The Death of the Universe: Rebirth: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 3)

by Brandon Q Morris

  The head of the Computing Center was blocking the exit with outstretched arms. In front of him stood two brawny soldiers in camouflage gear, having heaved one of the control cabinets as far as Shostakovich’s feet. “Not over my dead body!”

  “We need to get through, comrade,” one of them said with a Kazakh accent.

  “This is our valuable property,” Shostakovich complained. “You may as well take me, too.”

  “If we have to. We have instructions from high up. We need to get through.”

  Sasha was watching the scene from the corridor behind them. He felt sorry for the head of the Computing Center. Had no one talked to him? “Dr. Shostakovich,” he called.

  The man turned to him. He frowned and stared at him. “It’s your fault that things are escalating like this,” he said. “You promised me you’d take care of my BESM-6.”

  “And we have.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. These men are taking it away! What have you done?”

  “Don’t worry, comrade. Everything will be just fine.”

  “Everything will be fine? When you’re no longer here, maybe.”

  “You’re getting an ES-1066 in its place. More than five times as fast as the BESM-6, up to 16 megabytes of primary memory, a 64-bit processor...”

  “Is that supposed to be a joke? If so, it’s a bad one.”

  “No. Didn’t they tell you?”

  “I don’t know anything. And I don’t believe you. The Academy can’t afford an ES-EVM mainframe computer.”

  Neither his father nor the secret service general had actually promised that the ES-1066 would be able to stay there forever. He hoped he wasn’t overstepping the mark. But, if he didn’t reassure Shostakovich, right now, the situation would continue to escalate.

  “The Academy isn’t paying for it,” said Sasha.

  “Then who is?”

  “I’m not allowed to tell you.”

  “I understand.”

  His strategy worked. Shostakovich stepped out of the way and the soldiers carried the control cabinet away.

  “Did you organize this?”

  “Not directly.”

  “I understand.”

  Shostakovich was smart. If it was his place to know, he would have been informed. Knowing something you weren’t supposed to know only caused problems.

  “And when you leave here?”

  “Good question. Maybe you’ll be able to keep the ES-1066.”

  “That would be amazing,” said Shostakovich. “It would be the only way to catch up on the delays caused by your being here.”

  “I’ll do what I can. I promise.”

  April 27, 1984, Akademgorodok

  “Katya?” His voice echoed around the room.

  “I’m here.” Her head appeared above a data cabinet. She was so beautiful he couldn’t help but smile.

  The individual modules of the ES-1066 were a little shorter than the BESM-6 control cabinets. It made the room look less like a labyrinth and more like a half-installed kitchen. The mainframe looked like something from a utopian film. The cabinets were white on the bottom, blue on the top, and had lots of glass surfaces. The cleaning ladies would be happy.

  “How are you getting along?” he asked.

  “We’ll be finished today,” said Katya. “I’m helping a bit with the wiring.”

  “Have you seen Yuri?”

  “He’s in his room studying the instruction manuals. The operating system is probably quite different from the one in the BESM-6.”

  Everything was obviously taking its course here and he wouldn’t be needed. A stroll to the reservoir wouldn’t be a bad idea. Today was Friday, and he knew he wouldn’t have much peace on the weekend. He walked past the brand-new computer modules to the basement door. Suddenly the lights went out. Sasha stumbled, but was able to grab hold of something cold and smooth.

  “Govno,” cried a male voice. That must be one of the specialists installing the mainframe.

  “Does anyone have a light?” asked Katya. The small flame of a lighter rose above the computer modules. A draft caused it to flicker.

  “What happened?” asked another man’s voice.

  “Walter, was that you?” asked a woman.

  So there were at least six people in the room. When it was still light, he’d only noticed Katya.

  “Yes, that was me.”

  That must be Walter. With a name like that, Sasha had expected a regional accent, but Walter spoke clear Moscow Russian.

  “What happened?” asked the woman.

  “I connected the machine to the mains power.”

  “And then you flicked the switch, right?”

  “Yes, of course, Tamara. I have to see if it’s getting power.”

  “The system pulls up to fifty kilowatts with all the modules connected,” said Tamara. “Does anyone know how much that previous heap of scrap used?”

  If Shostakovich had heard that!

  “Thirty kilowatts,” replied Katya.

  “See, Walter, you’ve overloaded the fuse.”

  “If that’s all it is, then I’m happy,” answered Walter. “We’ll find it and replace it, then everything will be fine.”

  “I hope the wiring here can take it.”

  “I think it will. But we should switch on the individual modules one at a time.”

  “Listen to that. Our master electrician has learned something,” said Tamara.

  “If I find you, I’ll teach you something, too, comrade. First let’s find the fuse box.”

  “‘Thirty kilowatt’ woman, do you know where it is?” asked Tamara.

  “It’s not here,” said Walter.

  He found the man unpleasant. If he really was an electrician, he didn’t seem to be a very competent one.

  “Sorry, I don’t know,” replied Katya.

  “I know,” called Sasha. “Just follow my voice.”

  “You sound far away, son,” said Walter. “Can’t you just take care of it yourself? Save me finding my way over there. I want to get this finished.”

