Ad Astra (8 page)

#

The re-revised story begins: Wilyam sensed the arrival of a message from his old rival and comrade Robertyne, who had existed in an indeterminate state since an accident while researching applications in the mysterious world of the quantum foam, where literally anything was possible. Waving a hand to freeze his work in mid-motion above his desk, Wilyam waved again to bring up the message display.

Particle functions coalesced into a functional framework emitting radiation on visual frequencies. The familiar features of Robertyne appeared as if he/she were actually looking at him through a window, though Wilyam suspected that Robertyne had actually ceased to exist some time before and he was really speaking directly to the inexplicable presence that seemed to animate the quantum foam. The image of Robertyne displayed a very human smile, though even when Robertyne had been unquestionably posthuman he/she had never been easy to understand or to trust. “Have you heard the ripples in the foam, Wilyam? Organic matter from the macro-place you call Asia now exists in a frozen state without flaw.”

Wilyam frowned as the implant linking him to the bare edges of the foam glittered with possible outcomes. He saw himself in a million different mirrors, each one reacting slightly differently to Robertyne’s proposal. “As you know, Robertyne, nothing actually exists, so it isn’t possible to preserve something that doesn’t exist. Previous attempts have produced probability chains that wander off into reduced states of replication quality.”

“There’s something new/old/past/present/future in this perception reference, Wilyam. It represents a low probability outcome of extreme accuracy.”

It sounded tempting to the millions of different Wilyams staring at him from the could-be’s dancing around the implant. “I’m busy analyzing signals from the Eridani probe. We’re not sure if they’re from our probe or if signals are tunneling from an alternate probe in another reality.”

“Then split your probabilities and attend to both and neither. I am everywhere and nowhere, but will center a probability node below here.”

“Okay.” Wilyam focused on the implant, drawing on the strange properties of the quantum foam to create infinite possibilities. He waved a hand to shut down his work and stood up/remained sitting and continued working.

The door’s probability state cycled as one Wilyam approached, going to zero for an instant as that Wilyam walked through.

In the endless hallway beyond, Jandyce from a few stationary states down floated with her eyes closed. She opened them, her eyes glowing blue from the tap implanted in her brain which connected Jandyce directly to the dark energy which filled the universe. Wilyam tried not to stare, knowing Jandyce was tied into cosmic currents none of his probabilities could hope to grasp.

She crossed her arms, drawing Wilyam’s observations to the two symmetrical anomalies superpositioned on her chest, both far exceeding functional limits in a way that excited his ground state and also provided proof that dark energy could overcome the pull of gravity. “You’re in a rush. Going on some important mission?” Jandyce hadn’t spoken, but her voice echoed in his head.

“The foam has found something new. A way to preserve matter in an hitherto unknown way. There’s a sample from the human-reality matrix of Asia.” Wilyam hesitated as his millions of selves around the quantum foam link swirled in every possible action-outcome sequence. Jandyce and he usually demonstrated weak interaction. When he had once asked her about the possibility of mutual reinforcement, she had informed him that the likelihood of direct reactions between quantum foam and dark energy was infinitesimally small and shown him the Feynman diagram that proved it. But he had long hoped for a probability sequence that could result in entanglement with her. Perhaps, somehow, their wave/particle dualities could constructively interfere in a way that would generate mutually beneficial patterns. “Would you like to come along?”

Jandyce’s eyes glowed brighter as the dark energy flowed. Matter swirled as she reached beside her and plucked a patch of darkness from nothing, examining it closely. “The cat lives. I will go, maintaining the proper balance of forces and perceptions.”

#

The agent: Great! This I can sell. It’s pure SciFi. Nobody could understand what’s happening or why these, uh, people are doing whatever it is they’re doing. Tell you what, though, it’s still a little rough. I mean, how do you explain what’s going on? Readers want to know how this stuff works. So how about you polish it a little, provide some explanations, and give me one more look, okay? Oh, and put the sex back in. You didn’t take it out? Well, then, make the sex
understandable
again. Make the sex so
anybody
can understand it. Heck, make the whole thing so anybody can understand it.

