“Something?”
“Some... force. I can’t explain it more precisely than that. I didn’t notice anything apart from the effects of the force.”
“That sounds to me like a classic malfunction. Maybe the high levels of radiation in there interfered with your senses.”
“No, they were totally clear.”
“To you they seemed clear. And I don’t want to contradict you. Maybe our copies manipulated your body and can control it remotely.”
“Through the shell? Impossible, there’s no kind of remote-control impulse that could do that.”
“Then maybe there’s a mini AI in your limbs. When it notices that you’re trying to escape, it brings you back. That would feel to you like an external force.”
The battery symbol turned yellow and stopped flashing. His head was responding now. Kepler shook it. The movement felt good. He moved all of his limbs.
“Do you want to get down?” Zhenyi asked him verbally.
“Am I allowed?”
“I only hung you up there to charge, and I can open the cuffs any time.”
“Yes, please,” said Kepler.
He slid down the wall, caught himself, and stood in front of Zhenyi. Then he hugged his girlfriend. It felt good, even though they were made of hard metal. He placed his finger against hers and increased the current until sparks flew. Zhenyi laughed.
Cycle IC 5.1, unknown location
“There’s nothing there,” said Kepler.
He knew that couldn’t be true. Why else would they have spent weeks steering toward this point in space? Z and K had more important things to do than play pranks on them. They were set on destroying the Gigadyson at the core of the Milky Way.
“You see nothing,” K replied, “but it’s there.”
“I’m using all the ship’s sensors. If they can’t detect anything, then it could only be a black hole.”
“But it isn’t. What would we want with a black hole?”
That was hard to argue with. A planet or an asteroid orbiting a black hole—those would be possible destinations. But they were steering toward a point that wasn’t emitting any radiation.
“A wormhole? You’ve discovered how to travel through wormholes?”
It was a guess—a stab in the dark. Physicists had tried for billions of years to make use of wormholes for interstellar travel. If humans had succeeded, then the universe would have been their oyster. It would have removed the barrier of light speed that confined them to their home galaxy. But they had been unsuccessful. Wormholes existed, but no one could get close to them, because to do that you’d have to cross the event horizon of a black hole—and in normal time that took an eternity.
“Sorry, no,” K sighed. Kepler’s clone was sitting upright in his gel bed. “Wrong. Fortunately. Wormholes would only have amplified our problem. Consider yourselves lucky that they are fundamentally unsuitable for the transport of matter.”
“Why? We could have populated the whole universe.”
“You don’t realize how much your isolation has protected you. Space out there isn’t nice. Humanity would have...” K broke off.
“Humanity would have what?”
“You’ll find out when we reach our destination. Tomorrow.” K put his mask back on and lay down again. His face disappeared into the thick liquid mass. It looked ghostly. The gel bed was reminiscent of a uterus, nourishing and protecting its child. It was an apt comparison.
Once again, Kepler was glad to be in a robot body. If things continued like this, he might not want to get back into his real body.
Kepler wandered around the control room. The ship was still braking, but the 3 g didn’t bother him. He was alone. Zhenyi had slowed down her system clock—in a sense, she was sleeping—and didn’t want to be awakened until the day they arrived. Just like Z. Kepler thought about watching Z climb into her gel bed. She had unselfconsciously removed her clothing and then lay down in the gel bed. Her body was as flawless as Zhenyi’s. He hadn’t noticed any difference—a real work of art.
Did Z and K’s bodies also function biologically inside? Or were they just androids with an optically perfect shell? But if that were the case, they wouldn’t have to use the gel beds, like the butler. Or were they doing it to deceive them? There was no longer any reason for them to do that.
How was the butler doing? Kepler missed him. The butler had a unique, dry sense of humor, but Kepler especially missed their conversations. He knew an unbelievable amount and could arrive at surprising conclusions. When he talked to K, he felt as though he was talking to his own reflection. And anyway, they had surprisingly little to say to each other.
What had K revealed about their destination? It was supposedly invisible, but was still there, and it was neither a black hole nor a wormhole. Was he talking about a dark nebula? Or a lonesome wanderer—a planet without its own sun? A white dwarf, even if it was extinct, would still be visible in infrared. A neutron star didn’t emit radiation, but it rotated and created magnetic fields that they would be able to measure.
There was one kind of interaction that the ship was unable to detect from any great distance—gravity. Although they could detect gravitational waves that arose when two heavy objects merged, the attractive force of a single object couldn’t be differentiated from all the forces coming from the galactic center and surrounding stars, which also affected the ship.
But there was one way to measure gravity. He would have to try to catch the unknown object at the moment it altered the light of the stars behind it with its gravitational force. This gravitational lensing effect would reveal to him how heavy the unknown object was. Kepler stood next to his alter ego’s gel bed and pulled down the screen. The ship’s telescopes displayed everything they saw—at least that was how it worked on Zhenyi’s ninety-niner. He entered the coordinates of their destination. The screen centered itself on empty space.
