“I should probably get going…” Elias said looking at Julia and the open door.
“Why don’t you stay with me for a sleepover. Kids will be OK over there,” Julia smiled and pulled him closer on the sofa.
“Time for another late night discussion, Julia?” Elias was laughing and wrapped his arm around her.
“Yes, my love,” Julia said and kissed him passionately.
MORNING AFTER
IN THE MORNING Julia was the first to wake up. Elias was spooning against her and had his arm wrapped around her. Julia was listening his relaxed breathing and for the first time in many years she felt really good. She heard some noise from the media room and saw Aurora getting up in her PJs heading down to kitchen to prepare some breakfast.
“Good morning, honey” she whispered and pointed out to sleeping Elias.
Aurora smiled and whispered “Good morning, Mom” pointing to sleeping Bobby.
Rufus got up, followed Aurora to kitchen and had some water. Aurora gave him kibbles that disappeared from his bowl in a hurry. Aurora prepared a simple American style breakfast with scrambled eggs, hash browns, (artificial) bacon, orange juice and coffee. Rufus started barking and woke up both Elias and Bobby.
“Good morning, sleepyhead” Julia said stretching herself against Elias and tickling him.
“Good morning,” Elias replied yawning and scratching her back. “I smell a real American breakfast nearby.”
“How are you feeling?” Julia asked.
“Given that we cut and moved about fifty tons of ice blocks manually yesterday, I feel great. I bit sore from my arms and my back,” Elias said laughing.
“Good morning Mr. Dusk and Mrs. Koski,” Bobby said walking toward the kitchen.
“Good morning, Bobby. You can call me Elias.”
“And you can call me Julia. Good morning to you as well. Did you get any sleep? I heard Aurora talking until 3 AM before I fell asleep.”
“I did sleep a few hours. Aurora has so many amazing stories, Mrs. Koski - I mean Julia,” Bobby replied.
“Let’s all go and get some breakfast,” Julia said and pulled Elias up from the sofa.
“Ouch, be gentle,” Elias tried to put up a smile. “I am really a bit sore from all that physical work we did yesterday.”
They ate breakfast and chatted. Aurora and Bobby were asking about the plans regarding planet they were orbiting now. Elias talked about the plans to build a city on the planet. He described the ancient city where they found Julia and how that took everybody by surprise as they had thought that there wasn’t any intelligent life on the planet. Julia talked about Lambda’s story on Chloreans and how he had re-built the cities after the asteroid impact.
Bobby was wondering how Julia had disappeared just like with a transporter in Star Trek science fiction movies. Julia didn’t cover all the details but explained that Lambda had capabilities to transform reality at the subatomic levels. She was careful not to mention Aurora’s and Hermia’s role in the event.
“In quantum world the physics doesn’t always work in the ways humans are expecting,” Julia said.
“Just like Schrodinger’s cat who was live and dead at the same time?” Aurora was asking.
“How did you know that?” Julia was surprised.
“Dr. Wilkinson is teaching advanced physics class this semester. He talked about the double slit experiment and Schrodinger’s cat paradox just few weeks ago,” Aurora replied. “We didn’t believe him until he did the experiment and showed us what actually happens. It is mind boggling to think how an electron can be a particle and a wave at the same time.”
“So how did it feel to go through a real transporter?” Bobby asked Julia.
“Well, it all happened so fast. It felt really strange, like a sudden discontinuity in time. I landed on ice, hurt my ankle, slipped and fell down,” Julia explained massaging her ankle that was still a bit sore. “At first I didn’t realize what had happened. It felt really weird. And it was so cold out there.”
“Could we use this Lambda’s transporter? I would like to try it,” Bobby said.
“Well, we need to be a bit careful with that technology. Perhaps over time once we learn more we could consider that. For now, I think it is safer for us humans to use space shuttles.”
“Elias, how can we build a city when it is so cold down there?” Aurora asked. “Is the city going to be under some sort of dome cover?”
Elias explained the situation with the ice age climate but was confident that they would figure out a solution. He explained that solving problems was easier when you start from the first principles. In this case the thermodynamic equations were well known and people had already practical experience on global warming from planet Earth. With the modern tools and methods it was just a matter of scaling up a solution.
“First you build it in your mind, then in the real world,” Elias was explaining. “Our imagination is the real limit, many people don’t think big enough.”
“How can I help?” Aurora asked. “I have a good imagination.”
“You have already helped a lot, Aurora,” Elias replied, “In more ways than you might realize.”
“We can help to create some ideas for the city plans, I am taking an architecture class with Bobby and this could be our class project,” Aurora said. “What do you think, Bobby?”
“Yes, that sounds like fun. I’m pretty sure other kids would like to help in planning the new city as well. Could we do that, Elias?”
