by Paul Anlee
A sliding door whooshed open in the wall behind Greg and a metallic sphere about a meter in diameter floated into the room. Conversation ceased abruptly as attendees wondered if the new arrival was part of the presentation and calculated the fastest route to an exit—just in case.
The security detail drew their weapons and took aim at the object, but held their fire.
Greg shot Kathy a sideways look; his raised eyebrows conveyed his query. I thought we were going to wait until later, before beginning the demonstration phase of the presentation.
You were losing them. I had to do something—Kathy replied.
Greg pretended not to notice Reverend LaMontagne hiding a smirk behind one hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Alpha-001,” Kathy announced as the sphere hovered to the center of the meeting table.
“Alpha-001 is a prototype mechanical robot I’ve constructed to demonstrate how we envisage construction of the Vesta colony being completed in reasonable time. We call them Cybrids, short for Cybernetic Hybrids.”
She turned to her left. “Madam Prime Minister, if you could ask the guards to holster their weapons, please. Alpha-001 is not a threat to this meeting.” The PM nodded to her security people.
“Thank you,” Kathy continued. “Almost all space projects since the first astronaut orbited the Earth have been based on humans working in space.
“Long-term residencies in the International Space Stations and the highly-publicized Mission to Mars failure of 2028 have demonstrated the perils of space for humans. When we travel into space, we must carry our Earth-like environment with us. That includes air, water, food, and shielding from heavy radiation as well as from micro-meteors. All of this must be transported from Earth in armored containers we call spaceships, and survive travel over hundreds of thousands or millions of kilometers.”
“In the past, humans were necessary because only we had the ability to think and act autonomously without direct operation from a distant Earth. But that’s about to change.
“Our DNND technology has provided us with a way to construct independent cognitive systems, and to program them with human knowledge and even human personalities. We can have human cognition and know-how in space, without the necessity of transporting our entire supporting environment.”
The attendees were almost bursting with questions, and Kathy rushed ahead to finish.
“Alpha-001 is only half the size of the construction robots we plan for this project. It contains a power source based on the Reality Assertion Field, or RAF, technology. It requires no food, air, water or fueling. It can operate in the harsh vacuum of space for ten years at a time or more.
“In its full-scale form, the Cybrid will contain a central processing unit based on the dendy lattice, which will give it complete operational autonomy and decision-making capabilities. The lattice will house a fully human personality and memories, and greater than human intelligence. It can calculate complex orbital dynamics while mining metal-rich asteroids.
“Using these mechanical workers, the Cybrids, will provide us with a huge population of sturdy space workers and help us to save the personalities and memories of millions more people that would otherwise be lost.”
“Wait. Are you saying you’ve solved the Artificial Intelligence problem?” asked the Indian Prime Minister, who’d been a well-known Computing Science scholar before entering politics.
Greg jumped in, “We’ve assembled a team of international experts to help solve quite a number of engineering problems in designing Alpha-001, although this particular model is only about as smart as a dog. We have a clean, long-lasting power source, reliable propulsion and manipulation systems, and autonomous intelligence.
“There will be many more inventions coming out soon that will seem nearly-miraculous, even to most scientists and engineers. Humanity has been on the brink of developing these advancements for a long time. The dendy lattice that Sharon Leigh first designed, the one she accidentally exposed her unborn son to, has simply allowed Kathy and me to think a little faster, and to explore a little deeper than our colleagues. The technology has come a long way, thanks to the advancements made by Sharon’s son, Darian Leigh, who continued her work and extended it into new areas.”
“Dr. Mahajani, you talked about programming the robot workers, the Cybrids, with human personalities,” the Indian PM began. “That sounds a lot like downloading the human soul, in much the same way Kurzweil described in his book, ‘The Singularity is Near’, doesn’t it?”
“Darian Leigh argued strongly against the existence of anything like a human soul,” replied Greg. “The dendy technology simply allows us to copy the concepta and persona—that is, the knowledge, beliefs, memories, opinions, habits, and personal preferences—our data, if you will, from the dendy-connected brain of a person into the blank semiconductor lattice of a robot. The biological person is still who they were when the process started; their brain patterns will only have been copied into a non-biological brain.”
“So you can make more than one copy of a person?”
Greg was not happy with where this line of questioning was leading. “Yes,” he admitted, hesitantly. “Frankly, I don’t see what we’d gain by doing that under these circumstances. Right now, the lattice copying procedure gives us a chance of storing the complete personalities of millions of people whose lives we couldn’t possibly save.
“Perhaps, in future, we’ll be able to copy those stored personalities back into biological bodies. Perhaps, we’ll figure a way to try out newly designed personalities in some kind of virtual reality before they become embodied.
“I can’t predict where this might take us. We have other more pressing issues right now. We need to save and encourage as much diversity of personalities out there as possible, in much the same way as we encourage biological diversity. It makes a species hardier, stronger, and more resistant to environmental shocks and surprises.”
