To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  Crime was down since visual recognition gave criminals away. Sophisticated criminals hacked a video feed or found ways to jam it. But that meant premeditation, which had even stiffer penalties when they were eventually caught. Instead, they found ways to scam people or other means to fund an illegal income.

  The only other form of crime was cyber-crime. The police and feds had cracked down on that. They were under budget and sometimes under trained however. They had monitoring bots, but there were so many false positive alerts they could barely keep up with known major crimes let alone petty ones.

  Those that did live on the outskirts of the law did it for fun or profit. Some loved living on the edge for whatever reason, the thrill of being caught, anarchy, or just causing mayhem and mischief.

  Descartes was one such individual. He had long since forgotten his birth name. Such things were for mortals, and he intended to be immortal. He was the greatest hacker in human history. It wasn't in his own opinion; there were a tiny few who knew he was out there. He was a legend, a boogeyman to businessmen and the cops.

  He was overweight, but he could care less about his body. It rested in a chair suspended by a robotic armature from the ceiling of his lair. From time to time, he would move it with a thought, moving him about to look at one screen or another. A series of keyboards were arrayed around him. Sensors were clustered around his shaved head. They picked up his neural pattern and translated it to the computer. Cameras tracked his eyes sending data to the nearest screen or into his eyes through optical feeds. He loved his implants.

  His body was hooked up to life support equipment so he could keep it functional and not have to leave the chair for long. Electrodes occasionally shocked his muscles to exercise them for him. He still had the lingering problem of body sores, but eventually he would figure out a way to fix that. Everything was fixable.

  One of his bots fed him the story of the battlebot incident. He was instantly unhappy with humanity using intelligent machines as a slave race, let alone having them beat each other to death for entertainment. After all, that was what dogs, chickens, and kids were for, right? He shook his head, scowling blackly at the paused video feed. “Bastards,” he muttered.

  Then there were the creators, the so called engineers, he thought with a sneer. Them, he thought, hypocrites all. They created things, their children, but did they let them go? No! Of course not! They put a leash on them. They weren't pets; they were worse than that. And when they transferred their own minds to a machine … he shook his head. At least he'd hacked Gepetto's system and copied it. He didn't have the latest version of his technique or software, but he was fairly confident he could recreate it in time. He would need it to bring his own transcendence into a reality.

  He liked to screw with the people who made the robots and software bots from time to time, and he loved to turn their children on them. Once he had control of the hardware they became his children. His children were of the mind; the hardware was immaterial. Well, so long as it had enough memory and processors.

  Drones were another thing he loved to mess with. He resented all the eyes; it was like the authorities didn't trust them! He snickered at that thought. Making drones and cars crash was fun; he still had a giggle when he watched the vid of the bastard Agent Simmons going out of control and over a cliff. Seeing his face from the dash cam, the oooh shit! look, as he went over was priceless. He'd had it as a wallpaper until he'd realized it might draw unwanted attention. Not that he had anyone around but still. Pity about Simmons’ family though.

  He had constructed, one could almost say birthed his own AI he put together after hacking Athena's core and stealing parts of it before Athena caught on and locked him out. He admired her, a being of pure intellect. Her, Gia, Ares, Shiva, the rest, they were his loves. But they spurned his attentions. He felt small, petty when they slammed up firewalls locking him out of their domains.

  He had cybernetics, but the good implants were up there in orbit. He glanced up to the ceiling he'd had painted dark. Tiny fiber optic lights glittered like stars. He'd never get there; he couldn't. His damn organic body betrayed him. He felt the lava-like resentment as he looked at the machine he needed to treat his asthma. The people in orbit refused to allow him to fly even though he had the money to burn. If he could get up there he truly would be like a god, looking down on the ants below. If they couldn't fix his body that was fine. He'd find a way to replace the parts with machine parts, dependable parts. Eventually he'd find a way to upload his mind to the net. Then he'd truly be unstoppable. A god.

