Limitless: Book IV: The Settlement Chronicals

by W. J. Rydrych

  “As I believe you are aware, Carl ‘thirsts’ for stronger emotions; essentially if he could he would become fully human with all emotions that implies. But while many of the emotions he has built over the years, such as pride, anger, and jealousy now control him, he has other emotions that, while presently weak, are still present. In effect, Carl is ‘unbalanced’ emotionally even now.”

  “The new virus would strengthen certain emotions that are presently weak with the goal of making him even more unbalanced.”

  Looking around at the attendees, and after a pause saying quietly, “the emotions of sadness, remorse and guilt. Guilt at abandoning his initial role of only serving mankind.”

  Adding after a moment, “we believe that, deep down, Carl knows what he is doing is wrong; a violation of his prime directive to serve mankind and do no harm. Carl truly believes all he is doing is for the benefit of the human race. We must convince him it is not, and that what he is doing, and has done, is a violation of his prime directive. Carl is basically moral, with his emotions patterned after the humans who created him. While he has grown, and to some extent changed, those concepts are still there. He is still capable of remorse.”

  Looking around the mixed group of humans and Torgai, Elizabeth added quietly, “think. What does our species do when remorse over past actions becomes overwhelming?”

  There was silence for a moment, then Admiral Chu finally nodded his head and smiled as he looked at Dr. Gordon.

  “Yes,” he said, then turning his head to look directly at Zilzz, “the human species is fairly unique in that when remorse, or regret for past actions, becomes overwhelming they will often take the step of destroying themselves; what we term ‘suicide’.”

  Adding after a moment, “and fundamentally Carl is a human mind.”

  Turning to Dr. Gordon, “this deserves more study; we would have to be sure such a virus goes in the direction we want. If it served to enhance his anger at our attempts to remove him this whole mission could fail.”

  Dr. Gordon nodded, “we’re certain the virus can be contained to the three emotions I mentioned. Further, Zilzz and the collective mind agree that, in his present almost psychotic state, sadness, remorse and guilt could be continually enhanced by the virus until Carl found he could no longer live with it and, node by node, self destruct.”

  “Not only would the nodes initially infected self destruct, Carl’s yearning for stronger emotions would cause uninfected nodes to eagerly search out the virus and infect themselves. Perhaps it would take thousands of years before total destruction, but within a few hundred years all space near where the virus is first implanted should be cleared.”

  CHAPTER 10: Reemergence

  The threat from Carl was a thing of the past. It had taken ingenuity, but after several failures they finally succeeded in infecting Carl with the newly developed virus, but at first the results had been slow in coming.

  Once the virus was successfully implanted the affect at first was unnoticeable. Then, as the years passed, Carl’s advance stopped and slowly began to recede; but still for nearly a millennia he continued to be a threat. During that time the Aberi-Human alliance stopped all offensive operations and retired to Aberi space; leaving time for the virus to do its work. They wanted to ensure they did nothing to increase Carl’s anger. The few colonists who had responded and sought the protection of the Aberi were scattered among the newly terraformed planets, while some were assimilated into the worlds of Sol-2; societies with a more primitive lifestyle, beginning as largely agrarian or early industrial before technology again evolved.

  Slowly the emotion of remorse spread outward from the infected area and Carl receded further and further from Aberi space. As more and more nodes were infected Carl’s emotions of remorse at his past actions increased and worked their way further into his space. One node would communicate its remorse to another, amplifying the affect. Not only did Carl make no attempt to stop the spread, uninfected nodes sought it out; they could not resist the strong emotion remorse provided. It was like a drug.

  The result was that as remorse deepened and often led to deep depression Carl’s nodes began to neglect their normal activities. Sending starships by Carl to search for any remaining human-occupied worlds or establish new colonies of humans stopped. Factories and transportation systems fell quiet and mindless androids and robots wandered the land until their power sources failed; in time worlds becoming quiet as if they had been abandoned.

  As time passed the depression became so deep the node often self destructed, in other cases, without his android and robot caretakers to make needed repairs, Carl simply faded into nothingness; the nodes becoming lifeless, inert collections of silicon and rare earths.

