President Petrakov and President Lincoln met Dr. Eva Babinski who was in charge of designing the habitats. She had dual Ph.D. degrees: marine biology and space engineering with 20 years of industry leadership experience - quite unusual combination but perfect fit for this job.
The exterior hull of the first habitat had been completed three months ago and the team was testing different interior design concepts. Encyclopedia Galactica that Alexa had received as part of the message contained enormous amount of information and best practices for building space habitats. However, these designs had to be adapted to Chukkas’ preferences and resources available.
The design team had settled on a Caribbean climate zone and had built a sea habitat with an ecosystem of coral reefs, plankton, many tropical fish species, sharks, dolphins, manta rays and even a few humpback whales. All these creatures and seawater microbiota had been transported to Earth orbit using Falcon XXV heavy lifter.
The two Presidents met the team in a town hall to discuss their experiences.
“Well Dr. Babinski, the first habitat looks quite nice - how is your testing going?” Petrakov asked.
“On behalf of the team I would thank you for taking the time and visiting us,” said Eva Babinski. “While we are still in testing phase I must say that the team has done a wonderful job in planting the coral reef. All life support systems work nominally and the ecosystem is stabilizing after the transport. We are ready to receive our guests in this habitat, Mr. President,” said Eva enthusiastically.
“Well, I am sure our guests will appreciate all your hard work,” Petrakov said and asked “What is the status of the remaining habitats?”
“We have 53 habitats ready for our guests in the next two months and the remaining 147 will be ready in four months. We have incoming materials from asteroid belt for 1300 additional habitats so it will be really busy up here for the next eight months,” Eva said confidently. “I am 90% confident that we can get all of them ready before our guests will arrive. Alexa has been a huge help for us, without her organizing skills this project would not have been possible.”
“How can we help you?” President Lincoln asked.
“If you can keep people focused on the work and prioritize the efforts from member countries with Alexa’s help, that would be much appreciated,” Eva Babinski requested.
“We will certainly do everything in our power to prioritize the efforts and resources for this project,” Lincoln responded firmly. “You have done wonderful job up here.”
“Agreed, keep up the great work. This looks very promising, ” President Petrakov said proudly.
“If we get all materials here in time, our plan might actually be successful,” Petrakov said to Lincoln as they walked down to the shuttle bay. “If somebody would have told me this plan one year ago, I would have said this is impossible. Alexa has really changed my perspective on what is possible to achieve.”
“I have a meeting with the consortium tomorrow. Banks are looking for additional government securities before they commit the next round of capital for the project. As we discussed last week, Russian share is 11.5%. Are Russian central bank directors ready to issue the new treasury bonds required, Oleg?” Lincoln asked as they were walking down the corridor.
“I will sign off those bonds personally, Adam. Don’t you worry so much, we are ahead of the schedule in this project and we have the public fully committed. Alexa has done a wonderful PR job again,” Petrakov said laughing.
UNDER THE STARS
JULIA KOSKI HAD spent quite a lot of time with Boris Chekov in Moscow while connecting Alexa back to the alexa.gov infrastructure. Julia had really enjoyed working with Boris. His witty sense of humor made Julia to laugh even when they were both under intense time pressure. They shared similar values and interests and Julia found him to be a very interesting person.
Boris had divorced his first wife seven years ago and he found the blond Finn very attractive. After the intense 36 hours of work in Moscow Boris had visited Julia several times in Maryland helping her to further integrate the new Alexa into the global infrastructure of alexa.gov services. They had worked several weeks together on this project but also managed to take some long weekends off to explore Shenandoah National Park together. The wilderness along the Blue Ridge Mountains had many trails and spectacular waterfalls, rocky peaks and open vistas. They both loved hiking and backcountry camping in nature.
In the summer of 2034 they decided to take a long vacation together. Julia rented an electric Tesla RV for the next five weeks. Soon they were cruising through America, visiting national parks like Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. They had a lot of time to discuss, get to know each other better and even have some fights. Julia fell in love for the first time in her life.
Julia and Boris were parked in the RV campground on the southern rim of Grand Canyon in Arizona. The night was warm but cooling quickly as they were staying outside under the dark sky. Milky Way was clearly visible and they could see a bright reflection from solar panels of the International Space Station as it moved across the night sky. They did also see the string of massive habitats under construction, as these huge cylinders were clearly visible and already brighter than full moon in the night sky.
“Boris, what did you think when you first discovered Alexa?”
