Oceanworlds

by J. P. Landau

  “Now that’s a fascinating claim,” said Derya. “Because what you call God would be indistinguishable from an ancient alien civilization that had billions of years to evolve.”

  “Yes!” jumped in Sophia, clearly excited. “Cropping and manicuring primitive sentient beings like us around the Universe. Tossing an intentional stone at Earth to unseat the dinosaurs so that mammals could have a chance. Nudging archaic humans into mastering fire. Watching us with fascination evolve, make mistakes, amend our ways … caring, lovingly. Our forefathers in all but bloodline.”

  “Look at Andromeda,” said Derya. “Our giant galactic neighbor would look six times bigger than our Moon if we could easily spot it from Earth, except so few photons manage to traverse the enormous distance and then Earth’s atmosphere that it can only be seen by the naked eye on a moonless night.” Here, in the unending night of outer space, its majestic oval shape and spiral arms were perfectly discernible against the void. “It’s a shame,” continued Derya. “If it shined like the Moon does, I think its immensity in the sky would have tempered our arrogance, our chauvinism, and our persistent geocentric stubbornness. But anyway, what I wanted to say is that it’s 2.5 million light-years away. At our extraordinary speed, twice as fast as our closest competitor, Apollo 10, it would take us … er, help me out here, TiTus.”

  “Assuming constant speed, about 34 billion years to arrive,” said TiTus.

  “Almost three times the current age of the Universe!” said Derya. “So, unless wormholes are real and big and stable enough to allow sizable things to pass back and forth, we are trapped in our galaxy.”

  “It’s hundreds of billions of stars spread across 150,000 light-years. We are having trouble moving around one star. I say there’s no particular hurry in finding those wormholes,” said Sophia.

  “What I mean is that biological organisms are bulky, spoiled, fallible, and fragile. Say in the distant future our civilization builds a Noah’s Ark for a million people and then travels successfully through interstellar space for 1,000 years. Yet a ten-minute hiccup in the oxygen supply system is all it takes to kill every single human on board. Look at us. We need all this support machinery and regeneration systems to keep us alive, forcing a huge spacecraft that in turn forces fuel restrictions so severe we move at barely twenty miles per second—this compared to the speed of light’s already shamefully slow 186,000 miles per second—and even so we feel like we’re living inside a sarcophagus. Worse yet, sharing it … no. Human 2.0 will not be made of carbon. They will be made of silicon. Not Enceladus’ biological silicon. I mean Silicon Valley silicon. I mean uploading the consciousness of a living person into a computer. In case you haven’t noticed, artificial intelligence is overrated. Much better to have human intuition and powers of deduction coupled with superhuman processing and mnemonic power. Sometime in the future we’ll be able to simulate through software and hardware the neuronal wiring of the human brain. Then we’ll get rid of our bodies and upload ourselves into the cloud. That means achieving immortality but also shrinking spaceships to finger-sized vessels carrying hundreds, maybe millions of people. Then and only then are we ready to expand across our galaxy and beyond.”

  “Which brings us full circle to the Designer,” said Sophia. “The God, plural or singular. If It or They are a hyper-developed ancient alien civilization, then it’s indeed intelligent design itself, imparting intelligent design around the Universe. Biological species that once upon a time evolved from gunk much like ourselves on a habitable world, until they upgraded themselves into second-generation, sentient computer programs that expanded across the Universe … if so, most of life in the cosmos may not be carbon-based, but silicon-based. Silicon Valley silicon.”

  “We wanted to honor Yi the Curious and Jimmy the Adventurer. I say mission accomplished,” said Derya.

  78 | Reverse Slingshot

  June 11 2032. Return Day 622; 1.2 Years to Earth

  JUPITER

  “Lamb, naturally. Roasting outside on a stick over firewood embers, for never less than four hours, turned every once in a while,” said a daydreaming Derya. “Dripping fat, which upon contact with the embers assaults my nostrils. Eating in quantities that guarantee an unbearable heartburn later—but later doesn’t matter; it’s all about the now.”

