by Howard Marsh
“Yeah, I can see that. I can move my attention to whatever I want to focus on and still keep up with the others. Can I try to manipulate the robot that I’m connected to?”
“Sure, if you can tell me which one it is. That’s the first test.”
“It’s that one nearest the wall,” Harry replied and pointed to the one that he meant. “It’s pretty obvious since it sees the wall from that perspective and it also sees all the others. But I also knew it even without that information. How does that happen?”
“Good. You caught on fast. You are so tightly coupled with that robot that you and it are mutually self-aware. I know it’s a funny feeling at first, but your brain now thinks that it’s both you and the robot. We think that the robot’s brain feels the same way and uses your sensory information as if it were an extension of its own.”
“Unbelievable! This is really fantastic. So can I try to manipulate the robot?”
“Go ahead, but be careful. It will be like a small child just learning to walk at first, so keep things very simple. Remember that the interface is so tight that you will feel sensory responses that the robot feels, and if it hits something or falls over, you are likely to recoil or fall too.”
Harry spent a few minutes doing some simple maneuvers with the robot, and Brad was right. His hands and feet felt feedback from the robot and his sense of balance was clearly affected too.
“OK,” Brad said after letting Harry play for a bit. “That’s it for now. One of the things in the training is to let you practice controlling the degree to which the robots sensory inputs affect you. It’s not hard, but it takes practice. We need to get you to a point where you can see what the robot is doing or thinking and also put new thoughts into its brain, but you also have to decouple from the feedback from the robot’s sensors. You need to develop the master-slave relationship with it instead of the more symmetric relationship that you have now. We also need to get you to a point where you can work simultaneously with more than one robot. You’ll have to deal with four on Mars. So, let’s quit for now. Take off the headgear, and we’ll move on to the next topic.”
Harry removed the headgear and gave it to Brad. He was a bit disoriented, but all in all he felt pretty good after the sensory overload session.
“Let’s get to the bio and chemistry now,” Brad said, and offered the floor to Nigel, Gladys, and Mikio.
“Ah, finally,” Gladys said, clearly eager to explain how the bugs would be delivered to the alien fleet. “The biology part is easy. It’s the chemistry that will make everything work.”
“You’ll get used to Gladys,” Nigel interjected. “She still doesn’t get it, but OK, she is doing a super job, and it’s not easy. But the bio wasn’t all that easy either.”
“OK, OK,” Gladys continued. “They did some pretty neat stuff too, but the chemistry was a real bear. Here’s the problem. Nigel and Mikio developed some really nasty bugs that will kill off most of the aliens, but the challenge was to find a way to get those bugs into things that will go back to the fleet and to start the incubation when they reach the fleet. The trick is to embed the bugs in a chemical matrix that keeps them in suspension and that releases them when they reach the alien fleet. And that’s what we did, me and my research staff here. We created the molecular cages to package the bugs.”
“Doug helped too,” Brad interjected, much to the annoyance of Gladys. “He developed a composite material that was almost identical to the type that the aliens use for storage containers, with a very clever difference that lets us merge Gladys’ molecular cages with the molecules of the composite in a way that would be almost undetectable. So we can bury our weapons inside the walls of containers that the aliens think have the pathogens that can kill humans. That will induce them to take the containers back to their fleet.”
“Doug’s work was important,” Gladys admitted, clearly still annoyed with Brad for interrupting, “but the chemistry is really the clever part. Look, we know that the aliens breath air pretty much like ours and that the atmosphere on Mars has much less oxygen, so the chemicals we mixed into the composite will cause the composite to begin to dissolve when the oxygen content reaches a level that would be on their ships. We adjusted the chemistry so that dissolution would start within a few minutes after exposure to the expected oxygen content and temperature. Then microscopic pores would begin to form in the composite, and the cages for the bugs would dissolve. All of that would be almost undetectable by anything except a good analytical instrument or a powerful microscope. Since the alien ships would fly back to the fleet at very high velocity, the time measured on them would be very short, even if the fleet was light years away, so we could start the contamination within the ships as long as symptoms didn’t show up until after they arrived at the fleet and unloaded their cargo. When the ships arrive, the bugs would already be leaking into the air and would contaminate all the places where the containers went before they could be taken into biohazard containment. Then the bugs would start to spread. Nigel and Mikio designed several types of bugs that would be highly contagious immediately, even though symptoms wouldn’t appear until much later. These are the worst types of plagues to put into a tightly integrated ecosystem.”
Nigel and Mikio then explained the biology approaches: one for the attack and the other for the defense. The two approaches were pretty straightforward. For the attack, they had developed a number of viruses that they determined would be highly lethal, highly contagious through both airborne dispersal and contact, and had incubation periods of about five to ten days. The dead aliens provided all they needed to concoct these lethal agents and to do some basic tests. Several of the viruses would result in a form of hemorrhagic fever, basically liquefying the aliens from the inside out. The others would cause very aggressive respiratory infections. Mikio explained that all of them would also mutate very rapidly once inside alien bodies. Nigel, Mikio, and their team of researchers did extensive tests on the aliens to confirm that there was no indication that any of these viruses, or their potential mutated offspring, had ever infected them. There were no signs of antibodies or any other indication that they could be immune.
