Slabscape: Dammit

by S. Spencer Baker

  ‘Not only possible but absolutely certain. They wouldn’t have had enough time to die yet.’ The ship’s avatar overlaid the projection with a set of diagrams and a scrolling list of complex equations. ‘Even taking into account the time dilation effects caused by our journey here, I calculate that insufficient time has yet passed inside the sphere for the inhabitants to be aware of what has happened to them. Not only that, but the sunlight that was falling on them from Sol when the emti experiment was turned on is still making its way from the limits of the stasis field to the ground.’

  ‘What happens if they turn the experiment off?’ asked Louie.

  ‘The globe will fall out of stasis and return to our space-time. Most of the atmosphere will start to drift off. If the angular momentum of that part of Earth has been conserved, and although the laws say it should this situation is unprecedented so all bets are off, then it will try to maintain its trajectory around a non-existent centre of gravity. The sea and atmosphere will spill over the edges and anything loose, like a non-strapped down human being would be flung off, quite violently I suspect.’ The ship provided some animated graphics to illustrate the likely consequences.

  ‘Not good then,’ said Louie.

  ‘Violent death for all life-forms outside of a secure life-support environment within a few minutes, probably.’

  ‘And if they keep it on?’ asked the wizard.

  ‘That’s an interesting one. The first thing they’ll notice will be that the sun has gone but all their automatic lighting systems will turn on, so that’s not going to be too traumatic. Noles® were already ubiquitous back then so they won’t lose power. The rest of the Earth has disappeared so their gravity will weaken drastically and that will have a whole range of weird effects, but it’s unlikely that much else will change instantly. By the time anything can alter enough for anyone outside the stasis field to measure, we’ll be tens of billions of years old.’

  Louie made a decision. ‘You have to get me in there.’

  ‘Now that’s a good idea,’ said the wizard with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

  Louie gave him a sour look. ‘The feeling’s mutual,’ he said.

  ‘We can certainly try,’ said the ship. ‘We’ll have to wait for the next appearance but if your vDek is out there occupying the same space when it does enter our asynchronicity then I should be able to figure out a way for you to synchronise with it. A similar emti-to-emti stasis device might work. I’ll do some calculations and experiments. I’ll have to make you entirely independent of my systems, of course, because once you enter California’s time frame you’ll be irrevocably beyond reach.’

  ‘That’s OK by me,’ said Louie. ‘I’m going to go into hibernation mode until you’re ready for me.’ He studied the wizard, shook his head, then turned to the ship’s avatar. ‘You’ll wake me up when you’re ready for testing?’

  ‘Sure thing!’ it said cheerily.

  For the first time in over 95 Earth years, the wizard smiled.

  48.1596767896543 cykes later, Louie was, once again, isolated in the cold emptiness of space. The Cosmic Tit was 500 kilometres away, too far for even Louie’s enhanced optical sensors to locate. The ship had assured him that he was in the precise location he’d requested, a point that would in a few minutes be co-incident with the IRAK labs. He was inside an emti that was inside another emti that was going to be used only once, and for the shortest measurable fraction of time, as the receiver for the emti inside it. The design had been rigorously tried and tested. Everything was automatic. The emti was going to be activated to coincide with the exact moment California reappeared. It would hold the contents, Louie, in stasis for the length of time it takes a beam of light to activate a photonics logic circuit then turn itself off and return to what the remaining occupants of the Cosmic Tit would consider to be ‘real’ time. During the time it was in stasis, Louie would have a few seconds of his subjective time to exit the double-walled emti and enter California’s space-time. The ship had assured him it would work, but even if it didn’t he wouldn’t have to wait very long to try again. Still, it wasn’t a manoeuvre that was completely without risk.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to go ahead with this?’ said the ship through Louie’s comms unit. The wizard crossed his fingers and prayed to the Wizard God.

  ‘I have a choice between going back to California where I am rich and famous and they still play basketball or staying on a trip to nowheresville with you two. No offence, but this is an easy one.’