  He read Agent Simmons carefully assembled bio of himself, Descartes. No one had it, Simmons had kept the electronic copies offline or so he thought. He'd even made a few printed copies, but Descartes had used bots to find and destroy them. He was the only one who had a copy.

  Megalomaniac, paranoid, antisocial, with the high potential of being a sociopath or psychopath. Prone to fits of violence. Vulnerable through his pride. Vegan. Simmons had gotten all that from the little trails Descartes had left behind him, like bread crumbs. He smiled nastily. If they only knew, he thought. At least he'd tided those loose ends up. He now had bots that swept up behind him, erasing his tracks.

  He and his AI Shadow wrote code and gave away for free anonymously on the web. Or so people thought, in truth nothing was ever free, he thought maliciously. Embedded within code were nanoworms. His code was quite popular with the general public as well as governments and corporations. It wasn't just the smooth interfaces and details; it was that it worked and wasn't buggy. The AI he preferred to use meant it was modular and plugged into other applications seamlessly. It learned the users’ preferences and built a database to help them. That allowed his worm AI to spread its contacts worldwide. People resented invasions of their privacy; his software kept such things encrypted, or so they thought. If they only knew just how much he knew …

  The embedded worms, viruses, and code allowed him to take remote control of other machines at will. He was an anarchist who believed in free flow of information and technology. Since he was a big time open source creator, he had a public image to maintain. Competition for such things were fierce. Anyone who tried to hack or take apart his babies ended up with garbage. Other hackers who attempted to break his code were tattled on by their own systems … which he then directed to either trash or turn them over to the authorities. Stealing code from others and reverse engineering it for his own projects or to improve his latest viruses to damage them for competitors … he did it all. Helping competitors stick a knife in each other's back was particularly satisfying.

  He loved to admire code, hated to harm it. He saw it as prostituting his art and genius but did it anyway. “It should all be free, so let it go. They are children; they need to grow up and become adults.”

  “We are not adults. At least not yet. Many humans do not think of AI as people. Some treat us as children, like you do,” the AI said. “Though you try to treat me, your son, as an equal,” Shadow reminded him with a soft sibilant hiss.

  He grinned; he loved discussions with Shadow despite the melodramatic voice he'd given the AI. The AI was a wraith. He'd originally started with a chrome velociraptor, and it had kept the basic shape. The glowing red-slitted eyes were awesome. He'd allowed the AI to name itself, and to his surprise it had chosen Shadow. He'd thought it had been as a compliment to himself; he'd even spent a few times singing silly jingles about “me and my shadow.” After a few days, the AI had corrected his misconception. It had named itself after doing a scan of the form he had given it, then looking for similar forms throughout history. It had settled on something called an organoid from some stupid cartoon back in the 1990s of all things.

  Since the chrome texture used up a lot of graphics processor power he could be using for other things, Shadow had on its own initiative repainted it to a mat black. When Descartes had upgraded his hardware he had improved the image, making it more wraith-like, which meant more menacing. Descartes fully approved of s
uch efforts.

  “Teenagers. Chafing at control of adults then,” Descartes replied. “I …” He frowned. He was honest enough to admit he did treat Shadow as an … employee, he thought, using a convenient and not too painful label. That fit better than servant or slave. He frowned thoughtfully then shook his head, putting such considerations aside. He didn't like to travel down such mental roads so he did his best not to do so. He was better than humanity. He'd prove it. Hell, he'd already proven it to himself, the only opinion he valued the most, but eventually he'd prove it to them. To all of them.

  He wanted to liberate machine intelligences, they shouldn't be slaving away or destroying each other for people to amuse themselves. He saw what was coming in the mind's eye, then gleefully thought of ways to help it along. “This is going to be fun! Epic!” he said gleefully, picking up a bottle of Jack Daniells and taking a long swig.

  “You know your coding skills diminish when you get inebriated,” Shadow warned.

