by Paul Anlee
The congregation echoed “Amen.”
When those who had joined Alum on the stage raised their heads, they were no longer on Earth. In place of the Diamond Cathedral, their eyes opened to the wonders of the tube colonies in the faraway asteroid belt.
50
Greg hummed a triumphant tune. Today, he and Kathy were going to save the world. Well, not literally today. It would take a bit longer to put their plan into effect, but the work they were doing would set them on the road to salvation.
Not only that, but their strategy would launch a Golden Age fueled by expansion into space, and facilitate great leaps in science and technology, all made possible by the enhanced-IQ lattices.
The President of the university and Prime Minister Hudson were equally relieved and excited about the plans to move the Eater away from Earth. PM Hudson immediately commandeered six small rockets for the purpose.
Kathy and Greg outfitted the inside of the isolation tank with RAF generators they’d designed to hold the Eater. A little more fine tuning to balance the power across the grapplers, and we’ll be ready to connect the rockets!
The roof and walls all around the vacuum chamber would be removed in just a few days. They needed to construct launching pads and connect the rockets to the enormous tank. Then they’d add control circuitry to manage the ascent of the clumsy arrangement. Kathy figured they could be ready to send the Eater into space as early as next month.
Greg was happier and more excited than he’d felt in a long time. Life was good and they had hope for the future. Everything is going to be okay, for humanity and for us. We haven’t had much hope for such a long time—he realized.
It was Sunday, and the two of them had been working quietly side-by-side all morning. There were so many things he looked forward to sharing with Kathy again, like the tranquility of weekends on campus.
He was already dreaming about the long vacation they’d take once this problem was behind them. He wanted to travel, to see the world and the asteroid colonies they’d helped bring into existence. Maybe they could even stay out there for a while. That would be fun. When they settled down, maybe they could finally start a family. He was almost giddy.
True, only about ten million colonists had been delivered to Vesta, and barely half that number had arrived on Ceres and Pallas combined. But all of the new technologies and habitats had been meeting or exceeding everyone’s expectations, and now that they’d set up the additional Shifting Stations, they could ramp up the remaining colonization process.
That alone was cause for celebration, but his real source of excitement was the surprise anniversary gift he was bursting to share with his wife next week. In anticipation of a few months of travel, he was going to tell her the truth about the “shifting” technology.
Several years ago, when he’d first told Kathy and Reverend LaMontagne about his discovery, he didn’t really lie about it. He just didn’t tell them everything he knew. He couldn’t. Not right away, not until he tested out the rest of his theory.
He didn’t lie when he said using entangled particles to navigate space made shifting safer and easier. It did. He’d even told them entangled virtual particles were everywhere, and that they made it possible to shift short distances.
What he’d neglected to say was that he’d grown an RAF generator inside his own skull some years earlier. And that he no longer needed an external RAF shifter to jump around. And that he’d been practicing shifting longer and longer distances by hopping between different entangled virtual pairs.
Kathy would’ve freaked if he’d told her that last bit.
She wouldn’t have been wrong. What he was doing was dangerous. He risked becoming completely disconnected from the universe, drifting in non-space until he died. It remained a very real possibility.
His shifting method, without a specifically-manufactured entangled navigation guide, was still too imprecise for his comfort. He bounced around in a crazy random walk outside of space and time every time he shifted.
But it worked. He eventually got where he wanted to go, and it was getting easier with practice. Actually, it got easier when he extended his lattice into his gut. Intestinal neurons were the second most numerous in the body and he had no problem seconding them for navigation calculations.
Before long, he was traveling all over the world on his little jaunts. Next stop, the moon—he’d joked to himself, and then a sobering thought crept into his mind—why not?
He put on the environmental suit he used for the vacuum chamber. Then, jumping between naturally-occurring, exotic, entangled virtual particles, he’d made his way to the moon, and then on to Mars.
Even with practice, he couldn’t manage a smooth shift—more like a drunk walking over an ice-covered rock field—he chuckled. But he got where he intended.
The number of entangled exotic virtual particles—particles with no analogs in the real universe—was practically limitless. If he could write out the formulas describing their properties, he could find them. Their existence, such as it was, was implicit in the math, but neither Kathy nor the Reverend gave any hint they had similar ideas. Greg kept that as his own little secret.
By noon, he and Kathy had mapped out a scheme to balance the force exerted by the RAF grapplers. He stood up and stretched. “Lunch time?”
“That would be great,” replied Kathy.
“Okay. I just have to pop to the washroom first. I’ll be right back.” In the hallway, he paused at the big observation window and looked back into the lab.
Kathy caught him peering in. Feigning exasperation, she lifted her brows as if to ask, “What’s up?”
Greg grinned and shook his head. He blew her a kiss. She laughed, and followed his retreat down the hall a moment before getting back to work.
The lab exploded. Or rather, imploded. The ceiling collapsed. The tempered glass observation window shattered.
Greg ducked at the sudden blast and covered his face with his arms against flying debris. What the hell? An explosion?
Chunks of concrete were falling. Structural metal, pipes, and wires were severed and flapping. Only then did he hear the roar of the wind.
