by Cramer, John
“Why don’t you simply sabotage the SSC? Wouldn’t that stop the signals?” asked Roger.
“That would be intrusive, and also unwise. Over a period of time we have developed a technique for isolating each universe from the Hive by capturing the Bridgehead they send before a Hive Mind has formed and using the Bridge against them. We cannot be absolutely sure that the Hive has not already established a Bridgehead here. However, from past experience with them, that would be unlikely. When they do arrive, we must be ready. And then your SSC may be useful.”
“Why do you think it’s unlikely they’re already here?” Alice asked.
“In all Hive attacks in our experience,” said Iris, “the hyperdimensional signals were produced by the target species for about one of your years before the Hive attempted to establish a Bridgehead. It appears that they must devote considerable time to making preparations before they can act.”
“Wait a minute,” said George. “The LHC at CERN has already been operating for more than a year. Doesn’t it send the same signals, attract the same kind of attention?”
“It’s a matter of the energy threshold,” said Iris. “The collisions of the other machine are ‘silent’ because they are below the critical energy level, while the SSC collisions are above it. Your machine’s energy was perhaps an unfortunate choice. But, of course, you had no way of knowing that.”
George stroked his beard, frowning. “What did you mean about using the SSC?” he asked.
“We might defeat the Hive with a time vortex, and if we did the high concentration of electric power of the SSC would be useful. However, that is a desperate measure with consequences for you and us that we wish to avoid. But the SSC also has another use. We have found that the captured Bridgehead can be placed into a focused particle beam and given a very high electric charge, then accelerated with a machine like the SSC to a near light-speed velocity and held there for a time, a few days or weeks. Then relativistic time-dilation produces a time shift in the Bridgehead’s time frame. The existence of such a time-shifted Bridgehead makes it impossible for the Hive to establish another Bridge into your universe without forming a catastrophic time vortex. You would be permanently protected from them.”
“In this context, I’d like to understand more about how you establish a wormhole, what you called a Bridge,” said Roger. “Can you connect to anywhere?”
“We can only make a new Bridge to a locus that has reached the critical energy density,” said Iris. “And we are careful only to Bridge to a single location in another Bubble and never within our own. To do otherwise would be extremely dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?” George asked.
“Again, there is a danger of accidentally creating a time vortex. It is a rather complex subject, but I can explain it now, if you like.”
“Later,” said Alice, “I’m sure there will be time enough for small-talk about physics. What I want to know is, when do we learn to READ and WRITE and how can we use the skills to protect humanity against the Hive?”
“We could begin now,” said Iris. “I must WRITE a retrovirus that will modify your genetic code and also WRITE several different nanomachines that will alter your body and your brain, installing receptors, modifiers, nerve paths, and creating new brain centers. I will introduce these into your bodies. You must rest for about two rotations, 48 hours, while your bodies are changed to accommodate your new capabilities. After that, I will give you instructions in how to use the skills.”
“Does it hurt?” asked Roger.
“There would be some pain if nothing were done to counteract it. However, part of the process involves the generation of endorphins that nullify most of the painful effects. You will not, however, be particularly mobile or comfortable. It will be like having a bad case of influenza, but without the fever and congestion.”
“OK,” said Roger, “I’m ready now.”
“Me, too,’ said Alice, feeling some anxiety as she spoke.
George looked irritated and uncomfortable. Finally he said, “OK, dammit. I suppose I might as well join this stampede of the guinea pigs.”
CHAPTER 6.6
Reawakening
ALICE woke first. She felt weak and very hungry, as if she had been ill for a long time. She vaguely remembered recent periods of dull aches, sharp pains, and strange dreams, as if her mind and body had been dissolved and reassembled.
She struggled out of bed, and stood. As the initial dizziness cleared, she glanced across the bed at George. He did not look ready to face the day, she decided. She quietly closed the bedroom door and tiptoed to the bathroom room. After a quick shower she felt better and returned to the living room.
Iris was sitting in a chair by the window where she could see the ocean. She seemed to be using Roger’s lapstation, rapidly reading page after page of dense text and arcane mathematical equations. The plastic case of a textbook holo-ROM lay nearby. Its title was Advanced Quantum Gravity Theory. The child was wearing a frilly pink dress that Alice had not seen before.
“That’s a very nice dress,” said Alice. “It adds to the effect you were trying to achieve. Where did you get it?” Alice felt almost as if she were seeing double, viewing Iris simultaneously as a mysterious alien and as a beautiful and charming child. She began to appreciate the subtle power of the alien’s choice of body forms.
“I grew it,” Iris said. She led Alice into the back yard. A large plant was growing there. Hanging from a pair of its larger branches were two long pods. The pod walls were translucent, and Alice could see that one contained something yellow, the other something blue.
“These aren’t quite finished,” Iris said, “but they will be by this evening.” She pointed to another plant across the yard. “I have underwear growing there,” she said.
“The world of women’s fashion will never be the same,” said Alice, as they returned to the house. She went to the kitchen and rummaged through the food supply, finally deciding to cook up a big pot of spaghetti. She explained the fine points of cooking spaghetti and making sauce to Iris as she thawed a package the ground beef in the microwave. She thought how strange it was to be teaching cooking to a being who could grow her own underwear.
