by Guerin Zand
“You always have your fembots to play with, Dad.” Maria flashed me a dirty grin and took a sip of her drink. I just ignored her.
I looked back at Gamma and said, “So, I don’t suppose there were a lot of young boys on the station? Is that why you want to move there?”
Gamma shifted her eyes down and muttered, “No. I just like being around all the animals.”
Prima squeezed my hand and signaled me to stop that line of questioning. Later that night she explained that Gamma was a bit infatuated with a young Bree she had met. That was why she wanted to stay with Gamma for a while. Gamma hadn’t really had any experience with boys. Prima wanted to be there to guide her through the whole first crush thing. I wasn’t sure if having your ex-sex slave mother teach you the facts of life was a good or a bad thing. All I knew was it had to be better than me doing it.
To change the subject, Prima said, “You know you can always come out to the station and visit us, Guerin. Besides, you’ll still have Scirla to keep you company.”
“Actually, Scirla will be leaving soon with Maria and the Ryvius to go check out what’s happening on Taes.”
“You’re still going to let me take charge of that mission, Dad?”
“Yes, Maria. I assume you’ll try and behave?”
“You know me, Dad. I would never do anything to tarnish the family name.”
In response I rolled my eyes and finished my drink. I stood up and walked over to the bar to dispose of the empty glass. I was trying my best not to let Maria get to me. “Come on Alpha. Are you hungry?” Alpha had been lying at Gamma’s feet. She jumped up and followed me into the kitchen. I was probably going to miss Alpha the most. She was the only member of the family that didn’t find it necessary to annoy me.
Chapter 14
Another Science Experiment
Maria and Gamma had just returned from Earth. They had taken the Ryvius there to pick up Roger, Diane, and their families. Diane had married Hal Sanders shortly after our intervention on Ganymede. Their twin daughters, Annie and Judy, were born the next year and had recently just turned ten. Gamma immediately took the two young girls under her wing and they were pretty much inseparable from the day they first met.
Roger, Katie, and of course their son Timmy, were moving out to Athenia, that was what the fembots had decided to call their home planet. Roger had finished his work as ambassador on Earth. Nancy had taken his place and she was living at the embassy in Chile. Roger was going to take over the day to day management of our growing base.
Steve had returned from Desterio where they had established a working military government for the time being. The troops we had left behind were acting as a military police force to maintain order. The majority of the humans living in the colony were glad to be rid of the Trogans, but still there were a few loyalists hiding among the colonists. As long as they didn’t cause any trouble, the troops didn’t bother them. The ones that did cause trouble were being held in a makeshift prison at the spaceport until we decided on a long term solution to that problem.
We finally had the whole gang of original spacers back together again. We would be serving as the ruling council of this new society, I guess that’s what you’d call it. We didn’t have any immediate plans to expand our presence on the planet outside of the spaceport. The buildings that already existed there could house almost a thousand people. At that time, we had close to two hundred people working and living at the base. Roger wanted to increase that number, but we needed to plan the growth and not just let it overwhelm us. In just a few months our new ships would be ready for delivery and we still had to construct all the hangars and maintenance facilities we would need to support our small fleet.
Once everyone had gotten settled into their new homes, we started to have weekly dinner meetings to talk over all the issues. I have to admit, I was really regretting agreeing to Julie’s proposal. This was more work than Roger alone could handle, and at just about every one of our meetings I mentioned that. This was not what I wanted to be doing and we needed to recruit people with the necessary skills in development and planning. We all agreed, and there were people with the needed skills back in the Terran system, but this was a secure facility and not an open colony. Recruiting and vetting such people would take time. For now, we would have to be the ones to do this work. At one of our dinners, I guess I had just had enough, and I may have lost it a bit.
“I’m tired of all of this, Roger. When we agreed to Julie’s offer, it was my understanding that we were not going to be recruiting people to serve on this base until we got things under control. Now you want to bring in maintenance staff and other workers to support the ships we still haven’t taken delivery of. Why not just freeze everything for now? Why don’t we let the construction bots and manufacturing facility concentrate on building the hangars and facilities we’ll need? Until they are completed, we shouldn’t even think about increasing the workforce here.”
“The new ships will be ready soon, Guerin, and we won’t be ready for them. Not only don’t we have the crews to man them, but we won’t have completed the facilities to maintain and support them here. If we find the crews and support personnel, we have to build out quarters for them before we can bring them out here. If we don’t increase the workforce, how can we be ready in time?”
“We don’t have to be, Roger. I’m sure we can delay delivery of those new ships until we’re ready. Let the Collective simply keep them in storage for us until we get our shit together here. They have more than enough room available on Milly’s station.”
“I understand you find this all very boring, Guerin, but you agreed to Julie’s proposal just like we all did. Just putting everything off until later doesn’t solve the basic problems. So, unless you have some other solution?”