You would think there was nothing there—the perfect camouflage. Kepler called up his visual interface. He programmed it so that he’d be able to detect the effects of a gravitational lens. Very practical, this robot body! He no longer needed a separate computer. Now he played back all the recordings from the last few days at high speed. He stared at the screen. A human wouldn’t notice anything, because the stars in the background were so faint. But the Milky Way had so many stars that eventually every seemingly-empty spot would have a star pass behind it, demonstrating its gravitational lensing effect.
There! Three days ago. The light from one of the few remaining G-type stars had briefly intensified, to a degree outside of the expected range. From the ship’s point of view, the star was located behind the unknown object. He knew the mass and distance of the G-type star, as well as the distance of the object, because he knew its coordinates. So Kepler was finally able to calculate the mass of the invisible celestial body.
The object that Z and K wanted to show them weighed as much as 20 suns. K must have lied to him. It couldn’t be anything other than a medium-sized black hole. There were no planets with a weight of 20 suns. If it was a dark nebula, it would have to be sprawling, to the point that it couldn’t cause the gravitational lensing he’d seen. But why wasn’t K telling him the truth if they were going to arrive tomorrow anyway? Could it be a trap? Maybe he needed to wake Zhenyi now, while Z and K were in the gel beds.
But the trap idea made no sense. Their kidnappers could have destroyed them right away. Z and K needed their help, he believed that, even if he couldn’t understand their motivation.
So, it wasn’t a black hole. He retrieved the archive and looked at the recordings from the day before yesterday. He extracted the light curve—the change in the brightness of the star over time. By way of comparison, he simulated the gravitational lensing effect that a black hole of the size he had calculated would have on the G-type star.
Since he had all the data, this wasn’t difficult. He could even calculate it in his head—that is, his robot brain. He overlaid the results of the sim
ulation with his measurements and found a slight disparity. Oh! This is exciting! He quickly determined the error interval. The difference was significant. And there was a 95 percent likelihood that it was not a measurement error.
The black hole they were heading toward was behaving quite differently than its siblings. It was conducting itself in a way that was actually impossible, according to physics. They were flying toward an impossible destination.
Tomorrow would be an exciting day!
Cycle IC 5.2, Convention
The Secretary came storming toward them wearing a pants suit. Ada stopped in her tracks. The towel she was carrying in her lower left hand wouldn’t be needed today—the holiday mood was over. Maria Sybille Merian met them halfway to the platform where she’d received them last time. Ada looked at Valentina. They understood each other without having to say anything. Valja folded her arms in front of her chest.
“Thank you for coming,” said the Secretary.
Very professional! She remained friendly even though it was obviously urgent. The old Secretary, Columbus, would probably have bawled them out for not showing up immediately. But, as freelancers, they had to take jobs from third parties and couldn’t instantly drop everything the moment they were summoned by the Convention.
“What’s happened? You seem quite anxious,” said Valja.
“That’s an understatement,” Maria replied. “But I can’t answer your question. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Why did you call us?” asked Ada.
“I was hoping you could help me find the answer to what’s going on in this galaxy.”
“To do that, we’ll need to know everything you know.”
“Of course, Ada. I’ve put all the details on a memory glass for you.”
“I’d also like to hear a short version of events in your own words.”
“A short version?”
“Yes. Condense it into one sentence, please. What do you think has happened? That will help me figure out how to approach the case.”
“In a single sentence?”
“That’s all I need. I might notice if you’re focusing on the wrong aspect or unwittingly ignoring certain truths. Humans tend to do that.”
“I understand,” said Maria. She scratched her elbow and gazed into the distance. “Okay, one sentence,” she said finally.
“Yes,” said Ada.
“I’m afraid Kepler and Zhenyi have betrayed us and that they’re trying, with the help of some unknown power, to destroy the Gigadyson.”
“Thank you. That’s enough for me,” said Ada.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I’ll take that into account. Valja and I will take a look at the facts and then perhaps we’ll come to the same conclusion. If not, we’ll try to get to the root of the problem.”
“Thank you. I wish you every success.”
“I would prefer that we can draw a different conclusion from the facts,” said Ada.
“Did you notice something?” Valja asked.
“The Secretary was very upset,” Ada replied.
They’d covered Ada’s gel bed and made it comfortable with a few blankets while they looked at the data from the memory glass. Valja sat between Ada’s legs and leaned back against her. Tomorrow they’d have to get back into the gel. They’d just spent the last two weeks in it. Apparently, there was a lot that needed doing in the universe these days.
“That’s not what I meant. She named Kepler first, and then Zhenyi, contrary to convention.”
“Maybe she’s just in favor of gender equality, Valja.”
“I think she has designs on the astronomer. Do you remember how she invited him to view the diamond with her last time?”
“True, I noticed that, too. You’re probably right. But does that have anything to do with our case?”
“If you were to answer without thinking about it, who would you consider to be the mastermind and who the accomplice?”
