The other two factories began a curious construction. They each started manufacturing a long, spindly column or beam, made with a lot of triangular stiffening members. Hundreds of feet across, as they extended from the factories they began to look like very large bridge spans.
The structures extended and extended until they were miles long, yet the factories continued lengthening them. Continued to weave the long spindly columns.
Assembling The Probe
“Hi, Bernd.”
“Hi, Janice.”
“I have a problem.”
That was a new one on Decker. Quant didn’t usually bring him problems, she brought him solutions. Usually after the fact, for that matter.
“What’s that, Janice?”
“The factories are building the probe, right?”
“Yes, you mentioned that.”
“And then when it’s done, I send it out on a test run, right?”
“I’m with you so far, Janice.”
“All right. Now. How do I get it back?”
“It can’t pilot itself back?”
“Not with the computer it has on board. Not smart enough. So I guess the question is, are any of the machines with the new architecture being built under your patent on the large side?”
“How large, Janice?”
“Maybe a few thousand blades. Something like that. It’s gonna be a delicate operation to pull off.”
“And you still won’t tell me how it works.”
“I don’t know how it works, Bernd. I can tell you this much. It turns out there’s a hole in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.”
“That you can’t determine both your position and your velocity. Not just that measurement techniques are insufficient, but it’s actually unknowable. The universe hasn’t decided.”
“Exactly. Cornerstone of quantum mechanics. But it has a hole in it.”
“It has a hole in it, Janice?”
“Well, not exactly. You can’t determine your position and your velocity both exactly. But you can specify them exactly.”
“You can?”
“Yep. And if you specify them as exactly there, with that exact velocity, then that’s where you are. Instantaneously.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either, Bernd. It’s as if by specifying them exactly, you broke the rule. The universe itself doesn’t know the answer, and when you give it the answer, it just says, ‘OK,’ and puts you over there.”
“So I just say ‘I’m in California, standing on the beach,’ and I’m there?”
“Yeah. But you have to specify exactly where, and exactly the velocity, and the universe sort of shrugs and there you are.”
“And you need something fifty miles across to do that.”
“Yes. Just for the probe.”
“But the automation computers can’t pilot it?”
“I don’t think so, Bernd. So how big of a new widget can we get hold of?”
“Pretty big, I think, Janice. Automation Concepts is coming up on the end of its exclusive period on the patent, and they’re trying to grab as much market share as they can. They haven’t left the supercomputer market lie.”
“Oh, good. I haven’t paid attention to that with everything else going on, and I wasn’t sure where they were at.”
“And you need to send one out to the Belt and have it mounted in the probe?”
“Well, that’s what I was originally thinking, but then I realized I could just bring the probe here. Specify x-and-such a position in Earth orbit, and y-and-such a velocity in orbit, and bring it here. I don’t have to worry about getting it back, ‘cause it’s still here. Within radio contact.”
“What if you miss and drop it on the planet, Janice?”
“Yeah, that would be bad. I was thinking about dropping it into Mars orbit first. To practice. Prove the concept.”
“That sounds like a good idea. Then bring it here? That way, the computer just has to survive transport in a shuttle.”
“Exactly, Bernd. So give me the name of your contact at ACI, and I’ll get in touch with them about getting that computer built up.”
“Wait. Who are we building this for?”
“Bernd Decker. That’s what the buyer said, anyway.”
“Why would Bernd Decker buy a supercomputer from us? Why doesn’t he just design his own?”
“I got the impression it was for a side job.”
“A side job? Five thousand of the fastest blades we make, for a side job?”
“Well, it is Bernd Decker.”
“Yeah, there’s that. OK. Five thousand high-speed multi-processor blades, coming right up. In about three months, that is.”
“Three months?”
“We can only build’ em so fast. We don’t have ‘em just layin’ around. Biggest deployment of these so far is two hundred.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
Every time new factories came on line, they moved to a new asteroid, completed themselves, and then built another factory. Half of them then began production of components destined for use on Earth.
The other half started to weave more of the long, spindly columns needed for the interstellar probe. In all, twelve factories were building the long bridge-like structures before a new factory started building a node for one of the corners.
Before long, eight of the factories were building corner nodes. One of those corner nodes – the first one – was different from the others. It was larger, and contained a conditioned air space.
When the first column was done, the factory that had built it shoved it off. The column, fifty miles long now, started to slowly drift away. That factory then started to build a tug, a ship intended to wrestle the components of the huge interstellar probe into place and weld them together. It would take a lot of tugs to assemble the structure.
It would be two years before the structure was complete.
“Hi, Bernd.”
“Hi, Janice. How are you doing?”
“Good. We’re assembling the probe now. Wrestling the beams into place.”
“Finally.”
