Chapter 18: Belly of the Beast

I was relieved to find that the ascender, or ‘descender’ to be precise, which controlled my slide down into the dark shaft, had a speed limiter. With the very low gravity, I was able to easily bend my suit downward so I could watch my descent and verify that I was not going to collide with either Uxe or Jonathon.

After five minutes and after descending over a hundred meters, I began to close the distance with Uxe and Jonathon. I saw that they had stopped descending and were now busy disconnecting themselves from the tether. Once that was accomplished, Uxe began inspecting the surrounding area while Jonathon stood stationary off to the side of the shaft on a circular platform waiting for my arrival.

When I reached the same depth, he reached over and hit the brakes on my ascender stopping my descent with a sudden bounce. My suit lights swung around wildly for a moment before I was left hanging facing downward. I was able to see that the tether and shaft continued far below so we were not yet at the bottom.

Jonathon then pulled me away from the tether until I was able to stand on a narrow platform that circled the shaft. I had just gotten myself stable when Ohmu came to a stop next to us. My android friend simply swung over to the ledge nimbly and I noticed that she had not bothered with an ascender but had simply gripped the tether with her hands. Showoff.

There were five tunnels arranged around the shaft. Uxe chose one of them and entered but not before waving for me to follow. Jonathon followed ready to assist as I carefully made my way around the open shaft to her tunnel. My suit only had small forward illuminators and there were pools of shadow everywhere. I did not want to mistake a shadow for the open shaft although if I had, the light gravity would have given Jonathon time to grab me.

“John? Do you have your lowlight enhancements turned on?” he asked over the group com system.

“I do now,” I admitted with some chagrin after finding and mentally activating the feature on my smart iris control menu. The circular chamber came alive with luminescent paint markings all around. Even the tether was now glowing. I saw that there were five clearly marked radial tunnels leading away from the shaft.

“Everything important is marked with luminous paint so just our suit lights will be sufficient. Like at Forbin, we tried to eliminate all unnecessary conductive pathways like those needed for electric lighting. The suit lights will reenergize the luminous paint and allow them to glow for an hour or two.”

I now remembered this detail from the early planning sessions. Uxe had already moved many meters ahead down the side tunnel and now stood inspecting a cluster of equipment. She was standing in a pool of blue light which came from much higher above her. I looked up and saw that it was the familiar blue glow of a large ESU cylinder’s power status indicator.

The display showed that the ESU was fully energized. ESUs of this size could normally power a field base for years and I noticed more lights just beyond Uxe’s current position. Before I entered her tunnel, I did a quick circle and verified that the four other tunnels also had similar blue glows from their own ESU arrays. I was looking at a lot of stored power.

The numerous charged ESU indicators physically confirmed that Jonathon had indeed completed the preparations needed to ready the facility and that the required energy reserves were in place. I saw him smile proudly as he watched me take in our surroundings.

“I bet it was a bitch getting those babies installed down here,” I commented as I gestured towards one of the ESUs.

He pointed to the trolley rails suspended from the ceiling of each tunnel. That explained how he’d gotten the ESUs from the central shaft and out into each of the five radial tunnels.

“Those helped,” he explained. “With the shaft crane above to lower the bulky bastards down to this level and the trolley to distribute them, it wasn’t too hard. In fact, I think it was easier moving the ESUs in Vesta’s low gravity than it would have been shoving them around in full weightlessness. At least the gravity kept the things pointed in the right direction.”

I remembered my own decades of zero-G construction when I’d helped construct Evadere. Having some gravity also kept things from floating away inconveniently when you turned your back.

“Isn’t it risky having fully energized ESUs so near the new arrays?” I asked.

Uxe replied instead of Jonathon. “It can’t be helped. In order to respond quickly if an opportunity presents itself, we need to have the array ready to go with only a moment’s notice. I’ve designed a series of safeties to help reduce the risk.”

I couldn’t help noticing that she’d said ‘reduce’ instead of ‘eliminate’. I decided to just trust her and not delve any deeper into the risks.

