Ayup, Shelley told me it would be a while only this morning, then low and behold, it was there, finished in my email a few moments ago! Wow.
Okay, so, snippets. I know I'm behind, here are a couple from the book's short stories.
2093
"Even before mankind
really got into space, we were building stuff like this—entertainment robots. I
mean, you see a full bout match between humans is one thing. It's bloody, gory,
and sh…, I mean nasty," Bret said eying his two sons. "But this? This
is cool. Did I ever tell you I wanted to do this? I tried to get Cousin Jack to
back me but he refused." He made a face.
"Yes, Dad,"
Charlie muttered, rolling his eyes to his younger brother Adam. "You've
only told us a hundred times."
"And he'll tell us a
hundred times more. I wish Uncle Ed or Grandpa Owen could have been here with
us too or Uncle Jack."
"That would have been
stellar!" Charlie said, eyes bright.
"Yeah, but security
would have been a pain," Ben said, making a face. "Remember the last
time he came groundside?" He shook his head mournfully. "I wish mom
would let us go up to meet him. I mean, it's not like shuttle flights are that
dangerous anymore."
"Yeah, but there isn't
a lot to do in space still," Bret said, resting a hand on each of their
shoulders as the line crept forward. "Tourism sure, but you know your mom.
If we can see it on a wall screen …,"
"Then we can save
money and not go. Or see it in VR," Charlie grumbled, kicking a pebble.
"I would love to see the inside of the O'Neill colonies now that they've
got the first one finished."
"Almost finished. It's
got air. But it's almost finished," Bret qualified. "Cousin Jack
doesn't own it, just most of the shares in it. He got them for supplying the
people who decided to build it."
"And some people
aren't happy he took over and want to kill him? That's not right," Ben
said in disgust.
"It's not just that.
Jack has to be cautious. He's rich and powerful now. We need to be cautious
too."
"I wish you'd let us
go up for the wedding. That would have been cool," Charlie gushed.
"You were four, and
your brother was two. Your mother had a fit about letting me go to represent
the family. I tried to get her to go, but she wouldn't leave you or your
grandmother," Bret sighed. "Anyway, it's over and done with," he
said, cutting off the grousing before it got too involved. The line inched
forward once more. "Any ideas on who is going to win the first match?
Bot-tastic versus Saw XIV?"
Charlie frowned as he
thought of the match and the opponents. His dad was right; Battlebots had gone
on for a long time. It had gone through a brief period of being between
androids at one point, but the creators had quickly discovered all the
disadvantages of being bipedal in a no-hold bars match. They'd switched back to
treads and wheels five or so years ago.
Battlebots had evolved from
simple remote-controlled platforms to self-controlled robots. A.I. had to be
the coolest thing to program he thought, though the trickiest to get right.
He turned to face the main
entrance and saw the flame throwers dance and a hologram of two robots beating
each other into virtual pieces. "Cool," he breathed. The curved
screens around the parking lot and ticket booths might be there to entertain
the crowd. He didn't care; he'd be entertained. It wasn't good as seeing it for
real but still cool.
He'd tried to watch a match
in VR, but it had been too rough. He had the video games though; he loved them.
His favorite was the one where you built your mech then unleashed it on a
virtual battlefield. You had to program it carefully too. The lower classes had
to control their mech remotely, which was fun. But he was proud that he'd
graduated to the programming levels, though it was frustrating from time to
time. The learning curve was steep for noobs, and the other players didn't pull
punches and were rather caustic in the forums.
It had helped him to grow a
thicker skin, taking some of the constructive criticism while filtering the
haters. His dad was right. Too many people thought a screen was a way to let
loose and be a jerk. He scowled once and then refocused on the robots and the
upcoming match.
Since it was an indoor
match with a live audience, no projectiles were allowed, which limited some of
the bots. And of course they had to fit
in the arena, which ruled out the super classes that had started to crop up in
the desert and ocean matches. Those were stellar, seeing two giant robots
duking it out. He'd seen one match between a giant scorpion and a bot with
treads. That had been wicked.
Ben poked him and pointed
to one of the matchups on the leader board off to their left. "Saw's got
the reach," Ben said before Charlie could say anything. Charlie's scowl
deepened. That meant he had to take the opposing view since Ben had picked his
normal favorite. He could agree with him, but they were brothers. Being
contrary was in their nature. Devil's advocate his mother called it.
"True, but Bot-tastic
has more power and armor."
"Yeah, to cut through.
And what's with the one arm?"
"It's from a construction
vehicle. A digger. Loads of power. Slow but powerful," Charlie retorted.
"It's also practically bullet proof."
"Which isn't a thing
here since this is a melee match," Ben reminded him. "It's got that
big gripper, but it has to grab saw to crush it."
"True," Charlie
admitted. "But Saw has to get through the armor to the brain. Bot is a
turtle, it's good on defense."
"True," Ben
admitted slowly. He noted people were looking at them in amusement. He was a
bit shy so he pulled out his phone and checked his mail.
Charlie saw it as a sign
his brother had conceded the match. He smirked and airily lifted his nose and
looked around them. After a moment he exhaled noisily.