“We don’t have enough construction bots to do the work we need done in the time we have allotted, Roger. We can’t increase the number of construction bots without interfering with our current manufacturing schedule. We simply don’t have the manufacturing capacity for what you want us to do. It’s that simple. And then there’s the personnel shortage. We are not the people who should be planning this project, and we can’t recruit the right people without thoroughly screening them first, which we don’t have time for in our current schedule.”
“We are all aware of the problems, Guerin. What we need are solutions. We aren’t going to find them if we keep having this same argument.”
“Then let’s stop arguing about it, Roger, and admit our current plans are unworkable with the resources we have.”
“And how does that solve the problem?”
“What do you normally do, Roger, when you need a job done you can’t do yourself?”
“You’re suggesting we ask the Collective to help us?”
“Bingo, Roger. Look at this place. The manufacturing facility and construction bots that were here when I first arrived sure as hell didn’t build this spaceport and its facilities. They had to bring in the resources from elsewhere. Perhaps they have ships, similar to the Earth ship, that they move around to various construction projects. It couldn’t hurt to ask. Julie did promise us whatever resources we required, didn’t she?”
“So, are you going to talk to Julie about that?”
“No. You know Julie and I don’t exactly get along, besides that’s your job. You’re the one we put in charge of managing this project.”
“Gee, thanks. Oh, and while I’m at it, thanks for the personal assistant.”
“Don’t mention it. How’s she working out?”
“She’s about as much help as you are, Guerin. She does know most everything there is to know about how this base works, but she keeps telling me the same thing you do, we can’t do what we want with the resources we have.”
“Roger, I agree with Guerin. I didn’t move my family out here to join the local P&Z committee. I came out here to study the Collective technology, but I’ve been spending most of my time on these issues instead.”
“I understand, and I’m sorry about that, Diane.” The truth was, Roger was just as frustrated with the situation as the rest of us. It was just in his nature to not give up, but instead to try and push his team. He looked over to Jackie, our only Bree member and asked, “Is Guerin right? Do the Collective have a construction fleet or something along those lines?”
“More or less. Any of our large main ships could be tasked for such a purpose. That’s something we have done in the past. The Earth ship has been designated for exploration and research, so that particular ship would have the required facilities but not the needed personnel. I can’t tell you what all the main ships are currently being used for, or if there is one available that could be tasked to help you. You will have to talk to Julie about that.”
“Still, if Julie were to agree and provide us this help, it could be a while before that help arrives. We’d still not meet our schedule.”
“We’re not going to meet it anyway, Roger. If they can help, then we should probably spend some time planning the project a little better. If we just slap together what we need to meet this artificial schedule we may end up having to redo it all again when we want to expand. I’m sure that we can arrange meetings with members of the Collective who could help us come up with a better plan than we could on our own. Even if we can’t get the resources for the construction, we should push to get their help with our planning. I’m sure they have experts in this area, and we wouldn’t have to worry about screening them for security.”
“I don’t suppose any of you want to volunteer to join me when I talk to Julie?”
◆◆◆
The next morning, I met Diane down in the main lab. She said she had something she wanted to run by me.
“Thank you so much for getting Roger off our case about the base construction, Guerin. I thought I’d die if I had to sit through one more dinner where all we did was talk about that. If you hadn’t done something, I was seriously considering taking up fasting for the next few months.”
We both chuckled. “Tell me about it. So, what do you have for me?”
“Remember when we first discussed adding the star drive to the Ryvius design?” I nodded. “Well, I’ve been looking into what you suggested. You know, entering a portal with the star drive still engaged?”
“Sure. Do you think it would work?”
“I do, and I also think we could move the exit point in time as well.”
“You’re not saying we could use it to travel into the past, are you?”
“No. That would be problematic, I mean with the grandfather paradox and all. But based on the math I worked out, there is no reason we couldn’t move the exit point into the future.”
“What good would that do us?”
“I’m not exactly sure, but when I was playing with the math used for portal dynamics, I noticed that they had simplified the math by assuming that time was constant. In other words, the time at the entrance and exit portals was the same. It does make the computations a lot easier, and it makes sense since you can’t actually exist in the void. While your consciousness is in the void for the briefest of instants, that’s what causes the feeling of disorientation, physical objects such as your body are not.”
“Ok, I’m confused.”
“Your consciousness leaves your body for a brief instant while your physical body jumps from point A to point B. I think you once described it as analogous to a near-death experience. That’s probably a pretty good description of what happens since your physical body is doing something quite unnatural. Perhaps it’s sort of a self-defense mechanism, or a natural reaction to a traumatic physical occurrence. Whatever causes it, when your consciousness is separated from its physical container, it is no longer contained within this universe. It becomes part of the great nothingness we refer to as the void. See, your physical body is your consciousness’, or soul’s connection to the physical universe. Anyway, if the star drive is engaged, you are physically and spiritually contained within the pocket universe the drive creates around the ship. That pocket universe can exist in the void just as every other natural universe does.”
