Elias was interrupted in his monitoring activity by a call on his Emmie, “Elias this is Arn we've found something you might be interested in.”
“Okay Arn, I'm on my way.”
Elias entered the command center to see Arn, Al, Bucky and the others.
“What's up Arn?” he asked.
“Look at this Elias.”
On the wallscreen was an image of a blue planet. An Earth blue planet.
“Have you run an atmospheric analysis?”
“Yeah,” said Al. “Nitrogen, oxygen with a smattering of other gases. Composition almost identical to Earth.”
“Other particulars?”
“Diameter point-nine-five Earth,” said Steve. “From gravimetric analysis a composition that is approximately equal in density to Earth.”
“An Earth-like planet,” said Elias. “And obviously some process that is putting oxygen in the atmosphere.”
“Yeah, that process is called life Elias,” said Bucky without emotion.
After six days they arrived in the vicinity of the planet. In the command center, Bucky was the first to notice.
“Something is happening on the surface down there,” he said. “It's like a giant ant farm or something.”
“Okay,” said Arn. “Let's not get any closer. We'll observe from here. Al have the Emmies hold us at this distance. Elias, what does your instrument show?”
“As far as I can tell the source is not on the planet but at a vector beyond it, generally pointing back to Earth. I suspect that the ships are exiting the wormhole mouth there.”
“Okay, let's try to get a little closer to that mouth. Al can you and the Emmies plot us a course to Elias' source?”
“Sure Arn, just a minute.”
“How about the planet's surface?” asked Bucky. “Are we going to investigate that activity?”
“Later,” said Arn. “First we find what we've been looking for, Elias' wormhole.”
A few days later as Bucky was searching the region where the suspected wormhole mouth lurked he noticed the pinpoint of light. From a distance, it looked like an unblinking star.
“How far away do you think we are?”
“Impossible to say Elias but Arn has ordered us into deceleration to prepare for a rendezvous.”
A day later the pinpoint had become a disk and was growing.
“I would estimate another day Elias. We'll close on the object somewhat above it. Hopefully undetected until we determine whether there is danger or not.”
The following day it was obvious that the object they were approaching was a large wormhole mouth. Larger than usual. And brighter than usual.
“That's something,” said Elias looking at the wallscreen. “They are keeping that mouth open as if the amount of power required was no object.”
“Why?” asked Bucky.
“Well I would say that they are in a hurry. They want to keep the wormhole prepared for the next ship. And they are probably using it for communication to coordinate their efforts.”
“Who Elias? Who has the money and power to do such a thing?”
“I'm not sure Bucky, but I bet it has something to do with the fact that the ship we found on the moon of Eridani was AI piloted.”
“AIs?”
“Yeah, I think the AIs are involved.”
Just then the wallscreen flashed brightly, blinding both Elias and Bucky.
Their Emmies both announced at the same time.
“This is Arn, prepare yourselves, we are under attack.”
By that time Elias had seated himself but was still rubbing his eyes as they watered. After a minute he was able to see a bit with only an after image. He could sense the ship was turning because of a new force on the spinning crew wheel, like a Coriolis force on Earth. On Earth it caused storms like hurricanes to spin in a preferred direction. Here it normally caused just a slight unsteadiness when standing. Obviously, Arn was trying to flee as fast as possible without bothering to power down the crew wheel.
The fusion engines kicked in as the ship finished its turn and began accelerating at its maximum. A new experience was now had as the acceleration produced a force at right angles to the spin. But the spin was slowing and the rooms would soon rotate to accommodate the direction of the acceleration. The force would soon be perpendicular to the floor but Elias would have to hold on and wait before heading to command.
Chapter 17
Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science - The Star Way
The Star Way is a transportation bridge from the Solar System to the Centauri System. Huge light-sails kilometers across are driven by lasers to relativistic speeds fast enough to make the trip in a little over six years. The light from the Sun or Alpha Centauri A is fed to giant solar arrays which power the tremendous energy needs of the lasers. The laser light is refocused every one-hundred astronomical units by giant lenses at beam relay stations and sent forward or redirected to power the light-sails. The entire system is the largest engineering project ever undertaken by humans.
The Star Way is not only a transport system, it is also an abode for human life. Almost every fifth beam relay station along the Star Way has an accompanying habitat. These cylindrical habitats are typically a half-mile in diameter and one to two miles in length. They slowly rotate to provide an artificial gravity for their inhabitants.
At a distance of thirty-seven billion miles, ten times the distance from the Sun to Pluto, the settlements are truly isolated from each other. Even a fusion ship takes over twenty days to travel from one settlement to another. And while still small compared to the Earth the total population of the Star Way amounts to almost two-hundred million people . . .
Anyone else would have been frustrated. But Hugh Mason wasn't like anyone else, he was one of a kind.
“So the Mach woman has dismissed our doctor?”
