Dark Firmament

by Ezra Manes

  After three sessions in the simulator over two days, the volunteer confirmed its regen process had started. Azlor, Lotsu, and the other members of the ruling council were in awe of what Joqi and his intelligent ship had accomplished.

  CHAPTER 18

  W e have done all we can for now to counter the future threat of the szswns descending on Zilia, Earth, and Earth’s colonies, Joqi thought.

  I agree, Dawn conveyed. This was the quest Prophet Sepeda sent us on. The szswns need warm blooded mammalian flesh to complete their reproductive cycle. They were focused on getting it eventually from habitable planets having ample populations of mammals—and eventually human occupied planets.

  What was their next step toward getting home? Joqi still had no idea. But he knew deep inside there was a path back and that he must find it. He was confident his grandpapa wouldn’t send him on a dead end mission. But he had some unease; how could his grandpapa see what the future held? Or was he just making educated guesses?

  There was an intermediate task that provided good reason to leave, as he had explained to the ruling council; conducting a close assessment of the brown dwarf and its planet. He had promised to provide the results of that assessment to the szswns.

  He couldn’t explain the need he felt to survey the brown dwarf sub-star. Some of the feeling surely came from their entering the solar system at a point near the dwarf. Whatever or whomever opened the way from the Zilan solar system to this solar system, could just as easily have dropped them on the opposite side of the solar system from the brown dwarf. He had to trust his intuition which supported returning to the vicinity of the brown dwarf.

  They had taken care of last minute details to support building and maintaining more virtual environment simulators that would induce the szswn regen process. It was time to leave.

  Azlor, Lotsu, and the six council members had convened in the council building. Joqi projected his simulacrum into the imposing, circular chamber, which was well illuminated for his convenience.

  “Greetings, Chosen One,” Azlor said. All the szswns were in deferential postures in a semicircle, with Azlor in the center and Lotsu on his right.

  Joqi was still uncomfortable at their calling him the Chosen One and showing deference to him. But there was nothing he could do about either.

  “Greetings Azlor, Lotsu, and distinguished council members,” Joqi said. “It is time for my ship and I to leave for the brown dwarf sub-star.”

  “We understood this day would come, but hoped it would be some time later,” Azlor said. The council members were now in their normal posture, standing with their body level with the floor. Azlor and Lotsu were in their communication posture, with their frontends slightly elevated.

  “We share memories and experiences widely among our kind,” Lotsu said. “We will long remember the renewed hope you have given our civilization. Knowledge of the Chosen One and what he accomplished here will be remembered for all generations to come.”

  “Humans no longer need to worry about aggression from our kind,” Azlor added, touching on a sensitive topic in earlier discussions with Joqi.

  After the general goodbyes, the six council members departed, leaving Azlor and Lotsu to close out communication with Joqi.

  “We plan to conduct a very thorough survey of the brown dwarf sub-star,” Joqi said.

  “We encourage you to take your time,” Azlor replied. “The longer you stay in our planetary system, the more we are blessed.”

  Joqi had to smile at this response; the longer he stayed the more he could help if they encountered problems building more regen stimulating virtual environments.

  “We will take our time and provide you our survey data.”

  He agreed to communicate periodically with the two leaders during the survey activities, and that completed their communication session.

  • • •

  Joqi deferred control of the Horizon Quest to Dawn and she turned the sleek spaceship outward from the planet. She deployed the ships huge solar sails to use the local star’s radiation pressure to steadily accelerate the Horizon Quest outward. They needed to conserve their nuclear fuel, which was in short supply. There was no need to hide this secondary propulsion technique from the szswns, for they already used this technology. The acceleration created by the solar wind was low. However, it was continuous and would propel the Horizon Quest to a fairly high velocity toward the outer reaches of the solar system.

  He could feel the smart plasma continuing the healing process. It was like an itch all over that scratching didn’t relieve. His mind was crystal clear even though his body was still recovering. He kept searching for an elusive idea on what they should do next. He sensed that Dawn was also searching for a solution to their dilemma as she kept watch over the ship’s systems.

  Joqi reviewed again every bit of information Dawn had collected and catalogued about the local solar system. He looked closely out beyond the large outermost planet for the first time since they had rescued Cssyza. He was unable to find any indication of the transition point where they came into the solar system, except for a location Dawn had affixed to the data.

  Asteroids were scarce in that region, but there was a thin belt of small asteroids beyond the outermost planet by a distance approximately the same as that between the outer planet and the brown dwarf. The fragments were probably the remains of a planet that never fully formed. The large outer planet and the brown dwarf may have robbed the belt of most of its material, preventing formation of an additional planet. What was important to Joqi was they could mine the asteroids to replenish their raw resource needs, and possibly to manufacture more nuclear fuel for the Horizon Quest.

  They would surely need more fuel. The szswns were no help when it came to providing nuclear fuel. They had experimented with nuclear devices in their distant past and decided such devices were too dangerous to their species and their home planet’s environment. From what Joqi and Dawn had discerned, the szswn spaceships used some type of advanced ion plasma engine when exploring their solar system.

