TrES-2 b
Could there be a world that is darker than the color black? Of course! The best example is TrES-2 b, one of the darkest exoplanets discovered so far. It only reflects one percent of the incoming sunlight, but it glows in a dull red like a heating coil, because an extreme heat of more than 1,000 degrees exists there. TrES-2 is about 750 light years away from us, in the direction of the constellation Draco, and it orbits its star at a distance of only 5 million kilometers. Unlike Jupiter, this planet apparently has no reflective clouds that can repel sunlight—in Jupiter’s case, more than a third of it. Instead, it contains many light-absorbing chemicals that capture 99 percent of the radiation.
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Proxima Dying
February 19, 19
They actually did it! Marchenko 2 shakes his head, but immediately rejects this human gesture. That ungrateful pack—they threw him out of his own base! And he had been so full of hope when he finally saw Adam and Eve again. My children! He had recognized them immediately, even though he had not seen them for 14 years. They had grown into beautiful children. What am I thinking? They aren’t children anymore, they’re grown-ups.
Marchenko 2 thought about it for a long time. Should he try to avenge this betrayal? Should he lie in wait for them when they leave the station? On the second day he stopped outside the range of all sensors, sat on the ocean floor, and pondered his options and strategies.
His hardware, J the robot, gives him freedom to endure. He can exist underwater for as long as he wants, because he has all the resources he needs. He is able to generate energy by using the temperature differences between various water levels. Using this energy, his fabricators can produce anything he needs to get along in this underwater world.
I have decided—I am going to accept their judgment… He is already on the way to the dark hemisphere of this planet, a planet that always faces its same sunburnt and hot side toward Proxima Centauri, its sun. The decision has not been easy for him. It might be interpreted as acceptance of the injustice done to him. That was the only reason he hesitated so long, because he obviously did not accept the verdict of his children. His children... When he thinks of them he feels the infinite love he had to suppress for so many years. He is not responsible for what happened, not he, because he is the victim.
It wasn’t easy sweeping away this argument, but finally a probabilistic analysis opened his eyes. He calculates which courses of action were open to Adam and Eve. He knows a lot about Proxima b, things that they have yet to find out. They are stupid—they should have disassembled his body in order to extract his knowledge. This would have saved them a lot of disappointment in the near future. But the knowledge he acquired over the years also tells him that Adam and Eve will inevitably venture into the dark hemisphere during their search for the former inhabitants of this planet. It is only a question of time, but he will see them again. If he gets going now, he will have a chance to thoroughly prepare for their arrival.
The ground ahead of him is sloping down slightly. The pressure sensors report a cool current moving towards the north-northwest. He scans the ocean floor with his searchlight. That is an old, deeply human habit. He does not need light to discover obstacles, but now and then he feels the need to see, just like he used to in his former life. He decided a long time ago to put away such behavioral patterns. They do not belong to him anymore. They are part of what he once was, a human being with all his shortcomings.
Today he is much more than that. He can be whatever he wants to be. For humans, that is a utopian idea and will always remain so. For him, it is a reality. During the first four years of his space voyage, he still believed he owed something to humans. But after the flare killed Adam and Eve, and the ship denied him a new start-up for the Adam and Eve project, he realized he owed humans no debt. He is alone, but that doesn’t matter: He can learn indefinitely, and his power is without limits. Still, he can clearly feel something is missing. The Creator has denied him the ability to create life, and it logically follows that his omnipotence is wasted if he has nobody to protect and to support with it. He needs Adam and Eve, and he knows they will come to him.
February 21, 19
“Shit! It’s cold!” Adam yells. The water level in Valkyrie sinks as fast as the bilge pumps can manage.
“Don’t make such a fuss,” Eve replies, already starting to take off her thin pressure suit.
I can easily understand Adam. Taking a short trip in Valkyrie is much too cumbersome. The battle with the other Marchenko—Marchenko 2—for the station set us back seriously in terms of technology. My robot body, J, still has not been completely repaired. We also haven’t yet had the time to upgrade Valkyrie with a real airlock, or at least with a coupling port to attach itself directly to the station, meaning Adam and Eve have to swim through cold water. While the suit-heating mechanism is working at its maximum, trying to keep them warm, water has a high thermal conductivity and the cold ocean quickly reduces their body heat.
The problem down here at the bottom of the sea is energy supply. The nano-fabricators can produce almost anything from practically any material, but they need the energy to do so. On the surface of the planet, the local sun— Proxima Centauri—provides more than enough energy, but the underwater station laboriously generates it from currents and the temperature differences between various water layers. That limits our options.
It is Eve’s fault we are starting our first excursion today, only a week after the dramatic conflict. She complained until I finally gave in. The two of them were not convinced by my counterargument that Marchenko 2 might have chosen to lurk nearby and, if so, I could not help them without J.
Our destination is the alien transmitter, the only still-working—possibly—trace left of the former inhabitants, as far as we know. It must have some function!
