The Rift: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  Somewhere behind him he heard honking. Derek stopped, out of breath, and bent forward, his hands on his thighs. He spit on the ground. The soil greedily sucked up the moisture. He probably wasn’t giving his wife enough credit—or himself, for that matter. They had been together for 20 years now, without anyone or anything forcing them to stay together. There must be more there than he realized. Things had simply dried up like the soil in his fields. Secretly he still hoped that it would start raining again and everything would be like before.

  There was more honking. Derek turned around. There was a second truck stopped in front of his. Next to the truck he saw a man standing on the road, waving his arms.

  “Okay, I’m coming,” he yelled. “I’m coming, asshole!”

  May 20, 2085, Ceres

  The vista spread out before him far into the distance. M6 was standing at the upper edge of Occator crater. In front of him was a 2000-meter drop. He didn’t feel any fear, just respect. He’d be able to manage the downward climb, even with only four legs. He could have flown down to the crater’s floor, but his bosses preferred that he study the crater walls on the way down so that he could give them that much more information on the structure of Ceres’s crust. That was the only thing they were interested in, ultimately. What worthwhile raw materials were on Ceres, and where were they located? M6 wasn’t angry about it—80 million years ago, a meteorite’s impact created a 92-kilometer-wide hole up to 4000 meters deep, now giving him the exciting opportunity to look into the dwarf planet’s past. M6 was ready to start. Getting to this spot had not been particularly interesting.

  He began the climb down. The crater wall had barely eroded. Ceres had no real atmosphere, so erosion was not to be expected. And yet there was this thin dust layer everywhere. The lower part had already transformed into solid rock—regolith. It was as if a thousand elephants had marched through here in ages past, compacting the dust into stone. But that was obviously nonsense. It was such a crazy thought that M6 had to ask himself where the image with the elephants could have come from. He had never seen real elephants.

  M6 had awakened when the space probe that was carrying him had started its final approach to the dwarf planet. He knew that he wasn’t a living creature—he was a machine—but still, there were thoughts in his head that seemed to have originated from other people. M6 would have liked to be able to get rid of them. Most of them were unpleasant thoughts, others were, at best, neutral. They made him afraid, apprehensive, bored, annoyed—all negative feelings that didn’t even make any sense.

  He was virtually indestructible and immortal. Why should he be afraid of anything? And yet there he was, filled with these emotions as he was about to start his 2000-meter climb down into the crater.

  He also couldn’t understand his builders’ motives. He could work much more efficiently if he didn’t have to constantly deal with these misguided emotions. The most valuable thing of all had to be efficiency. That was the only thing that appeared useful to him—apart from fun and joy, maybe, for which his reward center was responsible.

  M6 stopped. He had noticed a black stone that resembled charcoal. He picked it up and slid it into the analyzer. The dark material on the outside was something like charcoal. It was made up of carbon and had the structure of graphite. M6 removed the stone from the analyzer and rubbed it across the ground. It left behind a black streak. He could write! Whatever he wrote on the exposed subsurface would likely remain for millions of years. Nobody would destroy his creation. Of course, nobody would see it either... but that didn’t matter. He would know that it was here. M6 designed a fractal in his head. He loved these patterns that repeated indefinitely. Then he transferred the image from his mind onto the stone.

  After an hour he had to stop. He wasn’t satisfied, because the work wasn’t complete. He knew, of course, that a fractal was a figure that couldn’t be perfectly reproduced. But wasn’t that true for all compositions? At least at the atomic level, the uncertainty principle blurred everything the closer you tried to look at it. How could humans still be passionate about being artists? On the other hand, his search for truth—for the ultimate facts—was also never-ending. Even if he lived forever, he would never be able to answer every question. Nevertheless, he found the search to be fun. Maybe it was somehow similar for human beings and their art. And fun was a positive feeling!

  M6 set down the black rock. The bottom of the crater was waiting. Only there could he find the materials that he needed for his replacement legs. Slowly he scrambled downward. Every 100 meters he paused and examined the crater walls. He found a hard material that was rich in water ice underneath the layer of dust. Maybe the water that had been melted and evaporated by the impact had then condensed and solidified on the walls.

  M6 tried to imagine the catastrophe as it had happened at the time. It had occurred long after Ceres had become a sort of dirty ice ball. Then a heavy space-rock had drilled directly into its side, melted the ice, and boiled the water. Was part of the once-liquid ocean still in liquid form inside the crust? Had, perhaps, primitive lifeforms been given some new hope, like when rain fell in the desert? He would have to make particularly careful measurements at the bottom of the crater, especially near the raised mound in the center, where it appeared that material might have risen up and outward from the interior.

  But first he needed two new legs. Ceres was keeping the necessary materials ready for him, he just had to pick them up. M6 pointed his telescope toward the bottom of the crater below him. The famous white spots were still approximately 30 kilometers away.