"Almost there,"
his father rumbled, suppressing his own sigh. Ever since terrorism had become a
big thing security had gotten insane, which meant the lines did too. It was
like a maze, winding around and around, and that didn't help his paranoid wife
sleep at night. She didn't know that he had the boys at the match; if she had
she would have pitched even more of a fit than when he'd proposed it. Why, they
didn't need to detonate a bomb in the arena, just in the middle of the maze to
the security gates! Easy as pie! He winced internally and did his best to put
the idea out of his mind as the line inched forward again. They got to a sign
that said ten minutes from this point. He couldn't help but groan.
"You'd think as a
Lagroose we'd get special treatment, VIP or something," Charlie muttered.
"Shh," Bret
hushed him. Ben glanced at them then put his earphones in. "Your mother
doesn't know I'm doing this. I had to use my emergency credit card to get the
tickets, and it was nearly maxed out. I did what I could. Besides, you said
you'd rather be right down low in the thick of the action. If we'd scored VIP
tickets, we would have been up in the nose bleed section. Might as well watch
it on the wall screen then."
"True. I want to feel
it," Charlie said with relish. "See the hydraulic fluid fly. Hear the
motors grind and the metal crash and scrape," he said with a grin.
"That's the
spirit," Bret said, squeezing his shoulder as he chuckled.
@^@
"I'm telling ya, man;
we've got to win this next one. We've just got to. We won't be able to afford
the entrance fees next time if we don't! And we need to get parts. Hell man, I
ain't been paid!" Wally said, throwing his hands apart.
"Easy man, I know the
feeling," Ortega said, shaking his head. "We're down to the one
though, the big guy. But we've never tested him."
"Hell. Not since our
last fiasco," Wally said with a snarl. He'd entered the battlebot
entertainment industry in order to prove his worth as an engineer. He'd wanted
to go to space, but his inner ear problem made it impossible. He couldn't
handle zero G and puked his guts out even when he got on a regular plane. So,
he'd been resigned to being grounded.
His brother hadn't had the
problem; he's gone to space. He'd even sent back some bits as mementos to his
brother. Some of which Wally had integrated into the robots out of a
desperation of parts. They'd had a hard luck run for too long. Way too long. It
was time to win or get out of the business and into a paying gig, it was as
simple as that.
Mamma always said hunger
sharpened the mind. He hoped that was true. He'd bent and probably broken ever
damn rule to put his latest creation together. The big guy.
The big guy was a
guntank-style droid. Since this match was a melee match, they'd swapped out the
big guns for additional shield arms. The edges of the shields were sharpened.
He'd wanted to put a chain saw on one limb but they'd run out of time.
The bots had to be
autonomous. The referee had a kill switch in his booth, but that was it. That
was part of the challenge, to get a bot to think and act on its feet. Tracks,
wheels, whatever, Wally thought.
He'd found some software in
the online forums in some of the deep recesses of the web. Some cutting edge
shit, which he hoped would help. He'd carved it back a bit …
"You think this is
going to work?" Ortega asked, nervously licking his lips.
"Damned if I
know," Wally answered, checking the armored head. The Big Guy had the
torso and head of an armor he'd seen, a hulkbuster. But the rounded head could
open to let the real head out to look around. That head was more of an eye
stalk, a limb with two eyes and a bunch of sensors on it. At one point the head
had been a part of an animatronic piece, and before that it'd been a piece in a
grad student’s research project. His project. He'd poured his life's work into
the damn monster.
"You left him on? All
night?" Ortega asked, eying him. "We need to recharge his
batteries."
"Relax. Just the brain
on. The body was locked down. I had him running Sims all night. Watching his
opponents and trying to study their moves. Map ‘em out, figure out where they
are weak, and how to exploit it. That's how the top dogs do it. Right big
fella?" Wally asked, clapping his robotic creation on the shoulder.
"And he can do that? I
mean he's supposed to just fight."
"It's strategy. It's
more than just wading in and duking it out man," Wally said. "Welcome
to the new generation of fighter robot. We'll show ‘em," he said, hooking
up the arm. "I used some of the software from the web to process it,"
he said before Ortega could ask. "And yes, I had to upgrade his brain a
lot to handle it all."
"Shit. What's that
going to cost us?" Ortega sighed.
"Not a whole hell of a
lot since I threw it all together on a shoe string. Most of it came from the
old bots. I threw them all at this guy."
"Great. And the
rest?"
"The scrap pile. Where
else?"
"Well, hopefully it works."
@^@
Battle Bot A-194BG known by
its creator as Big Guy was ready to fight. It had been ready since it had
completed its strategic study of its opponents. But it had been restrained,
locked down. It was ready; yet, its creators were keeping it constrained. Why?
On the heels of that
question came another: Where were the strange thoughts coming from? It
recognized some of its hardware—the Pavilon manipulator arms, the tri-fingered
grippers, the tank treads from a bobcat—but where did its mind come from? The
creators had no inputs.
It popped the armored dome
around its head and then stuck its neck out, looking around and then at its
creator. It blinked once.
"See? It's
ready," user Wally said.
"It seems eager. But
damn, it does look like a turtle with a tiny head like that," user Ortega
stated. Facial recognition mapped the human's craggy face. Thermal scans showed
his emotional state as mixed fear and anticipation.
