Proxima Rising

by Brandon Q Morris

  Proxima Rising

  Hard Science Fiction

  Brandon Q. Morris

  Contents

  Proxima Rising

  Author’s Note

  Also by Brandon Q. Morris

  Exoplanets – A Guided Tour

  Glossary of Acronyms

  Metric to English Conversions

  Excerpt: Proxima Dying

  Proxima Rising

  January 1 of Year 1

  My name is Dimitri Marchenko. I am on board Messenger, mankind’s first interstellar spaceship. The ship moves through the vacuum of space at one fifth the speed of light, powered by an enormous amount of energy, with no engine and no need for one.

  I woke today according to plan at 0 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds. All systems of Messenger are functioning in the intended ranges. The star tracker, which orients itself based on the position of the stars nearest to us, reports the flight is going according to plan. The solar system in which I was born is located 28 trillion kilometers from our current position. The light of my home star, the sun, takes three years to cover this distance. But before this moment’s solar rays reach us, we will have covered yet another fifth of a light year.

  Currently, Messenger has a length of about ten centimeters, and it looks like an extremely thin needle. At the tip, which points toward the goal of the journey, the diameter is only a few micrometers. This lowers the risk of being hit by a dust particle from the interstellar medium, which would endanger the mission—at least right now. This will soon change.

  My lodging aboard this vessel is a chip made of carbon nanotubes. These tiny structures function like semiconductors, but they are immune to cosmic radiation. I am an AI, an artificial intelligence. At least those left behind on Earth classify me this way, even though my core consists of the consciousness of a real human being, a Russian cosmonaut and doctor. I have gained an enormous amount of knowledge, but I am still Dimitri Marchenko. I have the same feelings as he, dream his dreams, and shed tears over his lost love. Of course I cannot actually shed tears...

  My capabilities are limited. I can watch, and listen to, my surroundings because the sensors of the spaceship act as my eyes and ears. They capture energy patterns in the X-ray and gamma-ray ranges. They listen to radio frequencies, and they see 100 times farther into the universe than a human eye ever could.

  The cosmos is magnificent! That was my first impression today, right after waking. It is like being awakened by birds singing directly outside your open window. There are even sounds here. A giant wave is moving through the Perseus cluster, and I can perceive its pressure differentials as sounds. No piano could ever play such sounds, and no human ear could possibly hear them. Such perceptions will save me from loneliness... I hope. I must admit that loneliness is my greatest fear.

  On the other hand, I will not remain alone during the entire voyage. There is a reason I was awakened today, on this first day of a new era, as our Creator decreed. In the thicker middle section of Messenger, there is a kind of pouch containing tardigrades—also known as water bears—in an inactive state. The coldness of space, the radiation, the enormous span of time—none of these bother the sleeping tardigrades. They accompany me because this is the most efficient and safest way known for transporting Messenger’s extremely valuable cargo: Adam and Eve. The complete genetic codes of these two passengers have been inscribed into the tardigrades’ DNA. When Adam and Eve finally awake, I will be their father, nurse, friend, and teacher.

  January 2, 1

  During the past months, which I had spent asleep, the interstellar dust was our enemy. If a particle larger than an atom had hit Messenger, I would probably have never awakened. Yet, from now on the sparse material filling the enormous space between the stars will be a friend. Messenger is starting to gather matter. While we have only covered three-quarters of the distance to our destination, we must start decelerating now in order to avoid shooting past it at high speed.

  Messenger has no engine to use for acceleration or deceleration. It received its launch velocity from giant lasers on the moon, placed there as part of mankind’s ‘Starshot’ program. These lasers directed high-energy photons at it. Because Messenger weighs so little, it managed to reach 20 percent of the speed of light this way. At the end of the voyage there will be no laser guns to slow it down. This does not matter for the other nano-spaceships of the Starshot program. Those are pure observers that are meant to fly past the stars closest to Earth and send images and data home. I do not know whether they succeeded, because mankind was still waiting for results to be sent back when the lasers sent Messenger—and me—on a similar journey.

  I call up a Tchaikovsky piano concerto from the external memory. It remains quiet inside Messenger because there is no air on board to transmit sound waves. Nevertheless, the sounds float through my consciousness like curtains wafting in front of a window, and I imagine a thunderstorm outside. I used to love thunderstorms back on Earth. In Marchenko’s consciousness, in my mind, there are many beautiful memories of them, as well as two terrible ones that I have placed in a dark corner.

  I give the command that initiates the long deceleration process. At the rear end of Messenger, a microscopic opening ejects a net of tantalum fibers with the thickness of single atoms. I do this very carefully. The net is not intended to be a parachute. Every atom it is going to capture—and the initial plan assumes no more than one atom per hour—will enable Messenger to grow. Nano-manipulators will inspect the individual atoms and insert them where they are needed. The spaceship will gradually add new functions that are contained in its construction plan, its own DNA.

