by Taiyo Fujii
“So that is what she means. I guess everything is about computers over there.”
“Not entirely. Kazumi uses a special sense to fly space tethers in his head.”
“Then he might be kind of like me.” Jamshed stretched his arm out behind him and pulled one of the sheets of hanging paper toward himself. It was covered in scribbled lines, numbers, Persian letters, and in a few places some English. “My computer is this and calculator. Anyways, about communication method and content. That is all on my paper.”
“You must mean the section ‘Robust Communication.’ I saw it in the table of contents. Only part of the body of your essay has reached us.”
“After our meeting I will send it once more. Space tethers do not need complicated information for their telemetry. That is one of advantages of space tether. According to my paper, all you is need is serial numbers, spatial coordinates guided by GPS, and motion vectors for terminal apparatuses.”
“Can you read it?” asked Jamshed, writing the three figures on a piece of paper and holding it up beside his face. “To command a particular space tether to transfer from one orbit to another, all you have to do is send TLEs that will serve as their destination. With approximately three thousand steps of computational logic if you use Fortran, you can derive timing for activate Lorentz force required to shift from present position to that of destination TLEs.”
Akari frowned faintly. Most likely she saw the programming language Fortran as a relic of the previous century. Kazumi felt the same way. Though he could follow Jamshed’s line of thinking, it struck him as terribly out-of-date. At the same time, he found the simplicity of his system beautiful.
All you have to do is send TLEs that will serve as their destination. Kazumi ruminated on Jamshed’s words. His space tethers had been equipped with the essentially unstable element of ballast that moved along the wire, and this allowed them to use their thrust in any direction. Based on feedback regarding whether they were approaching their target or not, the space tethers themselves could calculate the correct timing to accelerate and fire electrons from the electron guns in their terminal apparatuses in order to transfer to the correct orbit. It was a straightforward and robust system.
“Of course, this only applies at time I wrote paper,” Jamshed continued, now looking toward Daryl. “But I imagine the type of programming language, processor, and sensors being used are more advanced than what I am familiar with. I have no way of knowing because I cannot connect to the Internet.”
“How about when you send commands to multiple space tethers?” asked Daryl.
“All you do is send serial numbers followed by TLEs. If you vary slightly each command, then they will fly in mass formation.”
“Dr. Jahanshah,” said Kazumi, deciding to ask the question on his mind. “It doesn’t seem to me that the space tethers kicking the SAFIR 3 along in orbit are being controlled by the method you just described. They appear to be moving according to a faster, more refined program.”
“The TLEs are not absolutely necessary. Is possible to send timing to activate the Lorentz force as something like musical note. In that case, they would move more efficiently. Theoretically, their thrust would be multiplied four or five times.”
“Would you be able to carry out such operations, Doctor?”
“No. I said ‘theoretically,’ didn’t I?”
Jamshed turned around again and drew another piece of paper toward himself. On it was a diagrammatic map of the world with numerous arrows and numbers scrawled here and there all over it. Lined up densely at the bottom were different times alongside a zero and a one. Kazumi supposed that the arrows represented the “footholds” of the space tethers, namely geomagnetism, while the zeros and ones represented on/off states for the Lorentz force.
Jamshed compared the angle of the revolving space tethers to the direction of Earth’s magnetic field and calculated the timing to activate the Lorentz force. None of the calculations were particularly difficult on their own, but their large quantity taken together presented a serious challenge—and here he was doing it all on paper.
“You have to think about space tethers’ rotation, direction of geomagnetism, and the intensity all together. Since space tethers rotate in high velocity, their clocks would need to be accurate to millisecond, and their geomagnetism database would need to be in arc seconds.”
Jamshed patted the paper with the back of his hand and puffed out his chest proudly. Being able to do such calculations by hand was indeed impressive, and Kazumi thought that Jamshed must have cultivated the same sense that he used when conducting his “ritual.”
“However, I am only speaking theoretically. I can show you calculations, but I am not think is possible to realize these in practice.”
Kazumi noticed Bruce and Daryl fidgeting uncomfortably. They seem to be wavering about whether to tell Jamshed that the practical problems he saw could be solved easily. The coordination of the clocks, the geomagnetism database, and the massive amount of calculations he had mentioned would not be problematic at all. The times sent by GPS satellites were so precise they needed relativistic corrections. For the geomagnetism database, they could also consult a map through NASA a hundred times more accurate than the one Jamshed wanted. And as for the size of the calculations, well, that would just be a matter of—
“Let me just try to put it together,” Akari muttered in Japanese, and began to tap at the keyboard on her left wrist with her arms still crossed.
Wed, 16 Dec 2020, 02:25 -0800 (2020-12-16T10:25 GMT)
Pier 37 Warehouse, Seattle
Typing on the keyboard on his lap, Shiraishi listened to the sound of the increasingly heavy snowfall tapping the metal-framed window. A blizzard was approaching.