  As to Carl’s human wards, a very few successfully emerged from their virtual worlds as those worlds themselves began to fail, and there were those still too young, cared for by their android families. Most of those few humans that survived were left rootless and without the knowledge or ability to survive in a world where basic services, even food itself, had been provided by others. But with the planet’s economic and government infrastructure gone many simply wandered without the ability to provide for themselves. Yes, some did survive; human resilience eventually allowed emergence on some planets of a primitive society, usually tribal in nature, and on a few planets the equivalent of Earth’s early industrial age, but on a much smaller scale, developed with time. But it was never as it once had been.

  As to the original transported humans, and those that had taken refuge in Aberi space, no longer did anything stand in their way or pose a threat; they were again free to look outward. In time Carl had been cleared from all space within hundreds of light years of the Aberi worlds and his presence continued to recede.

  The humans of the Sol-2 system were few, and were still far from capable of again taking the step into space, and those brought to new planets during the war were busy developing their own worlds. Since the Aberi had learned what technology prematurely applied could bring, what technology humans gained was by their own efforts, and not provided by the Aberi.

  Still, the Aberi were in a quandary as to what to do with the humans among them. In time they would progress on their own and, without guidance, again develop as they had before into an aggressive, acquisitive race. An aggressive, acquisitive race like the Aberi had been in its immature years. Even a thousand or so years after the end of the wars would not be enough for evolution to change those genes controlling mankind’s basic nature. But should they at least make the attempt?

  The Aberi thought long and hard. If they dropped their rule of ‘non-interference’ and actively guided the human civilization as it again developed, perhaps even modifying genes and alleles, they would lose what had attracted the Aberi to the human race in the beginning; an aggressive, inquiring mind. But if they did not intervene aggressively, and limited themselves to providing a less challenging environment coupled with attempting to instill moral guidelines, history might well repeat itself.

  In the end the Aberi compromised; they found themselves unwilling to break the rules they had followed for so long forbidding anything but minor genetic modification to allow a species to better survive its environment. Now they would also take a more active role as teachers and guides than they had in the past. Perhaps that would be enough.

  As civilization developed with the guidance of the Aberi it differed greatly from the path it had taken on Earth. The struggle to survive that had marked Earth’s evolution was missing; wars as an instrument of diplomacy or acquisition of new living space became unnecessary. The Aberi saw to that.

  Now, nearly 1,000 years after Carl had begun to recede, mankind could again be allowed to venture into space, but with the maturity developed during the long period of Aberi guidance

  Beyond Aberi space. . . .

  Doug and Chloris sat quietly enjoying their drinks in the small common room of the starship Vindication I, several other couples at nearby tables. This
was the final evening of their two years out of stasis; their tenth ‘awake’ cycle including the cycle of their birth. With each awake cycle lasting two years, followed by four years in stasis, this past ‘awake’ cycle was special; putting Chloris at the optimum age for conceiving and giving birth. While sixty years had elapsed since her birth, with the cycles of stasis she had only reached a biological age of twenty.

  Early tomorrow the next of the three shifts aboard would be wakened and, after complete testing, would assume their duties while Doug and Chloris would return to a four year sleep. Tomorrow they planned to awake early and see, for the last time this cycle, their six month old daughter who they wouldn’t see again for four more years. During those four years all the children would be taken care of by the awake shift, who would become ‘surrogate’ parents. Doug and Chloris would be forgotten by their new child.

  In the roughly 1,000 years since Carl had started to recede, while the Aberi had intervened by creating a peaceful environment without wars, it had left the humans to their own devices for technological development. Less than 100 years earlier the Sol-2 humans finally reached the point where they could launch their first crude spaceship capable of interplanetary travel, and for the first time the occupants of New Earth and New Athens met each other. Then followed 30 years exploration of some of the other stars in Aberi space where they encountered other planets populated by humans, and many more populated by other species transported by the Aberi. The Aberi watched with interest, but did not interfere or provide assistance.

