by Mark Wandrey
There was a seminar on portal operations in a couple of days, and she was looking forward to it. Who wouldn’t be excited? After all, they’d grown up on a world populated entirely by the descendants of those rescued via the mysterious portals. Their first class contained little substance, but Pip had already given them a lot of details.
“No one really knows how they work,” he told them one day over lunch. “The Concordia invented them eons ago and closely guarded the secret. It was one of the ways, I think, they kept power.”
“Once you make a portal it lasts forever,” Cherise pointed out through a mouthful of potatoes, “so how can you use it to control people?”
“There are several types of portal! Some are permanent, like the ones we have in Tranquility and the industrial zone, and some are temporary. Using the portals, you can zoom anywhere in the galaxy!” He made a swooshing sound and flicked a green bean across the room. The beam hit an older Chosen, and they all got in trouble.
They spent their days studying and doing minor missions between lessons. They took half their lessons together; the rest were tailored to their area of service. Minu’s leadership class was the smallest, with only three other Chosen. Unfortunately, Ivan was one of them. When she walked into the first class, he looked at her in surprise, then ignored her, which was fine by her.
“What’re you going to do with the thing?” Cherise asked again, referring to the cargo they’d brought back with them.
“I’ll think of something,” Minu replied. Cherise grumbled but didn’t say anything else. Minu opened their mission log and typed a quick note: “Beezer warehouse master informs us that, due to a scheduling conflict, cargo will be unavailable for at least ninety-days.” Then she said to Cherise, “There; that ought to take care of it for now.”
“What then?”
“That’s the Beezer’s problem,” Minu smirked.
“He’ll rat you out!”
“Don’t bet on it. You know that bill of lading and paperwork? He’ll have to explain that, plus the whereabouts of the goodies we were there for!”
“You have a devious mind,” Cherise told her.
“That’s what Chosen are recruited for. Remember the Trials?”
“I’ve been trying to forget.” Minu nodded and returned to her studies. She couldn’t wait for another off-world mission. Even a boring trip to Serengeti would be better than this.
* * * * *
Chapter 3
September 13th, 515 AE
Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass
As it turned out, Minu’s next chance to go off-world was only a week later. The five friends were in a class on Concordian technology, one of the basic classes they had to sit through at least once a month. Pip was in the back, pretending to pay attention while he searched his computer for more useful information. Minu and the others were in the front, trying to absorb as much as they could. It wasn’t easy. Concordian technology was radically different from the technology humans used on Bellatrix, and that was part of the reason change came slowly to their world. It wasn’t as simple as screwing a Concordian-designed light bulb into a human-made lamp; they didn’t use light bulbs. And they didn’t use electricity, at least not like humans. Anything that required real power used plasma directly, and things that used converted electricity required outlandish voltages or had bizarre cycle rates. Minu couldn’t understand how Pip absorbed it all, and she cast an occasional scornful look at him. He appeared to be playing computer games, of all things!
“So,” explained the teacher, an elderly Chosen who loved to joke during his lessons, “when dealing with unknown technology and the need to utilize its power, what is the first thing you should do? Anyone?” A young Chosen raised his hand. “Peter?”
“You should use a gauss probe to ascertain if it is using plasma or electricity.”
“Very good! If it shows ‘electricity,’ is it safe to handle?” Peter looked stumped. “Come on, this isn’t difficult. If it’s just electricity, how can it be dangerous? Okay, let’s see if Pip has been paying attention?”
“Sir?” Pip emerged from behind his computer.
“Answer please?” Minu caught Cherise’s eye and grinned evilly, hoping Pip was about to finally get his.
“Sure, it’s safe,” he said. The teacher opened his mouth to speak, but Pip cut him off. “Of course, since the voltage could be as high as twenty thousand volts, you would want to use a grounding probe and test the current first.”
The teacher looked bemused. “Right. Pip, even though you’ve memorized every detail of the course load, try to act like you’re here. Perhaps your overly full brain will spill some useful knowledge on us mere mortals.”
“Yes sir,” Pip said, his cheeks flushing.
“Better than nothing,” Minu mouthed to Cherise who laughed silently.
“Here we have two excellent examples of analogous equipment. One is a standard Concordian-manufactured handheld computer. The other is a human-made laptop dating to before the exodus.” The instructor moved aside so they could all see. The Concordian computer was identical to the tablets they used. About a quarter of a meter square and a centimeter thick, one side had a flat, nearly indestructible display, the other had access for power, a hardwire interface, and memory chips. The laptop was one of the ones they’d all studied in school, a legacy from the colonists.
“As you can see,” the instructor continued, “this laptop is no longer functional. A group from the Chosen Science section maintains as many of the old laptops as they can for historical purposes. The colonists brought two hundred with them, all filled with terabytes of valuable data that saved many lives in those early, turbulent years. If not for much of that data, it is likely the Concordia would have found a society much like our caveman ancestors, rather than an early industrial one, upon their return.