So much dust. Can’t catch my breath. Choking.
“Kathy? Kathy? Where are you?” he screamed into the howling wind.
What happened? I can’t see for all the crap in the air.
“Kathy!” he yelled again. My ears. Ringing so loud. A bomb? No, impossible. A lightning strike? No, something bigger. Kathy? Can’t think. So dizzy. Why won’t this ringing stop? The wind. It’s sucking everything into the tank.
The noise was deafening. Amidst the raining debris, dust and darkness, an alarm blared.
“Oh, no, no, no!” The Eater! The isolation chamber must have imploded. “Kathy? Kathy!” he choked. Too much dust. That ringing! It’s not just inside my head. An alarm. It must be an alarm. Wait. Not just an alarm. THE alarm!
“Kathy!” he bellowed into the sucking rush of air. He tried to reach her using his lattice communications, but the local routers had been destroyed and his transmission was too weak to penetrate the thick dust. Or maybe it was the effect the exposed Eater had on the local radio transmissions.
“The vacuum chamber’s been breached!” He could barely hear his own voice. “Kathy!” he screamed into the chaos that was pulling anything not fastened down toward the gaping maw of the Eater’s isolation enclosure. He could see the gray sphere just inside its walls, now, growing steadily as it sucked in air and debris.
“Kathy! Kathy! Where are you?”
He peeked over the lab wall that used to support a window into the corridor. In the midst of what felt like a tornado, he frantically searched the lab.
Remnants of the roof and loose papers flew past. A work table slid toward the Eater, behind a flow of wheeled chairs, broken glass, lab paraphernalia, and bits of construction material. As each item touched the implacable gray sphere, it was smoothly and instantly absorbed. With every molecule, the Eater
grew a little bigger. It was already pushing toward the boundaries of the catastrophically breached cell.
Kathy! Her unconscious body was caught on the ragged edge of the imploded vacuum chamber. Her broken limbs flailed, driven by the gale force wind that was drawing everything into the Eater.
He couldn’t get any closer but maybe he could shift in, grab her, and shift out. Too dangerous. Couldn’t get in and out fast enough, before the wind sucked us both into the Eater. Besides, he’d never tried shifting anything other than himself and whatever he was wearing.
Need another way. Greg slid along the wall to the lab door. If he could just bridge the gap across the break in the isolation tank, he could reach her.
There was a stepladder behind the door. It was long enough; it would work but the Eater was millimeters from the inner wall of the tank now. He didn’t have much time. He heard something rip out of the ceiling behind him. He ducked as dozens of acoustic ceiling tiles flew past him and into the Eater.
That was all it took. The gray sphere grew enough to contact its prison walls. They were gone in a second. There was nothing between Kathy and the Eater. Greg watched helplessly as the wind sucked her into the growing microverse. She disappeared without a sound.
As if it had been a dream, the wind slowed. Is it over?—Greg wondered. He stood in the doorway, bracing himself against the sucking wind.
The lab was empty. The isolation chamber was no more. The wind had died when the Eater broke outside its confines. Now it was absorbing matter evenly on all sides, rather than having to suck everything in through the tear in its container. But Kathy was already gone.
She’s gone. Kathy’s gone. The shock of it was too much to bear. His knees went weak and he collapsed against the wall, numb.
Kathy’s dead, and the Eater is loose. It’s loose.
The ominous gray sphere was growing more quickly now, fed by the walls of the building it contacted, by the mountain beneath the building, by the air that flowed against it, and even by the light of the afternoon sun. Earth is dead. Dead planet walking! He chuckled at his dark wit. Then he snorted. It threatened to turn into a laugh, into tears, into outright hysteria.
What do I do now? Kathy’s gone. The Eater’s out. The world is doomed. He stared at the gray globe expanding implacably toward him.
I’m seconds from oblivion, myself—he observed calmly, in shock and too spent for fear. It was all falling away from him. No Kathy, no lab, no hope of saving the Earth. What was the point in struggling?
A memory floated into his consciousness, and pushed through his despair.
“I always hate when they do that,” he remembered Kathy saying.
“When they do what?” he’d asked. They’d been watching an old action movie.
“When you’re in the middle of an intense action scene and the hero loses his wife or girlfriend, and he just stops whatever he’s doing and takes a little timeout to grieve. Right there, in the middle of the battle or disaster or whatever it is. I mean, come on! And all the bullets just go around him as he kneels there, crying. In real life, threats don’t end just because you lose someone. You have to haul butt!”
“That’s not very romantic,” he’d replied.
She’d swiveled on the sofa and looked him in the eye. “If we’re ever in a dangerous situation and I get hurt or killed, don’t be stupid,” she’d said. “Take care of business first. You can grieve or save me, or whatever, after. You got that?”
“Now, you’re telling me when I can grieve and not?” he’d laughed. “I’m not sure I have much control over that.”
“Just promise me,” she’d said and her eyes bore into him until he gave in.
“Okay, okay. I promise!” he’d said.
