“Well can I wipe it off now?”
“Do what you want. I got all the info I needed.”
“Alright, I’ll be in the hallway.”
“Do something constructive.”
“I always do,” Darvin said as he looked back to Exsid with that grin of his and then disappeared into the hallway.
“My rear you do.”
“And that is also fat as well,” Darvin shouted back in response.
Exsid brought his hand up to his face and sighed exasperatedly. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a gigantic jerk?” Exsid muttered to himself as he started to compose an update for the Chief.
“Daily,” Darvin shouted back in response, even though he knew Exsid didn’t want an answer anyways.
***
“Mr. Bodd. I am glad to see you here. Are you ready to give me my tour of the ship?” Admiral Jevins asked. Walking through the Central Hallway of the Earth Ring that ran the whole length of the complete portions, Admiral Jevins greeted Mr. Bodd in the secure naval shipyards section of the Earth Ring. The Central Hallway surrounded the Central Railway that moved supplies and personnel throughout the entire Ring system. It also sent people and goods, mainly food and medical supplies, to the Stalk Depots were it was transferred to the surface via the Stalks. Drone freighters coming to and from Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and Jupiter all came to the Earth Ring to transfer their goods to Earth. Every colony exported and imported different goods and materials, even with educated personnel being shuttled to and from different colonies as well.
“Just of the systems we have produced, Admiral,” Mr. Bodd replied in turn.
“Yes, yes of course. The weapons system I have all seen in action and I have approved. But this… You kept this under tight security. Not even I had full knowledge of what you built until recently. Only an idea until the briefing you sent me.”
“I have made it to be that way.”
“So you have, so you have.”
“Let’s be on our way Admiral,” Mr. Bodd said as he took a seat in a small open top electric car that would carry them from the entrance of the shipyards were they were now to the docking platform that held one of the newly built destroyers.
“What, Admiral, do you want to hear from me that you could not read in my briefing for you that was prepared by my researchers?”
“Mr. Bodd, when you get as old as I am you begin to appreciate being told things by the people who matter,” Admiral Jevins said as he took the seat right next to Mr. Bodd. The two security officers accompanying the admiral got into the other two back seats of the car as the driver started down the carpool lane of the Central Hallway.
“Needless to say Admiral, time is money to a person such as myself. I should be in a meeting right now discussing the placement of the first Hub on the Earth Ring with my board. I also should be reviewing the candidates selected from our telescopes on the moon.”
“Do I have to remind you who is sponsoring you into the Senate?”
Charles sighed silently to himself at that comment. In order to get into the Senate you had to hold a vast amount of wealth under your control and then obtain a sponsor, which never came cheaply. “Alright, how is your understanding of particle physics?”
“Start from the beginning.”
“The discovery of the graviton led to a great many things. Artificial gravity for one. Although that is still too demanding on energy production for large scale use like in the Jupiter Rings. It also led to a greater understanding of spacetime at the Planck scale.”
“That we have known for centuries Mr. Bodd.”
“You told me to start from the beginning Admiral,” Charles said. “Mind if I skip to some more recent discoveries?”
“Continue, continue,” Admiral Jevins said slowly.
“We were able to map out the chaotic Quantum Foam, where our understanding of that area used to be limited. It was the invention of a machine to create D-strings and F-strings. That pushed us where we needed to be. We retooled the machine to even create cosmic strings, which comes into play later.”
Charles took a breath and wondered if the Admiral even bothered to look at his briefing. He probably did, Charles thought, but Jevins always appreciated things the traditional way. “At Planck scale of empty space, all forms of particles appear and disappear from the energy that is present there. It is here where we found that natural wormholes open up and close. However, we knew beforehand that they were so unstable that not even a photon could pass through a natural wormhole. We can thank the Schwarzschild metric for that.
“Instead of focusing on creating wormholes from scratch, we would rather just use the ones that form naturally all around us. The fundamental concept of a traversable wormhole from a naturally formed untouched wormhole is not possible. It needs to be stabilized. Our theories on gravity and string theory predicted that we would need a negative energy density in order to stabilize that. That may seem contradictory, but by definition zero energy density is the average energy of normal empty space, which as I said before it is not as empty as many think.