Iris touched the meat. “Oh yes,” she said, “I had forgotten. You still eat the flesh of animals. Is this what you call a cow?”
“Yes,” said Alice as she dropped clumps of the meat into the oiled frying pan and sprinkled it with garlic salt. “I’m afraid we’re still rather primitive in our sources of food. Over the centuries we’ve selectively bred animal species that we feed on grass and grain and then kill for meat. No one who has thought much about the practice is particularly happy with it, but as a species we’re genetically programmed to enjoy eating meat.”
Iris sniffed. “It does smell good,” she said. “I hadn’t expected that.”
Roger poked his head out of his bedroom door. “What’s that I smell?” he asked, “spaghetti sauce with lots of garlic?”
“Good nose,” said Alice. “Might you, perchance, be hungry?”
“I feel as if I were in the last stages of terminal starvation,” said Roger. “I hope you made a lot.”
“It may not be up to the highest standards of gourmet cuisine, but there’s plenty of it,” said Alice. “Why don’t you see if George is ready to join the living.” She rested her right hand on the soft flesh of her left arm pit as she talked and noticed a peculiar sensation. There was an electric tingle under her arm, and she felt she was looking at herself in an unfamiliar way from a long distance off. She looked at Iris. “I just touched my body and experienced a strange sensation. Was I READING?”
“Yes, I think perhaps you were,” said the girl. “Learning to READ yourself is the first step in the process you must learn.”
George, looking pale and disoriented, walked out of the bathroom and
sat at the dining table. The others came to join him.
Alice served up plates heaped with spaghetti, sauce, and hand-grated parmesan. Then she poured red California jug wine into glasses. Holding out a glass, she turned to Iris. “This is red wine, a beverage made from the juice of a kind of fruit, grapes, which has been fermented by yeast cells. The fermentation converts sugar into alcohol, which when ingested has some interesting effects on the human nervous system. In small quantities we find it relaxing, but too much can be harmful and disorienting. Normally we do not serve wine to children. What should I do about you?”
Iris put a fingertip into the glass, and looked thoughtful. “Fascinating,” she said, “sugar, alcohol, tannic acid, and a whole array of complex long-chain molecules. Your species seems to have evolved specific genetic programming to deal with this substance, and it has some benefits. I think I should try some.” She took the glass. “I’ll synthesize an enzyme to aid me in dealing with the psycho-physiological effects.”
As Alice began to eat her own meal, she noticed that Iris was sipping wine and watching each of them intently, but not eating. She looked down at her plate self-consciously, then looked up. “Are you going to eat,” she asked Iris.
“Yes,” said the child, “but the process looks complicated, and I’m attempting to understand it. Roger rotates his fork against his spoon, rolls up the long strands, and moves the fork and spoon to his mouth together to transfer the food. George cuts the strands into small lengths and eats them with his spoon. You rotate your fork against the plate and bring the fork to your mouth, sucking in the loose ends. Why does each of you use a different method?”
“I suppose it’s a matter of how we learned as children,” said Alice. “Perhaps there is no good and proper way to eat spaghetti, so we each use a different awkward way.”
Alice carefully demonstrated her method to the child, who successfully transferred a roll of spaghetti and sauce to her mouth. She tasted it thoughtfully. “That is very interesting,” she said, taking a drink of water. “It is sweet and hot and salty and a bit bitter, all at the same time. In a human body, the sensation of eating is very different from that of the Makers. It’s a very pleasant sensation.” She began to eat the spaghetti with some enthusiasm.
After they had finished off all of the spaghetti, they had more wine and Iris commenced the Reading lessons.
“You must understand,” she began, “that I will only be able to teach you a few basic skills now. The arts of READING and WRITING require lifetimes of work and discovery. You are at the starting point of a very long road. You must not expect too much too soon. But let us begin.”
As Alice had done by accident, they were instructed to place their right hand in contact with the soft flesh under their left arm, close their eyes, and concentrate.
After the electric sensation that Alice had experienced previously, the READING commenced. Alice became aware of her own body in a way she could never have imagined. She could see clearly the small miracles of its operation, the cycles and processes she took for granted or was simply unaware of. She could see the tendencies to accumulate fat in the wrong places, the muscle tone that was withheld unless pounded in with physical exercise. She could see the programming associated with aging, the withdrawal of hormones and collagen replacement, the cross-linked proteins that were allowed to accumulate, the wrinkles, sags and crow’s feet that were the consequence. She could see the wired-in hair graying cycle, the biological clock ticking toward the onset of her menopause.
She could also see the outright defects, the tendencies toward breast cancer, arterial plaque, and calcium loss that were part of her genetic heritage. “That’s awful!” she said aloud, and looked around. George and Roger lost their self-absorbed expressions and looked at her, nodding in agreement.
“To me,” said Iris, “all of you READ like untended gardens that have been allowed to go to seed and decay. Now that you see the problems, perhaps we can begin to work on the solutions. Let me give you an example.” She swiped her index finger across each of their palms. “READ that,” she said.
