Singularity Point

by Brian Smith

  “Da,” Federov added. That was the first word he’d spoken the entire meeting.

  “You’ve been awfully quiet,” Vasquez remarked sharply. “Anything to add? Any dark secrets you need to open up about?”

  Federov grinned like a schoolboy. “Dark secrets? Nyet. Something to add? Da. I was going to wait for the annual meeting and show you footage of a flying prototype, but since we’re all together right now . . . We’ve had another breakthrough—a significant one, this time with rapid engineering applications. Ironically, we may owe it all to the supercomputer we are about to switch off, although this breakthrough was made by a member of my team—Kusaka Shiguro—whom some of you have met.”

  “You get your gravity drive going?” Forester asked, momentarily forgetting his anger.

  “We’ve finally nailed down the theory of it—my scientists are already calling it ‘trispectrum technology.’ From the engineering perspective, we’re at an intermediate point,” Federov admitted. “We’ve achieved stable electrogravitic fields and limited inertial dampening, which allows us to effectively negate most of the mass effect of . . . well, any mass within the field effect. It’s not pure antigravity, or a gravity-drive field, but it’s the next best thing. It won’t be long before we have the full field manipulation figured out, and then we have the . . . how do you say it? The whole enchilada.”

  “In layman’s terms, Dmitri?” Vasquez pleaded.

  “I can make a 1,000-kilogram payload weigh a single kilogram on the surface of Earth—in layman’s terms, it means whatever propulsion efficiency I start with is increased a thousandfold within the field effect. With the limited inertial dampening, I can then accelerate that artificially reduced mass at, say, twenty or thirty gravities without harming a living occupant.”

  Campbell and Forester had been over the numbers, in all their permutations, for an Alpha Centauri mission a thousand times. The two of them exchanged glances before looking back at Federov; it was Forester, the torchship pilot, who said it out loud: “That means about eight years to Alpha Centauri, maybe a decade one way, given our current drive efficiencies and assuming we can run the ship up to about half the speed of light.”

  “We might be able to do it faster than that,” Campbell added, light appearing in his oculars. “The faster we go, the less mass we need all around. . . .” He began crunching numbers on the spot, forgetting everything else.

  “Hmm,” Drayson muttered. “That might spell the end of Martian independence, right there.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vasquez asked.

  “It means that if Mars wants to declare independence, it’d better happen soon,” Federov replied. “Once we put this system into production, the disadvantage of Earth’s gravity well goes away overnight. It also means Earth and Mars are anywhere from half a day to a day apart in terms of travel time—people could commute from Earth to Mars as easily as they do from Earth to Luna right now. Plus, by the time this technology becomes commercially viable, either we or someone else will figure out the rest, and then we’ll have real antigravity, artificial gravity, and grav-field propulsion. No more spinning habitats. No more populations suffering from long-term exposure to microgravity.”

  “Another paradigm changer,” Vasquez noted, somewhat in awe.

  “How far along are you?” Drayson asked.

  “I’m sending a team to Earth to do further testing in that gravity well,” Federov replied. “That’s where the technology will have the most impact when the time comes. We’ve already got a technology demonstrator almost built. A manned prototype will be next—with this intermediate technology it’s a simple matter of integrating the field generators and the inertial-dampening technology into an existing design like a spaceplane or transfer shuttle. Two or three months and we’ll be flying. After that we’ll publish the theoretical work, secure our patents, and begin working on the first production models. It may interest you to know that, when we publish, the mathematics of it will be simplified a great deal—that was the big breakthrough Kusaka made, and it’s opened the way to rapid progress, my friends. It’ll make the Hyman-Tsong cosmological model accessible to the broader scientific and engineering communities.

  Campbell looked interested. “Will someone like me be able to understand it?” he asked.

  Federov shrugged. “Kusaka and Tsong say it’ll be Level-Four mathematics, the way they’ve reworked it. It has to do with coordinate systems or something like that. This technology, along with your shelved torchship design, may be the answer. With some modifications, we might have our RFP winner. We can probably even scale her down a good bit—build her smaller. A twenty-year roundtrip mission versus twice that is what we’re looking at now, just for starters.” He paused and grinned toothily. “Didn’t I tell you I could cut the mission time at least in half?”

  “And with only half a gravity drive, by your own admission,” Vasquez replied warmly. “Well done, Dmitri! Well done! I never thought I’d live to see humans reach Rigil Kentaurus—maybe I will, at that!”

  “Well, you won’t die of cancer first, that’s for sure,” Drayson winked at her. He rapped his knuckles firmly on the table, drawing all eyes back to him. “A moment, everyone,” he added. “This meeting has taken an unexpected turn—and a welcome one, I might add. Given everything else, Dmitri’s news is the biggest bombshell of all. Going back to the initial topic—let’s put it to a formal vote. The order of the board is that trustee Campbell dismantle the supercomputer at Titan, and all its associated hardware. The shutdown needs to be accomplished within the month, and the dismantling completed by year’s end. All in favor?”

  “One point,” Federov interjected.

  “Go ahead, Dmitri.”

