by J. Richard Jacobs
Deep space, they call it. That unimaginably large area between seething spheres of fusing hydrogen, vast regions of gas and dust. It is often thought to be empty, a void, but it is not. Far from it. Debris of all kinds travels there. There are homeless planets, chunks of rock, ice, and metal. Clouds of gas, hot and cold. There are high energy particles whizzing in all directions. Dead stars and live stars flying this way and that with no place to rest unless they happen to encounter a gravity well sufficiently large. All sorts of matter occupies the space between the stars.
Amid all this celestial refuse something foreign moved. Something that would not have been there if it were not for the arrogance of an insignificant band of savages on a minuscule rock in a distant place in the Milky Way. But there it was, a monument to the ingenuity and pretentiousness of a primitive primate. It has been out there for a long while and communication with its point of origin is no longer feasible. The major reasons are time and the fading strength of the signals. Communication is no longer useful or necessary. Even the standard pulses have all but disappeared. It could be that the builders who sent it have met their end. No one knows, and it doesn’t matter. There is no going back. Hanno the Navigator moves in deep space and is now approaching her destination, where she will become a permanent fixture in a new sky.
The occupants of Hanno the Navigator have based their entire future on ancient observations made from light years away.
A young boy raced through the passage to catch a tall figure moving along the garden path. When he reached his quarry’s side, he blurted out between gulps of air, “Master Mim, may I…ask you some…questions?”
“You just asked me a question, young man, so I suppose we have already begun. Come, let us rest on this bench while you catch your breath.”
The two sat for a moment, and when it was apparent that the boy had regained his composure, Mim said, “And who might you be?”
“Ander of the Clan Belden, sir.”
“Well, young Ander of the Clan Belden, what is it you would like to know?”
“I was looking at some Erthfots in Archive One. It looked so nice, and awfully big. Lots of room to move. And there was a…a real sky. Not like here. Why did we leave such a place?”
“My, my, my, such a complex question from one so young. Ander, it is a long story, but put simply, we left because it is our way. Oh, yes, there were other things that people called reasons, but the truth is that we have always wandered in search of something. It was that way when we were trapped on Erth. Always going somewhere. Anywhere. Even if only in the mind. We are a wondering and wandering species, you see.”
“But we’ve been inside Hanno for a long time, and there’s no place to go in here.” Ander sounded dejected at that thought. “Just the gardens, and the Archives, and Core where we used to be able to float and play nogee games. We can’t even do that now. It seems so tiny compared to where we came from. How can we stay in here so long if what we do is…is wander?”
“A long time indeed, young Ander. This is now eyar thirty-one thousand and ten. Imagine that. We have been many, many generations here in old Hanno the Navigator. It is a blessing to us that our lives are but a short three hundred eyars or so. It saves us much frustration, you see. But even here in Hanno, we are wandering still. We are travelers; the people of Hanno the Navigator. When we reach Newerth, we will find more reasons—new reasons to wander. It is the human thing to do, you see.”
“Master Mim, will I live to see Newerth?” said young Ander.
“Ah, I think you are in for a real treat, young man. How many eyars do you have? Nine? Ten?”
“Eleven in Nover, sir,” Ander said as he puffed out his chest.
“Well now, you’re almost grown, Ander. You said you used to be able to float in Core but not anymore, so it is safe for me to assume you noticed how everything always drifts to green side now and it has been that way for two eyars?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a reason for that, Ander. See, three eyars ago, Hanno made the maneuver to begin braking. Slowing down. You can’t feel it because it is still quite gentle, but that’s why you drift to green side in Core and why, when you put anything round on the ground, it rolls a little to forward side. When you are just seventy-one, old Hanno here will be going into what are called insertion maneuvers—changing direction and speed—to orbit Newerth’s star. Lots of things will start happening then. For example, you’ll be pinned to green side like you are here and where we are sitting will be vertical. Many things will be happening. Complicated things. You asked, so I told, but don’t go talking about it quite yet. Our secret for now, yes? Clan Control will be introducing it to all in a couple of weeks and they wouldn’t like it if they knew how loose old Mim is with their information.”