“So, in that case you can exist outside of our universe, in the void, since the pocket universe is governing the physical entities within it.”
“More or less. You have to realize that the void is, for lack of a better term, absolute nothing. It’s a state of nonexistence. You can’t actually be ‘in’ the void since there is nothing to be in. Instead you are part of the void. You can’t think of the void as a physical place, it isn’t. I guess the only word that you could use to describe it would be metaphysical. It’s beyond what we understand as reality. So, you’re not so much ‘in’ the void, it’s you are not ‘in’ the universe.”
Diane was definitely trying to convince me she knew what she was talking about, but I knew better. It was the typical physicist’s pitch. A wild ass guess combined with a lot of math that made it look like they had it all figured out. The truth is, that’s just how we justify that further experimentation is warranted, so we can see if the math was valid. Even if your experiments seemed to back up the math, sooner or later you’d find a case where the math doesn’t match the observed results.
You have to understand that math is just another form of art. Mathematicians use it to describe the physical universe in the same way artists use their drawings. The better the mathematician is, just like the better an artist is, the better the representation. In either case, it is impossible to represent reality exactly. If you could, you would be able to create reality. This is the scientific basis for Murphy’s Law and my favorite, the Shit Happens principal.
“So, what’s your plan, Diane?”
“Well, since we’ll have some more ships with portal and star drives soon, we could probably convince Roger and the others to let us give it a try with the Deviant?”
“And how do you plan on convincing them that these tests are safe? Usually people get a little apprehensive when you meddle with the primal forces of nature.” It made me feel really good to finally be able to quote Ned Beatty’s character in Network. I always wanted to use that line and I finally had the chance.
“I’ve been working with the top Collective portal scientists on this. I’m pretty sure I could get a couple of them to join us to observe our testing. If we get a few of them to participate, I’m sure Roger would defer to their judgment.”
“You’re just not going to mention to Roger that we could fuck reality sideways?”
“Not if he doesn’t ask.” Diane smiled, and I started to actually feel excited about getting the chance to do something stupid again.
“I guess I get to be the test pilot?”
“Not until we’re ready for human testing, Guerin. I was thinking we could use the Athenians to pilot the initial tests.”
The Athenians, in case you haven’t figured it out, is the name the fembots had decided upon for their race. From what they told me, they actually came up with the name for themselves first, and then named the planet based on that.
“You should ask them to volunteer, Diane, and explain to them the risks. They’re going through this whole self-realization phase, so I think it’s best we play along. Mia and Phoebe have crewed the Deviant in the past. I’d ask them first if I were you.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about them, Guerin. Do you actually think they are, I don’t know, alive?”
“How should I know? I guess it depends on how you define alive, but it’s probably not much of a stretch. I don’t think we’ll know for sure until they develop a little more. They’ve been simply used as helpers in the past, but if you actually spend some time with them, you’ll see that they’re curious about everything. I only glimpsed at their design specs before I locked that info away, but they’re far more complex than what I’d call a machine. Perhaps, if we don’t destroy reality with your experiments, you’d like to study the designs when you have the time.”
“We’re not going to destr
oy reality, Guerin. We might bend or twist it a bit, but not destroy it.”
◆◆◆
It took us a few months to get everything set up for our first experiment. Phoebe and Mia had agreed to pilot the Deviant for us. Unfortunately, unlike in so many of the stories I had read, there was no way to backup the Athenians in case the test didn’t go well. Cindy had arrived with her shuttle and a crew to observe the tests. We conducted the test in a fairly empty region of the galaxy between two of the spiral arms. The Ryvius observed the Deviant’s entrance to the transit portal and Cindy’s shuttle was located at the exit point. The first test was to simply leave the star drive engaged, with the Deviant wrapped in its pocket universe, as it used a trans-dimensional portal to make the journey.
Before anything else could happen, we had to test that the changes to the portal drive controls that allowed us to open a portal while the star drive was engaged. Diane had worked that all out before she even approached me with the idea, so it was a simple upload of the new command logic. Running the new logic through its diagnostics took most of the first day of testing. The second day we simply tested opening a portal and then sent a small drone through to make sure it ended up where it was supposed to. On the third day the ladies made the journey through the portal without any incident. It all appeared to work as expected. The Deviant, while cloaked in its pocket universe, successfully made the journey without any issues. The ability to remain hidden in the pocket universe through the portal transit was one of the advantages that drove us to pursue these experiments.
Everyone but me wanted to analyze all the data before we moved on to the next test, that was the human test with me joining the two ladies. The Athenians did not experience the portal lag that we organic life forms did. This, of course, led to all sorts of speculation about the nature of the Athenians, and whether or not they had a consciousness or soul. I had to point out that it really didn’t matter and insisted that we move on. Once again, the test results were exactly as the team had predicted. They spent about two weeks pouring over the data before they gave me the ok to move on to the human test.