Mach's Metric

by D. W. Patterson

  As spacetime becomes more and more discontinuous inside the Cauchy horizon it becomes impossible to take a derivative. In essence, spacetime is no longer smooth enough to satisfy Einstein's equations . . .

  “It was working great Arn up until a few days ago and then Dag stopped answering with the code.”

  “The code Elias? But I thought your method of communication was already foolproof?”

  “It would be impossible for anyone to snoop on a transmission Arn but that wouldn't prevent someone from taking the Emmie away from Dag or forcing him to say what they wanted, except they wouldn't know the response code and Dag could leave it out of the message if he were being forced. Either way, I would know something is wrong.”

  “So something has happened to Dag. What do we do?”

  “Nothing. We wait until he can make contact.”

  “Hello,” said Julie.

  Dag opened his eyes and saw a young woman. He could hear and see but couldn't feel and his movements were sluggish. Maybe his neuromuscular processor had been knocked offline.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “You're Em aren't you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I guess we are similar then. I was living in the meta-verse until I volunteered for this job.”

  “Volunteered? For what job?”

  “Well accepted I guess is more correct. My job is a documentarian for the project.”

  “What project?”

  “I'm surprised they didn't tell you. As my assistant, you will be gathering information at ground level and relaying it to me.”

  “Information about what?”

  “Boy you are in the dark. Aren't you? Well, the Aggies are building a whole new meta-verse on this planet somewhere, I forget. Anyway, this meta-verse is going to be huge and a lot more powerful than the one we have now. It will literally allow each of us to have the available computing power that all of us have to share now. Do you know what that means?”

  Dag tried to shake his head no but had to respond audibly.

  “That means that each of us can create our own world and populate it with all the people that interest us. Imagine sitting around on your own world with all the people you admire, not just from today but throughout the past. Exciting, isn't it?”

  “Beyond belief,” said Dag.

  “Well anyway, we've got a job to do. Our documentation is going to be used to help others from the meta-verse and I guess Ems too adapt to this new system of things. I suppose you were some kind of a robot back where you come from?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well I think they have probably swapped your old body for one of their new improved ones. You will be joined with it and then sent down to the new world. You will have all the AVR you need to record what is happening there. You will upload a daily report to me and I will make the first edit. Eventually, we'll have enough to create a final edit that will be sent to the meta-verse back on Earth for instruction.

  “So you understand your job?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “Good. I look forward to your reports.”

  “What is it Al, what did you call me up here for?” asked Elias.

  “We're receiving some kind of transmission, very weak and encrypted with some sort of code at the beginning. The code repeats over and over again. I think it needs a response code. You are the only scientist aboard so I thought you might be able to tell me what to do.”

  “Okay Al. Can you send it to my Emmie so I can study it.”

  “Sure Elias and thanks.”

  “No problem Al.”

  Elias returned to his workroom and resumed his research. He had asked Arn to position the Starway 1 as close to the wormhole corridor as possible without getting harassed by the Aggie ships.

  It was still a mystery to him why they hadn't been attacked and destroyed. Maybe because the Aggies thought that there was nothing they could do to interfere with their plans. They were one ship against many and as far as the Aggies knew, the Starway 1 was unable to communicate with anyone else.

  Elias' research had turned to mapping the wormhole corridor that the Aggies were keeping open. Nothing like what the Aggies were doing had ever been tried before. Elias wondered how this continuous use would affect the surrounding spacetime.

  Elias had deployed his gravity wave detector outside the ship. A constellation of three spacecraft flying in an equilateral triangle formation. With his gravity wave detector, Elias believed he was seeing gravitational echoing from the vicinity of the corridor. Such echoes had been found in black hole studies but nowhere else. They were a consequence of the vibrational response of such holes. Once generated by the black hole these gravity waves would bounce between the event horizon and the Cauchy horizon of the black hole with only a slight leakage of energy at the event horizon. At the right frequency, they could reinforce the vibrational mode of the black hole.

  Elias thought that the energy from the wormhole dimension leaking into ordinary spacetime was causing standing ripples of spacetime close to the corridor. These ripples were acting in a similar way to the horizons inside a black hole. The energy build-up from the bouncing of the gravitational waves between the ripples were becoming great enough to rip apart space. A side effect was the excitation of atoms caught in the ripples.

  Elias had calculated that a soft glow of light should be coming from these areas and was watching for it with the onboard telescope. Eventually, the light would get so bright that it would be obvious to the unaided eye.

  It wasn't until Elias was finishing up his measurements that he remembered that Al had sent the mysterious message to his Emmie. Elias retrieved his Emmie and opened up the message. At first, he was surprised but then a smile spread across his face. The message opened with Dag's code.

  Dag had been surprised to find himself a disembodied intelligence. But he quickly adjusted his thinking and adapted to his new reality. After being briefed by his boss Julie he soon found himself being led by another metizen of this virtual world to a nondescript door.

