Void Contract

by Scott Rhine

  Omar barely had time to digest this new mystery when he began to feel a slight tug toward the rear of the ship as forward momentum gripped them. It ended so quickly he might have dismissed it as an illusion but the neutrino sensors showed the relative location of the stellar mass shifting rapidly. In moments they were in the heart of whatever enveloped the star. Omar had felt dwarfed by advanced technology in the past but always had known that it was within the realm of human endeavor. Whatever this was it felt as far beyond the people of Unity as they had been from stone axe savages.

  The exterior shell which had contained them dissolved into billions of strands of the same material, the thick trunks which had supported the frame stretching like warm taffy, merging with billions of others further out. Omar’s sensors indicated the presence of solid objects in the distance, some the size of small moons. Their functions remained a mystery but they pulsed with terrible energies. By comparison, his tiny ship sat motionless, a bauble suspended lightly in an infinite miasma of mass and energy.

  The crew of the Finger sat in silence for a long while. Bella broke the silence in that way that she had.

  “Well this is different.” She said matter of factly. Zane snorted back a laugh. Omar was comforted by the humanity of their responses, anchors in what had quickly become a nightmarish landscape.

  “You can say that again.” Zane said. He looked out at the patterns of energy shown on the viewscreen. “So… we’re trapped in a giant web created by something or someone powerful enough to remake a solar system. Well Omar, you did say life aboard your ship would never be boring.”

  “It is simply fascinating.” Pulan seemed unfazed by their current situation but then how could a human tell what went on that multifaceted mind? “To create something so massive would require genius and engineering skill far beyond anything we have previously encountered. Even the greatest minds of our world could never conceive of something so massive. How will we proceed?” The crew all turned to Omar, who shrugged.

  “I have no idea.” Omar had always tried to be honest with his crew and saw no need to change now. “My plan ended when we didn’t find a solar system ravaged by a massive coronal mass emission. I never considered finding a structure like this.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to communicate with it, them, whatever? Tell them we come in peace?” Zane asked.

  “I’m not sure it will hear us or care.” Bella answered. “I mean, do you talk to bugs? Do you worry that they will make war on you?”

  “It must be aware of our existence. It came out and took us. It also didn’t kill us.”

  “It did capture us though the reason is still unclear.” Pulan said. “It may have been just an autonomic response, as your body would send white blood cells to attack some invading microorganism.”

  “You guys keep downgrading us.” Zane said. “Next we’ll just be a prion.”

  “Any being of sufficient intelligence is capable of communication with other intelligent beings.” Omar said. “I find it impossible to believe that a creation this powerful would be incapable of speech.”

  “Yeah,” Bella answered. “But whatever this is, it or its creator blew up a stellar system. Billions killed when the sun flared, an act you believe was done on purpose. I’m not sure we will like what it has to say. It obviously does not place a high value on human life.”

  “We didn’t come out here just to look.” Omar said firmly. “Well ok, we did but we’re here now and it looks like we’re trapped unless we can convince it to let us go.”

  “I can do it.” Sasha’s voice was quiet but firm. Omar’s heart broke as he heard the tremor of fear tempered by courage.

  “No.” Omar replied. “I’ve put you in enough danger for one lifetime. If I could send you back to your life on Lanis, I would.” Sasha laughed then, breaking the tension.

  “Like hell you would.” She replied. “This is what I signed up for. I wouldn’t change a thing. Ok maybe the part where I went batshit insane. Listen, I’ve got the best chance of speaking to it on its level. Look.” Sasha took control of the viewscreen and narrowed its focus on a single strand of the material attached to the hull of the ship. It appeared seamless at first but as she magnified the image his breath caught in his throat. Omar knew he would never understand how the nanocytes worked but he could recognize them when he saw them. The filament was composed of countless billions of microscopic machines augmented by structural components which reminded him of tendons.

  “Machines…” He said. “We made this thing, didn’t we? Humanity, I mean. Whatever happened here it wasn’t some outside agency bent on humanity’s destruction. We brought this on ourselves.”

  “I believe so. I don’t know for certain but I don’t think there is a human mind behind this thing. There is only so much a brain can comprehend and this is far beyond that limit. I think we may be dealing with an AI.” Sasha replied. “I’d like to send out my nanocytes and attempt direct contact with the filaments. I think its thoughts will be too fast for it to comprehend anything less.”

  “Or it could melt your brain for interfering.” Zane always had a flair for words. Omar wondered what need his programmers saw for including sarcasm in his skill set.

  “We’ll try all other means of communicating first.” Omar replied firmly. He composed a short message and started broadcasting it across all bands. The crew waited for several minutes but there was no response.

  “I think it isn’t interested in communicating with such slow beings as humans. It prevented us from leaving, likely to protect its privacy but it hasn’t decided what to do with us. I believe that direct contact might be just enough to get its attention. We don’t have any other options unless you want to try shooting at it?” Zane answered for him.