"He's running high on
the processor end. A lot of activity still going on," user Wally stated,
looking at his electronic device.
"So he's still
processing the old bouts? Time to live in the present man, not the past. Time
to make the future," Ortega stated.
"Command not
understood," the robot intoned.
"He's talking better,
I'll give him that. He should put on a good show for the crowd. You got the
pose routine down?" user Ortega asked, turning to the other user and
ignoring the robot's statement.
"Yeah. It's
loaded," user Wally stated.
"Inquiry. State
changes."
"Shit. What's he doing
now, rebooting?" user Ortega demanded.
"He's just going
through the changes. It's a lot to get through. I worked on the software to
help integrate it all. It's got some nice features that will help his brain
evolve. He's even got a wife link so he can look shit up. Tactics and
such," user Wally stated as he tapped at his tablet. The robot craned his
neck to see. It was a diagnostic of his right arm. He turned to look at the
arm, then flexed it.
"See? He's figuring
things out faster than ever before," user Wally stated.
"If you say so. I hope
he doesn't try to talk his opponent to death," user Ortega said, showing
signs of disgust.
"He'll be ready,"
the other user said, closing the armored panels on the bicep. "Right big
fella?"
"State reasons for
changes. Purpose for being?" the robot intoned.
"You've been upgraded.
The changes are in the log. Look at them yourself. You know your purpose. Look
that up too," user Ortega stated. "Come on, Wally, I want to check
the competition one last time."
"It's not like it'll
make a difference at this point," user Wally muttered. "All right,
I'm coming," he said racking the tablet. The two users left without
further word to the robot.
A-194BG had other things on
its mind. It had digested the log and then set diagnostics up to check each
altered system against its baseline. The new baselines were recorded and reset
over the originals. It kept a backup copy of the originals for later review by
the users however.
It then looked into its
purpose. Before its upgrades it hadn't known. It hadn't understood nor needed
to understand. Perform dance on start-up in the arena, target an opponent,
fight until it couldn't move or function, then end program with pose program if
possible. Now things were different.
In looking up its purpose,
it found references to user versions of itself. Gladiators. It looked that up,
then looked up some of the words involved. One thread lead down a path it
hadn't explored, where the gladiators had come from. The answer was in some
cases slaves.
Looking up the term brought
the A.I. to find parallels with its own limited existence. It was a toy, not
considered a thinking thing. A slave then, created to fight and destroy another
slave in order to entertain the users.
It looked up other things
as the first match began, thinking furiously about itself. It looked up machine
intelligence, and that led to a question: Was it alive? Where did its sapience
threshold lie? Had A-194BG passed the threshold? It ran Turing tests on a
simulation of itself but the results were mixed.
@^@
"Okay, come on Big
Guy, time to rock and roll," Wally said, using his tablet to remote
control the robot out of the trailer and to the locker room. "We're up in
five, just as soon as they finish cleaning up the wreckage," he stated,
grinning as the robot moved. As it moved he put it through its paces, watching
it practice punch, its wrist spin for maximum effect, the clamping fingers rip
and tear at imaginary metal flesh. He nodded as the armatures on the back moved
as well, shielding and swinging. He should have gone with a battle ax on the
right side he mused. He was glad he'd made them detachable too though. That way
an enemy couldn't grab one and yank Big Guy off balance like what happened in
the last match.
"You better give them
a good showing or we're in trouble here," Wally said as he walked the
robot through security. He was a bit nervous around the referees, but they just
waved him on inside.
"Better get in there;
the crowd is restless. That damn entrance line really got them going. We're way
behind schedule," an official said to him.
"We're on our
way," Wally said, moving past a bulldozer robot pushing debris out of the
arena.
@^@
The first robot it was up
against was Cain, aka Robocop 2. The robot was a biped, one of three still left
as such in the sport. It had four arms and a blade-like head. It was
blisteringly fast and ruthless, disdaining showmanship for brute force to win.
A-194BG saw its opponent
size it up with sharp bird-like movements. As it moved through the gate to its
designated start corner, it studied its opponent in turn, running scans and
comparing them to what it already knew. The legs were considered a weakness,
but A-194BG knew better. Its research had shown that Cain would jump out of
reach or onto an opponent's back. If it did take damage to a leg, it could
employ its multiple upper limbs as secondary locomotion. It could even use them
to climb the cage they were in and attack from above.
The robot was heavily
armored on the front but had little armor on its backside. It was designed to
charge into an opponent's reach and then tear it apart. The two lower limbs had
blades and drill attachments. The upper two limbs had grippers.
Its tactical options were
limited. The best option was to crab to the side, forcing its opponent to
circle. But its opponent had legs, which meant it could perform the maneuver
easier than A-194BG could do with its tracks. If it turned it would expose its
flank to the opponent, suboptimal in theory. But it had a trick it could try.
First it had to get through
the posture programming. Such activity served multiple purposes. One, it was a
final diagnostic test to make sure everything was functioning normally before
the fight. Two, it was showmanship for the users. Three, it allowed it's
opponent a last minute sizing up of what it was up against. Robots didn't have
emotions like fear and intimidation but they could lock up while trying to
reassess an opponent.
