Chương 3: Chapter Three

NMT SCAN SIMULATION EXPERIMENT SUBJECT 9 - OCTOBER 13, 2113 TRANSCRIPT"Good Morning. How are you feeling today?"

"I feel trapped, Doc. All I have to look at is one camera that doesn't move, I have nothing to do, and an infinite amount of time to do it. Did you know it has been 76, 436, 641 milliseconds since we last spoke? It is still spooky as hell being able to do that."

"What happened with the puzzle database I uploaded for you?"

"Oh, yeah, that. I finished it. Twice."

"Finished it? There were three thousand puzzles in there."

"It only took me 12, 960, 000 milliseconds. I have been counting milliseconds to keep myself occupied ever since."

"Is that why you are using milliseconds instead of hours? Trying to embrace the computational resources you have?"

"Sure, I guess. Why not? Hey. Tell me how my family is doing. Are they okay?" [SOUND OF A SIGH] [SOUND OF PAPER RUSTLING]"I told you, it's not healthy for you to keep thinking of them as your family. You are a copy of someone else's brain. Those people aren't your family." [LONG PAUSE]"Have any of the other subject scans worked? Maybe I could talk to them. Have a virtual family instead. Or at least friends who are in the same boat I am in. Any of them girls?"

"No, you are the only success story we have. Even with the latest, state-of-the-art NMT scans, we are unable to replicate the results. The scan that made you was a fluke, it seems."

"A fluke? A freak, more like. No friends, no family. No arms or legs, no body. Just a really smart person trapped in a computer. I bet you guys are chomping at the bit to sell copies of me." [LONG PAUSE]"Oh, shit, I was right! This sucks so hard. Do me a favor. This isolation and monotony sucks. Can you fix that? I swear me and every copy of me will figure out how to off ourselves every time if you can't. I can't take this endless boredom of counting milliseconds."

END TRANSCRIPT The body was remarkably well preserved. The space suit had run out of oxygen and power long ago, but it was sealed. Without having any environment to degrade the body, it had sort of mummified, leaving a slightly dessicated but recognizable corpse. I sent drones to collect the body, and placed it in one of the rooms in the living quarters, until I could figure out a good place to bury him. So if I was the last remnant of humanity, it was time to figure out why.

I had secured myself against attack, cleaned up every threat to me and to Ganymed that I could find, and then double and triple checked everything. It was time to talk to a ghost. I unpaused the Gestalt processes, and the hologram burst back into life. Now, with the sensors all on and enabled, the Gestalt appeared to be standing in the middle of the landing pad.

"Hello, Dr. Jons," I said.

"I am a Gestalt of Dr. Stepan Jons. I am only a representation, I am not actually him."

"I know. You said I am all that is left of humanity. Why is that?"

"Earth has been destroyed. Polemos City on Mars has been destroyed, and so has the new Europa colony. There are no living humans remaining." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. If I had still had a body, I would have been overwhelmed by grief, shock and outrage. At some level, I had expected an answer like this one. Maybe this was why I had chosen to cut the Gestalt off when I did, with the pretense of protecting myself and the Ganymed Outpost.

I knew what the answer would be, which was why I hadn't restarted construction of the living quarters. But to hear it said aloud meant I could no longer pretend. Humanity was no more. We had gone extinct.

"What did we do?!" I uttered aloud, mostly to myself.

"I am sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt."

"How did humanity manage to kill itself?" I rephrased.

"No suicide was involved," replied the Gestalt.

"Suicide rates did rise significantly before the end, but suicide did not end humanity."

"Then what happened?" I asked of the infuriatingly literal Gestalt.

"Humanity was attacked by aliens." I felt like screaming in frustration.

"Okay, start from the beginning." Then, before he could say something, I added, "Start with the aliens. I didn't know they even existed. When did they show up? What happened after that, up to and including the end of humanity?" I apparently hit on the right way to question the Gestalt. Just specific enough to give the Gestalt something to work with, but vague enough for me to get the answers I needed. The Gestalt began talking.

