Equinox

by Christian Cantrell

  She stood from the metal barrel she’d been using as a table, and as she’d had it ingrained in her that there was no sense in leaving behind stray DNA, she gathered the trash from her lunch. The nearest refuse chute was embedded in the back wall, and as she approached it, she could feel the heat from the incinerator burning probably hundreds of feet below. She held on to her bulb of water, but deposited the stemstock box and chopsticks, then took a moment to survey her surroundings. There were stalls with multiple levels of racks packed with fabric and clothing in every conceivable texture and hue; booths with crooked stacks of old components, and bins containing circuit boards, microchips, and spools of cable; all shapes and sizes of tanks full of compressed oxygen, hydrogen, propane, and various other gasses and liquids; nutrition in just about all forms and flavors and states of matter including synthesized protein, fermented soy, dozens of species of insects, supplements and probiotics, and tall jars of large brown placenta capsules. Not far from where she stood was a frame of welded iron rods enclosed in curtains bearing the discrete symbol indicating that anyone with the caps could step inside and ingest the nutrients and antibodies of warm human breast milk directly from the source.

  Ayla knew she should wait to use the toilet on the Accipiter Hawk, but she didn’t want to go back to her ship until she had another job arranged. She followed the contour of the back wall until she reached the corrugated plastic patricians, then took one last look behind her before going in. The toilets were squat-style and were flushed with a simple spigot and hose, but in truth, Ayla had used far worse, and she was thankful to find that this one had not yet been ruined for the day. Before putting her suit in standby and starting on the clasps, she quietly popped the top off her water bulb and poured a thin stream gently into the bowl in the floor. She listened, and after a few seconds of simulated urination, the door behind her was shouldered violently open, then someone took half a step toward her before realizing that she was still both dressed and armed.

  The man’s jumpsuit was open down to the crotch, and Ayla couldn’t tell if his chest and stomach were dark from grime, body hair, or both. He was heavily bearded and his long, oily hair was pulled back into an unkempt ponytail. His hands went up in front of him in a reassuring gesture, and when he smiled, Ayla could see that he was missing most of his bottom teeth.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. He did his best to come across as both harmless and embarrassed. “I didn’t see there was someone in here.”

  Ayla’s hands went up in a similar gesture, but it was not one of reassurance or peace. She lowered the ring and middle fingers of her right hand and a bright green dot appeared on the man’s chest. It skittered in and out of his open top as he looked down for a moment, then back up.

  “Bitch,” the man spat. He was no longer concerned with appearing contrite. “I said I was fucking sorry.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Ayla said. She made a rapid fist with her right hand and there was an eruption of light. The door slammed open, then closed, then creaked gradually back open again above the soles of the man’s boots, forming a slack and asymmetrical V. Ayla stepped forward and confirmed that the man was sprawled completely motionless on the siliconcrete floor several meters from where he had been standing. His jumpsuit was dark where he had pissed himself, and in the air was the now-familiar smell of ozone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE HISTORY OF THE CORONIANS

  PART TWO: SHADOW

  AT THE CORE OF EQUINOX were two concentric rings encompassing the entire planet at an altitude of roughly four hundred kilometers above the equator. Both rings were constructed in sections—massive trusses with barely detectable individual curvatures—launched from all over the planet, meticulously maneuvered into position, and then molecularly fused. Early artistic conceptions depicted the rings as radiating spectacular glimmers of golden sunlight, prompting an impressive but ultimately unsuccessful worldwide movement to rename the project TORRTA, or The one Ring to Rule Them All, after the precious magical fetish at the center of what remained one of the most enduring novels of all time.

  During the construction phase, each individual segment, as well as the main assembly itself, orbited Earth “spinward” (in the direction of rotation—from west to east) at a rate of about 28,000 kilometers per hour, or 7.8 kilometers per second. To understand why this precise velocity was necessary—and more importantly, to appreciate the extraordinary marvel that Equinox would become—it helped to understand the very basics of orbital mechanics and microgravity.