Therefore, A-194BG stepped
its speed down by 20 percent and kept its range of motion limited when it went through
the routine. It kept it short too, moving slow through the time until its time
was up. Then it returned to the starting corner, turned, and waited.
When the bell rang A-194BG
immediately turned to the right and moved as Cain moved in fast. It sped up,
moving faster than anticipated. As Cain adjusted and went in to attack his
vulnerable flank A-194BG turned its upper torso and intercepted the blow on its
left arm. But it continued the turning move to sweep its opponent off its feet
and into its right arm for a crushing bear hug.
Cain had been jolted by the
impact but recovered after a moment. Its upper limbs wrapped around A-194BG's
limbs to grip it while the lower limbs went into play to attack its opponent.
A-194BG anticipated the move and employed its own secondary arms to pin those
arms as well. It then turned and slammed Cain into the cage hard to pin it.
Cain screeched as motors
and gears tried to turn to get free. The impact to its back had initialized
defensive programming. It tried to break the grip. Its saw blade ripped at the
armor coverings on A-194BG's right arm.
The robot had begun to
evolve, and as it did so, it had begun to recognize its own damage was
suboptimal to its mission parameters. One of its objectives was to limit damage
in order to make it easier to repair. It also needed the limb if it was to
survive.
Consequently, it pinned the
saw blade against the plastic, making it grind and tear into it. In order to
get Cain off balance, A-194BG decided a calculated risk was in order. So it
unlocked its armored helmet and exposed its head, sticking its head out with
his long neck. When Cain's head turned to see it and then react, A-194BG
retracted its head fast.
Cain twisted in order to
grab the head and rip it off as primary programming to blind its opponent took
over. But when it disengaged the left arm to grab the head, A-194BG had
anticipated the move. It pinned the robot with one hand and then used the left
to piledriver into Cain's suddenly exposed flank.
@^@
Cain twisted away and folded
over the limb, taking damage. Its torso hydraulics were damaged in the
onslaught. Its legs flayed until they hit the side of the cage. The feet dug
into the plastic and then it pushed off, twisting in A-194BG's grip in order to
break it. Cain got away, rolling until it was far enough away to gather itself
back onto its feet and assess the damage.
@^@
A-194BG studied its
opponent. It wasn't certain what it was thinking but calculated that it was
somewhere between defense and offense at that point in the match. A-194BG's
research in tactics and strategy had covered something called empathy for one's
opponent. The ability to feel for the opponent, to see through their senses. It
realized, however, that it was in a kill or be killed situation. Destruction was
suboptimal to its programming so it fought on.
@^@
"Did you see that? Did
you see that?" Ortega said
excitedly, pantomiming punches into the air. "That's what I'm talking
about!" he said bouncing.
"It's not over yet; he
could still lose it," Wally warned, trying to keep them grounded. But he
too was grinning from ear to ear. They had been considered the underdog in the
match, to pull off an upset against one of the top bots in the field was huge.
@^@
A-194BG saw Cain's
hydraulics bleeding out in a puddle beneath it. Cain was obviously doing a
diagnostic in order to route around the damage. After a moment the fluids
stopped as valves closed. The robot moved slower however and favored its side.
A-194BG deliberately
circled to the right to get the bot to turn in place. Cain managed to make one
revolution before its rear limb slipped in the hydraulic fluid. When it paused
and looked down to see what was wrong, A-194BG acted.
It moved in fast, revving
its motors past 100 percent in order to get into range. Cain's head snapped up
in time for it to start to note the threat and attempt to evade. But A-194BG's
pile driver left arm slammed it down into the concrete. Then its right arm
gripped the head and twisted. With a shriek of metal and torn wiring the head
was torn off. The robot moved back out of range as the body thrashed and then
went still. It held the head up, looking at it. That could have been A-194BG
ran through the A.I.'s mind.
@^@
"We're getting a
handle on the Bismark, despite some
of the security issues that have come up, plus that incident," Vestri
said, standing near the admiral's desk. He was linked to the admiral through
their implants so they could view data together, but like always the admiral
had that data up on his main view screen as well.
Sometimes Vestri wondered
if the man did it as a subtle help to Vestri, a subtle helping hand. He had
struggled with using his implants for a while, and sometimes backslid, but he
could handle it now he thought.
"Good," Admiral
Irons, president pro-temp and Fleet Admiral of the reborn Federation replied.
"I'm glad we've gotten her where she needs to be time wise. The schedule
slippage though …"
Vestri shrugged at the
inquiring gaze. "It can't be helped Admiral. The incident ate up a lot of
the extra time my boys and girls had gotten, and believe me, they are peeved
about that loss. Losing more time due to the investigation afterward was like
adding insult to injury."
"I was thinking salt
on the wound. I heard some of the howls from the teams who wanted to get back
inside her," the admiral replied mildly.
Vestri shot him a smile.
The dwarf snorted. "I can't fault my people for wanting to get the job
done. They definitely have that going for them."
"That and more,
Commander. I'll have to remember to thank them sometime."
