as she put together a series of teams and began plans for each significant aspect of her project. She involved as many Pathway personnel as she could because she was of the mind that the more there were on any given project, the merrier the progress and the more issues they could come up with, conceive of in their minds, and share in the Virtual Universe, so they could overcome them with ease. Once they could identify all of the potential issues and ideal preventative measures, they could more fully prepare any IMC Command Spacecraft AI, to easily overcome each one as well.

  The plan would be simple; design each aspect of the first IMC Command Spacecraft, create an order of accomplishment as to how it would be built, and produce a macro-like system with armies of clouds of Virtual-Universe-controlled-nanos that would automate those procedures and fine-tune them, and then duplicate the one spacecraft for an additional twelve or more spacecraft just like it. All the raw materials they needed were right there in the asteroid belt above and around the dwarf planet, Pluto; with Eliza’s nanos, everything from the asteroids could be tapped and stored for historical data, and then they would mine, smelt, mold, shape, and finish parts from a macro to a micro level of scope using cold fusion without a single bit of waste to a single particle to provide resources as needed, as well as part-integration, and systems tie-ins to complete each spacecraft.

  Resources, provisions, and a large group of highly intelligent and eager personnel now ready, and looking out from her encapsulated work center in space, with a bright and full view of the Milky Way Galaxy, Vesha Celeste organized the following teams:

  Team 1 – Engines/Drives, Team Lead: Luís Rodriguez

  Team 2 – Navigation Systems, Team Leads: Mett Dormer, James Wilhelm

  Team 3 – Environmental Systems, Team Lead: Scarlett Hart

  Team 4 – Labs and Innovation Centers, Team Lead: Yon Forall

  Team 5 – Inter- and Intra-Command Spacecraft Travel, Team Lead: Anastasia Renée

  And finally one of the most critical aspects of intergalactic travel:

  Team 6 – Shields and Defense, Team Leads: Malinda Jefferson, Melissa Asher, Rebecca Knight, and Matzu Kashi

  Ultimately, Vesha saw to it that certain key aspects of the prototype IMC Command Spacecraft would be designed first, with as many integrated crew members as requested and necessary, while simultaneously working on various other projects within the scope of the spacecraft. They could then shape a beautiful shell around the engines, navigation, and living areas that would include the shield connected like a woven network to each inner wall, and the subsequent spaces used for the life-like aspects of the living-space-juggernaut. All of this could be done by programming the clouds of nanos, and for additional high-end quality, the crew was involved with the nanos to ensure all safety, security, and functional requirements were met. The nanos were very helpful, but humanity was essential.

  The head engineer for Team 1 and the great mind behind the development of the engines was Luís Rodriguez, a previous astronaut for NASA, who had been to outer space already, and who was well-versed in the development of fusion and plasma engines, yet he had theories and ideas for so much more always playing out in his mind. When he’d met Yesha in 2011, he was enthralled with Pathway LLC at the time, had worked to help it become its own super industrial powerhouse in 2012, and with clearness he had been working on far more than fusion.

  Upon approach and with in-depth knowledge of quantum entanglement en masse, fusion, the sophisticated use of the Casimir effect, and gravitational and electromagnetic manipulation, he shared with Vesha his idea for four different types of engines or drives and how each would serve a mutual and seamless purpose in traversing the Cosmos. He then stated that he would refer to each component of the engines and drives as merely drives, from the moment of this conversation with her and on into the future. Vesha had approved, and he had gathered around him a large cadre of workers to mull over each detail and possibility as well.

  Vesha, to ensure maximum participation, started with the six design teams and afforded them as many workers as needed. She also visited them often in the Virtual Universe for planning, review, and testing. Each crew also met in the Virtual Universe often as well.

  Luís’ first crew developed what he called the Q-Drive. This crew of ten worked with the shared knowledge of each crewmember and Luís on the design of the Quantum Entanglement and Disentanglement Accelerator Drive. Rather than using such a long name for that or any other drive, he decided it would be much easier to call it a drive but precede it with the first letter of the outstanding feature of each unique engine, in this case, he would simply call this one the Q-Drive. Essentially, this drive made use of Eliza’s sensor and jump gateway technologies to fashion plans for a series of single drive to a much more robust set of powerful drives, based on spacecraft size with no apparent limit, that would take advantage of quantum entanglement to plot a location in the Universe to go to, factor in all of the navigational system information and then jump to that location in mere moments.