#

The re-re-revised story begins: The great wizard Wil sensed a message from his companion and challenger the Baron of Basi. He waved one palm and the magical mirror on a nearby wall glowed, showing the image of the Baron, who gave Wil a searching look. “Have you heard? From far in the east, that which we have long sought can now be ours. It lies frozen.”

“Frozen?” The Wizard Wil gestured again and the fires blazing beneath his cauldron sank to a low glow. “As you know, Baron of Basi, nothing once living survives well being encased in ice.”

“The Grand Council has found a way, I tell you! A way we must investigate before the Bane of Dargoth does! That which we desire lies frozen in a state of perfection. Come down from your tower and we shall seek it together.”

“A quest?” The Wizard Wil turned a doubtful look on his cauldron. “I have been seeking to interpret certain messages from the stars.”

“Surely a wizard of your powers can deal with two tasks at once.”

“There is a way,” the Wizard Wil agreed. Calling up the proper spell in his mind, Wil summoned an elemental assistant and ordered it to continue his work. He walked toward the door, the earth spirit bound to it seeing his approach and opening the portal, then closing it behind him.

Outside stood the Sorceress Jainere, who sometimes appeared in the south tower of Wil’s fortress. Jainere, her eyes glowing with the fires of the powers that lay beneath the world humans knew, sought wisdom in places few dared venture. Now Wil tried not to stare at the beauty she barely concealed behind a few filmy garments, her breasts glowing with a magic older than time that offered the promise of pleasures no man could withstand. The sorceress Jainere crossed her arms under those breasts, smiling enticingly as she saw the reaction Wil could not hide. “You’re in a rush. Going on some important mission?” she inquired in a voice that rang like the tiny bells the dancers of Dasiree wore.

“We seek that which was frozen and can be rendered perfect again once thawed,” Wil spoke haltingly despite his efforts to resist the spell of Jainere. “It comes from the lands far to the East, where priests and priestesses with skins the hue of the sun have long guarded it.” He had desired Jainere for many lives of normal men, but the unpredictable sorceress had always scorned him, declaring that no sorceress could live by the rules of right and wrong which Wil followed. Perhaps if she joined the quest Jainere would finally learn enough about him to desire uniting their powers and their lives. “Do you want to come along?”

Jainere reached down to the slim, bejeweled girdle which hung on her hips in a way that made men’s minds go astray, drawing forth the enchanted mirror in which she viewed images of what might be. “Your possible futures are of interest. I will accompany you. It might be amusing.”

#

The agent: Now that’s more like it. Fantasy! There’s a big market for that now. It’s a lot easier for readers to understand than SciFi and people seem to be able to relate better to the characters.

I wonder why they don’t want to read science fiction as much these days?

Author's Note on
Do No Harm

This story had a simple premise. If spaceships (or anything else) is built with a capacity to detect damage and self-repair, you are essentially giving it an immune system. That is a good thing, as a rule, but immune systems don’t always work as they’re supposed to. In fact, they often go off kilter. The ship that can repair itself might find itself suffering a form of auto-immune disease. When that happens, what kind of specialist is going to figure out what is wrong and how to fix it?

Do No Harm

“Sandra’s acting weird, the geeks can’t figure out why, and the boss is spinning like a pulsar.”

Kevlin pulled his attention out from the immersive medical simulation long enough to give Yasmina a questioning look. “I thought Sandra was supposed to leave this morning.”

“Right. She won’t go. Come on. The director’s called an all principals meeting.”

“I’m a doctor,” Kevlin objected. “I’m supposed to keep the people working for the corporation on this station healthy. Why do I care about Sandra’s problems?”

Yasmina smiled back at him in a mocking way. “I’m a doctor, too. If I have to go, so do you.”

“They need you to analyze the project director’s mind just in case he gets really dangerous this time,” Kevlin suggested. “I’m just a simple country doctor with a low-gravity, space illness specialty.”