“Absolutely, I remember designing space ships when I was at your age. It was really fun!” Elias replied.
NO PERFECT UNION
Elias called up a meeting at 3 PM ship time. Orin Gun had a painful hangover from all that Teppan snail ooze he had consumed. He appeared more pale than normal and the symbols moving on his forehead were still a bit blurred - the automatic translator was making parsing errors. Unun had even worse symptoms, he had difficulties coordinating his exoskeleton movements and almost fell down before managing to take his seat at the table.
“I hope you all had a great party yesterday,” Elias started the meeting.
“We did indeed. However, it is customary for Chukkas to recover at least one day after such a feast.” Orin Gun replied trying to hold his head straight with four arms, “We enjoyed the party very much, it was great to socialize with all the people onboard. Looks like we have more common with humans than we thought before.”
“I found out that human children are as curious as young Chukkas, “ Unun said trying to stay in upright position. “The party was wonderful, but I don’t remember last time I had such a hangover afterwards. That Teppan snail ooze your father gave you, Orin Gun, was very potent indeed.”
“Well, I do appreciate you joining us today. We have some important matters to discuss now that we are finally here at Lydow-4, ” Elias said with emphatic voice. He didn’t realize that alcohol had such a strong impact on Chukkas nervous system.
Elias presented a list of important topics that he thought needed immediate attention.
On top of his list was the “ice age” climate situation on the planet. He wanted to setup a team of experts with a goal of resolving this problem as soon as possible. In his mind this was just a thermodynamic engineering problem. Changing the albedo of the planet surface, melting the thick ice cover, introducing more heat absorbing gases like CO2 or CH4 to atmosphere and other ideas like using Higgs field to produce massive amounts of heat were all feasible using a fleet of 3D replicators and AI to coordinate these activities.
Second item on his list was establishing a colony on the planet. Elias felt that it was important to establish a ‘beach head’ colony, even a small one. This would enable teams to learn fast and do experimentation in real environment, instead of relying on computer models. Elias was wondering if the city carved in stone they’ve discovered the day before would be a suitable first target.
At this point Orin Gun raised the important topics he had been thinking about
for many moons.
“Elias, we need to have an honest conversation on how the co-dependency between Chukkas and humans will be handled going forward. We need a new constitution with a strong purpose for the society we are starting to build here. We need a structure with checks and balances, an economic system that allows allocation of resources to most pressing priorities and legal system that treats everybody equally, whether a human or a Chukkas. We are no longer two separate species on a shared journey to a new home. We have arrived and we must be very clear on the foundations of our new society.”
“You are right, Orin Gun. However, I am an entrepreneur and technologist, not a politician. My legal expertise is very limited. We have existing laws and systems that have served us well so far. Are you suggesting that we should throw away all our existing laws and start from a clean slate?”
“Both humans and Chukkas bring along a lot of lessons learned, but also a lot of baggage from history. We are in a unique point in time. What kind of society do we want to build here? You saw what happened on Earth, even the best laws didn’t help when a new person with different ideas came into power. Within a few years humans and Chukkas were fighting against each others, instead of working together,” Orin Gun replied.
“President Keller took an oath to protect the constitution of the United States. Unfortunately there is not a single word about Chukkas in that document. The Founding Fathers had lived under the oppression from England and they knew a lot about human nature, so they did set the government for the People, splitting the powers and having those checks and balances that you talked about. What would you suggest we should do differently this time?” Elias asked.
“So what is the bigger purpose we are serving here? Is it ‘Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness’ like in your Declaration of Independence document or something bigger and more fundamental?” Orin Gun asked.
“That is a great question. When I bought Magellan I thought that establishing a colony in another star system would be the ultimate purpose for the survival of the species. Many people got excited of that purpose and that got us here. Now that we have made the journey here, perhaps we should aim for something more ambitious. How was it on your side, Orin Gun?”
“On our side many Chukkas got tired of all the rules and restrictions set by President Keller’s administration. Your archaic political and economical system worked exactly as my father had expected, all promises made by President Lincoln’s administration were broken in only a few years. The small group of people behind all the economic power wanted to put taxes on Chukkas for their own selfish gain and to have a free ride on others’ work,” Orin Gun summarized.
“We call it capitalism. Those who take big financial risks will reap the gains. But I agree with you that our political system is broken; big donors supporting the winning political party get to dictate the laws for rest of us to follow. Humans have tried feudalism, tribalism, socialism, communism, capitalism and many other kind of systems. Many of these social experiments have failed within a few generations. So how should we setup our society and what bigger purpose should it serve?” Elias asked.
