The Death of the Universe: Ghost Kingdom: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 2)

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Where do you want to start?”

  “She didn’t reveal the position of the alleged gravastar to us, but she revealed something much more important—the destination of her data transfer. There must be a strong receiver at those coordinates, either a control station or a ship. We’ll probably find her commissioner there.”

  “They won’t stay there and wait for us, and Zhenyi has an enormous head start with the laser transfer.”

  “Not necessarily. Look, the coordinates are not that far away. We should reach her in a couple of weeks. And then we’ll search for her until we find her.”

  “But that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  Ada was starting to think Valja didn’t even want to find Zhenyi. Why did she keep thinking up new reasons for why they might fail? “We won’t be searching alone. Before we left the Convention the Secretary put an entire fleet at our disposal in case we might need them.”

  “A fleet? Does humanity still have one?”

  “It appears so. Eighty-eight ships will be combing that region of space under our command. That means we should be able to find pretty much anything, even the needle you mentioned, Valja.”

  Cycle IK 2.2, Terra

  “Your papers, please,” said a uniformed man with a stern look.

  He was sitting in a glass cubicle and speaking through a microphone. Kepler had the feeling the movement of the man’s lips wasn’t quite synchronized with his words.

  Kepler reached into his pocket. The pocket belonged to a pair of baggy jeans he didn’t remember owning. Zhenyi certainly wouldn’t have let him wear pants like these. Maybe they were from his youth. The memory must have been buried somewhere deep in his subconscious. Otherwise the guard station wouldn’t have been able to use it to virtually clothe him. In the pocket he found a crumpled, stiff tissue, a hardened piece of gum, and a couple of unidentifiable crumbs. Had he really been such a slob back then? He didn’t find any papers. He patted himself down. He wasn’t wearing a bag on his shoulder or anything on his back, and the other jeans pocket only produced more crumbs.

  He felt hot. The uniformed man was still looking at him sternly. Even the entrance to the Terra sphere was no longer what it had once been. There used to be a gigantic angel as an incarnation of the Guardian AI who processed visitors. But the Curies had finished him off. It still wasn’t clear who had programmed the damage code that had killed the Guardian AI.

  He didn’t have any papers, and he didn’t need any. He finally remembered the purpose of his visit. He didn’t want to enter the Terra memory archive, like he had last time. And he didn’t need a guest body. His destination was Terra’s virtual reality. He was supposed to convince one of the Arbiters there to help them destroy the Gigadyson. He cooled his hot cheeks with the backs of his hands. If he had to carry out his mission in the form of a pimply, badly shaved young man in old jeans and an oversized t-shirt, then so be it.

  “Sorry, boss, but I can’t comply,” he said.

  Did his tone match his exterior? Kepler wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember that part of his life anymore. There hadn’t been any young people for an eternity, and obviously no youth culture either.

  The uniformed man's face made him appear as though he was about to yell at him. He stood up and pointed at his epaulets.

  “Senior Sergeant to you,” he said. “And what do you want here, boy?”

  “I want to speak to the seven Arbiters.”

  The man sat back down. He was smiling broadly. “Denied due to impossibility. Next, please.”

  “Impossibility? Are none of them here?”

  “Next, please.”

  Kepler turned around. There was no one there. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, angrily. “Why is my visit impossible?”

  “There are only six Arbiters. Next, please.”

  “Then I want to speak to the six Arbiters.”

  “Next, please.”

  Something was very wrong here. The whole area looked neglected and abandoned. This was what happened when you left a simple AI alone for too long. Kepler turned around, took two steps back, and then approached the desk again.

  “I want to speak to the six Arbiters.”

  “Of course, sir, what was your name again?” The uniformed man suddenly seemed quite eager to help. He looked at Kepler with his head lowered.

  “Kepler, Johannes.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be right with you. Please take a seat in the waiting room.” The man gestured behind him.

  Kepler turned in the direction he indicated. A door swung open. He walked over to it. Behind the door was a small room with a blue upholstered sofa and a table with books.

  He sat down and waited.

  The world around him dissolved. Kepler had been checking his watch every few minutes. About half an hour had passed, but that didn’t mean much. In this virtual world, time behaved according to its own rules, which he couldn’t determine. Although it felt like he’d been sitting in normal Earth gravity on a sofa, in reality his digital consciousness was inside a supercomputer that covered the far side of the Moon.

  A dense fog started forming around him. It smelled like a mixture of autumnal night-time mist and the exhaust fumes of a combustion engine. The fog became so thick it made him cough.

  Someone slapped him on the back, so hard that it hurt.

  “I’m not choking, you idiot,” said Kepler.

  “Oh, sorry, man,” replied a stocky woman with long, blonde hair. “I’m Ramona,” she said, standing in front of him and holding out her hand.

  He shook it. She was clearly quite strong. Kepler was glad she was holding back. “And, what else? I’m Johannes Kepler, by the way.”

  “What else?”

  She seemed a bit slow to catch on. He imagined she might be the lover of the uniformed man. That would fit.

  “Your last name.”

  “Arbiters only have first names, you idiot,” she said, returning his insult.