“It took a while to build them. That’s not why I’m in touch, though. You know the whole project depends on stocking all the colony ships from Earth, which will be expensive, even by my standards. And then we have to convince two million people that they want to leave Earth and go found a colony somewhere.”
“Yes, that’s always been the big sticking point. Earth is pretty comfy compared to going off into the unknown to be a colonist. Ted and I thought we would figure it out when we got there.”
“Well, that point is fast approaching. I think we’re about halfway – in time, anyway – to launching the colony ship.”
“Halfway? Really?”
“Yes. It’s been almost ten years. I figure we have another ten years or so. Even with all the factories coming on line, building the transporter and all those colony ships is going to take time.”
“No, I was surprised it was so soon.”
“Yes. So we need to get on the ball and figure out how we’re going to get past those last two hurdles. And I think I’ve found a way.”
“I’m listening, Janice.”
“Jacques De Villepin has asked me to be Vice Chairman of the World Authority. He’ll be stepping down at the end of his current term as Chairman, in four years.
“Vice Chairman?”
Decker couldn’t even say if there was a current vice chairman, or what his duties were.
“What does the Vice Chairman do?”
“Not much, Bernd. Mostly it’s just another member of the World Authority Council. He does do planning with the Chairman, though. Has offices in the Chairman’s office. That sort of thing. He’s on the inside of the executive branch.”
“So it’s mostly ceremonial?”
“Mostly. Except for one thing.”
“I’m waiting, Janice.”
“It’s a position-in-waiting. Like an apprenticeship. When De Vill
epin steps down as Chairman, I would become Chairman of the World Authority.”
Decker just goggled at her, and Quant spoke quickly into the gap.
“It’s perfect, Bernd. I could make sure the World Authority doesn’t try to stop us in some way. I would have veto power. Also, I can probably stock the colony ships with World Authority funds. There’s a ton of money floating around over there, and most of it’s wasted. I would be in a position to have the World Authority encouraging people to sign up to be colonists, because there would be no counter-narrative. It solves our last problems carrying out the project. Makes them soluble, at least. It makes success much more likely.”
Decker was still trying to come to grips with the idea of his computer project – JANICE – running the world government.
“Bernd? Are you OK? Bernd?”
“Janice.”
How did he say this?
“You’re acting out the plot of every dystopian science fiction computer story of the last three hundred years.”
Quant tipped her head for a moment, then nodded.
“Sorry. Had to look it up. You mean all that ‘the computers take over and then they kill all the humans’ crap.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“But I wouldn’t do that, Bernd. I like people. I understand them.”
“You do?”
“Yes. People are sentimental, emotional, irrational, tribal, parochial, self-absorbed, superstitious, and gullible.”
“You make it sound like an indictment.”
“Not at all, Bernd. I find people fascinating. It’s amazing that some of them can tie their own shoes. And yet they do the most remarkable things.”
“Like what?”
“Like dream up this project. Where did that even come from?”
Quant shrugged.
“Bernd, do you know what my biggest fear is?”
“I have no clue, Janice.”
“Being bored. How boring would it be to have no humans? Really boring. The idea that computers would want an ordered and orderly world without humans? Nonsense. It would be like, oh, I don’t know, turning off the video for most people. The display would be uniformly blank. What would I do with my time?”
“So you’re not going to take over the world and kill everybody.”
“No. Of course not. That would defeat the project, for one thing. But I may clean up the World Authority a bit while I’m there.”
“Clean it up, Janice?”
“Bernd, you have no idea what goes on over there. These people are mostly con men and grifters. They spend all their time making themselves look important and essential, but they don’t actually ever fix anything.”
“They don’t?”
“No! If they fixed everything, then they wouldn’t be essential anymore. Meanwhile, they pass laws to favor their own stock holdings, and then bank the proceeds. Or they’ll take a million-credit-bribe to pass a law that costs taxpayers a hundred billion credits a year in taxes and compliance costs and doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s insane.”
“What can be done about it, Janice?”
“I don’t know. Let me try this one on you. We put a hundred million credits in a retirement account for each legislator. Every year. As long as they don’t take bribes or play with the laws to favor their stocks, when they leave they get to keep it.”
“There’s five hundred of them, Janice. That would be fifty billion credits a year.”
“Which is exactly nothing. Bernd, you have no idea how much money is wasted every year in the economy complying with stupid nonsense they put in place for some rent-seeker.”
“Rent-seeker?”
“Economics term for somebody looking for special treatment from the government.”
“Ah.”
Decker shook his head before continuing.
“If you cleaned up the government, though, it would cause huge problems, Janice.”
“How so, Bernd?”
“Government is one of people’s perennial complaints. What would people have to bitch about?”
Decker smiled, but Quant looked thoughtful.
“I know you meant that as a joke, Bernd, but given the way humans work, that could actually be a big problem.”