  As Luís explained to Vesha, “This system will effectively gather ever
y bit of information from the particles, to the atoms, to every aspect of the spacecraft, its contents, and the spacecraft itself to prepare it for delivery and then teleport from any part of the observable Universe to another part of the observable Universe as programmed or upon request of the authorized spacecraft commander or their vice commander, and could return the spacecraft, crew, and cargo upon request and immediately to the last safest location it had been to, should anything be beyond our scope of ability for safety. This drive could be used to traverse long distances through vast regions of space, from galaxy to galaxy, from filament-to-filament, from supercluster-to-supercluster, from void-to-void, from supervoid-to-supervoid, and from planet-to-planet, and anywhere between. It could travel billions of light-years within a blink of an eye, but they would start small, and thus it could be used in a small scope setting for travel efficiency and safety. The possibilities were endless, but as with many new ventures, jumps could always be greater with more familiarity and experience with space as it is, rather than as it seemed.

  The second drive was what he called the Alcubierre Drive or the A-Drive. This would in effect allow the spacecraft to travel the speed of light by grabbing outer space before it and pushing outer space behind it while the spacecraft and all of its contents were shielded and safe from the effects of debris and fast acceleration or deceleration. This would be used if traveling within several parsecs to light minutes from the desired destination, or to quickly travel from one point to the next. Typically, the Q-Drive would be used, but the A-Drive was more of a backup drive that provided more real-time situational awareness if a sensor was sent to the target destination, and the A-Drive was set to accelerate and then decelerate precisely at that point.

  The Fusion Drive or the F-Drive was the third sequential method available for piloting the spacecraft in auto or manual drive covering distances that were typically less than thirty light minutes away, yet with speed and agility. This was the glorified method of travel since an individual would feel the thrill of the G-Forces ever so gently while turning, accelerating or decelerating. One could look out a spacecraft window and enjoy the view of outer space as it would slowly change according to the speed and movement of the spacecraft.

  Finally, the fourth drive was the G-Drive or the Gravity Particle Accelerator Drive. This could be used both inside and outside the gravity wells of planets and inside or outside of the various atmospheres for precise and smooth landing, take-off, entering or exiting gravity wells, and turning, accelerating, and decelerating. Effectively, using the G-Drive the spacecraft would canvas the entire area below or above and within a hundred-mile radius, no matter the speed of travel, and fuse the sensory information with every aspect when it came to monopole, dipole, and multi-pole magnetism in the areas around it to create the necessary polarity essential to float in the air or above the ground, and during landing, take-off, or even enable navigation based on automated fine tuning, while simultaneously deflecting debris or weather systems that would otherwise damage the craft. Using the G-Drive, the spacecraft could hover over the ground and travel at speeds of any sort between zero miles an hour to light speed, compensating internal gravity ideally to ensure movement of the spacecraft was possible without causing the passengers or cargo to suffer from turns, G-Forces, etc.

  Luís Rodriguez put together all of his plans and prepared his presentation for Vesha inside the Virtual Universe. Everything was designed, shown, and virtually experimented on down to the finite details and only required Vesha to push that mental trigger to begin the building process. Once she did so, Luís’ four drives would be built by pre-programmed nanos in an assembly line style and in a matter of moments, all within a bioenvironmental shelter that would protect the engines until the spacecraft was ready for their integration. Everything was ready to go; they just needed to await the work of the other teams to affix the number of drives needed for maximum power and redundancy when the rest of the spacecraft was ready for them. Luís’ contribution had been astronomical in every sense, quite literally, and he was thus rewarded. Even though he could have taken a five-year sabbatical he chose to gather his crews and together they helped the other teams out, but in the background. This whole project was exciting to him and his crew and they each wanted to be a part of it through to completion.

  On the side, he and his team worked with each of the other teams, to integrate separate fusion cores throughout many areas of the overall design of the Joint Space Command Spacecraft, to employ both redundancy and massive amounts of power within each of the various different functions. With twelve living sectors of one-hundred living quarters each, and with sixteen powerful defensive turret locations of sixteen delivery systems apiece, as well as a very large command section, other energy requirements, and one-hundred-ninety-two support spacecraft on-board in the twelve docking bays, he had Q, A, F, and G-Drives aligned for both internal and traveling aspects of each of spacecraft.

