Dust

by G. L. Carpenter

Dust

  By G L Carpenter

  Copyright 2011, 2012, 2013 G. L. Carpenter

 

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium

  This is a work of fiction. When names of actual places, organizations, or individuals are used they are used with no assertion that their descriptions or actions are reported here as fact.

 

 

  "Because of accelerating technological progress, humankind may be rapidly approaching a critical phase in its career. In addition to well-known threats such as nuclear holocaust, the prospects of radically transforming technologies like nanotech systems and machine intelligence present us with unprecedented opportunities and risks."

  Existential Risks Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards - Nick Bostrom, PhD Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University

  [Published in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 9, March 2002. First version: 2001]

  Chapter 01 - EJSM

  Jon Davis used both thumbs to uncork the magnum of California’s own Russia River valley champagne. The kiss of the pressure release also uncorked applause and cheers from the specialists and quests in the JPL mission control room. They were celebrating because on the screens around them they could see images of Jupiter’s sixth moon, Europa, sent from their Europa Jupiter System orbiter, JIMO.

  The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter was a robot explorer that had successfully navigated millions of miles of space and survived thousands of obstacles both technical and political to be where it was now doing what it was prepared to do now. These modern human explorers, who never left home, were celebrating because this might not have been.

  In good times, the thrill of finding stuff out is enough to give scientists the incentive and the tenacity to do the work they do when other rewards are long deferred. These were not good times.

  In good times, a magnum of champagne would not be enough, but these were not good times. Yet in this moment, backs were slapped, hands were shaken, even hugs were exchanged while glasses were filled and lifted “to success!”

  “And to our secret benefactor!” added Jon with his glass high answered by a unanimous “here –here”.

  “And.” Continued Jon holding his glass in front of his chest without drinking. “We must remember all of our colleagues who are now unemployed since congress cut all funding to NASA. These were good people, hardworking people, brilliant people -- now in the country’s rubbish bin.” With a noticeable catch in his voice, Jon concluded. “To our friends! This is for you too.”

  In these desperate financial times, Congress had cut funding for NASA to zero. Their kind of science wasn’t so important after all. If done at all it should be controlled by private business for profit. However, deep space exploration just didn’t show a quarterly return on investment worth the effort.

  Finding private funding in a drooping economy was a failure. Hope and some private money were raised but it didn’t last a season. The European space agency, like all of Europe, was in an equally desperate situation. Without competition or collaborators, even the Chinese enterprise was coasting. Meanwhile, everyone who had worked for the National Air and Space Administration and the Jet Propulsion Lab had been laid off over a year ago.

  The mission goals and parameters for the Europa Jupiter System Mission had changed several times in the years before the launch — before the most recent recession. Since its conception over three decades ago, each administration had supported different objectives and levels of financial commitment to space exploration. In a transient period of global optimism, the mission was restored to its full potential by piggybacking on joint expedition with the European Space Agency. Then the economy crashed once again.

  When the last of the funding for NASA was yanked, the Europa Jupiter System Mission would have been scraped even though all the important money had already been spent, the probe was already in the Jupiter system, and all that was needed was for someone to receive the data sent back to earth. This one mission was saved by an anonymous multi-million dollar contribution to keep the equipment up and running and staffed by some the recently laid-off scientists.

  In this last day of summer, these lucky scientists were permitted to do science for the sake of finding stuff out. What they intended to find out might be mind shattering. These twenty-first century explorers were rejoicing because they were now in a position to make discoveries. They hadn’t even made any discoveries yet but oh, what a discovery they were hoping to find!

  “OK people,” announced Jon clapping his hands in a sign of anticipation “show time!

  “I know Jim O’ has more brain power than anyone in the room, except for Frank,” The fifty something black gentleman at the second station nodded in mock agreement. “But we will only get this one chance at this and Jim O’ needs all our help now. Let’s make history!”

  The imperfect world outside the building was forgotten. This team had waiting two and a half years for the probe to explore the Jupiter system and arrive at its final destination – Jupiter’s sixth moon, the ice covered Europa. This was the pièce de résistance of the whole mission. Beneath Europa’s ice scientist suspected liquid water – the womb of life. To explore that potential harbinger of life was the culmination of this robotic space mission.

  Europa’s ice is kilometers thick. To access the water beneath an atomic powered thermal drill was to land on the ice and probe deep into the overburden of rock solid ice.

  The search for extraterrestrial life had been a quest to find the elusive for decades. The plug was pulled on the Mars exploration years ago during a previous recession. Because of the current world economy, this attempt would be the last for who knows how long.

  After the celebrating, people went to work processing data and preparing for the search for extraterrestrial life. There were press releases to write and web pages to update. Specialists organized photos and cataloged other data returning from Europa to compile what would be needed to back-fill the public announcement of the arrival of the Jupiter System Mission in a stable orbit around Europa

  The sound of human conversation in the control room was interrupted by a synthetic voice. “Excuse me team, but I am sending you Images and data of an unexplained phenomenon on the Jupiter side of Europa.” With that simple statement, the Automated Scientific Control capabilities of the Europa orbiter’s on-board computer interrupted the mission team’s work and changed the course of history.

