InterstellarNet- Enigma
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Technologies: apart from physics, the Xool do all they can to keep their technology behind what has become cutting-edge InterstellarNet technology. The ultimate purpose of their experiment, after all, is to preview if and how specific scary technologies lead to disaster. Hence, the Xool encourage, say, genetic engineering on one world, nanotech on another, and artificial intelligence on a third.
Choosing stars (in theory): even in possession of slow-time technology, efficiency is a virtue. The Xool prefer to experiment on worlds close to one another and Horua. Alas, rather than stay put, stars revolve around the galactic core and (most often to a lesser degree) have their orbits perturbed by passing encounters with nearby stars and star clusters. Over the duration of one turn around the galaxy (at Earth’s distance from the core, an excursion of roughly 200 million years), even passing encounters may cause once neighboring stars to diverge.
Over the course of the Xool experiment, Horua’s sun will complete almost three revolutions around the galactic core. They don’t much mind their “Petri dishes” diverging mid-experiment, when little is happening beyond prodding evolution. They do want their experimental worlds to be near Horua and one another once intelligences emerge. Observer teams can then efficiently compare notes. Home-world authorities can take reports from all solar systems at more or less the same time.
Choosing stars (in practice): The orbit of a planet in a solar system depends mostly on the far more massive star, and comparatively little on other planets. In the same way, the orbits of stars depend mostly on the overall mass distribution of their galaxy (more so on dark matter than on the visible kind). Thus the Xool, even with their primitive computers, can approximate stars’ orbits, to help them choose solar systems that will converge with Horua at experiment’s end. Sometimes, the approximation suffices—as happens with the solar systems that comprise the InterstellarNet community. When the approximations fail, experimental worlds end up scattered along much of the galaxy’s Orion spiral arm.
Experiment overview, phase 2 (in practice): the Xool developed without intelligent neighbors with whom to communicate. The emergence across several convergent solar systems of InterstellarNet takes the Xool by surprise. The resulting technology swaps among neighbors is, from the Xool perspective, cross-contamination of the Petri dishes. In eleven solar systems, rates of technological progress suddenly accelerate beyond what the Xool anticipated or know how to control—leading to improvisations like Joshua Matthews’s kidnapping.
As InterstellarNet matures, the far-flung Xool observer teams find their ability to coordinate—among one another, and with the home world—seriously hampered. Across light-years, the tightest radio beam diverges to wider than a solar system. Hence, with InterstellarNet members all operating interstellar-grade radio transceivers, Xool agents in neighboring systems dare not risk detection by coordinating via telecom.
So: at experiment’s end, the Xool observers are reduced to coordinating slowly, by interstellar travel. They eventually decide to quarantine all the InterstellarNet worlds, with all quarantines to be activated simultaneously. Synchronized quarantines avoid the unpredictable impact on the experiment of one InterstellarNet member observing that something unprecedented has befallen its neighbors.8
8. The Xool pre-positioned/hid slow-time and gravity generators wherever in a solar system colonization seemed most likely. Thus, the Moon and Mars entered quarantine when Earth did—but scattered communities on asteroids and smaller moons remain in real time.
The Xool have been left to gamble that those remnants of civilization will be too hard-pressed to further develop dangerous technologies.
The Xool’s grand scheme is likewise disrupted by the Centaurs’ success in building the first InterstellarNet-community starship. Coordination with Horua (about twelve light-years from Earth) involves decades of travel; for safety’s sake, earlier than first planned, the Chief Administrator decrees they must raise the slow-time barriers and begin the quarantines. The observer teams transmit time-delayed startup codes, delaying the barrier activations while they put some distance between themselves and the Solar System. Any human ships and colonies left outside slow time would not treat kindly an unrecognized vessel spotted fleeing the scene ….
Beyond InterstellarNet: the Grand Experiment originally encompasses many solar systems. Heavy “handed” Xool meddling mucks up some ecologies so severely that the observers abandon these worlds as lost causes. Staff from these worlds then move on to reinforce the observer teams where things are proceeding better, until—once ubiquitous broadcasting and networks make monitoring easy—most Xool returned home.
Scattered worlds, approaching their technological crises somewhat ahead of the clustered InterstellarNet community, have, locked behind slow-time barriers, been seen to fall into a gray-goo, AI runaway, robot apocalypse, or other nightmare. Such collapses have only further committed the Chief Administrator to her experiment: the Xool are learning—while reconfirming that these technologies are as dangerous as she has always feared.
Of clocks and dating: Why doesn’t anyone detect past diddling with time’s passage? Hasn’t Earth become curiously younger than, say, Mars?
The short answers: accurately determining a planet’s age is hard, and not so that anyone can tell.
Our planet is ever being reshaped by erosion, volcanism, plate tectonics, and the occasional asteroid strike. Other solid worlds in the Solar System experience (or once did) many of the same age-obscuring processes. The planets and major moons thus do not exhibit—nor are they expected to—surface features as old as the solar system.