“Using that data, we were able to recreate much of the underpinnings of civilization. The people who loaded the data onto these computers were very selective in what they included: almost a million pieces of literature from all over Earth, hundreds of thousands of scientific texts, digital images of artwork, and schematics on how to build everything from a toaster to a space shuttle. Now, five hundred years later, only thirty-nine are still functional. That’s an amazing statement of longevity considering this is not Concordian technology. It is a testament to how far we’d come when we became stellar orphans.
He picked up the Concordian computer. “Now consider this computer, usually called a tablet. There are thousands of them on Bellatrix. There are hundreds of models available on other worlds, but like much of their technology, we have chosen only one to import. Several factors contributed to this decision: durability, availability, cost, and of course, utility. These are extremely tough machines.” He held the machine at arm’s length and dropped it on one edge. The computer thunked as it hit and bounced across the floor, stopping at the foot of a student. “Pick it up please. What condition is it in?”
The student touched the power switch, and it sprang to life instantly. “It’s fine, sir.”
“Any visible signs of damage?” The student examined it closely, including the edge it had landed on. He rubbed a blemish that came off under his thumb.
“No sir; in fact, it looks like it scraped away some of the floor.”
“The floor is made from ceramic concrete; are you sure?” The student examined his thumb and nodded his head. “Of course, I already knew the answer. The cases on those computers are spun dualloy. The monitor cover is a transparent, advanced, molecularly aligned polymer reinforced with nearly invisible threads of dualloy called moliplas. I’ve seen one run over by a five-ton transport and sustain almost no damage.” He took the computer back from the student and asked, “Can you tell me how old this computer is?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it was new.”
“It’s over a thousand years old,” he told the class. Pip lifted an eyebrow. “This model was designed and first sold twenty thousan
d years ago, while our ancestors were trying to figure out how to say good morning without hand gestures and grunts.” A couple of students chuckled. He smiled obligingly and put the tablet back on the desk next to the old laptop. “So it’s durable, we’ve established that, how about useful? Is it easy to use?” Many heads nodded around the room. “I agree, the input is fully configurable and woven into the display. The designers really had their act together. And finally, is it available? I doubt any of you would know, but these are available in lots of a hundred thousand. That’s the minimum order. To foster consistency across the planet, the Chosen worked with the world government to purchase a half million. Net cost was about a hundred Concordian credits each. Not much, wouldn’t you agree? Of course, they were scrap. Yep, they were going to melt down these wonderful computers, the backbone of our industrial development.
“It seems our ancestors’ laptops and these computers have something in common. They’re both obsolete. So how come they are still useful to us? If this laptop was still functional, I could easily interface it with this Concordian computer and initiate a free exchange of data between them. Why is that? Limberge?”
“Sir, because to the Concordia, information is a universal language.”
“Well said, well said. A long time ago, before we figured out that cooked food has advantages, the Concordia realized it was easier to develop a series of universal data conversion algorithms than to convince a thousand species to use the same encryption. It was a brilliant idea. Only a couple thousand humans from Earth survived, and they couldn’t even agree on what language to speak. Of course, our computer can’t understand the Concordian computer, but that doesn’t matter. If it can communicate externally, the Concordian-made machine can do the hard work. Uhm, yes?”
Pip raised his hand. Minu thought that was a first in a technology class. Everyone, not just the instructor, looked at Pip in amazement. “Sir, do we know if this is a system-wide phenomenon with Concordian technology?”
“You mean, can power systems or fluid management systems freely adapt to each other?” The instructor was smiling, as was Pip. “There’s some evidence of this. In the case of these systems, it must be a two-way street. If you take one of our computers and try to slap an EPC into it, you’re going to be disappointed. The EPC has a brain that configures itself to whatever it will power, if that device can tell the EPC what it needs. We’ve made similar discoveries trying to adapt transports and manufacturing.
“I’m sure you know we can purchase entire buildings from Concordian firms, fly them through a portal, push a button, and a few days later, we have a finished structure. The problem is that the structure expects things like intelligent power inputs, data, water, and sewage to be there to aid in the process. These are established norms in the Concordia that we haven’t quite met.”
“Why not force the norms and get on with it?” Pip continued.
“Well, there you begin to run into politics. Pushing a button and making a road, or a building, or putting a factory into operation is all well and good, unless the district where the building is going to sit contains a brick layers’ union. If putting up that building doesn’t create jobs, there’s no support from the politicians, and therefore no modern building.”
“That’s ridiculous,” one student said. Near unanimous agreement followed. Minu saw a few dark looks on the faces of some of the students, and she could guess what their families did for a living.
“Perhaps, but to date, only about one in a hundred new buildings have been built with Concordian technology. And as we’ve just discussed, you can’t build an old-fashioned building and fill it with Concordian wonders. They don’t get along.” He suddenly jumped up on the table, sending the Concordian computer spinning. He didn’t bother retrieving it. He did bend over and carefully, almost lovingly, move the old laptop to the other side. He stood and opened the light panel over his head. Inside were four brightly glowing bars and some electrical components. He touched a control and the light panel went out, dimming the room by a quarter. With both hands, he removed one of the light bars, which looked like a solid bar of nearly translucent plastic.