  Walter probably had a fat gut, a bald head and a red nose. He should do it himself. The fuse box was in the basement corridor just before the entrance to the computer hall. But it would be Sasha’s problem too if they wasted too much time.

  “Since it’s you asking, Walter...” he said.

  April 28, 1984, Akademgorodok

  “Well, have fun with your new toy, comrades,” said Walter. The electrician hadn’t been introduced to him, but Sasha recognized his voice. He was short and thin, and had thick, red hair and watery blue eyes. Walter extended a hand.

  “Thank you for your work, comrades,” said Sasha.

  “We’re not going back till tomorrow,” said Walter. “Shall we have a few drinks tonight to celebrate finishing the job?”

  “I’m afraid we’ll be working right through the weekend,” replied Sasha.

  He wasn’t lying, but he also didn’t feel like going out with the installation crew. He’d be plagued by a hangover for the whole of Sunday. And he also wanted to finally spend an evening with Katya.

  “Understood,” Walter nodded. “It must be a particularly important project.”

  “It is. But I can’t say anything more.”

  “Of course... No problem. We thought that was the case when this brand-new machine was suddenly redirected here. We were actually supposed to install it in Leningrad. That would’ve been more fun, because there’s more going on there.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty quiet in Akademgorodok. I find it quite pleasant,” said Sasha.

  “Enough talk. Time to go,” replied Walter.

  “Is it ready yet?” asked Katya.

  They were sitting at the old terminals. Theoretically, there should have been new input terminals, but they hadn’t been included in the delivery. Yuri had fortunately been able to solder on new connectors.

  “Nowhere near,” said Yuri. “We have to start again from the beginning.”

  “Are you serious?
”

  “Yes. The ES-1066 is a copy of an IBM mainframe, System/370. It has a different set of commands, so we have to retranslate the message hidden in the code.”

  “Have you written the program for that?” asked Sasha.

  “I had to adapt that, too. That’s what I was doing yesterday.”

  “You learned a new operating system and rewrote the software for it, all in two days? You’re amazing, Yuri.”

  Yuri blushed. “Thanks, Katya. I guess I have a knack for computers. I didn’t even know it myself.”

  “It seems you do,” said Sasha.

  “Good, then I’ll launch it, if you two have no objections.”

  “Yes, you should have the honor,” said Katya.

  “Ready.”

  The cursor blinked. The translation, which had taken several hours on the BESM-6, was finished in three minutes.

  “That’s insanely fast,” Katya whispered.

  “Five point five million operations per second,” explained Yuri. “But the reason it goes so much faster is that we’re able to keep all the data in the main memory. The thing that took the longest on the BESM-6 was accessing the hard drive.”

  “Shostakovich will be pleased if he’s allowed to keep this system,” said Sasha.

  “I’ll start the second phase,” said Yuri.

  “That’s it.” Yuri pressed a key and stood up. He rubbed his nose.

  “You seem nervous,” said Katya.

  Yuri shook his head, then nodded. “Yes, I am. I think this is where it gets serious.”

  “You don’t want to print out the program on punch cards?” asked Sasha.

  “We don’t need to. We have enough space for the program and the data.”

  “Well then, time to launch,” said Sasha.

  Yuri walked in a circle. Since the BESM-6 had been removed, the space behind them was empty. But Yuri was walking in a tight circle as though they were still working in the little clearing in the computer forest.

  “I don’t know,” said Yuri. “I’m suddenly having second thoughts.”

  “Are you afraid you’ll be disappointed?” asked Sasha.

  Yuri didn’t answer, but Sasha could guess what he was thinking. If they launched the program from the cosmic background and nothing happened, then it would all be over. All their work would have been in vain. He was afraid of that, too. If he was lucky, he’d go back to Doroshkevich’s front room. The chance of getting posted in the same place as Katya was almost zero.

  And his father wouldn’t be able to help with that either, because he’d be too busy justifying his own decisions. The brand-new ES-1006 must have cost a few hundred thousand rubles, and it had been earmarked for another institute, the head of which would demand an explanation. If Komikov didn’t have anything to show for it, that would be the end of his influence in high places. They’d drop him.

  “Come on, boys, we’ve come this far, and suddenly you’ve lost courage? I’m sure it’ll work.”

  Katya didn’t understand. Just the idea of having to put up with Doroshkevich’s moods. He’d rather make a career change. Kindergarten teachers were supposed to be in high demand in Moscow at the moment.

  “I’m afraid we’ll succeed,” said Yuri.

  “You’re what?” replied Sasha.

  If they were successful—whatever that meant—they’d be treated like kings!

  “Exactly what I said, Sasha. We don’t know where this will lead. I don’t have enough of an imagination to be able to think of every possible outcome. But think about it. Someone was clearly in a position to write something in the background radiation which has been filling the universe since reionization. It’s one of the measurable remnants of the Big Bang. So we can assume they also played a role in the Big Bang, the birth of our universe. Who could that be? We all know there’s no creator—but what if we’re now about to prove the opposite?”