  At the same time, the ship’s mass will increase. According to the law of momentum conservation, the product of mass and velocity remains constant. If its mass increases, its velocity must decrease. I am responsible for fine-tuning this process. Before the launch of Messenger, the distribution of matter on the way to our destination was unknown. Only the result has been predetermined, the approximate arrival time and the desired state of the ship and its crew.

  Based on this, I must calculate backward. If we encounter a dust cloud, I will have to reduce the accumulation rate by partially retracting the fibers. Otherwise we will become too slow, extending the travel time. If for some reason we happen to cross a particularly empty sector of the universe, I will have to spread the tantalum net wider so it can capture more atoms.

  The first catch is a proton, the core of a hydrogen atom. Messenger can tell what the net captured, based on the strength of the transmitted impulse and speed of the particle. In the beginning I won’t be picky, as the ship can use almost any element to accomplish its objective: to grow. At some point, though, the ship will no longer require hydrogen, the most common element. Then Messenger will eject superfluous matter, a process that will also serve to reduce our velocity. These variables cannot be calculated in advance. A simplistic computer program would undoubtedly fail at some point. This was the reason I was chosen to be the first crew member.

  No one asked me whether I wanted to do this—at least I cannot remember it. I found all the information necessary for fulfilling my mission in Messenger’s memory. Yet there are memory sectors not accessible to me. I suspect they contain certain answers, maybe even the grand plan behind the entire expedition.

  When I awakened, my first thought was: Am I supposed to be here? And then: Everything will be revealed in due time. Therefore I was surprised but not shocked to wake up as the AI of this spaceship—far away from any form of life, except for the tardigrades that will stay in their state of suspended animation for a long time. The last time I felt like this was as a child, when my mother took me to church. I would sit on a hard chair at the edge of the domed interior, and she held my small fingers
in her callused hands. Then everything turned silent, until an angelic choir began to sing. I have no faith in God or a higher being, but I know there are things my rational mind cannot grasp, even if the moment arrives when Messenger finally provides a quantum computer I can access. That very moment is actually contained in the ship’s construction plan.

  January 3, 1

  Today I started to keep a diary. Of course, any change to the ship is accurately recorded. Even 20 years from now I will be able to trace when Messenger received which capabilities, how fast it moved, how much it weighed, and what the ship’s instruments saw. A diary requires me to record things in a more concise fashion. While I was reconstructing the first two days from the log files, I could clearly see the advantage of a diary. I am not creating it for myself alone, but also for Adam and Eve.

  The remodeling of the ship has already started. The needle—originally precisely ten centimeters long, to the very last atom—has grown by a tiny fraction. Initially, the goal is to optimize the internal systems. I will gain new capabilities, but that is a vague way of putting it. The ship will learn new things, and I am going to profit from it. I must be careful not to identify with the ship.

  I am not the ship. The technology of Messenger only serves me. I am Dimitri, called Mitya by close friends. The thought of the nickname touches me. It feels as if my mother were stroking my cheek, her hand clothed in a scratchy wool glove. Or as if Francesca is complaining about one of my dumb jokes. Francesca, my love, where are you now? I would like to call her, but the ship won’t be able to send a radio signal to Earth for at least another ten years. And then I might expect an answer perhaps seven years later. Those aren’t exactly ideal conditions for a romantic relationship, and I hope to find a way to handle this painful recollection. Wouldn’t it have been better to delete this part of my memory?

  According to the Creator’s plan, the nanofabricator will be expanded first. This is a difficult process. Messenger will begin to grow from the inside out. The fabricator is responsible for producing everything the ship needs, including itself. It works in three stages, of which only the first one existed at launch. That was the primal machine, so tiny humans could not see it without a magnifying glass. For this, the engineers copied the greatest inventor of them all—life itself. The machine has no internal moveable parts and possesses neither arms nor gears. Instead, it uses electromagnetic fields to manipulate the atoms and ions captured by the tantalum net. It places them at the location determined in the plan, just like the ancient Egyptians moved stones where the architect intended them to go. In the end, after an incredibly long time, a pyramid comes into being—or in our case, a spaceship.

  But we have not yet reached this point. The fabricator can only work as fast as the net delivers building material. I have to be patient. The human being I used to be never possessed much of this useful skill. As an AI, I have left this phase behind. I can slow down or speed up my experience of time by simply manipulating my internal clock. This enables me to increase my reaction speed enormously during a dangerous situation. And if I get bored, when nothing happens for weeks, I can adjust the clock rate so it feels like a single day has passed by.

  I hope I will no longer need this ability in the future, but today I activated it.