“Sure. Then you’ll come in handy if the director bursts a vein while he’s yelling at everyone.” Yasmina beckoned. “Come on.”

Grumbling just loud enough for her to hear, Kevlin paused the sim and followed her down the hallway. “I could always monitor the director’s health from my office,” he suggested.

“Nice try. Didn’t your teachers at med school ever tell you not to try to con a shrink?”

Sandra was still at loading dock four alpha. Yasmina led the way onboard the ship, then along a passageway that ended in Sandra’s control room. The limited area was already full of exasperated engineers of various types and persuasions, some looking dejected, some angry and some staring into space as they tried to think. “Why can’t we do a virtual meeting?” one complained as Kevlin and Yasmina wedged their way in.

Another engineer answered in an accusing voice. “Because the director found out you guys had been hacking the meeting code so you could have avatars sitting in for you while you did other stuff. Now we all have to crowd in here in person so he can be sure we’re all actually getting yelled at.”

“People have been hacking virtual meeting code since the stone age,” the first engineer protested, then hastily stopped speaking as a short man with a lofty attitude and an ugly frown strode in, the crowd somehow contracting away from him so he had free room.

“Report,” the director stated, glowering at the chief designer.

The chief designer, who had been arguing with Sandra’s captain, made a helpless gesture. “Sandra won’t work. Something’s shorting out her central control functions.”

The director’s glower deepened. “The Spaceship Autonomous Network Developmental Research Application is the most expensive project in the history of this company. I expect more from you than vague reports that it just doesn’t work! Are you saying the control network isn’t receiving the commands?”

“No,” the chief designer responded in a tight voice. “I’m saying that the control network isn’t responding to external signals. It’s in some kind of weird loop, with only a few apparently random signals going out to minor sub-systems. We give a command and nothing happens.”

“Nothing happens? Something has to happen! If nothing is happening that means something is happening!”

Kevlin gave a glance at Yasmina, who was watching the director with a fascinated expression. He just knew she would love to get the director into a controlled environment so she could analyze his mental processes.

One of the other engineers tapped the air in front of him, activating a virtual display. “This is what Sandra’s central processing activity is like.”

Yasmina looked suddenly startled as an image appeared overhead. “That looks like an EEG of an epileptic seizure.”

Eyes swung to focus on the doctor. “An epileptic seizure?” the director asked in a deceptively mild voice.

Though it was obvious she regretted speaking, Kevlin wasn’t surprised that Yasmina refused to back down. “Yes,” she insisted. “That’s what that looks like. If I saw that representation of signal activity in a human, I’d say it was a seizure.”

“This is a ship,” the designer protested.

“Yes,” Yasmina agreed. “A ship you constantly refer to as if it were human, as if it were alive, talking about the complexity of an internal and external sensing network that mimics that of a living creature. I’ve read the specs on the central command system. You modeled it on basic brain functions. Well, maybe that means it’s subject to the sort of problems living brains develop.”

Kevlin waited for an outburst of laughter or scorn, but it didn’t come. A third engineer nodded with a wondering expression. “The operating system is incredibly complex, full of learning routines and development loops. It could’ve developed problems like that.“

“How do we cure it?” the director demanded. “In people?”

This time Yasmina grimaced in the way of a doctor trying to explain complex things in lay-person’s terms. “Short term, we use medications that raise the seizure threshold. Long term, we go in and fix whatever is causing the brain to short-circuit.”

The chief designer’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Short-circuit? What could have caused that happen? Sandra’s central command functions were working fine yesterday. We haven’t modified them since then.”

“Stray signals?” another engineer suggested.

“The central command area is shielded.”

“Maybe some other part of the, uh, neural network on Sandra?” Yasmina offered.

This time everyone’s attention turned toward a senior engineer, who looked defensive. “The test monitoring equipment couldn’t –“

“It’s wireless!” the director snapped.

Sandra’s captain and the chief designer were studying something. “Stray signals. That would do it. They must be filtering in through the sensing network. Oh, hell. I bet they’re reflecting down these access trunks and into the command circuit sub-junctions.”