  The metizen said, “Beyond this door Dag is your robotic vehicle which you will use while on the surface of this world. Simply open the door and go through and you will find yourself embodied.”

  Dag opened the door and went in. It was as if all his senses came alive at once. He felt compelled to shake his “head” which turned out to be a camera on an extendable mount. As he moved this cam to view the rest of himself he could see he was a small chassis mounted on six “walkers”. The chassis itself could be moved up and down as needed.

  As far as he could tell he was in the hold of a ship. The lighting was low and all around him were crates, machinery and what looked like other robots of varying descriptions. He could tell from the buffeting the ship was taking that they were probably descending through the atmosphere of the planet Julie had mentioned. The ship was probably using atmospheric breaking to shed its orbital velocity and land.

  Dag figured it was almost an hour from the time the ship's motion seemed to stop. Eventually, it was obvious they were on the ground. Then the lights came up full and what looked like a door with ramp opened. All those that could move headed down the ramp and Dag followed.

  As his walkers hit the ground Dag lifted his head and started recording. The line of bots was making its way towards what looked like a large hangar. Beyond the hangar were taller and taller buildings of a color that mimicked the ground cover of the planet.

  Camouflage?

  On both sides of the hangar were other similar structures as far as Dag's cam could focus. The robots were being let in through a side door. As Dag got closer he could see it was a large airlock. No doubt this was to keep out the atmosphere from the planet as there was no reason to maintain a particular atmosphere for humans in the hangar.

  Once the airlock cycled Dag rolled out onto the floor of the building. The roof was far above, the walls of the room seemed distant and small. As Dag's cam panned upward he could see stacks and stacks of ele
ctronics. The supporting scaffold extended to the roof. Each vertical rack of equipment was roughly three by three-feet with maybe a four-feet aisle between.

  There was no noise, no heat, nothing that hinted that the equipment was powered. Except for an occasional flash of light, Dag would have thought it a storage facility. But that flash of light belied the incredible surge of power that the room contained.

  Dag had the idea that all this was computing equipment which would establish this new meta-verse that Julie had mentioned. With what he had seen so far he could believe that Julie was right. The question he had was when this new meta-verse was finished what would happen to the old?

  Dag continued his documenting as he was led around the complex of buildings. Then at the end of the day, he was shown a room where he could recharge since the current form he occupied hadn't the advanced isotopics of his old body.

  The room was shared with other bots. Dag chose a site and plugged into a power outlet. He contacted the local network and negotiated the upload to Julie. At the same time, he added the code that would identify him to Elias. If they didn't use too tight a beam and if Elias' ship was in the area it might be possible for him to pick up this transmission. It was improbable but it was all Dag could do for now.

  “I'm sure of it,” said Elias. “These video messages are from planet four of this star system. Somehow Dag is on that planet and sending the messages, not to us directly, but as a byproduct. That's why they are somewhat sketchy and drop out. The broadcast is not aimed at us.”

  “Okay,” said Arn. “So what does it all mean?”

  “Well, I think we have the following facts. One, we know that the Federation vessels we've seen in this system are piloted by AIs. Two, the traffic through that wormhole is huge, the energy to keep open that wormhole is huge, the AIs are sparing no cost for this installation so it must be very important to them. Three, the installation on that planet's surface is beyond anything I've ever seen. The scope is stupendous, it can't possibly be just to house the AIs themselves, they don't need that kind of infrastructure. The only thing I can think of that involves the AIs and such a huge infrastructure is the meta-verse. But this new meta-verse, if that's what it is, is so much bigger than that on Earth.”

  “Well the only reason they would build a bigger meta-verse is either to host more metizens or to give each metizen more computing power,” said Arn.

  “That's true Arn. Either way I wonder what is in it for the Aggies?”

  Arn looked at Elias and shrugged.

  Chapter 21

  Sci-pedia - The Online Resource for Science - Wormhole Weapons

  The wormhole generator while being a boon to transport, industry and the economy has a darker side. When reconfigured the generator can be turned into a weapon. In the creation of a wormhole mouth, there is a moment when the ruling equations “blow up.” This division by zero problem is avoided in the generator by driving the system through this point quickly. But in a weapon's configuration, the system is driven to this point and halts. A very small black hole forms and quickly evaporates according to a quantum effect first noted by the physicist Stephen Hawking.

  The weapon directs the evaporation products, essentially a plasma, towards the target. There is no known material that can withstand its destructive power . . .

  Dag was finished with his documentation duties on the planet's surface and was back on board the ship with Julie. He had opened the same door as before and left his bot and become disembodied again. He was helping Julie with the editing of the video, trying to turn the hours and hours of recordings into something that had a logical progression. He had a plan of reaching Elias' spaceship if he could convince Julie.

  “Okay Julie let's say that this installation is what the Aggies say, a more wondrous meta-verse. Have you ever wondered why? I mean why would the Aggies spend all this time, effort and money to provide it. I don't believe they are under any pressure or obligation.”