  Sophia’s head was so near that Derya’s breath caressed her clammy left cheek. The three had been inside the igloo, barely able to move without elbowing one another, for eight protracted hours. The closest approach to Jupiter was coming in four hours and thirty-seven minutes, yet no one had nor would exit their shelter until Shackleton abandoned the worst of the radiation belts in seventeen hours.

  As they waited for Sergei to start talking, her ears picked up on the unsettling stillness around them. If Shack was a person she would be in an induced coma, Sophia thought. For the first time since launch even the fans’ whirring is on holiday.

  “Come on, Serezha, quid pro quo,” she said, while watching Sergei’s handsome reddened face not two feet away, upper lip and temples beaded by the muggy air. A polar bear stranded in the Amazon rainforest.

  Their last skirmish against tension and tedium consisted of imagining a favorite activity for when they landed back on Earth, one of the few pastimes endless repetition didn’t blunt.

  “Let me give it a try,” said Derya. “Dropped off in a Siberian winter with a hunting knife, a wool mat, and flint and steel. Or three matches. You pick.”

  A worthy guess.

  “Perhaps later. Go to the zoo really, as long as it’s after hours,” said Sergei.

  “Now you have my attention,” said Derya. “Fearing the onset of arthritis from signing autographs?”

  “Not really, I was famous way before you, but for half a decade we’ve had the social interactions of cavemen. Once back you’ll feel like you have Asperger’s.”

  While Sophia hunted around her mind for anything to keep chipping minutes away from the hours, the sirens went off. The sensors around the ship were triggered by exceedingly high radiation levels. The crew did not need a reminder, but Earth’s decision not to disable them was to avoid modifying the large, single block software code controlling the alarm network on board Shackleton. As the return home became less hope and more fact, everyone was becoming overly cautious. The Angel of Death descending upon us.

  She wished the din had the familiar wailing of an ambulance. Instead, it had a petrifying nine-second ramp up to a deafening scream that released into a long descent in tone and volume before picking up again, like a World War II air raid siren. Her primal fear was reaching deep down and clenching her soul.

  “Best snooze alarm ever,” said Derya.

  Thanks for trying to lighten the mood.

  “Earth didn’t want to specify the thresholds,” he continued, “so I checked the code myself. The trigger is the radiation level at Hiroshima’s ground zero minutes after the explosion.”

  I take that back.

  Silence had settled for hours and Jupiter’s closest approach was behind them.

  Deep inside you know we’ll survive, Derya kept telling himself. What we’ve overcome makes any impending obstacle doable. But then he pictured the radiation belts enveloping them, particles subjugated into the fourth fundamental state of matter—plasma—and flung at super high speeds into perpetual loops. They call them chorus waves, the ant-sized version of which are responsible for the northern lights on Earth, because when converted to sound they become the demented chirping chorus of terrorized birds.

  “—no, I’m saying the very first time you ever kissed someone,” said Sophia.

  “And I just told you, it was Iman,” said Sergei.

  “But you were, like, 27 …” said Sophia.

  “A virgin at 27!?” asked an incredulous Derya.

  “I didn’t say a virgin. I said my first kiss,” answered Sergei.

  Really? You can bayonet with no prelude? In my eyes you’ve grown an inch taller. “If you say so,” said Derya.


  “How’s that possible?” asked Sophia, enthralled. “Not the virgin part, the kiss bit.”

  “I’m digging deep into my trove of secrets here. This only Iman knew, so I expect some form of reciprocity … the most popular boy title meant I wasn’t supposed to care, but I did. To me that first kiss needed to be magical, with someone special. Like Disney. Like Sleeping Beauty. It didn’t happen at 15 and each new year the stakes got higher. What if I was bad at it? What if I didn’t feel anything? What would that mean? So, then it was 18 years, 21, 24, and finally 27.” He let out a sad smile to himself. “It was well worth the wait.”

  Look, she’s eating him with her eyes, Derya thought. And he turns out to be a vulnerable orchid disguised as an invincible android. How cute. Meanwhile, Maleficent—also goes by the name Jupiter—is piercing Shack with trillions of high-energy particles each and every microsecond, with many killer ions, electrons, photons, and neutrons bombarding our bodies fast and hard, some finding cell nuclei along the way—incubating cancers, nurturing cataracts, damaging the central nervous system, wiping out bone marrow stem cells, destroying blood cells, devastating neurons.

