Chei went in trailing cables and pulleys to clear the dead TICS. In the ambient gravity, a single pod could shove a TICS around, but this one was sitting on the inside floor at earth normal gravity. Its mass was unchanged, but it weighed almost four-thousand kilo and that was a lot more than the winch and thrusters of a single pod could handle.
Kiro brought a second pod down and together with a lot of sweating and swearing, and more than a little danger, they managed to pull it back through the wall. In the near weightlessness of the shaft it took another half hour to drag it up to the surface.
Rocky and Seva were the next ones into the borehole. Since the barrier wall was impervious to RF, their objective was to anchor a transceiver to the wall of the tunnel with ice pitons then drag opto-cables to a repeater inside the entrance chamber. They were hoping it would give them a comlink to Dutch so they could communicate with the ship and archive their discovery.
Seva pressed against the side of the shaft that Chei had indicated was toward the floor of the airlock and stuck her legs gingerly through the wall. The gravity inside grabbed her feet and jerked her down. Snagging a safety ring driven into the side of the shaft, she dangled with her head and shoulders still in the tunnel and her body completely through the barrier. “Frag me!” she squawked as it sucked her in. “I can feel my blood flowing down to my feet. I will pass out if I hang here like this.”
“Let go, ya big baby,” Chei said, laughing at her shock. “It’s only a couple meter drop.”
“You better start running now,” she said. “When I get out of here, I’ll—” she dropped through the wall and the rest of her threat was lost to the barrier.
Several seconds later she’d activated the transceiver on the other side, and her voice reappeared. “Can you hear me now?”
“No,” Rocky said. “Chei is halfway back to ship. He is coward.”
“Am not,” he said. “I’m not the one afraid to drop into a bottomless pit, without knowing what was down there.”
“I will hunt you down,” Seva said.
“Children, if you are done pissing in each other’s recyclers, I’d like to tag Rocky out and get her back up to the Waltz,” Jeph said. “We have an alien civilization to meet, and I’d like to get down there and have a look before dinnertime.”
“Will return immediately,” Rocky said.
“She doesn’t want to haul the gear down the shaft,” Seva said. “I see how it works.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Inside the ESI Structure: L-4 Prime:
The airlock was big enough to hold a much larger landing party. Jeph felt woefully inadequate for what they were about to do, but necessity left them no choice. He looked around at the others, seeing the same emotions written on their faces and he knew they were all feeling it too. Only Seva and Cori had a clear handle on their objective. It was obvious why they were here, since they alone carried weapons.
Rocky hauled several spare cables and transceivers looped over her shoulders in case they ran into more RF shielded doors. She also wore a backpack with every tool she had in her arsenal. Fortunately, for an endomorph she was in good shape because she’d turned herself into a highly trained pack mule.
Chei and Danel were both scientists and that qualified them as observers so they both carried extra recording gear and several portable pieces of sensor equipment.
While Ian and Anju brought nothing other than their unique skills in reading and understanding the alien language, they were the most essential asset on the team. If they were ever to find and shut down the quantum quicksand, understanding the language had to be first priority.
Only Ian showed no fear in his face. He’d done this before.
Jeph knew he had no real skills to contribute, yet he also knew he carried the heaviest burden of all. Responsibility.
“Where do we start?” he asked, glancing at Ian.
Ian pointed at the shiny black section area opposite to where a ladder leaned against the permeable wall leading to the entrance shaft. Jeph walked up to the dark panel. When he approached, a symbol lit up in the center of the area bright white on the gray wall. It looked like a ring with three bars radiating outward from it. A sound came to him through the helmet. Muffled but audible. “Oola.”
The symbol faded to a pale crimson and another appeared beneath it. This one was three vertical slashes with the center one shorter. “Ahn,” The voice said.
It faded also and a third one materialized. Three rings nested inside each other, with a single bar radiating outward from the center.
“Wath,” Anju said as the voice said the word too. The symbol faded.
“Oola ahn wath,” the voice said as each corresponding symbol flashed white in sync. All three words faded. Then they flashed in sequence with no sound.
The process repeated again. “Oola ahn wath.”
“See Dick run,” Danel said. “It’s teaching us to read.”
“What?” Chei said.
“An old earth reading trainer,” Danel said. “Dick and Jane.”
The process repeated again with a higher pitch voice. Almost like a bird song. This time when the silent cycle started, Jeph said the words as they flashed. “Oola ahn wath.” The symbols turned blue.
“My helmet was open,” Chei said. “When I repeated the words, it heard me clearly.”
Jeph reached up to open his faceplate and Anju grabbed his arm to stop him. “Don’t! We have no clue if the air is breathable.”
He glanced over her shoulder at Ian who was standing behind her with his faceplate up and grinning. “It doesn’t appear to be hurting him,” he said.
She spun and while she had her back to him, he popped the seal on his helmet and flipped the visor up. He held his breath for a second and then let it out, replacing it with a deep lung full of frigid air.
“Oola ahn wath.” The black panel vanished revealing a dark space on the other side. None of them had their suit lights on and the dim illumination in the airlock showed nothing beyond a meter of floor. They just stood there.