“The contagion should spread pretty rapidly through the fleet,” Mikio explained. “As you were probably told, when the alien fleet pauses to explore a region, they connect all their ships to form a mega-city of sorts. We saw that in the records that were taken from the crashed ships and the robots on Mars and Titan. It’s actually quite clever, but it’s also their Achilles’ heel. You see, when they’re traveling at near light speed, time on the ships hardly passes, so each ship can take care of its needs for the few hours or days before the next stop. But when they do stop, time starts to move at the normal pace, and they need to be able to take care of all their needs for weeks, or maybe even months or years, while the scouts do their exploration. They have ships that specialize in all the things that are needed to support the population. Some ships specialize in food production; others fabricate or repair things; others handle the purification of air and water, and so forth. All of them are connected, and there’s forced air flow among them. You couldn’t ask for a situation more vulnerable to spreading airborne infection.
“We found that the food production ships also handle production of medical materials, and that’s where they’ll almost certainly take the fake anti-human pathogens that we give them, so that they can grow enough of them for their attack. That’s where our nasty bugs will be cultivated by the aliens, all the while thinking that they’re cultivating bugs to attack us. Since food and medical materials move throughout the fleet, once we get our viruses into those ships, the epidemic will spread across the entire fleet within just a few days, long before they even notice that they’re becoming infected.”
Harry was both impressed and disturbed that they were going to use lethal biological weapons to exterminate another race of intelligent beings, but he appreciated that this was probably going to be a war of extermination, one way or another. If
only one race would survive, he had to agree that it should be the human race. But it was also clear that these aliens were very advanced, and we might be underestimating their abilities to react to the attack. “Will they be able to develop something to stop the plague?” he asked.
“We don’t think so,” Mikio replied. “It took us two years to develop vaccines for just two of the pathogens, and those were the simplest ones. We’re still working on the others, with little success so far, and we haven’t even started to look at any of the likely mutations. It isn’t easy even if you know in advance what the pathogens are and how they work. We also found no way to fight any of the diseases after they incubated. Even if their biomedical science is years ahead of ours, we doubt that they’ll be able to react in time to do much damage control. They won’t even know they’re infected until it’s too late for vaccines to be useful for most of their population. They may be able to quarantine some ships and save a small fraction of their people, but the plagues will definitely wipe out most of them.”
Brad then explained that Nebula created data records that would be loaded into the robots on Mars to convince the aliens that the pathogens in the containers should be taken to the fleet to produce the bioweapons for the attack on humans. The records were an extension of the actual records that documented what the aliens were doing before they crashed. They’d already determined that a biological attack was probably the best way to go, especially since their biology was entirely different from ours. They were starting to develop pathogens that would be deadly to humans and that wouldn’t be able to exist in the alien bodies. What Nigel, Mikio, and their colleagues did was to alter the records and insert other microbes such as varieties of common cold viruses and other pathogens that caused diseases for which more than 90% of humans were vaccinated. So, the alien biological attack would have no real impact on humans, but the forged records indicated that they would be fatal and that samples were already stored in the containers.
Success was further insured by sending many containers with different types of the fake anti-human pathogens to the fleet. The reasoning was that they would probably want to generate weapons using most or all of them, since they wanted to be sure that the attack would be effective and also since they would already have the starting material for many varieties of microbes. It would be too good for them to resist, and the desire to culture most or all of them would probably cause them to set up production in all of their biotech facilities, all of those being on the same ships that produced food. So that would assure that the distribution of food to the rest of the fleet would also distribute the deadly pathogens as well as spreading them through the circulating air.
“You seem to have thought of everything,” Harry remarked after hearing the explanation. “It sounds like a sure thing, but the thought of genocide is disturbing, even if it is against an alien race that seems to want to do the same to us. I also don’t understand why you can’t just put the right things in place on Mars and then sit back and watch. Why do you need us to be able to work with the robots while the aliens are there?”
“Well,” Brad replied, “we do hope that it all works like this, but you know that no plan survives contact with the enemy. We’re making a lot of assumptions, and that means that we have to be able to respond to unexpected changes in what the aliens actually do. If things go as planned, our main tasks will be completed, and we’d just have to sit back and watch, as you say, but if something goes wrong, we’ll need to be able to do whatever it takes to get things back on track.”
“OK, I guess I can accept that. How long would we have to be on Mars to wait for them to arrive, and how will we know when they are preparing to come?”
“Good question. You know about the sentry robots, right? Well, we expect that the aliens who are going to arrive would send a signal to the sentries before they approach the solar system. This seems to be their standard practice. They would wait for a response before proceeding. The sentry on Titan is disabled, so it wouldn’t respond. The one on Mars will respond, but we inserted a delay of a couple of hours, so we will have ample time to get to Mars before the aliens get there. Remember that the signals travel at the speed of light, but the alien ships would approach a slight bit slower than that and would also delay until they receive the sentry’s delayed reply. It gives us ample time to get to Mars, disembark and get into our hidden outpost and get our spacecraft far enough from Mars that the aliens wouldn’t detect it.”