  “Are we going to lose the data in OURANIA’s partitions? There’s probably more of value there than we ourselves already possess,” he said. “No need to lose what she’s already produced, correct? And what about the offshoot technologies, like the Q-gel and the Omnisynths?”

  “Anything new she’s come up with is the windfall we get from all this,” Campbell said. “Once the computer itself is shut down, nobody needs to know where the designs came from in the first place. Obviously, Dmitri isn’t going to uninvent his advances in grav-field theory, and I’m not going to scrap the blueprints for a third- or even fourth-generation torchship. The Omni Systems synths are in full production—they’re already out there—and the competition is probably already working on reverse-engineering them. Hell, you know they are! We just need to get rid of the computer itself and shut down Janus—I’ll take care of it as promised.”

  “What about the data partitions?” Federov insisted.

  “I’ve already transferred most of the data cores back to Mars from my separate data archive on Titan. We can transfer the remainder and take a final look at OURANIA’s partitions as we go through the dismantling process. We’ll hard-copy any new or updated output she’s produced as we tear down the node-web. Good enough?”

  “Da.”

  “Very good,” Drayson added. “Now—the vote: All in favor?” he asked.

  The verdict was unanimous.

  “Okay,” he went on. “That matter is settled for now. I know all of you are excited about Federov’s announcement. I am, too. However, there’s something else I want to revisit: the current political situation. Maria is right. Some months back I was approached quietly and asked to mediate a possible union between the Martian Coalition and the Ares Freedom Alliance. I know my decision to participate is going to make me less than popular at this table, but there were good reasons to do it: One: Being on the inside has made me privy to all that’s going on. Two: The MIM is the real problem out there, not the idea of an independent Mars in and of itself. If the Coalition and the AFA can join forces, they can mitigate and perhaps even put a stop to the damage being done by the MIM. The MIM behaves as if there is some pressing reason Mars needs to immediately and violently sever ties with Earth, when in fact nothing could be further from the
truth. If the process can be made reasoned and gradual, it can be made peaceful. Dmitri was right about his new technology’s being a paradigm changer. On the one hand, it will tie Earth and Mars more closely together than ever before. On the other, it will reduce Earth’s dependence on Mars to the point that Terran nations may no longer be interested in governance here.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Forester grunted.

  “No, he may be onto something,” Vasquez countered. “I lashed out at you earlier, Carter, and I apologize. It’s just that this matter of the independence movement is one I deal with daily in one form or another. Chryse Planitia University represents a microcosm of all human society. As you’d expect, all those young minds are bursting with ideas. Like most young minds, they’re all unreasonably sure they’re right, which sows the seeds of conflict. Trying to suppress the MIM influence on campus eats up far too much of my time these days. However, one idea seems to come up often at CPU, both in the classrooms and at the student union: the notion that a single, unified Mars might pave the way for a unified Earth. That’s an idea worth exploring further, in my opinion.”

  “Why?” Forester grunted, his agitation making his drawl more pronounced than usual. “All this talk of a single Martian government. . . . What good would it really do anyone? The reason we don’t have it on Earth is because it don’t work—there are too many cultures and belief systems to try and bring them all under one umbrella. Mars ain’t no different, under the surface. Yeah, everyone on Mars faces the same basic problems that come with living on a hostile world, but those are already mostly solved! Hell, I can touch down in Kasei Spaceport in the middle of dust-storm season in my shirt sleeves and go over 350 klicks all the way to Maria’s office at CPU without needing to put on an exosuit and go outside! The system we have here works! Decentralized government works! I’m just not seeing what problem these folks are thinking to solve with this. Sure, I get it—they don’t want to pay taxes to anyone on Earth. Fine! But they’re going to pay taxes to someone, whether it’s the air fee in the local pressure or a more ambiguous tax paid to an independent Martian government. The way I see it, these folks are tryin’ to fix what ain’t broken, and by tryin’ to fix it, they’re just gonna end up breakin’ it and gettin' a lot of folks hurt—mebbe killed!”

  “Good points,” Drayson conceded. “Maria?”

  She smiled. “What about Rigil Kentaurus?”

  “What about it?” Drayson replied.

  “Thanks to Dmitri, there will probably be people living there in fifty years if either of those planets is the least bit suitable—and that’s looking pretty good. Are we going to try to govern them from here? All the nations of Earth, and Mars, maybe—with little flagged territories carved out on Rigil-4 and Alpha Centauri B-2, the way we did it here on Mars? One of these days we’re going to need to get around to naming those damn planets, by the way,” she added with a hint of curmudgeonly irritation. “It all gets hopelessly messy really fast. The governance part, I mean. The system we had for centuries on Earth is starting to break down as we move into the twenty-second century—events on Mars are bearing that out. Once we start populating nearby star systems, the current way will become untenable.”

  “It’s not our bloody problem,” Campbell interrupted.

  “How so? It everyone’s problem ultimately,” Vasquez argued.

  “No, it’s not,” Campbell insisted. “It’s not an engineering problem.”

  “It’s a problem of social engineering,” Drayson countered.

