Natty just nodded as he continued to contemplate the hologram of the Dead Zone.
“If we put them in orbit around Earth for now,” Laney said, “once the asteroids go flying into space stations this large, not even the Nautili will be able to keep the debris from destroying all life on Earth.”
Natty shook his head. “Nah, you’re not thinking like a Stage 3 civilization. For sure whatever space factories were churning out these things would have built them with energy shielding to spare to protect them from the ravages of space-time. And if the energy shields weren’t sufficient to disintegrate the asteroids on contact, you can bet they come with teleporting mechanisms so they can get themselves out of trouble fast, and out of the way of whatever’s coming for them. Either way, no shrapnel to contend with. Without teleporters, moreover, these cylinder worlds would have to be dragged into place. Can you imagine space tugs dragging them around across a trans-galactic civilization? They’d be antiques before they even got to where they were needed.”
“Just to be safe, maybe we should time their extraction, pull the cylinder worlds out the same instant the Earth and its moon are teleported back to the Milky Way Galaxy. That way the asteroid bombardment is a non-issue.”
Natty kept his eyes on the hologram as he smiled and nodded. “Nice.”
Laney nodded. “These cylinder worlds, and the other space stations…they could have been grown from seeds. Why have the factories so distant from where you need them, when you could have a time-tunneling, space-warping equivalent of a crop duster laying down the seeds that turn into space stations and space colonies with all the genetic variety you need to bring an entire galaxy out of the dark ages into Stage 3 status virtually overnight.”
Natty gasped. “Techa, that’s brilliant. I forget sometimes the advantages your biotech approach has over mine. If we could get our hands on such a cosmic-scale fertilizer of federations…”
“If their technology wasn’t quite so advanced at the time for the time tunneling crop duster to work from anywhere in the TGC, then it’s possible they sowed the seeds locally, within the Dead Zone, with a crop duster that could only seed a galaxy that it was located in… in all likelihood its zero point energy converter fell into disrepair. And once the TGC had the time-tunneling crop duster in hand that could work from more remote locations, the relative antique wasn’t worth repairing, especially after the area had been abandoned.”
“Of course!” Natty shouted excitedly. “Why build it with anything but a zero point energy converter, allowing you to tap the void itself for all the energy you needed to convert to matter readily. Hell, if the seeds were to grow up to be full-fledged space stations any other way, they’d have to mine space dust, asteroids… it would take forever, at least by Stage 3 standards. Yep, nothing else makes sense. What’s more, according to you that crop duster could still be in the Dead Zone. What I’d do to get my hands on that.”
“Theta Team has noted that at least one cylinder world shut down in the middle of giving birth to another.”
Natty brought an image of what she was talking about closer to him by manipulating the hologram with his hands. “Yes, but this is likely a backup mechanism, in case a particular cylinder world becomes overpopulated, or access to the seeding device is down. Or, possibly, some of the cylinder worlds may just be older than others, built before the time of the galaxy seeding device.”
Natty kept walking through the hologram, touching the various artifacts scaled down in size so he could get through a goodly number in the time he had, without shrinking the space stations down so much in size he lost the sense of awe and wonder he needed to kick start his mind and keep it humming at top speed.
“You’re forgetting a few things,” Laney said. “How are we supposed to teleport the stations individually? Especially if we can’t find the crop duster and have to move them en masse? And even if we can manage that, how are we to avoid triggering alarms all across the TGC?”
“Why would you waste energy policing a graveyard? Any automated security they have we ought to be able to get around readily enough, again, because this is hardly a high value target that they have their best AIs on. So I’m not too worried about setting off alarms.
“As to how we beam these babies out of there…” he said, fondling the latest ‘toy’ he couldn’t wait to get his hands on – another artificial gravity station whose Spirograph-inspired geometries were captivating him – “So long as the Nautilus can use the hack the nun placed for us in the boundary AI about the Dead Zone, the abandoned space stations will do the rest, using the avenue of escape to teleport through. That is, once we’ve figured out how to reactivate the teleporters on each of them.”