“You mean that your AFO team would be abandoned on Mars? I’m not sure that I like that thought, especially when you tell me that I’m supposed to be part of that team.”
“Abandoned isn’t the right word. The team will be deployed there for several days. That’s all it will take to complete the mission. Once the aliens begin to get sick, our transport ship can return, with another couple of warships, and we can destroy whatever is left of the aliens on Mars and extract everyone on the AFO team. We’ll be stuck on Mars for a pretty short time, not abandoned.”
“Well, I still don’t like the idea of being up there with just the few of us and an alien invasion force, but I guess that it does sound like a logical plan.”
Chapter 5
The following months were spent perfecting the human-machine interaction techniques that Lars and Yuri had been developing and getting Harry trained to work with the others for controlling the collective behaviors of the robots. He had a good head start from his prior research and quickly bonded with Yuri and then with the rest of the team. Everything was almost ready for the final preparations on Mars, but Harry still needed one last piece of training.
Brad entered the lab as Harry and Yuri were going over their notes and making some slight adjustments in the logic that would be programmed for supervisory control. They had promised Ludmila that they’d have it for her by the end of the week and were now a couple of days ahead of schedule. Things looked pretty good in all the simulations, and it looked like the job was finished.
“Harry,” Brad said as he approached them, “can you spare a few hours? There’s something that we need to do.”
“Yeah, I think that Yuri and I were just about to wrap up anyway.”
“Good. You and Milo and I need to take a little ride. Is it OK with you, Yuri, if we steal him for the rest of the day?”
“Sure. Like he said, we were just about to quit for the day. We think that we have everything that Ludmila needs, so go ahead for the ride. Harry earned a bit of fun.”
“What’s this fun? Do you have an amusement park down here too?”
“Better than that,” Brad replied. “We’re going on a quick trip to Mars. We want to show you around before we go there for the job, and we also need to train you to fly the spacecraft. Everyone needs to know the basics, just in case something comes up, and it’s pretty easy. You’ll be a pro in a couple of hours - not as good as Milo, he’s the best, but good enough to do whatever you’ll need to do in a pinch.”
Harry had expected this to happen at some point, but it still took him by surprise. “We’re going now? Don’t I have to do something to get ready?”
“No, we just get in and go, like we’re going shopping in the family car. We have space suits so we can go outside, but we don’t wear them inside the ship.”
So, off they went to the docking area, where a small ship like the one that they flew in before waited. Harry recognized Milo, who actually responded when Harry said hello to him. “Welcome to spaceship 101,” he said as he shook Harry’s hand and ushered him onboard. “You take this seat on the right, and I’ll handle things until we get safely away from Earth.”
Harry obeyed, and sat down. Milo sat to his left, and Brad settled into a seat behind them. Milo then explained the set of controls in front of them and in a console between them.
“OK, it’s pretty easy to fly this thing, unless you want to do something fancy. That’s for course 102. For now, let’s get the basics.”
He pointed to an array of buttons on the fr
ont panel. He had one of them in front of himself, and there was an identical one in front of Harry. “These are the controls for everything except the gravitational vectors that propel and steer the ship. Those are in the console, like the throttle controls in an airplane. If you’ve learned to fly an airplane, this will be a piece of cake. If not, it may take a bit of practice, but it’s very easy.”
He then pointed out each of the buttons on the front panel. They controlled the landing gear, outer door and ramp, interior gravity field, temperature, air pressure, radios, sensors, and a few other things that he said Harry could learn from the operator’s manual. Then he explained the console with the flight controls. It was more like the joystick for a video game than like the controls in an airplane. Each of them had his own joystick, on their respective sides of the console.
“OK,” Milo continued. “The joystick is what we use for all maneuvering. Push it forward, and we go faster. It applies force, like thrust, so as long as it’s pushed forward, we continue to accelerate. Pull it back, and it decreases the thrust. If you pull back beyond the neutral point, the thrust reverses, and we slow down. If you push to one side or the other, the thrust vector changes, and we move to that side, still accelerating if we haven’t gone to neutral in the front-back direction. The ship automatically reorients itself so that the front is pointed in the direction of flight, but you can change that by rotating the handle at the top of the joystick. If you pull the handle up, the ship rises, and if you push it down, it descends, but that usually is done only at low speeds for takeoff and landing. It sounds a lot more complicated than it really is. When you get the feel of it, you’ll see how easy and natural it is.
“The speedometer is this display in between our two panels. At low speeds, the numbers are black and indicate kilometers per hour. When we go to higher speeds, still non-relativistic, the numbers change color, first to bright green and then to bright blue. That means they’re showing speed first in kilometers per minute and then in kilometers per second. When we go to relativistic speed, the numbers turn red and show our speed in percentages of the speed of light. It’s actually a lot simpler than it looks, since you know in advance when you are going to make a transition, so you expect to see the right colors and numbers.