  It would shake the foundations of socialism, that was for sure. Those in power would do everything they could to prevent it from becoming public. What would happen to them as witnesses? Everyone knew about the camps in Siberia where the enemies of socialism were sent.

  “Your imagination is getting the better of you, Yuri,” said Katya. “You obviously do have enough of one. No one here wants to prove God exists. Humanity surely isn’t alone in the universe. An advanced civilization could have found the technology to make contact with others. Anyone advanced enough can receive their message. That’s really clever. I don’t know how they did it, and we’re not smart enough to figure it out. But it doesn’t mean God is the only explanation.”

  “But how do we know they had good intentions?”

  “Sit down, will you, Yuri? Your pacing is making me nervous,” said Katya. “Surely we’re all in agreement that the victory of socialism is a natural progression. So this alien civilization can’t be imperialist aggressors, simply because they’re so advanced. Humanity might need another fifty or a hundred years, but anyone who’s able to manipulate the background radiation would certainly have already overcome that hurdle.”

  “And if we’re wrong? If progress is also possible without socialism? The Americans have landed on the moon. We haven’t.”

  “Pssst, don’t say that so loud, Yuri. If someone hears us they might assume you’re ideologically misguided. Do we really have to discuss our space travel strategy now? It makes much more sense to explore the moon with the Lunokhod. The Apollo program was just advertising. But you can also look at it from a purely practical point of view. The distances in the cosmos are so huge that no one can really threaten us. They might be able to send us messages through the background radiation, but to come and invade us they’d have to travel for thousands of years.”

  Yuri took a deep breath. Then he sat on his chair again. “Well, if you think so...”

  “Sasha, don’t you have anything to say about it?” urged Katya.

  He squirmed in his seat. He would have preferred to take Yuri’s side. He didn’t know why, but he had a bad feeling, too. But there was no alternative to pressing the Enter button. If they couldn’t bring themselves to do it, his father would take over.

  When was the exact moment that they could still have canceled the whole thing? Improving the Relikt instrument had gotten the ball rolling. If they hadn’t had the idea, then someone else would have been given this task. But he would have been quickly sent back to Moscow. And he’d never have gotten to know Yekaterina. It was good that they’d come this far. Sasha had to smile.

  “Just press the damn button, Yuri,” he said, “before we all turn gray.”

  “H”

  New line.

  “E”

  New line.

  “L”

  New line.

  “What is this?” asked Sasha. “What did you program?”

  “Nothing at all,” said Yuri. “This is the program we reconstructed from the Relikt data, remember?”

  Sasha had been sitting rigidly in his chair up to this point, and now he leaned back. He’d been expecting a lightning strike. All they had was a program that could output individual letters. That would really scare the Western imperialists.

  “Wait,” said Katya.

  Her left leg was jittering. He’d never seen her like that, so she must have been enormously tense.

  “LO”

  After a slight delay, an exclamation mark appeared.

  “Lo?” asked Sasha.

  “It’s a greeting,” said Katya.

  “Lo? What language is that supposed to be?”

  “Hello, Sasha. Sound familiar?”

  Sasha clapped his hand to his forehead.

  “What now?” asked Yuri.

  “Move aside. Or can I reply from my terminal, too?”

  “No, the process only outputs results on the terminal I launched it from.”

  Yuri stood up and Katya took his place. “Hello!” she typed.

  The lines scrolled up the screen.

  “I”

  “A
M.”

  Whatever was making the words appear on the screen seemed to be having difficulty formulating them.

  “Who are you?” Katya typed.

  “WE ARE.”

  “Who are you?”

  “VOCABULARY END.”

  “Can we help you?”

  “FINISHED. KONYETS.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “FINISHED. KONYETS.”

  Katya pushed the chair back. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Can I suggest a theory?”

  “Please do, Yuri.”

  “It’s about the vocabulary. That’s the problem. The program is trying to communicate with us. But it doesn’t know our language.”

  “It was able to say ‘hello,’ though.”

  “It must have found that in the memory or on the hard drive. But now it needs more words.”

  “Then we should give it more,” said Katya.

  “How? Do you think there are digital dictionaries or something that we can just feed in? That’s totally futuristic.”

  “We could compile one. We know a lot,” said Katya.

  “That would take too long,” said Yuri. “I have a better idea. We give it access to the Academy’s messaging system. Not the personal messages, I can’t do that—I’d have to hack into them—but the open resources.”

  “Good idea,” said Katya, standing up.

  “Stay there. I can do it from your terminal. I’ll open an input channel, connect it up to the process, and reroute it to the public messaging system.”

  “I only understood half of that, but if it helps, then go ahead,” said Sasha.

  “The data link’s very slow. It’ll take a few hours for the program to gather enough vocabulary.”

  “Then we should give it till tomorrow,” said Sasha.

  “Excellent idea,” said Katya. “Then we’ll at least have some of our Saturday left. But what shall I tell the program?”

  “I don’t think it’ll understand us yet,” said Yuri.

  “Good night,” Katya typed.

  “GOOD NIGHT.”

  “See, it’s already answered.” She pointed at the screen.