Chapter 15: Intrepid - 3755 C.E.

Paul had never shown much interest in the other passengers and crew of the Intrepid in all the months since he first boarded the space ship. He didn't feel comfortable in the company of soldiers, he didn't need to see the crew very often, and there were no other computer archaeologists amongst the scientists. He was more than happy in his own company and, of course, that of Beatrice. What more did he ever need?

Not a lot, Paul mostly believed, but lately Beatrice had been spending rather less time with him and there were occasions when he rather missed having someone around to talk to.

And so it was that Paul was now wandering rather aimlessly about the research laboratories and meeting rooms where most scientists spent their working days. Paul was normally rather less fully occupied. When not pursuing a line of research that more often than not ended nowhere and had very little to do with the mission to the Anomaly, he simply idled away his time. He might visit virtual space. He might spend hours playing games in cyberspace. He might even just doze. But what he didn't ever do much of was socialise with his fellow scientists.

But now he thought he'd do just that. It also occurred to him that he might even meet Beatrice who often claimed that she was visiting other scientists when Paul asked her about her whereabouts when she wasn't in the villa. Paul never thought to ask the question that inwardly troubled him the most which was why Beatrice was absent so much more often these days. Was it something he'd said or done? It wasn't that Beatrice wasn't there to share his bed at night, although quite often when Paul stirred into brief wakefulness during the night hours he'd find that Beatrice was no longer by his side.

The Research Centre wasn't the most thrilling sector of the ship to visit. The building was very similar to where he'd worked on Godwin and there was just as much there which was wholly mysterious to Paul. He found discussion about extraterrestrial life, non-baryonic matter, entangled particles, holographic projections and anti-gravity wholly incomprehensible. There was no sign of Beatrice so Paul was very soon bored.

Paul left the confines of the Research Centre after only an hour or so of wandering around. No one had much time to put aside for him and indeed seemed quite alarmed at the prospect of him disturbing their concentration with a naive question or, worse, by clumsily knocking over their equipment. The scientists' relief when Paul chose not to bother them was quite palpable. But they didn't need to worry. If there was anything that Paul understood and respected it was obsession and dedication. He knew how much he hated to be interrupted whenever he was working at a problem.

Paul sat on a bench just outside the Research Centre and surveyed the landscape on the fourth level. The curvature of the Intrepid's internal space became more apparent as each of the space ship's concentric cylinders became steadily smaller towards the core. It was easy to see the ground rise up towards the horizon where it soon curved behind the internal hub which housed the systems that kept everything functioning. Paul was still in awe of the space ship that had been his home for so long now, even though it was on a relatively small compared to the colony of Godwin. It was still difficult to comprehend that where he was sitting on what seemed like solid ground in actual fact his feet were pointing outwards into space inside a colossal vessel that was flying through space at something like a quarter of the speed of light. It was hard to believe that he was so far away from the nearest inhabited point of the Solar System that it took more than two months for light to travel there, although this lag in communication became painfully apparent whenever he trawled cyberspace. The locally held data caches were good enough for most purposes, but if Paul wanted to know about the weather on Uranus, the latest news from the wars in the Asteroid Belt or the fortunes of an interplanetary football team he'd have to wait several months till he got a response from his query and by then the news would be totally out of date.

Paul idly watched the other scientists stroll by or chat with one another beside the bubbling water of a nearby fountain. He caught the eye of a tall black man with a huge bush of curly black hair and wearing a white overcoat. The man stood up from where he'd been reading a book under a tree and approached Paul.

"Hello," he said. "You must be Beatrice's husband. Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," said Paul who was now faced with the problem he always dreaded which was of thinking of something to say in reply. What did you say to a total stranger? The best he could think of was to refer to the subject of shared interest. "You know my wife, then?"

"Well, yes," said the scientist who took his gaze away from Paul and stared ahead of him. "She used to be a regular visitor to the Research Centre. She still sometimes visits, of course, but not as much as she used to. I guess you've come here to keep an eye on her: to find out what she's doing."

"Er, no," said Paul who'd had no such intention. The very notion of keeping an eye on someone made no sense to a Godwinian. What possible role could he have in deciding what Beatrice should do?

"Are you seriously not bothered?" asked the black scientist as if surprised.

"What should I be worried about?"

"I must say you're remarkably relaxed about it all then, Paul," said the scientist. "My name's Barry, by the way."

"Barry?"

"You can call me Dr. White, if you like, but I'm mostly called Barry. I'm a good friend of your wife."