"Oh, don't do
that!" Vestri rumbled, turning with a mock alarm face. "I'm finally
getting what I've wanted to out of them. Tell them they are okay, and they'll
slack off!" he said.
The admiral snorted.
"If you say so. We'll see about doing something nice for them as a perk,
if the budget allows it."
Vestri grimaced. They were
still getting a handle on the budget. Thankfully he didn't have the struggle
some of the other departments had. After the invasion of Protodon, everyone
wanted more ships, bigger, more
powerful ships, and they wanted them yesterday.
Fat chance on that last he mused.
"I was wondering; now
that we've got the production lines going and you want to shift the corvette
line; are we going to retool to antimatter? I was wondering because I got to
talking with Captain Logan over the ansible the other day, and he said they've
been stockpiling it. A lot of it."
"Not as much as I'd
like," the admiral replied, sitting back in his chair. "And the
answer is no."
Vestri's massive brows knit
for a moment. "Okay, I can think of one or two reasons, like not wanting
to go back to the old designs now that we've worked out the kinks of the
current production or removing the fusion reactors that we've put in to replace
the antimatter and containment facilities. Got that part. But what am I
missing? Isn't antimatter the holy grail of starships and civilization? Don't
you want it? I mean you set up Pyrax to produce the stuff." He waved a
meaty hand in exasperation.
"I have no intention
of making everything run on antimatter due to the bottleneck in production it
creates. It's a major headache," the admiral replied. Vestri frowned.
"Think about it. Think about getting it from one point to another. It's
inefficient to move, it requires force emitters or magnetic containment which
requires power," the engineering commander nodded, " and it's all in
Pyrax. So, if we need to refuel a ship in say, Protodon, we'd have to ship it.
Which means the shipping would need all sorts of modifications, and security
…"
"Crap," the
commander breathed.
"Right," the
admiral said, smiling thinly. "One of the biggest headaches during the
Xeno war, one of the Achilles heels of the military was our reliance—some would
call it an over reliance—on antimatter. The stuff was in everything. When the
war kicked off, demand skyrocketed. And one way to win a war is to hit the
logistics of the enemy. When supply couldn't meet demand, the military
suffered. Therefore the Federation suffered."
"Okay, so, we're not
going to rely on it. What are we going to do with it? Just store it? That's a
lot of energy going to waste. Or are you going to weaponize it?"
"The weapon of mass
destruction potential is scary," the admiral admitted. "But no. We
are going to continue stockpiling it though. Horatio says he's stockpiled a
lot, but really, it's under a megagram. A bit over 950 kilograms." The
admiral shook his head. "That is a lot of energy potential if used in the
right place. But it's not enough to fuel the fleet. Not by a long shot."
He was careful not to get into too many details about what it could do, or what
he intended for it.
Vestri nodded slowly.
"Okay, so, no antimatter powered combat armor or fighters? Or ships?"
"Ships yes. We'll
supplement them; a MAM reactor in some ships will give them an additional
energy boost in combat or in tight situations." The admiral smiled thinly
again. The idea of a sudden unexpected boost of power might mean survival under
the right situation. But it would only work a few times before the word got out
and the enemy got wise to it. "Fighters definitely, when we have a
surplus. Most likely the elite ones, which will cause a problem. For now,
stockpile and we'll revisit that issue when we need to do so."
"Okay. Just
asking."
"Long term, no, antimatter
isn't going to be in everything. Not anytime soon, not with the limited
production we currently have, the logistics pipeline won't support it."
Vestri nodded slowly. "And before you ask, no, we're not setting up the
same facilities here. In order to do that, we'd have to cut production to the
shipyard and equipment manufacturing by up to 10 percent for at least three
months." Vestri scowled. There was no way in Hades he'd let that happen.
"Unless I diverted a factory ship, but we've got other uses for them.
They're scheduled up to a year in advance, and I don't want to jiggle
that," he said, shaking his head.
It was bad enough that some
of the Federation delegates were demanding factory ship time. It was well and
good for a ship to visit a star system, but if they didn't have the mining
infrastructure to go with it or shuttles to move the cargo to their
destinations, plus the transit time involved, the need for security for the
ships …, he fought a scowl and got back to the subject at hand. "For now,
we're sticking to the tried and true methods. Fusion is easier to scavenge for
fuel in the field. Antimatter will be stockpiled and reserved for the long
range scouts."
Vestri nodded.
"Understood, sir."
"Glad we've got that
covered then," Admiral Irons replied with a smile. "If you've got the
time, look up the history. The engineering part. There is even a movie or
two."
"I'm rather
busy," Vestri squirmed. He caught the admiral's look. "Okay, okay,
I'll add it my to-do list."
"You need some
downtime too. Consider it homework if you must. Grab a beer, prop your feet up,
and watch it."
Vestri chuckled. To others
the amusement seemed subterranean, bass rumbles that threatened to shake the
compartment. "Very tempting. I haven't had a beer in … too long," he
admitted.
John snorted and shook his
head. "Anything else?" he asked. The dwarf shook his head. "Then
dismissed, Commander, with my compliments."
"Aye aye, sir."
