“Do you understand?”
Dead air.
Sigh.
“Yeah, I understand.” Natty couldn’t hide his dispirited condition from Leon.
“Sorry, kid. This is more my fault than yours. I should have addressed this issue with you sooner. Let’s hope as slow as I am, the Kang are slower. Possibly the only reason they haven’t taken it out already is it just didn’t dawn on them that we would do anything but follow them into the Kang dynasty to continue the dogfight. That is, after all, how they’re wired.”
Nothing but static on the line.
“You think if you mutate that strange algae-nanite-hive mind coating the towers, you could get them to make more towers even faster? And if you boosted the power of the individual coils as well, you could throw a net around the moon from here?”
Silence.
While Natty pondered whether he could run with Leon’s idea or not, Leon walked the killing field. The Kang littered the ground like a meteor had indeed exploded here. Seeing dead versions of himself strewn among the Kang bodies, didn’t do much for his sense of cheer. Nor did seeing any of the dead bodies of the other Omega Forces operatives. It seemed that knowing they were “merely” backup digital copies bioprinted at the last second and beamed here didn’t do them or him justice. They deserved more respect than that. Grief and horror seemed the appropriate reaction no matter how he cut it.
“Leon, we have to be careful about shielding the moon,” Natty came back finally. “The very act of doing so will draw attention to its importance, not that I and the others haven’t already been fast at work on the problem.”
“How about giving the moon its own HAARP grid, tweaked like Earth’s so the shield is invisible until it’s impacted. And the second it is, the artifact beams the Earth and moon to some other part of The Milky Way Galaxy? Or it does the necessary assessment to see if The Milky Way Galaxy itself has to show its true colors as the Gypsy Galaxy and beam the whole galaxy the hell out of Dodge? The Tesla Towers themselves can be cloaked, perhaps as boulders, impact craters…”
More silence.
“I like it,” Natty said. “I’ll get on it.”
Natty cut the line before he could explain how the hell he was going to carry out that mandate. Leon imagined it would require Mother’s help to beam duplicates of the tech they had here to the Moon, where the genesis effect of growing the grid would commence. As to the Tesla towers themselves needing to be incognito, or its presence on the moon would tip their hands as well…Even Omega Force had “rocks” and “boulders” lying around that doubled as bombs, probes, satellite repeaters, and whatever the hell other tech they needed to hide. He doubted Natty would even need to call in Alpha Unit for that retrofit.
Leon stared at the sky again, enjoying the light show of asteroids exploding against the Earth’s new energy shield. Only then did it dawn on him. Who or what was hurling the asteroids now if the Kang were contained in their home galaxy? Surely, hacking the Boundary AI that was coordinating the bombardment for the Kang would have been the easier part of this operation. Though technically he’d never put it on the to-do list. If the barrier hole could be sealed, that meant the Boundary AI had already been hacked.
Oh, yeah, duh. Natty was still testing the Earth’s new planetary shield to make sure it delivered as promised.
Wait. That meant Team Good Guys could now hurl asteroids as well, simply by hacking the boundary AI enclosing the Kang Dynasty—and sending the pelting asteroids the other direction.
That could come in damned handy in a galactic-scale war with them, should it come to that.
But how exactly would Natty manage that? That hacking job might have to be a bit more thorough.
The question would have to wait. He didn’t dare slow Natty’s progress on getting that moon shield up and running. Besides, with any luck, one of his clones, Theseus, or someone else in the braintrust was already hard at work on the problem, perhaps Nauti herself. And he hadn’t been looped in because there were some shortcomings in Mother’s syncing and updating of everyone on one another’s thinking.
THIRTY
THE DEAD ZONE
ONE OF THE CYLINDER HABITATS—A WORLD MAKER—PROTO
Theseus materialized a few feet from Sparky, the third-eye organ in his forehead he used for teleporting still inflamed, looking like the iris of a camera that hadn’t been stopped down for bright light conditions. “What is it?” the magenta giant asked. His tone was just brisk enough to pass for Omega Force, who had a similar no-time-to-waste attitude.
