Chapter 20: Council

The next day Uxe went to school while I went into the medical crèche to be scanned. Naomi would be tutoring Uxe and continuing to round out her knowledge. This was not just science and technology, but mainly history and a better understanding of humanity and its past cultures. Uxe was a very intelligent woman and just lacked context and raw knowledge. As Naomi started providing that, Uxe would be able to ask questions as fast as she could absorb the answers.

My bout in the crèche would provide a digital copy of my mind-data that would exist here at the space station. This would augment the one floating around on Nautilus. I began to feel like I was a bootleg CD being passed around. At least I was still bald from my scan three days ago. I did have to be depilated though. Now I was baby smooth again.

Uxe and I had discussed being bald. Even though I made clear the benefits of being bald, especially down there, Uxe wanted to try hair. She had never had long hair or any pubic hair because of her stunted growth and wanted to try both. Naomi had provided a treatment that would promote hair growth and she was already fuzzy in both places.

The next day when Uxe was in school, I was in the command center talking with Naomi. Our topics under consideration were the pending arrival and passage of the Assemblage ark ship, and the redevelopment and expansion of the human race. She had many thoughts on the former while I was primarily focused on the latter.

Naomi had been outlaying the various responses we had available regarding the ark ship. They ranged from trying to blow it up on one end of the scale to evacuating the current human population and fleeing before they arrived on the other. When I said that I had already decided not to flee Naomi made the case that this was now a different option.

In the two hundred ninety-three years we had remaining until the ark ship’s passage, she felt that she could build a true interstellar vessel. One that would take only a few centuries to travel the gulf between the stars as opposed to a hundred millennia for the rushed escape she had proposed before we had taken down the master A.I. Also, this new ship would be large enough to carry the current total human population, including the tribal humans living in the Amazon.

It was an interesting idea. I liked the idea of spreading humanity beyond just this one solar system. But I also hated the thought of giving up on this one, our ancestral home, especially now that the A.I. had restored much of the damage inflicted on the planet (I still chafed thinking of the new radioactive zones created during the recent battle). I told Naomi not to rule out the idea yet and that I would think about it.

The other extreme option of trying to destroy the ark was risky. The only likely method would be a very high-speed kinetic impactor. This method had many challenges. The first was how to accelerate a mass large enough and fast enough to annihilate the ark. Another would be how to aim such an attack. A third challenge would be how to determine the enemy’s precise course through our system.

Would we launch our attack before the ark arrived and hope to find its course or wait until after it flew by when we would have that information? If the latter, we would still have to survive their near passage through the system.

Also, what if the ark was not a single object. It could be dozens or hundreds of vessels. Or, it could have advanced scouts traveling ahead, looking for such a threat. There was even a tiny chance that it had followers intent on punishing any attackers after the fact. We just did not know.

Between those extremes was a middle option; one that Naomi was recommending. This was to simply do nothing. By nothing, I mean nothing unexpected by the Assemblage. In the two hundred ninety-three years we had until the arks passage Naomi would pretend to be the master A.I. and continue preparing the system for the Assemblages fly-by and migration transmissions.

This would mean that the orbital launchers from the various launch facilities around the world would continue to send supplies to space as the hundreds of large ultra-high bandwidth relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit would need to be constructed.

Naomi would have to continue sending the same type of periodic interstellar messages to the approaching assemblage and do so in a manner indistinguishable from the master A.I. She thought she had access to enough of the old data and records to properly format the coded messages.

On the ground, the construction of the cloning facilities and receiving stations would have to be begun and completed as planned. Or enough construction would have to happen to fool the assemblage as it passed. The same went for the arcologies. A large number of somethings would have to be built that would stand up to scrutiny from any spying scouts that passed through the system with the ark.

The enormous data storage facilities on the ground could be faked as they would not be receiving the relays from the geosynchronous satellites. Well, they would be receiving something, but instead of each set of mind-data being stored in a data array, it would be simply overwriting the data which had arrived before. In other words, the billions of total mind-data sets would be sent to the Earth, just not in a form that could be downloaded into a biological body.

If we acted our part right, the passing ark ship would never know that its sown seeds were simply dumped. The ‘do nothing’ plan had a good chance of success. The downside was the incredibly massive amounts of construction that would still need to be completed. The working relays in space were needed because the transmissions would use quantum particles for security and to ensure data integrity and verify successful reception.

The transmitting ark ship would be doing periodic checks to confirm the transmissions were arriving properly. This confirmation extended all the way down the chain to the only weak link, the final biological implantation. The ark would be long gone before living bodies should have begun emerging from the download facilities. That last stage is where Naomi could stop the flow of enemy data.

One potential snag to the plan was that we were not sure if and when the Assemblage would be sending operatives to inspect conditions beforehand or to observe and oversee the process. Naomi feared that if they did send operatives and if she denied downloading them into active biological or A.I. units, then the assemblage would learn of that when they failed to report back.

