by Ivan Kal
Tomas sighed and closed down the report; there was nothing he could do about them arming themselves. That was one of the reasons why he didn’t want to share their technology with them—he knew what they would do with it. He opened up the next report, this one from Professor Hyeon Seo-yun. It informed him that their first interstellar trip was a success. The exploration ship Star Gazer had arrived from its trip to the Alpha Centauri system, the system closest to them. It had started its journey more than a year ago. With their version of the alien hyperdrive, they were able to travel at ten times the speed of light, making the 4.3-light-year trip in just over five months. They had spent another month there collecting data and looking around the system, and then spent another five months back.
It was now traveling at sub-light speed from the outer edge of the solar system, the edge being the place where the Sun’s influence was low enough for a ship to enter hyperspace. That was just a few light hours past Pluto, but it would take it a few months more to travel back to Mars. The drives worked perfectly even on a trip that long, as did the stasis pods the crew used while in hyperspace, just as Seo-yun had assured him they would.
But Tomas had still been a bit skeptical; he had wanted to wait a bit more before they undertook such a long trip, but Seo-yun had insisted that there was no need. That they understood the technology and had everything under control. Tomas had chosen to defer to her judgment and had given her the permission. The report contained a mountain of scientific information that Tomas didn’t understand. Sensor readings, readings from the planet orbiting one of the suns in the system, and others. He scrolled down until he found Seo-yun’s translation of the data. She tended to leave Tomas notes on the more scientific reports she sent him, as he insisted that he get any report on matters she deemed important. Her notes told him that while this was a giant leap and a momentous event in human history, the system itself wasn’t impressive. There was nothing there of interest to them; the one planet was unremarkable, nothing more than a rock, with no or very few materials that they used. She didn’t recommend colonization of that system.
There were talks between Tomas and his “council” on colonization of other star systems. They all agreed that if they started colonization, they would start with a planet with more hospitable conditions, preferably an Earth-like world. But based on the map recovered from the alien ship, those planets were so far away that it would take them decades to get there from the solar system. For now, they would stay in their birth system.
Just as he finished the report, his second, Nadia, pinged him and informed him that Seo-yun wanted to speak to him. He told her to send her in.
A moment later, Seo-yun walked in. She had her hair tied in a knot on top of her head and was holding a datapad in her hand. It was amusing to Tomas how most of those who were born before the age of implants had a tendency to review information on their datapads rather than their implants.
“Hello, Seo-yun. I have just finished reading your report on the Alpha Centauri mission,” Tomas said.
“Hi. Well, I have something even more exciting to show you now.” She sat down on the chair in front of his desk; they had abandoned any formality between them a long time ago. She smiled brightly with a mischievous glint in her eyes.
Tomas raised an eyebrow. “More monumental than a trip to another star system?”
“Oh, yes, much more,” she said.
Intrigued, Tomas motioned for her to continue.
“I have two things to tell you—I waited until we were sure about both of them. It was coincidence that the final test results came within a day of each other,” she said. Tomas knew that Seo-yun had a lot of experiments going on, and that she didn’t bring them to him until they were successful. He kept silent and waited for her to tell him more.
“First, we have been experimenting with faster-than-light communications. There were some mentions of it in the alien databases, but the data was too corrupted to be recovered. But it helped us by telling us that FTL comms were possible. So we threw ourselves on the problem. First idea we had was to use hyperspace-capable commdrones. But since ships, or in this case drones, can only enter hyperspace when they are sufficiently away from a star’s influence, we rejected it, but kept it as a possibility for communication between star systems. Then we got the idea to use gravity. We had discovered that gravity propagates at a speed substantially faster than the speed of light when we were developing artificial gravity generators.
“But our understanding of gravity is not yet large enough to pull it off efficiently. We don’t have a power source strong enough to create a gravity pulse focused enough to reach any distance that would be of use to us. So after these failures, we tried to follow more abstract and unconventional paths. We tried speeding up the light, at which we, of course, failed.” She grinned.
“We played with the concept of micro wormholes, but decided that at our current level, we weren’t proficient enough to pull that off safely, if at all. And then we went back to hyperspace. We know that the law in hyperspace is different than in regular space. We studied the laws of hyperspace and finally discerned that the reason ships can only enter hyperspace when the star’s influence is low enough has to do with the mass of the object trying to enter the space. After an object with mass falls below a certain point of the gravitation pull on it, it can safely pass through the barrier between regular space and hyperspace.
“If it tried to enter hyperspace while the gravitation pull on it was above that point, the gravity would hamper it, and it wouldn’t achieve, for the lack of a better word, enough ‘thrust’ to be pushed through the barrier, resulting in it being destroyed. Theoretically, one could enter hyperspace within a star system, but it would require an insane amount of energy. The closer to the sun you are, the more energy you would need, while after it crosses the ‘passing point,’ the amount of energy drops off sharply. So after we learned this, we set about to find a way to pass communications through hyperspace. We discovered that if we sent charged Luxon particles—particles that move at the speed of light—into hyperspace, they became tachyons—particles that move faster than the speed of light. And those particles will move in the direction they were moving prior to entering hyperspace until they run out of charge.
