James laughed. “There’s nothing else that the write gave to you that you’d like to discuss?”
“Nothing of great importance, no.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Just kidding, you numpty," she said, quickly moved to grab his shirt and pulled him into a kiss. “Two hours ago, you were the last person I expected to be doing that to.” She said, once they eventually separated.
“Our future selves pulled a fast one on us. Are you okay with it? We should have warned you, really, you might not have gone ahead with the merge if you thought it was going to lock you into that destiny.”
“It’s fine, it’s not like with Sarah, I agreed to the merge beforehand, that included any personal changes that came with it. I know that we’d have eventually been drawn to each other anyway, I wouldn’t have just kissed you if I thought any different.”
Their future selves had made the decision to wait for Victor to undergo his write and gain the memories of how James and Beth’s relationship had blossomed from the start so that things wouldn’t feel so awkward. Victor had dated Beth first after all, though they hadn’t gotten too far, they hadn’t even shared a kiss. Father and son dating the same girl at different times was weird territory, but forgivable in their strange circumstances, especially now that Sarah was back. This was the biggest news as far as James and Beth were concerned, but the others were probably going to find their second surprise much more exciting.
They returned to the group, and Spencer decided to be next in line for her write. She asked if they had anything to tell them before she went under, but they remained tight-lipped.
“It’s a surprise!” Beth said. “Promise it’s not an evil plan.”
“Don’t say it’s not an evil plan, Beth, now she’s going to think it is an evil plan," James said.
“I must admit, it didn’t even occur to me that it might be until you said that," Spencer said.
“You’ll have to just trust us," James said reassuringly with a wink.
“I absolutely do," Spencer said with a smile. She picked her helmet up and went to the recliner. “Stupid to even ask, really, since I’m going to know as soon as I wake up. Back in a jiffy.”
Chapter 43
One by one, the team received their writes, each one keeping their secrets from the next. Simon was the last to undergo the merge, which was best as he would be the one to get the most out of the news.
Once Simon’s write came to its conclusion, he awoke to find the whole group gathered around his reclining chair. He wondered what might be going on, for the briefest of moments he thought that they might be checking up on his mental state, fearful of a new Stan, but then the new memories kicked in. The first instant when coming out of a write felt like waking from a dream, in a bed that’s not your own, taking a fraction of a second to realise where you are.
“Whoah," Simon said.
“Yep," Spencer said. “We’ve been waiting for you to wake up so we could make a start.”
“This could be the thing that saves us.”
“Yep," Victor said. “So stop lounging and get to work, genius.”
Simon almost leapt out of his chair to begin work on their subatomic assembler, a technology that would bring them another step closer to teleportation. They had yet to figure out how to assemble something as complicated as a human being at the return side of the teleportation sequence, though they had managed to construct cells in the cloning pod, this new subatomic assembler was both simpler and more complicated. Complex because they could create whole food items from thin air, but the unit was easy to use, which could turn out to be the saving grace for humankind. The assembler could create compounds from subatomic particles, meaning that they would be able to create an unlimited supply of water. Though they referred to it as an assembler, it was also a disassembler; it would recycle any object by breaking it down into its constituent subatomic particles, then the particles could be reused as building blocks for creating something new.
The teleportation process would consist of a number of stages, first the object to be sent would need to be scanned, a scan so thorough that the original object had to be disintegrated for its composition to be inspected and catalogued at a subatomic level. The subatomic assembler/disassembler would be able to do this, and then store the plans for replicating the item, so that it could be recreated an unlimited number of times at will.
As a byproduct of generating more vital resources — be it food, water or any other substance — the assembler would also solve the planet’s waste problem. Acres upon acres of waste sitting in dumps and landfill would finally have a purpose, allowing it to be removed and reused. The subatomic assembler would take the waste and break it down so it could serve as a source of particles when creating whatever was most in need. Recycling programs have been helpful in managing society’s waste problem until now, but this new technology would make any item recyclable, regardless of the material it was made out of, even natural waste. It would also make the waste conversion process much simpler, as simple as throwing the refuse into a bottomless pit, no need for complicated processing machinery. Every home could swap their rubbish receptacles for one of these machines. With this technology, the PRE-Innovations team could finally have the solution to all of their problems.
The group were in the central work area of HQ, Simon was already constructing the parts for the subatomic assembler.
“Now we have it here, and it’s technically been reborn, I think it’s time we came up with a catchier name for it. How about replicator?” Beth asked.
“We might get in legal troubles. CBS probably own the rights to that one.” Victor said.
The TV channel owned Star Trek, the first show to use such technology. This wouldn’t be the first time that technology had caught up with the science fiction of the show.
“People use the term warp drive without a problem.” Spencer alluded.
“That’s a fair point, but wouldn’t you prefer it if we came up with our own name?” Victor responded.
“What can we call it that might roll off the tongue a little easier? Subassembler?” Beth asked.
“Reatomiser?” Spencer asked.
“Nah, an atomiser is a spray bottle, it sounds like something that sprays in a cycle," Victor said.