  Mett Dormer had worked on the navigation systems and had engineered integrated navigational computers of all types since their beginning in the mid to late 1900s and had since been involved in the development of some of the most advanced supercomputer hardware and software known to humanity having worked on IBM’s Brain-Computer Program, before he had met Eliza back in 2013, and therefore was an ideal team lead for a command crew and AI driven navigational system. He and his friend, James Wilhelm, had accumulated hundreds of patents under their belt and had both been fully read-in to Pathway. Each of these gentlemen had also worked on navigation systems together for NASA and had over the last few years worked closely with Luís Rodriguez for Pathway designing and building both the engines and the complex navigation systems and pilot-friendly interfaces for the millions of space-vehicles already milling about the solar system with ease.

  The command spacecraft would be so much larger in scope than anything designed before, and they would provide much more than a command section and shelter for twelve-hundred families apiece. With a vast array of complementary missions a command spacecraft would complete, Mett Dormer, James Wilhelm, and Luís worked together, and each with a large cadre of personnel, visiting the Virtual Universe often to design the navigational systems. Many of the personnel knew that this might be the only time they could actually be a part of the IMC, because many would either stay behind to develop more command spacecraft, help with Solar System Operations, or comb the Cosmos creating vast colonies throughout the billions of galaxies in each of the twelve zones of space. As far as the navigation systems were concerned, most everything would be automated, but tied-in in such a way as to allow the AI, Spacecraft Zonal Commander or the Vice commander, permission to use autopilot or they would be enabled to take over the controls if they wanted or needed to.

  Each of the navigational systems would be automatic, were tied into a very sophisticated network of artificial intelligence subsystems and had unique voices. The Presidential Spacecraft AI had a deep, soothing, kind, thoughtful, authoritative voice, and identified himself as Morgan. President Eliza Williams approved and thought him easy to hear, respond to, and appreciate.

  The AI Subsystems could be integrated into the navigation and drive systems and were such that a pilot or general in charge could enter the desired destination through their neural link or use the physical interface on the control deck. From there, the AI Subsystems which were tied into the Twelve Database Moons and would also be tied into the large database processors on the spacecraft itself, and as such could communicate with the spacecraft crew and send out a series of sensors scattered throughout a general area of space near the destination desired, yet within several light-hours apart. Once the sensory information was returned and processed, the AI, the Commander, and the Vice Commander could determine within the Virtual Universe, and within an already safe sector of space, with full-on details of both visual from every direction, with recorded mapping of the regional stellar activities and every other sensory aspect the safest and most secure region of interest to jump to
next. The sensors were set up such that tampering of any kind could also be detected and recorded in every frequency spectrum and in every wavelength and known encryption, so the Mission Staff would know each detail to consider and be optimally prepared if further action were to be required. Once the location was determined, the navigation systems would be set into motion by the AI with a macro-like set of loops that would account for every atom, every particle, and every complex construct within a defined area, or in the case of the Q-Drive the entire spacecraft and its contents and then essentially teleport to the desired location for very long distance travel, with pre-planned defenses up and ready or another jump or series of jumps set up in the event of something severe, until desired exploration, discovery and progress was made, and the rest of the missions for each designation could be completed.

  Team 2 presented their designs with Team 1 in the Virtual Universe to Vesha Celeste, and as such Vesha was quite impressed. “This is a moment of prestige, of honor, and it is an honor to include all of those who worked with you, ladies and gentlemen, for doing what you have done, here, and for having the collective foresight to deal with any conceivable situation with haste, safety, and accuracy. I am so proud of each of you for your efforts, to each of your team members for their collaboration and their efforts, and as such, in accordance with Universal Laws and in and by the power of Universal Ethics, I grant each of you five years of sabbatical to travel wherever your whim and hope takes you. Please make the most of it, your Solar Credit Accounts have unlimited funds, so please make the most of it, within the scope of Universal Ethics. The Virtual Universe is amazing, but there is something about this physical Universe that is even more profound.” The three gentlemen and their crews chose to hold off on their sabbatical and help Teams 3, 4, and 5. While they were working away, Team 6 finished their project.