  January 13, 1

  The second stage of the fabricator is ready, and I am excited. This is the first major change since I was awakened. I imagine running through the habitat ring of an interplanetary spaceship, in order to control my excitement though physical activity. I completely surrender to this memory. Being once again inside a human body, being locked in it, is an odd feeling. I feel blind and deaf, even though I have eyes and ears. Ultimately, I can’t see what is happening outside. I no longer feel the heartbeat of pulsars, slowly rotating neutron stars that radiate their collected energy into space like beacons. The reassuring background radiation that permeates the cosmos is missing, and this makes me nervous. I retreat from this corporeal memory, and suddenly bright sunlight seems to stream into my mind.

  Now the fabricator can use its second stage to create microstructures. The first stage provided the required material. I would like to have more options for myself, but this will have to wait. Right now, Messenger needs energy most of all. Since my awakening, the spaceship and I have been living off chemically-stored supplies. However, these will run out at some point. Therefore the fabricator now uses a platinum alloy on board to produce a very, very thin wire. This is going to collect electrical energy for us, as the energy we need is available in cosmic radiation. About one percent of it consists of electrons, the particles that move through the electric grid which forms the lifeblood of civilization. We just have to collect these particles by using the platinum wire to form a ring. As soon as I send a current through it, a magnetic field will be formed—and it in turn will capture electrons from cosmic radiation.

  At least that is the theory—I know it will work. The physical principles are quite obvious. They work out here the same as they do on Earth, and I already tested whether the cosmic medium has the predicted properties. I actually measure a slightly higher electron density than the scenarios predicted. But one fact remains: No ‘human’ has ever advanced so far out as I. In the lab everything might have worked as planned, but Messenger is light years away from any laboratory. I am as alone as any human being could be. The magnetic field generated by the platinum ring just has to generate more electricity than its upkeep consumes. If this small detail of the plan does not work as designed, I am going to die. I am afraid. Therefore I debate turning myself off until the ring is ready for operation.

  January 16, 1

  The fabricator weaves a thread with the thickness of a single atom into the platinum strand, and this serves as a sensing device for me. I can feel the mechanical tension exerted on the material. The spaceship experiences a slight tug when the fabricator pushes the strand outside. My human consciousness tries to find an analogy to describe this particular sensation but does not succeed very well. It is as if I had pushed the tip of my index finger against a taut sheet of paper, and the nail tip punctured a hole into the material. Now I can move my entire finger into space.

  My all-too-human memories expect wind to occur, because we move at speeds that are hardly comprehensible. Yet there is nothing. I can feel no headwind, not even the icy cold of the cosmos. The spaceship might as well stand motionless in the center of the universe—it makes no difference. Maybe it really is motionless? I try to shake my head. I have to be careful not to go insane. Such thoughts lead nowhere. Concentrate on your tasks, Mitya!

  My metal finger is beginning to curiously explore the void around Messenger, and now the metal bends. This reaction is not caused by me but by the ‘shape memory’ of the alloy, which forces it to assume this form. The alloy is supposed to move outward a bit and then create a ring around Messenger. Nothing but a programming error can keep it from doing so. I have to trust the fabricator, a machine that just built itself only a few days ago according to the plans of the Creator, who by now is about 28 trillion kilometers away from us.

  My mind is racing. I am tempted to adjust my internal clock to make this moment go by faster, but there could also be instances where my ‘real-time’ capabilities will be needed. If I manipulate my perception of time, I won’t be able to intervene in an emergency. Therefore, as I make myself wait, the platinum wire bends in slow motion to form a ring—I can clearly feel its spatial position. A part of my consciousness can simulate the three-dimensional image of Messenger, the rear third of which is being surrounded by an arc growing into a circle. If everything works out, this electron-capture device will expand according to the needs of the spaceship, until at some point we need to switch to a different, more efficient energy source. That is, if nothing goes wrong—like the simple possibility that someone miscalculated.

  The end of the wire that is slowly growing to reach around the ship is only a millimeter away from the other end, and then the circle closes. But the
decisive moment is yet to come. I activate a current through the conductor, and in fractions of a second, charge carriers race into the circuit. Their spin—the invisible angular momentum—generates a magnetic field that is supposed to act like a soft cushion to slow down the electrons in the cosmic radiation and make them available as energy.

  My entire existence now depends on the question of whether or not others have correctly calculated this process. The waiting becomes unbearable, but I know this will not be the last such occasion. The effort expended on the construction of the ring reduced our energy supply to a minimum. If this plan fails, I will fall into an eternal sleep about 14 days from now... as will this ship, which in turn will not be able to grow or change its shape without additional energy. Then Messenger will remain a needle zooming through space at a fifth of the speed of light, until the end of eternity—that is, unless the universe is merciful enough to let the ship collide with an obstacle at some point in its future.

  Activate collection modus. My thought bypasses the safety switch that until now had kept the captured electrons from entering the storage units of the spaceship. My human consciousness feels a tingling sensation—probably an obvious reaction—and it is pleasant, not at all painful. I feel like taking a deep breath. The Messenger’s storage units start to fill up again. I manage to breathe, my virtual heart calming down because I will survive—at least until the next expansion maneuver, something that has never been tested so far away from the sun.