  In any case, the prospects for using any fuel beyond surveying the brown dwarf looked dim, unless they could find another intersection point that would open a path back to Zilia. Without such a path they had only two options that he could think of. They could remain in the local system or point the Horizon Quest on a trajectory to intercept the closest human occupied planet in the distant future. He had no desire to go into extended hibernation in the smart plasma with the hope of being rescued by those on New Earth, the Earth colonized world that was twelve light-years closer than Zilia was.

  He and Dawn had discussed time and again what occurred during the Horizon Quest’s passage through the intersection point and transition to the szswn system. Joqi gained very little insight from these discussions to advance his understanding of the physics of a multidimensional universe, which he believed they resided in.

  He needed more data to understand the relationship between ordinary observable matter and the unobservable things in the universe. The latter had surely played a role in getting them to this solar system. He had the nagging feeling again, like he had right after transition to this system, that this relationship was key to finding a way back to Zilia. But they couldn’t even detect their exit point from the anomaly that deposited them in the outer reaches of the solar system several months earlier.

  It seemed foolish to create a mood enhancing virtual environment now, but with no solution coming to mind, that is what Joqi did. Once again he imagined sitting on the bank of the Avili spring river on the co-op farm his parents managed on Zilia. The breeze gently rustled the leaves of the large shagba hardwood tree he sat under enjoying the shade from the relentless sun. He heard water rippling over rocks in the shallows just above the deep pool he faced, adding another familiar dimension to the environment.

  Joqi noticed several bitternuts lying on the bank where they fell from the shagba tree. He picked one up that lay nearby and rolled it around in his p
alm, admiring the smooth, dark-brown shell. Little climber rodents loved the rich meaty seed inside, and stored as many as they could to help them survive the cold winters. In early times before modern farming techniques were developed, many Zilans survived tough times by storing and eating the bitternuts as well. But some had also died from eating the raw seeds.

  Joqi liked the seeds when they were properly processed and roasted. He cracked open the shell with his thumbnails and popped out the moist, light-brown seed. It looked good and smelled good, but from experience, he knew better than to pop it into his mouth. The bitternut seed had a high concentration of tannic acid in its brown surface. To leach out the toxic tannic acid, early Zilans learned to soak the nuts for several days in cool moving water, preferably flowing spring water.

  Joqi smiled as he reminisced about roasting the nuts when camping as a young teenager. The first time, he and some friends had roasted the nuts without leaching out the tannic acid. Talk about stomach cramps and lower bowel pain!

  Joqi tossed aside the enticing bitternut seed. Caution was certainly appropriate when trying things for the first time. You had to look much deeper than surface appearances to learn the true nature of things.

  He looked at the river’s surface, trying to see into its depths. The cold, clear water beckoned to him, but he resisted, still trying to peer under the surface to see what was hidden there. Even though the spring water was clear, the sunlight’s angle and the reflections from the opposite shrub lined bank kept him from seeing below the surface. He knew the bottom of the river hosted a variety of life, from microscopic bugs to large fish and frogs and other critters. He just couldn’t see any of them from his vantage point.

  His grandpapa’s words from long ago echoed in his thoughts. “Joqi, if you test the water you won’t want to go in.”

  Joqi laughed as he stood up; in this case, he had gone in before. He ran and dove into the cold spring river, seeking the gravelly bottom and any aquatic creatures making it their home. He surfaced in the middle of the river and swam back to the bank. He sat again, but this time exposed to the warming rays of sunlight that began drying his clothes.

  He assumed a meditating posture and the river and banks faded away as he focused elsewhere. He now knew where the answer to their dilemma lay.

  • • •

  “Sometimes we sense vast reaches of matter and energy in the unobservable part of the Everything,” the szswn delegate had said. This comment was made when the two delegates escorted Joqi to the spaceport after his meeting with the ruling council. Joqi thought about this now, and about what Lotsu had said later about their scientists linking together to formulate theories regarding the unobservable matter and energy in the “Everything”. If linked szswn scientists could “sense” the unobservable matter and energy in the universe, why couldn’t he?

  Joqi reached out mentally as he had done many times during the journey in the Horizon Quest, his thought sensitivity greatly enhanced by the smart plasma. He sensed systems and structures of the spaceship, now familiar as old friends. He briefly touched the core processing center that housed Dawn’s private consciousness of self, and observed the vibrant processing ongoing there. He felt a stirring as she detected his presence. He reached farther, through the skin of the outer hull and on into the vast vacuum outside, which wasn’t empty at all.

  He detected specks of dust and molecules of helium and hydrogen, and more sparsely, some dense organic molecules. On average, there was a molecule or speck of observable matter in about every cubic meter of space in the region the Horizon Quest was passing through. But these molecules and specks were not what he was looking for.

  He opened his mind farther, augmented by the smart plasma and the powerful sensor systems of the ship, to sense radiation in the local region around the spaceship. There was a flood of it, from full spectrum radiation from the local star to high energy particles from far-flung sources. He searched this radiation for any anomalies and found none. He began integrating everything detected into a comprehensive, multidimensional representation of space around the Horizon Quest.