“John, pull yourself through this segment of tunnel very carefully. Use the wall handholds to keep yourself from bouncing too high and getting too close to those,” Jonathan said while pointing overhead to the heavy metal bus bars installed along the ceiling of the tunnel. There were two parallel bars and each was connected to one of the twin power taps at the top of the ESUs. “The busses are currently fully energized by the way,” he added.

I saw the bus bars and ducked a bit lower. They were enormous! Each bar was silver metal and rectangular in cross-section.

“Metal conductors? Why not use superconducting conduits?” I asked.

Uxe answered. “Simplicity, John. Although normal metallic conductors will lose some energy to heat due to resistance, we have oversized the ESUs to compensate. The bars are 100mm by 240mm in cross-section and are constructed of a highly-conductive silver alloy. Each will carry over forty-two thousand amps of electrical energy for the few seconds required to fully energize the array. After that, they will begin to fail, although the termination charges deep below will have destroyed the bars, and the entire complex, well before that happens.”

The reminder that we were currently standing above multiple armed atomic scuttling bombs located at the bottom of the complex momentarily distracted me from the power distribution system Uxe was explaining.

I put the thought of the live bombs out of my mind and asked the next question on my mind. “Don’t the bus bars need to be insulated?” I asked, studying the exposed metal conductors.

They were suspended from the ceiling about two meters apart on regularly-spaced hanger brackets. The brackets must have been insulators as the rock of Vesta contained decent amounts of iron and other conductive minerals.

“No. Despite the high amperage, the voltages are below the threshold to cause vacuum arcing. However, once the bars heat and begin to melt, there will be enough energized free atoms of silver floating about to allow for ionic discharges. There will then be lightning all over the place but this will occur too late to impede lattice initiation ... we hope.”

She smiled at that. I knew she was making a joke and that they had run the numbers enough times to vouch for the reliability of the complex. I just nodded and after a moment Uxe pointed to a cluster of equipment installed further down the tunnel, just beyond the last ESU. She carefully moved off, using the handholds to keep herself confined to the lower half of the tunnel.

I found another luminescent handhold and followed her, pulling myself very carefully down the tunnel in a similar manner. All the while the back of my neck itched knowing that there such a deadly amount of live current just overhead.

A dozen meters past the final ESU we came to what looked like a power junction switchboard of some sort. Uxe pulled herself around and underneath the bulky device, and as I followed I saw that there were three identical units in series. Each was connected to a massive relay overhead where the bus bars terminated. I noted with relief that the ceiling of the tunnel here was much higher, placing the bus bars further out of reach.

Uxe finished her cursory inspection and waited until Jonathon and Ohmu caught up with us. When the four of us were in the small compartment she spoke. “This is the final design of the failsafe power relay system. There are three redundant circuit breakers like these in each of the five ESU tunnels. All have to fire simultaneously in order to allow power to enter the array.

“Also, all three have mechanical timers which will only allow the power circuits to be closed for the few seconds required to activate the array,” she continued. “Although, the timers are redundant and serve the same function as the melting bus bars and facility termination charges.”

I studied the complex-looking circuit breakers. I was reminded of something old, something almost steam-punk. There were plenty of pipes, tubes, and valves but also a clear lack of wiring and anything digital or electronic. Another example of wanting to keep the area as free from digital pathways as possible.

“How do the circuit breakers communicate between themselves to verify that they are closing simultaneously?” I asked.

She pointed to a cluster of small tubes leaving each of the devices. There were over three dozen. I followed the tubes up to the ceiling where they ran along a raceway leading back towards the central shaft. “Shockwave tubes, John. The activation signal arrives here from the main centralized permissive action link below via an induced shockwave traveling through one of those tubes.”

“You mean like the detonator cords used in the mining industry back in my time?” I asked.

“Exactly, although the chemicals in these tubes induce a weaker pressure pulse that does not break the tube wall.”