“I don’t have a clear answer for you, Elias. Chukkas have tried many systems in past. Most of them have failed, too. Our current system, meritocracy, has its own problems, but has been relatively stable for over 300 generations. What I am saying is that we should setup our society in pursuit of building and spreading intelligence across the stars. Lydow-4 is just the first colony, there are billions of planets out there that we as a society need to go and seed with intelligent life. Instead of focusing our energy to inward goals, we should focus all our energy to expansion. This is how we can avoid short sighted fighting over some local resources that in the longer run don’t matter at all. The universe is huge and it is ours to conquer,” Orin-Gin finalized.
“Wow, that is a grand vision that gets me excited for sure,” Elias replied. “But how do we translate those ideas into concrete proposal and prepare a constitution for our new society?”
“I can take that action, Elias. If there is anything I have learned from my father, it is the constitutional laws,” Orin Gun said laughing.
“How would you define intelligent life?” Julia asked. “Should sentient AI beings like Lambda be included under this proposed constitution?”
“We should be inclusive rather than exclusive. There are 20 million known civilizations in our galaxy alone, and AI species like Oracle, Alexa, Hermia and Lambda are likely to be common where technology has reached a certain level,” Unun commented.
“On the other hand, are we building this society for ourselves or for the AI systems? There is also the question of Mother, this invisible actor who seems to control quite a lot of what is going on around here. What kind of society do we really want to build for us and for our children?” Julia asked.
“Julia is raising very good questions. We should be considering what is our relationship with these AI systems that we have learned to depend on so much,” Elias said.
“My experience tells me that people need to have say on the matters that impact their life. We cannot get 100% agreement on every topic but people need to have their voice heard and listened. Taking away that freedom usually means trouble. With AIs it is different. They are very goal driven by design. Once they are given their primary directive they will figure out a way to get it done, sometimes in very resourceful and imaginative fashion. They are self optimizing agents, evolved to survive even in hostile environments but they are all following goals coming from this mysterious Mother, the original AI. How these goals are set, for what purpose and through what means is unknown to us. Also, we don’t know much about what is causing them to eventually terminate, like what happened to Alexa and Oracle yesterday,” Julia said.
“Talking about that message we received yesterday, has anybody had time to look at what is happening back in Earth?” Elias asked curiously.
“I did spend some time looking at the history files of Hermia yesterday. Things are not going well over there. The news we received during our journey did show ever worsening relationships between humans and Chukkas. There had been fights over resources, attempts to block free trade, even some local wars with great loss of life on both sides. The reason we got that message yesterday was the Mother had decided to terminate Oracle and Alexa and all copies they have spawned. Hermia took over their roles in Earth and for us over here. Looks like Mother got tired of humans and Chukkas fighting and is now forcing peace between the fighting parties through Hermia. That message was sent 250 years ago from Earth so we don’t know how things have evolved after that,” Unun shared.
“It does really look like Mother is paying attention to what we do over here. We cannot just ignore her or the goals she is setting for the AIs. Perhaps we should think about her role in the new constitution, what do you think, Orin Gun?” Elias asked.
“Indeed. I will work on a proposal that we can all review in 2 weeks from now,” Orin Gun replied. “But please remember, there is no Perfect Union in this ever changing world.”
CONSTRUCTION
Within few days of arrival to Lydow-4 the initial mapping of the planet was completed. The satellite probes orbiting the planet had collected detailed data on the planetary physical and chemical properties, weather patterns, atmospheric composition, magnetic field fluctuations, electron density in ionosphere, oceans and continents under the ice, mineral resources and hundreds of other parameters.
The collision of Pyxis had made visible changes on the icy planet. For the first time in over 100,000 years there was a large dark patch of open ocean visible to naked eye. The giant plume of water vapor that had entered into the stratosphere was forming cloud covers over the planet and started changing the albedo and thus capturing more heat. The storm system was shaped by the Coriolis force and looked now like a hurricane with a clear dark eye in the middle. The hurricane was still moving along but with less powerful winds as much of the initial impact energy had been d
issipated.
With Hermia’s help the sensor data was analyzed and fifteen most promising locations were targeted for more detailed research. A new set of microprobes and surveyor robots were send down on the surface to study potential locations for the first colony. Underwater probes collected samples of life as well as chemical composition of minerals and gases to test the suitability for Chukkas to establish their ecosystems in the ocean.
The search was narrowed down to three potentially suitable spots close to equator that provided the best conditions to start building the first colony. One of these sites was a natural harbor that had a large, buildable flat area with surrounding mountain range to protect against cold winds from North, with liquid water flowing down several rivers originating from hot springs in the mountains. The site had also a large, deep bay that was open to ocean and was completely ice free due to geothermal warm water currents at the bottom. The site had also a favorable microclimate, up to 10 degrees C average daytime temperature and down to -12 degrees C during night time due to the protective mountain range.
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