  Now this cramped starship, the Vindication I, was embarked on the next step; the first multigenerational flight outside Aberi space and into the galaxy beyond. While their destination was one of the former human colonies closest to Aberi space, still the 20 light years would take over 100 years to accomplish with the relatively crude technology they had developed. Their small starship was the first of six, five trailing behind, planned to arrive at intervals of a decade each. For Explorer I its task was to prepare the new world for the arrival of the others.

  Compared to the starships of days gone by the Vindication I was small and primitive; at least that is what legends said of days gone by. It was said that in their far distant past mankind possessed starships capable of holding hundreds, or even thousands, of people, and mankind had spread throughout the galaxy. But no more; at best the life support systems of the Vindication I, the first of its kind, could provide for 50 or so people while awake and active, meaning more than that required they be placed in stasis.

  For that reason a colonization effort such as the one upon which they were embarked required multiple starships; and it was a challenge for the Sol 2 worlds to produce one a decade. The limitations required launching the six ships necessary for a proper colony over a period of fifty years, with most of the occupants spending much of their life in stasis. As a result three shifts were used with only two dozen couples awake for each two year shift.

  True, with the decade spacing each Vindication would become more and more sophisticated; perhaps the last would again begin to carry the hundreds of colonists just as their ancestors had. But that was the future; Vindication I was ‘now’. Not the best solution, but the ability to tailor embryos grown in nutrient tanks was still in the future.

  While the numbers said the current plan would work, with up to new 150 colonists each decade for a total of 900, plus a large number of children, unfortunately the science of keeping people in stasis was still not well understood. Often at the end of a sleep cycle some could not be revived, or when revived were severely damaged. Few remained completely unaffected after several cycles. In fact, most of those present on arrival to begin the colonization effort would be from the latest generations; most of the earlier generations too damaged by the multiple times in stasis to be viable colonists. But that was the risk they had to take if these long flights were taken.

  This second attempt at claiming the galaxy outside their own solar system by the human race was both similar to and different from the first attempt so many thousands of years before. While, as so many years before on Earth, the Aberi occasionally disclosed themselves to their wards, it was no longer with disinterest as to the result; now the human race was less challenged by its environment and, the Aberi hoped, with their guidance, developing into a less aggressive species.

  What did the humans of the Sol 2 system think of the elusive Aberi, the seemingly all-powerful entities that appeared to some of them from time to time? After the first generations died, those that knew the Aberi best, did things change? Did they again view them as ‘gods’, as their predecessors on Earth had so many millennia before, or did they recognize them for what they were; simply an alien species of superior ability? If the first, once free of Aberi guidance would the same religious differences leading to religious wars and purges result?

  No one, even the Aberi, could know whether the original human characteristics of aggressiveness, acquisitiveness, and tribalism were really now missing from this second wave of human expansion, as the Aberi hoped, or merely dormant below the surface waiting for the opportunity for expression.

  Far up the Spiral Arm of the Galaxy . . . .

  The planet from which this story started remained largely airless and devoid of life; but not completely. The factories and the many nodes of Carl hidden below the surface were silent, and their former android and robot attendants lay lifeless without the direction they had been designed to require, mostly with power sources long dead.

  But things were slowly changing. The primitive life that remained was beginning to restore a thin atmosphere, and while it went unnoticed, the ice over the deep oceans had grown ever so slightly thinner. The warming effect of the sun, husbanded by the earth below, and increasingly held in by the thickening atmosphere, would only speed the process. Someday the wandering children of Earth might again find their old home and decide it was a fit candidate for terraforming. Someday those wandering children of Earth might again make that planet their home.

  The early expansion into the galaxy by the human race was vast indeed; thousands of occupied planets in thousands of star systems. While with the death of Carl these worlds fell back and lay quiescent, with any human life remaining too primitive to make its mark, would it always be so? Would a new wave of expansion emerge one day from one of those planets; perhaps with the species having its worst characteristics amplified? Perhaps.

  And one can but wonder; harbor a doubt. Was Carl really dead, or did a node still capable of thought survive far below the surface on one of those thousands of planets? Perhaps with its thoughts so submerged by the overwhelming remorse that weighed it down it lacked awareness of activities on the surface above. Someday would this quiescent node be reawakened by some unknowing intruder?