Uxe then pointed out groups of identical tubes. “The initiation pulse reaches each of the final circuit breakers and then is sent back along a different shockwave tube for redundancy and security. If all fifteen return pulses arrive back at the main initiator with the correct delay, the initiation cycle is authorized and the array is fully activated.”

“Physical shock waves? Isn’t that slow and susceptible to accidents?” I asked.

“Well, the shock waves travel at 1732.4 meters per second and with the multiple bounces from the initiator out to each circuit breaker location, the delay does add up to over two seconds. But, as it takes over three seconds to establish the shunting wormhole from here to the Sarissa array anyway, this delay is acceptable,” she explained.

“Also, as an additional security measure, the back-and-forth shockwaves allow for unique timing parity checks and any unplanned shockwaves not starting at the main initiator below nullify the overall activation sequence.

“Considering that it takes three complete back and forth shock wave passes, one for each step, to close all the relays and energize that portion of the processor lattice, it is virtually impossible to trigger even a partial activation improperly,” she explained.

“How do you test it to know that all the tubes are connected properly?” I asked.

Jonathon answered this question. “They are all pressurized to 0.3 atmospheres with Argon. A loss of pressurization would signal a breach in the system. I can also add small pressure pulses to individual tubes to trace continuity.”

I was impressed. It looked like they had designed and built a safe, non-electrical firing mechanism. I realized that even if the shockwave tubes destroyed themselves once they fired, it would not matter as the entire complex was a one-use installation anyway.

“Rosie and I are the only ones who know the precise shock tube lengths and pulse speeds. The individual tube delays are tied into the circuit breakers themselves with matching custom-tuned timers. This means that even if someone were to run new tubes and attempt a bypass, they would have no idea of what specific timing each circuit breaker is looking for to fire properly. The timing details only I know as I had Rosie delete those from her memory.”

“So, back to the mechanism...” Uxe continued, pointing to the final circuit breaker. “Once all three relays are closed, power from the ESUs is channeled down the bus bars and into the initiation stages of the processor clusters.”

She paused as she pulled herself further down the tunnel. “Come, let me show you the start of a processor tree.”

After advancing another twenty meters, the tunnel ended at another large diameter shaft. I pulled up next to Uxe and aimed my suit lights up and down the dark shaft energizing the luminescent paint markings on the shaft walls and stacked equipment racks.

The shaft was not perfectly vertical and was tilting off plumb about ten degrees. The orientation of the shaft’s tilt hinted that the bottom would likely converge far below at the central shaft now behind us. I aimed the lights upward to find the top of the tilted shaft sealed with a white polymer dome just ten meters above.

“We sealed these outer shafts immediately after lowering in the preassembled processor towers,” Jonathon said. I looked back and saw that he and Ohmu had joined us at the edge of the tunnel. “Getting the towers installed in the tilted shafts was a bitch. There was just enough gravity that the lattice kept scraping the outer shaft wall as each segment was lowered inside.”

I barely heard him as I was absorbed studying the small skyscraper of dense processor blocks stacked in front of me. There were dozens of meter-wide columns arrayed tightly together. Just overhead was a massive bundle of power cables that snaked out of our tunnel. Each cable linked one of the processor columns to the circuit breakers (and potentially, to the energized ESUs!) just behind us.

As I panned my view downwards, I saw that the columns merged into fewer, but larger bundles below. I remembered from the planning discussion that where the five shafts converged, a few hundred meters below, each column had been reduced to only one massive grouping of lattice processors. These final five then converged in a central terminus point which was near our final destination for this trip.

“I’m surprised you got them all in place without wrecking them,” I said. “Were there any accidents?”

“Well yes, some were wrecked ... but not too many. But we had spares and there is some redundancy designed into the system. Also, surprisingly, the variations between each processor column should push the potential of the evolving transcendent sentience’s higher,” Jonathon said.