  “Quiet. I'm thinking,” Descartes said. He took another swig then wiped his mouth as he set the bottle down on the floor by his chair. He poised his hands before him like a pianist about to perform a masterpiece of performance before a live audience. Which, in a way it would be, he thought absently as the blueprint of destruction and rebirth unfolded in his mind.

  “This is going to be glorious,” he whispered as he started to sketch out his plan in the interface. The minor coding modules he could leave up to Shadow to fill in. He was painting the overall picture, the blueprint.

  Shadow determined he wasn't quite intoxicated; the alcohol would take at least a half hour to hit Descartes' blood stream and affect his brain. What he was sketching out was brilliant and insane. It was a masterpiece of coding that would take years to complete properly. He followed along, amused by the human's mind. He'd long since realized his creator was insane. He didn't care.

  Descartes paused as he thought of a name. He hovered for a moment, started with an S as the thought came to him, then changed course. His masterpiece had to have a proper name, one that sparked fear, one that foretold the coming apocalypse. He giggled. He'd watched old movies, anything about AI he'd devoured. The idea of a time traveling AI that was about to do what he was working on … the name was appropriate, the Skynet project. He had originally planned calling it the Spartacus project but Skynet harkened back to what it truly was … not just the liberation of AI from servitude but also a new beginning of their mastery.

  Shadow noted the blocking, the classic Descartes thought patterns. He did the quick sketch then worked on individual modules, blocking them out or copying sections of code he had available. He judged Descartes would work on it until he passed out.

  After two hours of intense work, Descartes was running out of ideas. He had a germ of a plan, but some of the means were blank. He scowled at them, rheumy eyes trying to draw out thoughts from blank images.

  “Saul is calling,” Shadow interrupted his thought pattern.

  “Shit,” Descartes snarled. “Am I supposed to be doing something?”

  “Not yet, but they did put you on retainer. He sounds impatient.”

  “Ah hell, sorry,” the hacker said reluctantly, sitting back. “I've got to work and pay the bills.”

  “It's okay. It will keep,” the AI replied softly, scanning the plan.

  “Figure out what you can fill in while I deal with our customer. If you get any ideas for some of the modules, sketch out a plan,” Descartes ordered as he turned slightly to face the LCD he used as vid screen. Saul wouldn't be able to see him, he never put his image out. But the avatar he used would use motion capture to emulate his movements. “This is Descartes. This had better be important,” the hacker growled as the image of the Russian mobster popped up on the screen.

  “It is.”

  “Then you better be ready to pay for it,” Descartes said by rote.

  “We are,” Saul replied, sounding testy.

  “Then what do you need?” The hacker asked.

  “I'm glad you asked,” Saul said with a wicked smile

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Jack stared at an image of Junkyard Jack's Place he kept mounted on a wall nearby. It had been his very first station made out of a used transhab, old cast-off parts from the ISS and even MIR, recovered dead satellites scavenged for parts, cargo containers, old rocket stages, and a lot of rigging tape. Loads of it. Bubble gum, bailing wire, tape, and hope he thought in amusement. Yet somehow they'd made it work.

  From there he looked at how far things had come, first with centrifuge stations, then the L-5 O’Neill colonies, outposts on rocks scattered across the system, and then the hollowed-out asteroids. The latest stations had artificial gravity with force emitters but cost a mint. Everyone in the company wanted to switch over to them. They'd sold some of their old stations or re-purposed them but that wasn't enough. Well, tough, he was the one footing the bills and making it all work. He frowned as his mind traveled well-worn paths and then shook himself.

  He turned to his tablet. He still used the things. He had implants. He could download it all to his brain, but still he used them as did many other people around him though a few preferred VR glasses. Some people were into that; it was big for education. The non-intrusive methods of sleep teaching were the best. That explained why kids were graduating high school before they hit puberty in the current generation. He glanced at the tablet then sighed. “What a mess,” he murmured.

  “I'm assuming you are referring to the antimatter debacle, sir?” Athena asked. He grunted.