“We need an acronym," Simon said. “Something like SART, Sub-Atomic Reclaiming Technology.”
“That sounds like fart, Simon," Beth said.
“Okay, Sub-Atomic Reclamation Sequencer.”
“SARS, Simon?” Victor asked. “That’s taken. And a little frightening.”
“Can you think of anything else?”
“Sub Atomic Reclamation Apparatus," Sarah said.
“Really?” James said. “SARA? How narcissistic.” He laughed
“I don’t know, I like it," Victor said.
“You would," James replied.
The group pondered on the question for a few minutes, but no one could come up with anything better than replicator or SARA.
“I vote for SARA," Spencer said. “It has a nice soft, non-threatening sound to it.”
“It’s definitely better than FART.” James said. “Especially since it will be used to recycle biological waste.”
“SART," Simon corrected.
“Whatever.”
“Recycling human waste sounds gross, but society already does it, and SARA would do it with one-hundred percent efficiency,” Victor said. “Some people would no doubt need reassurance that we’re not handing them food that’s made out of poo, but they’d get used to the idea.” Most of the group chuckled, despite the immaturity in doing so. “We could replace the standard flush with SARA.”
“Maybe the name isn’t such a good idea after all," Sarah interjected.
“It might make a home self-sufficient.” Victor continued.
“But what if one family home creates a surplus of broken down matter and others have a deficit? Wouldn’t it be better to have it on a shared system?” James aske
d.
“Could be, it will take a lot of calculation. Or we could just play it by ear and if we make the wrong choice, reset it.”
“It will probably be taken out of our hands once we turn over the technology, I would think," Simon said.
“We could try it out here for a while," Spencer said. “See if self-sufficiency works in HQ and in our homes if we end up with more, or less, particle ingredients than we need to keep going, a shared system would be the better option. I think it will remain constant, it’s just energy in, energy out. Energy isn’t destroyed, it’s just reallocated elsewhere. We won’t have a lot of packaging to dispose of because nothing will need to be packaged when the product is created at home, on demand.”
“Good point. We should give that a go.”
“I’m not sure we need to, as far as public use is concerned,” Simon offered. “If there is a deficit or a surplus, we could solve it with our current plumbing system. If you’ve a slight excess of base particles after a day, the surplus could be transformed into water and sent through the pipes, if you have a deficit, just pull water from the pipes, break it down and keep going. Water could be a compound middleman, like currency in a trade.”
“Nice.” James gave Simon a pat on the back.
“What about industry? If they’re disposing of waste, we could get floods, or if people are taking more than they need, we could get a resource problem again.” Spencer said.
“Valid point, but I think it would even out, like your energy simile," Sarah said. “The amount of waste they put out won’t be greater than the materials they bring in.”
“We’ll see," Simon said. “I think a test run here would be good, but we’d need to create a closed system, reroute all the plumbing to a recycler.”
“If the world did go to shit again, we’d have a much simpler system for staying alive,” Simon said. “We wouldn’t need nutrition bars and could create any spare part we required, no complicated whirring machinery. The nutrition bar machine may have been similar, but it’s nowhere near as sophisticated as this.”
“You know, we can handle this Simon if you want to continue your other little project," Victor said.
The final surprise that their new memories had supplied was that Simon’s quest to find a NASA liaison had borne fruit. Zack Winstone had been the end product of a two-year search for a trustworthy colleague who would neither steal their technology or be at odds with their philosophy for keeping their work private. It had taken a few loops before falling on the right man, but this time around he would be able to skip the search and go straight to Zack, knowing exactly how to recruit him. He knew exactly because Zack himself had told him how.
“You sure?” Simon said. “That would be useful. The quicker I start, the sooner we’ll be an interplanetary species.”
Simon looked immensely happy to be talking about space travel like he was eight years old again and had been gifted a new puppy.
“If we manage to crack real teleportation this time around too, we could be sending people to other planets like they were walking into another room," James said.
If Simon were any more excited, he’d need a paper bag to breathe into. He was feeling like he’d finally learnt how to dream lucidly, but so lucid that he could do it with real life. He was so close to achieving everything he’d ever wanted.
Chapter 44
Simon arranged to meet Zack Winstone at Johnson Space Center, his current place of employment. Simon had booked a direct flight from Manchester, choosing to fly coach, despite having the funds for business class in the company account. He was distinctly concerned with the seductive and corrupting nature of the wealth that they were accumulating. Since they were now under the assumption that the world had — for now — been saved from its undesirable fate, it could be tempting to abandon their philanthropy and live in decadent luxury for a while. Technically, they could live the high life all they wanted for an indefinite trial period, then delete the timeline and begin again with no lost time at all, but the team would be surrendering to the very part of human nature whose side effects they were struggling to circumvent. They could live the life of the affluent in a loop for a thousand years until it became tedious, but who knew what else they might become bored of during that time. Simon had no interest in that world, he just loved his work, and he would get tired of the abundance sooner rather than later, so — for him at least — it was better just to avoid it entirely.