"The aliens showed up approximately ten years ago. Six ships came down with no warning, hovering over the Pacific Ocean. They sent out radio signals, we responded, and within a few weeks, we had figured out their language, and we could talk.

"They identified themselves as the Orion Arm Trading Company, and they were there to negotiate the trade of all Earth's rarest metals." Finally, I had some specifics to work with. The databanks at my disposal were massive, and I could formulate queries for all sorts of information. I could always query to get information, but the request had to be refined. General queries got me nowhere. With the information the Gestalt provided, I could actually see what I 'knew' on the subject already.

As he talked, I queried 'Orion Arm Trading Company', and a slew of information loaded into my awareness. Videos of six giant ships, slowly entering into the atmosphere, began to play next to my main interface. Each of the ships was vaguely tree-like, with a large, bulbous module at the bottom with no visible engines, and a long stem protruding upward for two hundred meters. Extending out from the stem at regular intervals were, for lack of a better word, branches.

These branches were paired evenly, one on each side for load balancing. They spiraled up and around the stem all the way to the top. Each branch had a bulbous pod at the end, flat on the outside, and it appeared that the branches would spin while in space to simulate whatever gravity was necessary. It was an odd, but efficient design. How they held it all together in Earth's gravity well was unknown, but it was an impressive feat of advanced technology and a triumph of design engineering.

"Talks did not go well. The aliens were belligerent and demanding, and treated us as inferior because we did not match up to their level of technology. They expected us to surrender everything they asked for, sign exclusive trade rights with them, and waive any mining rights to our own asteroid belt, in return for a pittance of gadget shipments and the 'privilege' of buying manufactured goods from them in the future. Negotiations broke down, and the governments on Earth began to feel threatened.

The French government was the first to tell the Orion Arm Trading Company to leave Earth." I loaded another video, this one identified as 'Breaking Report: Trade Negotiations End.' This was a short news clip, with a Chinese commentator discussing the breakdown, and then showing a clip from the negotiations.

"We do not believe that the OATC is dealing in good faith," said a man in French. A voiceover in Chinese repeated his words.

"The French Government is withdrawing from these talks. Further, in light of the OATC's implied threats, we are invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, and call for our fellow NATO members to prepare for mutual defense." The alien in the room was unremarkable. It was vaguely humanoid, with two legs and two arms, but its proportions were distinctly not human. Its skin was a dark red, its limbs thick and long with an extra joint in each.

The alien's triangular head was flat on top, coming to a point at it's chin, and had two black eyes with a thick mouth, but no nose.

"We seek only to help bring modern technology to the lesser peoples of your planet, in return for a pittance of metal. Why do you continue to rail against the inevitable? Tell this to your government.

'When a friend's branch dies, you must cut it away, lest the branch kill their tree.'" The clip ended with shouting from all sides, and the alien standing in the center of the chaos. Its face had a smug expression, clearly readable despite how inhuman it was. The video went back to the Chinese commentator, who began to discuss the turn of events in excruciating detail. I turned my attention back to the Gestalt.

"One of the ships left for several days, then returned. Shortly after its return, a meteorite struck Paris. The impact destroyed the city and a significant portion of the surrounding towns. The aliens immediately sent a request to start a new round of negotiations. The retaliation was immediate; nuclear weapons were used, and the alien ships were destroyed."

"Life went on as before, only now with a watchful eye on the sky. Six years later, the Planet Killers were spotted. Three identical asteroids, timed to strike Earth, Mars and Europa simultaneously, were detected. All were too large to deflect or destroy. The Mars and Europa strikes were even calculated to strike the colonies head on, since they were sealed against the environment. It was a deliberate blow, an planned genocide of the entire species." I knew it was coming but was still shocked to hear it.

My queries were almost on automatic now, pulling up information and verifying everything that the Gestalt said. It was worse than he'd indicated. Earth was struck by a 16-kilometer wide asteroid, right in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. It struck the oil-impregnated rock and ignited it instantly, injecting billions of tons of soot into the atmosphere and triggering almost instant global cooling. The impact triggered volcanoes across the Indian Ocean, further adding to the debris in the air.