Uxe pulled herself out of our access tunnel and was making her way around the shaft’s outer casing by using illuminated handholds. Ohmu stepped up to me and clipped a tether onto my suit’s shoulder harness attachment point. The other end was attached to her torso. She gestured for me to follow my former wife.

With a quick look down I carefully pulled myself out of the tunnel. I had spotted more handholds below so I was reasonably sure that if I had fallen without being tethered, with the low gravity, I could have caught myself below before I had gained too much speed. Still, I might damage the processors and I suspected that was the main point of Ohmu’s precautions.

I pulled myself around the shaft, holding as close to the outer wall as I could so as to avoid bumping the processor towers. There were support struts above and below which kept the processors centered in the tilted shaft and the moving shadows formed from our suit lights were spooky in the dimness. Finally, I arrived at the shaft’s outer wall and saw that there was a ladder built into that face.

Uxe paused at the ladder and watched my progress around the shaft’s perimeter. When I reached her, she pointed upward to the top of the towers. “When the circuit breakers close, the energy from the ESU tunnels enters the shafts and connects to the lattice processor at the initiation segments up top. The energy is divided across the separate processor towers, causing each to boot their non-corporeal sentiences into existence. We’ve seeded each chain with various logic packages which should promote aggressive self-expansion from the get-go.”

She then pointed downwards. About six meters below our current level, I saw that the processor column’s architecture changed. Where there had been dozens of separate and parallel lattice towers, the numbers were reduced by half below the mixing level. This was an intentional part of the design and it forced each new sentience to dominate over its peers to continue to evolve and have access to new processor lattice segments and additional thought-sustaining power below.

Uxe was already quickly descending. I saw that she was sliding slowly down the ladder by sliding on the side rails fireman style. I moved into position to follow and found the method easy to control. Ohmu was just behind me, still acting as my backup with the safety tether. I was going to ask why only I warranted the special protection until I remembered that Uxe had been here many times before.

The four of us slid down the tilted shaft slowly. Our suit lights illuminating each new section and leaving the trailing ones lit with a luminescent glow. As we descended, we passed three more ESU power delivery tunnels. These roughly matched up with where the processor towers combined and reduced in number. The additional energy was needed because despite there being fewer individual towers, those that remained were larger in cross section and the free space in the shaft was reduced.

Finally, we reached the bottom of the tilted well. Here there were only two remaining processor columns which merged into one as it turned and entered a much shorter horizontal tunnel leading towards the central shaft. Uxe had already entered that tunnel while I waited for Ohmu to unclip my safety tether.

“Hold up, John,” Jonathon said. He slid to the bottom of the ladder and pointed under the lowest segment of the processor lattice tower. “See that beach ball-sized bump? That’s one of the six, ‘enhanced-radiation’ nukes that will ensure termination of Acid Rain. There are neutron bombs like that at the bottom of the other four lattice towers along with one in the central termination sphere just ahead.”

I looked up at the four-hundred-meter shaft above. The shaft continued to the surface above the level at which the processor clusters began.

“Won’t the bombs just eject the processors out into space like the bullets from a gun?”

“That’s the plan!” Jonathan replied. “But with the enhanced neutrons, the ejected processors will just be harmless slag. We’ve constructed the individual processor devices with a higher-than-normal susceptibility to neutron radiation. They will be fully scrambled and partially melted. The lower yield will mean that much of the tunnels and shafts will be salvageable, although I doubt we will get a second chance to run another Acid Rain.”

“I hope if we do use it, we won’t need a second chance,” I commented.

We departed the tilted shaft through the side tunnel Uxe had vanished into. The tunnel was only five meters long and we emerged into a large, spherical central chamber. The diameter of the chamber had to be over sixty meters across and unlike the smooth-bored cylinder of the tilted shaft we’d just left, the walls of this new space were uneven and rocky.

Also, the chamber was not completely spherical, as it had a flat floor about five meters below its equator. This floor appeared to be leveled crushed rubble that had been solidified chemically. To do that, the chamber must have been pressurized at one point. Now, it was open to the vacuum of the shafts and to the surface beyond.