“So we devised a way to send information with these particles.” She announced proudly. “We devised computers that can interpret the information once tachyons leave hyperspace and become Luxon particles again. Now we have FTL, or rather near-instantaneous communications; the lag is so small that it is negligible.” She hesitated. “Well, with a few little problems. One is that the communications are instantaneous in the range of fifty light years, after that the tachyons lose speed rapidly, even if they are still charged. But it will still be much faster communication than anything else. We have discovered that there is speed degradation, increasing exponentially based on the distance. It isn’t enough to hinder the device, but the lag increases substantially after the fifty-light-year point, at least according to our simulations. We are yet to test it in practice for obvious reasons.” She said. The reason being that they hadn’t explored anywhere close to that distance yet.
“But we won’t need to worry about that for a long time. We even have some ideas that could effectively remove the problems; we could place rerouting stations that would receive the communication and then relay it for another fifty light years—if we ever need to communicate over such vast distances. The other problem is the calculations required to send the communication on target. The math is abysmal. The biggest problem is that space—our galaxy, even—is in constant motion, while hyperspace is not, and as such we need to calculate the amount of charge the communication needs. Then the coordinates of the receiver, as they will be after the communication exits hyperspace. The only computers that are able to calculate this are our most advanced quantum computers, and then only those that have an AI in them. The AI’s ability to manage a multitude of problems simultaneously lowers the margin of error
to barely a fraction of what an ordinary computer can.”
Tomas raised his hand. “Wait. Why can’t a quantum computer do the calculations without the Ai?” he asked.
Seo-yun grimaced. “It can, but an ordinary software can’t do it as precisely as an AI can. The AIs have the ability to coordinate and use a quantum computer’s assets in such a way to increase its capabilities by a factor of 12. We have still not been able to figure out why,” she said. Tomas saw that their inability to find the cause of the increase in ability was annoying her. She had never liked unsolved puzzles. It was one of the reasons he’d hired her, and had shown her the alien ship so many years ago.
Tomas sighed. “Alright, I know that you feel that the AIs pose no threat if they are treated right. But I still want you to be careful. The aliens shackled their AIs for a reason, and I don’t want us to make any mistakes,” he said while looking Seo-yun in the eyes.
She held his glare, and was about to say something when she changed her mind and nodded.
“Good, that is an amazing discovery, and I have no doubt that it will be remembered in the history books. But you said you have one more thing to tell me. I doubt that it could be more amazing than what I just heard,” Tomas said.
Seo-yun’s expression immediately changed from serious to amused, which immediately told Tomas that he was wrong; this would be even more amazing.
“I so enjoy to prove you wrong,” Seo-yun said while smiling and batting her eyelashes at him, which in turn made him smile with her.
“Go on, then, prove me wrong,” Tomas said.
“Well, you know that we got a lot of medical knowledge from the alien ship,” she said, and Tomas nodded. “Well, the knowledge itself was worthless to us, as it was all about alien physiology. So it was of low importance. But one of our geneticists was looking through it in his spare time, and something he saw in there on one of the races that the Union encountered gave him an idea. So he worked on it in his spare time for the past few years, until finally a year ago he had a breakthrough. He went to his team leader and showed her his work, and she in turn showed it to me. I gave her permission to focus all our available resources on it, and then we had another breakthrough a few months ago. The final test results came in yesterday, so now it is confirmed. We have been able to create an artificial gene that, when introduced into human DNA, causes our cells to stop decaying, stop dying. In other words, it stops entropy. With this gene, we can remove death. Each one of us with this gene will live forever, barring that we don’t have a violent death or die from disease,” Seo-yun said, grinning.
Tomas looked at her with mouth and eyes wide open, disbelieving what he heard. He thought that she must be pulling his leg, but he knew her better than that. She never joked with her work. Living forever…he tried to wrap his head around the concept, it was unbelievable.
“That, that…that is insane,” he finally said.
“Yes, it is,” Seo-yun said still smiling.
“My god, what are we going to do?” Tomas asked uneasily.
“What do you mean?”
“This could change everything.”
Seo-yun’s smile slipped at the expression on Tomas’s face.
“How?” Seo-yun asked.
“This could change everything it means to be human. Imagine what it would do to religion, or how it will influence peoples’ lives. Or what it would do to Earth if we gave this to them. The Earth is already overpopulated; if people stop dying…it could lead to the collapse of our entire race at the worst, and at best it will redefine the human existence,” Tomas said gravely.
Seo-yun looked at Tomas, understanding dawning in her eyes.
“We will need to be very careful about how we introduce this,” Tomas said.
Seo-yun started to protest, but he cut her off.
“I’m not saying that we don’t share it; I just think that we need to be aware that this will impact our entire race. And before we introduce this kind of an upheaval to our culture, our way of life, we must be ready to face the consequences,” Tomas said.
“You are right,” Seo-yun said, and knew that with this one discovery more than any other before, Olympus would yet again change the world.
