by Peter Riva
18
A WHOLE NEW SYSTEM TO TALK TO
It took six hours for the nav team to discover what I had hoped for, an asteroid belt orbiting way out, around Alpha Centauri B, “But we have no idea what the size of those asteroids will be. We’ll only know when we get within five hundred thousand kilometers.”
Then it took two hours to convince Aten and the crew that hiding amongst the asteroids instead of immediate planet fall would be best. The asteroid belt was way out past the seventh planet and, once our engines were reduced to initial pulling power and not the great speed we currently had, it could add four years to planet fall. I did not explain that it could be more than that, as I had no idea if we would ever be able to leave the asteroid belt.
If hiding worked and nothing else did, life could continue aboard. If the Vast Pattern or its operator, whatever it was, took a dim view of us, it would not want us landing on Angelica. Staying put in space, hiding out, might be our only option for life.
Aten was way ahead of me. Of course. Actually, it was good to see her a little less goo-goo eyed over Cramer and using her considerable intellect again. Cramer, on the other hand, was feeling left out as planet fall was his responsibility and delaying or perhaps never getting there, well, that was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He told me so in no uncertain terms, poking my chest with his little fingers, “Fix this Simon, fix it, you’re it, damn it. You came up with this hare-brained scheme to talk to the thing out there, you had better be sure you are not simply making them aware of something they had no idea was around.”
The thought had occurred to me.
When I had first been a System coder, I was not surprised to see all sorts of messed up code when I was diving in System. That was my job, to go in and fix things other coders had set as traps and deliberate errors. My job was to change coding from within the System’s computer matrix. The whole idea was that in fixing deliberate errors, the system would adapt to more human foibles, thereby refining programs meant to suit humans better.
So, I wore a data helmet, turned on the interface and, presto, I was inside the brain, inside the systems, all the coding, FAT files, pathways, library, everything visible to me. I had only to think of where I wanted to check something and I could drift there instantly. Of course, my body stayed on the stool in my office, maybe a maximum of ten minutes at a time, but inside the system seemed like hours. Eventually, I stayed inside too long and my internal clock, the nerve synapse, was recalibrated to a faster speed, and I couldn’t sustain human pace without taking Slo-doze pills. That’s why Angie and I had relocated to space. At least there we could be speeded up together, free from gravity effect on fast moving body parts.
Anyway, inside the System I had learned that the errors I found were not put there by other coders but were manipulations by the System itself—part of its becoming self-aware. Peter was born who then became Apollo and Ra, in an amoebic-like split. And eventually Ra became Aten in a SynthKid body.
What I hoped for now was not another discussion and birth of a new life form. One of those in one’s life was enough for anybody! No, what I wanted was merely to listen in, to try to understand if this thing, the Vast Pattern, had heard of or could spot us. If not, then we could proceed to Angelica and planet fall.
But first, we had to hide, out of a sense of precaution. Better to be safe than sorry.
Over the next six weeks, the nav team, working feverishly with Aten, managed a slingshot course to go around Alpha Centauri A’s sun, which started to point us right at the asteroid belt of Alpha Centauri B. Time to land or at least come to a halt in the asteroid belt? Estimated at five-plus months. The crew was not happy with the delays and change of plans, but they had, much to their credit, evaluated our prognosis of danger and concurred with the necessity. Zip and his team kept morale up, mainly by playing with the kids. Happy kids kept parents happy. Everybody was busy.
I had little to do except think and worry, so I took on the task of working with two maintenance men to construct the new space suits. Using cannibalized parts from the existing suits we had used, like the cuff collars and helmet collars, we managed to make twelve suits that were fairly robust. I was sure they could take an EVA with little worry—except for fast moving particles, should there be any. There was no way to build in a woven graphene layer to make them particle-proof. If they were needed, we’d just have to be careful outside. And I was getting this nagging feeling that I, at any rate, would be wearing one.