“That's right sir,” said Elaine Horton, one of his assistants.
“Our investigator, did he find out the reason?”
“He believes that the doctor gave himself away somehow.”
“Where is the doctor?”
“He seems to have disappeared sir.”
“Well find him. I want to know what he says.”
“Yes sir.”
“Dismissed.”
Horton rose and left the room, she wasn't sure if she would ever get use to Mason's abruptness.
Mason turned to his specially designed Emmie which was in control of a wormhole generator used for communication and made his report.
After finishing he thought, It won't be long until I'm finished with that farce.
Hugh Mason then leaned back in his large chair. Noting the sound of fine leather but not really feeling it.
Someday, someday I'll be able to feel it.
Earth had not changed much in the past three centuries, not since the Aggies, the Artificial General Intelligence's, had taken over professional management of Earth's resources and citizens from the governments. Their management had brought many benefits. Efficient use of resources removed much of the contentiousness around the world. A dramatic improvement in health care and longevity followed with a corresponding reduction in deaths. And after a brief period in which the larger countries of the Earth fragmented in a spurt of neo-tribalism, a golden age of peace.
Aggie management had spread throughout the Solar System as more settled areas became aware of the benefits to be had. However, it had not spread to the space habitats of the Star Way or Centauri System. With populations of a few ten thousands up to a couple of million these settlements were already efficient and well organized. They had no choice. To live in a place that was fundamentally hostile to life had kept the settlers of the habitats focused on their real problems such as the life destroying vacuum of space, the known and unknown threats to their water and food supply, the poisoning of their environment by the simple act of failing to recycle chemicals and elements at a one hundred percent effectiveness.
To live as a free people re
quired the acceptance of the responsibilities and duties of a free people. Responsibility could not be shirked as it could in a relatively benign environment as on Earth. Still most of the inhabitants of the space habitats had accepted the dangers and responsibilities of living there in exchange for escaping the confining nanny care of the Aggies.
Humanity had thus divided into two groups; those that could accept the management of the Aggies, and those that could not. By far the largest contingent was the first group, but even it was split into two camps; the real worlders and the virtual worlders. The largest part had opted for the exciting but safe world of virtual reality that the Aggies provided. There as disembodied avatars of their physical selves they could be or do anything they wanted without the repercussions, such as death, that were found in the real world.
Action without responsibility was the age old longing of humankind. The Aggies had quickly learned this about their charges and had responded by creating the virtual world called the meta-verse. It was not only a way to fulfill many people's dreams but also a way to control the fast growing population caused by the reduced mortality and extended life expectancy brought on by Aggie management.
The Aggies used the technology the Ems had been using for a hundred years to imprint the human brain into hardware and upload billions of humans to the meta-verse. In fact by the time Elias Mach was born in the Centauri Two habitat almost twice as many people had chosen to live in the meta-verse as on the real Earth.
Julie had been a metizen (citizen of the meta-verse) since she was twenty-one. She had wanted to be there since a young child but had been forced to wait by law until the prefrontal cortex of her brain, the cognitive portion, had fully developed. Only then was she lawfully allowed to make the choice. But she was lucky, some had to wait longer, boys usually had to wait until at least twenty-five because their prefrontal cortex development was slower.
Once in the meta-verse she had pursued her life-long dream of becoming a writer, not a choice most people who entered the meta-verse would make, but for Julie, it was the only choice. She had quickly become a famous best-selling author, not in the meta-verse but in the real world. It had only taken her a year, objective time, although she had used her access to advanced computing resources to live many subjective years in that one year. By the time she would have had her real-world twenty-second birthday she had achieved her dream.
What to do next? The payments for her work were really not a reward since living in the meta-verse cost almost nothing. In fact she donated most of the money to the Society for the Meta-verse which would channel it into the infrastructure supporting the virtual world.
She was at a loss. In her year of writing she had written enough novels to last for a decade in the real world. She realized, maybe too late, that an author could only be cherished and supported in the real world. People in the meta-verse could live any novel they chose. Only in the real world were books a gateway to an impossible life.
Julie continued to ask herself, now what?
She wasn't the first to reach her dream with no second act and some of the Aggies had come up with a way to give direction to ones such as Julie. She received the message as most metizens did, by an almost trance like interface to the Aggie sending it.
Greetings,
We are contacting you in regards to an opportunity that we feel will be productive and exciting for you.
From time to time we enlist the aid of some of our meta-verse citizenry to assist us in an endeavor. We have an opening that we believe will suit your skills and temperament.
We have need of a documentarian for an exciting new project that we Aggies have embarked upon.
If you are interested in a new opportunity please contact us - Aggie Council.
Julie accepted the offer and soon found herself aboard a fusion ship headed for deep space. The only thing she knew at the moment was that they were headed for a distant star system that the Aggies were colonizing. Why, she did not know.