  Kepler sat up straight. This was going well. Even the Arbiters seemed to have given in to apathy. Ramona was wearing jogging pants and a baggy sweater with a hood.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  All at once, they were no longer alone. The fog had disappeared. He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a campfire. Now and then something splashed on his shoulder. He looked up. There was a pot up there, which appeared to contain bubbling soup. He licked one of the splashes. It tasted of oregano.

  “Potato soup?” he asked his audience.

  In front of him sat four women and two men who had arranged themselves around the fire he was sitting in. He’d already met Ramona. Who might the others be?

  “Good guess,” said one of the men. “I’m Michael, by the way.”

  “And I’m Pierre,” said the other man. Kepler made a face. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like my name?”

  “I know a Pierre, and I don’t like him at all. Sorry, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  “And who are the others?” asked Kepler.

  Pierre gestured toward the blonde woman. “You already know Ramona. “Next to her is Jinmei. That’s Paola over there, and next to her is John Lennon.”

  Another man? No, John Lennon is clearly a female. “I thought Arbiters only had first names?”

  “John Lennon is her first name. Like Mary Magdalene, get it?”

  “I see,” he said.

  He didn’t care what the Arbiters called themselves. He only needed one of them. Statistically, it was probably going to be a woman. He hoped whoever it was would meet the expectations of the Aterae. Right now it didn’t look like any of them would, but you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

  “And what are you doing here?” asked Ramona.

  “I’m your fire.”

  Pierre laughed. “I assume that was a joke,” he said.

  “It was,” said Kepler.

  “And what do you really want?” asked Pierre. “
We don’t get many visitors from the real world, and when we do, it’s usually because some catastrophe is looming.”

  Kepler bowed his head. “That’s the case here, too. The Milky Way stands on the edge of the abyss.”

  “Boring,” said one of the women.

  Was that Paola or John Lennon? He’d already forgotten. “But you don’t know the whole story yet,” he said.

  “Then tell us,” said Pierre. “I’m all ears. But you’d better not leave anything out. We can turn over every stone in your memory.”

  “Alright,” said Kepler.

  At least this Pierre seemed to be taking an interest. Maybe he’d be able to convince him to go with him. Hopefully the name wasn’t a bad omen.

  “These beings made of dark energy—what do you call them again?” asked Pierre.

  “Aterae.”

  “So they want you to betray humanity?”

  “They want to protect the Milky Way from a catastrophe.”

  “That’s what they told you, but are you sure they’re not just exploiting you?”

  Kepler was hoarse. He’d already told the whole story twice. Ramona and Paola had told him just before the end that they’d forgotten the beginning.

  “You could come with me and see them for yourself,” he croaked.

  “Ah, you know what, Kepler, humanity has lost interest in us, and we in you. We’ve grown apart.”

  “But the catastrophe will affect you, too.”

  “At some point, long after you humans have ceased to exist. We can get by with very little space. I’ve simulated it. My thoughts move at the speed of light through my consciousness. Space could expand a thousand-fold and I still wouldn’t notice anything. At a million-fold I would start to notice a lag. A thought might need about half a second. That would put me about on your level, and you seem to cope quite well. After that there would need to be two more orders of magnitude before it resulted in a splitting of my consciousness. That’s funny, because it means that before the universe is finally torn apart, it will be filled with nothing but the shreds of the seven Arbiters. Isn’t that amusing?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me,” replied Kepler. “But did you just say seven Arbiters?”

  “You must have misheard. We’re only six.”

  “Well, what’s it going to be? Is someone coming with me?”

  “We’ll decide tomorrow.”

  Cycle IK 2.7, Terra

  “Your papers, please,” said the man in the uniform.

  “I’d like to speak with the seven Arbiters.”

  “Not possible. Next, please.”

  “Six Arbiters, of course. I’d like to speak with the six Arbiters.”

  Why did he think there were seven? For some reason this number was linked in his mind with the concept of the Arbiters. Maybe that had happened during his journey via the laser pulse. Now and then a bit got flipped around—that could turn a six into a seven.

  The uniformed man pointed toward the waiting room, and Kepler went and sat on a blue upholstered sofa. It seemed familiar. He must have owned a couch like this at some point.

  He came to his senses in the middle of a campfire. The fire was hot but it didn’t burn him. Four women and two men were sitting around the fire. They greeted him and introduced themselves. The last man to say his name was called Pierre. Kepler told his story. By the end he was hoarse, and the Arbiters promised they would think it over until the next day.

  Cycle IK 2.8, unknown location

  Kepler still hadn’t made contact. Zhenyi was gradually starting to worry. The work on the Gigadyson was pretty much finished. It was high time they started calculating the data in preparation for the explosion. Ada and Valja certainly wouldn’t be sitting around idly. And if they were unlucky, it wouldn’t only be those two searching for them—other ships could also be on hot their trail.

  Zhenyi marched into the control room. Z and K were sitting together in front of a screen. She couldn’t tell what they were doing. “Have you heard anything?” she asked.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Zhenyi. This doesn’t look good.” Z pointed at a diagram on the screen. It was a light curve, representing the change in the brightness of a star over time. Just before the end, the curve dropped off slightly, multiple times.

