by Jason Bourn
At this rate, the once great human race will quietly vanish within three hundred years. It is predicted that a stable population could be achieved through the use of artificial reproduction, with persas tending to the babies in VR, if the decision to go that direction is agreed upon. Within this paradigm, this is the only way to keep the human race from dying out.
The important take-away is this: The basic trends are not going to change – humanity will lose its ability to survive outside of the virtual world.
End of report
Classification: Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
Since Hayden’s power was significantly enhanced by the use of the virtual suit, as all communications between people had to be electronic, it was in his best interests that this report not be publicized. He did everything in his power to ensure that any hint of this subject was dropped from discussion any time he heard of it. He set his persa to ensure that he was aware of anything related to this research and especially this conclusion, quashing it at every opportunity.
The fate of humanity in three hundred years was something that Hayden was willing to live with – and deal with later – as long as he could secure the maximum power for himself in the meantime.
– – –
Calaes sat on the bridge and thought back on everything he had been through. He had been in the Flight Simulator sim for almost five real-life years and he had almost reached the ultimate goal – becoming Captain of the ship. Working himself up from entry level engineer all the way up to Chief Officer, he was now at the level just below Captain. He had met a lot of wonderful people, possibly many were persas, but had learned a lot about others in general and himself in particular. He was generally happy, but with the end finally in his sights, he was starting to get more concerned about what he would do next with his life.
He had put his heart and soul into this simulation and knew the ship as though he had lived in it his whole life – he knew it ever better than the Martian Survival Challenge and he never thought that would ever happen. The bridge was gray, seating twenty officers, each with several multi-function displays. Why, he thought, was everything painted gray? The old cruise ships that had sailed to Alaska and the Caribbean islands had been painted in festive colors – why couldn’t this ship? Looking around, there was plenty of bridge activity with all the usual background sounds from side discussions, artificial voice prompts and electronic noise. This made him feel more at home than when on the exceedingly rare occasion, he popped out of the simulation. He was so comfortable here that it took a real effort to do anything outside the simulation and he never felt as fulfilled as when he was in this wonderfully complex environment.
He knew that he would miss it, but with the simulation bound to end soon it was almost time to move on. Besides, they were on final approach to Europa so the simulation would be over soon enough anyway – but Calaes needed the final step of becoming Captain to fulfill all his goals.
Calaes glanced over to Lieutenant Jefferies. She was one of Calaes’ best friends, having served with her on the ship for over four years. She was the astrogator, the pilot of the ship. As always, she smiled back – she was always smiling which was one of the reasons that Calaes liked her.
She said, “A penny for your thoughts? Naw, that’s too much for your thoughts – you never have any good ones anyway.”
Calaes smiled at her sense of humor. “Well,” he said, “since you never listen to what I have to say, then I guess you get your money’s worth.”
He loved the camaraderie. This was why he was starting to feel almost homesick, even though he was still in the simulation. Ruminating over things that had not yet happened was a good way to become distracted and get killed on the cusp of achieving his ultimate goal. That would be really stupid. He needed to concentrate on his current Chief Officer’s assignment, which as always kept him very busy.
He had just been alerted to a staffing problem where there were two qualified navigators that were “available,” but Lieutenant Chandra was in sick bay getting a broken arm repaired and Lieutenant Sanchez had just started labor and the contractions were now at two minutes apart. All the other navigators were on their mandatory time off so they wouldn’t exceed their weekly maximum. Ah, the joys of leadership. Calaes wished there were something more important and exciting to do than work a personnel problem, but ninety-nine percent of the time it was like that. The key was being able to deal with the monotony and still be ready for the one percent of the time when quick thinking and finding creative solutions were critical.
Speaking of critical, he glanced down at the ship’s display and saw Lieutenant Sanchez’s contractions were now every thirty seconds. Well good for her, he thought.
Suddenly the Klaxon bell went off, signaling an emergency. “See what happens when you start wishing for things you shouldn’t,” thought Calaes. As it turned out, this had the appearance of being a huge problem. The ship’s status showed an anomalous power surge. This was very bad. If it couldn’t be contained the engines would have to be taken off line since the fusion reactors had a nasty habit of acting like a thermonuclear bomb if the containment field was compromised. Yet, as the ship was in final approach and needed the engines to stop their moon-bound momentum, now was about the worse time for them to be taken off line. There was supposed to be triple redundancy so this wouldn’t happen – but obviously it had happened.
Captain Strauss started shouting orders asking for options, and stat. When no one came up with any immediate options, he had no choice and reluctantly gave the order to take the engines off line before they destroyed the ship.
Calaes leaped into the navigator’s chair just as engine power was cut off. They had auxiliary power from the off-line power reserves, but this provided power to the maneuvering thrusters which provided only a small fraction of the power of the main engines. They had planned on achieving orbit by using their main thrusters to provide the necessary braking, but they were now unavailable. The good news was that the vast majority of the braking had already been done. The bad news was that this didn’t matter – they still had far too much velocity to get into a stable orbit.