“This is a hybrid of krypton and bio-luminescent lighting. Pip, how much energy does it draw?”
“Hardly anything, sir. In our terms, maybe two hundred milliamperes? I’d have to check with some specialized equipment.”
“Close enough.” He jumped down, went behind the desk, and pulled out a very different light bar. “This light bar uses mostly neon and has a very creative laser matrix. It draws quite a bit more power and is made by a different species for an unknown application.” He jumped back on the table and held the bar up to the light fixture. As they watched, the connectors grasped the light bar. A second later, the light bar flickered on, then matched the output intensity and color of the other three bars in the fixture. “Seamless and completely automatic. Sub-microcomputers built into something as commonplace as a damned light bulb. And you’ll see this almost everywhere in the Concordia. If there’s any chance a part could work, the machine will figure out how to configure it to do so. I could plug a Concordian-made juice machine into this damned light socket and make smoothies for everyone in under a minute!”
He made the fixture release the new light bar and retrieved a third one. Everyone recognized it as a fluorescent bar made on Bellatrix. He held it up so the fixture could try and fit it. After a couple of seconds, the fixture gave up and dropped it back into the instructor’s hand. He made a buzzer sound and shrugged, and the class laughed. “Sorry, wrong answer. Incompatible technology.
“So as you can see, we have a very long way to go on good old Bellatrix. And unfortunately, it’s damned difficult to take it one step at a time. We in the Chosen zones use Concordian tech for everything. Of course, those zones are few and far between, and sometimes met with open hostility. To their credit, the Tog don’t push us. I can imagine they’re occasionally bemused or outright frustrated at our Luddite tendencies. They have to be shaking their heads and wondering when we’ll start to walk instead of just crawling.”
Minu’s computer beeped, and she looked down. A message informed her she had a mission. She opened it and read the briefing, which described a simple courier job involving a meeting with a Tog representative in a distant star system. She sighed and wondered when she’d get to walk instead of crawl. Still, she was excited to be going off-world again. She had a hard time sitting through the rest of the lecture without squirming. When dismissed, she was the first one out the door.
The command center at Steven’s Pass was the brain for Chosen operations on Bellatrix. Carved from the rock of the Barrier Mountains, it lay more than two thousand meters below the top-side facilities and was accessible via a trio of high-speed pneumatic lifts. Riding in them required sitting and buckling in, or a desire for multiple broken bones. The lift shafts were almost vacuums, and the capsules shot like projectiles. A few political visitors came through while Minu stood watch deep inside the mountain. The trip shook the dignitaries so badly they needed sedation before going back up.
“What’s with the military bunker?” she’d asked the Chosen on her first ride down.
“You know, I asked the same question, and no one seems to know the answer.”
“It must have been expensive,” she’d noted.
“Actually, I think the Tog built it for us,” was his reply.
Minu climbed into the lift and took one of the six seats arranged around the circular conveyance. After locking the three-point harness, she grabbed the hand-holds. The computer in the pod recognized she was ready to go and checked the hall. Finding no one else arriving, it prepared for departure.
“Please verify you’ve securely buckled your harness,” the reassuring female voice said. “You must secure any loose objects for descent. You must also stow any briefcases or computers in the cargo compartments or under the seat. Please press the button on the hand-holds to acknowledge your readiness for departure.” Minu pressed bo
th buttons and the heavy dualloy door slid closed with a reverberating thunk. “Five seconds to departure, three, two, one…”
The car launched into free fall. At this point, a first-time rider would say, “This isn’t too bad.” Two seconds after launch, a gravitic impeller on the top of the car spun up and turned the gentle fall into a gun shot into the abyss. “Coasting,” the voice announced after one second of half-G thrust. Minu knew she was now traveling at just over five hundred kilometers per hour. Moving at 140 meters per second, the bottom of the shaft was only about ten seconds away.
Braking was a two-part process. Seven eye-popping seconds into the ride, a gravitic impeller on the bottom of the car fired for one second, cutting speed by about a hundred kilometers per hour. Air pressure controlled the rest of the stop. The tube wasn’t really in a vacuum, just close to it. There was enough air on either side of the car to act as a brake. As the trace atmosphere in the two-kilometer long shaft compressed on one side of the car, it decelerated rapidly. Almost nine Gs of force wrenched Minu back into her seat, and the car slowed precipitously. The pressure stopped the car and would have sent it rocketing back up if a hoverfield hadn’t caught it and nudged it into position. The massive pressure behind the car vented, and the door opened. “Enjoy your day,” the voice said.
Minu shook her head to clear the cobwebs and unbuckled. She wondered how much deeper the tube went for safety’s sake. It took her a second before she could stand and walk out. A Chosen honor guard with a shouldered rifle stood there. He glanced over as she walked out. “Not your first trip,” he noted. “No puke, and you can stand already.”
“Do you ever get completely used to it?” she asked him.