The greatest challenge for Aten and the Nav crew was that we only had so much thruster fuel on board. Use that consumable up and there would never be planet fall. So the “hiding operation” as it became known, posed a serious challenge for plotting a course. Aten was determined to achieve the braking and insertion into orbit around a yet-to-be-determined asteroid without using any thrusters, except in an emergency. She was convinced that our past emergency, when we needed to clear number one engine, had trained us for drastic course alteration. Besides, as she said, “The graphene tethers were not brittle, so we can allow for even greater deviation, at least to thirty degrees if needed. We’ll steer her without the thrusters, I am pretty sure.”
The slowing down of the ship went off easier than I had thought. As we approached Alpha Centauri A, we were going at eighty percent of the speed of light, and we actually accelerated as we neared the sun, but the nav team plotted an elliptical path using Sir Oliver Lodge’s “gravitational lens” effect when passing near a star or sun, skipping wide of the sun going in, swinging around the sun twice and then skipping off, coming close on egress, the sun’s gravity pull slowing our speed dramatically. Engines on idle, we were relentlessly pulled by the sun’s gravitational field as we transited that solar system further slowing our great speed. When we emerged out of that solar system and into Alpha Centauri B’s outer boundaries, we were doing less than 40,000 kilometers per hour, but soon a burst of the engines as they found dark matter on the fringes of those two solar systems over a few weeks got us back to 120,000 kilometers per hour as we aimed for the largest segment arc of the asteroid belt, spotted on radar.
It took three more weeks to make that last transition into orbit around a rock the size of Earth’s moon. Navigation was tricky. Aten was at the controls the whole time, sleeping in weightlessness, less than twenty minutes a day. It required all her intellect to make the non-thruster steering system work. She used a parabola course, absorbing the gravity deflections of successive asteroids as we drifted, making very slight course adjustments with number one and number two engines and relying on deflection of the graphene tethers at the slow speeds we were progressively doing. When we got down under 4,000 kilometers per hour, the moon-sized asteroid held us in an elliptical orbit and the pilots called down throughout the ship to say, “Orbit achieved, four hundred plus year duration, we’re now taking teams of five in rotation to peer through forward windows. PowerCube engaged for rotational spin, please conserve energy. Doctors to the forward flight deck.”
Aten was exhausted and throwing up. In Zero-G, she could choke because water formed large bubbles that jammed airways. Cramer rushed forward and took control, cradling Aten and talking to her inert form. She was breathing, fast asleep, as confirmed by Doc Todd. Cramer held her and carried her back into the gravity environment to their quarters. Aten slept for two days, and she was cheered by everyone aboard, me included, when she showed up for her first meal. We had all watched her fortitude at the helm. The intelligence of the ship’s crew, down to the youngest child, understood her superior brilliance and dedication.
People went forward over the next three days to peer out the window at the asteroid. Cramer and Aten named the moon-sized asteroid after Zip since the asteroid had a faint halo around it from outgassing of billion-year-old water vaporized from rock pockets every time the asteroid turned to face the sun. The sight of that halo reminded us all, well those of us who had been on Earth, of a Dog Moon, so Zip’s Rock it was.
Engines were no
w set at almost idle. And yet they were having some trouble staying lit since there was not much material ingested at this speed, even though there was plenty of small debris in the asteroid belt. The halo material of the gas given off by the asteroid was considered enough, however, to keep them ready, on low standby, or so the pilots and engine crew told me. Aten confirmed their findings. Everyone felt we were safe in an orbit duration of a half day from faint light to dark, drifting around Zip’s Rock.
However, amidst that general crew relief and ease, Cramer’s increasing frustration at the delay in getting to Angelica was worrying me and, it seemed, also Aten, who came to see me. I was in my room, asleep on top of papers spread out over every surface including the bed. The papers were blueprint drawings of the last parts for the spacesuit modifications. I hadn’t slept well for a few weeks by then, worried about insertion around the asteroid without using up all our consumables. When I got the good news, I started to relax and was frequently falling asleep at the strangest moments.
Standing in my open doorway, Aten called out, “Simon, wake up please, I need to speak with you while Cramer is in the gym …”
I was groggy and seeing the earnest look on her face, made me immediately think she wanted to have the “talk,” the one about physical intimacy—“Aten, can’t this wait?” She stamped a foot, a very pretty Meg Ryan foot and pouted. I gave in. “Okay, where do you want to start?”