  The best way to conceptualize how and why one object orbits another is to consider Sir Isaac Newton’s famous thought experiment of placing a cannon at the top of a high mountain and firing it horizontally. If the velocity were too low, gravity would eventually pull the cannonball to the ground. If the velocity were too high, the cannonball would escape Earth’s gravity altogether. But if the velocity were just right, the cannonball would fall toward the earth at exactly the rate at which the earth curves away from it, meaning it would never actually touch the ground and would therefore have achieved orbit. (Of course, in reality, air friction would slow the cannonball down and cause it to fall to the ground, which is why orbit can only be achieved above Earth’s atmosphere.)

  Since gravity is what keeps one object orbiting another, microgravity (also called zero-g) is not the absence of gravity at all. Rather, weightlessness is an illusion—a sensation experienced when everything around you falls around the curvature of the earth at about the same speed. When everything you can see is falling at the same rate, it appears that everything is, in fact, floating; and since a bathroom scale would fall at the same rate as you, standing on top of it in microgravity would make you appear weightless.

  At four hundred kilometers above the surface of the earth, an object must travel at about 28,000 kilometers per hour, or 7.8 kilometers per second, in order to remain in orbit. These figures come from long-established equations and well-understood principles, on top of which well over a century of predictions, experiments, and both manned and unmanned missions have been based. And it was precisely such relatively straightforward orbital mechanics that made the procedure initiated by the international Equinox team, after the frames of both rings were complete, appear to defy both physics and logic.

  Using integrated ion thrusters, the inner ring—designated Xuanwu after the Chinese constellation of the Black Tortoise—was decelerated by between 93 and 94 percent; from 28,000 kilometers per hour to only about 1,770; exactly the rotational speed an object needs, at four hundred kilometers of altitude, to be geostationary, or to be synchronized with the rotation of the earth below.

  The concept of geostationary orbit was well known and thoroughly understood, having been successfully used for decades in the context of communications and other satellites that needed to remain in exactly the same position in the sky at all times. However, prior to Xuanwu, geostationary orbit could only be achieved by objects at a distance of almost 36,000 kilometers from the surface of the earth, and traveling at over 11,000 kilometers per hour. It was physically impossible for an object only four hundred kilometers above the surface of the earth to simultaneously travel slowly enough to follow the earth’s rotation, and fast enough to fall at a rate matching Earth’s curvature. Any such object would invariably plummet, most likely disintegrating in the atmosphere along the way.

  Unless, of course, that object happened to be a ring.

  Earth’s gravity did indeed take hold of Xuanwu as it slowed and yanked it furiously down, yet it did so uniformly across its entire structure, shrinking it due to anticipated material compression by a fraction of a percent of its predecelerated circumference, and thus achieving an almost perfect balance of forces. In fact, it proved perfect enough that only minimal station-keeping adjustments were necessary through its reaction control systems and linked ion thrusters to compensate for lunar and solar gravity, solar winds, the irregular gravitational attraction of Earth due to its asymmetry and slightly askew
center of gravity, and from the accumulation of minuscule forces that would one day be exerted by the various routines of everyday life. Strictly speaking, Xuanwu was not actually in orbit since its speed no longer matched the curvature of the earth, which meant objects inside it would no longer experience weightlessness. In fact, the gravitational field aboard the inner ring was only fractionally less than 90 percent of that felt directly on the surface of the earth. It turned out that artificial gravity inside a space station did not, in fact, have to be artificial. All you needed was a ring big enough to encircle an entire planet.

  Xuanwu was to be a way to spend long periods of time in space without any of the health risks, complications, and challenges of zero-g. Living quarters were to be housed inside the inner ring where residence and visitors could adjust to the minimally diminished gravitational field in mere hours, and with modest exercise routines, avoid muscle atrophy, loss of bone mass, anemia, and weakened immune systems. Most importantly, no matter how long one stayed aboard Equinox—days, months, years, even decades—spending enough time inside Xuanwu guaranteed that one could return to Earth at a moment’s notice with no ill effects or transitional period whatsoever.