Simon had lured Zack into a meeting under the pretence of sharing their SARA technology; with such a device, NASA would be able to save weight on spacecraft missions by reducing the quantity of food stored onboard, or even eliminating it entirely. Other heavy machinery could also be removed, and the technology had many more benefits unrelated to load lightening. NASA was doubtless wondering why the technology was being brought to them when it had so many other applications outside of space travel, but they were unlikely to look a gift horse in the mouth. In actuality, PRE-Innovations had already completed their prototype and were well underway with mass production in their new factory. The release of the SART to the general public was expected to happen within a month, but the white lie had planted their foot firmly in NASA’s door.
Simon had asked for a meeting with Zack specifically, which NASA had apparently found unusual as it wasn't Zack's areas of expertise, but their curiosity was tempered when Winstone's reputation was cited as their rationale in talking to him in particular. This was not a lie, but it would have been hard to explain from whom they'd heard about Zack's reputation since they themselves were the source of praise.
When Simon embarked at Manchester, he was pleased to find that he had the entire row of three seats to himself once boarding was complete, giving him plenty of room to spread out. He purchased a pass for the plane's WiFi so he could browse the internet from his laptop, an expense which he also ran through the extravagance test in his mind, but only briefly as, to him, it was a necessity. The laptop also had a secure line to the time drive, achieved via a USB dongle containing an entangled photon paired with a box at HQ. The speed of the USB connection was much slower than the photon box was capable of, but that was of no consequence as he would be using the processing power of the quantum computer. The dongle merely acted as both a video receiver and peripheral sender, making his laptop a streaming device for his HQ workstation. Once they were able to release the entanglement technology, it would revolutionise the way that laptops function. A powerful computer could be stored at a person’s home, while their laptop was nothing more than a portable wireless monitor, keyboard and trackpad that would harness the power of their home processor no matter where they were to roam.
The team wouldn't release their entanglement technology until they knew the world could be trusted with it, releasing it right now could have an effect worse than they saw in the fall, but the SARA should radically change society on its own, hopefully for the better. Simon and his friends were unable to imagine a scenario where the SARA might have a detrimental effect, only beneficial outcomes could possibly arise from its implementation into civilisation. It would no doubt shift focus from modern society’s obsession with the accumulation of currency and allow people to concentrate on finding new ways to move the species forward. The SARA would enable individuals to obtain any physical object they desired, be that food, clothing or technology. Precious stones and metals would be worthless as the SARA would reproduce them effortlessly. Capitalism would be defunct since the only item anyone would need to own is a SARA. Anyone who had already obtained a SARA would be able to produce another for a friend. The machines could be made in various sizes for assembly of larger objects, home furniture for example.
The only way to pervert the SARA for monetary gain was to create designs for specific retail products which would be used in SARA assemblies. If you wanted a particular brand of ice cream, for instance, the firm that owned that name could sell the plans for creating their product in your SARA, or charge per item built. This would be
short-lived, however, as the means of performing software piracy would then also extend to the physical. The SARA could recreate any object by scanning the original, once scanned, the digital designs for its makeup could be reproduced freely. New piracy laws would need to be drawn up, but that would take time and, as with current software piracy guidelines, they would be widely ignored. The laws were unlikely to remain in place if the majority of citizens found them to be unjustified. It was possible for society to eventually settle into a new, less individualistic way of life that could literally bring about peace on earth. Initially, the PRE-Innovations team had discussed this scenario ironically, but they eventually realised that it was a genuine possibility, given enough time. If they achieved this new world peace, and greed was taken out of the equation, the time drive technology could then be released to the world.
They might face some resistance when releasing the SARA technology to the public, major corporations would see their eventual demise in the machine and do whatever they could to stop it, they may even convince governments to ban the technology. Corporations have an abundance of power over every governing body, and it would be entirely possible for them to force those in positions of power into a decision that would cause difficulties in executing PRE-Innovations' plan. Despite this, the current form of government would be the lesser of two evils in comparison to a corporately run society. In the present democracy of the so-called free world, it was possible for the SARA to usher in a truly liberated civilisation, finally allowing technology to be the aid to humanity that it was ordained to be, jump-starting its progress rather than enabling its demise. If they did find that the old system was unwilling to make way for a better world, they had an eternity of repetition to help humanity find the right path towards absolute equality.
PRE-Innovations were aware that their plan might sound considerably similar to some radical groups or anarchist organisations, but their strategy didn't involve violence or forcing people into their way of thinking. They would always allow the majority opinion to be the driving force behind their decisions. The problem with today's society is that the power is taken away from the masses by those who have the means, the team hoped to return that power to the people, as un-anarchistically as possible. If the people were offered a future of freedom from the will of the wealthy and to be equals, independent of the slavery induced by those deemed as superiors, they were sure that the majority would choose just that. Their plan had always been to save humanity from itself, but circumstances had evolved rapidly, the goal had moved beyond the survival of the human race and into its capacity to thrive.
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