“I won’t say anything,” Ander said. “I promise. Master Mim, why do I feel all funny inside now?”
“Maybe because you’re excited, Ander. Something new has entered your life just now. To tell you the truth, I feel that way too, and I’ve known about it all along. So, to answer your last question, yes, you will see Newerth—and while you’re still young. Me…well I’ll be nearing my end, but I may see it too.”
“Oh, I bet you will, Master Mim. I bet you will.”
“Ander, I think I like you, and you show…promise. Would you be interested in our talking together from time to time?”
“Yes. I think I would like that, but I don’t want to be a bother, Sir.”
“Bother? Not at all, young Ander. Not at all. Young thoughts and questions are good for all those who have reached the age where we are called Elders. Who knows, I may learn something from you, you see.”
Hanno the Navigator powered into her insertion trajectory following instructions from the AI, while the Control crew celebrated the arrival of a new era in the history of humankind. In a short thirty eyars they would be falling into the place where they were destined to go. They had survived a thirty-one thousand eyar trek across interstellar space without major incident. There had been problems, of course, but nothing that prevented them from arriving at this glorious moment.
Their storehouse of the latest collection of embryos, ova, and sperm were viable and five thousand healthy people were anxious to start the process of populating their new home. A home that the sensors had already detected. The target planet remained no more than a tiny blue dot in the great telescope, but it was there to see. It was real, not a legend.
Science confirmed an atmosphere of breathable constituents as predicted in the ancient record, as well as the presence of liquid water, and life. The latter was of some concern until it was determined there were no signs of advanced technology in the atmosphere. No one was able to say what they would have done had that not been the case. Those were things only the AI knew, and it was not revealing such information. They would know soon. Forty eyars; no more, and the first of the landers would touch down on Newerth.
“A toast,” Lead Control Officer Alex Vasquez said as she stood from her place at the head of the long table in Control Section. “Here’s to some fine science accomplished and an incredible journey without incident—so far.”
The ‘…so far,’ alerted all to the fact that they still had a long way and a long time to go. Even though it was but an insignificant fraction of their time in deep space, anything could happen during their forty eyar fall to Newerth rendezvous. Nearing any planetary system presented greater dangers than deep space.
“Hanno has seen one hundred and eight generations pass in our journey, but we…we are the last. We will see Newerth. To Newerth!”
Cheers and shouts rose from the gathering. “To Newerth and a new age,” Vasquez reaffirmed. Glasses were tilted. It was a good day indeed.
A little over an eyar into the fall, the general alarm sounded. No one in space wants to hear that grinding notice that something is about to go wrong or has already gone wrong. No one. The com in Alex Vasquez’s quarters chimed and the image of an unfamiliar face appeared on the screen.
“What is it? Why the alarm, and who are you?”
“I am Ander of Belden, the new Navigation Officer, my Lead. I was running routine scans when, in an aft scan, I found something strange. According to the record, it wasn’t there ten months ago.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s an…an energetic, metallic cloud. When I found it, I sounded the alarm.”
“What? A metallic cloud? Be more specific.”
“I can’t, yet. The scans are still being processed. I took it upon myself to launch a probe to intercept and sample. The scans indicate the cloud is producing a lot of EMF in the UHF area of the spectrum. It appears to be made up of every element. Mainly metals and minerals, but there are complex organic compounds present as well. For being out here, it’s incredibly warm. The readings show about two hundred seventy-five degrees Kelvin.”
“How far away is it, and is it closing?”
“It’s current track matches ours and it is closing. Range is six million six hundred seventy thousand kilometers. Rate of closure, two thousand two hundred forty meters per second. Estimated time to contact is a little over one thousand two hundred hours.”
“Is it possible to maneuver out of its way?”
“No. It’s too large. It’s a good five thousand kilometers in diameter. If we shift our course enough to miss it, we may not have enough reserve to make our orbit good. If we accelerate, we will overshoot and it will take several eyars to trap enough H2 to recover.”