Chapter Eighteen
February 2103
Adrian and his teammates waited inside of the training base’s landing bay for the transport ship to dock. Their team had passed the training; after that first stumble, Bethany and Adrian had managed to clear the air between them and started to work together on tactics for the team battles. Instead of leading alternatingly, they led together. It proved to be the right choice; after that first loss, they had won every other match, bringing their team to the top spot. After the deadline, Force Commander Pierce informed them that only the top three teams passed, and the third one just barely. The other teams were crestfallen, but the force commander informed them that they could stay one more year and try to pass with the next class. Or that they could keep their ranks of cadet tier 1 and join the fleet at that level, or choose another path in the fleet—they always needed people.
Some stayed behind, while others chose to remain cadets and try to work their way up the ranks through service. From those that passed, only Team 9 was told to board the transport that would take them to their new assignment. They weren’t told yet what rank they’d acquired by passing the test. The other two teams were told that they would remain on the base for another week. Team 9 had little time to celebrate. They spent only a few hours at the station bar, and then they had to go to sleep in order to wake up and be on time to board the transport the next morning. They didn’t even know where they were going.
After the ship docked and they boarded it, they were told that the ship was going to the Moon station where they would be told their assignments and ranks. One of the transport ship’s crew showed them to their quarters for the trip. They spent the next month on the ship as it traveled from the training station to the Moon. They spent their time mostly in the recreational facilities that the transport had, and the rest inside of their room discussing what their next assignment would be. Most of them wanted to be placed on a transport or a cargo ship, with all of them agreeing that a post on a mining ship would be the least favorable. Adrian, on the other hand, believed that there was a good chance that they would be posted to serve on one of Olympus’s warships. But the others didn’t even know that those existed, and Adrian couldn’t tell them. So he agreed with them.
After they arrived at the Moon station, they were immediately met by a woman in fleet uniform with the rank of Adjutant, who sent them instructions on where they needed to check in. They were split, with most were sent to the offices in charge of transport ships, save Alexander, who was sent to medical, and Adrian and Bethany, who were only given the instructions on how to get to the office where they were supposed to check in. They said their goodbyes and agreed to meet later that day.
“I wonder why we weren’t sent with the others. It doesn’t even say where we are going, just the instructions on how to get there. I hope they don’t plan on assigning us to a mining ship,” she said. Adrian didn’t need to wonder; he knew exactly where they were going. He had gone there often when he’d been on a break from the Academy and had the time for the trip to the base orbiting the Moon.
“We are going to Laura Reiss’s office,” Adrian said.
“And how do you know that?” Bethany asked, frowning.
“I was there before,” Adrian said.
Bethany stared at him, but when he didn’t elaborate, she gave up and they walked the rest of the way in silence.
When they arrived, the secretary in front of the office instructed them to go in. Adrian entered the office with Bethany following close behind. The office was the same as it had always been. Laura sat behind her desk reading reports. Or rather, Fleets Master Laura Reiss, Adrian corrected himself. He couldn’t keep referring to her as he usually did, at least not in public. When she noticed them, she stood up and walked around the t
able to stand in front of them. Both Bethany and Adrian stood at attention. Laura studied them for a moment, and then reached out and hugged Adrian, surprising him. A moment later, she let him go, without him even having the chance to return the gesture.
“Congratulations on passing, Adrian,” she said, smiling brightly. Adrian looked at her and couldn’t help but smile as well. Laura was the closest thing to a mother he’d ever had. And even though he had forgone the possibility of being adopted when he accepted to come to Olympus, he felt as if she was his family. And even without her last name, he felt a close bond with her.
“Thank you,” Adrian said, and then he remembered Bethany. He glanced at her and saw that she had a startled and confused look on her face. She of course didn’t know about his connection to Laura.
Adrian coughed uncomfortably and looked back at Laura. She looked at Bethany and her face reverted to her commanding form.
“Cadet Jones, congratulations on passing the training,” Laura said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Bethany responded tightly. Adrian had no doubt that he would need to explain some things later.
Laura nodded and then turned to her desk, where two black boxes sat. She picked them up and turned back towards them.
“I know that both of you are wondering why you are here. The answer is simple, I wanted to inform you of your earned ranks and your assignment in person.” She opened the boxes and retrieved two sets of Low Prime insignia. “Both of you are granted the ranks of Low Prime in the Olympus Fleet.” She pinned the ranks on both of their shoulders. They were stunned; they’d never expected such a high rank. At most, they’d thought they would be given the rank of Adjutant. Their faces must have conveyed their thoughts, because Laura smiled and said, “There was much debate over what ranks were to be given to those who passed the training. You have all exceeded our expectations. Most the others have gotten the ranks of Station Handlers or Adjutants, but the two of you were the only ones to get the Low Prime ranks. There was a lot of arguing over that decision; some even wanted to give you a higher rank, mostly because your scores in the simulations at the Academy, and those during the past year, far surpassed those of our fleet officers. But in the end, we decided that while you were impressive at the Academy, you still lacked experience.”