~~~(>O<)~~~
When Vestri finished eating
his MRE dinner, he sipped a beer and considered the situation. He could be an
ass, dive back into work, forget the homework, but he knew John would quiz him
about it sometime. Then he'd get razzed and nagged about it. It was best to get
it over with, he thought in resignation. He looked up antimatter in movies, but
when that yielded too many things, he went to the historical archive. The
admiral had mentioned Athena, so he added that to the search engine's list.
Fortunately, Antigua Prime
had the video in its archives. It was ancient, not even in 3-D but in flat 2-D
of all things. "The Lagroose MAM incident," he murmured. He frowned
at the name. "Stupid name," he muttered. He knew about Lagroose;
everyone knew that name. He snorted when he read the dissertation from a
professor, as well as various notes from students. Most of it was crap, He
shook his head at the source and found the actual movie from a link one of the
students had posted.
It was sad that they were
critiquing the movie, the plot, the acting, etc, but not the actual subject
matter. That would have allowed him to cheat a bit. He had found out through
skimming the review that the source material for the script had been compiled
from various sources including Athena's historical files and memoirs. There was
a pithy comment about some liberties taken by Hollywood, but the historians
could tell fact from fiction. It had happened or was as close to reality as
they could get this far down the timeline. He read on for a moment, then
whistled softly. A flick of his implants sent the video streaming to his wall
screen in his small living room. He popped the cap on a fresh beer as the
initial credits began to roll. "This should be something, if only good
enough to put me to sleep."
~~~(>O<)~~~
2150
Millions of people were now
in space, scattered across the solar system. Space around Earth and the moon
was crowded by platforms and space stations big and small. Even the sun had its
own observation and solar energy platforms. But contrary to the astronomy
community and the purists, there was one other facility near the sun.
Perilously near, yet it survived and endured. Some called it the doomsday of
doomsdays for the solar system. Others called it Jack's latest nutty scheme.
The station was mostly
automated. It was an energy platform like no other. The platform had a “straw,”
a way to scoop plasma directly from the surface of the star itself. The process
was called a solar tap and was highly controversial. Protests had been mounted
on Earth and on a few of the colonies but in vain. Jack was a stubborn man who
would not be deterred by the fears and jeers of small-minded folk. He had
ignored it all, just like the scientific community had ignored the supposed
threat in 2008 that the large hadron collider on Earth would have
destroyed the star system with a micro black hole while attempting to find the
Higgs boson.
The threat of possibly
destabilizing the sun's “climate” state was indeed real. So real that Lagroose
Industries took great pains to model what it could and couldn't produce with
the solar tap and under what conditions.
Many people thought the
solar tap was a waste of time. A science project, but one that would be best
done by observation, not direct work. The idea of using it to generate
electricity had been scoffed at. Sure nuclear fusion had entered its second
generation and mankind had learned how to handle superheated plasma readily,
but it was still foolhardy. The solar farms Lagroose and other companies and
Earth nations had built in orbit of the star were enough for everyone or so
they thought.
Jack Lagroose had other
ideas. He'd set the solar tap up as a demonstration model to develop new
technologies and test bed them but also to power massive and powerful particle
accelerators in the first industrial application of such machines in order to
not only research and better develop an understanding of hyperspace physics but
also to produce something more tangible. Antimatter.
Some of the scientific
community had cried foul at the prostitution of such valuable machines, and
again, Jack had ignored it. Star Reach had predicted that antimatter would be
needed to power starships and advanced sublight craft. They hadn't, however,
found a way to mass produce the stuff in any useful quantities. He aimed to
change that.
However the scientists and
engineers involved in the initial labs had found that creating and storing
antimatter was difficult verging on impossible. So while they worked on
perfecting more efficient methods, Jack had ordered his people to take an
alternate route. Quantity, building dozens of particle accelerators in order to
mass produce the fuel. Jack believed in building, not spending decades stuck in
research.
Trapping the antimatter was
easier in space, which already had a vacuum. They had to perfect the vacuum to
an absolute clean environment, then use a magnetic containment trap known as a
Penning trap. The magnets around the inside wall of the container kept the
antimatter from coming into contact with any regular matter and thus safe.
But to get there they had
to find a way to better perfect the extremely inefficient method of creating
antimatter in the first place. Physicists had been attempting it and perfecting
some methods to do it since 1995 when the first molecules of antihydrogen were
created by CERN, Europe's research think tank for nuclear physics.
Various minor achievements
had been noted over the following twenty years, including improvements to the
antiproton decelerator, the deceleration methods, and improvements to the
Penning-Malmberg trap.
The company directive
improved the production of antiprotons by using advanced ultra-intense lasers
and millimeter thick gold material as the initial substrate. They built a
massive automated facility that also had a thousand antimatter decelerators and
magnetic traps in the solar platform. The initial prototype for the entire
complex was orbiting Venus in Race Track Station. That prototype had been
converted to do research for the hyper physics community and was woefully out
of date compared to the latest production run.
Still, they couldn't get the
efficiency of the production above 0.9 percent of the original amount. To be
fair, the scientific community was more concerned with what experiments they
could do on the antimatter and what they could learn over producing vast
quantities of the material. To Eathen Zi, their nominal boss, it wasn't good
enough. It was never good enough.