PM Sidhu was not finished. “Even so, isn’t this opening the way for a tough new species of machine intelligence, these Cybrids as you call them, to compete with humanity? I mean, if we create these machines and give them free reign in space while our home planet disintegrates, why would they bother helping us? Are we working toward a solution that will ultimately destroy us, given the chance?”
The question was one Greg had not allowed himself to dwell on. He scrambled to formulate an answer, one he hoped that he, himself, would find convincing.
“The Cybrids would be imbued with human personas. They will think of themselves as human on the inside. Why would they turn against their own people?”
“Because that’s what I would do,” a voice called out, “and what everyone around this table would do, given the chance to start over in a new environment with a new race of beings stronger and smarter than humans.”
The words flew out of Greg’s mouth without thought of the possible consequences, “Well, I hope very few people who think that way are chosen for Cybrid embodiment.”
14
Kathy gave Greg a severe look and sent—Are you trying to make sure we get no support at all for this program?
Sorry—Greg replied. I didn’t think that one through. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Reverend LaMontagne smirking again, and this time, less guardedly.
Clearly, many of the G26 leaders and their advisors had not been pleased with his answers. The room was alive with open muttering, emphatic shaking of heads, flying hands and, everywhere, faces carved with deep furrows and sour scowls. This was not an encouraging sign.
Surprisingly, Greg noted, the Reverend wasn’t among the overtly distressed. He had contained his smirk and now leaned forward in his seat, with an eager and thoughtful expression on his face, absent-mindedly stroking his chin.
I would have thought a “Man of God” would be voicing the most and the loudest objections here—Greg speculated quietly to himself. Very interesting.
Numerous voices shouted unin
telligible, overlapping questions.
PM Hudson held up her hands, trying to calm them all down. “We’re sure you all have a lot of questions. Remember, the purpose of this demonstration by Drs. Liang and Mahajani is to convince you we do have the scientific know-how to build this colony. What we need now is the political will to make it happen.”
“How is it floating there like that?” someone asked, happily changing the topic. “Have you discovered anti-gravity?”
Relieved to return to the science, Kathy answered patiently, “Not really anti-gravity per se. We can weaken the Higgs field interaction between the Cybrid’s matter and the Earth’s gravitational field. That makes it so the robot seems to have less mass, so little it can be easily kept afloat using gentle internal fans.”
While the leaders and advisers paused to process and ponder the implications of that, the measured voice of China’s President Chu emerged. “Let us accept that you can develop autonomous construction robots that are capable of developing an asteroid colony. How are we to transport these robots to Vesta in any reasonable amount of time?”
Greg had been prepared for that question and was glad to have the meeting back on track. “Good question. The asteroid belt is farther away from Earth than Mars. The fastest transit time to Mars, that is, when it is closest to Earth and using the best available rockets, is about four months. Going to Vesta, which is on average nearly three-hundred million kilometers farther from Earth, would take those conventional rockets at least two years. Clearly, on our tight schedule, this would make for considerable constraints. If you will indulge us a moment, we’ve set up a little demonstration here to show you how we can shorten the travel time using RAF technology.”
As Greg spoke, Kathy reached under the table in front of her and pulled out four things: a potato, a spring-loaded potato gun, an inch-thick block of wood, and another block of steel. She handed the potato and the spring-loaded gun to Greg. She walked to one end of the conference room and she set the blocks into the two sturdy clamps they’d positioned there earlier.
Greg held up the potato gun. “No worries, fellas,” Greg said to the nearest security officer. “It’s just a toy. Many of you will recognize this as a potato gun. We stick the barrel end into this potato and pull out a small plug.
“There isn’t much to these old-fashioned ones. When I pull the trigger, it causes a small build-up of air pressure behind the plug and propels it outward.” He shot a plug at the wall.
“You’ll notice the plug doesn’t have a lot of velocity and, because it’s only a small piece of potato, it doesn’t have much momentum.”
He paused to survey the bemused faces around the room. “Now, what if I said I could split that board at the other end of the room with this potato gun? I imagine you’d think, a piece of potato shot out of this thing couldn’t even reach that board, let alone break it.” Someone at the table laughed, but most just stared stone-faced, wondering where Greg was going with this.
As he spoke, Kathy moved back to the relative safety of Greg’s end of the room. She sat down at her open laptop beside him and pressed a few keys. A cylindrical beam of translucent violet light, about five centimeters in diameter sprang into existence between Greg and the wooden board at the other end of the table. Around the room, an intrigued audience collectively gasped and leaned forward.
Greg reloaded the gun and placed the tip of the barrel an inch inside the beam of light, and aimed precisely along its length.
“This cylindrical Reality Assertion Field between the barrel of the gun and the target is a complex field. Ninety-nine percent of it, up to right before it touches the plank, reduces the apparent mass of the potato plug so that it is more highly accelerated by the compressed air behind it. No doubt most of you will recall from your school years that acceleration is equal to force divided by mass (‘a’ equals ‘f’ over ‘m’).” Blank faces looked back at him.
Greg laughed. “Or maybe not. How about this? If we throw a small rock with the exact same effort as a big one, the small rock will fly farther.” People nodded understanding.