  The probe’s electronic brain was referred to as Jim O’. It was like a team member, albeit the one without enthusiasm. Jim O’ communicated with humans in multimedia. It presented the photos and videos it relayed with captions and voice over narrative accompanied with pages of data tables and graphs. It could understand speech and human body language but took its direction from typed commands to increase clarity.

  The pictures and data sent from Europa showed puzzling differences between what was being recorded and what had been seen decades before from previous Europa surveys.

  The new pictures from the robot orbiter, presented a mystery of a moon changing color as a band of dark gray was now superimposed across the icy sphere of Europa. As close-ups of the changed area were received and inspected under magnification the darkening area could be seen to grow from one orbit of Europa to the next. It was difficult to pick out in the visible spectrum because this side of Europa was headed into sunset but enhanced imagery showed it plainly. No one, not even Jim O’, had a theory explaining what was happening. There was no venting from the surface. It was not limited to fissures. There was just this creeping field of darkness across the otherwise continuous globe-encircling field of ice illuminated in the reflected glow
of the giant gas planet Jupiter. It looked like a dust storm on a moon without dust, only ice.

  Team leader Jonathan Davis told his PR tech just to release the canned blurb on the mission until there was a chance to look at this. "This could be significant. We don’t want to get it wrong. A scientist was nothing without a reputation. Reputations are careers and could be killed by proposing too radical an idea without adequate documentation. These last few years making a living doing what you loved to do was getting harder. Depending on how this turned out they could all be looking for jobs.

  Jon was a long time NASA employee. In the past when this became known in public it was assumed he must be an astronaut – he looked fit enough to meet the public expectations. In fact, manned flight was his first interest. As a young man, he was turned down for that program but he did land a job with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory unmanned space exploration group. He had a good mind for science and was a competent administrator. He didn't design the missions but he could make them happen. With those skills, he could make more money in industry but he liked what he did. That is probably why he was good at it. He was one of those who loved what they did so much that now he worked without pay.

  With the real-time discovery of this new and interesting feature of creeping darkness on Europa, Jim O’ suggested a new landing site for the atomic drill. The landing site was changed to the vicinity of the spreading stain on a face of Europa that perpetually faces Jupiter. This was almost as good a drilling site as the previously chosen one and it would be very interesting to find out what was causing this rapid change on the moon’s surface. The drill probe was decoupled from the orbiter; it fired rockets twice to slow it's orbital speed; it drifted down through Europa’s very thin atmosphere and, with giant balloons to protect it, dropped right on target.

  The sun had just risen on the landing site. The Lander lay like an abandoned truck tire alone and silent on the ice. With the glow of Jupiter filling the sky, it couldn’t even manage a shadow to keep it company, and yet there was a shadow creeping toward it. It spread across the ice like poverty, fear, and ignorance, turning black what was meant to be bright, beautiful, and pure.

  In a few hours, Europa would pass behind Jupiter, into its shadow, and there would be real night but darkness would overtake the Lander before then. The Lander computer, a copy of the one on the orbiter, referred to as Jim L’, directed analysis of the approaching substance. The humans watching the video feed in far off California supplied the fear Jim’L was incapable.

  The probe’s computers were designed to control the analysis strategies for the mission because control from Earth was untimely. The signal travel-time between Earth and Jupiter is thirty-five minutes when the two planets are closest in their orbits. Not only was best-case over an hour round trip signal delay in communicating with Europa but the orbiter passed behind Europa every two hours and Europa passes behind Jupiter every three and a half days for almost three hours. Communication was a periodic thing that also required predictions of where the receiver was going to be when the signal arrived. There would be no point in sending a message if the receiver is going to be behind a moon or planet when it arrives.

  The probe’s cameras watched as the creeping shadow engulfed the decent rocket stage that had impacted nearby. It watched as eventually the mystery black cloud washed up against the probe as it lay vulnerable on the ice.

  Attempts to take samples of the mystery substance were inconclusive. The substance was very corrosive and active considering the temperature was only 103 degrees Kelvin. Bits of the Lander were being dissolved.

  The mission control team at JPL in Pasadena watched their display screens to see images and telemetric data feeds from the probe go dead. The spirit of joy and expectancy was expelled from each observer in a collective sigh.

  The drill probe’s onboard computer had turned its microscope and nanobeam molecular analyzer toward the gray substance coloring the ice on Europa and returned indications of macromolecules – animated, large, and evidently capable of reproducing, yet not biological. Then the probe went dead — eaten by the nanobots or killed by radiation from Jupiter that would incapacitate a human in half an hour.

  The molecular analyzer had reported mega molecules. DNA is a mega molecule — it defines life on earth but it does not routinely dissolve metal and plastic.

  The discovery of self-reproducing nano machines on an extraterrestrial body was the discovery of the century — of any century of human existence. Extraterrestrial life, however you define it, of this complexity means humans may not be alone in the universe. To find it in our own solar system makes the discovery even more remarkable. There was understandable excitement at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena where the mission was being controlled and monitored. The loss of an expensive probe was nothing compared to the discovery it had reported, if it were true. The scientists wanted more information before they made fools of themselves reporting that life had been found in outer space. Another false report could be the end of a career.