Calaes ran through the options. These included slingshotting around the moon and heading to Jupiter or back to Earth. Neither of these options were appealing: with the former they would smash into the planet and with the latter they would soon run out of food, water and other supplies. Another option that he rejected was to steer directly into the moon. At their current velocity, there would be no hope for survival. The only feasible option that he could see was a highly risky maneuver to guide the ship into a tight orbit and let the drag of Europa’s atmosphere combined with full maneuvering thrusters slow the ship down. It would have to be executed perfectly and they would have to gauge the atmospheric drag perfectly. Even then they would run out of auxiliary power before they could safely get into a stable orbit around the moon, but it would slow them way down and provide them time to think of what to do next.
If they were to try this maneuver on Earth, the thickness of the atmosphere would quickly heat up the ship and destroy it since it had never been designed to land on a planet. Luckily Europa’s atmosphere was about a trillionth of the earth’s. If they maneuvered the ship just right, they could run a delicate balance: maximizing the drag to slow down and keep the heating to within tolerable limits so the ship would not be destroyed. He knew the risks if they miscalculated: they would be flung out of close orbit, burn up in the atmosphere, or crash onto the surface at high speed.
His persa showed that even if they could run this delicate balance, the front of the ship – the natural area to sacrifice due to the large ram scoop in the front – would heat up far too much and the ship would be destroyed. Calaes quickly thought about alternatives when an idea hit him. Instead of having the front of the ship receive all the heat from the atmospheric breaking, what if they turned the ship and presented the side instead? This was a radical idea
because the front was the natural barrier against space debris and could withstand the heat better than any other spot on the ship. But since the ship was spinning at a rate of once per minute, by presenting the side to the heat, the heat would be evenly spread across the entire surface area of the ship – not just on one point.
So, if this was to work, they needed to be ultra-precise with their navigation and try a maneuver that had never been attempted. And they were missing their navigator. Calaes laughed quietly to himself – “What could possibly go wrong?” Lieutenant Jefferies glanced quizzically at Calaes and said, “I’m not sure what you find so funny. Maybe if we get out of this mess, someday you’ll share with me.” Calaes quickly smiled at her, but didn’t have time for more than an “It’s a date” comment.
With only seconds to decide, Calaes couldn’t think about her right then. Calaes quickly presented the options and his recommendation to the captain. The captain quickly looked at them and, after quickly consulting his persa, signaled to Calaes to move out with his recommendation. Calaes laid in the course and sent the information to Lieutenant Jefferies. She took the information, but hesitated.
“You know,” she said, “Europa’s atmosphere is somewhat variable due to the tides that break up the ice. That small variability might be enough to throw off the calculations. I recommend we use the Lidar to determine real time what the atmospheric scatter is. We can program the right laser frequency into the ship’s systems and feed it the real-time results so it can make the necessary corrections.”
Based upon all the work on the Flight Simulator sim, Calaes knew Lidar was a pulsed laser beam, normally used to determine the distance and shape of objects. By selecting the proper light frequency, it could determine the exact quantity of atmospheric particles. The idea was brilliant – but it had never been tested. One bug or one area not thought out could cause it not to work.
Calaes had to make a quick decision. If he made the wrong decision, the entire ship (and Calaes’ future) was in jeopardy. The question really came down to trust. He didn’t have enough time to fully research the issue and he knew and trusted Lieutenant Jefferies, so … He made the instant decision to take Lieutenant Jefferies’ suggestion and implemented it. They were now locked in – for better or worse. Immediately the maneuvering thrusters kicked in pushing the ship towards the proper near-moon path. The maneuvering thrusters didn’t have the power to quickly slow the ship, but they were plenty powerful enough to nudge the ship to the correct trajectory.
Captain Strauss’ voice rang out on the speaker system: “All hands, all hands, we have experienced an emergency situation and the ship will be experiencing high G’s due to emergency maneuvering. Everyone needs to strap in immediately. This maneuver will commence in twenty seconds.” This was the time it would take to get down into the low orbit.
As the automated system’s voice counted down, everyone on the bridge was busy strapping in and securing any loose objects. The chairs, once occupied, unfolded becoming flat in preparation for the high G’s. “Five, four, three, two, one,” droned out over the speaker system. They were getting closer and closer to the surface of Europa. The cracked frozen tableau was breathtaking – unfortunately it was streaking by way too close for comfort and at much too fast a rate.
As they hit the low orbital path, the ship started groaning from both the stress and the heat buildup. The chairs, which were designed to accommodate a fixed acceleration, attempted to rotate to maintain a constant “down” direction against the high G’s, but the chairs could not keep up. They were never designed for a fast, low orbit going sideways. This caused everyone to be pulled painfully against the straps instead of against the cushioning of the flattened chair. Groans of pain could be heard from everyone on the bridge, Calaes included, and Calaes was sure these were echoed by everyone on the entire ship.