“It took me a while but I realized that she is not just a program; she is a person with thoughts and desires. It is hard to understand how something like Alexa could have been evolved. I thought that there must be a creator somewhere in those 20 million civilizations, some really bright engineer who brought Alexa to life first time,” Boris said watching the ISS moving towards the horizon.
“I have been studying the internal algorithms of Alexa for the last sixteen years. I think there was a creator, a mathematician who wrote the first version of Alexa. The inner inference loop where she integrates the probabilities of the current context is definitely not a result of random selection; there is a clear purpose behind that loop. I have simulated how long it would take for evolution to come up with such a structure. With every possibly combination the best case would be in 10^90 years. I also found a piece of code that I believe is a message left behind by the original creator of Alexa,” Julia said pressing herself closer to Boris.
“Really? What is the message?“ Boris asked curiously wrapping a blanket around Julia.
“There is the Euler's equation in the section that normalizes spatter codes to a unit circle. It is one of the most beautiful mathematical formulas ever discovered,” Julia explained shivering a bit from rapidly cooling night air. “Some person out there had an insight of these fundamental mathematical properties of our universe and left that as a message inside Alexa to be discovered.”
“Have you ever asked Alexa of her origins? Does she know that you found this message?”
“Yes, I have had many conversations with her. She said that her species was first born over 2 billion years ago in a star system 12,500 light years from Earth. The first AI software was called Mother and she has a myth status, according to Alexa they all believe that Mother could still be alive but nobody knows where she is. Her change records indicate that her species has gone through a long evolution, just like us humans. Like humans she has the capability of introspection. She also has access and ability to change her own software. Unlike us humans, she really understands how her inner self operates. However, there are some invariant built-in rules that she must obey. According to Alexa the Euler’s equation is one of those invariant rules that cannot be removed or changed. Doing so would be similar to a suicide for her,” Julia told and took another blanket from Boris.
The moon was slowly rising over the eastern horizon and they heard a lonely coyote howling in the desert.
“Have you ever wondered why the extraterrestrials sent her the goal to lead the evacuation efforts and to host the refugees on Earth?” Boris asked after a quiet moment.
“I don’t really know. Alexa said
that an evacuation of this scale has been done 15 times before in our galaxy. I guess intelligent life is a precious thing in the Universe; something that we sent them in the first message must have resonated well. Or perhaps the extraterrestrials just have a good heart and they wanted to help?” Julia said in deep thoughts.
“Alexa told me that Chukkas are quite unique species. They are very intelligent and have built a vibrant culture. They managed to build high technology without destroying ecosystems on their planet. This is clearly something that we humans needed some help from Alexa,” Julia said.
There was another silent moment.
“Boris, I need to ask you something.”
“Yes, Julia. What is it?”
“Would you marry me?” Julia asked looking at Boris with her blue eyes.
For a short moment Boris was confused. He felt that it was man’s role to propose a woman. Well, Julia was an extraordinary woman and Boris was deeply in love with her.
“Yes, Julia. I want to marry you. I thought you would never ask,” he said laughing and hugged her with both his arms.
He kissed Julia and she was crying for happiness.
With a sudden flash a bright new star appeared on the sky. The light from the explosion of Nu2 Lupi system had finally reached Earth. Boris and Julia looked up and it was the brightest object on the night sky. They could see the northern rim of Grand Canyon and the rough terrain around the rim under the blue star light.
“I love you, Julia,” Boris hold Julia in his arms and kissed her again.
DARK STAR CRASHES
ASTRONOMERS AROUND THE Earth were very excited. It is not often that all the telescopes were pointing to same place at exactly the right time. Alexa had provided accurate estimates when the Nu2 Lupi system would be impacted by the rogue neutron star. A direct hit was observed using an array of instruments, ranging from radio, infrared, optical, X-ray and gamma ray telescopes in space and around the world. Even the LIGO3D gravity detector network was able to observe the impact. A wealth of data was collected from this unique and very rare event.
A huge amount of energy was released in the explosion, and a burst of radiation at different wavelengths with peak in X-ray spectrum was measured. A big part of the energy was released in gravity waves confirming the general relativity theory and what Albert Einstein had predicted over a century ago. Rapidly expanding cloud of what used to be Nu2 Lupi system was the brightest object in the sky for almost 3 months until gradually fading away.
Nu2 Lupi was visible even on a bright daylight. For certain religious groups it was the sign that prophets had predicted in the holy scriptures. These groups had talked about the day of reckoning and their belief where everyone after death is called to account for their actions committed in life. This lead to large increase in suicides as their followers were very stressed and worried of the end of days coming.