“The Casimir effect has long showed us that it is possible for there to be a negative energy density since that means there only needs to be an average energy density that is less than the average energy density of the so-called empty space. Since the Quantum Foam is so chaotic, negative and positive energy is shown to form naturally and that’s why wormholes form naturally. Have you read any science fiction books while you were younger?”
“A few, a few,” Jevins said smiling, as if recalling distant memories.
“You remember how they always had to race away from gravitational sources to engage the so-called warp drives or engines using wormholes?” Charles asked.
“Yes.”
“Well they were wrong. In fact it is the total opposite. Quantum effects that create negative energy density forms at a greater rate in curved spacetime, not flat spacetime. That is why the Hubs are being selected to be built close to Earth and eventually on it and not floating out in space away from everything. Graviton generators will smooth out the spacetime fabric of the wormhole only after it is stabilized so dilating it to its needed size has a reduced energy requirement because of reduced outside influential forces on the wormhole structure caused by warped spacetime.”
“That’s a mouthful. So gravity is needed to make them naturally but gravity then also makes it unstable? That sounds ironic.”
“Yes. Well, it sounds contradictory. But the math works out. That’s all we need.”
Charles took a moment to collect himself, thinking he had overstepped and said some confidential information that he hadn’t even discussed fully with the board yet. After a few seconds, he decided it was worth telling his sponsor, even if it benefited him by allowing him to realign is thoughts when he would have to finish the discussions with the board. “That is also how we describe and were able to form cosmic strings. It is our modern day exotic matter. Our engines widen the wormhole and bridge it using a lattice of cosmic strings. We are also able to manipulate the end point of the wormhole, but that is highly dependent on the amount of energy involved and that is why our ships will only be able to go so far with our present power plants.
“But the engines on the ship will be a double engine. One will produce closed cosmic strings and manipulate them while the other produces gravitons. The gravitons create a gravitational source that curves spacetime more than the ship’s mass itself could. This allows the formation of wormholes outside of a gravitational well. This decreases the amount of energy involved and allows us to create wormholes quicker. However, the capacitors charging the wormhole engine take time, even with antimatter power plants.
“Also, unlike in the science fiction stories and common conception of wormholes among populace, they are not instant travel. Wormholes are also called Einstein-Rosen bridges. Think of it like you want to cross a river. You can walk all the way around it, past the point where it springs up out of the ground. Or you could buil
d a bridge over it. But in that scenario, you still need to walk across the bridge to get to the other side. You still need to travel some distance before you get there. The same is true with wormholes. You still need to cross some fabric of spacetime that makes up the throat of the wormhole before you get there.”
“How long will I need to travel inside the wormhole?” Admiral Jevins asked.
“A few minutes for the destroyers, while the Hubs will have less than a second of travel time. But that is only due to the amount of energy that will be available for the Hubs themselves to use. Unfortunately, our current technological level of wormholes at this point requires the ship to be at a relatively low to almost no velocity. We might be able to do it at higher speeds but the formation of the wormhole might not be complete by the time you reach it. Formation and bridging of the wormhole currently only takes a few seconds. Charging of the capacitors after use takes about fifteen relative minutes.
“We are working on decreasing the charging time, but the formation of cosmic strings is very energy expensive. Our goal is to be able to form the wormholes continuously instead of once every fifteen minutes as we are presently capable of. The middle of the throat of the wormhole is smaller in width than the diameter of the mouths. Many cosmic strings are used, but the width of the spacetime fabric at the middle of the throat needs to be larger than the ship’s diameter.”
“What happens if we by accident skim along the edge of the spacetime fabric of the wormhole?” Admiral Jevins asked.
“You will not leave the spacetime fabric if that is what you are asking. In fact it would be like hitting a wall with no means of getting through. The edge would simply crush the ship if it impacts it at a great enough speed. It is like an unyielding surface.”
“And if the throat of the wormhole isn’t big enough for the ship?”
“The ship would be crushed to become the width of the throat. That would likely destroy the equipment that is holding the cosmic strings in formation and also preventing them from collapsing into several smaller cosmic strings before vanishing all together.”
“What will it look like?”