“So while this piece of potato is being pushed by the compressed air in the gun, it will be almost without perceptible mass. The force of the air will be able to move it at a much higher than normal velocity. In fact, by the time it leaves the barrel of the gun, it will be traveling as fast as a bullet.”
The guards in the room leaned forward at the mention of a bullet, and Greg hastened to explain, “Don’t worry. It’s only a little piece of potato, and it’ll only travel that fast within the purple part of the light beam.” The guards relaxed a little but remained alert.
“If you look at the far end of this light beam, you’ll see the color changes to yellow. Just before the potato plug exits the beam, another RAF field will increase its apparent mass by a factor of thousands, to fifty grams. However, it won’t have enough travel time in that part of the beam to lose any of its acquired velocity. And, just for good measure, we’ll increase its physical hardness just before impact.
“Now, for those of you who do remember high-school physics, you might be thinking that the friction of the air on the super-light potato plug in the purple beam would slow it down before it ever reached the yellow beam at the other end. Normally, that would be true. However, in this case, the reduction in the Higgs field interaction that removes the mass of the potato also proportionally reduces the air friction. The potato plug will act as if it’s in a vacuum. Let’s see what the result is.”
He took aim and pulled the trigger. The wooden board split apart with a loud “crack!” The protective steel plate behind it rang out as it absorbed the impact of the potato plug.
The audience jumped and then laughed nervously. The German Chancellor reached over and picked up the piece of potato from where it landed after bouncing off the metal plate. She held it up and squished it between her thumb and forefinger, for all to see.
Greg explained, “The basis for rockets is action and reaction. When propellant is expelled from one end at high velocity, it exerts a force on the rest of the rocket in the other direction. The RAF generator allows us to alter the relative masses of the propellant and ship. Increasing the acceleration of the propellant makes the rocket move faster. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
“We calculate that a properly outfitted ship could travel from Earth to Vesta in five to seven hours.” Several individuals gasped, and lively chatter threatened to take over.
“So, how much is all this gonna cost us?” Representative for the New Confederacy, Secretary of State, Virgil Hartland’s Texas heavy drawl cut through and refocused the diffused attention.
Faces turned his way as he continued, “I mean, the technological wizardry y’all have shown us today is remarkable. But at some point, we have to win the support of our voters. And the world economies haven’t exactly been hummin’ along the past thirty years. Most of us here are not in any position to go to our voters and ask them to pony up for another ‘make work’ program. We tried sippin’ from that well a few times too many this century.”
Greg was dismayed by the number of heads nodding in agreement. He wondered if they’d been listening at all. Didn’t they realize they were discussing the end of the world? There is no ‘Plan B’ here, folks!
His first impulse was to walk around the table and slap each one of them upside the head. He resisted. Barely. Instead, he tried to make his point in a different way.
“Your electorate will all be dead if we don’t do this,” he said.
“Well, hell,” Hartland replied, “They’re pretty much all gonna be dead anyway, no matter what we do, aren’t they?”
Greg was stunned. He accepted the inevitable massive loss of life the planet was facing. He and Kathy hadn’t held out much hope of saving more than a token sampling of humanity, just enough for it to survive. Maybe I was naïve to hope preserving the human species would be motivation enough. He looked to PM Hudson in silent desperation.<
br />
The support he sought arrived from a completely unexpected source: Reverend Alan LaMontagne.
“Now Virgil,” he began, his deep baritone automatically commanding attention. “Do you truly believe that God would abandon His people in this hour? Can’t you see that He has brought these two gifted, young scientists and their miracles to show us the way forward?
“Our Lord means to give us Dominion over His universe. Our Promised Land is not confined to this planet. Who are we to question God’s Plan and Methods?”
As he spoke, the Reverend’s voice grew in fervor and power. “When the Great Flood came, Moses and his family built their sacred Ark. They knew that everyone and everything not on that Ark would be destroyed in the Great Deluge, but did they question the Lord’s Promise? No! Though they were charged with the responsibility of rebuilding all of humanity and all of the animals on the entire planet from the few they were able to save, did they ever lose Faith in their God? No!”
Despite many of the leaders not being Christian, and none belonging to any of the more evangelical sects, Greg could see they were nonetheless captivated by LaMontagne’s inspired message. He made to jump in and take advantage of the swing in sentiment, but the Reverend was not finished his impromptu sermon.
“Clearly, the Lord has decided to end our time on this planet. Earth is full of sin and humanity is due for one final cleansing. We are being given a Holy Mission to save what we can and take His Word into the greater unknown. The Lord has spoken through these two young people and delivered to us a new message. We are ready. We can save our people. We can choose the purest, the most qualified, the best of humanity, and we can start again. The message is ours to heed, and heed it we must. Heed it, we will.”
As LaMontagne’s entreaty came to an end, his eyes blazed with Yeshua’s Glory for all to see. Secretary Hartland, feeling publicly admonished, lowered his gaze and fiddled with his pen.