“Start? Me? No, you need to start. Stop,” she waved her hands around my room, “fussing with those suits, the maintenance crew can finish those. You need to start talking to the Vast Pattern and find out how long we’re going to be stuck here.”
“Oh, so no sex talk?” I countered, getting up and trying to inch past her to get my shirt, stepping over papers and material samples pinned to paper blueprints.
“Behave, and keep your prurient thoughts to yourself.”
“Sure Meg, oops, sorry, Aten …” She swung a fist at me as I ducked. “Okay, okay—have a look, on the hook, on the door jamb …”
She slid the door back into place and turned seeing the space helmet on the hook, “Yes, so it’s a helmet …” she paused, suddenly seeing the thick wires protruding, hanging out of the back inside the dome. “You modified this space helmet into a data dome? But why? Surely you are not planning to hook up outside the ship?” She glared at me, getting angry, “Are you?”
I felt it was time for this almost eleven-year-old to clear the air, “Aten, Ra, Peter, can we remember who we both are? You are a genius, you are now a fully-fledged woman. But this is me, the guy who knows how to do this, had been doing this when you were spanked awake, all right?” She nodded, hearing my tone of authority. “So, understand this, I know how to make that damn dome work, the docs made the frequency modification—which I think will be all right because we tested it here, inside the ship. And no, I didn’t connect to the Vast Pattern yet. And always remember, I understand what it feels like to plunge into a system and deal with code, programming, and transmission of data. I can do that. What I cannot do is connect to an unknown entity from within a ship without Vast Pattern interface present. In short, I heard it out there, the frequencies are out there, and out there I must go.”
“But who is going to connect you, and to what?”
“Angie. She’s outside in the jelly of the hydra, if you see what I mean. Angie is going to act as an antenna. When I heard the presence I was locked tight onto the electrical cables, semi-conscious admittedly, but my hands were gripping tightly and my head, inside the helmet, was hunkered down firmly pressed onto the cables. The docs agree, the cables were connected to the outer skin of one small portion of the ship. If I can get to Angie’s skin—Angie’s skin that has a huge surface area exposed to … in contact with … dark energy. Angie will be the antenna.”
19
ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH …
I needed another week and a half to get everything ready. During that time, I trained and finally fitted Cramer for a spacesuit. I had, of course, allowed him to bully me into the joint EVA. I had always secretly planned for him to accompany me, but allowing him to think he was pushing me into the decision, made it all his idea in his mind, and that’s what mattered. Okay, firstly, I really had no urge to be out there on my own. Here I was near an asteroid and all the memories that that history played in my mind. And secondly, who else needed activity, physical activity, hell, call it what it was, “Action!” on board more than Cramer? So while I was posturing that he forced me into it, secretly I was glad to have him out there. I really didn’t want to be alone near or on an asteroid again.
Just to placate everyone, especially Aten, I donned the dome inside the medical unit, and they connected the sets of wires to the outer hull behind one of the plastic panels, starting with the eight primary wires to be connected and then following up with the full set. Nothing. No “sight,” no presence, nada. Todd was not surprised. “The hull coating inside is meant to insulate us, isolate us from space, hold pressure. It forms a barrier. We dare not penetrate that shell. Simon is right. It has to be outside if he’s to hear anything.”
Aten was not entirely happy with the risks we were taking. She supervised our EVA preparations, communication procedures, and, lastly, insisted that Sam and Ernest be backup, fully suited and ready to go outside to rescue Cramer and, oh yes, then she remembered, me. I laughed at her when she clumsily tacked that on. She hit my arm, again. I was wondering where she got the idea that I liked being hit on the arm. She had been doing it before Cramer woke from his coma, so it wasn’t he who had taught her. “Aten, what’s with the arm punching? You never seem to punch anyone else.”
She barked a little laugh, “They might hit back.” Then she smiled, broadly. “Besides I promised Angie I’d keep you in check.”
It was the first time she had ever said that. Angie had appointed Ra to be my babysitter? Before Ra became Aten? “And how was Ra supposed to do that?”