"Well, that's good to know," said Paul with a trusting smile. "She's never mentioned you to me, but as you know my wife's got a lot of friends."

"She has, hasn't she?" said Barry with a less confident smile. "I don't know how she keeps tags on them."

"Beatrice has an excellent memory. She never forgets a thing."

"Is that so?"

"She's got a much better memory than me, that's for sure. So what do you research, Barry?"

"I'm an expert in holographic projections and other visual phenomena. I'm here to assess whether the Apparitions appearing all over the Solar System and most densely distributed around the Anomaly aren't just holographs."

"That's an interesting idea," said Paul whose fascination was genuine. "Is that something Beatrice is also interested in?"

"Your wife seems to be interested in everything," said Barry evasively.

"You can say that!" said Paul with continued enthusiasm. "I don't think there's anything she won't get involved in or find out about. I don't know how anyone can keep up with her."

"Well, I most certainly can't," said Barry ruefully.

"How does this holographic projection theory work? Do you think the Anomaly itself might not be some kind of holographic projection? Are these weird things just everyday three dimensional images?"

"I don't think they are. Holographs are visual phenomena. These apparitions have other attributes such as mass, heat and momentum."

"So is your journey here a total waste of time?" Paul asked.

Barry looked alarmed. "Don't say that too loudly."

Paul enjoyed speculation as much as anyone. "There are plenty of theories about the Anomaly. Scientists from different disciplines are investigating it from different perspectives. Not all the theories can be correct. There can only be one correct theory and it could be that it's one that's not been proposed by any of the scientists on board the Intrepid. And whatever it is, it must be the case that the majority of the scientific research that's been done here is a total waste of time. If there are no extraterrestrial life forms, for instance, then all those exobiologists might as well have stayed home. The same goes for you I guess, Barry. And I don't really know why I'm on the ship, for instance."

"If one genuinely doesn't know what the Anomaly's going to be then it's best to be equipped with as broad a range of scientific expertise as possible," said Barry loyally.

"I'd be very surprised when we arrive at the Anomaly that we find that it's the result of discoveries revealed in Twentieth or Twenty-First century computer files," said Paul. "I'm only here because I did research on classified government data from one and a half thousand years ago. It might be an interesting footnote in the history of human knowledge, but it's got no possible bearing on what the Anomaly actually is."

"You were the one who demonstrated that the Anomaly isn't just a recent phenomenon," said Barry. "A lot of theories were proved wrong because of your research..."

"But none were actually proved right," said Paul. "What's this Anomaly got to do with my expertise? Will it be encoded in ASCII or EBCDIC? Is it going to reside in a relational database? Will it be stored on magnetic disks? Since no computer in the Solar System currently resembles those primitive machines, it's extremely unlikely that the Anomaly would."

There was an embarrassed pause while Paul felt sorry for himself and wondered again just how he'd ended up being propelled at astronomical speeds across empty space towards something totally unknown. While other scientists like Barry could try out their equipment to verify or refute their theories, the most that Paul could do was watch them get on with it. His biggest dread was that the whole thing would be a huge disappointing non-event and would be remembered forevermore as the most expensive research project in all human history.

"How is Beatrice?" asked Barry. "I've not seen her for a while."

"She's doing well," said Paul, who'd seen her last just after breakfast when she announced that she wanted to go for a walk. "I don't know where she is now. I thought she might be here."

"She might be visiting a scientist in one of the villas on this level, of course," said Barry.

"She says she often engages in discussion with other scientists," said Paul. "Her curiosity is boundless. She must have got to know every scientist on the Intrepid who's got the time for her."

"I think you might be right there," said Barry sadly.

Paul's excursion to the Research Centre wasn't one he was inclined to repeat very often. Although he had access to whatever resources he might ask for, there was nothing much for him to do here. Paul mostly idled away his time at the villa that he'd come to think of as his new home.

Paul was a creature of habit and there were few days when he couldn't find some way to occupy himself while he waited for Beatrice to return from taking a walk or visiting her friends or exploring the ship or whatever else she was doing. Inevitably, much of Paul's leisure time included an excursion to virtual space, although a sense of fidelity towards his wife made him shy of returning too often to Nudeworld. It was clearly absurd to feel compromised between his love for Beatrice and his relationship with Blanche, who was just a virtual construct whose hair colour, breast size and height he could alter simply by changing her parameters. Nevertheless, cyberspace was a huge expanse and Paul could never get to know it all. There was often talk of it being infinite but Paul was too much of a mathematician to believe that. It had the potential to be infinite, but it was bound by finite time and resources.