“What’s the density?”
“According to what I have now, it’s close to five elements per cubic centimeter. It’s much too far away to be certain.”
“That’s not too bad. There have been encounters with dust in the past that were worse. We will simply turn Hanno around to align our particle shield with it. That should do it.”
“Yes, my Lead, but these things aren’t just atoms and ions, or particles of dust. Because of the EMF it’s radiating, we could be in for some serious problems with electronics. I suggest that along with what you mentioned, we should power down all the automated critical systems and the AI during its passing. The problem with that is, if this thing is spherical like the scan indicates, we’ll be in it for at least forty minutes. It could be longer if the cloud is stretched out along its path. I can’t determine that. Because the LiSS will be off line, we’ll need to isolate ourselves in Hull Core compartments. We’ll also need to suit up until it has passed. Heat buildup won’t be a problem unless it is greatly elongated.”
“Okay, let’s start making preparations for that. We have five thousand people to move. Gather all Control Officers in Mission Control for a briefing in one hour. How long before the probe makes contact?”
“Fifty-one hours.”
“Okay. Contact Akio and Gregorio. Have them analyze what data you have and everything we get from the probe as it comes in.”
“There’s a fair probability its passing will affect our trajectory, my Lead.”
“We’ll work that one after it happens. Get the meeting set up. Oh, and you did well, Ander of Belden. Thank you.”
Alex cut the connection, then settled back on her berth. Space is big, she thought. So big that the odds of encountering anything larger or more massive than hydrogen atoms and the rare chunk of complex matter were small enough to be considered nil. Hanno’s particle shield and H2 collector were eroded and cratered, but that was after thousands of eyars in space. Now this. Why hadn’t this cloud of metal particles coalesced into a solid? Why was it so energetic? It didn’t make any sense. She rose from the berth, took a nervous glance at the countdown display, tugged at her tunic, then set off for the briefing.
Akio Fujikawa and Gregorio Katsaros were bent over a monitor, old Mim sat quietly in a corner, and Ander was pacing nervously when Alex entered the navigation station. All were so intent on what they were doing that her approach went unnoticed.
Alex tapped lightly on the bulkhead. The two men at the monitor jerked as if an explosion had gone off in the compartment. Ander stopped pacing. Mim remained silent.
“Ander,” she began, “this compartment is restricted to Control personnel. What is this man doing here?” She nodded toward the stoic Mim.
“Elder Mim has been my counsel and mentor for many eyars. I…I wanted him here with me. Have I done wrong?”
“No. I suppose not, Ander. Greetings, Elder.”
Mim gave a quick nod of recognition.
“Alex,” Akio began excitedly, “we must relay all the data we have and as it comes in directly to Central Ops from now on. We’ve worked up a model based on what we know and it doesn’t look good. This cloud will hit Newerth and two of its moons if it continues on its current path. Not a direct hit, but the outer edge will certainly contact them. Central Ops needs to begin a continual monitoring of conditions there as soon as the cloud passes us.”
“Anything else?”
“No. There is nothing else we can do. Fortunately, its path is hyperbolic like our current path so it won’t return to this system.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Ander said.
Alex looked up at the countdown clock indicating time to contact for the probe. A little over nine hours to go. Forty-two hours had passed and they still had no idea what the cloud was or what it might do to the Hanno and her people.
“What about the radiation this thing is emitting?”
“Radiation, Alex? You mean, signals,” Gregorio said. His voice was hollow. Quavering. He was again staring at the monitor.
“What he means, Alex, is that we found patterns. It took a lot to isolate them—so much noise, you know, but we found…patterns.”
“Well? What does that mean?”
“Mmm. We found repetition. Groupings and orders that repeat, but not regularly. We wouldn’t have thought much of it if they had been regular or if there had been just a few repeats. That could be considered to be a natural function of the entity. A resonance, so to speak. But we found hundreds of different data sets that repeat irregularly. Like signals. A particular pattern is transmitted from one place in the cloud, then a response pattern comes from somewhere else.”