How then do we ascertain the age of our planet? Very indirectly. First, the ages of meteors are estimated from an analysis of radioactive-decay products (of very-long-half-life isotopes of lead) within those meteors. Earth’s age is then estimated using models of planet formation and the calculated age of the oldest meteors.
To estimate the Sun’s age, believed to be about 4.6 billion years, is likewise indirect. It entails models of both fusion processes and the circulation of fusion byproducts from the solar core, where fusion takes place, to the observable solar surface, as well as inferences about the primordial composition of the dust-and-gas cloud from which the star formed.
If Earth spent the occasional few millions of years in slow time, the age discrepancy between Earth and Sun would not be obvious. If a discrepancy were noticed, it could easily be dismissed as a glitch in one of the models.
What’s next?
As retirement on Earth loses its (pun intended) novelty, it will occur to Carl to wonder about other worlds, hundreds or more light-years distant, once also part of the Xool experiment. With slow-time technology, all such worlds become eminently reachable.
Each journey would take—though it would seem only an instant—many centuries. If any civilizations Out There have survived, perhaps they, too, can be set free. Someone should look into that.
Someone like Carl?
But that’s a story for another occasion ….
InterstellarNet History: Key Milestones
The Earth-centric Perspective
1958 Leos (of the Lalande 21185 system) detect Earth’s radio emissions. The faint signals are not at first recognized as evidence of intelligence.
2002 Earth receives Leos’ radioed reply (transmitted in 1994). Humanity responds under United Nations auspices, opening an era of interstellar barter in intellectual property.
2003 The UN begins a program of radio beamcasts to other stars, in search of other intelligent neighbors.
2006 Onset of the three-year-long Lalande Implosion: the collapse of petroleum-based portions of Earth’s economy. The adoption of advanced fuel-cell technology, deduced from clues within the 2002 Leo message, triggers the crash.1
1. The fuel cells, exploiting a revolutionary new catalyst, draw power from almost any fluid hydrocarbon, including natural gas and alcohol. After 2007, few new automobiles use internal combustion.
2010 The “Proto
col on Interstellar Technology Commerce” takes effect. The international treaty creates a new UN agency, the Interstellar Commerce Union, to oversee Earth’s radio-based commerce with extraterrestrial species.
2012 The Centaurs (of the Alpha Centauri A system) contact Earth by radio, the first of many ET species to answer Earth’s exploratory messages.
2031 A permanent lunar settlement is established. Colonies and research bases begin to spread across the solar system.
2041 Europan gambit: an interplanetary megacorp impersonates an ET species native to Jupiter’s moon Europa, attempting to circumvent ICU refusal to import Centaur nanotechnology.
2050 Transmissions disclosing Centaur nanotech reach the Solar System.
2052 The ICU proposes a secure e-commerce mechanism that gradually becomes the flexible basis of a more sophisticated interstellar trading community.
2055 The United Planets Charter is ratified; the UP succeeds the United Nations.
2061 An artificial intelligence is received from the Centaurs; the AI trade agent is successfully installed and confined by the ICU. Other AI agents follow, as more distant species receive, accept, and respond to Earth’s 2052 proposal.
2072 The AI trade agent to Earth of the Hunters (colloquially, the Snakes, of the Barnard’s Star system) announces a computing technology far in advance of human photonics. The debate whether to license incompletely understood alien biocomputers roils human society and interplanetary politics. A deal for the tech is not consummated until 2076.
2084 Human and Wolf (from the Wolf 359 system) authorities acknowledge their near parity in technology, paving the way for lightly regulated interstellar commerce among private parties. The practice spreads as InterstellarNet fosters technological convergence.
2102 Snake Subterfuge: the attempt, very nearly successful, to extort a fortune from humanity. The exploit involved trapdoors long hidden in the now ubiquitous—but still incompletely understood—Hunter/Snake biocomputing technology.
2110 The asylum request of the Centaur trade agent precipitates an artificial-intelligence emancipation movement across human space. Granting of the agent’s request sours relations between humans and Centaurs.
2112 The AI emancipation amendment to the UP charter is ratified.
2125 The habitat-sized Centaur starship Harmony, the first starship built within the InterstellarNet community, sets off in secrecy for Barnard’s Star.
2126 A former Secretary-General of the Interstellar Commerce Union nearly succeeds in subverting InterstellarNet trade mechanisms by illegally cloning the AI trade agent from Tau Ceti.
2145 Harmony, its Centaur crew in cold sleep, reaches the fringes of the Barnard’s Star system. The starship is captured by a fugitive Hunter clan. Lacking the technology to mass-produce antimatter, “their” starship at this point carrying antimatter fuel for only its planned return voyage, clan Arblen Ems undertakes a desperate journey.
2165 The Hunter starship Victorious (actually Harmony, its Centaur crew imprisoned) reaches the Solar System. In the conflict that breaks out: the UP antimatter factory is destroyed (the “Himalia Incident”); Victorious is pursued, boarded, and also destroyed; the rescued Centaur crew are resettled in the Australian Outback; the Hunter survivors are interned on the Uranian moon, Ariel.