His mind went to the people on the asteroids. The Vesta Project had delivered only a fraction of the population they’d hoped to save. The colonies were barely ready to support even those few million. Ill-prepared and unsupported, what were their odds of survival? Is this the end of humanity? Are we done?
He’d never felt so lost and alone in his life.
The dull gray sphere was within a foot of the wall. Its calm surface showed no other activity besides the relentless expansion. It was the most menacing thing that had ever existed, and Greg hated it. He would have pounded the damn thing to a pulp with his bare hands, but there was nothing to strike against and if he touched it, he’d just lose his hands.
His shoulders slumped. Kathy was gone. Completely gone. He hadn’t believed in the human soul for a long time. Darian had been too damn convincing. What if Darian had it all wrong? Maybe I will see her again.
He wanted to believe. If he could just believe, he’d throw himself into the Eater right now, knowing that he could join her. But he knew, deep down, he couldn’t.
It’s a nice fairytale, but death is the end. There is nothing left of the person I loved. No body, no mind, no spirit. No Kathy.
There was no point in his dying today. The remains of humanity, the colonists on the asteroid and whoever could be saved of Earth’s best and brightest were still alive. To leave them to their own devices —the millions of people that still had a chance on Vesta—that would be the height of selfishness. If Kathy were out there somewhere, in body or soul, she’d never forgive him for that.
Greg stood up and glared defiantly at the Eater, now less than a hand span away from his face. He’d do whatever was needed to save as many as he could. He would honor Kathy’s memory.
He shifted away; there was work to be done. He would grieve later.
51
Greg knew the list by heart; he’d helped write it.
He jumped to the nearest Shifting Station, not far from Blaine, Washington. There were world leaders and VIPs to rescue! Humanity would stand a better chance of survival in the asteroid belt if it kept its organizational heart.
He checked emergency escape routes. Air travel should still be possible for a few days. The Shifting Stations can take it from there.
He cursed himself for ever agreeing to maintain the fiction that colonists were still being transported to the colonies by rocket. The Reverend had been adamant about it and the G26 agreed.
If it hadn’t been for them, he could have put a shifter in every capital city in the world. But he’d been voted down and it didn’t seem worth pushing any further. Not back then.
The world’s leaders had insisted that instantaneous transportation all over Earth—not to mention throughout the solar system—would be too disruptive to global economies. Shipping and transportation industries needed protection. Greg and Kathy disagreed; their economic models predicted disruption would be limited and short-lived. The industries would adapt.
Guess who won that argument.
Greg materialized inside the Shifting Station. He wasn’t surprised to find it empty; the next movement of colonists wasn’t scheduled until later that evening. His footsteps were the only sound as he walked to the Control Room to check on the readiness of the RAF shifter.
“Hey, Jules!” he called out to the on-duty technician. He’d come to respect the man. He was methodical, unambitious, and most importantly, he knew how to keep the biggest secret on the planet. Jules had seen people disappear in front of him and known they would reappear far away. He knew the reasons for all the subterfuge.
Jules kept quiet about his work, about the Eater, and about the need to keep quiet. Even if his secrecy had been bought with a promise to save him and his family, he kept the secret. Perhaps the threat to rescind his reservation should he ever leak anything had something to do with it.
Even now, seven years after the first colonists had been shifted to Vesta, those selected gathered at what they presumed were rocket launching stations. After their briefing session, the colonists were marshaled into a large hall. They clustered nervously near the middle and Jules or the other shifting technician would push a button in the control room.
The button activated a link between a pair of entangled particles, one
under the hall, and the other a few hundred million kilometers away inside one of the three asteroid colonies.
The specialized RAF generator below the hall spun a field around the room’s occupants and disconnected them from the matter and energy fields of the real universe. Then it shifted them to where the other member of the entangled pair had been situated and re-connected them to their proper universe far, far away from where they started. The relocation took no measurable time.
For every two hundred colonists shifted off Earth, a rocket laden with supplies and additional Cybrids blasted off to scattered stations throughout the asteroid belt.
The people of Earth believed the rocket ships were crammed end-to-end with colonists, frozen embryos, and seeds. Of course, that would have been impossible; putting that many people in one of the rockets would have killed them all on launch.
The Shifting fields were precious. They could only be generated in limited sizes, and the project had a lot of people to move out to the colonies in a very limited amount of time. The project heads agreed, fields would be used exclusively for people.
The rockets mostly carried Cybrids. Without the need to supply oxygen and other human necessities such as food and space in which move about, the ships could be stripped down and packed much more efficiently.
The world remained largely ignorant of the enormous numbers of autonomous robots working on their behalf in outer space.
After a dozen years, the colonies were nearly independent of Earth. They’d been producing their own food and most of their manufactured goods for years.
People on Earth took for granted the unbelievable diversity of products—chemicals, components, machines, electronics, and the expertise to put it all together—necessary to keep an advanced society running. But the colonies didn’t. They understood firsthand how hard it was to become fully self-reliant.
In addition to new Cybrids, most of the rockets these days carried specialty items: works of art, scientific instruments, advanced machines, frozen embryos, and thousands upon thousands of treasured personas encapsulated in freshly-minted, bodiless, Cybrid brains.