“You cannot see the cosmic strings. They have a diameter less than the width of a proton. You would just see a very thin ring of blackness around the mouth of the wormhole that really is no spacetime at all. The image you would get by looking into a wormhole would be the area it ends at as the photons themselves from that section of spacetime travel to your optical instruments.”
Admiral Jevins seemed to ponder something for a little bit. “What would happen if the wormhole collapses and the ship is still inside?”
“Depends on where the ship is when the wormhole collapses. If it is past the midpoint, spacetime will literally shove the ship to the endpoint of the wormhole as it collapses. This would happen so fast that the ship would be instantly crushed and destroyed, likely vaporized into plasma from the impact. If it is before the midpoint, then spacetime would shove the ship to the start point, and the end result would be the same destruction as with the previous scenario. However, if the ship is in the middle we do not know what will happen. Our theories say that some bubbles of spacetime will form independent of the universe we inhabit if the wormhole is not properly collapse using the sequence we have programmed into the engines. What will happen in these bubbles if you are trapped? That we do not know. Whether they expand, retract, or stay the same we cannot tell. We cannot even tell if they will have the same cosmological constants as our present universe.”
“So danger will literally be all around us.”
“I wish you would give us more time to test it on ship level. We only have sufficient evidence material for stationary based wormhole gates that will be used in the Hubs. And the gates themselves house the stabilizing equipment for anchoring the wormhole. Otherwise the wormholes wouldn’t move as the planet’s surface still spins. Hence the requirement for stabilizing. Maybe in the future it will be different. Other than that, the Gates still use the same engine as is present on the ships, just on a larger scale.”
“Afraid of losing your sponsor?” Admiral Jevins asked with a soft chuckle to himself. Bodd did tell him more than what was in the report after all.
“It would be expensive to convince another Senate member or Admiral to sponsor myself,” Charles said honestly.
“My occupation is dangerous by nature Charles,” Admiral Jevins said. Hearing the Admiral refer to him on a personal level stunned him, since he has never done that before. “But this is a dangerous time. Minotaur has supplied me with two of the finest ships I have ever seen. Two ships that have never been designed for because who needed them? A waste of resources for no threat that existed for them to be built for. Fighters have been enough to deal with the few pirates that transformed captured transports. Their bases have recently been a different story though. That was why these were originally developed. Busting bases could hardly be done with a few fighters. However, how do we know what is out there among the stars now that we are finally going to be exploring them? Humanity needed a way to protect itself. This… is also why people like myself exist.”
“What about the Islamic Theocracy?”
“That too, that too. But they haven’t bothered us much for nearly a century due to a few treaties we have with them. And we still give them food and medical aid shipments for their population to keep our peace,” Admiral Jevins said. The little electric transport car they were riding stopped in front of a large hallway that was the docking platforms. The Earth Ring itself varied in its outer diameter along its length, but here it was about a kilometer and a half wide. The docking platform itself was shaped like a large rectangular box that was a hundred meters wide and tall and three hundred meter long. The end of the docking platform had a large ellipsoid shell was connected to it. That shell was the actual shipyard. Inside the shell a newly constructed destroyer floated, connected to the Earth Ring through several umbilicals.
As they walked down the docking platform, Charles thought to himself about the upcoming events. He himself has received some notice of the events in the Jupiter Ring System and the connections to some events on Earth. Admiral Jevins was going in blind from a tactical standpoint, but he had to support the Commonwealth Marines that were stranded there and link up to the five fighters left patrolling the region that were not destroyed when their base itself was destroyed in the ‘industrial accident.’
They came up to the edge of the docking platform and walked up a few flights of stairs as they came to the observation deck. Charles admired the strength that the Admiral exhibited even at the age of two hundred and thirty. Advanced nanomeds and genetics has lengthened the average age of humans on Earth to a hundred and fifty for most while those who had money could live to an average age of two hundred and eighty if they could afford it. That limit always seemed to increase with time. Humans on Jupiter had a better health care system though and had an average age of over two hundred under the most basic health care plan.
“It is a thing of beauty isn’t it?” Admiral Jevins asked as they stared outside the viewport of the observation deck.