  “Which is not the business of the Crandall Foundation,” Federov interjected, firmly taking sides with Campbell on the issue. “The foundation’s mission statement says we’re about getting humanity to the stars. The foundation has carried that mission forward in the past, even when wars, revolutions, and political dissension happened in the background. Putting human beings on Rigil-4 is our mandate. How they govern themselves once they arrive is going to be up to them. It’s not for us to try to decide here and now, when we know so little of what they’ll find or the society they’ll build.”

  “Dmitri’s right,” Campbell said firmly. “Carter, you’re this foundation’s chairman of the board. You can’t be involved in these political shenanigans. God forbid some kind of war actually breaks out—not that I see how that’s possible, really, but do you want to make a target of the foundation? of this academy? What if the MIM decides its goals conflict with a unification of the Coalition and the AFA and we’re seen as the catalyst? What happens then? Once you abrogate our prior stance of political nonaffiliation and take a side . . . Once it’s done, it can’t be undone. Unless you want to resign from the board and pursue these matters as a personal effort,” he added, taking the opportunity to reflect right back at the man who’d made it the same threat leveled at him earlier.

  Drayson snorted. “I don’t want to resign from the board,” he said, stating the obvious.

  “I suppose you two have a valid point,” Vasquez added, “although I do find it all very interesting on the academic level. Is this something we really need to put to a vote?” she added.

  “No,” Drayson sighed. “I’ll nominate someone unaffiliated with the foundation to take my place and will bow out as mediator. However, I’m worried about our losing the ability to influence these events, going forward.”

  “Well, what I said to Bill earlier goes for you too,” Vasquez said. “If at some future point we decide to alter the foundation’s mission, it will be a decision made by all of us, around this table, not by one of us going off and doing it on his or her own. We need to remember who we are and what we represent. We’re so close now to achieving the ultimate goals of this foundation on the interstellar scale we’ve strived for. . . . We can’t allow outside factors to distract us, tumultuous though they are. Agreed?” she asked.

  The others assented like a pack of unruly boys scolded by their elderly aunt.

  “Okay, then,” she said, symbolically passing the gavel back to the chairman. “Carter, since we’re all here and all the unpleasant business has been dealt with, I move that we go back and analyze the ramifications of this new breakthrough Dmitri’s teams have made. . . .”

  ***

  So, it was all just a big misunderstanding, eh? a tight-lipped Bill Campbell thought to himself as he watched Dr. Shu’s transmission. The first thing he’d done upon opening this latest direct communication with Janus Station was inquire about the payload recently delivered by Thuvia—the payload with Shu’s authorizations all over it.

  “I thought I made it plain,” Shu explained, “that I wanted to build a few of OURANIA’s new core designs so that I can reverse-engineer them to decipher her design improvements. I wanted only a half dozen or so, not a complete 500-core replacement. To build the cores, I needed to make the manufacturing-plant modifications as specified by OURANIA, then restart the plant to build them. Once I have a few to break down, I’ll secure the plant again. If we ever decide to restart it to go ahead with the core replacements, it will be ready to go. Of course, I realize in hindsight that it looks like a lot of materiel, but most of it was for the plant modification itself. My understanding was that decisions like that were within my purview. I didn’t realize I needed your permission to make the purchases and arrange transport. I apologize if I crossed the line. Awaiting your reply. Over.”

  Campbell didn’t wait; he began recording his reply immediately.

  “No apologies necessary, doctor,” he sent. “In fact, the situation has changed: Federov Propulsion has made the breakthrough we were looking for. Project Daedalus will go forward on a significantly advanced timetable, both in terms of shipbuilding and the mission itself. It will please you to learn that OURANIA’s contributions will more than halve the mission time and have resulted in the proliferation of not just new technologies but entirely new industries. By any measure, OURANIA has exceeded expectations, fulfilling the purpose for which it was built. You are to be congratulated, doctor. OURANIA’s success is you
r success.

  “However, after consultations with the Crandall Foundation board, the decision has been made to shut down the computer and dissolve Janus Industries. With that in mind, these are my instructions: Upon receipt of this message, you will immediately deactivate OURANIA and then begin the process of disassembling the hardware and recovering the cores. Recovered cores will undergo one final, hard data retrieval before being recycled. An industrial-scale recycler is on the way to you as we speak, as are a team of specialists and security consultants who will ensure that my instructions are carried out to the letter. The core-manufacturing plant is to be shut down immediately—any modification work is to cease forthwith, and the plant itself prepared for teardown and recycling.

  “Furthermore, you may begin the process of informing your staff about the cessation of operations, and of preparing them for their return to Mars or their homes of record. Every member of your staff, past and present, will be paid five years’ salary over and above his or her contract buyout and will enjoy a full benefits package for five years.”

  At the very least, that means I’ll be able to keep track of every last one of them for at least that long, he added to himself. Not that he had any real concerns on that score—he suspected he knew what was going to happen after he dissolved Janus Industries. People like Shu didn’t give up on their work. She would return to Mars for a time and shop around for another venture capitalist or entrepreneurial sponsor, and then a few years from now a new and improved version of OURANIA would be born. The difference, Campbell told himself, is that the next version of OURANIA won’t have anything to do with me or the Crandall Foundation. He’d be free and clear of the whole thing, and good riddance.