  On close examination of the integrated data, he detected a minute deflection of microwave radiation when integrated over long distances. There should be similar deflections of radiation in other wavelengths, but none were readily apparent, so he concentrated on the microwaves. But try as he might, he couldn’t detect what was causing the deflections, the very low frequency modulation of the microwaves. He knew something was there, just as he knew there was something under the surface of the Avili spring river when he couldn’t see past the surface reflections.

  Like the ESP slug Alandi’s team was investigating before he left Zilia, he was sensing the surrounding space with a capability that was hard to define. The integration of the Horizon Quest’s sensory capabilities with his own, coupled with the smart plasma sharply focusing his mind, led to his sensing the environment surrounding the ship in a unique new way. It was as he imagined the linked scientists sensed the “Everything”.

  Joqi let his thoughts flow with the microwave radiation. He sensed something pulling on the microwaves, something in the darkness through which the radiation passed. He let all his senses free to embrace the darkness, filtering out ordinary matter and energy—everything directly observable.

  At first there was nothing but a deep well of darkness, a dark firmament; nothing went in, nothing came out, or at least that was his first impression. He focused on an arbitrary spot in the darkness and looked closer and closer, and finally sensed massive dark particles. He couldn’t see them; he sensed their presence through the miniscule disturbances they caused in the fabric of space-time. It was like some all-powerful entity had opened a keyhole for him into another realm.

  He attempted to forge in even closer, trying to see between the particles. In doing so, he detected a slight movement of the particles away from his focal point. He was focusing enough energy to crack the keyhole open!

  In his excitement he lost focus and just as suddenly was back observing radiation and ordinary particles in the area around the Horizon Quest.

  I need more processing power, he thought. He remembered what his father and grandpapa had said about him using only half his brain’s capability. How could he learn to use his brain’s full capabilities?

  You have already done so, Dawn conveyed. Your new way of sensing the fabric of space-time reveals this.

  But it isn’t enough, Joqi lamented.

  • • •

  Joqi continued to hone his newfound ability to sense unobservable features in the vacuum of space through which the Horizon Quest traveled on the way to the brown dwarf. He was unable initially to achieve any more than he had on his first try after leaving the szswns’ home planet. But he remained optimistic and kept trying.

  A rough image began taking shape in his mind of long rivers of dark matter spreading throughout space, sculpting in large part the shape of the observable universe. And he sensed a thin cloud of dark matter enshrouding the Milky Way Galaxy. He also felt the pressure of energy contained in the vacuum of space, and observed that it existed everywhere that he explored. This had to be the so-called quantum vacuum energy, the dark energy, which was causing the universe to continually expand.

  This experience is surreal, he thought after another foray into the dark firmament. It is like a dream that becomes clearer each time I enter the dream state of mind.

  Or like a vision, Dawn observed. She had monitored his thoughts during the most recent forays into the dark firmament. Your grandfather, Prophet Sepeda, learned much from visions that helped guide his team and the Zilans through many difficult times. Accept what you sense. The knowledge will help us find our way back to Zilia.

  I’ll continue trying, Joqi conveyed.

  When not focused outward, Joqi focused inward, assessing the various theories that attempted to tie together all aspects of the universe in a unified theory. He was more a mechanobiologist than he was a physicist, but his mathema
tics background was strong. He researched the data Dawn had accumulated before their departure from the Zilan solar system. He looked at everything addressing dark matter and dark energy, those things in the universe that were not directly observable. With his recent observations, the theories made more sense to him now than they did before embarking on the mission.

  He was able to reduce the number of potentially viable theories about the Everything to two. One was a theory pulled from the Earth archives pilfered by Dawn at the start of their mission. The theory, proposed in the mid twenty-first century on Earth, combined the Einstein general theory of relativity with the most accepted estimate of the structure and influence of dark energy and dark matter in the universe. This undetectable energy and matter were thought to make up most of the energy and matter in the universe. Joqi discovered questionable assumptions used to make the theory’s equations balance when addressing gravity at the micro, or very small scale. However, the theory looked sound when addressing local structure at the macro, or large scale.

  He found more promise in the theory proposed on Zilia by the mathematician LaSorepe Kilerah. Of particular interest was Professor Kilerah’s theory about how undetectable matter, dark matter, influenced the formation and shape of galaxies through its gravitational pull on observable matter. If this was true, then observable matter exerted a pull of equal strength on dark matter as well. However, the greatly dispersed ordinary matter would have immeasurable small local pull on the concentrated filaments of dark matter. The professor had devoted the rest of his life trying to measure the attractive force between observable and unobservable matter to prove his theory.

  How much higher can you fly, my Joqi, if you shed your knowledge biases?

  His grandpapa’s words echoed in his thoughts, and he smiled, remembering interacting with him on the high atoll overlooking far reaching farms. Yes, he now understood—if Kilerah’s equations were correct as far as they went, he needed to build on them, not spend valuable time trying to verifying them.