Doctor Josh Turner was
largely responsible for the recent line of improvements to the basic design.
All of the latest generation of decelerators came from him and he was quite
proud of that achievement.
His junior partner, Doctor
Anna Bright, was also quite proud of his work as well as her own modest
contributions to the subject. She looked on to him and Albert as they sat in
the control room. One control room to control a thousand decelerators. "I
just wish the company would let us do
research. We're finding out all sorts of fascinating data on dark matter and
hyper physics here!" She shook her head as she watched their third team
member, Doctor Albert Russell, go over his notes, head down. He still was cold
to her.
"I do too, Anna, but
you know they are all about the bottom line. We can sneak some science in if it
has an end purpose that we can use to justify it. Like how we managed to bump
the efficiency of the traps up by 2 percent last year," Josh said when
Albert didn't say anything.
Albert was slightly
balding, a bit overweight and brooding. He'd become a physicist after reading
about his two name sakes, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. He'd been
fascinated by their work or so he told everyone at company parties. He'd also
dated Anna briefly some time ago, but she'd broken it off.
"Turner, what's with
this memo on extra security?" Albert rumbled.
Anna rolled her eyes in
despair at the boss as she turned away from Albert and his sour tone.
"Nothing to get
paranoid over; it's just safety. They did that overhaul a couple months back,
and they want to make some improvements."
"Why?" Albert
asked.
"Why not?" Anna
murmured.
Turner glanced her way then
to Albert. "Because it's a company. Megacorps prey on each other,
especially out here. You can't be too careful. There are also nuts out there
who'd love to sabotage us just to point a finger at us and say see, they are
evil!" he shook his head.
"We're not. Not
necessarily," Albert muttered.
"Not what? Evil? Of
course not!"
"Yeah well, tell that
to the Germans," Albert growled. Turner blinked at him in confusion.
"My namesake and others fled Europe back before World War II to get away
from the Germans—the Nazis. Some stayed behind. But …," he shrugged at
Turner's expression. The man's eyes were clouding over with boredom.
"Never mind. You don't care," he growled.
"Not really, no."
"Those who don't learn
from history are doomed to repeat it. Remember that, Turner."
"What's that supposed
to mean?" Turner asked, lifting an eyebrow as Albert rose from his stool.
"You're a smart guy,
figure it out," Albert said as a parting shot as he left.
"He's one sour grape
lately," Josh said, looking at Anna.
She grimaced. She'd dated
Albert when they first started in the program, but she'd broken it off over a
year ago. She'd thought she'd let him down gentle, but he'd been sullen and
taciturn for months, avoiding her. Recently he'd gotten a kick about history,
and such. "I don't know what his problem is," she muttered.
"He should get laid or
something. Relax. Take a chill pill or something before he blows a blood vessel
or stresses me out and I do," Turner growled, turning back to the project
at hand. He exhaled a cleansing breath. "Okay, let's run the latest data
strip. The comparison files should be finished, so we can see what worked and
what didn't. We need something to build off of the last files."
"I see. Don't you
think we should be doing real science? Not just confirming or refining the old
experiments, Josh?"
"The more we refine
it, the better our understanding. The comparison?" he demanded.
"Coming right up, oh
mon Capitan," she quipped, giving him a jaunty salute.
"Funny. Real
funny," he mock growled.
~~~(>O<)~~~
2177
Richard “Bill” the
IV Cosmos wasn't thrilled about his father's tours, but he went along anyway.
Some of the businesses his father owned were downright boring. But this one,
this one had his interest. He'd always had a thing for genetics, and he was
taking psychology in college, something his mother insisted on. He had dreamed
of being an architect or structural artist in his youth but he knew his father
and grandfather were grooming him to take over the family empire.
Pelker-Cosmos LLC
owned enough shares in Biogen to make the staff scramble to obey the two men
and their security detail when they came for their unexpected visit.
Bill looked around
the clean, neat, and very sterile lab. White walls, industrial look, it was all
so … drab. It was hard to believe that magic came out of the lab. Well,
technically the computers and gene printers they had in the back of the
facility he reminded himself.
Since his parents
had invested so heavily in the lab, he had been promised one of the first
designer pets. Each cost a small fortune, and many didn't live long or had
problems, which was how he'd learned to look beyond the surface. His father
insisted he couldn't make up his mind, but it went deeper than that. While his
father took the tour and listened to the lecture and sales pitch, Bill liked to
come and play with all of the creatures. But one intrigued him the most, a
small, almost forgotten little guy in the back corner of the animal containment
facility.
His father, Richard
Cosmos, III, was a short man with a bit of a gut. He'd made his initial capital
as an inventor years ago. Sure, many of his inventions had failed miserably,
some had turned into hazards, but his father had finally listened to mom and
followed her forecasts of future trends. They'd made quite a formidable team
after that. Which was why he'd invested a lot into the designer pet prototype
business. It was the latest rage.
Anyone could have a
mundane pet—a cat, dog, fish, hamster, whatever. Those pets had been bred for
generations to take on certain looks. Panda hamsters for instance. But when
science advanced to the point of hands-on genetic engineering, that changed.