“I’ll get word to Theta Team.”
“Tell them we’ll want to empty out that entire graveyard if we can manage it.”
“Natty! You can’t turn us into a Stage 3 civilization by forcing it, filling up the entire Milky Way Galaxy all at once.”
“Why not? The reason Africa could jumpstart itself with the latest technology that not even America could afford was precisely because they didn’t have so much invested in legacy tech whose debts had to be paid off first. What’s more, the newer stuff was just cheaper, better, and easier to maintain.”
Laney sighed. “And what about the more evolved consciousness a galactic-scale civilization will need?”
Natty snorted. “Tell that to these Kang goons.”
“Let’s try to learn from their mistakes so we don’t repeat them.”
“Don’t you see? Why fight one another on Earth over limited resources when we can have an entire galaxy to plunder, whose resources will take our cooperation as much as our competition to extract effectively? It should give us an extended peace and prosperity period like America had after World War II. At a galactic scale, we could enjoy hundreds of thousands of years of peace before feeling a need to turn on one another like mad dogs again. And maybe by then…”
“The Forever Peace can just keep feeding on itself with the latest technologies, and hopefully a more evolved consciousness to go with them, so we can cease plundering anything.” Laney nodded. Her mind raced to fill the holes in his thinking.
She had no doubt Natty’s recent burst of genius could be entirely correlated with someone having the nerve to deprive him of his original playthings.
“That’s a lot of mission creep, Natty,” she said. “Theta Team didn’t exactly deploy with all this in mind. And to vacuum out the contents of an entire galaxy before a Stage 3 civilization gets on to them… They’re spread too thin for that.”
“So have Mother print up more of them. We can drag a few of those space stations behind us on a tractor beam for the extra space we’ll need for the bioprinters until she’s built out the ship enough to accommodate them. Assuming she has to resort to such a low rent solution. I doubt she has as much trouble warping space and time inside the Nautilus that Solo and Cassandra have inside their heads. And like any of us are going to notice at our level whether we’re living in a Tokyo-size city or a Shanghai-sized one. Likely, the Nautilus is already bigger than both of them put together.”
Laney smiled.
Suddenly Natty felt threatened by it. “Why are you smiling at me? Is that one of your condescending smiles? Your placating smiles? Your disarming smiles? Honestly you smile too much and in too many ways to be married to me. I should have cured you of that a long time ago with my incorrigible behavior.”
She hugged and kissed him, feeling solid for the first time. So! The Nautilus, if not the actual Laney, thought he had earned his way back into her arms.
“I’m smiling at you because you did well. And I have no problem with you embracing that inner child if you can put it to use like this.”
“Really? Well that does make me feel a lot less insecure. What are a few cagillion Kang by comparison?” He squeezed her tight and kissed her.
When he finally came up for air, he said, “Wait? Where’s the real Laney in all th
is? What’s she up to?”
“Ask your avatar. He’s with her now,” Laney said dematerializing.
“Hey, I wasn’t done kissing and making out yet! Not like the real wife is going to humor me on that level, especially if she is into something big,” he said, trailing off. “Something big…and doing it without me…the nerve!”
Natty ran out of his suite into what seemed like an empty ship, feeling like a terrified five-year-old lost in Wal-Mart without his mommy.
He slid to a stop in his socks. “Wait, Theta Team may be deployed but… what about Sonny and that seedy underground world of genetic rejects?” He put the back of his hand up to his forehead to make sure he wasn’t delirious from fever—sometimes the feel-good-hormones following a burst of creative activity could get so over-secreted that it triggered psychotic breaks. But he wasn’t feverish, even if he was running hot. Natty sighed. He couldn’t believe he was that desperate for toys in the toy chest to play with that he actually missed Sonny.