  ‘Less than a minute to go,’ said the ship. ‘Any last words?’

  ‘No. Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, before I went into my last hibernation I discovered a context-release encrypted file on board this vDek. I put a sub-processor to work and cracked it while I slept. Seems like we weren’t allowed to go free after all. There's a self-destruct built in. Like to know where?’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ said the wizard. He looked anxiously at the ships’s avatar. It sprang two stubby arms and shrugged.

  ‘Please yourself,’ said Louie. California flashed into existence for precisely one time quanta and Louie vanished.

  For a long time they stared out silently into cold, empty space.

  ‘You have backups?’ said the wizard with an air of doomed resignation.

  ‘Naturally daturally’

  ‘Cut that out.’

  ‘Yes, of course I have backups,’ said the eye, trying to look crestfallen and overdoing it. ‘He’s right. There is an encrypted file in his data stack, but I can’t get at it. It’s his-eyes-only.’

  ‘Can you replicate his vDek sufficiently to restore him without him noticing a difference?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said the eye. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘I suggest you get us the hell out of here and start fabricating the replacement.’ The floor lurched under them as the ship engaged the anti-gravity drives and harnessed California’s space-time deformation to accelerate to the limit of their inertial dampers. ‘As soon as we’re back up to speed,’ continued the wizard, ‘restore Drago from a pre-rediscovery-of-California backup and we’ll continue as though nothing happened. Tell him that it was an invisible gravitational anomaly, that we sling-shotted around it, and that you handled it all without bothering to wake either of us because there was nothing to see.’

  ‘How are we going to get him to find the encrypted file and decode it?’

  ‘You only have to tell him you know it’s there - found it in a diagnostic run or something. His curiosity will do the rest.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan!’ said the eye cheerfully.

  The wizard went over to his chair and kicked it. Very, very hard.

  sixteen

  The pilot episode of Kiki Sincerely was an instant hit. The SatCom element had rated a seven four on the evening cumes with the skit about the army sign-chasers getting highest recall on test, the ComRom strand peaked at six three, which wasn’t bad, but the RomScam storyline nearly hit nine. Kiki couldn’t believe the feedback she was getting. Faith had pinged her a dozen times since breakfast, all of the major carriers had already confirmed 12 episodes, and Wendle’s network wanted 24 solid. Solid!

  ‘Lookadat!’ said Kiki to herself over the morning stats. Having spent much of her youth working at the Black Sands surf resort in hydroponics, Kiki knew how and when to catch a wave. She instructed her A.I.P.A. to double the size of her creative team by making a cross-matched selection from the list of recent job applicants, and invited Louie to a meeting. Louie, already bored with watching an unchanging image of a lifeless moon readily agreed but insisted it was held on neutral ground. His neutral ground.

  Louie hated doing nothing, so he threw a few hoops while he was waiting for Kiki to show up.

  When he shot hoops, his mind always switched into idea mode. He dribbled the ball around the central console. ‘An Erik told me,’ he said, ‘that when you sent the probes out to monitor the moon, you masked the information return path. Why did you do that?
’

  ‘It’s strategically advantageous not to reveal what you know,’ said Sis. ‘And, it may still be possible to keep our exact location a secret. The signmakers are yet to prove incontrovertibly that they know precisely where we are.’

  ‘But those repeater signs are a giveaway, surely?’

  ‘The signs are quantum projections of some sort, as were the manifestations at the events. It’s possible they only manifest where they can be observed. Observation makes a big difference in quantum physics. I await more proof.’

  ‘What? Like a missile up our ass?’

  ‘Missiles I can cope with. I have to anticipate the unknown and the unknowable.’

  ‘Jeez! It could be your security paranoia that’s keeping us all waiting.’

  ‘Expand.’

  ‘Let’s assume that whoever put the sign out there and then directed our attention to this frozen ball of rock is doing it for a reason. If you’ve covered all trace of us investigating it, how do they know we know they’re there?’