Facing the window as she spoke on the phone, Chance said something in Korean and hung up.
“It’s done,” she said. “Leaving it up to the Cyber Front was the right choice. They may have gone a bit overboard, but they found Kurosaki and Sekiguchi.”
Shiraishi took one final look at the code he was in the middle of writing and put the screen of his tablet to sleep. The Cyber Front agents had used Shiraishi’s account to access JAXA from all over the world, completely trashing their whole system. They had failed to break into the computers related to JAXA’s development arm but had got their hands on all of the data contained in the regular office servers, computers, and smartphones, along with other mobile devices.
“They finally deleted your account.”
“… Oh.” Shiraishi pushed his glasses up onto his nose and exhaled a long breath into the shelter of his palm, fogging up his visual field.
The last thing that had connected him to JAXA and Japan was now gone. The thirty-two-letter password and eight-letter ID that he could not bring himself to completely forget, even after abandoning the organization and his own country, were now just a string of meaningless characters. All he had brought with him from Japan was his body and a pair of bent glasses.
It seemed to him as though he were floating above the floor. What emotion was this? The same sense of loss he’d experienced when he’d realized that the satellite he’d designed for the China National Space Administration in Shanghai had been a mere reproduction of a project already realized by America and the EU? Or when the scout from North Korea had brought him to Pyongyang and they had shredded his Japanese passport? No. It was different. He had merely gained another kind of freedom.
His fogged-up glasses cleared. Beyond his sinewy hand, he could see Chance staring at her smartphone.
“So where did those two go, then?”
“Kurosaki and Sekiguchi are in Tehran. According to an application to travel abroad that we pulled from a photocopier cache, they departed the day before yesterday. To meet with Dr. Jahanshah.” Chance explained that they had most likely gone to pick up the remainder of Jamshed’s paper, and Shiraishi nodded.
&n
bsp; “Do you think Kazumi and his team can find a way to stop the space tethers?” asked Chance.
“Even if they figure out how they work, stopping them is impossible.”
Since the space tethers consisted of little more than tiny terminal apparatuses, removing them from orbit would be an incredible challenge. They would only appear as something like debris on radar, making it difficult to pinpoint their precise locations, and even if a device capable of deorbiting them could make a successful rendezvous, the tethers would come flying in at three kilometers per second. There was simply no safe way to stop them.
Blocking their communication pathways to the base stations would also fail to solve the problem because the tethers had what Jamshed described in his paper as a “survival instinct.” In other words, they were installed with a program that autonomously alternated between maintaining their orbits and generating their energy, so even if communications with the ground were cut off, they would in all likelihood remain in the same orbit for some time.
“I can’t even think of a way to remove them from orbit myself,” said Shiraishi.
“So you’re saying you’ve put things up there that can’t be cleaned up later. Headquarters will have a fit when they hear that.”
“That’s why I’m developing a web application that even those guys can use. When the Cloud completes its job, all they have to do is use the app to increase their altitude.” Shiraishi tapped his tablet with the back of his hand.
“When will you give it to us?”
“If I can work on it tomorrow, I’ll give it to you by nighttime …”
“We’re moving tomorrow. Can you have it ready the day after that? I want you to hurry on this. The more approaches we have to work with, the better. Maybe there’s nothing that you and Kazumi can do about it, but NORAD and NASA might still find a way to stop us.”
“NORAD?”
“When we were rummaging through the JAXA servers, we found an email that Kurosaki sent to NORAD’s Colonel Lintz. The body was encrypted with PGP, but we were able to read the subject. ‘Urgent: Unusual SAFIR 3 Orbit Caused by North Korea.’ ”
“When?”
“The day before yesterday. This means that the American government, in the form of NORAD, has been in touch with Kazumi, who’s read Dr. Jahanshah’s paper.”
“… I see.” Shiraishi looked up at the ceiling. He’d never thought that they could keep their scheme secret forever, but things were developing much faster than he’d anticipated. Clearly, Kazumi had gathered some highly accurate information if he had succeeded in getting these usually plodding bureaucracies to move with such speed.
“We’ve been … found out. They know about the Cloud and the space tethers too.”
“That’s not necessarily true. However, I’m going to report to headquarters in the North about the possibility they’ve been exposed, so let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to add.”
“Don’t be naive, Chance! The Orbital Cloud is out in the open now! Put that in your report!” Shiraishi closed his eyes and filled his lungs with the dusty warehouse air. The time had come at last. “Tell the Supreme Leader we’re proceeding to a stage in which we can spread even greater terror. We’re going to change the situation before Kazumi Kimura’s voice becomes influential.”
Chance’s body tensed up, and she raised her index finger to her forehead. She was preparing to make a mental map of Shiraishi’s explanation.
“You don’t need to do that,” said Shiraishi. “It’s easy to remember. First of all, the orbital hotel. While the majority still believes that the second stage of SAFIR 3 is the Rod from God, we’ll bring it even closer. So close that the Smarks can see it with their naked eyes.”