Alice concentrated on the area of her right hand that Iris had just touched. Somehow she could see that it was a virus. She focused on it, wondering what it’s function was. Suddenly, the answer popped into sharp focus. It was a retroivirus designed to transcribe itself permanently into a human cell nucleus as a small loop of DNA that coded for a specific enzyme.
What did this enzyme do? She considered this, and the answer became startlingly clear. In normal cells, each strand of DNA had a special non-coding segment on each end, like the plastic tips of a shoestring. She could see that each time a cell divided this special end-segment became shorter. And finally, when the segment length went to zero, the cell could not divide again, the natural cell renewal processes stopped, and the body began to age. The new enzyme systematically restored the end-segments to human DNA. It did not require cells to divide, but it allowed them to when the body’s repair mechanisms made the request.
“Wow!’ said Alice aloud. “It’s the fountain of youth!”
CHAPTER 6.7
Back at the SSC
WOLFGANG stood as George walked into the underground laboratory that now housed the Snark. “Well,” he said, “welcome back. It looks as if your vacation did you good. You look very healthy.” They shook hands. Wolfgang looked down at his hand as he withdrew it.
“I had to make a quick trip over to Seattle,” said George. “Not particularly restful.”
“I must to go to Seattle sometime,” said Wolfgang. “You look ten years younger.”
“Perhaps it’s the coffee,” George said. “How has our Snark been behaving while I’ve been gone?”
“Schlecht,” said Wolfgang. “The day after you left, the second level transmissions from the Makers stopped. Tunnel Maker is still talking to us, but he’s been rather evasive about further large transmissions. He says they have come to the end of their prepared downloads. From now on we should ask questions or request specific information. On the other hand, his end is still downloading massive quantities of our data from the Internet, the Web, the NSF net, and various proprietary databases that they have bought access to using the bank account we provided. I’ve watched it on the monitor. There is no subject, from pornography to pet grooming, that has escaped their notice.”
“Hmm,” said George. “What happens when you do make a request for further information?”
“When I’ve tried,” said Wolfgang, “Tunnel Maker has usually given me a reference to data that we’ve already downloaded. It’s certainly true that it’s going to take us a long time to digest all the information they’ve already provided, but surely that’s not all there is. It seems the equivalent of giving a child a set of encyclopedias instead of educating him.”
“What about this end?” asked George.
Wolfgang gestured toward the equipment racks. “We made many equipment changes. I think we’ve reached some limit to the transmission rate. We’re up to 200 megabaud now, and it seems difficult to go higher.”
“Any problems with outside interference?”
“We had an official visit. Your SSC Director showed up here with a big group of ‘interested parties’ from various of your government agencies. There were people from your DOE, FBI, CIA, NSA, and some military officers in uniform. The military people said their experts had been studying the downloads and had some questions about the Hive species mentioned in them. They were once again threatening to take the Snark and move it to a secure site, but we convinced them that as long as the data was streaming in from the Makers, we shouldn’t change anything. I don’t know how long that will last.”
“OK, Wolfgang, thanks for all your effort here,” said George. “I can take over now, if you’ve got things to do. I need to talk to Tunnel Maker. Perhaps I can get a clue as to what’s going on.”
; Wolfgang looked relieved. “I’m glad you’re back, George,” he said. “I’ve been practically living here, and my wife is beginning to complain.”
As they shook hands again, George looked at him closely. “You don’t look so well, Wolfgang,” he said. “Perhaps you’re coming down with some virus. I’ve heard there’s a new ‘flu strain going around. Perhaps you should take a few days off.” He wondered how Wolfgang would react, when he began to Read.
Wolfgang blinked, surprised. “I feel well enough,” he said as he left. “But I’ll be careful. Danke.”
After checking the door, George triggered the microphone connection. “OK, Tunnel Maker, we’re back. We hatched your Egg in the Gulf of Mexico. Your daughter, Iris, is a lovely child. We like her very much.”
“Yes,” the voice of Tunnel Maker came from the speaker, “I am in contact with the one you call Iris. I am aware of your progress.”
“She told us that you were in contact, but I don’t understand that,” said George. “I thought such communication between bubbles was only possible through a wormhole.”
“Once a Bridge, what you call a wormhole, has been established, it is not difficult with our technology to cause it to divide, to become two instead of one. It can be dangerous to have more than one Bridge connecting between Bubbles, should a time shift between them occur, but in this case there is no problem. The Egg contained a new Bridgehead, which is now inside the head of Iris. We use it to communicate.”
“Iris has told us about the race she calls the Hive and the danger they present. She thinks that we have perhaps a year to prepare.”
“Yes,” said Tunnel Maker. “There is a certain risk until we can train you to be fully prepared to deal with a Hive incursion. Fortunately, you probably have some time to prepare. You will need to construct a permanent network of sensors around the SSC ring to detect such an incursion. You must make preparations for capturing the Hive Bridgehead, for using the SSC to process it, also certain other backup preparations.