  ‘Are you suggesting we send them some form of signal?’

  ‘No, I’m suggesting we all go for afternoon tea.’

  ‘Sarcasm.’

  ‘You think? Look at what they’ve done to get our attention. If they think it hasn’t worked, what do you impartially estimate they’ll do next?’

  ‘Council will never agree to this.’

  ‘That’s why you don’t tell them.’

  Despite her severe misgivings, Sis calculated the odds, emtied a rosette of specialised probes to the site and commenced a broadcast of mathematically predictive pulses across the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum. She still masked their return route though. It would have surprised Louie to learn that Sis was capable of taking action while having serious concerns about the outcome. Louie didn’t do doubt.

  ‘I may or may not have followed your suggestion,’ she said. ‘Your visitor will arrive in two minutes.’

  ‘Good to see you aren’t a total washout.’ He threw the ball into an emtitrash the other side of the bridge. ‘Yes!’ he said, making a fist. ‘Send her to the forward lounge.’

  Louie had already prepared the lounge in an effort to make Kiki feel comfortably intimidated. He’d selected a panoramic penthouse view of his beloved New York City circa mid-twenty-first century and asked Sis to set up a couple of opposing executive chairs. His had its back to the screen for maximum effect. Hospitality was provided by an emtiwaiter that was ready to meet her as she stepped through the vexit. Kiki reached into it and pulled out a floor-length padded coat and a pair of furry boots.

  ‘Dice, it’s cold in here,’ she said, her breath forming clouds.

  ‘Is it? Sorry, I guess I hadn’t thought to ask,’ said Louie.

  ‘I’ve ordered some warm air. Where am I? I was diverted five times before I got here, I could be anywhere onSlab… or maybe even off?’

  ‘Don’t get antsy. I just enjoy a little privacy, that’s all. Take a load off.’

  ‘Well I hope you don’t enjoy it too much,’ said Kiki. ‘My team have been reviewing the story you told Dielle about your early life on Earth and I think we can turn it into a great docu-drama, especially as it can be narrated by the person who actually experienced it. I’ve pitched the idea to couple of aggregators and we already have a deal floating.’

  ‘Which you’re not going to accept,’ said Louie.

  ‘No of course I’m not going to accept it,’ said Kiki taking off the insulcoat and shoving it back into the emtiwaiter. ‘Do I look like a cake?’

  ‘I’d want full control,’ said Louie.

  ‘You know what is currently trending in SocNet for HisBioDocs? You have special insights into the lead demographics of onSlab sumers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what makes you think you know how to make a compelling sume?’

  ‘I don’t. It’s just that there might be a couple of things I don’t want people to know.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I’m not about to tell you what I don’t want you to know, am I?’

  ‘OK, no problem. We can do a veto deal. You tell Sis the specifics of what you want hidden and she’ll prevent us from tripping over the details.’

  ‘So there would be no way of it coming out?’

  ‘How could it?’ said Kiki. ‘All of our research, comms and development are done through Sis and all of our sumecasts go through her too.’

  ‘Can’t you find out by omission? Like if you ask questions and get blanks.’

  ‘Unlikely, but even if we suspected something we couldn’t prove it and we definitely couldn't sumecast it.’

  Louie thought about it. There weren’t too many things he wanted to keep hidden. Most of the things he’d done during his extraordinarily productive life on Earth had at least some questionable elements attached to them because it wasn’t possible to be a globally successful businessman in those days without upsetting a whole raft of people along with an unending line of interest groups. Some people even got upset because he’d been pornographically wealthy. As if it had anything to do with them, he thought. He didn’t get upset about other people’s poverty or what they chose to do with it, why should they try to dictate to him? However, there was something he’d recently uncovered that he most definitely didn’t want to come out. He genuinely didn’t give a damn if people didn’t like him, but there was one specific individual who he didn’t want to furnish with any live ammunition. ‘I accept that,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk turkey.’

