Helium 3: Fight for the Future

by Brandon Q. Morris

  “Then Norok would have met a different brave Navigator. In your life, one door would have closed and another would have opened.”

  Kimikizu envied the old woman. With the experience of several hundred cycles, she could view life from a more serene vantage point. On the other hand, it was probably not that exciting anymore. Even if she could leave the infirmary now, Lobozinu had just a few cycles to look forward to at most.

  “And how was the trip to the planet?” asked Lobozinu.

  “It was... a gift,” Kimikizu replied. “I’m so grateful to you for this opportunity.”

  She told the old woman how Norok had welcomed her and what she had experienced during the flight and on the planet’s surface.

  “I would have solved the cook’s riddle,” said Lobozinu. Then suddenly she groaned.

  “Can I help you? Should I get a nurse?” Kimikizu asked worriedly.

  “Thanks, no. It’s okay. But I need some rest now.”

  “Of course, Lobozinu. If I can, I’ll visit you again tomorrow.”

  “I’d like that, Kimi.”

  She did not resent this short form of address anymore. It showed just how much of an Explorer she really was.

  As she made her way to work her assigned shift, the communicator, which she wore around her neck on a chain, vibrated. She answered the call with a nod of her head.

  “Sorry to bother you, Kimi. Do you have a moment?”

  She recognized Norok’s voice immediately. She hadn’t thought she’d hear from him so soon. “Yes, I’m on my way to my midday shift,” she replied.

  “I won’t keep you for too long. I just wanted to ask if you have time tomorrow night. I promised to take you out to dinner.”

  Even though she had known he’d call, Kimikizu was speechless. He’d suggested that they eat together on the return flight, but now he was offering to take her out. Those were two very different things.

  “Kimikizu?” he asked after she’d pondered for a few moments.

  “The reception isn’t so great here right now, sorry.”

  “No problem. And?”

  It was going too fast for her. Norok was apparently not one to beat around the bush, and she liked that. She had to be careful not to let any vague fears get in her way. “Yes, I have time—I mean, I don’t have any plans for tomorrow night,” she said, and she felt the burden lifting from her shoulders.

  “That’s nice. I got places at ‘Mother Nature.’”

  So he had already made reservations, and at Mother Nature of all places. She swallowed. It was the restaurant where she’d had her only other date. It had been awful, but not because of the food. It wasn’t the restaurant’s fault that Kimikizu had made such a poor choice of company. Mother Nature was quite a well-known restaurant, and it wasn’t an inn. Maybe she’d be able to get over the bad experience she’d had there.

  “Mother Nature. Very nice,” she managed.

  “At midnight?” Norok suggested.

  “That works very well for me.”

  This wasn’t a lie. Then she’d have two hours to get ready after work. Should she make a trip to a feather artist? She actually didn’t like someone with a wing iron tampering with her wings, and she didn’t find that it left her looking that much prettier. No, a nice dust bath had to be enough.

  When she got to work, she was in unusually high spirits.

  “What’s wrong with you?” a colleague asked.

  “Nothing,” she said cheerfully, taking her place on the roost.

  There were several screens in front of her that she could operate with her beak and fingers. Kimikizu preferred to work with her beak. Many of her colleagues complained that the tips of their beaks would get sore, but it was much faster than using their small fingers. Because the fingers were located approximately in the middle of the wings, she always had to move her wings when typing. In the long run, she found that to be tiring.

  The Supreme Navigator was the one who gave orders to her and her colleagues. Now that the generation spaceship had entered into orbit, their task was to explore the system more closely, which hadn’t been possible before because the ship had been traveling too fast.

  It was now her job to align the measurements using the ship’s various instruments—for example, to look at the telescope images for the objects detected by the gravimeter. The natural intelligence of an Iks was better suited to this task—which was basically pattern recognition—than a computer. Her main screen displayed two side-by-side maps, the pair showing the same area of the system as recorded with different sensors. Kimikizu had to slide one of the two maps over the other, aligning them until there were as few deviations as possible. Differences often occurred, simply because the individual sensors varied in terms of sensitivity. The farther along Kimikizu got in her assigned project, the more difficult it became for her. Was it because her concentration was fading?

  She closed her eyes for a moment. The Supreme Navigator had distributed the images in order, beginning from the center—first with the measurements of the inner planets, then the areas located farther out. The farther they were from the central star, the larger the area to be examined and the less precise the measurements she had to work with. Kimikizu clacked her beak in irritation.

  The latest gravi map that had just appeared on the left side of the screen seemed notably inconsistent with reality. It had several bright spots on it. The gravimeter had apparently measured sharp changes in the local gravity value there. But the telescope photo on the right just showed empty space. There could be only a few reasons for this. Either the computer was defective and had compiled the wrong data, or the telescope or gravimeter was damaged.

  Since it had provided reliable data so far, Kimikizu suspected the computer was to blame. “Are you also getting strange values on the gravi map?” she asked her colleague.

  “The bright dots with nothing behind them?”

  “Yes, those.”