  “TiTus, status please,” said Sophia. Derya realized the regular reports from TiTus had ceased and it had been an abnormally long silence from the computer.

  “Commander—Commander—Commander—Commander—”

  “TiTus, what is your status?” repeated Sophia in a clear yet urgent voice.

  This time there was no answer. They looked at each other.

  Scheiße.

  “TiTus. Full ship report.”

  “TiTus. Full ship report. Now.”

  Scheiße.

  “You think … maybe there’s a problem with the voice activation controls?” a hopeful Sophia asked while looking at Derya.

  “Tweety, its brain has fried,” said Derya categorically. We knew the risks.

  Some of the zillion magnetic particles slamming Shackleton were bound to fly against its electronics and knock atoms off the chip or electrons out of position in the circuitry. And TiTus had no radiation vault …

  Had they known about the reverse slingshot, the electronic parts would have been made larger, a jump into the past. Transistors, the fundamental building blocks of electronics, were currently made of two atoms. Three decades before in Moore’s law, circa 2000–2001, would have required 650 atoms for that same transistor. And hence the paradox. Losing one atom in an old transistor would mean no perceptible functionality loss, whereas it obliterates the functionality in a modern one. For once in history, older computer tech is superior to the cutting edge.

  The clueless hush was slain by Sergei, “I’m going to the flight deck. Need to shut down TiTus and check if manual course correction is needed.”

  Derya gazed at the blue eyes in awe, glancing back briefly.

  Words were superfluous. Venturing out may cost Sergei his life now or years later, but not going could doom them all.

  The frying of electronics will get worse before it gets better and a full shutdown decreases the risk of damaging more circuitry and transistors. Hopefully TiTus is crippled and not dead because it is indispensable for a successful re-entry to Earth.

  In less than a minute Sergei’s body disappeared from view as he closed the tiny igloo entrance behind him.

  The cargo area was pitch-black except for a line of red dots disappearing up the passageway like a runway at midnight. Sergei glided toward it in a silence so complete he heard the ratcheting inside his mouth as he swallowed.

  He deftly grabbed a rung and launched himself forward to the flight deck four levels ahead. Feeling as if someone was pulling on his hair, the longest it had ever been, he placed his hand on top of his head and sensed the static. I’m the coal mine canary, he thought.

  “TiTus, commence mainframe shutdown,” he shouted, expecting and receiving no answer.

  As he crossed the sleeping quarters level in his interminable glide to the cockpit, his mind fixated on what he had recently read about Hiroshima survivors with acute radiation syndrome. People being brought to the hospitals with no injuries developed crippling vomiting and diarrhea within hours. As days went by their hair fell out by the handful and sores and bluish spots erupted all over their skin. Many soon began bleeding from the mouth, nose, and ears. Doctors gave them vitamin A injections and the results were horrible: flesh started rotting around the hole made by the needle. Every single patient died after enduring days to weeks of excruciating pain. Autopsies showed their organs had been cooked from the inside out—time will soon tell if I get radiation poisoning. He was anxious but level-headed.

  Once on the flight deck, he kept his sight intentionally low while his hands positioned him mostly from memory back into his seat, yet as he dashed his eyes from the floor to the main screen, he couldn’t entirely prevent his retinas from soaking in the psychedelic shapes and colors of Jupiter.

  “Ничего себе.”

  In the minutes that followed, as he checked the ship’s trajectory, the corner of his eyes kept trying to seduce him toward the Observation Window.

  “Sophia, Derya, over,” he finally called over the intercom. “Good news. No additional course corrections needed. We’re heading back home having shaved over ten miles per second.” And carrying a giant question mark: with TiTus gone or crippled, how are we going to re-enter and land?

  Sergei manually shut down the mainframe.

  I’ve earned the right. He faced the Observation Window and abandoned himself to the cloudscape before him.