2178 The UP-built starship New Beginnings sets off for Alpha Centauri to repatriate those Centaurs young enough for another interstellar trek.
2180 The UP begins construction of a new starship, Discovery.
2185 Joshua Matthews is named historian of the Interstellar Commerce Union, Discovery nears completion, and the story opens …
Dramatis Personae
Terrestrials
Richard Lewis Agnelli: Director, United Planets Intelligence Agency (UPIA)
Denise Chang: Wife of Corinne Elman
Danica Chidambaram: UPIA covert agent
Grace DiMeara: Freelance pilot employed by Corinne Elman
Corinne Elman: Reporter; detainee during the Hunter raid on the Solar System
Lyle Logan: Pilot; repairman for robotic mining ships
Joshua Matthews: Historian; former employee of the Interstellar Commerce Union (ICU), an agency of the United Planets
Joyce Matthews: Retired secretary-general, and formerly the chief technical officer, of the ICU; grandmother of Joshua Matthews
Akihiro Matsushita: Admiral, commanding UP naval forces in the Saturn system
Carl Rowland: Warden and UPIA station chief at the Hunter internment colony on Ariel; long ago, under an alias, free-lance pilot for Corinne Elman
Donald Schnabel: Assistant to the deputy project manager, Discovery mission office
Helena Strauss: UPIA station chief on the Moon
Robyn Tanaka Astor: ICU secretary-general; an Augmented (human/artificial-intelligence (AI) hybrid)
Astor 2215: AI; later, a partial backup of Robyn Tanaka Astor
Tacitus 352: Historian; Joshua Matthew’s colleague; an AI
Bruce Wycliffe: Deputy UPIA station chief on Ariel; assistant to Carl Rowland
Centaurs
K’tra Ko ka: Coordinator (ka) of the Centaur colony in Australia
T’Gwat Fru: Historian in the Centaur colony
Hunters
Dolmar Banak: Sculptor and craftsman
Rashk Folhaut: Navigator (Timoq era)
Firh Glithwah: Foremost of clan Arblen Ems; leader of the Hunter colony on Ariel
Hrak Jomar: Chief science officer (Timoq era)
Firh Koban:Logistical officer / pilot / Glithwah’s cousin
Loshtof: AI; Glithwah’s translator
Cluth Monar: Glithwah’s aide
Rashk Motar: Engineering officer aboard Excalibur (Timoq era)
Pashwah: Trade agent representing the Great Clans; Earth-resident; an AI
Rashk Pimal: Glithwah’s tactical officer and chief aide
Cluth Timoq: Foremost of clan Arblen Ems as successor to Glithwah; biologist
Gral Tofot: Fighter pilot (Timoq era)
Hrak Votan: Crewman aboard Excalibur; computing specialist (Timoq era)
Xool
Iroa Ene Leiahoma (Ene): Leader of Xool observers in the Solar System
Atufea Lua Duruza (Lua): Leader of Xool observers in the Barnard’s Star system (the Hunters’ home)
Wataninui Wue Tihotiho (Wue): Chief Administrator (dictator) of the Xool
About the Author
EDWARD M. LERNER worked in high tech and aerospace for thirty years, as everything from engineer to senior vice president, for much of that time writing science fiction as a hobby. Since 2004 he has written full-time.
His novels range from near-future technothrillers, like Small Miracles and Energized, to traditional SF, like the InterstellarNet novels, to (collaborating with Larry Niven) the space-opera epic Fleet of Worlds series of Ringworld companion novels.
Ed’s short fiction has appeared in anthologies, collections, and many of the usual SF magazines. He also writes the occasional nonfiction technology article.
Lerner lives in Virginia with his wife, Ruth.
His website is www.edwardmlerner.com.
InterstellarNet: Enigma
Humanity once feared that we might be alone in the universe. Now we know better. And we’ve learned there are worse things than being alone …
Contact with other intelligent races in nearby star systems seemed to have answered the age-old question at the center of the Fermi Paradox: Where is everybody? But when Joshua Matthews lands a new job that will give him access to vast new troves of data on the subject, suddenly everything goes wrong for him. Someone is sabotaging his life. Finding out why leads in astonishing and dangerous directions. It is as if he has tugged on one thread, very gently—and caused everything humanity knows about its place in the universe to unravel, awakening the enmity of unsuspected ancient powers.
Includes the 2015 Hugo-nominated novelette, “Championship B’tok.”
“When people talk about good hard SF
—rigorously extrapolated but still imbued with the classic sense-of-wonder—they mean the work of Edward M. Lerner, the current master of the craft. InterstellarNet: Enigma is Lerner’s latest gem, and it’s up to his usual excellent standards; a winner all around.”
——Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Red Planet Blues
“One of the most original, believable, thoroughly thought-out, and utterly fascinating visions ever of what interstellar contact might really be like.”
—Dr. Stanley Schmidt, Analog Magazine
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