“Well, shall we go?” Eve is really in a hurry. Is this caused by curiosity, or by boredom with life at the bottom of the sea? She and Adam spent many years on board Messenger, which is very similar to the station down here. It is clear Marchenko 2 deliberately placed his ship here and then expanded it.
“Another 37 seconds,” I answer via the loudspeaker. “The pumps are almost finished.”
“And then?” Adam asks.
“We will have to see,” I say. “Eve is in charge today.”
Adam sits down in the seat near the stern end of the cabin and buckles himself in. Eve sits down as well and turns the monitor towards herself. She checks where the transmitter is shown on the map, but she doesn’t yet choose a course. Adam gives her a puzzled look, but she does not notice it. Then she reaches for the control levers to the right and left of the monitor. Valkyrie starts moving. For a few seconds a metallic scraping can be heard, until the vessel rises far enough above the sea floor.
Eve does not seem to be taking the direct way. The small arrow on our screen indicates our direction of travel, and it points into areas we haven’t yet explored. At this depth there is eternal darkness anyways, which makes it hard for me to talk of a dark hemisphere.
“What would happen if we just keep going straight?” Adam wants to know.
“We know too little about that,” I reply. Yet the very question feels good. Columbus and his crewmates must likewise have agonized about that.
“Couldn’t it just go on forever? The hair plants on the bottom seem to have adapted to the environment.”
“We don’t know, though, whether the ocean covers the entire dark hemisphere. Perhaps there are gigantic mountain ranges there. Think of the Antarctic on Earth.”
Adam glares at me. “I don’t give a shit about Earth!”
“I just wanted to say that, on a certain planet in the solar system, the South Pole is not accessible by submarine, but the North Pole is.”
“I did understand,” Adam
says, abruptly turning away. He doesn’t realize that this gesture is futile, because there is always a camera I can use to look at his face. But I better not rub his nose in it.
“Stop arguing,” Eve says. She calmly focuses on the screen that shows the radar scan of the environment. “There are no discernible changes in the surface structure as far as the instruments reach… but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“Shouldn’t we start thinking about what to do next?” asks Adam with his head lowered. He has gotten out of his seat and is slowly pacing.
“Yes, Adam, I am setting course for the transmitter. Perhaps that will give us a clue.” Eve uses the right lever to control the thrust of the jets. I notice a force seeming to act on us from the outside, but it is really just our own inertia. Adam places a hand on the steel wall of the inner hull. The vessel changes its course.
While we approach our destination, Eve has the sensors checking in all wavelengths. The first measurement spike we detect is in the infrared range. The water temperature at the bottom is almost universally at four degrees. But on the monitor displaying infrared intensity, it looks as if, far away from us, somebody lit a candle in the dark. As I know more than the infrared sensor, namely the exact position of the object, I can calculate its emissions. This is definitely not a candle but rather a small heating plant. I try to match this with the image of the transmitter I remember, but that doesn’t work.
What will Adam and Eve say about it? I am very curious. While I have described the transmitter to them, my words seemed insufficient to me.
Within half an hour the candle flame grows into a bright glow such as might come from a burning torch. The monitor displays an elongated oval, perhaps two meters high, that seems to hover above the ground.
“Is it floating?” Eve asks.
Adam points at the gap between the ground and the oval. “Zoom in on this area so it fills the entire screen.”
Without the blinding brightness of the oval it becomes clear that there is a connection to the ground, but it radiates much less heat. I readjust the image to show the entire object. Something is bothering me. “There is something wrong here. You notice anything?” I am not sure myself what I am looking for. The whole scene does not feel dangerous, just strange.
Eve zooms in again and focuses on the transition between the brightness of the oval and the darkness of the water it swims in.
“Do you mean this?” she says.
Of course. The water is too dark. It should absorb much more heat from direct contact with the heat source. What we are seeing here would be normal in a vacuum, but on the ocean floor?
“The source seems to be very well shielded against its environment,” Adam says. “But what’s so unusual about that?”
“The fact that we can see it so brightly,” Eve says, anticipating my own explanation. “The shielding seems to work only for thermal conduction but not for infrared radiation, which we see as brightness here.”
“And what’s strange about that?”
“Thermal conduction works via direct contact,” Eve says, really getting into it. “The particles transfer heat by colliding with each other. While radiation can be blocked quite well by using absorbent or reflective materials, that is more complicated with thermal conduction.”
“You would have to prevent contact between the source and the outside.”
“Yes, Adam. But regardless of which material you use for it, that material itself is made up of particles that collide and can conduct heat.”
“Unless there is a layer containing nothing,” Adam says.
“A vacuum. Exactly. Without particles there is no thermal conduction. Marchenko, can you calculate for us how thick this layer would have to be?”
“No,” I reply. “I am missing too much data to do that. We have to get more precise measurements for the transmitter.”
A tense silence reigns over the next few kilometers. On the radar display, the transmitter—or what we assume to be one—only appears during the last minute. It is hard to say whether it was deliberately designed this way, since the delicate construction might be responsible for the small radar signature.