  The descent took another two hours, but the flat area in the crater took only about 50 minutes to cross. He switched to four-leg pacing, which allowed him to move especially efficiently. His legs moved in pairs so that he didn’t rise at all. Long periods between points of contact with the ground would slow him down, because then he couldn’t accelerate with the force from his joints. When he used all of his energy for pacing, he could accelerate to speeds of at least 300 kilometers per hour. That speed took some time to reach, however, and it also took just as long to slow down again. Thus, this type of movement was only suitable for occasions such as this one, when he wanted to reach a known destination as quickly as possible.

  Now there was a white, dream-like landscape spread out in front of him.

  M6 was fortunate, because the sun had just appeared over the walls of the crater. It looked like the far-off battlements of a tall castle. White light fell from a black sky onto an enchanted field, where it glittered and gleamed. A thick, pasty mass made from water ice, ammonia, and various salts had long ago been forced up to the surface. The sunlight had dissolved the frozen water, leaving behind the salt crystals. The process had taken a long time—not tens or hundreds of years, but thousands of years—and the crystals had thus had lots of time to grow. That’s why they were especially symmetric. At the proper angle, they looked like prisms, splitting the white sunlight into a multitude of rainbows of colors from the spectrum. From other perspectives they looked like cut crystals.

  Every salt, every chemical compound, arranged itself in somewhat different crystalline shapes. It appeared as if nature had tried out everything that was possible here, and maybe even a little bit of what had previously been considered impossible. In fact, with the help of his laser spectrometer, M6 quickly found a shiny deposit made from a compound that does not occur naturally on Earth. The extreme cold, the low pressure, and the influence of cosmic radiation had produced it here. M6 remained standing so that he could record a panoramic image. He bent over so that he could photograph a crystal pyramid at the perfect angle and stood up on his front legs so that he could investigate a deposit that looked like a blossom with wide-open petals.

  He felt honored. M6 was the first being that could look at this beautiful scene unfolding all around him. Had it been born from catastrophe? No one would ever know for certain, but it had taken a long time. In the beginning, this had most likely been a salty swamp, but now that
he had come, the area finally showed its full beauty. M6 was grateful to his bosses for giving him this experience.

  Unfortunately, his arrival was also the beginning of its destruction. First he must dismantle at least some part of the beauty himself to obtain the materials he would need for his new legs. And then the humans would come, because they would see his images. Exotic compounds created in this unique laboratory of nature—that was what his bosses had been looking for. M6 sighed. He could refuse to send the data. He was a free consciousness. He was not bound by orders—he could decide for himself. Psychologists on Earth had decided he should be designed this way, because they had conjectured that other designs might harm his mental health. A being who is not free, and who is also damned to solitude, would not be able to survive in the long run.

  He would decide later whether he would send the data to Earth. He would not sacrifice his replacement legs, however. M6 began to dismantle the structures which, according to measurements with his spectrometer, held the necessary components. He picked up the minerals and placed them in the analyzer in his abdomen. From outside it must have looked like he was eating the rocks. In the analyzer, there were millions of nanofabricators waiting for the minerals. They broke up the material into minuscule pieces, took the pieces apart atom by atom, and then reassembled them again according to his stored design. With the right starting materials, he really could manufacture anything—even new nanofabricators.

  That was also one of the big dangers. M6 had done the calculations himself. If he should lose his sanity and reasoning and begin to replicate the nanofabricators over and over again, in a few weeks all of Ceres would have been consumed in the manufacture of new nanofabricators. He would become Ceres itself. M6 found this idea amusing rather than appealing, but he could imagine a simpler mind being attracted to the notion. That was why the nanofabricators had been given an expiration date. Their inventors had adopted the idea from the aging of biological life: the more often the genetic information was replicated, the more often errors occurred. The nanofabricators would become unusable in the 11th generation. That sounded modest, but in reality it meant that two of these tiny universal machines could make 2048 more. And he hadn’t only brought two with him, but instead approximately one hundred million. His capabilities for transforming himself were practically unlimited, as long as he didn’t become megalomaniacal. He had no plans to do so.

  His ‘abdomen,’ the analyzer, wasn’t big enough in which to grow new legs, so the nanofabricators had to move the material from there to the location where it was needed. Very slowly, two new legs began growing out from his joints. The entire process took approximately ten hours. M6 didn’t have to supervise the entire time. Every fabricator knew what it had to do. Nevertheless, because errors were always possible, every now and then M6 checked whether everything was proceeding as planned. Especially critical were compounds that were nearly identical chemically and barely differed in polar mass. If two were being used in the same project, sometimes the wrong one would be used. And he didn’t always notice in time. A few mistakes were completely manageable, however. That had already been considered in the design.

  M6 partitioned a tiny part of his mind to allow it to continue watching over the growth of the two new legs. With the far larger part of his mind, he admired the incomparable play of light created by the sun setting across the dry salt lake. It was a scene that could not be viewed from anywhere else in the entire solar system.

  May 23, 2085, Ottawa, Kansas

  With squealing tires, Derek turned from Main Street onto 13th. His thoughts were all on his fields. Only when his wife put her hand on his knee did he notice that he had almost driven past the hospital. He let the truck slowly roll to a stop. Every two weeks, his wife, Mary, went to see her doctor at Random Memorial Hospital. She did not seem especially sick, but if it made her happy, he would keep bringing her here. Mary had a driver’s license, but she refused to drive in the city. In truth, Ottawa was no longer anything more than a big town. Since the events in the 2070s, the number of residents had dropped below 10,000. It was a miracle that the pride of the community, its university, could keep going. Those who had big plans for their lives tended to move to a real city.