  The outer ring—designated Lepus after the constellation of the hare being hunted by Orion—maintained its original orbital velocity, thereby providing an environment of complete weightlessness. Sandwiched between the two like ball bearings were to be several V-MAPs, or Velocity-Matching Pods: electromagnetically accelerated or decelerated trams capable of matching the speed of either ring, enabling rapid and convenient passage between levels. A scientist could wake up in the morning in almost full Earth gravity, commute to work aboard a V-MAP (where, over the course of a few minutes, she would feel herself become weightless), spend her day floating in microgravity, then return to a comfortable, familiar, and healthy environment in the evening.

  In addition to enabling humans to remain in space essentially indefinitely, another tremendous advantage of the geostationary rotation of Xuanwu was the skyhooks: carbon nanotube cables joining the inner ring to the earth’s surface in various locations along the equator. They were intended to serve as the foundations for lifts promising inexpensive and unfettered access to low-earth orbit. By no means were space elevators a new idea (in fact, proposals dated all the way back to 1895), however it was the foundation of Equinox—and in particular, Xuanwu—that finally made the concept not just practical, but almost trivial. Rather than having to somehow construct and deploy a cable that reached beyond traditional geostationary orbit (almost 36,000 kilometers), the skyhooks were only about four hundred kilometers in length—less than two hundred fifty miles—and even when outfitted with pulleys, drive systems, and cars, they would be under only a fraction of the amount of strain as any formerly proposed or conceived space elevator.

  Equinox was to become a platform for supporting all of humanity’s future astronomical ambitions—to serve as the infrastructure for dozens of telescopes, hundreds of scientists and students, thousands of satellites and other global communication systems, and even extensive and relatively affordable tourism. Surface area could be increased through almost endless appendages extending from both Cancer (northern) and Capricorn (southern) sides of either ring, almost as far as the tropics themselves. There were to be factories for manufacturing specialized chemicals, drugs, materials, and systems components that could only be produced in zero-g; sensors designed to detect incredibly minute narrow-bandwidth radio waves and pulses of photons as brief as a billionth of a second in duration from transmitters or laser beacons possibly produced by extraterrestrial technology; data centers safe from earthquakes, tsunamis, and physical security breaches; hospitals where ground-based surgeons could remotely perform procedures otherwise complicated by gravity; and launch pads for spacecraft designed to explore the solar system (and eventually considerable distances beyond) using sails only fractions of a micron thick, propelled by high-energy lasers mounted at various points along the rings. The skyhooks were to finally provide a safe and economically viable way to transport every manner of waste—from toxic chemicals, to sequestered carbon and methane, to fully intact ICBMs with multimegaton warheads—off the surface of the planet, where it could be released into a rapidly decaying solar orbit and finally become a thing of humanity’s past.

  The original schedule for Equinox was established while humanity was still on the cusp of incredible advances in materials science, and just as the fields of structural engineering and manufacturing were about to be profoundly transformed by metamaterials. Computer-aided manufacturing, 3D printing and fabrication, and even primitive molecular assembly technologies were constantly improving, but at linear rates that, when juxtaposed with humanity’s ambitions, sometimes felt sluggish. But then everything changed with the explosion of a field known as meta-manufacturing: a branch of industry focused not on producing marketable products, components, or commodities, but on using the most sophisticated manufacturing technologies on the planet to self-referentially create new and better manufacturing technologies.

  Once the processes of manufacturing, fabrication, and assembly became tightly recursive, their evolutions accelerated from linear to exponential. When meta-manufacturing technology was eventually established in orbit, its potential was further unlocked by microgravity, and not only did it accelerate faster still, but it even began diverging significantly from technology available on Earth. As a result, the basic structure of Equinox was completed almost a full year ahead of schedule, and turned out to be bigger, stronger, and far more robust than what the original schematics described.