  “They can’t be anything but artifacts,” replied her neighbor. “Perhaps there was a coronal mass ejection from the central star at the time of the measurement.”

  “But the effects haven’t reached the outer system. Maybe a computer error?” Kimikizu suggested.

  “Why don’t you send it to the Supreme Navigator? She’ll take care of it. That’s what she’s there for.”

  No. Life had given her some variety in the midst of this tedious job, only for her to pass it on to somebody else? Out of the question. “Okay, I’ll make sure it’s cleared up,” Kimikizu said. “Send your data over to me, and then I’ll compile it and send it to the Supreme Navigator.”

  Her colleague didn’t answer but did as Kimikizu had asked. Now she had twice the amount of data available for the analysis.

  She hid the optical map on the screen and replaced it with her colleague’s gravitational data. The two images looked very similar—there were well-defined spots with particularly bright dots in the middle. The gravitational values the device measured there were as high as they would be for a neutron star. The values on the left image were slightly higher than on the right. Kimikizu thought hard. The data fields were not recorded simultaneously, but rather in quick succession. What if the lower intensity in the newer image on the right, as compared to the left, was caused by the passage of time? Then it had to be a question of a subsiding phenomenon.

  Kimikizu started the simulation module. She had the computer extrapolate into the past using the two gravitational values. The values immediately rose exorbitantly. Four days before, the gravity where the bright spots were now should have been equal to that of a black hole! Their gravimeter would probably have been blown out if they’d used it. If an object weighed as much as a black hole and could not be detected by the telescope, what could it be?

  “A black hole,” she said aloud. “No, more than a dozen.”

  “What did you say?” asked her colleague.

  “Sorry, I’m just thinking out loud.”

  And these thoughts had been utter nonsen
se. Fortunately, her colleague hadn’t noticed. With the simulation, she’d just gone four days back. Eight days back, instead of the bright spots, there should have been a supermassive black hole, like the core of the galaxy, for each one. She counted. There were exactly 20. Now that was utterly impossible!

  The Supreme Navigator stood behind her and looked at her screen with interest, her beak raised. “Kimikizu? What are you doing there?”

  Kimikizu almost fell off the roost. “I... I was just running some quick calculations. I’m moving on.”

  “Leave it there. I’m quite interested in what I see on your screen. You want to make sense of the gravimeter’s values in the outer system. So far we’ve only looked for errors in the measurement log. I’ve noticed that you like to think outside the box. Please don’t take that as a criticism.”

  Kimikizu wasn’t happy with this attention, but as long as the Supreme Navigator was there she could explain her thoughts. She ran the simulation again.

  “Do you see it? If you take the change in intensity between the two images as a reference measurement, black holes could have formed there four days ago,” she explained.

  The Supreme Navigator shifted from foot to foot, a sign of impatience. “A nice idea,” she said, “but you see for yourself that they’re just disappearing again.”

  The Supreme Navigator tapped the screen to start the simulation forward. “Do you see, Kimikizu? In three days there’s nothing left to see. It doesn’t look like black holes at all. Unless they just vaporized in seven days!”

  This was a real weak point in her thinking. Black holes disappeared over time, but it took billions of years, not seven days.

  “That’s true,” she said.

  “Then why don’t you stop searching for the causes and get back to your assignment. We need to learn as much as possible about this system,” said the Supreme Navigator.

  Kimikizu was disappointed. Others would get to attend to the bright spots, and she had to compare images again like a kid. Suddenly, a strange image popped into her head. She saw herself, freshly hatched from the egg, and a Provider was pushing a worm into her beak. The worm disappeared. There was a hole where the worm had been.

  Of course! She had discovered wormholes. Kimikizu’s beak clattered so excitedly that the Supreme Navigator placed her wing on her shoulder. “What have you got, Child?” she asked.

  Even though Kimikizu could foresee the reaction, she had to say it. “I think,” she said, “that what we see there are wormholes. The moment a wormhole opens, we see through the white hole, which represents its mouth, deep into its throat, and the black hole in it. Our gravimeter picked up the echo.”

  “Now this is good,” said the Supreme Navigator. “It is certainly important to have imagination, but those who want to be successful in science must use it sparingly. The simplest solution is always the most probable.”

  Strorok’s Premise. All the young Iks knew it. It was enough to bring down such an elaborate theory. Kimikizu knew that the Supreme Navigator was now just waiting for one thing, for her to claim that Strorok’s Premise did not apply in her particular case. But she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. There was no point. It was essential to know when the battle had been lost.

  “Of course, Supreme Navigator, it’s just a measurement error. My imagination sometimes goes a little too far,” said Kimikizu, lowering her beak.

  The Navigator moved away silently.

  Kimikizu had never looked forward to a dinner like she was now. At midnight tomorrow she would report her observations to Norok. The Supreme Explorer may have had something else in mind, but she was sure he would listen to her. He wasn’t as much of a stick-in-the-mud as the Supreme Navigator.

  Kimikizu’s communicator vibrated again on the way home. She had a premonition that Norok was going to cancel. Perhaps word of her blunder had gotten out, and Norok could no longer be seen with an Iks like her.