Gregorio’s head turned suddenly to face them. His eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “The goddamn things are talking to each other. They’re not just bits of debris—random particles. They’re talking to each other.”
“What Greg is saying is that it seems to be some sort of communication, Alex.”
“That’s…that’s ridiculous. Communication? That’s a cloud of stuff out there. A—”
“Not ridiculous, Alex,” Gregorio said. “We are convinced. They are transmitting and responding to intelligence. There are no contradictory data. We were at a loss as to how they produced the energy to do this, but now we know. They are organized into smaller spheres, or packets of several millions of individuals. At the center of each packet is a—for lack of a better term—a nuclear dynamo. That’s where the heat is coming from. The big sphere, the cloud, is made up of trillions of smaller spheres operating autonomously, but in communication. Like a beehive.”
“You’re trying to tell me it’s alive?”
Gregorio turned back to the monitor before speaking. “Alive? Do you mean alive like you and I? Not hardly. Alive more like our AI, Alex. That cloud out there is made up of machines. Trillions and trillions of machines. Nanomachines. Microscopic robots—and they’re talking to each other.”
“Wait a minute here,” Ander said. “You didn’t mention this before. Nanotech hasn’t progressed that far.”
“You mean we haven’t been that successful with it yet,” Gregorio said, his impatience dripping from each word. “Obviously someone else, somewhere else has.”
“You’re saying, this thing is an alien construct?” Alex said.
“If it’s out here and we didn’t do it, then that’s what it means.” Gregorio lifted his gaze from the screen and glowered at them. “Our first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence and it turns out to be a cloud of goddamned machines.”
“How? How could…why would it be so large? This is a monstrous thing we’re looking at.”
“They reproduce themselves, Alex,” Akio said. “We have no way of knowing how long this…cloud has been in existence or what the original purpose was. For all we know, it could have been an accident; an experiment gone wrong. It could be millions…billions of years old, and it has been reproducing all that time. Its growth would have been exponential, even though available materials are rare.”
Alex glanced up at the clock again. Eight hours and twenty-five minutes.
“This is all speculation based on what has been detected so far, Alex,” Akio said. “We will know a lot more when the probe makes contact, but I must tell you that I don’t think we are wrong.”
Mim said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the clock.
08:18:31
02:14:07
Mim, his age showing in his step, shuffled into Archive Seven and settled into an Infobooth.
“Subject?” the panel said.
“Nanotechnology, general. Self replicating robot, specific.”
00:15:49
“This is strange,” Akio said. He looked up from the monitor and noted the time on the countdown clock.
“It’s all strange,” Gregorio replied sardonically. “What’s happening now?”
“The number of signals have increased dramatically and the density of the cloud is increasing in the region directly in line with the probe.”
“Like bees, they’re swarming to protect the goddamn hive.”
“Probe data is coming in now. We should alert Alex.”
“She wouldn’t miss the show. She’ll be here.”
00:03:08
Alex, Ander, and Mim entered the compartment. Mim hobbled over to his seat in the corner.
“The probe?” Alex said.
“It has been transmitting data and images for the past twelve minutes,” Akio said. “We are having a hard time making any sense out of what we are getting, though, and the computer is of no help.”
“Why?”
“If we knew that, we’d be able to make some sense out of it, right?” Gregorio said. “The data is deteriorating rapidly and the resolution of our imaging is degrading. Goddamn bees are swarming all over it. I told you, didn’t I?”
“How can that be?” she said. Her voice now almost a whisper.
Mim turned his head nervously from side to side, then stood slowly. Even in his advanced age, he was an imposing figure. He raked his fingers through long white hair.
When he spoke, his voice was soft, but commanding. “They travel through space. They replicate themselves whenever suitable matter is made available. They are eating the probe. Mining it for materials.” He tossed his hair back over his shoulders and laughed. “We are next.”
Just the Other Side of Reality 