“I thought you might like to see this,” Sparky said. He looked more robot than humanoid, but that was owing to the fact that he was a silicon-based lifeform. The tips of his fingers were flat discs that extended on metallic tentacles, which pulled out of the “shell” of the fingers themselves, like very long snails.
Larger metallic chords, looking much like plumbers’ snakes, extended from his torso. Where once they were flush with it, the disk-like ends were now touching other locations on the expansive console he was operating. He may have been doing the work of the ten or so operatives originally stationed at his control center.
Sparky communicated with machines better than most AIs. He could feed off a far wider range of electrical signals, for one. He hardly needed AC or DC electricity, voltage regulators, or ohms settings. And if he could suck vampiristically off any electronic device, he could also rejuvenate them.
But mostly he found intelligence and sentience in things that AIs would not even recognize as conscious life forms, perhaps because they weren’t, at least not strictly speaking.
Theseus observed the closed end of the cylinder world he was standing in retract, exposing those inside to space and stars. There should have been a complete evacuation of the insides, venting into space. Instead there was nothing, not even a faint breeze.
But if the sounds of that cylinder seal retracting weren’t ominous enough…
The sound of it rotating caused Theseus’s teleporting organ to flare—in readiness to beam him the hell out of here.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Wait for it,” Sparky said.
Theseus, on the verge of losing all patience, and smashing Sparky’s head into the console, or perhaps strangling him with his own tentacles, crossed his arms and snorted, letting his body language speak for him. Before long, his arms fell away limply. “Shit! Shut it down! Now!”
“No,” Sparky said deadpan, refusing to take his eye off the portal as wide as a world, for this was one hell of a big cylinder, bigger than many Theseus had visited so far.
The world just kept coming toward them.
To be fair, it didn’t look like much, a Mars-like red-dust planet. Not a body of water in sight, barely an ice cap at one end.
As the cylinder began to vibrate, to steady himself, Theseus grabbed hold of one of Sparky’s tentacles—which he wanted to strangle him with anyway; this just put him one step closer to realizing his fantasy. Maybe there was a reason Theta Team had chosen Theseus to interface with Omega Force; they shared certain conditioned responses to certain forms of stimuli.
The cylinder was devouring the planet at its open end. It turned about the planet, which fit between its cylinder walls that continued to spin about it, pulling it apart.
When the center of the cylinder was clear again, the planet entirely dismantled, the cylinder shot out a smaller cylinder back out the hole, whose walls were formed by the planet turned into the cylinder’s hull.
“I believe what we just witnessed is a form of cellular mitosis,” Sparky said. “This cylinder world reproduces itself. I’ve yet to master all the ins and outs of this console. But I believe if the planet it’s devouring is big enough—the turning end dilates as it needs to—and instead of spitting out one cylinder, it spits out two, three, four or more, of different sizes, based on the thickness of the rind the world was able to produce.”
Sparky sighed with satisfaction. “Some are already
calling it The Planet Eater. Though I prefer World Maker.”
“This thing couldn’t possibly be set free in the Milky Way Galaxy,” Theseus warned.
“I believe that’s why the console requires manning by a number of operators. If used more strategically instead of being set to autopilot, this thing could be stationed at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to feed the giant black hole in the center with vacuumed up space debris turned into cylinder worlds, buying the other worlds in the galaxy an extended lifespan—perhaps an indefinite one. It could, at least in theory, make the galaxy immortal. Of course, those cylinders would have to be designed like prescription lozenges, each with different space-warping capacities themselves, in order to get the black hole to turn slower, or weaken its grip on surrounding star matter.