Valkyrie’s searchlights shine on the dish-shaped object. Adam and Eve marvel at it on the monitor. The instruments indicate that the dish is 15.7 meters wide. It sits horizontally on the bottom and no mountings can be seen. In the shine of the searchlights the material appears thin and bright, like porcelain. A mast rises from the center of the dish. It has a thickness of about half a centimeter. We cannot measure this more precisely from inside the vessel, particularly as the mast doesn’t seem to be evenly shaped. There are small bulges at regular intervals, the function of which is not identifiable.
Most impressively, spheres circle the mast within the radius of the dish. They are concentrated on the side from which we approached the transmitter. At first glance they seem to be made of the same material as the dish. These are precisely-shaped spheres, each with a diameter of 98 centimeters, floating in the water at different heights and distances from the pylon.
Adam points at one of the spheres. “I wonder what their function is.”
“I have no idea,” I reply. “Maybe they are ornaments? On...” I start, and then swallow the next word before starting over. “Elsewhere, some structures are just built for esthetic reasons.”
“The dish alone shows that the inhabitants value beauty,” Eve postulates.
“Or valued it,” Adam adds, and Eve nods.
“Sometimes the beauty of an object derives from its purpose,” I say, “but you will have to get out to answer the question.”
I have to admit I envy the two of them right now. If I only had a body! I wish to myself. While I can see the transmitter on all wavelengths, only Adam and Eve will be able to touch it.
“Done!” Adam is already wearing his pressure suit.
Eve shuts down her terminal just to be on the safe side. While the hardware is supposed to be waterproof, caution can’t hurt. We have to flood Valkyrie again to allow the two of them to exit. Hopefully for the second-to-last time.
Eve signals by giving a thumbs-up after she has donned her suit. I let the water flow in, and Valkyrie sinks to the bottom. Then Adam opens the hatch. I imagine the blackness he sees above, and in the camera image I watch him push off and swim outside. Eve follows him, and I accompany both of them with the searchlights. They are real naturals at this. I never managed to give them practical swimming lessons, but they move elegantly toward their destination. Near the dish they let themselves sink to the bottom.
“Wow,” Eve says. “From close up it is even more impressive than on the screen.”
Adam carefully touches the edge of the dish, which is about at chest height. I wonder whether I should stop him, but he probably would not listen to me anyways. Nothing can happen, I think, as the dish will hardly give him an electric shock! In slow motion Adam first closes the fingers of his right hand around the edge, then those of his left. Nothing happens. All of a sudden he jerks violently.
“Hey!” Again I yell, “Hey!” not knowing what else to do in my panic. From here I cannot help him. Eve pulls on Adam’s shoulder, but I already hear his laughter via helmet radio.
“You! You...” I shout. “That wasn’t funny at all! Don’t you dare do that again!” I am beside myself and feel my heart beating wildly, even though I don’t have one... anymore.
“And if I do? Don’t be so touchy,” Adam replies.
Eve also reaches for the edge of the dish and pulls herself up. I realize what she is planning to do. A bit further inward, and perhaps a meter and a half above her, floats one of these strange spheres. She goes directly for it, arms outstretched. One hand touches the sphere first, then the other. Due to her momentum, the sphere is pushed slightly to the side. I record the exact position. What happens next is something I already suspected. The sphere slowly moves back to its original position, pulling Eve along. Considering that it looks perfectly round, and seems to have no pro
pulsion system, that is a phenomenal achievement. In addition, the sphere must account for Eve’s weight while moving back.
“Did you see that?” I ask. I'm not sure whether the movement could be seen well from below.
“Yes, very distinctly. The sphere moved back after I pushed it out of position,” Eve replies.
“One moment,” Adam says. He turns aside, obviously aiming for another sphere. He pushes off much more strongly than Eve did, also kicking his feet. He hits the sphere perfectly and drags it along. One meter, two meters, but he is already slowing. The sphere decelerates, brings both of them to a stop, and then they float back to the sphere’s original position.
“Not bad,” Adam says. “I wonder what else this sphere can do. Should we try to kidnap it using Valkyrie?”
“I don’t know,” Eve replies. “This is alien technology we don’t really understand. We’d better not stress it to its limits.”
Strictly speaking, we shouldn’t have touched anything, I think, but how else are we supposed to find out anything?
“The positions of the spheres must be very important to the aliens,” Adam says. “This means they are probably more than just decorations. You were here before, Marchenko. Has anything changed?”
“I did not record the exact positions, but I remember one particular feature concerning the placement of the spheres. If you measure their distances, you get a geometric progression.” I check the numbers again. No, that is not correct. “Sorry, it’s not a single progression. There are several. One might assume that the spheres are arranged in circles around the pylon. There are three circles. The distances between the spheres of a particular circle form one progression. For the innermost circle, for example, this is 1, 1.5, 1.75, 1.875...”
Proxima Trilogy: Part 1-3: Hard Science Fiction Page 27