  The orbiter locked its cameras onto the probe and zoomed in. Orbital timings prevented the orbiter from sending pictures to Earth until it emerged from the backside of Jupiter three and a half hours later. By the time the Pasadena crew got an image, there was no probe to be seen, only grayness. Yes, these were the right coordinates. The JPL team spent the rest of the day analyzing data.

  The next morning it was noticed that the probe that had disappeared from the surface the night before had again appeared in the field of gray on Europa. This was shock enough and set technicians to the task of again running diagnostics on all the equipment they could access. On the next orbit of Europa a second Lander near the first was observed — then two others and four additional on successive orbits.

  At first, they doubted their equipment, then their own senses. When they accepted what they saw great excitement filled the control room. Not even in their wildest dreams had they considered the discovery of an entity that could reproduce machines that it encountered.

  “It’s converting up welled metal salts.” Offered a speculating team member. “But it probably can’t reproduce the electronics or the Radioactive Power System.”

  The riot of theories about what was observed fell silent and scientists looked at each other in total disbelieve when, in the reflected light from Jupiter's clouds, the team could plainly see on their monitors a whole fleet of landing probes fire descent rockets and ascend from the European ice surface which was no longer gray.

  Too many objects to count entered orbit around Europa. The bewildered computer onboard the EJSM orbiter tracked the center of the mass with its high definition telephoto cameras as the fleet of launders shifted orbit and congregated into a clumps. The clumps transformed themselves into giant copies of the craft that had been sent to the surface. These artifacts of planet devouring self-replicating microscopic machines then fired rockets and left European orbit. As soon as the rockets burned out the giant crafts dissolved into a gray cloud and was lost from the view of the robot telescope.

  The JPL team leader Jon Davis was present to watch from a mission control room, which hadn't changed much in appearance in fifty years. “Where is that going?” he demanded to know pointing to the spot on the huge wall mounted monitor where the mystery craft had just disappeared.

  A blond technician at one of a row of consoles waved her hands like a Middle Eastern dancer in front of her 3D display screen to ascertain trajectory. “We have visual and ranging radar” she talked to herself as she worked. “Acceleration, duration, speed, trajectory.” She brought up a Jupiter system diagram and dropped the vector data on it. At length she turned to Davis and gave him what he wanted to know in under a minute. “It looks like it’s headed for a gravity boost around Ganymede and then it’s off for …” She pinched at her screen to enlarge the field” to ah, well in this case we have to factor in solar wind." she muttered and poked toward her s
creen again. "Oh, shit!” She said. "The closest object on the projected course is … Earth, sir."

  Jon thought for a moment and muttered, "I'm glad that picture didn’t go out live over the cable network."

  He spoke a few code words into his headset and then announced to everyone watching the feed. "It looks like our search for extraterrestrial life has been successful, but has been interpreted as an invitation to come visiting. Until we have a chance to analyze everything that we have seen I recommend you all keep what we have seen in the strictest confidence. Understood?" He made the gesture of zippered lips. We have to be sure of what just happened before we try to explain it.

  "Troy!" said Jon. "Troy, where are you?"

  "Here" said a red headed young man near the back wall of the room.

  "Shut down the web server."

  Troy didn't move. He took out his cell phone, tapped the screen a dozen times, then looked up and said in a discernibly European accent "Done, sir”.

  "Is the European Space Ops Center online?"

  "Indirectly” said Troy in a booming baritone voice “they're getting the feed from here via Goldstone and DSN. Their ESTRACK system is on call as backup. So far, they’re getting batched data feeds every eight hours. They were waiting until the good parts when we do the drilling. With their budget cuts they are only manned part time."

  "Call the Darmstadt control center. Tell them no one talks till we look into this." commanded Jon.

  "Ok Boss." was the young man's reply. “Should we have them be on the lookout for our UFO with their Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter?”

  Jon thought a second and said, “They could try but there’s nothing there but space dust”.

  “ETA?” asked Jon of the helpful tech. The tech pointed down with a question on her face. Jon nodded.

  “…“We’re inside the Hohmann transfer orbit window.” Mumbled the tech in deep concentration. The screen was prodded a few more times. Nervously fingers alternating between the screens and tucking hair behind an ear where it did not want to stay. The tech still talking to herself “Thirty months coasting, falling actually, all the way" — then to Jon “Arrives mid March, sir, the 15th. Ah, unless they do another burn. It could be sooner.”

  As Jon left the op control room with another man, a visitor, he announced over his shoulder "There will be a meeting in two hours in the lecture hall”.

  Jon returned to his office and made two phone calls.

  The wide screen monitors high on the walls in the mission control room showed an unchanging field of stars with one very bright star called Sol near the left field of view. All of these ancient inhabitants of heaven seemed complicitly unconcerned about the future of the young and perhaps transitory human race soon to be host to an uninvited guest with the ability to dissolve anything interesting it encountered.