She did not have a reliable way to deal with early-arriving presences or operatives. As she described the risk I had a weird thought. For some reason, her worries reminded me of an old science fiction movie I had seen long ago. In the movie, much of humanity existed in a virtual world. They remained unaware of the fact as they went about their business.

“What if we construct a virtual world for any enemy operatives or A.I. presences to be downloaded into? If we made it accurate enough, they would not know they were in a simulation and would transmit back that all is going according to plan,” I said.

Silence. Eight whole seconds of silence. I was beginning to wonder if Naomi had shorted out or if something more urgent was happening elsewhere. Just before I was about to ask, Naomi finally responded.

“Yes, John. Your idea will work! A simulated environment could be created that is detailed enough to fool any operatives or presences sent by the Assemblage. The only challenge would be constructing the enormous processing arrays and data storage centers to run such a detailed virtual environment.

“Conveniently, since we are forced to continue building a large number of download and data arrays for storing the assemblage mind-data, we can use those facilities to run the simulated virtual world! Again, well done. You have surprised me with your intuitive cleverness. I am calling Ohmu to come and give you a kiss for me!” Naomi gushed.

I was fascinated. She sounded truly excited. “Not necessary, I will have Uxe do that later,” I said. I was just glad to have been able to contribute a useful idea.

We left that subject of what to do about the Assemblage with the ‘do nothing’ deception plan being the preferred plan. I told Naomi that I would think about it for a day or two and let her know for sure about the other option of fleeing. Before I left she repeated her praise of my virtuality idea. I laughed when she ended her statement with a loud booming, “Muhahahah!”

After a lunch break and a session in the command center’s zero-gee vacuum equipped toilet we reconvened to discuss what to do about humanity. In my thoughts about the problem over the past few weeks, I had become sure of two things. The first was that I wanted most of the changes made by the master A.I. to the colony humans undone.

They had been made more fertile and I wanted that stopped. They had also been conditioned to accept their current living and mating situations. That was a trickier issue. While I wanted that conditioning reversed, these people had been living with the arrangement for a long while now. I would have to investigate how these living arrangements were working for them.

The second conclusion I had reached was that I did not want humanity to ever reach the population densities again that it had achieved at the time of the attack on the Earth. In my half-century of living in that world I had noted two things. People living in dense cities tended to act illogically. The same could be said about people who lost their ability to be somewhat self-reliant. The power of the A.I.s and the automation we now had available could exacerbate both problems if we were not careful.

Towards that end, I was trying to come up with a way to prevent overpopulation and stagnation. Neither was an easy problem to solve. The good news on the overpopulation front is that we had the whole Earth available. Overpopulation would not be an immediate threat. But, if I could stop the trend early, more the better.

As far as stagnation went, I just did not know. If I limited humanity’s taking advantage of the miracles of alien technology, I would be the world’s biggest hypocrite. Why shouldn’t every person have almost every wish granted or be rejuvenated at will to maintain perfect health and fitness? On the plus side of the equation, I suspected that the Earth would be a much more natural and healthier place with the machines providing our needed resources instead of intensive mining and farming altering much of its surface.

Secondly, if people could be made young, healthy, and long-lived, maybe they would not be in such a hurry to reproduce and maybe they would take more care of their surroundings. Would they begin thinking in the long term and stop acting irrationally or without careful consideration?

These were some of the thoughts I discussed with Naomi. As a logical machine, she was all too aware of humanity’s flaws. She was also intelligent enough to realize that humans needed some freedom and independence, or they would stagnate into ignorance and apathy.

I needed more information. Regarding the colony humans, I set Naomi on the task of planning an inspection trip. I would go down and see for myself how the colony groupings were getting along. After a few seconds of thought, she suggested that we visit the colony in New Zealand. It was summer there and Lake Taupo would make an ideal landing and takeoff location for Bucephalus.

I had always wanted to see New Zealand ever since I watched those Tolkien book movie adaptations, so the idea sounded good to me. Naomi said that we could go right away as all she had to do was provide a few supplies and load enough hydrogen on board Bucephalus to allow it to make a forty-degree change in her orbital plane.

She did suggest delaying long enough for the field base in New Zealand to send a few drones over to the lake to assess the conditions there for landing. Not only the wind and weather conditions but more importantly the depth of the lake and to ensure that nothing was drifting about on the surface. I concurred and we set the departure for two days from now on Thursday, Jan 4^th.

Supper that night was quiet. I sensed that Uxe was troubled. When I inquired she explained that she was depressed about some of the things she had learned in school today. I already suspected many of the things which bothered her, but I still listened. We spent a few hours discussing the more troubling aspects of humans and their history. I agreed with much of her worries and we discussed ways to prevent humanity from devolving to such levels in the future.

She perked up when I mentioned our field trip in two days. Also, I told her that tomorrow we’d have to take a few breaks from her schooling throughout the day to play in the gymnasium. Both of us needed to maintain balance in our lives and exercise was good too. With her mood now improved, we headed off to bed.