  That was the only reason he could see to explain why the hospital had hired a Turkish doctor. ‘Akif Atasoy, MD, Diabetologist and Allergist’ read a sign on the office door. As always, Derek walked his wife into the waiting room. When Mary had first started going to this doctor, he had been afraid she might be having an affair. He didn’t really care if she was, but did it have to be a Turk? He had been part of special missions during the U.S.-Turkish War. Luckily the conflict had only lasted a couple of weeks. Derek looked around. As always, the waiting room was full. Atasoy was a diabetologist, but Mary claimed that she wasn’t diabetic, she just suffered from allergies. The Turkish doctor did have additional training in treating allergies. Most of his patients, however, appeared to be here due to diabetes. At least they all looked appropriately obese, Derek had often thought.

  He nodded at Mary and left the room. Outside there was a bench in the shade of a large maple tree. He liked to sit there and smoke a cigarette, a real, proper one with tobacco. He might even smoke two today. Sitting in front of the hospital and smoking seemed fitting to him. These institutions were so full of infectious germs that it wasn’t even clear who or what they were really built for. So he thought it best to smoke the little buggers out.

  “Mr. McMaster?” intoned a masculine voice.

  Derek looked around in surprise. Had he overlooked someone he knew in the waiting room?

  “Mr. McMaster!”

  The door to the doctor’s office had opened, and a slim man with short hair and a mustache was walking toward him. He looked like he had a tan. On the street, Derek would have barely recognized him as a Turk, but he had to be, because he then introduced himself.

  “Atasoy, Akif. I’m your wife’s doctor.”

  The doctor extended his hand. Derek hesitated for a second, then shook it. He was pleasantly surprised. Atasoy had a warm, strong handshake.

  “You always leave so quickly,” the doctor said.

  “I’d rather sit outside and wait.”

  “Of course. In this weather, I’d rather sit outside too.”

  “It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like to me.”

  “I see. Can we go into my office for a moment? I’d like to talk to you about your wife’s illness.”

  The doctor motioned toward the open door. Derek shrugged his shoulders and followed the doctor. Better to get it over with, he thought. In the movies, after such an invitation, the doctor would tell the frightened husband that his wife only had six months to live. Derek began sweating. That was the movies. Real life was never so dramatic.

  The doctor closed the door behind him. Mary was already waiting in the room. The doctor pointed to two chairs in front of his desk as he sat down himself in his chair behind the desk. Mary took a seat in one of the chairs. Derek shook his head.

  “I’d rather stand,” he said.

  “Mr. McMaster,” Dr. Atasoy began, “we’re making good progress with your wife’s strange allergies. I’ve been doing some extensive testing. The problem with allergies is that there are so many triggers, but for reasons of safety we can only perform a few elimination tests at a time.”

  Derek took a breath. That didn’t sound like Mary was going to die next month. Perhaps the doctor wanted to perform a really expensive test and he was now trying to sell him on it.

  “Yeah, I know that from the times I tested new feed on my cows,” Derek said. Now I’m talking nonsense, he thought. I haven’t had cows for ten years.

  “In the meantime, I’ve determined that certain wood preservatives might be one of your wife’s triggers. She had a very strong reaction to those specific tests. She tells me you live in a wooden house.”

  What a statement, Derek thought. Who around here doesn’t live in a wooden house?

  “N
ow I’d like to ask you something, and please don’t take it as criticism,” the doctor continued. “Mary says you renovated your house a couple of years ago. Could you possibly have used any of the substances on this list? They are officially approved, even for indoor use, but the timing would match very well with the onset of your wife’s symptoms.”

  Of course, Derek thought, they’d match just like my fist to your eye. But what good would any of this do? It wasn’t like they had another house to move to.

  “I’ll have to look,” he said. “I think I still have a half-full bucket in the garage.”

  “That’d be great,” the doctor said, “and it would really help us out.”

  Atasoy glanced at Mary with what Derek thought was a conspiratorial look. ‘See, that went well,’ is what the look seemed to imply to Derek. Did he think I wouldn’t see that? Derek was starting to feel angry.

  “And what are we supposed to do if one of these is actually in our house? What then?” He spoke with more aggression than he had intended. Atasoy raised an eyebrow.

  “Then I would say...”

  A loud knock on the office door interrupted him. The person knocking didn’t wait for an answer—the door opened at once. Derek recognized the receptionist, a young Indian woman.

  “Doctor Atasoy,” she said, “you have to see this. Come quickly.”

  “Now slow down, Gita, what’s the problem? I’ve asked you before not to simply barge in here,” the doctor said.

  Creases appeared in Atasoy’s forehead. The receptionist looked as if a tornado were racing toward the hospital. Derek wouldn’t have been surprised by that, even if it wasn’t tornado season right now. The weather and all its unpredictability didn’t seem to follow the old farmers’ rules anymore. He heard excited shouts from the corridor and the waiting room.