Once they had achieved a certain distance from Earth Julie knew that they would be making a wormhole jump to the star system. Talking to some of the other metizens aboard the ship who had experienced a jump she found out that it seemed to take only a moment but for that moment they were not cognizant. And that was something a metizen had not experienced since their human lives. Julie wasn't sure she was looking forward to it.
The long jump went without a hitch. Soon they were orbiting a planet. Julie was surprised, she hadn't felt a thing. To her the planet they were circling looked a lot like the Earth as she had seen it from orbit but something was different. The surface was pockmarked with what looked like engineered structures. As a matter of fact, Julie figured that it wouldn't be long until it was one large artificial world.
For what?
Chapter 18
Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science - ANI
Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI or Annie in the vernacular) first became available in the early twenty-first century. It developed out of the machine learning technology that was rapidly evolving at the time. Narrow refers to the fact that often this form of intelligence could do one function well such as speech, facial recognition, etc. and that was all.
Eventually, some researchers were able to tie together several ANI functions in a neural matrix which allowed the development of the first truly autonomous bipedal robots. Further development in this area was curtailed later in the century as the breakthroughs in emulated brain research promised a more powerful general intelligence.
Some of the later Annie based robots are still existent in specialized areas . . .
“That was quick thinking Arn and it probably saved us,” said Al.
They were all in one of the restaurants which would usually be open twenty-four hours for a full crew. Now it was just used as needed.
“I don't understand why they didn't come after us,” said the shuttle pilot Steve.
“I suppose they don't see us as capable of doing anything to alter their plans,” said Elias. “We aren't a Federation cruiser with a wormhole weapon.”
“Yeah that's right, all we can do is observe and report,” said Arn. “And since they control all communications between us and the Centauri System they're not much worried about that.”
“Maybe so,” said Elias. “For now anyway. But I think I've got an idea of how to bypass their communications roadblock and also give us a weapon to protect ourselves.”
“Really Elias. You think it is possible?”
“I'll let you know soon.”
“You see, I know exactly where the Centauri System is from here,” said Elias to the doctor. “And I know where the Centauri Two habitat is in its orbit. And I know exactly where my home is in that habitat. The only thing I don't know is if there is anyone in that house at this time although I suspect that Burgess and Dag are there. So all I have to do is open the smallest of wormholes to that location and send a message to my Emmie there which has my detector modification attached. Then I can communicate with them using entangled qubits and pass a key which Dag can use with his quantum computation abilities to decipher the message. There's no way a third party can intercept the communication without destroying the message itself.”
“That's great Elias. You also have a way of arming us for our protection?”
“Yes. You see because these ships are not bothering to use their qubit reservoirs to prevent entanglement breaking I can actually pinpoint them from a distance outside their wormhole weapons range. We can then open a wormhole large enough to deliver an old fashioned explosive charge onto their ship. Not an elegant weapon but it should be effective if we need it.”
“And not a weapon we will have to use unless they attack first.”
Elias nodded.
“I wonder what could be happening on Earth that would cause these ships to show up here? They're preparing that planet for something. But what?”
“And who?” added Elias.
Dag came into the commo
n room where Burgess was listening to the day's news.
“Miss,” he said.
“Yes Dag?”
“I've had a message from Elias.”
“What! What do you mean? Is he all right?”
“Yes Miss he and the others are fine he says. You see he has opened a wormhole and is using entangled qubits to communicate. I sensed this and found the Emmie with the attachment he made.”
Dag showed Burgess the Emmie device with Elias' detector.
Seeing the device made by the hands of her husband caused Burgess' eyes to tear.
“He's alive,” she said quietly.
“Yes Miss I would say that is obvious.”
Burgess shook her head.
“Go on Dag. What message has he sent?”
“First he asked about you. I shall be able to use the device to tell him you are fine once he opens the wormhole again next hour.
“Next he says they have found what looks like a planet teeming with activity some forty light-years from here.”
“Excuse me Dag. Forty light-years? How did they get that far away?”
“He doesn't say Miss.”
“Very well, as you were saying.”
“Yes Miss, it seems that ships of Terran Federation design are flying in and out of a nearby wormhole on a regular basis. He thinks that somehow the Aggies have overcome the energy restrictions on wormhole casting. And he thinks the ships using the extended wormhole are similar to the ship we found on the moon world in the Eridani system. And if so then they are Terran Federation ships being piloted by Aggies because such a long jump would be too dangerous for humans. If that is true then something is happening on Earth with the Aggies and he wants me to go there and see if I can find out.”
“You, by yourself?”
“Yes Miss. He asks that I get someone to take my place here and go to Earth to see what is happening. He can contact me there just as he has done here.”
“Okay Dag. But I don't need anybody to replace you. I have mine and Elias' family if I need anything. And the lawyers will be in and out quite often I think.”
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