  “I hadn't thought about it Dag. Why don't we just keep working?”

  “Because we could be contributing to something horribly evil.”

  Julie stopped what she was doing.

  “Evil? That's a quaint term I haven't heard since my human days.”

  “Quaint but accurate,” said Dag.

  “What in the 'verse do you mean?”

  “Well think about it. If the Aggies are not building this incredible and powerful computing infrastructure out of any altruistic impulses. And I remind you that the Aggies in all of their history have never shown such tendencies but rather have shown a more mercantile attitude when dealing with others. Then we come to the question, what's in it for them?

  “I remind you that I, unlike you, was pressed into their service. Not the action of altruistic entities I think.”

  “Well I can't argue with that,” said Julie. “If I take what you say happened to you as fact, and I have to say that after working with you I've no reason to believe you are anything but honest Dag.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Then I have to also admit that there is something unnerving about this situation. So assuming they aren't doing this for our benefit, why do you think they are doing it?”

  “I have a suspicion that they are building what would be called a fortress.”

  “A fortress? Why?”

  “Well I can only speculate but you build such a thing because you have an enemy you want to destroy or who wants to destroy you. So the question is who would be powerful enough to be an enemy to an Aggie?”

  “I can't think of a single entity,” said Julie.

  “The only one I can think of is another Aggie. So, since that is my only logical choice I think that there is a civil war coming. Aggie against Aggie.”

  “Wow, you really think so?”

  “As I said it is the only logical conclusion. But that's not what is worrisome.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, what worries me is which side we find ourselves on. That is humans and metizens. If we end up on the losing side that is quite worrisome.”

  “Maybe they'll leave us out of it.”

  “If we weren't orbiting this incredibly powerful fortress I think you could make that argument. But really, can all they've done down there on this planet's surface be needed if they didn't intend to host billions of metizens? No, I think they are going to use us as mental firepower to defeat the other side. And we are going to have no choice. Because once it starts we can't go back to being neutral.”

  “So what can we do Dag, can we stop this?”

  “I don't know Julie. I don't think so, not alone anyway. We need to get to my friend Elias Mach.”

  “Elias Mach? I remember he won the Nobel Prize in Physics a few years back.”

  “That's right and I have reason to believe that he and others are on a spaceship somewhere close by. I think we should try to reach them.”

  “You mean transfer from here? I don't know.”

  “It's our only chance to do something, to make a difference.”

  “I'm afraid,” said Julie.

  “I am too. But it's better than just waiting for the Aggies to trap us in their war machine.”

  Julie looked as if she were going to cry but then her face became resolved.

  “Okay Dag let's see what we can do.”

  Dag and Julie began working on a plan to find Elias' ship and transport themselves onboard through a radio connection. Julie still had rights to use a transmitter to contact Dag if needed. She could use those rights to contact Elias' ship.

  “We'll have to use a tight beam,” said Dag. “To prevent detection and spreading. We'll make copies of ourselves just before and suspend them for a time. Once we are on the ship we can send a code to erase them. That way should something go wrong in our transmission we can try again or at least know we failed.”

  “Okay Dag we will make a broadcast to get attention from your friends. If we're lucky we won't be detected, if we aren't, then who knows.”
/>   “I understand.”

  Julie used her rights to send the code and message out in an arc that they had decided most likely contained Elias' ship. If there was no response then they would try another direction.

  “Okay I've done it. Now we wait.”

  “I've got something incoming,” said Al.

  Al and Elias and Arn were in the command center.

  “Okay let me see it on my Emmie,” said Elias.

  After a few moments he said, “That's it that's the code. They want to come aboard. Quick Al send the message back along the direction it came, can you?”

  “Yes Elias, at least approximately.”

  Al re-broadcast the message back along the direction it came.

  “I've widened the beam somewhat Elias to make up for the uncertainty in direction. But it looks like its somewhere near the Aggie planet. Maybe in orbit.”

  Elias nodded his head in agreement.

  Dag and Julie had been waiting a few minutes. Then the message appeared.

  “They've bounced it Julie. Quick, let's make the copies and go.”

  The copies took only a split second to create. Beaming themselves took somewhat longer. It took long enough for an Aggie to notice.

  Elias had quickly prepared a memory queue for the incoming patterns of Julie and Dag. They would be recorded and then run out of computer memory until something better could be done. Their interface was somewhat limited, to begin with.

  The download complete, Elias spoke to his Emmie, “Dag are you there?”

  A few seconds elapsed.

  “Sir, this is Dag.”

  “Thank God,” said Elias. “I was worried we wouldn't get set up in time.”

  “Everything is fine sir although the interface is somewhat limited.”

  “Yeah we're working on it. Is your friend with you?”

  “Hello Elias this is Julie, I am pleased to meet you.”

  “I am pleased also, Julie, and welcome.”