“Good idea. That should buy us some time.”
“Exactly. For a while, anyway.”
Chance opened her eyes wide as though she’d suddenly sensed something. “If we lay on that much pressure,” she said, “the American military will probably try to intercept the Rod from God immediately.”
Shiraishi felt his lips curling up into a sneer. “But their target is just an empty rocket body. They’ll fall right into our trap. The American army will be a laughingstock. And right in in front of the eyes of those panicking fools—” Shiraishi stared with intensity into Chance’s eyes. “We’ll conduct a massacre in low Earth orbit. I was planning to take my time and make it look like an accident, but the situation has changed. We can’t give them time to think up a countermeasure. Instead, we’ll send in all forty thousand of the space tethers and simultaneously knock all of the two thousand satellites in LEO down to Earth!”
“Wait. That’s …” Mouth gaping, Chance’s pale eyes quivered.
Yes, that’s the face, thought Shiraishi. That’s the expression I’m going to stamp on all humankind.
“Are you afraid, Chance?” Shiraishi curled the edge of his mouth up even farther. His dry lips split open, and the pain amped up his tension. “We’re going to start a war.”
Shiraishi imagined the hordes of tethers that composed the Cloud scattering in different directions and swarming on the satellites. The satellites would be struck by the terminal apparatuses of the space tethers at low relative velocity and cease to function or even spin out of control, dragging a tail of plasma with them as they fell into the atmosphere. Space stations, telescopes, GPS, communications satellites, weather observation satellites, reconnaissance satellites. All of the orbital infrastructure that humankind had come to depend on would be obliterated in an instant, and radioactive-material-filled satellites would cause widespread chaos when they rained down on the Earth. So be it.
Humankind would just have to start over. Enterprises involved with orbit had grown bloated, vulnerable to the slightest mistake, and the efforts of the have-nots had been frustrated by more than seventy years of space domination by the world powers. Better to start again from scratch than to try to fix such a system, with all its high-altitude satellites, space stations, accumulated debris, and complex tangle of rights and interests.
“There’s no need to declare war. All of a sudden, one day, all of the satellites will just disappear. In the wake of the terror this will cause, the nations carrying out the Great Leap will be able to monopolize space development for the first time!”
“… But if we do that, low Earth orbit will become an ocean of debris. You can hardly call that a Great Leap.”
“I’m not going to sully the springboard for the Great Leap. I’m going to carefully knock each man-made object one by one into the atmosphere.” Shiraishi stepped close to Chance as she stood by the window. “Contact them immediately!”
“North Korea doesn’t have the courage for that.”
“You sure about that?” Shiraishi moved in so close to Chance that his forehead pressed against hers. “What if we make someone a scapegoat and blame them for everything?”
Chance frowned. You don’t get it? thought Shiraishi. There’s only one person who could knock down every low-orbit object in a flash and show the way toward a new future. Someone who would never again stand on center stage—
“Me.”
Wed, 16 Dec 2020, 03:21 -0800 (2020-12-16T11:21 GMT)
Western Days Hotel
The discussion with Jamshed shifted to how they might remove the space tethers from orbit. Kazumi and Daryl would shower Jamshed with questions, Jamshed would answer, and Akari would jump in with an observation from time to time.
Bruce followed what the four of them were saying and took notes. These he planned to send to the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley once the discussion was finished, so that the CIA could evaluate and substantiate their information before their next meeting first thing in the morning. This approach had been decided on by Chris, as she didn’t want to burden the team with such chores.
“I am devoted one chapter of my paper to what I called the space
tethers’ ‘survival instinct.’ Space tethers can autonomously alternate between generating energy and using their thrust while waiting in orbit for a new destination. I am also proposed Fortran program for this that could be realized in approximately two thousand steps.”
“Do you think the space tethers flying up there right now are equipped with this survival instinct?” asked Kazumi.
“I do not know. I cannot tell how carefully North Korean engineer is following my paper,” said Jamshed in a joking voice. “My paper is poorly put together. My academic advisor would not read it, so there are some calculation errors and other problems.”
Bruce thought it would probably be better to ask the protégé of the suspected mastermind. “What do you think, Akari?” he said.
“You mean about this so-called instinct? If it were me, I’d install it. The term ‘autonomous’ is attractive in itself, and if I were presented with the code to make it work I can’t see why I wouldn’t use it.”
Chris clapped her hands together. “I’m going to make the call,” she said. “It has this survival instinct. Continue to investigate under that assumption.”
“That’s just my opinion,” said Akari, looking surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. We have to decide either one way or the other. What do you think, Doctor?”
“If your objective is to make them inoperative, I think that is good way.”
Something about what Jamshed said gave Bruce pause. He listened closely to what Jamshed said next.
“I am talking about method of stopping them. Most effective way would be seizing base stations operated by North Korea or seize transmission themselves and take control of tethers.”