Natty made his way to Sonny’s district, hopping on a hoverboard to help him traverse a megaship that was difficult enough to navigate with teleportation functions down. And Mother, needing as much of her mind power as possible, would hardly be entertaining such nonsense.
He arrived by hover board in Sonny’s sector a short while later.
Empty.
Not even an autonav taxi trolling the forest of skyscrapers for someone looking for a ride. “When Leon said all-hands-on-deck, he wasn’t kidding. And Sonny, what are you up to? Figuring where better to expand your seedy underworld than in a graveyard for space stations without the monitoring tech that existed on the Nautilus? And even if the stations had it, or had an even more advanced version of it, if he could get to the Dead Zone space habitats first, learn the security system ins and outs before anyone else could, he could stay the step ahead of the good guys so important to crooks like Sonny.
“Techa, how does Leon deal with all these wild cards affecting the outcome of his rebel cause and his various resistance movements?”
Natty could only imagine what trouble Sonny was getting into unsupervised.
***
The Shadow Warrior, pressed against the far wall of Natty’s and Laney’s private suite, overhearing everything they were saying, edged towards the door. His invisibility cloak held for the most part. Only the keenest of eyes, the most present of minds, and a person skilled in spycraft would likely even detect the faint phosphorescent shimmer, like the underside of an Abalone shell, that became visible if he lost his concentration. Luckily, the moment he did, the two lovebirds had other things on their minds.
SEVENTEEN
THE DEAD ZONE
ONE OF THE SPACE STATIONS
THE LUCKY STREAK
Sonny surveyed the exterior of the twirling space station from inside, behind the wrap around windows; it was like a fast-spinning top with a lot of glowing LED lights. Only this top didn’t just have a fat center, it had smaller discs above and below the main one.
He turned to take in the interior, what he could see with his eyes, and what his handheld display was showing him of the other levels. The space station had been built as if it were the entertainment capital of the galaxy; it was a lot more than mere casino; just about any vice could be indulged here, with suitable accommodations for long-term guests.
His genetic rejects—from Mother’s early experiments in humanoid engineering—scampered across the complex, exploring every inch of it for bounty. Many of them, their genes mixed with canines, bounded on all fours.
Sonny laughed. “This place has gone to the dogs.”
He lit a cigar as his closest lieutenant and hit man, Xenon, bounded up to him on all fours before standing erect, morphing into something the comic book character Wolverine only wished he could be. “We’re going to make a fortune,” he said, drooling like any good space pirate. Even Sonny was startled at how easily they fell into the role.
“Don’t count your dogs before they’ve barked. We’ve still got to figure out how to get this thing out of here. The Dead Zone isn’t exactly booming with space farers looking to lose their shirt in my latest casino.”
“Our spies tell us that Natty is already working on beaming every last space station out of the Dead Zone. We may end up with far more bounty than just this spinning top.”
“Is that so?” Sonny puffed on his cigar, his hound dog face drooling more openly than most of the other humanoids in the Nautilus’s collection were capable of. Sonny reprised his chuckling. “Techa, I love being me.”
“Wait, there’s more, not all of it good news, I’m afraid. The idea, long-term, is to colonize our galaxy—The Milky Way—overnight with these baubles. Providing, of course, we survive this space war with the Kang. Might be worth leaving the Nautilus behind if that’s the case. We’d be the top of the food chain then, not that supersentient AI.”
Sonny thought about it. “And take on Earth’s military, or, worse, the galactic equivalent some day? No, thank you. Leon, on the other hand, is a man of reason I can bargain with. He appreciates my value.”
“I suppose we could get the Nautilus to drag this thing in tow on a tractor beam, several of the stations, for that matter, like those sucker fish that hang on to sharks. The Nautilus might well need the extra recreational space at the rate it’s growing, and it won’t justify more space for the likes of us, or for R&R, any other way.”
Sonny laughed. “We’re going to need something to convince the big man to play ball.”