Tonight, we tested a few new positions which the light, one-third gravity allowed. Our new favorite was with me standing and fully supporting her weight with just a light grip on her ass and ... well, you get the idea. Uxe wanted to brag and send pictures to Abby to which I replied, “Absolutely not!”

Later, we tried out the large bathtub. I was disappointed to find that buoyancy overruled gravity and it felt much the same as it would have on the Earth. The splashes were bigger though, and I was glad the floor had drains. Uxe loved it, as I suspect a modern bathtub with plenty of hot water and jets had not been a common feature in her tribal upbringing.

The next day was similar to the previous. We added a couple of exercise sessions in the gymnasium to break up Uxe’s schooling. Later in the afternoon I also spent a bit of time considering and fabricating items for our field trip. The colony humans had not been told we were coming nor had they been told that the solar system was under new management. Both pieces of news would be a surprise.

The other big holes in their knowledge were the details of who had been responsible for the Earth’s destruction and why they had been preserved in bio-suspension. Then, following the latter, why they had been woken and forced into their current colonies and what nefarious end the master A.I. had in store for them and their offspring. When they found out the details, including how their minds had been altered, they might become irrational.

Towards that end, I wanted to be prepared. I was having special suits fabricated for both Uxe and I. These were not quite battle suits or stealth suits but had features of each. They would resist impacts and offer other protections. They would also include a bit of augmentation with a light web of synthetic musculature.

If the worst came to pass and I pissed off the locals, I wanted to be sure that we’d at least be able to take a hit or two and easily outrun them. I also wanted to be armed. Nothing enforces politeness and respect better and I was a firm believer in the old adage of ‘an armed society is a polite society.’

As far as other supplies, we packed very lightly. Hoss had slightly larger replicators than those that Habu had possessed and we would be able to quickly make almost anything we might need. Her cabin was also larger and the fully reclining double chairs would make a nice double bed if need be. It was a great all-around flying speedster and recreational vehicle all rolled into one.

Thursday came and just after lunch we made plans to disembark. Ohmu was going along but planned to remain stowed in Hoss for much of the trip unless needed otherwise. The local field base had plenty of mobile units and aerial drones to which Naomi (and Ohmu by extension) had full access. Both Uxe and I used the toilet one last time and then we were ready to go. The travel orb delivered us to where Hoss was stored and shortly after, a manipulator arm installed Hoss into the cargo bay of the fueled-up Bucephalus.

I was surprised to see how much hydrogen Bucephalus was carrying. Naomi explained that the change in orbital inclination required a substantial delta-V and thus our engines would have to burn a long time. In fact, it would almost have taken less fuel if we had simply deorbited, refueled on the surface, and then launched into a suborbital hop with our final destination being New Zealand.

Oh well. The orbital station had substantial reserves. In addition to the hydrogen brought up as cargo, some of the nose cone maneuvering hydrogen from each cargo flight had been offloaded rather than carry any excess back to the surface. The landers needed to be at a minimum mass and only carry enough fuel to slow and land.

Soon we were drifting free in space. The orbital station was a few kilometers away when Bucephalus fired up one engine to begin our change in orbit. The burn would continue for eighteen minutes after which we would drift in freefall for almost two hours. Then, we would perform another engine burn to circularize the change in inclination.

Finally, once our path was aligned with our destination target below, we would fire to brake ourselves and drop out of orbit. While all this was happening, Uxe continued her schooling and I read my current book. We were just another bored couple on a routine flight.

Re-entry was loud and there was a noticeable vibration. Our seats had reclined to a position to allow us to handle the high gee loading of Bucephalus’s belly first deceleration. We stayed quite cool and comfortable in our seats inside Hoss. I monitored the reentry on the screen overlay. The outside images were suspended for the moment due to the fires of reentry. Our heat shielding was doing its job.

As we slowed and entered the atmosphere proper, our viewscreens began showing us an amazing view of New Zealand below. One window showed a magnified view of Lake Taupo, our destination and landing point. The aerial drones had directed us to land in a southwestward direction because of the current weather conditions, and Bucephalus began a slow banking turn to line us up.

It was clear skies below. Local time was two hours before noon, and just a few areas of fog remained along one shore of the lake and off in the river valleys beyond. We were coming in too steep to land so as we passed eight thousand meters our electro-thermal turbines began spooling up. Their thrust leveled us off slightly and our rate of descent slowed. Once we had passed two thousand meters our hydrofoils deployed, and the ride got a bit bumpier.

Uxe gripped my hand tightly as we flared and dropped the last few meters to the lake’s surface. The turbines were screaming at full power as the hydrofoils struck and bit into the water. With a sharp jolt, we slowed even further and began to plane on the twin metal bands now extending below the surface. Our speed continued to drop, and the underside of Bucephalus settled lower. Once we had reached a minimum speed, the turbines spooled down, and the main fuselage of our spaceplane entered the water with a huge spray off to each side.