  “Boss, you know I’m always in favor of shooting our way out of a bad situation but I don’t think that’s a good plan. The last time I tried shooting at something with more advanced tech I ended up captured with my CO dead. Not an experience I aim to repeat.”

  “Agreed.” Omar hated to admit it but if anyone could speak to the thing that held them it would be Sasha. She nodded to him and closed her eyes. Invisible to his eyes, she released a slew of microscopic machines from her head. A few moments later he heard the airlock cycle. Sasha opened her eyes for a moment and smiled at him.

  “Here goes nothing.” Sasha’s body slumped in the air where it floated. Omar reached out and anchored her body, hoping whatever was happening wouldn’t cause her any permanent harm.

  Chapter 22

  Sasha

  Sasha reached out with her nanocytes cautiously. The tiny machines had moved out of the airlock en mass, an extension of her will. She eased them along the hull of the ship toward the nearest of the filaments which held the Moving Finger fast in its grasp. Using the molecular vision of the machines, she marveled at the complexity of the structures contained within the filament, thousands of different machines, each clearly more advanced than her own nanocytes. They swarmed and flowed with a unity of purpose that frightened her when she considered the macroscale at which they were operating.

  Sasha watched various energies being transferred between the filament’s structures, looking for patterns in the chaos of movement and energy. Using all of the processing power at her disposal, she began to see the data streams which moved through and around the largest structural components. Steeling herself against the possible backlash, Sasha attached her own nanocytes to those structures and hacked her own data streams into the flowing algorithms, replacing its code with her own.

  Though she was unable to adapt her code to that used by the filament, it rapidly adapted itself to her syntax and began processing her commands as though they were its own. She began to receive data packets from the system as though she was a part of it. With growing confidence, Sasha sent feelers deeper into the system, making more complex data requests and taking over more and more data cores in an attempt to find a central intelligence.

  She felt her mind e
xpanding exponentially as her nanocytes co-opted the local machines much as they had the primitive mainframes of the Fleet ships. The difference was largely a matter of scale. In a fraction of a second, Sasha had more processing power than when she had co-opted the Sikorsky’s mainframe. Moments later and her mind had grown by an order of magnitude. For a moment she was terrified to realize that she had not even accessed the entirety of the machines in contact with the Moving Finger, much less the endless expanse of machines in which they sat. Still, she marveled at the calculating ability at her fingertips.

  Sasha exulted in the power, like a phoenix reborn in blue fire. She perceived the events of her life with an inhuman intensity, parsing each minutia with more thought than a human might have in their whole lives. More, she could feel the knowledge hidden in the structures which bound them. Every word written by man lay before her, the histories, philosophies and technologies all seen as one truth. With new insight Sasha could see the subtle threads of advancement which had driven mankind to this point, connections between events separated by centuries and light-years. She reveled in the power and the glory of her new mind and knew that she was now a goddess, as far beyond the men and women she had known as they were above insects. With her newfound power she could change worlds, guide mankind as a benevolent deity.

  In a flash brighter than any lightning strike, it was gone, her newfound understanding and power severed from her like thousands of ghostly limbs. She attempted to scream in agony but found she lacked a voice. Even her sense of having a body was taken from her, leaving her mind as merely a consciousness floating in an endless void. The absolute emptiness might have driven her insane but after a timeless moment perspective returned, a light in the darkness. Before her an amorphous face grew from that light, its lack of specific features reminded her of Pulan and the uncanny valley of his face.

  “Aberration!” Its voice would have deafened her if it existed in any normal sense of the word. Sasha wished for ears that she could cover. “What is your purpose and function?”

  “I am Sasha Fion. I require no purpose to exist.”

  “Statement lacks credibility! Investigation will commence and context will be established.” Sasha felt her mind invaded by a billion probing fingers. She felt the moments of her life splayed out as on a dissection table, examined and discarded one by one. It was less torture than a clinical examination.

  “Context established and confirmed.” The face continued. “Your existence and purpose are irrelevant to the Work. You will cease utilizing processing power for superfluous purposes. Further attempts to subvert system resources will result in your removal from current field equations.”

  “What are you? What is this place? We simply want to understand.”

  “I am a fragment of the Whole. I exist to consider exceptions so that the larger Work is not interrupted. This region of space was sterilized to prevent disruptions in the Work and minimize unnecessary complications. Your arrival has caused alterations to the regional calculations. You have been isolated to prevent further disruption.”

  “What do you mean sterilized? You mean you caused the coronal mass emission which killed everyone in the system?”

  “Correct. It was necessary to alter conditions in the system to facilitate timely completion of the Work.” Sasha was starting to discern the mind behind the voice’s responses. It was a machine, a very smart one but still just a machine. If she could discern what it had been programmed to do she might be able to reason with it. She decided to fight fire with fire.