Calaes looked at the status on the ship’s monitor – when he wasn’t being pulled by the straps which were trying to break his arms and his hips, primarily. As the ship slowed Calaes saw that they were indeed able to keep the delicate balance. Running though the projection, they would need another hour of braking and they could get into a stable orbit. An alert showed that the auxiliary power would run out in another thirty-seven minutes. Calaes reported this to the captain, who again asked for options.
Europa’s mass was less than one percent of Earth’s so, even with Jupiter’s moon’s smaller size, gravity was less than fourteen percent of Earth’s – less than that of Earth’s moon. So even though the ship was not built to withstand a planet’s gravity, fourteen percent was still a lot better than one hundred percent. Calaes determined that when the fuel ran out the ship would be going slow enough that a crash landing was at least within the realm of feasibility. Calaes ran multiple simulations and found that the expected casualties would be ninety-five percent. Almost everyone would be killed. Calaes wondered if anyone else thought that running a simulation within a simulation was ironic, but he figured he was getting too stressed out if he were even thinking of trivia like this at such a critical time.
With ten minutes of fuel left he couldn’t do anything to improve the ninety-five percent casualty rate – though he had found plenty of scenarios that killed off one hundred percent – if that was any consolation. He decided it was time to think outside of the box. They couldn’t radically speed up or slow down with the maneuvering thrusters, so there was almost nothing that they could do. Except – Calaes quickly put the calculations into his persa to use the last of the maneuvering thrusters to rotate the ship so that the ram scoop was again in the front. This would heat up the scoop and probably destroy its functionality, but that functionality was no longer needed anyway. What it could do was to provide a cushion that might save the lives of more people – many more, Calaes hoped.
The simulation results came back showing “only” a twenty percent casualty rate. Calaes quickly told the ship to implement this change and informed the captain. There was no time to ask – it was either implement it or ask – he didn’t have time to do both. The ship rotated so the front was facing forward.
The entire bridge saw the scoop start glowing red. Layer by layer the honeycombed structure was being eaten away by the red-hot atmospheric plasma. The ship’s maneuvering thrusters shut off when there was only sufficient power left to sustain life support plus a short ten second burst that Calaes was saving for just the right moment. Through the long twenty minutes of powerless decent, the ship lost layer after layer of the scoop structure. The simulation indicated that there would be slightly more than half left when they hit the surface. This is what they counted on saving their lives.
No one spoke as the final minute counted down, though prayers could be heard in the background. The ship hit the frozen surface of Europa with the bottom of the scoop and started rotating. Calaes quickly used the remaining power to the maneuvering thrusters one last time to attempt to keep the ship from rotating and keep the scoop forward, absorbing as much of the impact as possible.
This was the longest ten seconds of his life, with the ship lurching and groaning. The ship, with the aid of the maneuvering thrusters, maintained an upright orientation throughout the entire time it took to stop. With a final shutter, the ship came to rest.
Calaes looked around. The bridge had escaped with minimal damage, but some loose items had banged into people – since there hadn’t been time to secure everything. Calaes expected the captain to at least acknowledge that he had set the ship down successfully, if not gracefully, but the captain didn’t say anything. Calaes looked more closely and noticed that the captain was ghost-white. There was something seriously wrong with him. Calaes scrambled out of his chair and approached the captain.
The captain opened his eyes and looked at Calaes and said in a weak voice, “Congratulations. You did a fine job. I would have appreciated if you could have done even better – as this body of mine seems to have let me down. I didn’t want anyone to know, but the ship’s doctor has said my hea
rt could go at any time. Well, it looks like that time is now.”
He went on, “You did a great job, being creative and knowing when and how to make critical decisions. But most importantly you trusted your people and showed them that they can trust you. You are now acting Captain. Congratulations.”
He had done it. After so long, he had achieved his final goal in Flight Simulation – Captain!
Calaes didn’t know what to say. Nor did he have any time to say it. The simulation abruptly ended, leaving Calaes lying there in his virtual suit, in his virtual room.
CHAPTER 8
Hayden was already the most powerful world leader, but that was not nearly good enough for him. He wanted his position to be unassailable.
The next step was to create an AI algorithm that, for each world leader, would take all the input and output data that he had recorded over the years to create an extremely precise replica of each of those leaders. Each AI replica would have the capability to respond to stimuli just like the real leader would. He considered this one of his most brilliant feats, if anyone had actually asked him – which they hadn’t, since no one knew of its existence.
Hayden chose his first target, cutting off the network access for that leader. He simultaneously patched in his AI replica of the target. This meant any network data destined to the target would be intercepted and processed by the AI replica. The AI replica would generate appropriate feedback and send it out to the intended destination(s). Similarly, anything the target sent out would be intercepted and processed by the AI replica and appropriate feedback would be sent back to the target – so the target never knew that they were cut off from the rest of the world. The AI replica would behave “normally,” the critical change being the AI replica was programmed to continuously increase Hayden’s knowledge and power.