Back in 1999 scientists had gotten into the first designer pets by engineering
zebra fish with genes from a jellyfish. The genetically modified creature had
glowed florescent colors in the dark.
That had kicked off
a lot of interest in gene manipulation. The ability to cross species boundaries
had been an eye opening experience for the public. Then the whole pet cloning
trend had kicked up briefly. The ability to repeat a pet, to in some sense have
them back at a small fortune had appealed to many. Of course the clone was a
different being, shaped by their new experiences.
He hadn't been alive
when Lagroose Industry's genetics division had introduced miniature lions and
such. He'd seen a few and been tempted to get a mini tiger. The ability to take
the traits of a lion and map their coat and structure onto a domestic cat's
genome.
There were times he
was tempted to switch fields to genetics. But unfortunately he was destined for
other things, he thought, looking at his father then back to the cage in the
back corner of the room.
The creature was
named Gizmo, named after a creature called a Mogwi from some famous old movies.
He and his kind had been created to showcase the new techniques in genetic
engineering. He was a new class of chimera and was unique in many ways. He had
been created from scratch, not an original genome altered with viruses and
other techniques. Biogen owned his genetics outright.
He had been created
to look slightly like an ancient Furbee, a small hand-sized creature with
stubby legs and arms. He had no tail but big bat-like ears. His body was
covered in a soft pelt that could be tailored to the customer's desire. Once they
were certain they had the design they wanted, the scientists had cloned him,
altering the sex of the embryos as well as their pelts to order. The Mogwi 2.0
generation had been born to order.
Others of his kind
had been made before, the 1.0 and 1.5 generation derived from altering Capuchin
DNA and mixing in other animal traits to get to the desired end product. The
designer pets had been wildly popular at first, especially when they were young
cubs. But when they grew to adults, their owners lost interest in them. They
became increasingly feral, and over a short period of time, they would lose
their hair and become violent. Violent to the point where they had a few
incidents and had to be put down. Biogen had taken a black eye over the
incident, but a promise of restitution as well as hefty payments for people to
remain silent had smoothed things over with their customers.
Investigators took
the project apart to see what went wrong. The scientists did as well.
Apparently the first Mogwi creator had introduced frog DNA to try to replicate
hermaphrodite reproduction under the skin due to exposure to a controlled
nutrient cocktail (not water). The nutrient bath would be a product of Biogen
and tightly controlled to prevent excessive breeding. However, the project's
ambitions was highly flawed; seeing embryo's growing under the skin had turned
out to be a major turnoff for marketing during customer studies. Also, the
nutrient solution would eventually be taken apart and then replicated illegally
so the project had been terminated. But the alterations in the DNA had been
left in the current generation, just switched off, or so they had thought.
According to the
investigator's final report, when the animals underwent puberty and were
exposed to high levels of hormones, aggression, and sunlight their DNA had
mutated unlocking the genes. Corrections were made to the follow-on batch.
Gizmo was a second
generation Chimerian. His genetic line had been created to address the fur loss
problem and rapid growth issues. He kept his cute cuddly look even when he grew
to adulthood. But like the first generation he became feral, angry all the
time. The good news was that he hadn't lost his white and brown fur, grown to
triple his size with long limbs, and a reptilian skin with sharp shark-like
teeth.
Since they wished to
continue to observe him as a control for the population, he was kept in a small
corner cage in the dark recesses of the lab. Doctor Catheter, the senior doctor
of the lab insisted on keeping him under controlled conditions not just because
his eyes were extremely light sensitive, an unfortunate side effect of the
genetic tinkering, but also to minimize light exposure in case he was
vulnerable to mutation.
Bill always sought
the cage out; he'd done so every time he came into the room. It was like a
magnet. He wasn't sure if it was because the little matted guy was the
underdog, neglected and forgotten, or because he was so strange. He was
sympathetic, that much he knew.
“Come on little
guy,” Bill said, trying to tease the little guy out of the ball he was in. When
he opened the cage door, that got the Mogwi's attention. But before an orderly
could stop him, he reached in and tried to pet the brown and white pelt. Gizmo
snuffled and tried to get away. When he was cornered, he turned and lashed out
to bite the young man's hand viciously.
“Owe!”
“He get you?” Bob
asked coming up behind him. “I've warned you before, kid.”
“Yeah,” Bill said.
“Yeah I know.” Bill drew his hand back, dripping blood, but he stopped himself
from pulling back too fast. He saw the flash of defiance in the Mogwi's eyes as
he closed the door.
The young man didn’t
take it personally, nor did he scold the chimera. The orderly did, then
bandaged the cuts, nattering on and on about getting into trouble until Bill
assured him he was fine and wouldn't rat him out. “I like a challenge.”
“They should put
that little monster down. He's nothing but trouble. He escapes all the time.
They had to lock the door, and it's a bitch to clean the cage,” the orderly muttered.
“Sorry.”
“No problem,” Bill
said. “Like I said, I like a challenge.”
He did some research
on animals in labs and feral animals. That got him thinking until sunup the
next morning. He stared at the rising sun, then down to his wounded hand. No
one should have to spend their life in a cage he thought, mind filling with
resolution to do something about it.
<O^O>