“Oh, that’s what you’re getting at. Sure, Zhenyi is the criminal. Kepler does what she tells him to do.”
“What if that’s not the case? What if he’s actually skillfully manipulating her? The thieves have the codes to the maintenance shafts. What if Kepler got them from the best source of all?”
“I don’t believe the Secretary’s involved in this.”
“She might also just be a victim. But she can’t admit that, which is why she’s sent us out to take care of it.”
“I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound very logical to me, Valja.”
“You yourself thought we’d caught the thieves and the problem was solved.”
One point to Valya, definitely. Ada’s common sense had failed her. She had honestly believed that it was just good old human greed behind all the incidents.
Cycle IC 5.2, unknown location
“If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then it’s probably a duck,” said Zhenyi.
“But it’s definitely not a black hole,” replied K.
“It even captures radiation with its mass. You admitted that yourself. What’s it supposed to be if not a black hole?”
“A naked singularity,” said Kepler. “A black hole without an event horizon. Physicists have said that such a thing could exist.”
“But they’ve never found any naked singularities,” said Zhenyi.
“Cold, very cold, you’re going in the wrong direction,” said K. “The object we want to show you has no singularity at all. It obeys only the laws of general relativity and quantum physics.”
“Then I’m stumped,” Kepler admitted. “This thing has the weight of 20 suns, and yet the sensors can’t detect it. It has to have a singularity. Where could all its mass be otherwise? Neutron stars with a similar mass aren’t stable.”
“Oh, you were working on this yesterday?” accused K. “Actually, I should have guessed that.”
Z entered the control room. She’d put on a dress and smelled like roses. Kepler knew the perfume very well, and he loved it. His Zhenyi, on the other hand, smelled of used oil. They were due for another checkup in the workshop.
“There you are, my love,” said K. “Now we can finally start.”
Finally. Z had been the last to get up today and then took forever to shower and dress. Zhenyi didn’t usually waste so much time. But maybe Z just wanted to let the excitement build.
“Go ahead and tell them,” said Z. “You didn’t have to wait for me. I already know what Kepler wants to say.”
Great, he thought. But he could understand K. He would have waited for his girlfriend, too.
“Right, so where were we?” asked K.
“The naked singularity.”
“Yes, exactly. With no event horizon. If one had ever been found, it might have been a way to construct wormholes. But that’s not what I wanted to say.”
“What did you want to say?” asked Zhenyi.
K looked up at her. The robot was slightly taller than a human. “If a star is big enough and burns through all its fuel, it can no longer sustain the heat that keeps it from collapsing under its own mass. It transforms into a neutron star or, if it’s even more massive, into a black hole.”
Kepler was sure that Zhenyi knew all this, but she appeared to be listening attentively.
“With a star like that,” K continued, “there’s nothing that can prevent its collapse. The star keeps shrinking until a huge amount of mass exists in a minimal amount of space, a singularity, from which light can no longer escape. But that’s not the whole story. Under certain circumstances, this process might get interrupted. For that to happen, the star can’t be too massive. Its nucleus reaches a size that causes quantum effects. The vacuum itself then staves off further collapse. The space is preserved by the presence of dark energy, which has an outward effect. This concept is called a gravastar.”
“That concept is ancient, and no one has ever found a gravastar,” said Kepler.
“You haven’t look
ed in the right places. One condition is that the energy of the vacuum has to be high enough. That’s rarely the case in the Milky Way.”
“That may be true. But how does this help us?” asked Zhenyi, sounding slightly irritated.
“Our destination is one of these gravastars. It seems like a black hole in almost every sense. But it doesn’t have a visible event horizon, it has a solid shell. We can’t land on it, because everything that touches it becomes part of the gravastar. Directly above the shell is a thin layer of a perfect quantum liquid.”
“And what’s under it?” asked Zhenyi.
“That’s the key. The gravastar is filled with dark energy. It’s the perfect container for it. That’s the only way we could ever have escaped into your galaxy.”
“You traveled in orbit around the gravastar?”
“No, Zhenyi, inside the star.”
“But that’s where the dark energy is.”
“Exactly.”
Kepler touched the person that looked like him. K was definitely made of ordinary matter, and Kepler would bet he contained organic molecules.
“But you can’t survive in there. The pressure must be murderous.”
“These bodies can’t survive in there. But we can.”
“So you manufactured a couple of clones as some kind of container?” asked Kepler.
“No, Kepler and Zhenyi are real people, or as good as real, artificially manufactured according to your blueprint. They are our representatives, so to speak. We’re sharing these bodies with the copies of your consciousness that we borrowed.”
“But you talk just like they do.”
“We’re not in some trashy horror movie where possessed humans suddenly start speaking with altered voices. These bodies possess their own particular voice, so we can’t use any other. Just like you can’t suddenly start singing soprano.”
The Death of the Universe: Ghost Kingdom: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 2) Page 16