  She answered the call.

  “I’m sorry, Kimi,” he said.

  She knew it. He really was going to cancel on her.

  “Yes?”

  “Unfortunately, I have to cancel our dinner tomorrow.”

  Kimikizu covered her beak so he wouldn’t notice her distress. She had to keep her composure. “Of course,” she managed to get out in a level tone of voice.

  “The Supreme Leaders are now sending us out earlier than expected. We need to take a closer look at the gas planets.”

  “Oh, then I hope you have fun.”

  This meant that Norok would be traveling for many days. But she didn’t need anyone. Tomorrow she could visit Lobozinu and tell the nurse her name. But that would be silly and immature. Actually, it would be inappropriate.

  “I think there may be some misunderstanding,” he said. “We should take a look at the gas planets. With the emphasis on the ‘we,’ meaning with you included.”

  Kimikizu had to sit down. If Norok was playing a trick on her, she would...

  “Can you hear me, Kimi?”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “You should only come if you want to, of course.”

  Without hesitation she said, “I would really like to.”

  “That’s a relief! Especially because that last part wasn’t entirely true. You should have agreed to come along because I’d requested it.”

  “No problem. I can live with that.”

  At the next opportunity, Kimikizu turned to the right. To get over the shock, she needed a wind tunnel. She found the closest one and dived into the current with her wings outstretched.

  Intermedium 1

  The giant red sun hung motionless over the valley, casting a surreal light over its wooded slopes where the treetops swayed in a gentle breeze. The pink sky was clear but for a few small clouds, and it didn’t look like there would be any rain coming soon. What a shame, thought Mart. He liked the sound of raindrops pattering on the roof.

  He was sitting in a deck chair, contemplating the hologram of a complex structure spinning in front of him, when Shra appeared by his side. He made the hologram disappear with a wave of his hand.

  “You know this is physically impossible?” she asked, looking up at the sky.

  “I like it that way,” he replied.

  “It’s also monotonous,” Shra persisted. “I prefer the nighttime, when the stars are shining.”

  “That’s what you say to me every time.”

  “Well, all too often. I haven’t been here for centuries.”

  “In your subjective centuries. My timeline is different. You were just here!” There was a tone in his voice that suggested some reproval.

  Shra just shrugged.

  “What brings you here?” Mart asked.

  “You haven’t activated your link in several years—your years.”

  This time it was Mart who shrugged his shoulders.

  “You’ve turned into a hermit,” Shra continued.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “There’s a difference between private life and isolation!”

  Mart didn’t reply. He swiped with his hand through the air, and the surroundings changed. The valley disappeared to give way to the courtyard of an ancient Roman atrium house. Candles illuminated the surrounding arcades, and the black sky twinkled with thousands of stars. Even though there wasn’t a hint of wind, small waves rippled in the impluvium, which gleamed silver beneath the starlight.

  In the middle of the shallow pool stood the statue of a goddess, her outstretched hand holding a jug that poured a thin stream of water into the impluvium. The serene splashing sounds harmonized with the equally gentle twittering of a bird that was singing somewhere.

  “Better?”

  “It’s so cliché!”

  “Nostalgic is more like it. This house actually existed.”

  Shra ignored this. “We need you,” she said.

  “I’m busy.”

  “Doing what? Simulating the past of a lost species?”

  “I study hyperfractal
s, multidimensional polytopes, and the interaction of closed graviton strings with D-branes.”

  “You can’t let it go, can you?”

  “It is the only thing we’re still missing in order to fully understand creation.”

  “That’s the hubris talking, Mart. As if we’d already come to a complete understanding of our universe.”

  “Would we be here if this wasn’t the case?”

  “Losing interest in something anymore doesn’t mean you’ve understood it.”

  “That’s the ignorant arrogance talking, Shra! No... I’m sorry... That was too harsh. But losing interest in something that still hasn’t revealed all its secrets would either be ignorant arrogance or blatant boredom—or an inability to understand it! Take your pick. Which best describes our community?”

  Shra saw that Mart hadn’t changed in the past millennia. He was still an arrogant asshole. But they needed him.

  “I’m not bored, and I’m not ignorant either, Shra, and even my fiercest opponents can’t accuse me of incompetence,” Mart continued. “Sure, I may be arrogant, although somebody once said that class only looks like arrogance when viewed from below.” He laughed, which made him seem almost pleasant. “But I’m not alone in my conviction that this universe has nothing more to offer us.”

  “And you think that other universes would be more interesting?”

  “At least they would be new!”

  “If they exist!”

  “Of course they do, and I’ll find them—along with a way to get to them!”

  “How long have you been wasting your time on this problem?”

  “Ah, a rhetorical question to catch me off guard!” Mart laughed again, but this time it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “You know exactly how many tens of thousands of years of objective time I’ve been working on it.”

  “With no results.”

  “We’ve got time. What difference do a few millennia make? Moreover, your assumption is incorrect, dear Shra! I’m closer to a solution than you presume.”

  “I’ve heard you say that before. More than once!”