  Optimism and enthusiasm for Equinox were at their peak, and projections associated with just about every economic, social, and cultural index in existence soared. It was taken for granted that school-age children would have the opportunity to live and work in orbit, and that within a generation, humankind would finally establish permanent colonies on at least two other worlds. It was often quoted as an indisputable fact that the first human to live comfortably on Mars, to have their consciousness transferred into a machine, to fully comprehend the universe with the aid of neurological implants, and to have the ability to live forever had already been born. Equinox was to be the next wheel, printing press, internal combustion engine, telephone, lightbulb, antibiotic, birth control pill, photovoltaic semiconductor, Internet, decentralized cryptocurrency, and democracy—all rolled up into one. The Solar Age was widely considered the absolute best time in human history to be alive, and perhaps the very first age truly worthy of the eternal yearning for immortality. However, now that humanity was entirely dependent on the twenty-seven-million-degree ball of plasma a little over eight light-minutes away—probably the most constant, immutable, and seemingly predictable presence in the entire history of the human race—nobody had given serious consideration as to what might happen if the sun ever went out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TRANSPARTMENTS

  LIVING AMONG A POPULATION OF roughly five thousand people felt perpetually awkward to Luka. The community aboard the San Francisco was small enough that almost everyone was recognizable, yet large enough that it was impossible to know everyone. Luka had learned from the archives that, according to research conducted by the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, it was physically impossible for humans to intimately know more than about one hundred fifty people. Since the number of stable social relationships an individual could maintain appeared to be determined by the size of the neocortex, without the aid of neuroprosthetics, the human social potential was biologically constrained. After reading the article, Luka had tried to calculate his own personal Dunbar Number. Taking into account modifiers for introversion, general eccentricity, and, if he were being completely honest with himself, plenty of unresolved emotional conflict, the end result came out to be somewhere between zero and one.

  Social convention aboard the San Francisco dictated that the expectation of interaction was inversely proportional to immediate population densi
ty. In other words, the more people there were around, the less you had to acknowledge them. Therefore, as Luka guided his calibration cube through the streets between the foundry and his flat—crowded with purposeful evening rush hour foot traffic—he felt no obligation whatsoever to so much as make eye contact with those he strode past.

  This evening’s algorithmic sunset was already under way as the two and a half megawatts of plasma lighting that constituted daytime on the San Francisco were gradually reduced. During the day, the completely opaque air dome overhead was a pure bright white, but in the mornings and evenings, subtle orange and red hues were introduced, their ratios and concentrations informed by rigorous research into feelings of serenity and wellbeing. Insects were the primary source of protein here, and the giant glass sphere enclosing the Yerba Buena Gardens at the heart of the San Francisco had already started to vibrate with their collective singing. The antimicrobial silicone walkway under Luka’s feet was as soft as a newly groomed golf green, and the air was balmy and impeccably humidified.

  It was an evening every bit as perfect as it was indistinguishable from any other.

  But the San Francisco was not always the meticulously maintained human vivarium that Luka had come to know. She was once one of an entire fleet of Metropolis-class, nuclear-powered mining and refinery rigs built decades ago and given orders to do whatever it took to keep the Equinox project supplied with natural resources and raw materials. For several years, the rigs could be resupplied and repaired at almost any major port in the world, but when Equinox was gradually abandoned, so too was the Metropolis fleet. Over the course of a decade, the majority were captured and plundered by pirates, decimated either by famine or plague, or destroyed by industrial accidents. When fewer than ten remained, they finally turned on each another, waging amateurish naval battles with various forms of primitive projectiles, improvised artillery, and boarding parties who were both desperate and terrified, and armed with anything sharp or heavy they could find or fashion, and whose savagery more than compensated for their lack of training.