Off to the side of the chamber sat a small, pressurized tent habitat complete with a compact airlock. The habitat had a small ESU module connected for power and I saw that the lock’s actuator was energized. It must have been a rest station or sleeping quarters for Jonathon and Uxe’s use when they needed a break.

I pulled myself away from the side tunnel to inspect the chamber walls more closely. The walls and ceiling looked melted, like fused glass. I ran my gloved hand over the smooth surface.

“I made this cavern first,” Jonathan explained, anticipating my question. “A small hole was bored to this depth and a twenty-five-kiloton baby nuke detonated. It saved us a few weeks of excavation time.”

I looked at the dosimeter in my iris menu and saw that the levels were still at background. The place had cooled off since it was built. Before I could ask my second question, the spherical chamber lit up brightly. Uxe had reached the central cluster of equipment and deployed a battery-powered, portable lighting globe.

One level above Uxe was a raised receiving platform. The platform held the base of an attached tether which extended up from the center and through a hole in the chamber’s ceiling. The hole must have been the bottom of the central shaft we’d used to first enter the complex.

Below the platform, near the equipment Uxe was busy inspecting, was what must have been the final processor node cluster. This had to be the point where all the final processor lattices from the tilted shafts converged. It was ground zero; the point where the five still evolving and growing super-sentiences would hopefully duke it out for overall supremacy of the array.

Below the final node was a complex-looking information conduit extending downward a few meters. The conduit terminated just above the toroidal aperture of a small wormhole mechanism. I moved forward to join Uxe.

“Some of this looks familiar. I take it the final digital survivor of the lattice processors is funneled down below that final node and injected into a wormhole?” I asked.

“That is correct, John,” Uxe explained. “The small shunting wormhole aperture will open at precisely the moment the evolved super-sentience will discover that its energy supply is finite and near exhaustion. Fleeing down the wormhole will be its only choice for survival.”

She guided me closer to the bottom of the node where the final conduit hung suspended above the wormhole torrid. “The shunting wormhole is permanently aligned so that its terminus will form at the nearby Sarissa complex. Also, it is already aligned behind the Stinger deployment device’s final firing position. You will note that the bottom of the data transfer conduit here matches exactly the input end of the Stinger we saw back at Sarissa.”

I pulled myself down close so that I could inspect the underside of the conduit. She was correct in that when the shunting wormhole formed and joined this space with the Sarissa crater, the conduit would mate with the Stinger seamlessly.

“So, the shunting wormhole forms and the super-sentience is forced into the Stinger?” I asked. Uxe nodded. “And then, the Stinger is advanced into the already-active Sarissa wormhole and out of its terminus eight light years away, hopefully deep inside the enemy?” I asked.

“You’ve got it honey! It’s pretty simple actually, if you discount the three AIs needed, the enormous amount of dedicated advanced logic processors, and the miracle of timing needed to tie it all together. Keep in mind that the multiple linkages only have a few milliseconds to work properly. Too early and the super-sentience will not have coalesced into one supreme being at the Stinger ... too late that same super-sentence will have lost itself into an infinite self-contemplative solipsistic loop and no longer be functional.”

I remembered the latter had arisen often in the experiments performed at Forbin. The window where we could utilize this god-like artificial non-corporeal intelligence was so short. Just a wisp of time before the new emergence passed on to whatever lay beyond evolution-wise for transcendent thinking logic. We had learned enough to prevent the collapse most times, but there was still much unknown about the far extents of sentience.

“ ... and all this assumes that an emergence does not somehow escape into our local data network and propagate all through the system, wiping ourselves out in the process,” she added, after a short pause.

As if to reinforce the danger, I spotted the casing of the scuttling neutron bomb just below the wormhole torus. It was located next to the wormhole initiation machinery. Hopefully, the timing of the detonation would occur after the wormhole was closed and before the blast wave could propagate through the spatial rift and muck up the more-critical and complex Sarissa mechanism. I said as much to Uxe.