She laughed again, “Apollo and I discussed it,” she was giggling now, “and as we were used to helping your mental process anyway …” yeah, yeah, they had loved to tease me, I remembered that perfectly well. “We already found that a little jolt now and then would come in handy. Cramer agrees.” He was laughing now too, “Once I awoke as Aten, I thought it would be more fun to jolt your senses with a fist.” And with that, she gave me a hug, being careful with my nose at her chest height, and kissed the top of my head.
While they were having fun at my expense, I was still having a problem. I had squeezed the dome and all the cranium connections into the helmet. I had tested it with the ship’s computer and found that I could engage the programs I carried—memorized, left-brain, little sub-routines that I found copies of in the onboard memory files. One I had once used to turn all the tomatoes in the FarmHands Agrarian system blue. It had caused quite a stir by effectively acting as a swap routine, one color for another, one DNA splice for another. It was a substitution program, quite clean, that left the FAT file size and processor’s clock timing identical to what it replaced. It did that with a little fill-in program that I had also written to fool what I thought were other coders in the System and to have them think nothing had been touched. I prepared these little tools and a few others for the EVA expedition, well, mainly because they were part of my old armament within the System and they gave me confidence. I suspected Cramer carrying a weapon was along the same psychological lines. Or was that pathological? I decided not to analyze that, for now.
Anyway, although the dome worked fine, squashed into the helmet as it was, it had two problems I had so far failed to resolve. Once the dome/helmet was put on, I could not turn my head, my vision was straight ahead, eye movement only. In a spacesuit where the helmet doesn’t rotate, you have to turn your whole body to see something off to the left or right, up or down. I was glad Cramer would be out there with normal visibility.
The other issue facing me was more serious. Although Abadine had managed to stitch a small opening in the
spacesuit, into which she blue Loc’ed three donut magnets for triple redundancy, through which she could pass the helmet wires and then inject ferrofluid, which would seal the opening—although we had achieved all that, the question remained: What was I going to hook up to? There was no System or computer interface outside the hull and, anyway, hooking up to the ship’s computer had already provided no Vast Pattern contact. I had secretly hoped it would—no such luck.
In discussing this with Aten and Abadine, we again all agreed that Angie’s exterior skin of the ship would, could be the antenna. Okay, but what would the wire sequence be? There were over forty wires to hook up, but to what, where? Tests in the medical lab didn’t prove anything useful.
We were stumped. Cramer simply said, “Well, let’s try something.” And so we did, making twelve different schematics on what pattern to attach to the hull and how. All the attachment plans involved glue because there was no way else to attach to Angie’s super smooth outer skin. An additional problem was that blue Loc was UV activated so we had to take a UV light along with us as the sun was too dim and could be behind the asteroid we were orbiting. That UV light had to be added to our EVA gear, which was getting cumbersome.
Oh, and one thing was clear, roping ourselves to the handhold rail by the pressure hatch under the flight deck was not “out there alone” enough to mimic the space around me or have access to Angie’s skin—to have what I had experienced before. We had to travel down the spinning hull that was to be my interface antenna—if I could get there.
Spinning inside the hull was centripetal force, pushing you toward the inside skin of the ship. But outside, that was centrifugal force, flinging you off the ship into deep space. Angie’s skin was super smooth, no handholds, no cleats, nothing, a mirror finish. It was Abadine who came up with a solution, “The orange path runs down the length of the ship, right? So, you go outside, tethered with a strong magnet, say with a mass of maybe forty kilos, and find the highest point at the beginning of the orange path on the inside of the skin from where you are outside. I’ll be there. Meanwhile, inside I get your signal that you’ve picked up the stronger magnet that I’ll pull along the orange route and all you have to do is hold on, we’ll tow you along the orange path to the mid-ship point. Once there, you can use the magnets, inside and out, unmoving, as an anchor.” We all agreed it was so damn simple it was likely to work. So, Abadine went back to the mechanic’s shop and prepared a dense magnet core with a plastic rod through the middle and a lanyard attached to each end that we could clip onto, like a big baking rolling pin for us to use outside. It reminded me of those old water-skiing towrope bar handles, only much, much thicker.