  There was no perspective whatsoever, the entire window had been seized by what at a glance could have been Van Gogh’s The Starry Night: rivers of turbid cobalt flowing into emerald seas, zinc-yellow maelstroms farrowing a dozen whorls and eddies, white parasitic tendrils swarming across ultramarine night skies. The mesmerizing stockpile of fluid shapes and swirling colors seemed obedient to a single rule of no straight lines.

  Sergei found an abstract way of grasping perspective. They were 26,000 miles away from Jupiter’s cloud top chromatic maze. At that distance, our Moon would have had an apparent size in the sky of half a fist on a fully extended arm. Instead, seemingly everything in all directions belonged to the gas giant. Each second resounded in his mind like a pendulum clock marking twelve yet he leered, hunting for clues that denied the possibility he was dreaming an oil painting on canvas. He found three almost concurrently.

  He perceived the curvature, although it felt as if they had been sucked inside a giant balloon and he was looking at its internal wall. I knew 1,300 Earths fit inside Jupiter, but knowing is not the same as understanding. He also discerned movement betraying the seething cauldron of colored billows before him. And he saw the shadow, no bigger than a ping pong ball, of one of its moons etched against Jupiter’s cloud tops.

  Thereupon he propelled himself out of his chair and flew for cover back to the igloo.

  The moon in question was Io.

  A few days later, once out of the danger zone, they took turns spying on it through Derya’s telescope.

  Whereas Saturn’s court favors an exotic diversity of sixty-two moons, Jupiter’s sacrificed quantity in favor of four sisters—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto38—the very moons which convinced Galileo in 1610 that the geocentric model that had reigned for fifteen centuries was dying before his eyes.

  Europa, and perhaps Ganymede and Callisto, have global seas under their icy surfaces. But that’s their only evocation of serenity, as the four orbit the harshest part of the radiation belts. Io, the innermost of the moons, is also subject to the mutant gravitational pull of the giant plus its three siblings, and it has the scars to show for it. By far the most volcanic place ever observed, it produces the closest real-life depiction of a medieval Hell.

  Sergei had settled his eye over the telescope’s oculus and it seemed to him as if he was peeking through a keyhole into Dante’s Inferno: the abscesses running rampant across Io’s sulfurous skin were volcanoes, some blasting
the moon’s guts hundreds of miles into space before settling back down into rivers and seas of molten lava criss-crossing its surface. A moon barely larger than ours capable of crushing terrestrial fact and legend: with a mountain, Boösaule Montes, twice as high as Everest with a sheer southeast face ten miles tall, three times taller than any on Earth; meanwhile, Tolkien’s Mount Doom would sit in the mid to low ranks among the hundreds of volcanoes of Io.

  “You’re sure this is the ping pong shadow I saw over Jupiter’s cloud tops?” asked Sergei to Derya.

  “Yes, 100 percent.”

  “And you’re saying this orange thing is …” Sergei was looking at an umbrella shape distorting the otherwise perfectly circular moon outline.

  “An erupting volcano,” said Derya. “The comparatively low gravity creates sprawling radiuses of lava fallout that look like the water curtains of fire sprinklers. That one’s shower is covering an area the size of Alaska.”

  Two months later, Derya was watching Dances with Wolves in bed when a twinge in his stomach made him screech. In moments the stabbing pain clutched his whole abdomen. He had been disregarding the increasingly periodic cramping that developed a few weeks after leaving Jupiter, but the pain had never reached this level before. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhit. This … is … inhuman. Fuuuuuuuuckkk, he thought deliriously. Every nerve in his chest seemed to be sounding the horn and a congestion of electric signals flooded his cortex. Faint. Please black out. For God’s sake make this stop! The spasms jerked his body from one side to the other. For an instant his eyes opened and he saw a face in the mirror so contorted as to be unrecognizable. Without losing consciousness he abandoned the Solar System and burned inside the core of a hypergiant star. The mindless suffering was atemporal—perhaps endless or perhaps fleeting—unimaginable and unrelenting. At some point it eased and at some point later it stopped. He lay in bed, physically and mentally spent. When he tried to stand, he began coughing. He used his towel to muffle the noise, set on not alerting Sophia or Sergei. This … must remain between you and me … our dirty little secret. After a particularly strong bout of coughing he noticed his yellow towel peppered with red spots. “No. NO. NO!”