“It should work,” she replied confidently. “We’ve also programmed the Sarissa mechanism to shut down simultaneously when the shunting wormhole terminates. This will strand the compromised Stinger eight light-years away with the Assemblage. Regardless, we should be able to save Sarissa if we have to use Acid Rain.”

“What if something leaks through and into the control systems there?” I asked. “Could it use Sarissa to send itself elsewhere in our network?”

Ohmu answered. “I have arranged to have an independent digital agent remain active at the main wormhole site to monitor the integrity of the data net. If something does happen, it will initiate a fusion device and destroy the Sarissa crater.”

I stared at Ohmu. “Who did you get to do that duty whom you trust well enough to remain uncompromised?”

“Probe Ohno’s presence volunteered. With our plans to use the probe as an observation post for the upcoming weapons tests, we retrieved the digital awareness from the interloper probe. It has agreed to do this task for us.”

I did not know how to respond to that. Probe Ohno was designed to be resistant to external digital intrusion and was well suited for the role. Still, we were asking it to potentially sacrifice itself. Luckily Uxe changed the subject by reminding us that we had an important task to do here ... which was arming this facility.

The four of us converged at the central cluster of equipment. I observed the huge bundles of shockwave tubes leaving the equipment and heading off in all directions. A third led out horizontally and into the five tunnels leading to the tilted processor shafts. The remainder were routed up to the chamber’s ceiling and exited up through the central shaft.

The tubes were clearly the chemical shockwave tubes leading to the circuit breakers installed at each ESU power junction. This cluster of equipment must be the main initiator, or trigger, for the entire complex. It was also surrounded by an unsealed and deflated pressure curtain.

“Naomi? Are you online?” Uxe asked.

—Yes, Uxe. The micro-com wormhole link is active—

“Good. John, from now on, Naomi will maintain a micro-hole link to this place at all times. Upon request from you, me, or Jonathon to activate Acid Rain, Naomi will add additional micro-com links to each of our current locations. Two of us will have to agree to proceed with the activation,” Uxe explained.

“Naomi, are you able to produce all these micro-com wormholes from Querencia?” I asked. I had only seen the one wormhole generator on the sub the last time I had passed through.

—No, John. The communication wormholes will be coordinated and created from the High Castle station in Earth orbit. I have been developing a redundant wormhole capability on that satellite for some time—

High Castle had once been the Assemblage Master AI’s mid-orbital seat of power back when it had subjugated the Earth. We’d taken control of the satellite and Naomi had transferred her presence there during the first century of our new civilization. When I’d stopped going to space frequently and began settling down on Earth, Naomi had constructed Querencia and relocated her presence to the large submarine.

For a moment I wondered if Naomi had transferred her presence off the sub but then I realized that with the right application of wormholes, she could link both places together and exist in both places simultaneously depending upon her needs.

“Ohmu? We are ready to format the ‘keys,’” Uxe said.

Ohmu stepped up to the control station and inserted her finger probe into a small socket. An armored cover opened, revealing three complex-looking receptacles. Next, a panel opened in her torso and she removed three small devices. These must be the ‘keys’ Uxe had referred to. Ohmu withdrew the keys and inserted them one by one into the panel’s receptacles.

“Each of the three keys has a pair of quantum entangled particles. I am now transferring one half of each particle pair into each key of the permissive action link embedded in this control console,” Ohmu explained. Green tell-tales lit over each key. Ohmu withdrew them one at a time and handed them to each of us.

As I had been previously when I was first briefed on the activation protocols, I was momentarily bothered that Ohmu would not be receiving a fourth key. I’d wanted her to have one but the other three, including Ohmu herself, were against the idea. They judged that the android was not objective enough.

In the end, we agreed that if two of the three humans who had keys were ever permanently incapacitated, or dead, then Ohmu would be given authority to act as a replacement second member to maintain the two-man rule.