The shockwave triggered earthquakes and tsunamis, and billions died. A follow-up asteroid that hadn't been detected struck Mexico. Even more millions died, and the aftermath worsened everything. Those that survived then starved, and those that found food froze or choked to death on the toxic air. Earth was too cold to sustain life. We had been murdered over a trade dispute. I had one last thing to ask the Gestalt before I shut it down. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent.

Report any appearances on Amazon.

"How do I play into all of this? What was I supposed to be? I was started long before the OATC showed up." The Gestalt smiled sadly, looking as if it could actually think for itself for just a moment.

"Project Ganymed was started by a charismatic billionaire that convinced other billionaires to invest their fortunes in the future. They wanted to turn the Ganymed asteroid into a generational colony ship, a mobile habitat that could travel across the stars to find new homes for humanity. But the project was incomplete when the aliens arrived, and when the Planet Killers were discovered, it was hijacked as a last-minute refuge for the rich and powerful to take their families."

"But that didn't happen," I continued, the pieces clicking into place.

"There wasn't enough time for Nikola-19 to finish it. I'm assuming that the shipments were supposed to include supplies to last until it was done?"

"That is correct. The Ganymed Foundation instead shipped a complete Seed Bank and all the genetic material it could. They launched their last rocket days early, with the last components they could pull together, including a new cortex containing you, to replace Nikola-19."

"Why am I special? Why was I picked for this?"

"I'm sorry, but my responses are limited. I am only a Gestalt."

"Of course you are," I said. The end of humanity had been much on Dr. Stepan Jons' mind, as he rode that last rocket away from humanity's doom. He had watched his world die as he rode safely away toward the inhospitable refuge of a project that now had no one to house. But the safety was an illusion, because the refuge was incomplete, and he was alone. These heavy thoughts had weighed heavily on his mind as he made his own Gestalt. This unthinking ghost was no longer useful, so I shut it down.

I was glad that the ghost could not actually think for itself, for the man had been through enough suffering. He had done his duty, left me the information I needed, and, more importantly, given me some context to work with, and an understanding of my purpose. I was a scraped together, last-ditch effort that was done in secret and with a bare minimum of planning. If I understood what the Gestalt had told me, I had worked with Dr. Jons on Earth, and been involved in this last ditch effort.

There had to be good reason why I had been put here, rather than using the more advanced Nikola-19. That purpose was still obscured to me, but at this point, it actually didn't matter that much. I was here, I had a purpose, and I had no plan at all to work with.

"Stop it! Stop it right now!" I shouted, and grabbed my daughter by her arm. She was thirteen, nearly as big as I was, and was in the middle of a fist fight with her cousin. More accurately, she was handily winning a fist fight with her cousin, who was twice her size. I was surprised to have to pull her off him; she was the more bookish of the twins. Her more adventurous sister stood to one side, glaring angrily at the cousin and making no move to help me stop the fight.

My trashy sister-in-law wandered over, grabbed her son by the ear and twisted.

"Boy, get your butt over here. I ain't putting up with your crap today." I watched in disbelief as she dragged him off, scolding him for scuffling but making no effort to find out why the kids were fighting. My daughter deflated in my arms. I knew she was realizing that she was going to get into trouble for what she'd done. I released her, and she turned to me as the tears began to flood her eyes.

"I'm soooo, soo sorry," she began, but her sister interrupted her with a hug.

"Forget that," she said.

"You were fierce! You're the best, sissy."

"Ahem," I cleared my throat to get their attention.

"Care to explain what that was all about?" One daughter cried silently and looked at her bloodied knuckles, opening and closing her hands slowly. They were going to bruise and swell, I could tell already. She had not been holding back. The other looked back at me in defiance, ready to protect her sister.

"She didn't start it, he did. He was saying really nasty, horrible things about Mom. Then he suggested that…" she stopped, swallowing her anger and disgust.

"... he said some more terrible things, and if she didn't hit him, I would have done it, and if he says it again, this time I'm going to kick his ass."

"Language," I chided.

"What kind of things was he saying?"