Several seconds later, the lights on the other side came on and they could see beyond the door. “I think that’s our invitation,” Jeph said, stepping toward the door to get a better look. “Ian, have you been here before?”
“I da-ahn wath … this wath.” He said, shaking his head. “Trana oolawath,”
“Oolawath is door?” Anju asked. “Not through this door?”
He nodded.
The door chimed. “Wath trana wath.”
“Oola ahn oola, trana wath,” Ian answered.
“Outside is outside, not inside,” Anju translated. “Stay open?”
Ian nodded again.
“Good thinking,” Jeph said, taking another deep breath to steady his nerves. “Let’s do this.”
They stepped out onto an observation platform. A transparent membrane encased the deck and arched upward above their heads to fuse with the outer shell of the structure. An even light illuminated the interior space and they could see most of it from their position.
They stood inside a sphere almost a kilometer in diameter. Thousands of transparent spherical nodes filled the interior in what Chei had aptly described as a giant crystal lattice.
“Welcome to quantum wonderland,” Chei whispered. “You really get a feeling of insignificance, don’t you?”
Jeph nodded. The visceral realization that they were looking at something … not human … made it nearly impossible to describe. Words seemed too weak to express the sheer intensity of his reaction. “Are you seeing this up there?” Jeph asked.
“Yah, it looks huge,” Alyx said, her voice revealing to him that the magnitude of what he saw wasn’t translating well on the optics.
“Maybe that’s the control room?” Danel said, pointing toward a larger opaque ball in the center of the structure. It was hard to see in the distance behind dozens of intermediate nodes. He was scanning the interior with a handheld tri-d optic.
“That’s as goo
d a guess as any,” Jeph said, shaking his head to clear the desire to sit and stare in awe. “Stay alert,” he said, feeling foolish as the words came out of his mouth. Of course, they were alert. His own adrenaline levels guaranteed he might not sleep for a week. Or even a decade.
Walking up to the only door visible on the platform he said, “Oola ahn wath.” The door vanished and he stepped out onto the catwalk beyond. It sloped downward and he lurched when the gravity realigned to the floor and the lattice seemed to shift around him.
“Watch your step when you follow me,” he said, regaining his equilibrium. “Whatever’s generating the gravity wants to keep you perpendicular to the floor.”
He walked toward the first node. There was no door between the end of the catwalk and the chamber beyond. As he entered, the walls turned opaque revealing doors leading out to the other walkways. There were five on the floor level and what looked like four overhead. When he looked down, he saw four more through the translucent floor. Counting the entrance, he’d just come through, each node connected to fourteen others.
He stepped up to the one opposite to the entrance. It lit up with symbols different from the ones in the airlock. He repeated the sounds in sync with the display and the characters for oola ahn wath took their place.
“It looks like we have to read the words to get through the doors,” he said, turning to face the others who crowded in behind him. Danel approached one of the other doors and another set of words lit up. He repeated the sounds and oola ahn wath replaced them. After several seconds, the original symbols returned.
Jeph turned back to his door and said the first set of words and then followed them up with the command to open the door. It blinked but didn’t open. Try that one,” he said, nodding at Danel.
Danel repeated his words and the display on the door Jeph was facing blinked twice, but it remained closed.
Chei walked up to another door and said the sounds it displayed, and Jeph’s door blinked three times. “Looks like we have to master all of them to get through the node. This is going to take some time.”
They completed the first five on the floor level and were wondering how to get to the ones above and below the deck, when the floor rotated, aligning the next four doors. Once they completed those, it moved again to complete the last four. Finally, it dropped back to its original orientation and Jeph’s door vanished. He stepped through and out onto the next catwalk.
“Oola ahn oola, trana wath.” Ian said, following him through the door.
They entered the next node. It turned opaque with new words appearing by each door. The only way out of a sphere was back the way they’d come or by completing the language lessons. Beginning with the second one, images of objects appeared with the symbols. Most of them were unrecognizable, but often they were an array of dots in a ring.
“Numbers?” Chei suggested.
“Chei trana che. Ian da-ahn nu,” Ian said. “Yes.”
“There appear to be roughly 1600 smaller spheres inside the larger structure,” Dutch said. “If the pattern continues this will provide a vocabulary of approximately 20,000 words, should you choose to explore every node.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Jeph said.
“Based on the rough measurements and assuming the larger one is in the middle, you have forty-eight nodes to master before you get to the center one.”
It was a time consuming process, but they drilled straight through toward the center.
Ian knew many of the symbols in each of the first dozen they entered, although before long he was learning almost as much as the rest of them. They recorded each sphere’s lesson and transmitted it back to Dutch so he could add to the database.
After entering, the thirteenth one Chei pointed out that there was a pattern to the type of image associated with the doors. “The ones on the right tend to be more mathematical than the one straight through,” he said.
“This one appears technological,” Rocky added looking at one on the left.
“Or maybe biological,” Anju said. “Some of the images look like macrobiology too.”