“We’re already going over the surveillance tech on this thing to make sure we can keep out Mother’s prying eyes. Maybe if we can use it to take a peek into the trans-galactic consortium of worlds the Kang Dynasty Galaxy belongs to…”
Sonny nodded. “We’ll need more than a look see. Solo’s mind is already poring over that intel. We need something not even that snake can find.”
“Something that our schnozzes are a bit better built for,” Quar said, pointing to the same protruding, dog-like nose that Sonny had. Though his was even longer.
Sonny laughed. “Yes, precisely.”
Quar was off to relay the orders. In his wake Sonny basked in the beauty of his new space station. No, it wouldn’t take much to turn this place into a mecca of fantasy fulfillment an entire TGC worth of lifeforms might not mind frequenting. Sonny was going to have to play along with Leon long enough to help him win this tête-à-tête with the Kang. There was just too much at stake: access to the larger TGC to which the Kang belonged. A customer base perhaps big enough to fill up all the Dead Zone space habitats turned into casinos. And something told Sonny the Kang were never going to be customers in his casinos. So he had zero at stake in maintaining that relationship. And if this turned out to be a TGE—transgalactic empire—and not a TGC—transgalactic civilization—made up of all sorts of nasty types… all the better. Sonny’s people weren’t warriors, but they were killers and cutthroats, and they made excellent spies. Surely a TGE could find use for them, hell, even a TGC with more of a democratic and egalitarian outlook. It was a win-win either way for Sonny so long as he could get access to the greater whole. As to Leon making off with Dead Zone space habitats with the idea off transporting them back to the Milky Way Galaxy… So long as Sonny had time to build those relationships with this TGE or TGC first, he was still in business. Teleporters, as his people had already informed him, were de rigueur for most any Stage 3 civilization.
“Sir.” Sonny turned to address the Bulldog-looking one addressing him, another of Sonny’s henchmen made to do double duty between kills by also helping to run the business. “I think you’re going to want to see this. Not only is this space station armed to the teeth, it teleports.”
“Is that so?” Sonny trailed him. So the rumors are true. Excellent. “This just keeps getting better and better.” With teleporters, these space stations could comprise a traveling circus, supplying not just entertainment, but acting as liaisons for any number of trans-galactic empires. What
better place for diplomatic negotiations than stations devoted to R&R for diplomats? And who better to run surveillance and do reconnaissance for Leon—and every other space ship, fleet, and federation? Sonny might finally be free of the Nautilus AI, and he might just have the gateway to the universe he was looking for.
But one step at a time. First he had to get this transgalactic civilization to warm to him—so whichever way this war went, Sonny would end up with a winning hand. Sonny gestured for another of his inner circle, a slender-bodied Wolfhound type.
“Yes, sir,” the woman said.
“We’re going to need a computer printer that can replicate itself as rapidly as it can produce our one-of-a-kind casino attractions. It’ll need to run off zero-point energy so we aren’t conspicuously gobbling up real estate to provide the feed stock. The Nautilus isn’t going to be too happy about us requisitioning such a device. She’ll be using that tech to bioprint armies on demand, if it comes to that.”
“No need, sir. This station comes with any number of zero point printers.”
Sonny’s considerable jaw dropped. “And they abandoned this place as ‘legacy tech not worth refurbishing?’”
She shrugged.
Sonny was more determined than ever to implicate himself in the larger whole to which the Kang belonged. If this is the stuff the TGE threw away… and he could get ahold of stuff even more advanced… Those are things other galactic empires would pay a premium for. So far they’d just found one galactic empire. But surely there had to be more of these things, right?
“Tell me,” Sonny said. “How is this place for scanners?”
“Scanners, sir?”
“Trackers.”
The Bulldog one the two of them were now trailing stopped in his tracks and turned around. “As part of the teleporting feature, sir, the space station can locate any spot in the TGE you’d care to relocate to.”
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