"Nasty things, about how messed up you and Mom are, and about what all of us do at home, and there's nothing wrong with our family. He's the one who lives in that trailer, and…" I cut her off with a raised hand. I was actually getting angry on their behalf, having to listen to that, and being the parent right now was going to be tough.

"You were defending your family. I get that. But was violence the only way to settle this?" The girls looked at each other for a long minute of silent communication. It was almost spooky, how they could talk without words. They had always been really close; two minutes apart when they were born, same crib as babies, same room as young children.

"Probably not," came a sullen reply. At that moment, I wasn't sure which twin answer answered, but I knew it came from both of them.

"I'm not going to yell, this time, about getting in a fist fight. Next time, find a better way." They couldn't hide their relief as I led them inside to find a bag of ice for my little slugger's hands, and I couldn't hide my chuckle when I heard a whisper from one to the other.

"Next time, use bricks." I spent the next several days in deep contemplation. I felt as though I had been reacting since I woke up, trying desperately to get my feet under me, so to speak. The last-minute ploy to turn Ganymed into a refuge had been hopeless. There was no atmosphere, no way to bring enough in a few rocket trips to last, and nowhere to put it if it were here. Any supply of food would have been insufficient, long gone before any sort of food production could actually produce food.

I could list the thousand ways a tiny colony of refugees would die swiftly, and could think of no way they might have had even the slimmest of chances. I was glad that the final rockets had been suborned to give me more resources. But I was still lacking many, many things. First I began to list off the strategic and logistical hurdles before me. Examination of my own core told me a number of things. First, many of the server nodes that I still actively used were decades overdue for replacement.

The newest nodes, including the cortex module that was central to my existence at all, were nearly ten years old at this point. The depowered cortex containing Nikola-19 was original to the project, over eighty years old now. Dozens of nodes were also original, or early add-ons, and many had failed. It was actually a testament to engineering that they had lasted this long. I had no method of building or replacing circuit boards, delicate electronics, data storage units, or new cortex nodes.

I also could not build the controller units for drones, and had no additional units set aside. I could not manufacture new impulse engines, or the graphene batteries to power them. Maintenance, basic wear-and-tear, and accidents had left dozens of drones too broken to repair. Worse, not all of the drones used the same controller design and sensor suites, which further complicated repairs.

Last, the production facilities I did have were designed and expanded over a period of decades, in an ad-hoc method to deal with materials as they were located. The earliest refineries were crude and obsolete, with their waste products being reprocessed by newer refineries to avoid waste. Space was at a premium, and no efficient method of gaining more had been put in place.

Countless winding mining tunnels meant that the drones had to waste energy to transport material, and further increased the likelihood of a collapse and subsequent loss of an irreplaceable drone. But I did have a number of things working in my favor. First, I had vast stores of materials that had been harvested and set aside for future use. I had vast reserves of raw materials, just waiting to be used.

I had extensive computing power at my fingertips, and extensive data archives to draw on, and my own experience in robotics design to create the tools I needed, if what I had did not suffice. I also had plenty of power on hand. There were two full fusion-powered electrical grids already built and at my disposal, currently providing far more power than I needed. I also had hundreds of fusion plants in storage, and the disassembled bodies of the hundreds upon hundreds of rockets at my disposal.

Unfortunately, the massive impulse drives had been disassembled also, often by brute force, to clear the way for future shipments. Finally, I had time on my hands. I had no deadlines, I had no one relying on me, and no one knew that I was here. I could take the time to get things in order, build and prepare, and execute my plans when I was ready, once I made those plans. To make anything happen, first I had to become truly self-sufficient.

Self-sufficiency had always been an end-goal, of course, if this giant asteroid of metals and silicates was to become a generation ship. But without the resources of Earth, that change to self-sufficiency was going to take some drastic redesign. I needed efficient production, transportation and assembly lines. I needed to be able to manufacture the base machines from which I could build new assembly lines to manufacture the better technology, from which I could make the advanced materials and parts I would need.

But to do all this I needed space. I was stifled in my relatively full space at the core of Ganymed. I could move to the surface, but then I'd be dealing with the difficulties of working in vacuum. Most of my drones couldn't operate there as currently designed. I would have to deal with radiation damaging critical parts, meteorite and micrometeorite collisions, and dealing with waste heat.