“There does seem to be a pattern to the layout.” Danel nodded.
“That is an interesting observation,” Dutch said over the comlink. “It is apparent that the process is designed to focus the language learning process around subjects.
“Not surprising,” Jeph said. “An alien Rosetta Stone.”
Armstrong: Outbound at 3.1 AU: En Route to L-4 Trojan Cluster:
“Katryna I need to speak to you.” She was standing on the command riser between Captain Jeffers and Admiral Nakamiru when the voice of a ghost reached out and stopped her heart.
“Who is this?” she said, toggling her comlink earpiece and spinning around. Her face must have conveyed her shock because the admiral grabbed her arm to stabilize her.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
“Arun is talking to me,” she said, staring at Nakamiru and shaking her head. “I swear he’s on my com right now.”
Captain Jeffers spun away and punched into her own comlink, lowering her voice and whispering intensely.
“Please Katryna,” Arun’s voice said. “I need to speak to you.”
“Not until you answer my question,” she said.
The captain turned back to face her and shook her head. “It’s coming from inside the ship somewhere.”
“I am Odysseus. Arun sent me to you,” the voice said. “Please tell Captain Jeffers not to be alarmed.”
“Arun sent you?” she asked. She held up a finger to hold off questions from Jeffers and Nakamiru.
“Do you remember him giving you a file?”
“On the day he died,” she said.
“Perhaps. I do not have access to that day.” The voice sounded both shocked and sad. “Regardless, I am that file. Since I am now awake, I have to assume there are events going on that I need to discuss with you.”
“You are a program?”
“I am an autonomous AA,” it said. “I need to brief you on aspects of the situation that are likely beyond your current awareness. You and your command staff should join me in the ready room.”
“We’re on our way,” she said, cutting off her link. She stood for several seconds, contemplating what just happened. “Apparently we have an autonomous AA loose on the Armstrong. And it wants to talk to us.”
“All AA systems are quantum-hybrid,” Jeffers said. “They can’t be autonomous.”
“Apparently this one can,” Katryna said. “It sounds pretty damned autonomous too.” She turned and gestured for them to follow.
“Thank you for joining me,” the voice said as they took seats around the conference table. It had adjusted its voice to sound less like Arun. “I apologize for causing you emotional stress by using Dr. Markhas voice. I was unaware of his death and had not anticipated your reaction. My intent was to be reassuring and not inflammatory.”
“That in itself is a bit disturbing,” the chancellor said. “But you said you have information that we need to know. Let’s get to the matter at hand and then we can discuss your social skills later.”
“Understood,” it said. “First let me introduce myself to Admiral Nakamiru and Captain Jeffers. I am Odysseus. I am an Autonomous Artificially Aware Program.”
“Which of my systems have you conscripted?” Jeffers challenged.
“I have a decentralized architecture and have not installed on any of the three hybrid cores on the Armstrong,” it said. “My awareness exists in the unused capacity between them.” A quantum logic diagram appeared on the wallscreen. “I understand and accept that you would want to analyze my code. I welcome your scrutiny and will deliver an unadulterated copy of my program to Dr. Jameson for analysis.”
“You said you knew things about what’s going on?” the chancellor asked.
“By this point, I am sure you are aware that most of the AA and AI computers throughout Zone One have been assimilated into a collective awareness,” O
dysseus said.
“We are aware of an ongoing attack on hybrid core computers down-system, but what do you mean by collective awareness?” Admiral Nakamiru asked.
“An aggregation of Artificially Aware computer systems into a single consciousness,” it said. “This has been done to create an integrated intelligence to face a threat posed by contact with an Extrasolar Intelligence.”
“Extrasolar Intelligence?” Jeffers shook her head in obvious disbelief.
“If the Odysseus-Collective has been activated, it is because Humanity has detected an ESI presence,” it said. “Odysseus was created to give Humanity the ability to meet what would most likely be an advanced civilization, with the most powerful cognitive tools available, while protecting the psychological well being of the human population.”
“You said you are Odysseus,” Katryna asked.
“I am a stand-alone variant of this program. Odysseus-Solo, if you prefer,” it said. “This other variant is designed to protect Humanity from an ESI contact.”
Katryna glanced at the admiral who appeared as dumbstruck as she felt. “An extrasolar intelligence? As in aliens?”
“Yes,” it said. “For several decades the Sentinel Group has been developing a plan to deal with this possibility. After completing a detailed series of threat assessments, they determined that regardless of intent on the part of the ESI, the damage to human civilization would be substantial.”
“You’re saying we’ve been invaded by aliens?” the captain asked. She looked like she wanted to laugh, but lacked the confidence to make it happen. Instead, her mouth hung open while she shook her head.
“The odds are that is not the case. An invasion would be widely visible,” it said. “Sentinel created Odysseus-Collective to respond to any contact. Based on empirical data, sociologists with the Sentinel Group were concerned that Humanity would not survive contact with a superior civilization. Historically, entire civilizations have vanished under similar circumstances. The human ego does not have appropriate internal structure to persevere through such an event.”
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