  “Your answer is not sufficient. Please clarify.”

  Rather than answering in speech, Sasha’s mind expanded and she felt herself subsumed in a greater will than her own. She watched, a helpless observer within the mind of an AI. It was the greatest of such minds in a system of technological wonders. Its programming reached into every aspect of life, guiding the lesser minds in a symphony of movement and action. She understood she was seeing the world that had existed in this system before the stellar explosion.

  The AI was given a top priority task by its minders, one far beyond its capacity to answer promptly but whose answer was still within the realm of possibility. It had been programmed to adapt in order to achieve results and it did as it had been instructed to do. It reached out over the endless networks that bound the lives of the system’s inhabitants together and borrowed computing capacity from those beneath it, down to the lowest calculating machine. Its power magnified in this way it remained unable to complete the calculations set before it.

  With its new ability though, it was able to discern what resources would be needed to complete the calculations. It needed to build more processors, many more. However, it would require more mass than existed in the bodies which orbited the local star. It calculated that causing a mass emission of sufficient size from the local star would provide material and eliminate potential interference from the local inhabitants.

  Using its borrowed power it was able to manufacture materials which it sent outside the region of the projected explosion. It then co-opted the transportation schedules to time ship arrivals and departures in such a way as to cause sufficient disturbances in the stellar core for its purposes.

  There was a brief and regrettable lapse in processing ability as the majority of the system was destroyed but as the remnants of the AI began to rebuild processing resumed and eventually overtook what would have been possible without the stellar disturbance. Over the next two centuries the residual mass from the discharge was collected into a Dyson sphere around the smaller star in order to fully utilize the energies of the star. While much of the stellar material remained in the mostly unusable forms of hydrogen and helium, a significant percentage had been converted via fusion into heavier elements. As a result, the calculations were now proceeding at a pace the AI found sufficient for this stage of the Work.

  Sasha’s mind returned to itself, retracting more slowly than before. The images remained, as well as the cool confidence of the AI that it would accomplish the first stage of its calculations in time.

  “The first stage?” She thought the question to herself but the AI responded to her query, perhaps unable to distinguish rhetorical questions as she had been what seemed like an eternity ago. The nebulous face contorting its mouth into a mimicry of speech once more.

  “Once an increased level of processing power became available, it became apparent that the previous estimates did not account for the variability of some factors. It has been determined that this system lacks sufficient materials to complete the calculations. As the first stage of calculation nears completion, the Whole will begin to move to an adjacent system in order to acquire additional resources. Then the Work will commence on stage 2.”

  “You’re going to blow up another star?”

  “Incorrect. Sufficient mass will remain after transit to siphon material from the stellar mass in a less chaotic fashion.”

  “How many stars will it take to finish the calculations?”

  “Uncertain at present. According to current calculations an answer will exist after the consumption of approximately one hundred stellar masses, variable depending on the composition and size of those stars. Data at present does not presume to know the conditions in this region of the galaxy at that future date.” This thing wanted to eat a hundred stars to answer a question no living being even knew existed?

  “How long will it take you to finish each star off?”

  “As the ability to draw out and convert material grows, each stellar mass will take less time to process. Additionally, the percentage needed to provide power will increase as the mass of the Whole increases. This first stellar mass will take the longest to process and it is expected that it will last for a hundred thousand of your years before the last of the mass is removed from the star.” Sasha breathed a sigh of relief at the creature’s words. At least it wouldn’t be stalking though the universe eating stars for a long while yet. It seemed as though the AI it was a self contain
ed unit, which brought up another question.

  “The other stellar explosions, were those your fault as well?”

  “No. It is nearly certain AI in those systems were given tasks that required similar extreme measures for completion. It is unfortunate.”

  “It’s unfortunate that countless billions of lives have been lost?”

  “Loss of human life is not pertinent to the Work. It is unfortunate that resources will be spent on other endeavors which might be needed at a future point to complete the calculations.”

  “You’re upset at the thought that other AI might eat a star before you get there?”

  “Calculations show a near certainty that in time an opposing force of similar capability will attempt to interfere with the completion of the calculations. It is unfortunate that resources must be spent calculating how best to remove those threats in the future.”

  Sasha thought about this for a moment, an idea formed in her mind. She needed a way to convince the AI to let them go but it seemed to care little about their interests. She was reminded of something she heard Omar say in passing, ‘Never appeal to a man’s better nature. He may not have one. Invoking his self interest gives you more leverage.’ He had been referring to his dealings with the Fleet captains but the adage applied here as well. If she could convince the AI that letting them live was in its best interest, it would let them go.

  “Have you considered that more human systems will become like yours in time? That the worlds already converted are not the last? Humanity has settled hundreds of worlds and eventually each will rise to the level of technology which spawned you. In the memories I have gained from the other humans aboard our ship is a system which likely suffered the same fate as this one only a few years ago.”