“Yes it is,” Charles said as he looked at the ellipsoid shaped ship. To the untrained eye it would look like a cylinder with rounded off ends. To the trained eye, the natural curves of the ship popped out and formed a look of elegance for something powerful enough to level every Arcology on Earth if it was not for the Asteroid Protection System of the Earth Ring.
“Tell me Charles. How do you know so much about the engines? Even your Expanded Mentality and Biocomp cannot account for that depth of knowledge.”
“I designed it myself twenty years ago.”
“And you question why I sponsored you?”
“Only in the beginning. You grew on me Admiral.”
“As you on me Charles. As you on me.”
“Good luck Admiral.”
Admiral Jevins chuckled. “I’ll try not to get myself killed Charles. You can count on that.”
&n
bsp; Charles could only stare out at the completed ship, wondering what the future held. And he hoped his sponsor came back alive.
***
Admiral Jevins walked back into his stateroom and sat down at his desk. His desk monitor, built into the desk to take up the whole table top, was displaying an image of the destroyer. He took a long look at the marvelous ship. It’s sleek ellipsoid shape. It’s powerful and deadly weapon ports.
Yet, Admiral Jevins wished for only one thing. He wished he had one of these earlier. His eyes became unfocused as he remembered the past. The sounds of the dozen fighters he sent out dying in seconds came forth. The cries of men seeing the flash and knowing in a second they would no longer exist.
If they only had these ships earlier there would be hundreds of pilots alive today. Converted freighters and fighters could only do so much when the pirates had invented new defenses for their asteroid bases. They never knew what was there until too late. Even the Intelligence division had no idea they had developed their own advanced technology for defenses. He was forced to destroy the base with all of their civilians and the few hostages aboard. The Commonwealth Navy has not attacked a pirate base for over seventy years. And now they faced something potentially worse.
Watching those pilots and civilians die a century ago still weighed heavily on his soul and mind. Admiral Jevins could only hope that this time it would be different. He could only hope that these new ships would give him an advantage.
Yet Admiral Jevins knew that there would be surprises. In war no plan survived contact with the enemy. And in this case, they didn’t really know who the enemy was yet.
Chapter 7
The mass usage of fossil fuels before the Global Collapse pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the ice cap at the Arctic Circle melted completely. This led to the Great Extinction shortly after the Global Collapse. Due to the melting of the ice cap, the oceanic flow of water throughout the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico was altered and became stagnant. This also led to the collapse of other oceanic water flows. As marine species began to die off due to the lack of nutrition, as was supplied by the flow of water in the oceanic currents, the effect then began to spread to the land surface as temperatures rose. Shifts in weather patterns changed the climate of most local regions worldwide. The creation of vast deserts spanning across several continents started as these weather patterns shifted and as the acidity of the rain, which would normally be trapped into limestone along with carbon by the oceanic currents, began to kill off bacteria in the soil. One notable example would be the Great Plains of North America that used to supply much of the grains to the population of that continent. At present day, the landscape is a desert incapable of supporting farming. The creation of the Arcologies was designed to shield the remains of humanity from the harsh weather, temperatures, and increased winds. The Ecological Restoration Project (ERP) encompasses several projects worldwide, such as the Coral Restoration Project in the Australian Constellation, that aim at restoring the natural ecological balance of the world while shifting the atmosphere back to a stable level of pre-industrial revolution carbon levels. Transplantation of hardy plants such as genetically enhanced evergreen trees, found now almost exclusively in the Evergreen Conservation of what used to be the western parts of the United States and Canada, are one example of genetically engineered biologicals produced for the ERP. Another example is the genetically engineered plankton that are producing the majority of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere after most types of plankton and other photosynthetic-based unicellular marine organisms went extinct. The green ocean is colored green due of the high density of the plankton and the lack of predators for it. Organisms genetically engineered through the current understanding of nanotechnology and genetics enables humanity to repair what it had once destroyed. Genetic profiles of known and recently extinct organisms stored during the early twenty first century is allowing researchers to recreate ecological systems throughout the world, first starting with the reintroduction of bacteria and plant life. Restoring the ecological balance of the Earth to restore the carrying capacity of the planet is a main tenant that initially led to the founding of the Senate and the Earth Commonwealth.
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