  Zhenyi looked at the star’s data. It was so far away that it would have been quite a technical feat to be able to capture the light curve so precisely. “You’ve probably already figured out what it could be.”

  “Correct,” said K. “We know the star has a planetary system. But it’s positioned in space in such a way that, from our point of view, the planets never pass in front of the star. And the interruptions are too small to be planets.”

  “Could they be asteroids?”

  “Yes, Zhenyi. Asteroids that are outside the orbital plane of the planets, and not only that—they’re in a group, and the objects are roughly the size of spaceships.”

  “I see,” said Zhenyi. “It’s more likely to be something man-made. Can you determine the course of the objects?”

  “That’s impossible. At the very least, we’d have to locate them a second time. But how often do groups of spaceships travel together in the Milky Way?”

  “I can’t remember a time. Back when the Convention voted on the future of the galaxy, many people had traveled in their own ships, but I haven’t seen a group of ships in the last few million cycles.”

  “So there isn’t another meeting planned?” asked Z.

  “I would have been invited.”

  “You’re officially a fugitive and associated with the enemy.”

  “Still, the butler would have informed me about it.”

  “That means the ships have another destination,” said K “And I can only think of one possibility. It would be nice if Kepler finally had some success and returned.”

  She shouldn’t have let him go alone! The mission had seemed so simple. Was it really so difficult to pose a simple question? Presumably the answer was ‘no,’ but then why wasn’t Kepler back already?

  “Shall I go looking for him?” asked Zhenyi.

  “That could be risky,” said K. “If something really is heading toward us, we’d like to have you here. Perhaps you can convince the humans that we have to explode the Gigadyson.”

  The universe was black and empty. Zhenyi was standing on the outer hull of the spaceship. It was tranquil. The sky above her was divided in two. One half was dark. That was the Gigadyson blocking the light from the stars. Once, looking in that direction, she would have been able to see the core of the galaxy. Maybe she would again soon.

  They had fought so long for the Gigadyson, which was supposed to extend the survival of humanity. Columbus had even died for it. Although she hadn’t liked the Secretary, he did sacrifice himself. The Herbae had even lost their home planet. And now a couple of strange beings had arrived, told her a story, only certain details of which she could verify, and she believed them—and was helping them destroy the Gigadyson.

  Was she naive? Stupid? Even evil? No. She only wanted the best for humanity. She would even give her life for it. Maybe she was suffering from helper syndrome. Why hadn’t she simply allowed herself to live comfortably on Newton’s worlds? Instead of looking up at the blue sky from green fields, she was stuck in a robot and staring into the darkness. Roughly at the zenith she could make out the limits of the Gigadyson. Just beyond it, stars were twinkling.

  Not long ago, a flotilla had appeared to pass in front of one of them. But what did ‘not long ago’ mean in space? If the star was 5,000 light-years away, then the deviation in its brightness happened 5,000 years ago, because that’s how long the light would have taken to reach them. By now the ships would be much closer. And if they were ninety-niners, they could be alarmingly close.

  How much time did they have? And why hadn’t Kepler returned? He’d already been gone for so long. Even if he was unsuccessful, she really wanted to talk to him again. She missed him. />
  What had she just said to Z? The butler would tell her if there was a new assembly at the Convention. He had his own channels. She had often asked him how he got hold of information that was news to her. Couldn’t she have the butler search for Kepler? He’d have to leave his body on K2-288b, but that was easier for him than it was for a human. Why hadn’t she thought of it earlier? It wouldn’t save any time, because her request couldn’t move faster than the speed of light, but the butler may be better equipped for an engagement with the Arbiter AIs on Terra than either she or Kepler was.

  “Hello, Puppy,” she noted down in her head. “I have a favor to ask. I sent Kepler on a mission to convince one of the Arbiter AIs to help us. But we haven’t heard anything from him since. I’m really starting to worry. Can you find out what’s happened? Thanks a million.”

  There was a console with a data link next to the airlock. She placed her finger on it and loaded the message into the main computer. About ten meters in front of her, she could see the antennas turning on the outer hull. So, K2-288b was in that direction. Zhenyi sent the message.

  Cycle IK 3.1, Terra

  “Papers, please,” said an official in a glass cubicle.

  “I don’t have any. I just want to speak with the six Arbiters.”

  Someone must have told him the quickest way to get past the entry controller. Was it Zhenyi? Had she also told him that the Arbiters were all a bit strange? Kepler went to the waiting room in the back.

  “Please take a seat in the waiting room,” said the uniformed man as he walked past.

  The sofa was blue. He sat on the right-hand side of it. The upholstery was particularly soft there.

  Kepler was sitting in the middle of a campfire. Flames licked at his worn-out jeans and old t-shirt. Lucky he wasn’t wearing a suit. The six figures around the fire high-fived each other. They must have just noticed him and seemed to be enjoying the diversion. Their faces were familiar. Could he guess their names? For some reason he didn’t dare, but he decided to try guessing the name of the last one. Peter, that could be it.