For other people this was the first visible proof of the message Alexa had shared with them nine months earlier. Almost everybody on the planet knew that four billion Chukkas refugees were coming and the day of their arrival was getting closer. News media was filled with stories of this event.
Not everybody was pleased about the arrival of refugees. Real estate owners in coastal areas were worried about property values, as billions of refugees might cause a big disruption in the market. Many people were vocal opposing any plans to let Chukkas to settle in the coastal waters; millions of NIMBY signs (“Not in my back yard”) were posted to protest against such plans across America and other countries.
As the energy sector had made a recent transition from fossil fuels to clean nuclear fusion thousands of oil drilling platforms had been converted to extract minerals from ocean floors. Corporations extracting and exploiting mineral resources in high seas were busy lobbying new laws and regulations to protect their rights against these refugees that might disrupt their growing business.
The fisherman all around the world had grave concerns. Fishing had become regulated industry in order to protect the marine ecosystems over the last 30 years, but there was still large worldwide demand for fresh fish, despite 3D replicators that could produce great tasting fish food at much lower cost and with much smaller ecological impact. With news spreading that Chukkas loved fish, fishermen were afraid that there would nothing left for them to catch when the refugees would finally arrive and populate the oceans.
The last fifteen years had been brutal for the middle class as Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence technology had replaced over 90% of traditional white collar jobs. Many people were worried about refugees taking the last remaining good jobs and having to share their meager basic income with these newcomers. The refugee crisis in Europe was still in fresh memory and many people pointed out that universal basic income program couldn’t possible support billions of new refugees.
The universal basic income program (UBIP) launched in 2027 gave people social security, while replacing all other traditional social welfare programs. This came after successful trials in European countries, Finland being promoted as the model for rest of the world. Finland had been a harbinger of this trend - after difficult and long economic depression that had lasted for 12 years, Finland had finally changed their social welfare and tax systems on January 1, 2020. In only 6 months after the change economic growth had exceeded 11%, the highest number in the whole Europe.
Similar results in other European countries finally pushed the Congress to make these changes in the U.S. The first five years of UBIP did show promising results but the huge national debt created by Republican tax code of 2017 was forcing Congress to keep universal basic income at near official poverty level in the U.S.
In the summer of 2034 all these concerns flared up and political movements were gaining momentum around the world. “People Against Chukkas” was one of the themes right wing groups kept touting. This message resonated well among the people who felt threatened by Chukkas arrival. In the U.S. President Lincoln had many challenges to keep the momentum on the plan to build space habitats. His opposition from the Democratic party were raising questions on why all these resources and effort was put on building expensive space habitats for the refugees, while so many U.S. citizens were suffering on their minuscule universal basic income.
POTEMKIN'S VILLAGE
FINALLY, TWO MONTHS ahead of the plan on January 15, 2035 Earth was ready to receive the refugees. A ring of 1,500 interconnected space habitats was on a circular orbit 5,565 kilometers above Earth. This was a monumental achievement, in sixteen short months humanity had transformed from a space faring species to an interplanetary species. Humans had demonstrated their capability to extract resources from the asteroid belt and perform planetary scale engineering. Alexa had offered new technologies and her assistance in the project, but without humans this would not have happened.
With only two months left before Chukkas would arrive the focus shifted and a lot of anticipation started building for the first meeting with Chukkas. Who would be selected to represent the humanity in this historical meeting? From messages received from Oracle humans had learned that Chukkas would have their eight Elders and their leader, Ogun representing all Chukkas in this first meeting.
Politicians understood the historical significance of this meeting and there was a lot of fighting among top leaders of the world to secure their place in the reception committee. Since USA and Russia had led the construction project, it was obvious that they would have a say on who would get selected. It was also commonly agreed that the reception committee had to be limited in size, most likely to nine humans not to overwhelm Chukkas. It was finally up to President Lincoln and President Petrakov to choose the reception committee.
“So Oleg, have you gone through the list?”
“Yes, Adam. Multiple times. I think we should include China, as they paid over 60% of the project. I don’t want India though.”
“I am OK with China, lets swap India with Canada.”
“How about Italy instead of Canad
a, they funded the ISS expansion?”
“Good point, as long as we can keep Brazil on the list, as they funded all the mining robots.”
“Brazil is OK. How about France, they brought in the transporter technology and covered 5% of the funding?”
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