At first Theseus gazed at him as if he was mad, but then the other shoe dropped. “Better yet, if we can find a way to spit these cylinder worlds out the black hole on the other side—we could deliver ourselves into another universe even as this one grows cold from its dying suns. Don’t expect us to do the physics of getting these cylinder worlds to survive black holes, mind you, but we suspect these Dead Zone peoples did. It might even be the way they escaped The Collectors.”
Theseus swallowed hard.
“And…” Sparky said, sensing another realization caught in Theseus’s throat.
“If stationed at the outer arms of the spiral galaxy…” Theseus said, running with Sparky’s thinking.
“…could grow it.” Sparky beamed. “Of course there’s nothing saying we can’t do both, considering these World Makers reproduce themselves and teleport to any location you like.
“They might even have been used to bridge galaxies once upon a time,” Sparky suggested. “Link enough of them like so many Ellis Islands, cloak them, and…”
“We not only hide the actual location of our galaxy, but once the immigrants to the Milky Way are inside the World Makers, we can make sure we mind-scan them, debrief them, run necessary psyops on them to ensure they assimilate, and make sure we shut down any potential terrorists who, after the mind conditioning, won’t even remember they’re terrorists.”
“The other tech in this World Maker suggests they have the capacity to do all that and more,” Sparky assured him.
“And more?”
“In the event of colliding galaxies, if positioned at the periphery, they could buy the host galaxy time to evacuate by devouring the first planets, suns, moons, and asteroids to crash into us. And if given enough time for the cylinders to replicate, should shield the host galaxy entirely from such vagaries of cosmic nature.”
“Devour suns too?”
“Perhaps even black holes. We’re still learning how to work the World Makers. But more practically speaking, on a more modest time horizon, I think, we can dismantle useless moons and asteroids and turn them into habitable cylinder worlds in a pinch.”
Theseus tried to reel his mind in. They had the small matter of this war with the Kang to survive first. And then there was the somewhat bigger problem of contending with The Collectors. Before they could survive into the long-term to fully appreciate the treasure they were sitting on with the Dead Zone technology, they had to survive the short-term.
“I call this World Maker, Proto,” Sparky said, running his hands affectionately over the console, “as it’s the first we’ve gotten our hands on. And who knows? It may have even given rise to still more advanced versions.”
“I’m teleporting,” Theseus said, “against my will. That means either Mother or my higher self realizes there’s something that can’t wait for my attention.”
Sparky bowed to him.
“Thank you for this gift, my friend,” Theseus said.
“I’m but a small player in all this.” Sparky bowed again.
“Aren’t we all?” Theseus, who had faded to hologram density at the commencement of the teleportation, disappeared entirely.
***
THE DEAD ZONE
A CYLINDER WORLD—A RING FAB—TRICKSTER
Theseus had teleported aboard another cylinder, its mouth, too, open to the stars. Theseus hated to admit it but he wasn’t a fan of this “open-door” policy. He preferred his cylinders sealed. “What is that? A ring world?”
“And so much more,” Moranus replied.
The ring’s diameter made it look like your typical wrist band, relative to your typical arm, like a gold ID bracelet some humans were fond of wearing. This close to the sun, Theseus should not have been able to perceive glowing lights on the black wristband, but he could.
As captivating as the ring world was, Theseus took his eye off the giant ring encircling the sun, and put it on Moranus. “I remember your name, but not what you do.”
Moranus made a throat-clearing sound, nervously. “Um, Ring World specialist,” his eyes darting back to the ring world. “Of course, this is the first one I’ve actually encountered. Mother bioengineered me after reading a Larry Niven novel in a femtosecond. I was her nanosecond response to the read.”
“So, you know how to make the most of this thing?”
“Let me show you what I’ve discovered about it so far,” Moranus said, again, refusing to take his eyes off his object of fascination.
Theseus regarded him more closely. Moranus’s body appeared to be an assemblage of rings in humanoid form. Was he, too, hollow on the inside?
“Yes, I am,” Moranus replied, reading his mind. “The many bands that make me up house different AIs, grown from entirely different seeds of evolving algorithms.”