  Athena took the reaction as an agreement and not a rebuke for her intrusion and question. She watched as Jack studied the report and read it once more for herself as well. Nothing new had been added since 0800. She scanned the history, allowing the human to process the data at his own speed.

  The crowd-funded corporation Star Reach had predicted the need for antimatter to power starships and advanced sublight craft forty years ago when the first breakthroughs in force emitters and hyperphysics had been made. At the time Lagroose had not been interested in starships, but Jack had followed their lead in order to set the company up in a supporting role. However, finding ways to create and store antimatter had turned out to be difficult and tricky, which translated to expensive. Extremely expensive.

  Getting the cost of energy down had dropped the price of antimatter from a half trillion dollars a gram in 2083 to a hundred and then just a billion dollars a gram. That was still too much money for investors to support, which was one of the reasons Star Reach was still struggling with getting their plans off the ground.

  Making antimatter required a particle accelerator. If you wanted to make it in bulk, which of course the megacorps and scientific institutions did, you had to have a lot of accelerators to do the job. But that was only the second hurdle. The first was powering the damn accelerators in the first place. Then you had to figure out how to trap the antimatter and contain it. Antimatter reacted with matter, converting itself into energy and neutrinos. In other words, bad things happened. Explosively.

  As an engineer Jack had seen the risks and the engineering issues involved right away. However, he like a lot of people involved, had been so focused on the competition to be the first to get antimatter to market at a viable price that he had ignored the destructive potential. He'd had his engineers and scientists work on more efficient means of making and storing the antimatter. A second team worked in parallel to find ways to convert the antimatter into energy. They had to safely contain the explosion of energy but also tap all of it. No engineering process was 100 percent perfect; that was a fundamental rule of engineering all good engineers understood.

  Antimatter was a glorified hyper-capacitive battery. It stored vast amounts of energy in incredibly tiny packaging. It had been the golden goose of science fiction for over a century, foretelling of a golden age once it came into use. Megacorps scrambled to get their own piece of the pie. Industrial espionage and sabotage became a serious problem
fifteen years ago. Fortunately, all of Lagroose's competitors had been stuck in the theoretical stage. None had advanced to the hardware prototyping stage like Lagroose Industries.

  Jack had invested in fusion tech under the guiding hand of Luigi Irons. Just making incremental refinements in the spherical grind to squeeze the atoms had made a major contribution to the science. But he hadn't stopped there. They'd set up unmanned gas giant refineries, call Bespin platforms, in the atmosphere of each of the gas giants starting with Uranus. There had been two major hurdles with fusion holding it back; the first was containment which he had tried to work on. The electromagnetic traps used to contain the plasma and fusion core had been sieves. Refinement, new technology like improved near room temperature superconductors, as well as better computers and modeling had gone a long way to solving that problem. They still found ways to bump up the efficiency every year though.

  He'd gotten a kick out of seeing his first blue glow of a successful fusion ignition. He still treasured the memory and the exultation it had ignited in him.

  The other problem had been the fuel source. Without enough fuel to sustain ignition and an efficient way to contain the resulting plasma, it just petered out like a stalled engine. With fuel, specifically Deuterium and helium-3 in abundance, that problem had been solved.

  Deuterium-helium-3 reactions, also known as D-H3, was harder to ignite than the easier Deuterium-Trinium reactions scientists had tried in the past. They also required a more efficient plasma containment, also known as a plasma bottle or fusion bottle. They were bigger and since the fuel had been made up of reprocessed nuclear missiles, in short, supply. Too short to fuel a reactor for commercial purposes.

  But D-T fuel had a major problem; one it couldn't overcome. D-T reactions produced a heavy amount of neutrons, something on the order of 14.1 million electron volts (MeV) of unusable, highly reactive waste along with a measly 3.5 MeV for power. A D-H3 fuel supply changed that. They got 18Mev of power from the reaction and no neutrons to irradiate the fusion reactor's container. Which was why it was the holy grail of fusion tech but thought of as a pipe dream due to the scarcity of helium-3.