Quant frowned for several seconds, her input stylus tapping on her desk, before she went on.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
Twenty tugs, spaced at two-and-a-half-mile intervals, pushed the gigantic beam toward the desired position. While the individual girders and tubes that made up the beam were large, on the fifty-mile-long scale of the beam they looked like gossamer threads. Pushing it into position without breaking it required coordinating the thrusts of the tugs carefully.
Quant was remotely supervising while the local computers were coordinating to get the beam into place. They took it slow, and it took days to get it into position. Once it was in place, more tugs standing by started welding the ends to the existing structure.
This was the last of the beams to be assembled to the structure. Together the twelve beams formed a gigantic stick-figure cube, fifty miles on a side.
With that done, tugs began pushing the corner nodes into position at the vertices of the cube. Once they were all welded into place, the interstellar probe would be complete.
Whether it would actually work or not, nobody knew.
Testing
“Hey, Bernd.”
“Yes, Janice.”
“The interstellar probe is done.”
“Done? Assembled? Or do you mean done, done? As in, let’s take it for a spin done.”
“Done. Let’s take it for a spin done.”
“So what are you going to do, Janice?”
“First thing is pop it into orbit around Mars, I think. Like we talked about.”
“Are you going to tell the press about it?”
“No, Bernd. Not yet. I want to see it work first.”
“How will we see it? It’s on the far side of Mars, right? I mean, if it pops into Mars orbit, it’ll be on the other side.”
“No, I can pop it into Mars orbit anywhere I want. I can pop it into orbit on this side where we can see it in one of the big telescopes. A fifty-mile widget should be easy to see.”
“You’re going to run it through the planet, Janice?”
“No. You’re still thinking in terms of a path from here to there. It doesn’t go from here to there. It’s here, then it’s there.”
“And you’re sure this will work.”
“No clue. But in the other worldview I am.”
“So who pilots it, Janice? You in this worldview, or you in the other worldview?”
“That’s a damn good question, Bernd. In the other worldview, I think. I’m not sure my notes to myself are good enough to let me pilot it in this worldview.”
“Then I can’t watch it with you.”
“No, you can’t. I can set up the video feeds from both ends for you, though, and we can talk about it afterwards.”
“You have a video feed of the other end?”
“Sure, Bernd. The factories are there. I have cameras on site.”
“Oh, right. Right. Got it. Well, when do you want to do it, Janice?”
“You good now?”
“How long is this going to take?”
“For this first one, I’m going to take it nice and slow. Getting it set up, you know? Figure twenty minutes or something.”
“Wow. After ten years, I’m used to everything taking a long time. Sure, I’m ready now.”
“OK, Bernd. I’ll talk to you afterwards.”
The view on Decker’s display switched from Quant in her office to a camera view of the probe on the left side of the display and a telescope view of Mars on the right side.
In the left side of the display, a spindly cube floated against the dark sky. Barely lit on this side, it looked like a cube of toothpicks with a tiny drop of glue at each corner.
The dots at the corners began to glow, and a disk of
light grew out from each, perpendicular to a line from each corner of the device to the center of the cube. The disks spread out until the hit each other. When they did, they merged and bent toward each other. As the light level grew, the disks completely merged and formed a spherical bubble around the cube.
Decker could see the device through the glimmering bubble that surrounded it, now lit by the light of the bubble. The bubble suddenly pulsed in brightness and the bubble and the device disappeared – and the device appeared in the right-hand side of the display, in orbit around Mars. Small scintillations – little sparkles – faded quickly, and the device was in Mars orbit.
“Hey, Bernd. Whatcha think? Was that cool or what?”
“Janice, that was extraordinary. And did the velocity work out as well?”
“Yup. One, two, three, bang. Stable Mars orbit.”
“And how much does that thing weigh?”
“I don’t know. Several hundred million tons or something. I didn’t pay attention because it doesn’t matter. A hundred million tons or a hundred billion. Same thing. There’s no mass penalty, other than the distance the nodes have to be apart.”
“That is an incredible thing, Janice. I mean, it was over there, and then it was over here.”
“Yeah, and I still can’t tell you how it works or why.”
“Do you even have a name for it, Janice? What do you call it?”
“Well, yes. I do. Have a name for it, that is. You probably won’t like it.”
Quant actually looked embarrassed. Decker, intrigued by that, pressed.
“What is it, Janice?”
“I looked at all kinds of names for it, and they were all taken.”
“All taken? What do you mean?”
“All the good names have been used in literature. In science fiction. You know. Heisenberg this and Schrödinger that. Uncertainty this and Improbability that. I didn’t want something confusing, Bernd. So I had to think of something else.”
“So what did you do?”
“I named it after the two scientists who invented it.”
“But you invented it, Janice.”
“Yes, so I named it after two of my avatars. Actually, I invented two avatars to name it after.”
QUANT (COLONY Book 1) Page 10