“Hmm.” Theseus grunted. Moranus was a glowing LED light show all his own. “How exactly does that help us?”
“Each of my bands houses enough artificial lifeforms that they constitute planet-sized cities in miniature. Each band, is in effect, a study-in-progress of how different ring world habitats might indeed evolve over time.”
“Ah-ha,” Theseus said, still not sure he was sold on Moranus’s claim to the intellectual high ground in this area.
Moranus seemed to read his mind once again and proceeded with his demonstration as a way of flashing his credentials. He pressed some buttons on his cylinder world console. “Keep your eyes on the ring world,” he said as he did so.
Theseus returned his eyes to the sun. The one ring spinning about it subdivided into numerous bands. Those bands began to twirl about one another independently, slowly, then faster and faster, in a more coordinated fashion, forming fantastic Spirograph-like geometries.
When they settled down, they formed the beginning of a Dyson sphere, which rapidly closed in on itself, sealing off the sun entirely.
Theseus gasped.
Moranus was still pressing buttons on his console. “You’re going to love this,” he said. He pressed some more buttons and the rings surrendered their sphere formation, collapsing back into one another, and now behaving more like the interlocking rings in a magician’s hand, looping around one another as they fell away from the sun in all directions, leaving just one of the magician’s bands circling the sun.
Moranus kept pressing buttons.
The chains of interlocking rings got longer, some broke off and closed on themselves like necklaces big enough to encircle entire worlds—as big as this sun.
“How is that possible?” Theseus asked.
“The one ring you initially saw was actually many rings collapsed in on one another, the smaller rings nested within the larger ring. As they drop their nested formation they can expand and contract as needed by sliding out their overlapping parts. Even fully dilated, they remain amazingly strong and able to withstand both the gravity well and radiation of that sun.”
“You have full operational control of those rings?” Theseus asked disbelievingly.
“This cylinder you’re standing in creates the rings. There may be more of these cylinders with the same function. It’s not like we’ve had a chance to check them all out yet.” To demonstrate, Moranus pressed some more buttons, and a ri
ng broke off the tip of the cylinder, floating in the direction of the sun, keen on joining the others. Meanwhile, the cylinder started rotating at its outer band. As it did so, previously dormant robots activated, fleshing out the ring world, or rather, the ringworld surface unfolded, with their help, like origami to highlight the cities arising along its inner perimeter.
Once the city was complete, the ring’s 3-D view enfolded into itself, again, much like Origami folding down, so that the thicker outer band could be forged about it. That innermost band apparently was just one of the fold-out sections of an as-of-yet incomplete ring world.
“So,” Theseus asked, “this cylinder world devours itself to produce one of those self-expanding rings?”
“If it can’t consume feed stock at the other end, it will.”
“Does this cylinder devour worlds too for the feedstock?” Theseus asked.
Moranus regarded him, surprised. “Too?” He let the subject go when Theseus remained focused on getting his own question answered. “No, nothing so crude. It uses ZPE energy, forming matter out of the sub-quantum energy, which it then manipulates. So long as this thing doesn’t break down, it can birth ringworlds for all eternity out of absolutely nothing.”
Theseus shook his head slowly. “And this is what passes for junkyard technology? The cast-offs of another race, toys long since outgrown?”
“We don’t know that the Ethereals who left this behind were any less evolved than a Transgalactic civilization,” Moranus said. “It’s possible for a Galactic civilization to be more evolved than a TGC or TGE, like Greece was before the Romans came along.”
“Possibly, but that alone may not have been enough to help them effect their escape. As I recall from what little Earth history I bothered to learn, the more enlightened Greece fell to the less enlightened, but more numerous and war-faring Romans. Sort of the way the Kang are crawling all over us like ants right now.”
Moranus snorted.
Theseus brought his mind back on line; he was digressing pointlessly. “And what do we know about the lifeforms on those ring worlds?”
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