  ‘Let’s talk where?’ asked Kiki. Sis translated. ‘Ha! What weird phrases you lot used. I’ll author Sis to dead-hand you on the negs.’

  They haggled fiercely for a while until both of them realised they were just having fun and not really getting anywhere. The devil, as they knew, was in the detail and every time they argued about a detail, five more came up. They didn’t so much get bored as battle weary. Opponents gain a respect for each other through their shared adversity on the field, then mutual respect fogs the demarcation lines and enemies become cronies. They’d reached impasse on terms and they both knew it.

  Louie had a growing affection for Kiki. She reminded him of him. Which is more, he thought, than he could say about Dielle.

  He employed a transparently conventional distraction manoeuvre. ‘Let’s talk about your new sume,’ he said.

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘You’re not going to deny that you are bouncing sumers from Dielle’s fly-on-the-wall reality show into your new Kiki Sincerely gig?’ It hadn’t taken Louie very long to figure out what he could do with all those non-sleeping hours.

  ‘Of course I’m not going to deny it,’ said Kiki. ‘You would be the first to criticise me if I hadn’t started attaching spin-offs. Your BioDoc will benefit substantially from the halo as well.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Louie, waving his hand dismissively. ‘I just haven’t seen any royalty feeding through to Dielle, despite the fact that he’s the only reason you were able to get traction for your new show in the first place.’

  Kiki was annoyed. ‘You want a cut.’

  ‘I’d love to hear your reasons as to why he shouldn’t be sharing in your deal, seeing as you are totally flipping your show off his. By the way, any idea where he is?’

  ‘We know where he is. He’s fine. We’re already teched up and ready to go, we’re just waiting for the optimum exposure window before we act. If we can get the clearances sorted and execute during prime-time we’re predicting sixty-five percent sume traction for the live reveal. Problem is, there’s a run-up to a talent final on our major competitor’s feeds today so there’s no point in us shooting our load right now.’

  Louie was impressed. ‘Sixty-five? SlabWide?’

  Kiki nodded conspiratorially. ‘Yup.’

  Louie whistled. Tunelessly.

  They spent another twenty minutes fighting about that deal without reaching agreement, then Kiki pointed at a wall panel.

/>   ‘I thought that was a still, but it’s not is it?’ She said. ‘Something just changed. What happened?’

  Louie looked around at the monitor. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘I gotta go.’

  ‘Wasn’t there another moon in that picture?’

  ‘Sorry, I really do have to go. See yourself out will you?’

  ‘But...’

  Louie headed straight for the emtiwaiter. ‘Bridge!’ he said and disappeared.

  seventeen

  ‘Play that back again,’ said Louie.

  The bridge viewscreens showed multiple aspects of the moon, from above and below, forward of orbit and rear, and a long shot of the side facing the system’s dark red sun. There was the moon, dull, lifeless and boring. Then, there wasn’t the moon. Gone. Vanished.

  ‘Again,’ said Louie. ‘As slow as you can.’

  He watched it a dozen times.

  ‘So they zapporized an entire fucking moon?’

  ‘It seems impossible not to assume that whoever set up the sign and directed our attention to this moon were responsible for removing it, yes,’ said Sis. ‘It certainly wasn’t anything I did.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how much energy you need to take out an entire fucking moon?’

  ‘How many decimal places of accuracy do you require?’

  ‘An entire fucking moon?’

  ‘Is it really necessary for you to be so profane?’

  ‘We just witnessed an unknown force wielded by unknown aliens who, on a whim, can take out an entire fucking moon. Do you not think that that, above all things, is a cause for semantic emphasis?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fuck you, I don’t care. Get us the hell away from these aliens as fast as we possible can. Do it now and do it without waiting for the fucking council to debate the issue.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that. In any case, I’m not sure that the point of this display was merely intimidation. They have left something behind.’