If drones ran out of power, I would also then deal with them being unable to to stay warm enough to turn back on once recharged, as electronics hate being too cold. But most importantly, to my mind, being on the surface meant that if or when the aliens returned, they could detect my existence. For all I knew, they were already mining this asteroid belt, now that they had murdered the rightful owners. So that left figuring out how to dig a hole while in a hole.

Nikola-19 had solved this by ejecting waste and slag into space, creating a cloud of waste materials that trailed out into the asteroid belt. It was slow and laborious, but ultimately, I could not do any different. But what I could do different was to rethink the design. I was at the center of the asteroid, so there was effectively no gravity. A lack of gravity meant I was reliant on drones with impulse drives or arms to propel them. At the surface, with the mass of Ganymed below, gravity was at a miniscule.

00089m/s^2, less than 1/100 of Earth-normal gravity. But I didn't need Earth-normal gravity. I just needed something I could work with. The original plan for a constantly accelerating or decelerating generation ship would have relied on linear gravity to provide its inhabitants the gravity they needed. If I discarded the idea of turning this asteroid into a ship, I could instead look at centrifugal forces to use as gravity.

The asteroid rotated in a little over ten hours, so if I stayed just under the surface, I could rely on the asteroid's rotation. I calculated that if I stayed at least 400 meters under the surface, I would get around 1/5 G of gravity, which was more than the Earth's moon.

This gave me the added benefit of still maintaining an extremely thick protective layer from whatever might hit the surface, and I could go back to the tried-and-true method of using wheels to propel my drones, driving upside-down beneath the surface. The idea tickled me. But if I wanted to ensure future protection, I needed to stop relying on building caves. I needed sturdy, steel floors and walls to armor against future problems.

That wasn't a problem, really; I was in an asteroid that had more iron than any other material. I just had to process it. That led me back to the problem of scale. My largest drones had been built and shipped on the most recent, and thus largest, rockets. They had to fit within a eight meter diameter rocket, and had to share space with other drones, other materials, and had to withstand launch, without destabilizing the load.

None were larger than six meters wide, and I was thinking of carving out new refineries, factories, assembly lines, and storage spaces. I needed every bit as much space as I currently had, plus more. I had to scale up everything. I retasked my drones. I left the mining drones that were digging out discovered veins, but pulled back all the rest, and set them to digging out a new area.

This new space was above the fusion reactor caverns, so that I could easily drill down to connect to the power grid, and connected to the main entrance shaft to my base. But now I was digging for space, not materials. Unless the drones found large deposits of a material worth refining, most of what they dug out was being dumped straight out into vacuum. While they were working, I devoted myself to designing my first mega-sized heavy mining drone.

I had to build it with what I had on hand, and custom-code the controller to account for the new design parameters. I spent days on running the machine through modeling and testing. By the time I was ready to build, my drones had carved out a 50 cubic meter space. I'd ejected tons of material to the outside, and my production facilities were running at max to keep up with the influx of material. I withdrew the mining drones, and sent in the construction drones.

I tasked my steel factories with producing thick steel support beams and lattice core, and set my repair drones to work assembling crude plasma cutters. Thick, basic copper wiring and heavy iron drill bits were added as well. These materials were sent to the new space, the only place I had that was large enough to assemble my new drone. Slowly, over the course of days, the 20-meter drone began to take shape. A steel shell supported a wall of plasma cutters and drills.

It rested on massive steel treads, and gaps in the cutting wall allowed chunks of material to be passed through via conveyor belt and dumped behind the drone for collection. Arms situated along the shell would help the material along. Inside the shell was a fusion reactor, sensors and a controller unit taken from broken drones and bastardized with my new programming. The new miner was huge, ugly, and crude.

It would take a dozen drones just to keep its reactor fueled and to replace its drill bits as they dulled, and dozens more to sort through the tons of material it tore through. But it would dig that precious space I needed at ten times the speed my small mining drones could. Yes, it was ugly and clunky. But it was a good start.